The Whisper, page 1
THE WHISPER
WARREN GREER
COPYRIGHT
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
Copyright © 2024 by Warren Greer
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Copyright
BOOK 1: RIGHT OR WRONG
1. The Devil Of Acheart
2. The Lost Souls
3. Perfection
4. Between You And Me
BOOK 2: CHOICES
5. The House Of Summer
6. Pathetic
7. Bad Deeds
8. Consequences
9. Broken Glass
10. Silence
11. The Mist
BOOK 3: BLACK AND WHITE
12. The Frightening Melody
13. Fragments
14. The Good Patient
15. Mutilated Soul
16. Chilly Air
BOOK 4: CRUEL PEOPLE
17. The After
18. The Silhouette
19. Past Mistakes
20. True Pain
21. The Unstoppable Force
22. Human Poison
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
BOOK 1: RIGHT OR WRONG
FALL, 1972
1
THE DEVIL OF ACHEART
The Arlington Building stood in the heart of Acheart, towering over the gray ocean of other buildings. As the unofficial symbol of the city and a striking example of Art Déco, the spot attracted a lot of people, tenants, visitors, and those who simply wanted to witness its greatness. The building’s owner was reputed to be a person with a big heart and powerful will.
A role model. The guardian angel of Acheart.
There was a small circle of people who knew him by a different name.
Public records only provided information about Mr. Arlington that he wanted people to know. Owen James Arlington. Born and raised in Acheart, New Jersey. The son of the chief of surgery at Brady’s Hospital Center and a former English teacher. Married. No children. By the age of fifty-three, he was a successful entrepreneur, one of the wealthiest people in the state, who donated a good share of his fortune to the infrastructure development of his beloved city.
The records of course would never indicate that he hadn’t been in touch with his parents for the last thirty years or that his huge donations were not so much a gesture of goodwill as another way to shut up the city authorities when the cloud of suspicion above his head was getting too thick.
Perhaps keeping a legal and illegal business in such proximity was a lot of trouble, but that was how drug dealing worked, and that was the life Owen Arlington chose to live.
Once a month, Arlington met with the dealers in one of the empty offices on the seventy-third floor. All precautions were taken. The main elevators didn’t go past the seventieth floor, and all entrances from the stairwells in this part of the building were sealed. The only way to get there was one freight elevator.
The meeting Arlington arranged on October 12th, 1972, which was the second meeting of the month, alerted everyone right away. The dealers had learned that unscheduled meetings their boss informed them about at the very last moment never led to anything good. It started as it usually did though. Everyone had come before Arlington was there.
Whenever the dealers showed up at the Arlington Building, their whole job acquired a rather sarcastic subtext. They even mocked their meeting place by calling it a conference hall. The room had all the features of a conference hall, a high ceiling, a table that took up nearly the entire space, dozens of chairs, and even a delightful view of the city skyline. Yet, could a drug dealer identify with an office clerk who met his coworkers to discuss recent events and calculate monthly revenue, as happened in the investment bank a few floors below?
Very few of those who came to this particular conference hall had a formal education. They knew very little of manners or cultured speech and most of the time filled the surrounding space with cigarette smoke. The diversity of ages was quite interesting. There were middle-aged men, adolescents with remains of puberty on their faces, and even a couple of old men who found it hard to stand firmly on their feet for over ten minutes.
Jasper Newman had been eighteen when he had started working in the industry. He was twenty-two now, and so far he could hardly stomach the need to drop his voice every time he had to discuss his occupation. Jasper knew there was no such thing as a good drug dealer, but he liked to think he was the only one in this place who carried out his job duties with an unclean conscience.
He felt like he was walking on a minefield, scared to take another step. People were everywhere after all, and people could judge, people could blame, people could whisper behind his back.
Some would judge Jasper for his appearance. “He’s so skinny and pale, you sure he doesn’t have some chronic disorder?” Perhaps some derided his behavior. “He’s so weird and shady. He gives me the creeps.” However, what bothered him the most was what people—normal people, decent people, people who made an honest living—would think of him if they found out what he did for a living.
Jasper never made an effort to get to know his coworkers better. In the conference hall, he would sit alone with a book in his hands, struggling to concentrate on its pages. That day, he was reading Great Expectations, and most of the seats around the table remained empty as the dealers waited for the meeting to start. Suddenly, the book flew out of his hands, and Jasper saw a strongly built, heavily bearded man, shuffling through its pages. Of all the people in there, Glen Harding was the last person you would expect to be his close friend.
Not only was Glen fifteen years older, but they were also highly remote links in the drug-dealing chain. In actuality, Jasper considered Glen the only person he could trust, the only one whose judgment he was willing to take.
A thud of a hardcover echoed in the hall as Glen tossed the book on the table.
“What the hell was that?” Jasper asked.
“At some point, I started thinking you were hiding a porn magazine behind the cover or something,” Glen said, taking a seat next to him. “You were so intently staring at one page for almost half an hour.”
Jasper furrowed his brow in confusion.
“Seriously?” he said. “You’ve been watching me this whole time?”
“Not like I have something more entertaining to do.”
“I was just thinking,” Jasper said.
“Thinking, huh?”
“I guess everyone here is thinking the same thing.”
“Which is?”
“What the hell are we doing here tonight?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“Didn’t Arlington tell you?”
Instead of answering, Glen took a pack of cigarettes out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket and lit one.
“Why didn’t he tell you?” Jasper went on. “Isn’t he supposed to share everything with the… with his…” He struggled to find an appropriate word.
“If you say horsemen,” Glen prompted him, “I swear I’m gonna punch you right in your dumb face.”
Jasper knew it wasn’t a threat, not as far as their friendship allowed him to judge at least. He also knew how outraged Glen got when someone ventured to say that word within his earshot, “horsemen.” The four horsemen of the Apocalypse, the four men Owen Arlington put in charge of the dealers, the four who knew of all the skeletons in the devil’s closet, the closest link to the top of the industry. The dealers used that word out of contempt, despising the power some of the four wielded. There had been enough arguments and even fights for that contempt to fade to occasional, indignant whispers, which the horsemen were well aware of but too sick and tired to call the dealers out on.
“Actually, I was gonna say confidants,” Jasper mumbled.
Glen shot him a reproachful glance, taking another drag on his cigarette.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said. “You’re responsible for organizing these shitty get-togethers. Why didn’t you bother to ask him?”
“Because when Arlington flies off the handle, yelling, ‘Bring those motherfuckers here now,’ you don’t wanna ask him any questions.”
“What could’ve made him so mad?”
“There are very few things in the world that don’t make Owen Arlington mad.”
To that, Jasper found no objections.
It was already dark outside when the devil appeared. The lights in the hall were on, pouring over the walls of wooden panels, creating a feeling of comforting warmth that the room lacked. The door flung open, and a dead silence hung in the air. The dealers were snatching seats as Arlington strode firmly to the head of the table.
The devil, without exaggeration, looked impeccable. The perfect amount of gray in his hair gave his look the correct perspective—mature but not anywhere near old. At this age, he would have to admit, it cost him a lot more effort to stay in shape. His formal suits usually contrasted with the clothing of his subordinates.
Arlington cleared his throat, instantly raising tension
“God, I love it,” Arlington said, looking over everyone present. “This awkward silence and a bunch of dealers wondering if they’ve truly messed up or if their evil, arrogant douche of a boss is trying to find another reason to nag them. The situation is critical, gentlemen. A while ago, I thought it could’ve worked out. Now, I can’t be so sure.”
“Owen, for Christ’s sake.” Everyone turned their head to Ben Elliot, one of the horsemen. “The sooner you get to the point, the sooner they’ll know what they have to fix.”
“They?” Arlington raised an eyebrow.
The dealers knew that Ben meant everyone but the horsemen, and at that particular moment they wanted nothing more than to beat every bit of vanity out of him. At thirty-two, Ben was the youngest of the devil’s confidants. He never saw the need to hide pride for his status.
“I know what all this is about, and honestly I don’t see any reason you would need us tonight,” Ben said.
“Recently, I’ve been thinking if I need you at all, Ben,” Arlington said. “Tell me something. Do you like your job?”
Ben looked up at him and nodded a timid yes.
“What about you, Glen?” Arlington went on.
“I’ve been working for you almost twenty years,” Glen said. “What do you think?”
Arlington turned to the third one. Luis was standing in a far corner of the room with his arms crossed over his chest, listening quietly. His silence was itself an indication of consent.
“I guess if Morgan were here with us,” Arlington continued, “he would also agree. Why not? You guys make crazy money, drink as much of my booze as you want, and simply neglect your responsibilities. It doesn’t work this way. Do you think I put you in charge of these people so you could sit around with a finger up your ass?”
He extended a hand toward his accountant – a man of the barely-standing-on-the-ground category and the only one in the room, besides the devil, wearing a formal suit. The old man handed Arlington a yellowish paper file.
“According to Mr. Everett’s calculations, over the last two months, we’ve come to a shortage of over three thousand dollars, and it’s not the first time we’ve faced this problem,” the devil said. “Most of you probably think that Mr. Arlington is an overly wealthy man. Three thousand bucks is nothing for him. But I assure you, it is not about my money. It’s about my trust.”
He tilted his head to the left—a bad, bad sign. “You’re all here because, believe it or not, I trust you. And in the industry as unstable as the drug trade, trust is a luxury not everyone can afford. It breaks my heart…” He put an open palm on his chest—the situation was critical, as if Arlington’s inner temperature had reached its peak and he could explode any second. “…to think you can violate my trust. If you have the nerve to steal from me, even if it’s a couple of bucks a week, isn’t it a sign of disrespect?”
The air seemed to become heavier as the tension got beyond all limits. Respect was a crucial working condition in this place. If mistrust could only break the devil’s heart—in case he had one—disrespect could rip it right out of his chest with bare hands. You wouldn’t want to see how the devil coped with this kind of heartbreak.
Over thirty men were in the hall, and nobody ventured to utter a word, nobody except Glen.
“Take it easy, Owen. You know as well as I do that some dealers tend to loan the coke, and…”
“And,” Arlington interrupted him, “I’m not gonna take this excuse forever. We’ve already discussed this, haven’t we? You know there’s a product you’re responsible for. You know we have clients far from the upper class. Are you so stupid as to rely on a drug addict’s honesty?”
At that moment, everyone was ready to yell, “Yes, we are! We are so fucking stupid but not so stupid as to pay the tiniest bit of disrespect to you, Mr. Arlington!” The dealers stayed silent, feeling gratitude to a horseman for giving them a hand.
“We’ll get you the money by tomorrow,” Glen said.
“Are you even listening to me?” Arlington said. “I don’t give a shit about the money! I’m tired of asking myself how many reliable people I’ve got left!”
“You won’t find it out over one night.”
“If you’ve got something to suggest, fire away.”
Glen took a deep breath.
“We need a little time. At least a few more days so we could work through the root cause of this problem. If it’s a loan, I promise we’ll see to it that the dealers learn their lesson, and if it’s something other than that, it’ll be up to you. Give us a few days.”
Arlington propped his hands on the edge of the table and lowered his head. For a few moments, he brooded.
“No,” he concluded. “Not a few, just one. I’ll give you one day to fix this.” The dealers let out a collective exhale of relief. “Tomorrow, we’ll meet here at four, and you’ll give me the full report on every gram of coke that has been sold in the last two months. I think it’s fair.”
“It’s so fucking unfair!” Glen resented. “I stick out my neck for the people who can’t handle the simplest tasks. I do all the dirty work for Arlington and still get shit from everyone!”
He pulled up in front of the apartment complex where Jasper lived. It was their ritual to have a smoke and discuss matters of the past day before Glen proceeded home. The night was quiet, except for the occasional distant sounds of sirens. Jasper enjoyed living in this part of the city, where retired people bought apartments to spend the rest of their lives in peace.
“Why do you care what they think about you?” Jasper asked. “You were the only one who had the balls to say something to Arlington.”
“Now I honestly wish I had stayed silent.”
Glen flicked the ash from his cigarette through the unrolled window, autumn wind pulling the smoke outside.
“You’re too generous for this job,” Jasper said.
“After all the things that I’ve done on Arlington’s behalf, you still think I’m generous?”
Jasper wanted to believe in his generosity; after all, Glen was the closest thing to a father he had. Glen had known Jasper ever since the latter was too little to walk. The Hardings used to be welcome guests at the Newmans’, but babysitting an infant had been of little interest to the rebellious teenager Glen had been at the time. His parents would drag him to Summerhold, a small town a couple of hours away from Acheart, against his will every time they went to visit Mr. and Mrs. Newman.
Glen joined the devil’s gang when he was seventeen, and two years later he had to admit there was no place for family in his life. He lost touch with his parents and heard nothing from them or the Newmans until the news of the rail accident that killed Jasper’s parents spread across the city like a virus. The headlines were everywhere.
“Massive train crash near Rosaline Park. Thirty-four passengers dead.”
Soon, Glen learned that an eight-year-old kid named Jasper Newman was doomed to spend the rest of his boyhood in an orphanage. It was no sudden rush of sympathy, but Glen honestly wanted to let him know that the world hadn’t ended at once. Jasper still remembered what Glen had told him when they had first met at the orphanage.
They were sitting on a bench in the backyard, and Jasper, trying to sum up the recent events in his young mind, asked, “Can it be any worse?”
Glen replied, “You’d be surprised.”
That was the way Jasper knew Glen his whole life—never avoiding the truth, no matter how hurtful it might be sometimes. Glen had settled for visiting him once every two weeks, and he didn’t break the promise until Jasper came of age.
Having left the orphanage, Jasper faced the greatest obstacle in his life—freedom. The freedom to make his own decisions was new to him, and it was hard. The orphanage had made him accustomed to people telling him what to do all the time. Jasper inherited his parents’ house in Summerhold, but that was pretty much it. He didn’t know how he was supposed to keep afloat, so he gave Glen the opportunity to make the decision for him. A few months later, Jasper had a job—an illegal one—a rented apartment, and some prospects. He was sure he had the right to call Glen generous. The problem was that Glen’s generosity ended where his profession started. Jasper hated to think that things like guns and murders seemed normal to him—occupational hazards, as he would call them, as if they were stress, insomnia, or some other crap office rats had to deal with.
