That I didn't have much respect for the profession of gossip columnist was no secret to anyone who'd ever had a conversation with me about the job. I ranked its importance on the Journalism Scale of Importance somewhere between the people who filled up tubes of Wite-Out and telemarketers.

"Fine," he said. "I'll take a rain check for today. But at some point I'm going to cash in all my checks and you're going to have lunch with me."

I offered a noncommittal nod/shake, and Tony walked away. In the meantime, I had one person who might actually skin me alive if I didn't answer to him soon.

I arrived at Jack's desk only to find it vacant. It didn't take me long to figure out where he'd gone.

The shouting coming from Wallace Langston's office could be heard throughout the entire newsroom, and reporters who tended to make more noise than the average airbus on takeoff sat dead silent listening to the barrage.

Wallace tended to be a fairly mellow guy. In fact, in my few years at the Gazette, Gazette, I'd rarely heard him chew a I'd rarely heard him chew a reporter out, rarely saw him get p.i.s.sed at the copy desk (if he had, Evelyn Waterstone might have impaled him on one of the flagpoles outside). What really burned Wallace was losing a story to the compet.i.tion. And since Jack was the newsroom's elder statesman, he surely took the brunt 178.

of it. And since I was partnering with Jack, he no doubt wanted me there to take some of the small-arms fire.

I walked past Wallace's secretary. She was usually kind to me, always with a good word, but today she looked at me like I was marching right into the sights of a firing squad. I could have sworn she gave me one of those "please, don't go in there" looks usually reserved for the girlfriend in horror movies who pleads with her man not to go into the bas.e.m.e.nt where the killer is waiting with a machete the size of a guitar.

Sadly, I could not heed her advice, and knocked on Wallace's door.

"Who is it?" he yelled from inside.

"It's Henry," I said.

"Get the h.e.l.l in here."

I gripped the doork.n.o.b, took a breath, and hoped Wallace's machete was dull.

I opened the door to see Jack seated in front of Wallace's desk. Wallace was not seated behind it, as per usual. Instead he was pacing around the room while Jack's head swiveled trying to keep pace.

Wallace looked like he'd come in to work properly dressed, hair combed, clothes ironed. But now his graying hair was askew, gla.s.ses crooked on his nose. And the pads on his elbows looked like they were being worn away.

"Where the h.e.l.l have you been?" Wallace said.

"Meeting with a cop about the Kaiser investigation,"

I said. "He's going to find out what he can about the guy who might be responsible."

"That's dandy," Wallace said. "While you were out p.u.s.s.yfooting with your boys in blue, did you happen to see this?"

He walked over to his desk and picked up a copy of 179.

that morning's New York Dispatch. New York Dispatch. Wallace stomped over Wallace stomped over to me, holding the paper much as you would a bag of dog p.o.o.p. I looked at Jack, wanted to see if he had anything to say, but the old man sat there, head down.

Wallace handed me the paper. "Read it," he said.

I looked at the front page. Immediately my stomach lurched up to my throat, frustration and anger welling up inside me.

I turned to where the front page article continued, and read the whole thing. Slowly. Word by word. Then I closed the paper and threw it across the room, cursing loud enough that Wallace's secretary would probably have to apologize to whoever she was on the phone with.

"How the h.e.l.l did she..." I said.

"Don't you dare ask that question," Wallace said. "It's your job to know what goes on in this city. You handle the crime beat. It is your duty to know every nook and cranny of this island, from the mayor's office to the b.u.ms who live beneath the subway. For something like this to get past you...you must have been asleep at the wheel."

He looked at Jack, waited for a response. "Either that or the two of you have become so narrow-minded with this Kaiser murder and Gaines follow-up that you can't sniff what's under your nose."

"I didn't know anything about this," I said. "Paulina...I don't know where she got it. And I don't know which cops she spoke to, but if you look at the article they all spoke on condition of anonymity. I just met with my man in the NYPD, and he's as clued in as anyone. He didn't mention a word of this, and he doesn't keep things from me. Not like this. Something about this piece doesn't pa.s.s the smell test, Wallace."

180.

Wallace picked the newspaper back up. He held the cover out for us both to see.

On the front page of the Dispatch Dispatch was an enlarged was an enlarged picture of what looked like a small stone, possibly a piece of gravel, pitch-black in color with a rough texture.

The headline next to the photo read The Darkness.

The subt.i.tle said, The Drug That's About to Take Man- The Drug That's About to Take Man- hattan Back to the Stone Age.

25.Darkness Rising

As a deadly new drug hits the streets, police and citizens silently fear a return of chaos a quarter century old Most New Yorkers did not know Kenneth Tsang.The son of Chinese immigrants who pa.s.sed away before he graduated high school, Tsang received his MBA from Wharton and spent most of his twenties raking in the dough while working at two prestigious investment firms. Most New Yorkers did not know that, despite his income,Tsang owed nearly half a million dollars in taxes and mortgage payments, and that he burned through his money nearly as fast as it came in.

Most NewYorkers know thatTsang was found dead this week, his body pulverized and found floating in the East River.What they do not know is that a balloon marker was tied to the buoy that Tsang's body was tethered to.They do not know that inside that balloon were half a dozen small, black rocks, left by Tsang's killer. These rocks were no bigger than a piece of gravel, but each contain enough destructive power to 182.

clinch a plastic bag around the head of a city already gasping for air.

Now, come with me for a moment. I have a brief history lesson to impart upon you.

For those of us who lived through New York in the 1980s,much of the information within this article will ring horrifyingly familiar.Let's backtrack for a minute, about twenty-five years ago to 1984. George Orwell would have been proud. Or terrified.

New York as we know it today did not exist.Following the oil shortage of the 1970s, the Son of Sam murders, and an economy on the verge of chaos, the plumbing system that was New York was about to get hit with a cherry bomb that nearly destroyed it totally.

That cherry bomb was a new drug known to scientists as methylbenzoylecgonine. Or as it is more commonly known, crack.

Crack first appeared on our sh.o.r.es in 1984. Before that, the drug of choice was cocaine. But as cocaine became more plentiful, prices dropped and dealers began to lose much of their profit margin.

Poor them.

So to get back the money they were losing on c.o.ke, they came up with a new way to profit. In a nutsh.e.l.l, they used baking soda or other bases to cut the cocaine.

This increased the volume of their product while retaining the same toxicity of the drug. It was the equivalent of taking a dollar bill, mixing it with a few pennies, and turning it into two dollars.

By 1986, just two years after crack hit the streets, over fifty-five thousand people were admitted to emergency rooms around the country with crackrelated injuries (most often this was either from 183.

overdosing, or violence which was a result of the drug trade).

For those of you who lived in New York during that time, as I did, the effects of the crack epidemic were as visible as a streetlamp. Crime in this city hit highs never before seen. Murder and rape rates rose dramatically. Cases of aggravated a.s.sault skyrocketed from just over 60,000 in 1980 to over 91,000 by the end of the decade. Burglaries. Larceny.Vehicle theft.

New York began to resemble less of a modern, cosmopolitan city than an outpost of Beirut.

Thankfully, this trend reversed itself in the 1990s, and through the new millennium New York has enjoyed its lowest crime rates per capita since the 1960s. New York was known as one of the safest big cities in the country, and if you live here or came to visit, you could walk down the street feeling safe.

After the atrocities of 9/11, New Yorkers banded together to create a safer city. One that reclaimed its place among the grandest in the world.The virus that infected us twenty-five years ago had long been forgotten.

To my horror, though, recent developments have proven that this virus was not extinguished, but had rather been lying dormant, in remission, waiting for a catalyst to revitalize its poisons.

That catalyst has finally found us.And it is not a terrorist,or a crooked financial inst.i.tution.It exists in the tiniest form possible: a small black rock.

Though the human eye might not register this tiny specimen as anything more than a pebble, a piece of gravel,something that might even pave a driveway,the properties that exist within it threaten the very 184.

sanct.i.ty of the city we have fought so bravely to protect.

The culprit? A simple black rock that dissolves on your tongue as fast as a breath strip.

n.o.body is quite sure where the Darkness came from, who manufactures it, or whether this drug has spread to other states. Crack began in primarily metropolitan cities. New York. Los Angeles. Washington, D.C.Cities with large urban populations. Cities where there was enough poverty to turn the need of a cheap hit into gold for the men and women whose lack of humanity drove them to produce it.

As of press time, the police had no leads on who deals the drug. A high-ranking member inside the NYPD did comment, off the record, stating,"We are fully preparing for another epidemic similar to the rise of crack cocaine we saw in the 1980s. Though privately, we're worried that this one will be much, much worse and have a potentially more devastating impact considering that our infrastructure is already damaged."

So what's the harm in a little black rock, you might ask? Why should I care about some idiots getting high?

Because increases in drug production and consumption lead to increases in crime.But here's where this drug differs: a normal crack user will find successive hits of the drug granting decreasing effects.The hits, as they are, are not as potent.

With the Darkness,however,some insane chemical genius has figured out a way around this.

The human brain produces a certain amount of dopamine, a neurotransmitter often a.s.sociated with pleasure.Dopamine is released through many pleasur- The Darkness 185.

able experiences, including food, exercise, s.e.x and, of course, drugs. Simple crack cocaine releases a larger amount of dopamine than the brain is accustomed to, so when the user takes a second hit before the brain can replenish dopamine, a lesser amount is released.

Yet the Darkness circ.u.mvents this by causing the brain to produce more dopamine. This means that each successive hit will have the exact same impact as the one preceding it,making it more addictive than nearly every drug on the market.

It's no wonder the cops are nervous.They're facing streets about to be teeming with a drug that's cheaper, more plentiful, and delivers, pardon the expression, the best hit money can buy.

G.o.d help us all.

26.Friday

The call came close to midnight. Morgan wondered what the h.e.l.l had taken them so long.

He didn't recognize the voice on the other line. It wasn't Chester, and he didn't think it was Leonard. Not that it mattered much. He a.s.sumed there had to be more to the operation than the two guys he'd met. There were twelve other men in that room--well, eleven after the accident with Jeremy--and they'd all been recruited like him.

Leonard had said that they'd each been recruited by a different person, as Leonard had been brought in by this guy Stephen Gaines. If each new recruit was brought in by a different guy, a la Chester, that meant at least eleven people on Chester's level.

Morgan wondered just how many people were a part of this organization. Then he wondered how long it might take before he could be promoted, and how much money he'd have to bring in. Didn't matter. He'd do it.

In his mind's eye, Morgan could see Jeremy's lifeless body sliding down the wall, clumps of his blood like egg yolk on the wallpaper behind him. Morgan wished he felt 187.

remorseful, wished he felt some sort of sympathy for Jeremy, but as hard as he tried he simply could not.

When Leonard described what the job entailed, it was a zero sum equation: either you had the sack for it or you didn't.

Jeremy didn't.

It was clear from the moment the mission was explained. Morgan had seen that look before. He found it a little funny, considering he'd gone so far in business because of his ability to spot men like Jeremy. Men who wouldn't take the extra step, who worried so much about teetering on the diving board that they couldn't even see the riches hidden beneath the water's surface.

Morgan saw it all. He had a knack for it, could see deals before they materialized. That was the rule of thumb: first one in, last one out. See the profits before everyone else did, and stay longer than everyone else who got cold feet.

That look in Leonard's eye said it all. New product.

That's when Morgan knew he had to jump in.

When you introduced a new product to the marketplace, you didn't trust it to people who couldn't sell it, who couldn't get the job done. A new product has an extremely narrow window of opportunity to work, and while that door is cracked open, you needed to wedge everything but the kitchen sink in there because once that sucker closed up, it wasn't cracking open again.

Morgan sold to people. Plain and simple. He sold them investments in their future. He sold them the belief that if they did not trust him then they were putting their family's stability at risk.

Was this any different?

Morgan had done a few lines in his day. A night out at 188.

the strip joint with his buddies, a b.u.mp or two in the bathroom to make those lights flicker just a little faster.

He didn't quite have the taste for it, though, felt if you needed an external force to get high you were simply doing the wrong drugs.

Not that he judged them. Most people were simply not born with the same drive and instincts Morgan had been.

His parents were blue collar all the way, but had good enough credit to get him a decent financial aid package.

Morgan knew a lot of kids from his hometown that weren't so lucky.

They were the ones who filled up his tank at the gas station. They were the ones who sprayed perfume on his mother when she went to the mall. They were the ones who needed something to take the edge off the real world, because if they spent too much time with their own life and their own thoughts eventually it would occur to them what they had never become.

So this new product, Morgan guessed, was just one more thing to take the edge off. And that was fine. He trusted these guys. Jeremy was a message. Like no limit hold 'em, you're either all in or you fold.

Jeremy folded. Morgan's stack of chips wasn't as high as it used to be, but what was that great line from Rounders? Rounders?

Kid's got alligator blood.

Morgan liked the sound of that.

When the caller told him the address, Morgan was a little surprised at first. He'd actually been there once before, a few years back when he'd first started dating this French model named Claudia who was in town for some photo shoot where she was supposed to pose in a pink tutu atop the Brooklyn Bridge.