"You don't get into this industry to watch from the sidelines," said Reeves. "The people who take the biggest risks reap the biggest rewards."

Reeves, who already owns three apartments in New York City, says he plans to take his earnings from Internet ventures and invest even further in the housing market.

"Man, that can't have worked out too well for him,"

Jack said.

"Holy c.r.a.p," I said.

"What?"

"Look, there." I pointed to the next article. The headline said it all.

The piece was from 2001, and was published in the 303.

Wall Street Journal. It read: Reeves Named as Liaison to It read: Reeves Named as Liaison to New York City Department of Finance.

The article was also accompanied by a photograph. It was definitely the same guy from the Princetonian Princetonian article. article.

"He worked for the government?" Jack said. "You've got to be kidding me."

I sat there, stunned. How was that possible? Could this have been the same guy?

The other articles were not dated any later than 2004, and all were references to Reeves's job with the DoF. There were no other hits for the name, nothing else came up.

"It has to be him," I said. "But I don't get it. If this is the same Reeves as on the order made out to Morgan Isaacs, what the h.e.l.l is someone who worked for the government and who worked for one of the biggest brokerage firms in the world doing a.s.sociated with 718 Enterprises?

I mean, these people are drug dealers, plain and simple, and the c.r.a.p they're producing is killing people. How did someone like Reeves get connected to that?"

Jack sat there, thinking. Not listening to me, but lost in his own thoughts. Then I heard Amanda's voice from the couch.

"What if Reeves didn't just use use to work for the government?" she said. "I mean, what if he still does?" to work for the government?" she said. "I mean, what if he still does?"

"That's crazy," I said. "Obviously Reeves fell on hard times somehow and ended up selling his soul for a pile of black rocks."

"Not necessarily," Jack said.

"What do you mean?"

"Have you ever heard of the name Gary Webb?"

"It rings a bell, but I'm not sure why."

"Okay, well, have you heard of the Dark Alliance?"

304.

"That's a little more familiar," I replied. "Something about Nicaragua, right?"

"Something like that," Jack said. "In the eighties, Gary Webb was a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News. San Jose Mercury News. " "

"Now it rings a bell," I said.

"What does he have to do with this?" Amanda said.

"In nineteen ninety-six, Webb published a three-part series of articles in the Mercury News Mercury News called 'Dark Alliance.' See, in the eighties, President Reagan was embroiled called 'Dark Alliance.' See, in the eighties, President Reagan was embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair where it was determined that the U.S. government had supplied a group of Nicaraguan Contras with financial aid through the sale of weapons to Iran, in part thanks to our buddy Oliver North. Our government was supporting the Contras as part of the Reagan doctrine, which supported organizations that opposed communistic and socialistic regimes. The Nicaraguan government in the eighties, let's just say, fit the bill.

"Webb claimed in his articles," Jack continued, "that not only did we supply the Contras with funds through the sale of weapons, but through the sale of drugs as well."

"That's ridiculous. We weren't selling drugs," Amanda said.

"We weren't," Jack said. "But the Contras were reaping weren't," Jack said. "But the Contras were reaping millions of dollars through the sale of drugs within the United States. Crack cocaine spread like wildfire through urban areas in the eighties, and much of the money from those sales went directly into funding the Contras. Webb claimed that members of the NSC, or National Security Council, were aware that money from drug sales in the U.S. was being funneled to the Contras. Webb found out that not only was our government aware of this, but members of the NSC purposefully withheld that information from the Drug Enforcement Agency. They felt that 305.

by curtailing drug sales and cracking down on shipments, we would effectively stem the flow of money to the Contras and in turn hurt their efforts to overthrow Nicaragua's communist FSLN government."

"So in essence," I said, "they were selling drugs in our cities, killing our citizens and choking the national crime rates. And we turned a blind eye because we felt it pushed our agenda in another country."

"Pretty much," Jack said. "When Webb published these articles, he caused a firestorm unlike many seen in journalism. It was without a doubt one of the most controversial articles of the past twenty-five years. So what happened to Webb? Well, he was completely discredited by the government which issued denials faster than meter maids issue parking tickets. He was eventually pushed out of the Mercury News, Mercury News, and after years in which he failed and after years in which he failed to get another job at a major newspaper, Webb put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger."

"d.a.m.n," Amanda said.

"Twice," Jack added.

"Twice? How does someone shoot themselves in the head twice?"

"Don't get your panties in a bunch," Jack said. I glared at him. "Apologies, Ms. Davies. Sometimes I forget that I'm around a lady."

"This lady thinks she could kick your old a.s.s," Amanda said.

"Now that's my kind of lady," Jack said. "Hold on to this firebrand, Henry. Anyway, common thought was that Webb had been b.u.mped off. But it turns out Webb was genuinely depressed and had written despondent letters to his family. And an autopsy and gun residue test proved that the man really did shoot himself twice. It doesn't 306.

happen often, but it does happen if the suicidal person happens to have lousy aim."

"So, what, you think the sale of drugs in New York City is being funneled to, who, some shady overseas organization? Some anti-Taliban fighting squad?"

"Not at all," Jack said. "If what I'm thinking is correct at all, and if this guy Reeves is connected the way I suspect he is, then the sale of drugs in this city isn't going abroad. It isn't being diverted to an anti-terrorism foreign legion. What I'm saying is that money gained through the sale of drugs like the Darkness is going directly to the city itself. I'm saying that not only is our government turning a blind eye, but it's taking a cut of the profits."

"The layoffs, the deficits," I said. "You're saying they're trying to make up for budget shortfalls by taking a cut of drug payoffs?"

"Words to live by, especially in politics. If something worked twenty years ago, it'll probably work again now."

Just then I heard my cell phone ring. I went over to pick it up, but when I saw the caller ID I stopped. Looked at Jack.

"Who is it?" he said.

I shook my head, confused.

"It's Curt Sheffield," I said.

"Curt," Jack said, taken aback. "Well, pick it up!"

I answered the phone. Tried to play it cool.

"Hey, man, what's up?"

Then I listened as Curt explained to me what was going to happen in just a few minutes.

When I hung up, I looked at Jack and said, "You need to leave."

Needless to say this was not exactly what he was expecting to hear.

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about, Henry?"

307.

"In less than half an hour, somebody is going to come here to sell me drugs. And unless you want to try and pa.s.s off as my pot-addicted uncle or something, we can't have any trace of you in this apartment."

43.

Curt Sheffield had only been working for the NYPD for five years, but the past two days made it feel like a lifetime.

Two days. Twelve dead. All deaths related to this new drug, the Darkness.

For years, New York was considered one of the safest big cities in the world. The crime that existed was relegated to back alleys and dingy apartments. Upstanding citizens had little to fear as long as they used common sense.

The drug dealers were easy to smoke out. They were usually junkies themselves. They sold because that's all they had, all they knew. They were uneducated, unloved, and an honest day's work for an honest day's pay was a foreign concept.

And that's why dealers were so easy to break.

In real life, those dealers in their teens and twenties didn't have any sort of real loyalty to the drug lords. It wasn't like television. There was no "game" and no loyalty beyond a wad of cash. Your employer was simply whoever could pay that day.

When a man making seventeen thousand dollars a year selling crack is forced to choose between turning in a man 309.

he barely knows or spending five years behind bars, the decision was always easy.

That's why people on the top never lasted long. They could never offer the people below them a life worth risking on the streets. Every moment was fleeting, but when push came to shove a fistful of crumpled twenties wasn't enough to keep someone from saving their own a.s.s.

This drug, though, was different. The narcotics division was sweeping all those back alleys, talking to all their sources, offering all their informants good, hard cash for one tip that could loosen the first thread.

So far, they'd come up empty-handed.

And it wasn't because the informants had suddenly grown b.a.l.l.s or a sense of loyalty. It's that they didn't know.

However this product was being moved, it was being done away from the streets, away from the bottom feeders, away from the men and women who sold the very same drugs they ingested.

This was different. And that's what scared Curt the most.

This city had the best police force in the world, but now that force was being slashed like an unfortunately located forest. A thousand cops, vanished from the streets, victims of a mayor legally beholden to a budget that had come in four billion billion dollars in the red. dollars in the red.

Curt stopped to pick up a pizza on the way home. Half mushroom, half pepperoni. He had no bigger plans than to throw on his Rutgers sweatshirt, lounge on the couch with a few slices and a few beers and flip between games and late-night Cinemax.

As he approached his apartment building, he noticed a man hanging on the street corner. He was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and had a pair of slippers covering his bare feet. Ordinarily such a thing wouldn't catch his 310.

eye, but this guy was swaying slightly, looking like every few seconds he had to remind himself not to topple over.

It was a chilly night, and clearly the man had either gone out knowingly underdressed or was so zoned out that he hadn't noticed.

Suddenly he found himself walking over to the man, balancing the pizza in one hand while checking his gun to make sure it was at the ready. Curt had never been forced to use his gun off duty, but something about this man made him tense up. It was the jittery movements, how he looked like he might fall asleep one moment and then suddenly jerk awake the next. He looked like a cla.s.sic user, and Curt had learned long ago that someone high could only be trusted as much as the drugs allowed them to be.

Curt approached slowly. His hand was getting warm from the bottom of the pizza box. As he got closer, he called out, "Hey, man, you okay?"

The man didn't respond, just kept swaying. His right arm shot out and caught a lamppost to steady himself.

"I said, you okay, man?"

Then the guy whipped around, and the look in his eyes made Curt glad his gun was so close. His eyes were bloodshot, but they were wide open, crazylike, and he stared at Curt with a mixture of confusion and apprehension, like an animal cornered who might bare its fangs out of pure panic.

Curt slowly knelt down and laid the pizza on the sidewalk. He hoped this guy was just drunk, and that he could throw him in a cab, be done with it and retreat to his pepperoni. But getting closer, he knew it wouldn't be that simple.

"Hey, man," Curt called out. "You're not looking so hot. Why don't you head home. Sleep it off."

311.

The man shook his head. Slowly at first, but then more rapidly until Curt was worried he might hurt himself.

"Whoa, slow down there. I'm a cop. See?" Curt took out his badge, showed it to the guy. "My name's Officer Sheffield. I'm here to help."

"No," the man moaned. "No. No. No. Nooooooo. Nooooooo. " "

"It's okay. We've all had bad days. Why don't I call a cab..."

"It's all gone," he said, his body swaying faster than the breeze.

"What's gone?"

"All of it," he said. "All of it. It's gone."

"I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sure you have some in your fridge."

"No. I can't get anymore."

Curt kept playing along. "Why not?"