The Fury (2009) Read online

  Praise for the Henry Parker novels of

  THE STOLEN

  “A captivating and complex protagonist, one whose pithy

  observations about New York are dead-on. Pinter’s chunky

  plot, rapid pacing and credible dialogue do the rest.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “This thriller proves truly scary

  as it explores every parent’s worst nightmare.”

  — Library Journal

  “[An] exciting whodunit… Fans will appreciate this

  entertaining suspense thriller with the right touch of

  sexual tension to augment a fine read.”

  — Midwest Book Review

  THE GUILTY

  “[A] suspenseful and shocking tale.”

  — Library Journal

  “A captivating and thought-provoking read and thoroughly

  enjoyable. One of the great new voices in the genre.”

  — CrimeSpree magazine

  “[A] fresh tale with original characters…

  Pinter knows what he’s doing.”

  — South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “A fabulous thriller…

  will prove to be one of the best of the year.”

  — Midwest Book Review

  “Well-executed gritty action…”

  — Lincoln Journal-Star

  THE MARK

  “Pinter’s a wizard at punching out page-turning action,

  and the voice of his headstrong protagonist is sure to win

  readers over; his wild ride should thrill any suspense junky.”

  — Publishers Weekly

  “From the opening sentence to the exhilarating conclusion,

  Pinter’s debut thriller gets the reader’s heart racing.”

  — Library Journal [starred review]

  “An excellent debut.

  You are going to love Henry Parker, and you’re going to hope

  he survives the story, but you’re not going to bet on it.”

  —Lee Child

  “[Pinter] dares to take the traditional thriller

  in bold new directions.”

  —Tess Gerritsen

  “A harrowing journey—chilling, compelling, disquieting.”

  —Steve Berry

  “A stunning debut by a major new talent!”

  —James Rollins

  “It’s ‘Front Page’ meets ‘The Sopranos’

  with a little Scorsese thrown in.”

  —Jeffery Deaver

  “A top-notch debut… Fast-paced, gritty and often raw,

  The Mark is a tale you won’t soon forget.”

  —Michael Palmer

  “A gripping page-turner you won’t be able to stop reading.”

  —James Patterson

  ®

  To Joe Veltre and Linda McFall

  For yesterday, today and tomorrow. Thank you.

  Beware the fury of a patient man.

  —John Dryden

  1

  At nine in the morning, the offices of the New York

  Gazette are quiet. Reporters read the morning papers,

  prepare to call their sources and blink off hangovers

  over steaming cups of coffee. Today, however, it was a

  different kind of quiet. The kind of quiet where

  everyone seems to be waiting for the roof to cave in, or

  the floor to suddenly give way and fall out from under

  you.

  Every morning I would swipe my ID card, wave

  hello to the security guards who’d gradually warmed to

  me over the years and wait for the elevator with lots of

  other people who also looked like they’d rather still be

  in bed. I would exit the elevators at the twelfth floor,

  passing the receptionist, always too busy to acknowl­

  edge staffers, and walk to my desk. The offices of the

  New York Gazette towered over Rockefeller Center,

  giving me a panoramic view of one of the busiest streets

  in the city. Yet when I navigated the mess of chairs and

  debris and entered the cubicle farm on this day, I noticed

  the other journalists who shared my row were nowhere

  to be seen. There were no faces hunched far too close

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  Jason Pinter

  to computer screens, no whispered chats about the ump­

  teenth death knell sounded for our industry. No report­

  ers haggling over verb usage and tense like it was a

  matter of life or death. It seemed every day across our

  industry there were more layoffs, more cutbacks, more

  reasons to fear the end. And it had been drilled repeat­

  edly into us by our corporate overlords and the media

  that if the sickle wasn’t already lancing the air above

  our heads, it was in the midst of being lowered into

  place.

  I couldn’t worry about that. Still a few years shy of

  thirty, it had been my lifelong ambition to work at a pre­

  stigious, thriving newspaper. And while one could

  debate whether the Gazette was thriving, in my short

  time here I’d had the chance to work alongside some of

  the greats, including my idol, Jack O’Donnell.

  I’d also been wanted for murder and targeted by a

  deranged serial killer. Hey, who doesn’t complain about

  their job sometimes?

  Externally, you might think I looked the same. Inter­

  nally, though, I was a different man. A man learns who

  he is when his life, innocence and freedom are chal­

  lenged. I was stronger than I ever knew I could be, but

  deep down I wished I hadn’t needed to find that out.

  When I navigated the maze of empty desks to arrive

  at mine, I put my coffee and muffin on the desk, sat

  down and debated whether to ignore the silence or see

  what was causing the sound vacuum. I reached for the

  plastic tab on my coffee, but immediately thought twice.

  To ignore the strange stillness of the office would have

  gone against every bone in my body, and probably trig­

  gered some sort of spontaneous combustion. Curiosity

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  not only killed the cat, but made my breakfast grow

  cold. So I stood back up and took a lap around the news

  floor to see what the hell was going on.

  I didn’t have to go far.

  A group of half a dozen reporters were huddled

  around the desk of Evelyn Waterstone, the Gazette’s

  Metro editor. They were talking under their breaths,

  worried looks in their eyes. I wondered if there were

  going to be layoffs. If some of my colleagues—perhaps

  even myself—would be out of a job. That Evelyn’s desk

  had seemingly replaced the watercooler as center of

  office scoop was itself noteworthy. Evelyn stayed as far

  away from gossip as those who gossiped stayed away

  from her. Whatever happened had to be big enough to

  pique her interest. I walked up casually, inserting myself

  into the conversation through proximity alone.

  Evelyn Waterstone was a short, squat woman whose

  haircut resembled a well-manicured putting green—

  only this particular green was gray with age—and

  whose broad shoulders would have been a welcome

  addition to most offensive lines. She wa
s a discipli­

  narian in the gentlest sense of the word. It took several

  years for her to warm up to me, but when my work ethic

  and the quality of my reporting became clear, Evelyn

  began to grudgingly show me a modicum of respect.

  Still, I don’t think you’d ever see the two of us tossing

  back a couple of longnecks after hours. I made an effort

  never to stop by her desk unless I had a specific

  question, and Evelyn never stormed by mine unless I’d

  made some terrible grammatical mistake that, to

  Evelyn, was only slightly worse of an offense than

  treason.

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  Jason Pinter

  “Morning, Parker,” Evelyn said. She held a black

  thermos between her fleshy hands, and took a long,

  drawn-out sip. “Another beautiful day at your friendly

  local newspaper.” She sniffed the air. “Glad to see

  you’ve begun showering regularly again.”

  “Morning, Evelyn,” I said, nodded to the other re­

  porters, who offered the same.

  “You hear about Rourke?” she said. I hadn’t, and

  told her so. She raised her arms dramatically as if re­

  counting some heroic tale. “This paper’s most contro­

  versial sportswriter—who incidentally once told a

  linebacker he would ‘whup his ass like a donkey’—got

  mugged yesterday on his way home from the office.

  Well, I shouldn’t say mugged, because the guy didn’t

  take any money, but Frank ended up getting the donkey

  side of the whupping.”

  “Really?” I said, incredulous. “Rourke?” I had no

  love lost for Frank Rourke, considering the man had

  once left a bag of excrement on my desk—but the man’s

  swagger seemed to come from years of always being the

  one guy who was able to leave the fight on his own two

  feet.

  “Seems some hothead took umbrage to Frank’s

  calling the Yankees ‘the most poorly run organization

  since FEMA.’ Some disgruntled asshat from the Bronx.

  Anyway, this guy waits outside of the office until Frank

  leaves. Then he yells, ‘Yo, Rourke!’ Frank turns his

  head, and gets a sockful of quarters up against the side

  of his temple.”

  “That’s terrible, is he okay?”

  “Concussion, he’ll be fine. Police arrested the fan,

  I’m just hoping he might have damaged the area of

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  11

  Frank’s brain that makes him such an asshole. Maybe

  he’ll have one of those Regarding Henry kind of

  epiphanies and come back a better man.”

  “That’s probably too much to expect.”

  “We can dream, Parker. We can dream.”

  As we chatted, I noticed another group of reporters

  huddled together in the hallway looking like they’d just

  been told management had decided to restructure by

  throwing them out the twelfth floor windows. The group

  shifted nervously, whispering amongst themselves.

  Never wanting to be the last one in the know, I ap­

  proached, said, “I thought Frank was going to be fine,

  what gives?”

  Jonas Levinson, the Gazette’s science editor, said,

  “Frank is the least of our concerns. Though, as a matter

  of fact, something has died this morning. Something to

  be mourned as long as we’re employed by this godfor­

  saken newspaper. As of today, good taste, my friend, has

  kicked the bucket.”

  I stared at Jonas, waiting for some kind of an expla­

  nation. Levinson was a tall man, balding, who wore a

  different bow tie to the office every day. He very seldom

  exaggerated his feelings, so at Jonas’s remark a flock

  of butterflies began to flutter around in my stomach.

  “I’m not following you,” I said to Jonas. “Good

  taste? Jonas, care to explain?”

  “Just follow the eyes, Parker,” Jonas said. “Follow

  the eyes.”

  I opened my mouth to ask another question, but then

  I realized what he was saying. The eyes of every

  member of our group were focused on two individuals

  making their way across the Gazette’s floor. They were

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  Jason Pinter

  stopping at every desk, popping into each office for a

  few moments. It looks like some sort of introduction

  ritual was taking place.

  Immediately this struck me as odd. I’d never met

  another employee during a walkaround, and had not

  received one myself. The fact that this one person was

  being given the grand tour made it clear he was

  someone the brass wanted to coddle.

  One of the two men I recognized immediately as

  Wallace Langston, editor in chief. Wallace was in his

  midfifties, lean with a neatly trimmed beard. His brown

  hair was flecked with gray, and he had the slightly bent

  posture of a man who’d spent the majority of his years

  hunched over a keyboard. Wallace had been a staunch

  supporter of mine in the years I’d been employed by the

  paper, and even though now more than ever he was

  feeling the crunch of his corporate masters insisting on

  higher profit margins, he knew what it took to print

  good news. If not my idol, he was a good, loyal mentor.

  “Is he,” I said, “introducing someone around the

  office?”

  “That is precisely what it looks like,” Jonas replied.

  Evelyn walked up and said, “I never met a damn

  person until my first staff meeting. I got as much of an

  introduction as my stove has to a cooking pot.”

  “Me, neither,” I said. When I started at the Gazette,

  I didn’t know anybody other than Jack O’Donnell. Jack

  was my boyhood idol, the man most aspiring reporters

  dreamt of becoming. He and I had grown close over the

  last few years, but recently he’d lost his battle with the

  bottle and left the Gazette. I hadn’t spoken to him in a

  few months. I’d tried his home, his cell phone, even

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  13

  walked by his Clinton apartment a few times, but never

  got a hold of the man. It was clear Jack needed some

  time alone with his demons.

  Ironically the first reporter I’d met was a woman

  named Paulina Cole. We worked next to each other

  when I first started at the Gazette. Soon she left for a

  job at the rival Dispatch, where through a combination

  of balls, brass and more balls she’d become one of the

  most talked-about writers in the city. Paulina was cold,

  calculating, ruthless and, worst of all, damn smart. She

  knew what people wanted to read—namely, anything

  where if you squeezed a page, dirt or juice came out—

  and gave it to them. She was part of the reason Jack had

  left the Gazette. She’d managed to pay off numerous

  people in order to discover the extent of Jack’s drinking

  habits, and then ran a front-page article (with unflatter­

  ing pictures) depicting Jack as the second coming of

  Tara Reid. Saying there was no love lost between us was

  like saying there was no love lost between east an
d

  west coast rappers.

  Wallace was still too far away for us to make out just

  who he was introducing around the office, but I got the

  feeling he would prefer if he didn’t have to do it en

  masse.

  “I’m going back to my desk,” I said. “Jonas, if you

  see good taste anywhere, I’ll get the paddles and we’ll

  resuscitate the bastard.”

  “Thank you for the offer, Henry, but I do believe

  it’s too late.”

  I walked back to my desk, trying not to think about

  what this could mean. Since Jack left, the Gazette had

  been on a hiring freeze. We were in a war with the

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  Jason Pinter

  Dispatch over circulation rates, advertising dollars and

  stories, and our expenses were taking a toll. If Harvey

  Hillerman, the president and owner of the Gazette, had

  hired a new reporter, he or she had to be important

  enough to cause a stir. Not to mention someone who

  would be approved of by the other reporters whose pay

  raises had been nixed last holiday season.

  I sat down and continued working on a story I’d been

  following up on for several weeks, about the homeless

  population of New York. According to the New York

  City Department of Homeless Services, there were over

  thirty-five thousand homeless individuals living within

  the city’s borders. Including over nine thousand

  families. That number had increased by fifteen percent

  in the last five years.

  I was about to pick up the phone, when I heard the

  sound of footsteps approach and then stop by my desk.

  I looked up to Wallace Langston. And his mystery hire.

  “Henry Parker,” Wallace said, hand outstretched,

  “meet Tony Valentine.”

  Tony Valentine was six foot three, looked to be a

  hundred and eighty svelte pounds and had the smile of

  a cruise-ship director. His hair was bleached blond, and

  his teeth glistened. His tan was clearly sprayed on, as I

  noticed when he extended his hand to shake mine that

  his palms were a much paler shade. He wore a designer

  suit, and wore it well. A red pocket square was neatly

  tucked into his suit jacket. The initials T.V. were em­

  broidered in white script on the cloth.

  As he offered his hand, I noticed his sleeves were

  held together by two gold cuff links. Also mono­

  grammed with T.V.

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  15

  Clearly this man did not want his name to be for­

  gotten.

  “Henry Parker,” Valentine said, gushing insincere