Read Parker 04 - The Fury Online
Authors: Jason Pinter
I ripped out the picture from the
Gazette
and tossed
the rest of the papers in the trash.
I was no detective. My career thus far had progressed
almost solely on instinct. Seeing a thread, no matter
how thin or frayed the strand, and pulling on it until
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something larger unspooled. At this point, though, I
had no thread. There was nothing to pull on. No leads,
no witnesses. Nothing.
So I started where any reporter or cop would when
they had nothing.
When in doubt, talk to everybody.
I walked straight into Tompkins Square Park looking
for young families and older pedestrians. I figured those
were people most likely to come to the park because
they lived in the vicinity. And if they lived nearby, there
was a greater chance they might have seen Stephen
Gaines at some point.
But what if they
had
seen him? That hardly meant they
saw him being killed, or even knew who he was, what he
did, or anything about him. Still, it was the best shot I had.
Walking around, I noticed a couple in their early
thirties sitting on a bench. A baby stroller sat in front
of them. I hated bothering nice people who looked like
they just wanted to spend their afternoon relaxing with
loved ones, but I hoped they'd understand.
Of course not too many people could sympathize
with trying to hunt down the man who'd killed your
brother, while your father sat in prison.
I approached the couple in as nonthreatening a
manner as possible. Smiling, even. They paid no atten
tion to me until I got closer and it was clear they were
my targets. The husband looked up at me, and I noticed
his hand slowly plant itself on his wife's leg. Guarding
her. Nobody trusted young people these days.
"I'm so sorry to bother you," I said, putting my hand
out in apology. "I was wondering if you happened to
have seen this man in the area."
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I showed them the picture from the paper. They
looked at it long enough and with enough confusion to
show they didn't know him.
The wife said, "No, I'm sorry."
I thanked them for their time. Then it was on to the
next stop.
I approached an older black man sitting at a chess
table. The other seat was unoccupied. He was studying
the board, perhaps planning out moves in his head. I
crouched down at the other side of his table, cleared my
throat awkwardly.
"Excuse me," I said.
"Have a seat, young man," he said, his mouth
breaking into a smile. He reached into his briefcase and
pulled out a cloth containing numerous chess pieces.
"Pick your poison. Speed chess? I've got a killer Danish
Gambit, so hold on to your hat."
"I'm not looking for a game," I said somewhat apolo
getically. "I was wondering if you might have seen this
man before."
He looked at the picture, a blank expression on his
face. He said he'd never seen Gaines, and I believed
him.
I spent the rest of the day questioning every person
I could find in the park, until by the end people started
to recognize me as having pestered half the lot and they
began to move away before I even approached them.
One couple I asked twice within half an hour.
Nobody had seen Gaines. Nobody had noticed him.
He was a ghost in his own neighborhood. Or at least to
these people.
When people asked what I was looking for, I
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mumbled something about him having gone missing. If
they knew I was looking into a murder, they'd clam up
faster than a vegetarian at a barbecue.
The sun began to set. So far my efforts had yielded
nothing. I took a seat on a park bench. Desperation had
come and gone, and I was left holding a crumpled photo
of a man I barely knew, who'd lived a life seemingly
nobody had known. Several days ago none of this
mattered. Work was good. My relationship seemed to
finally be on stable ground. And now here I was, bother
ing strangers, hoping they might have happened, by some
ludicrous hope, to have seen someone other than my
father shoot a man in the back of the head. Or at least knew
more about Stephen than I did which was next to nothing.
I was searching for a needle in the East River, with
no clue which way the current was flowing.
I was about to give up, to try to think of a new angle
to attack from, when a shadow fell over me. I looked
up to see a young woman, late twenties or so, standing
in front of me. She was reed thin, one arm dangling limp
by her side while the other crossed her chest, holding
the opposite shoulder. Her hair was red and black,
mascara haphazardly applied. Perhaps twenty pounds
ago she'd been attractive, but now she was a walking,
painted skeleton. She was wearing a long-sleeved
sweater, but the fabric was dangling off her limbs. It
allowed me to see the bruising underneath. The purplish
marks on her skin immediately caught my attention. My
pulse sped up. Her lip trembled. I didn't have to show
her the newspaper clipping. I knew what she was going
to say even before she opened her mouth.
"I knew Stephen."
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A cup of steaming tea was set in front of me. It smelled
like mint. She offered me milk, which I politely
declined. I watched her sit down, a cup of the same at
her lips. She'd poured both from the same kettle, so I
didn't have to worry about being poisoned. I began to
think about how much more paranoid I'd become over
the years.
"Thanks," I said.
"Don't mention it. I brew three pots a day."
I nodded, took a look around.
This woman, Rose Keller, had taken me up to her
apartment after I told her who I was and what I was
doing. She seemed apprehensive, but once convinced of
my authenticity she was more than happy to help.
She lived in a studio apartment at the top of a fourstory walk-up on Avenue B and Twelfth Street. The
floor was covered with gum wrappers, the walls deco
rated with posters of vintage album covers and artsy
photographs, usually of frighteningly skinny women
shaded in odd pastel light. The room smelled like patch
ouli and cinnamon. Our tea rested on what appeared to
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be an antique trunk, covered in customs stickers from
every corner of the earth. Portugal, Greenland, Syndey,
Prague, the Sudan. This woman didn't look like she
traveled much. Odds were she'd bought the pieces,
stickers already applied.
The bed was unmade, and I noticed a large box
sticking out from underneath. She saw me looking at it,
said, "Clothes. I keep meaning to donate them."
She was lying, but I wasn't here to judge.
"So how did you know Stephen?" I asked.
"We used to..." She looked away from me. Then she
pulled a lighter from her sock, took a bent cigarette
from a drawer. "You mind if I smoke?"
"Go right ahead."
She took out a glass ashtray and set it on the table.
It was crusted with old butts and ash. Flicking the
lighter, she lit the cig and took a long puff, holding it
aloft between two fingers.
"We used to get high together," she said.
"Used to?" I asked.
"I met him when I moved to the city eight years ago.
Wanted to be on Broadway, you know? All that kicking
and dancing. I was voted 'most likely to succeed'in high
school. Starred in all the drama shit. Figured I'd come
here and show those Rockette girls how things are really
done."
"And then?"
"It's a tough gig," she said like a woman who'd given
up the dream long ago and had come to peace with it.
"Too tall. Too fat. Too short. Nose too big. Tits too small.
There's always an excuse. So I started waitressing in
Midtown, cool little Irish pub. Some of the actors used
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to go there for a drink after the shows. Then I'd come
back here, get high and crash. That's how I met
Stephen."
"How exactly did you meet him?"
"Funny story," she said, taking another long drag. "I
used to call this guy named Vinnie when my stash
needed re-upping. Well, his name wasn't actually
Vinnie. It was kind of a global pseudonym that all the
runners used, they'd all call themselves Vinnie. There
were probably a dozen different Vinnies working at any
given time, covering different parts of the city. So one
day I'm outside on the stoop waiting, and another guy
kind of ambles up and just stands around. I can tell from
the way he's walking, kind of looking at the street, side
to side, he was
definitely
a user. So I said hi. He said hi
back. Vinnie rolls up half an hour later, this greaser
wearing a hat turned sideways, couldn't have been a day
over fifteen, and fills us both up. And since it's always
more fun to see those bright lights with company, we
went back to his place."
Rose's eyes flickered to the walls, then back to the
table. There was sorrow and pain in her eyes that hadn't
been there a minute ago. She was trying to stay cool,
but I could tell she'd cared about Stephen.
"It was kind of funny, because Stephen and Vinnie
had this little, I don't know, chat. Friendly, like two
buds. I figured Stephen had used this guy before. You
know how sometimes you order pizza so often, the
delivery guy kind of becomes your pal? At first it's all
tips and friendly hi's but then you're talking about the
weather. One pizza guy actually asked me out once.
That's when I knew I needed to learn how to cook."
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"How long did you know Stephen?" I asked.
Rose sniffed, tapped out her cigarette until it stopped
smoking. Then she placed it in the ashtray amidst a
graveyard of used butts. She stared at them for a
moment, like a woman who'd been trying for years to
quit and realized just how addicted she was.
"Just about seven years."
"Were you two close?"
"Depends on when you mean," she said. Her voice
had become a little more abrasive. She had feelings for
Stephen, but there had been some bad times, too. I
imagined that when two junkies got together it wasn't
exactly Ozzie and Harriet. If a relationship between
two such people could be thought of as "tumultuous,"
it was probably the best one could hope for. I'd had
enough relationships that were able to find trouble on
their own without the uncertainty caused by stimulants
and hallucinogenic substances.
"Did you date?" I asked, hoping she wouldn't get
offended at my prying.
"Again," she said bitterly, "depends on when you're
talking about."
"Were you seeing each other when Stephen got
killed?"
"Hell, no," she said irritably. "See, thing is, after a
while you get tired of the life. It's one thing to be irre
sponsible and screwing around in your twenties. I mean,
everyone does it. Most folks don't settle down by
twenty-five and spend time worrying about a mortgage
and a 401k. I didn't, and neither did Stephen. But then
you hit thirty, and you're still renting a studio smaller
than a shoe box, and guys like Vinnie stay the same age
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because whoever the dude is who supplies them just
keeps hiring high-school kids. Funny. I must have had
half a dozen dealers all named Vinnie, all under the age
of twenty-one. You know how stupid you feel when
you're thirty and some kid is selling to you, and you
know he's still in high school and probably makes more
money than you?"
"So you were looking to go clean," I said.
"Have been for a year now," Rose said. She stood up,
picked up the ashtray and brought it into the kitchen
where she tapped out the contents into a trash bin. She
came back, put the tray back into a drawer like it had
never been taken out. "Trying, at least. The hooks are
a lot easier to dig in than they are to pull out."
"What about Stephen?"
Rose sighed, leaned back in her chair. A wistfulness
crossed her face. "I thought he was trying to quit. He
seemed like he was. See, I never really thought Stephen
had that serious a problem. Just recreational crap. I mean,
everyone smokes a bit. Shoots up a bit. It's all about
keeping it under control. I did that, and then I quit. Stephen
never quit. And in case you haven't noticed, addicts never
stay even keel. They either get better or they get worse."
"And Stephen got worse."
"Like cancer," she said.
I looked again at the skin under Rose's shirt. I could
see the bruises weren't track lines, but destroyed veins.
Dark blues and black, yellow skin surrounding them.
Perhaps even an infection gone untreated. Whether drug