Read online free
  • Home
  • Romance & Love
  • Fantasy
  • Science Fiction
  • Mystery & Detective
  • Thrillers & Crime
  • Actions & Adventure
  • History & Fiction
  • Horror
  • Western
  • Humor

    The Fury (2009)


    Prev Next




      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

      8

      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

      The Fury

      9

      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.

      10

      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

      The Fury

      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

      12

      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

      The Fury

      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

      14

      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.

      The Fury

      15

      Clearly this man did not want his name to be for­

      gotten.

      “Henry Parker,” Valentine said, gushing insincere

     

    Prev Next
Read online free - Copyright 2016 - 2025