I whirled around to find a woman standing at the other end of the room. From the lines and age in her face I made her out to be in her early to mid-forties, but the tone and muscle definition was striking beneath her black tank top. She had long black hair that I could see spread out behind her waist and her green eyes looked at me with a strange kind of calmness that would have given me chills if I wasn't scared to death.

"Jeremy killed himself," she said. "We only bring in men who have something to lose. Unfortunately, as we learned later, Jeremy had nothing."

"Eve Ramos," I said. "You're the Fury."

344.

Ramos laughed, her voice high-pitched, full of delight.

"The Fury," she said. "I always found such enjoyment in that name. And to think how many people trembled at the very sound of a person who might not even exist. I suppose it works the same way with Satan and even Jesus.

Beholden to deities we will never know exist until the day we die." Eve Ramos looked up at the ceiling. "I bet Jeremy Robertson knows whether there is a devil."

"You manufacture this poison," I said. "I'm pretty sure that if there is a devil, that puts you on an even keel with him."

"Oh, Mr. Parker," Eve said as she crossed the room to where I was standing. Then, moving faster than I knew possible, she had gripped my throat in her hand and said, "Who's to say the devil is a man?"

She then pushed me backward. I coughed once, but stared her down.

"You killed my brother," I said. "Just like you're responsible for about a dozen more deaths from this drug."

"A dozen?" Ramos said. "Henry, you don't know the half of it."

"So what do you want?" I said. "And where's my friend?"

"Officer Sheffield is fine," she said. "Unfortunately, as a police officer, we cannot simply dispose of your friend until we can be certain it is done in a way that is, shall we say, less than incriminating."

"And me? Why am I here?"

"Henry, you came to us, remember?"

"Why am I alive?"

"You're alive because you have use to me. Before you die, you have a chance to do one last n.o.ble deed. And then when the time comes to meet your maker, you can be sure it will be the right one."

345.

"I don't understand," I said.

"Please," Ramos said. "Sit."

I didn't move.

"Fine. You'll be sitting enough anyway." She went to the head of the table, pulled out a leather chair and lay back, propping her feet up on the table. She was wearing dark boots, dirty and worn. This was not a woman who preferred high heels. "You are a newspaperman. I take it you know much about our product from the reporting of Ms. Paulina Cole."

"I read her article," I said. "And I know how you got her to write it."

"See," she said, smiling. "I knew you were a bright young man. There's no way Ms. Cole could have had access to that information without anybody else knowing about it. Yes, we fed it to Ms. Cole. And now you are going to write another article for your newspaper. And once that is done, you can leave this world in peace, knowing you've kept your loved ones from harm's way."

"My loved ones?"

Eve took her feet down, leaned forward. "You came to my attention right after your brother, Mr. Gaines, was killed. How fortunate for us that another man was accused of his murder, that was an unexpected bonus. But when you figured out who pulled the trigger, we needed a way to keep you in check. It is part of my job to learn about people. Their families, backgrounds, careers, loved ones.

I know you have barely seen your parents in ten years. I know you have little family or friends. But you do have a woman who holds your heart. So piercing her would pierce you." She smiled. "So to speak."

"My brother," I said. "You were behind it. You killed him."

346.

"Guilty," she said. "When you run an organization, the buck stops with you. When your brother learned about our plans to diversify our product, he objected. In my line of business you cannot have employees questioning decisions, or threatening to divulge company secrets. He came to you, and that's when I decided he had to be dealt with."

"Dealt with," I said. "That's a pleasant term for coldblooded murder."

"Nothing around here happens without my say-so,"

Ramos said. "And if you do not write this for me, I will take your woman, Amanda, and I will make her scream so loud that even if you do make it to heaven, Henry, her cries will pierce the ears of G.o.d himself. I will grind her bones to paste, and coat the walls of this room with her blood. And I will make sure you are alive when all of it takes place. And only when you have no screams left to offer will you join her."

I sat there, my whole body cold. Amanda.

"You see, when I kill a person, their death must not be in vain. It must represent something. Your brother's death was a sign that even our highest-earning lieutenants were not invulnerable. Kenneth Tsang's death was a warning to new employees as to what could happen if you weren't trustworthy. Brett Kaiser's death showed that we can reach anybody, anywhere. To me, blood and bone are like paint and a brush. With the right artistry, one can create a work of art that speaks to people. Your family, Henry, would be a message that our reach does not stop within our organization, but that we can touch even the smallest, most insignificant lives."

"You wouldn't..."

"I wouldn't?" Ramos said. "Your mother and father live in Bend, Oregon, on a sunny little street called East- The Darkness 347.

view Drive. I can have a man there tonight. Your parents could be dead before the evening news. Your parents are insignificant, which is why their deaths would be all the more glorious."

"You're a monster."

"I'm only a monster because this involves you, Henry.

How many monsters do you see, day in and day out, in your line of work? Proximity heightens emotions.

Things could be different. You could have been down on your luck, penniless, and come to work for me. And then, like so many of these young men, you would have understood."

"I don't know anything besides what Paulina wrote,"

I said. "There's nothing more to the story."

"That's not true," she said. "You've been quite an explorer. Tell me what you know."

I looked up at her, and if looks could kill Eve Ramos would have been dead several times over. "I know that you and Rex Malloy were in Panama together, and that your troop was attacked and Chester Malloy was killed. I also know that it was in Panama that you learned how to synthesize Darkness, and you managed to smuggle it back to America. I know that all your drug mules are young men, and you're using their debts to get them to work for you."

"Great thing about those young men," Eve said, "is that they have something to lose. You see, when a man has pride, he will do things he knows are wrong to prove his worth. These men were born with nothing, but worked their way into high-paying jobs. When those lives were taken away, that ambition, that pride, left a gaping hole.

I simply offer to fill that hole. I will not use men from the slums, poor urban souls who have nothing to lose.

Dealers are nothing more than hungry animals. You feed 348.

them, throw them an extra bone here or there, they'll do anything for you."

"Even die for you."

"Not by choice, but yes."

"Why 718 Enterprises?" I asked.

"Ha! That's simple, Henry. I was born in Queens."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

There was a knock at the door behind Ramos. She went and opened it. A man stood there. He was wearing a suit, brown hair neatly combed. And he was holding a legal pad and pen.

"Leonard, come in," she said. "Meet Henry Parker."

"Mr. Parker, it's a pleasure." He didn't offer a hand.

Just as well.

"Leonard Reeves," I said. He looked at Ramos with evident discomfort.

"How much does he know?"

Eve chuckled softly. "Apparently more than I thought."

"Leonard Reeves," I said again. "Graduated from Princeton in 1993. Former executive at Morgan Stanley, and liaison to the Department of Finance."

I watched as Reeves's eyes widened, rage drumming up inside of him.

"How do you--"

"Which leads me to this question," I said. "How much is Eve Ramos paying you to sell out our government?"

Now it was Ramos who couldn't contain herself, laughing hysterically. Reeves looked at her. His rage seemed to subside as he saw how unperturbed she was by my knowledge.

"Henry, you have this all wrong," she said. "We're not selling out the government. h.e.l.l, we're working for them."

48.

"Working for them," I said. "You mean the city is making money off of you. That's why I found a money order made out to Morgan Isaacs for fifty grand from Leonard Reeves. Reeves works for 718. You set your drug cartel up as a legit business, and the government is making millions of dollars in taxes off of dead people and blood money."

"Millions right now, maybe. Soon it'll be hundreds of millions," Ramos said. "And once the Darkness spreads to other metropolitan areas--Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago--it'll be in the billions."

"How can they let this happen?" I said. "Don't they know these drugs are killing people? Don't they know who you are?"

"Know who I am?" Eve said. "Not only do they know who I am...they're the reason I'm here."

"Panama," I said. "The Hard Chargers--you were one of them?"

"Yes and no. I certainly did my share of h.e.l.l-raising down there. Nothing helps sell a war like violence against our troops. But those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds weren't supposed to kill me. And it's their fault Chester died."

350.

"Hollinsworth said you found a way to synthesize Darkness," I said. "So why would the government still work with you if you stole this from Noriega?"

"Oh, they didn't know," she said. "In fact, they trusted me so much that when the CIA-backed cartels in the eighties got out of hand, guess who they put in charge to oversee things?"

"That's why you're the Fury," I said. "They installed you as a watchdog because their money was at stake. With you there, they could make sure the money was going to fund the Contras."

"Yeah, but that stopped being fun after a while. Why be a watchdog when you can be the top dog? Those cartels made billions, but the leadership had more b.a.l.l.s than they had brains. They were more than happy to let someone take over who could handle distribution on a nationwide basis. Unfortunately word got out and that reporter Webb found out about it. The CIA tried to pull the plug. But when you're running a covert operation, pulling the plug doesn't mean ending things so much as pretending they never happened."

I said, "So they left you in charge of the largest drug cartel in North America."

"Your tax dollars at work. And Mr. Reeves here was kind enough to set up a deal where not only could we work in peace, but we'd benefit the city of New York as well.

Thousands of federal employees laid off due to a lack of funds, and that's exactly what we're giving them back."

"Makhoulian," I said. "He was the mole in the NYPD.

He knew everything we were doing."

"More or less. I am a little surprised by how persistent you are, Henry."

"So why this?" I said. "Why now?"

351.

"Well, the truth is we weren't able to perfect the mixture until recently. But if you believe in fate--like I do--then everything came together for a reason. Look at this city, Henry. Its infrastructure is crumbling. It's billions of dollars in debt. Millions of people have lost everything, and the people who pump the most money into this economy--the rich--are losing their jobs. The pipes have been rotting for years. With the Darkness, I managed to build the greatest cherry bomb the city has ever seen, and dropping it into those pipes now will cause the whole system to come crashing down. Cities burn from the ground up, not the top down."

"All because you think you were sent to die in Panama.

This isn't about money. It's about payback."

"Call it what you want. Truth is, I'm doing this city a favor. New York will have a chance to bring itself back from the wreckage. Twenty years ago this city teetered on the edge, and it was brought back. When a city comes so close for a second time, it needs a little push. That's where I come in."

"No matter how many people die in the process."

"I read somewhere that over a hundred billion people have died since the earth was created. Am I really supposed to shed a tear for a few more?"

"You're settling a grudge," I said. "You feel you were sent to die, so you're taking revenge."