The Fury - Jason Pinter [67]
of weed, a fourth of a kilo of cocaine and enough crack
rocks to keep Flavor Flav's teeth chattering for a year,
they're not the ones using it."
"We're not," Amanda said. "We weren't."
Makhoulian nodded, then thumbed his lip. "Look,
Parker, I know you think your father is innocent. If I was
in your shoes, I'd want to do anything I could to help
him, too. And if he is innocent, he'll be found as such
by a jury of his peers."
"The case hasn't even gone to the grand jury yet,"
Amanda spat.
"True, but we all know that's a mere formality. We
have his fingerprints. We have his receipts from his trip
to New York. And we have a motive."
"Does the name Butch Willingham ring a bell?" I
asked suddenly.
Makhoulian looked confused. Said, "No, why?"
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I believed him. "Nothing," I said. "Just a guy who
was killed a long time ago."
"And you bring it up, why, as a brainteaser?"
"I'm not sure why," I said. "Just wondering if I'm the
only one who thinks there's a lot more to this than a
simple case of a guy murdering his son. Since, you
know, another young man was just killed in the same
manner as Stephen Gaines."
"The investigation into the death of Hector Guardado
is under way," Sevi said. "You're a reporter, Henry,
right? Can you tell me how many murders were com
mitted in New York City last year?"
"Not the exact number, but I believe it was under
five hundred."
"Four hundred and ninety-two," Makhoulian said.
His eyes were riveted on mine. This was not a history
lesson or an attempt to belittle my knowledge. "Now,
first of all, that was the lowest number of murders com
mitted in Manhattan in over forty years. First time it's
been under five hundred since 1963, to be precise. Thing
is, even though that's low for our standards, that's still
an awful lot of homicides. Now, think about that word.
Homicide. These four hundred ninety-two people were
killed by someone else. They didn't step into open
elevator shafts or pee on the third rail. They were killed.
Murdered. Now, you are a reporter. So it's part of your
job to report crimes that are extraordinary. Like Sharon
Dombrowski, the elderly woman on Spring Street who
was so convinced she was being targeted by a robber
that she hooked up an electric cable to her door, so
when her poor landlord came by to check on a leak and
knocked he was electrocuted to death. Or Percy
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Whitmore who bought a studio in Little Italy using a
loan from his father. Only when he didn't repay in time,
Percy's dad came over and smacked his son across the
face so hard ol' Percy fell and cracked his skull open on
his bookshelf. Accidental? Maybe. But homicides
nonetheless."
"What's your point?" I said.
"See, you write about these instances because they're
one in a million. Like a shark attack, they're so
gruesome and out of the ordinary that people want to
hear about them just like how they slow down when
passing a car wreck. What doesn't get that press are the
boring murders. The two taps to the back of the head."
Makhoulian mimicked pointing a gun to his cranium,
cocking his trigger finger twice to illustrate the shots.
"You know how many of those nearly five hundred
murders were the result of gunshot wounds? Four
hundred and twenty-eight. Now, I'm not a mathemati
cian, but that's somewhere between eighty and ninety
percent. So you're going to come in here and tell me,
definitively, that these two murders are the result of
some vast conspiracy that I'm too dumb to see?"
"I'm not saying you're dumb. But Hector called my
brother that night."
"According to Verizon, the phone call lasted eight
seconds. You know how long eight seconds is? Long
enough to realize you've dialed the wrong number before
you hang up. There are no other records of these two
having ever corresponded, no other calls between the
two."
"You don't see these killings as two pieces to--"
"Pieces my ass, you're reading too much James
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Ellroy. Know what they teach us in the academy? The
rule of lex parsimoniae. Since I'm guessing