Jason Pinter - The Darkness

So it was a morning like this, a Monday, a day where he should have already been on to his third Red Bull and second cigarette break, that Morgan Isaacs couldn’t bring himself to unwrap himself from the fifteen hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.

He’d let his dirty blond hair grow too long, and whereas he used to weigh a trim hundred and eighty pounds, Morgan was now threatening to blow past the two bills mark. In fact, there was a pretty good chance he’d already done so, but was too frightened to step on the scale and know for sure.

Maybe he’d fix a breakfast. Toast with peanut butter and strawberry preserves sounded good. There were some good judge shows on in the afternoons. For some reason watching brainless poor people fight with some condescending judge over twenty-three dollars made Morgan feel better about his own situation.

Then he heard the chirp of his cell phone, still set to

The O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money.” He didn’t recognize the caller ID, and assumed it was a telemarketer. He was about to spin the dial to Ignore when he considered the faint possibility it could be one of the firms that still had his resume and had sworn to get back to him.

He answered the phone with a peppy “This is Morgan,” hoping to sound like a man who’d been awake all morning and not someone trying too hard to sound like he didn’t still have sleep schmutz in his eyes.

“Morgan Isaacs?” the man on the other end replied.

“That’s right.”

“I was referred to you by a former colleague, Kenneth

Tsang. I hope you don’t mind my calling.”

“Kenneth, yeah, of course,” Morgan said. Ken was a good guy, went a little too crazy at the strip clubs back when he was still working at Wachovia, and even after he was laid off the guy threw bills around like they were tissue paper. Ken was a good guy, but if you were stupid and careless, eventually you’d piss off the wrong person.

At some point, Morgan was sure, Ken would do just that.

“My name is Chester. Kenneth was doing some work for my firm and he passed your name along to us before his unfortunate passing.”

“That’s mighty kind of him,” Morgan said, scooping some gunk from his eye. “What firm did you say you were with?”

“If you’re interested in employment that will pay you quite handsomely with fair hours, meet me on Fifth

Avenue at noon. Northwest side of the street between

Fiftieth and Fifty-first. Right in front of the statue of Atlas.”

“I’m sorry,” Morgan said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but can I have a little more information? I want to be prepared, you know, just in case.”

“Noon in front of the statue,” Chester said. “Ken vouched for you. He said you were reliable and that you enjoyed the lifestyle your former employment afforded you. I promise that if that’s the case, you won’t be sorry you came.”

“Wait, how will I know who you are?” Morgan said.

His voice reached only an empty phone. Morgan sat there a moment, thinking about the call. Then he stood up, tossed off his briefs and marched right to the shower.

He had just over an hour and a half. An hour and a half to get his life back.

Sifting through ownership records and property deeds was nearly as much fun as it sounded. We found papers for the nearly two dozen companies who currently held leases in the building formerly housing 718 Enterprises, but for whatever reason there was no deed of ownership of the company itself. We found public listings for a brokerage firm, a jewelry store, three law offices, a psychiatrist, a pet psychiatrist, and a tantric yoga studio.

Only in New York.

“Look at this,” Jack said. We were sitting in a conference room, two laptop computers with several open windows each, our eyes beginning to strain from staring at various ownership deeds. I leaned over to the computer

Jack was working on and looked at the screen he had pulled up. “According to tax filings, the law offices of

Kaiser, Hirschtritt and Certilman occupy floors seventeen and eighteen. No other company in the building occupies more than one floor, or even appears to pay for more than one office space. If you were running a drug syndicate from an office, wouldn’t you want a little more privacy than a single office would give you?”

I stared at the screen, thought about the morning I went to the building and watched a stream of young, energetic drug dealers enter and leave with briefcases full of narcotics. I had a hard time picturing them all fitting inside a row of cubicles. Plus I doubted a truck pulled up every now and then to refill their supplies. They needed space to store the drugs. Space to allow for easy pickups for dozens of couriers.

And enough lack of clutter to allow them to pack up and get the hell out of Dodge on a moment’s notice.

“The building is managed by a company called Orchid

Realty,” I said. “According to their Web site, they have different managers for each property. It doesn’t spell out which one is managed by who, but we can call and find out.”

“Screw that,” Jack said. “Why call when we can show up uninvited?”

I smiled. I liked the way Jack thought.

Orchid Realty was on the eighth floor of a stainless steel complex in midtown, not too far from many of the tony properties they managed. Jack and I walked into the lobby side by side. A pair of security guards manned a long wooden desk. They did not seem intimidated by the purposeful look in our eyes. Installed in the front of the partition were two televisions, each running infomercials for the building itself. The sets looked recently installed, and the volume was far too loud. My guess was, with the economy tanking, the building had lost a bunch of leasing companies who couldn’t pay their bills, and were looking for fresh blood (and fuller bank accounts) to replenish the coffers.

We stopped at the security desk, and Jack said, “We’re here for Orchid Realty.”

“Name of contact,” the monotone voice came back.

“Mr. Orchid,” Jack replied.

The guard looked up, a bored sneer on his face, like he knew Jack was screwing with him but didn’t have the time or inclination to care.

“Name of contact,” he repeated.

“Call the front desk,” Jack said. “Tell whoever answers that we’re here to talk to whoever’s in charge of the 718

Enterprises account.” He took out his identification, underlining the words New York Gazette with his thumb.

The guard looked at him, the apathy turning into confusion.

“This is my official ID,” Jack continued. “Which means I have the official authorization to have a news crew down here in less time than it takes for you to put on that cute tie in the morning. It also means you and your friend here will have their friendly faces on our ‘Community Outrage’ Web site, as impeding an official news investigation.” He pointed at the phone. “One phone call.

All it takes.”

The guard’s eyes went wide, and he picked up the phone and dialed three numbers. Jack was full of crap, but news was about information, and that was information they didn’t need to know.

The guard covered the phone’s mouthpiece with his hand, his eyes growing more animated as he spoke.

Clearly the person on the other line wasn’t too keen on us coming upstairs, but it looked like the guard wanted as much to do with our Community Outrage Web site as

I did with bedbugs.

Finally the man hung up, pressed a button and printed out two badges from his computer kiosk. Handing them over, he said, “You promised, right? No cameras or news crew? I don’t want my son to see me on the Internet.”

“We’ll see how things go upstairs,” Jack said. “Come on.”