Eyes of the Innocent

by Brad Parks

“Investing.”

  “Riiiight,” I said.

  “Don’t do that,” she snapped.

  “What?”

  “You’re making assumptions about me!” she said. “I only told you he owned it because I thought you wouldn’t make assumptions.”

  “I wasn’t making—”

  “I’m not a spoiled little rich girl,” she said. “I’ve worked for what I’ve gotten.”

  “Okay,” I said, but apparently wasn’t convincing.

  She eyed me.

  “Look, everyone has a dad,” I said. “Yours happens to be filthy rich and friends with a guy who runs a newspaper. You don’t need to apologize to me for having advantages in life. I’d only hold it against you if you hadn’t done something with them. I didn’t exactly start this race in last place myself.”

  “Thanks for understanding,” she said, and we bonded for a moment, just a pair of hardworking spoiled little rich girls—even though the only real estate my parents owned was a two-story colonial.

  “So you can say it now,” she said.

  “Say what?”

  “That you told me so.”

  “Well, I guess I did,” I said. “But I have to admit I’m feeling a little responsible for what happened, because I didn’t quite tell you everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I guided her through my discovery of Akilah’s nonorphan status, finishing it off with how I tried to get the story yanked but was overruled by Uncle Hal’s space heater fetish.

  She pouted.

  “I thought we were working on the story together,” she huffed. “You were going to have them pull the story without telling me?”

  “I was planning to tell you everything at the bar,” I said. “But I guess I got there right after you left to pick up Akilah.”

  “Oh.”

  “About that…”

  She rolled over on her stomach, smothering her face in her pillow. I couldn’t help but admire her tight little ass as she loosed a muffled scream and kicked her legs in a minitantrum.

  “Ahh hhhann oooeee ahh ddiii daaa,” she said.

  “Come again?”

  She lifted her head: “I can’t believe I did that.”

  “You want your lecture now?”

  She nodded and fixed me with a big blue-eyed gaze.

  “Okay,” I began. “It goes like this: as a reporter, you’re going to be constantly tripping on people who need help—sometimes a lot more help than you can possibly give them. You will, of course, care about them. That’s good. That’s human. But remember, it’s not your job to save them and you couldn’t if you wanted to. It’s your job to write about them. If someone else decides to save them after that? Bully for them—and bully for you, because your words obviously inspired someone.

  “Otherwise? Lay off. You have to remember these are people who have been failed by a whole lot of folks in their lives, and one or two goodhearted acts by a stranger isn’t going to turn things around for them. You won’t last six months in this line of work if you make all the problems you see your business. Got it?”

  She nodded again, blinking the big blue eyes several times.

  “End of lecture,” I announced. “Now, why am I here again?”

  “I was hoping you might have a few ideas how I could get my charm bracelet back.”

  I started shaking my head and was about to launch into an explanation of how thoroughly improbable that was, when I heard the gallant steed whinny, reminding me sometimes the Heroic Male has to conquer long odds to fulfill his quest.

  “Oh,” I said, sighing, “I guess I’ve got a few.”

  * * *

  My first idea was breakfast. I waited for Sweet Thang to shower and dress, failing miserably at filtering out the inappropriate thoughts floating through my head as she did so. I resisted the urge to sift through her things as she got ready, though I couldn’t help but marvel at the general Martha Stewart Living feel to her place. Every paint color appeared to have been deliberately picked and matched with some other fixture or accessory in each room. It was an impressive display of decorative genius—if a bit sickening.

  Sweet Thang emerged from her bedroom in a light blue knit dress, and I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice how nicely it clung to her. We left her apartment and made our way to the nearest diner, which in the great state of New Jersey is never more than a few blocks away.

  I went with the pancakes, always safe. Sweet Thang surprised me by ordering a No. 2—two eggs, two pancakes, two sausages, juice, toast, and coffee—and surprised me even more by finishing it. Breakfast, she explained between bites, is the most important meal of the day.

  As we chewed, I formulated our strategy. Someone had to go see Bertie Harris, our only firm connection with Akilah. And, after the first impression I made the previous evening, we would be better off if the someone wasn’t me. I’m sure she and Walter the Beemer would make quite an impression at Baxter Terrace.

  My assignment would involve a visit to Reginald Jamison, one of my best sources for all things hood related. He made a surprisingly good living selling silk-screened T-shirts out of a storefront on Clinton Avenue. Everyone called him “T-shirt Man,” which was then shortened to “Tee.” I was probably one of the few people who came into his store who knew his real name was Reginald.

  Tee and I had gotten to know each other a few years back when I did a story that cast him in a favorable light as an entrepreneur. We had been buddies ever since. I liked having a guy plugged into the streets. He liked the novelty of having a white friend—in some parts of Newark, it was almost like keeping an exotic pet.

  Tee was about 250 pounds of muscle, tattoo ink, and braids, all of which gave off the impression he was one tough gangsta, a front he maintained when it served him. In reality, the dude was about as hard as a roll of Charmin. He had a wife he doted on (mostly because she’d kick his ass if he didn’t). And he had a sentimental streak that was even wider than his biceps. I once caught him watching a bootleg DVD of Love Actually in the back of his store.

  As a businessman, he was strictly legit. Still, he grew up with most of the illegitimate businessmen in the area, so he was well acquainted with the city’s informal economic infrastructure and didn’t mind sharing his contacts now and then.

  By the time I made it to Tee’s place, it was about ten o’clock.

  “Aw shoot, Whitey’s here, hide the weed!” Tee crowed when he saw me.

  “C’mon,” I said, “since when does white man need to actually see the weed before he makes an arrest? You know I’ll just plant it on you later if I have to.”

  “Good point,” he said as we shook hands, then slipped into his exaggerated white man’s voice: “To what do I owe the pleasure of your appearance, Mr. Ross?”

  “I got a hypothetical question for you,” I said.

  “Yeah, but it probably ain’t all that hypothetical, right?” he said, switching back to his normal voice.

  “Well, let’s just say you’re a citizen of Newark who has recently come into a substantial amount of jewelry and you want to liquidate your holdings,” I said. “Is there a merchant in the city who provides such a service without probing too deeply into the origin of the items in question?”

  “Now, why you think I know something like that?” he said in a fake rage. “Why is it anytime Whitey needs to know about stealing stuff, he come see his black friend, huh? Because that’s all the black man is good for, huh? How come you’re not coming here to ask me my thoughts on municipal bonds?”

  “Because I’m not in a high enough tax bracket to take advantage of the benefits of munies,” I answered.

  “Oh,” Tee said. “Well, in that case, yeah, I know the guy you gotta see.”

  “Who?”

  “This is off the record, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, allegedly”—“allegedly” is one of Tee’s favorite words—“you go see Maury.”

  “Maury?”

  “Ye
ah, that’s the name of the pawnshop. The dude who own it ain’t named Maury—it’s named after some Jewish dude who owned it a thousand years ago. But people still call him ‘Maury’ anyway. Everyone in the hood knows: you got some stuff, you need some cash, you go to Maury.”

  “And he’s, uh, not known to ask many questions?”

  “Most of the rest of the pawnshops make you fill out all kinds of paperwork, do this ninety-day waiting period thing, all that. Maury is known to be a little less strict with his bookkeeping,” Tee said, then added, “allegedly.”

  “And if I strolled in, asked for Maury, and inquired about some particular jewelry?”

  Tee laughed.

  “He’d assume you’re a cop and suddenly get real hard of hearing, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “I do. So what’s my plan?”

  “Well, break it down for me here. What are we dealing with?”

  I told Tee the whole sordid tale of Akilah and Sweet Thang, finishing with my frantic 6:14 A.M. wake-up call and the small amount of culpability I felt in the whole mess.

  “So you got yourself some tasty little honey and you’re trying to get her stuff back?” he cooed. “Oh, that’s sweeeet.”

  “Yeah, I’m just made of cotton candy. Do you think you can introduce me to this Maury character?”

  “Oh, I don’t actually know him,” Tee said. “I just know him by reputation.”

  “So you know someone who knows him?”

  “Let me make some calls,” Tee said. “I’ll holler at you later?”

  I was about to answer when I was interrupted by the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony coming from my pocket.

  “That’s my editor,” I said. “Like the ringtone?”

  “Remind me to download you some LL Cool J.”

  “That’s, what, a drink or something?”

  Tee just shook his head and muttered, “White people.”

  * * *

  I waved at Tee as I left his store and went into the street to answer the call.

  “Good morning, sunshine!” I said.

  “Tell me you got something,” Szanto barked.

  “Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “Windy Byers,” Szanto said, exasperated. “Brodie somehow thinks there’s a Pulitzer somewhere in this. He’s got a boner that could win him the county pole vault championships.”

  Wendell A. Byers Jr.—nickname: Windy—was a Newark councilman. He was a bit of an idiot and lot of a blowhard, the kind of guy who had the habit of talking when he should have been listening. I had met him enough times that a picture of him appeared in my mind. He was African-American, but he straightened his salt-and-pepper hair, which was brushed back across his head. He was in his fifties, but the weight he carried made him look older. And he had one of those meticulously groomed, pencil-thin mustaches, and it was etched across his fleshy, flaccid face.

  His father, Wendell senior, had also been a Newark councilman. And that, apparently, was enough for the citizens of the Central Ward, who had been sending someone with that name to represent them for the last forty years or so. As a result of this honor, Windy Byers spent a long and thoroughly undistinguished political career being driven around in a city SUV, pretending he was important. It was unclear what the citizens got out of the deal.

  “Uh, I’m sorry, what’s happening with Windy Byers?” I said.

  “He’s missing. Didn’t you read the paper this morning?”

  I cursed my lousy karma: of all the mornings to not glance at the paper before I left. I thought about offering any number of creative excuses—most of which would have required knowledge of viruses that cause temporary blindness—but decided on the truth instead: “No. I kind of had a little emergency this morning.”

  “You want to tell me what’s more important than a kidnapped city councilman?”

  This was not going to be easy.

  “Sweet Thang’s charm bracelet,” I answered. I was glad Szanto couldn’t see me, because I was grinning like an idiot and it would have driven him berserk.

  “Come again?”

  “You know the story Sweet Thang and I wrote yesterday?”

  “Yeah. It got bumped off A1 by the Byers story and buried on the county news page—not that you would know because you didn’t read the paper. Anyway, what about it?”

  “Well, you may or may not be aware, but Sweet Thang is a rather kindhearted young woman and she, uhhh…” I paused, groping for the right words. I had hoped to have this little mess cleaned up before anyone needed to learn about it. Sweet Thang was going to have a hard time living this down. And I was going to have a hard time explaining it in a way that wouldn’t have Szanto shotgunning Tums.

  “Have I not made it clear I’m in a hurry this morning?” Szanto barked.

  “Sweet Thang let Akilah Harris stay at her place,” I blurted. “And sometime in the middle of the night, Akilah stole Sweet Thang’s jewelry and took off. I’ve been trying to get it back.”

  I could practically hear the new hole being torn in Szanto’s stomach.

  “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “And this is what you’ve been doing with your morning?”

  “I have.”

  What followed was a rant spiked with language you are unlikely to hear from your local librarian. He strongly suggested that I, as his investigative reporter, ought to stop worrying about the missing jewelry and start worrying about the missing councilman.

  Then he hung up.

  “Nice chatting with you,” I said to the empty phone line.

  I sighed. I knew exactly how this was going to play out. I would be assigned to put together some kind of Sunday piece that Told the Real Story—or however much of the Real Story we could assemble between now and then. In the meantime, it was Tuesday and we, as a newspaper, would spill countless barrels of ink during the coming days, covering every detail of the life and perhaps-death of Windy Byers, all the while pretending he was something other than a hack local politician who had ridden his father’s half-good name to a long and undistinguished career in service to the public/himself.

  I wasn’t keen on canonizing him like that. On the bright side, at least I wouldn’t have to get a space heater reference high up in whatever I wrote.

  My first step in this whole process was, of course, to do what I should have done first thing this morning: read the paper. I hopped in my Malibu and started looking for one, which was harder than you might think. This being Newark, we couldn’t keep newspaper boxes on the street. Otherwise, for seventy-five cents, some homeless guy—sorry, Housing Challenged American—was going to break in just as soon as we filled the box, swipe all thirty copies, and sell them on the street for reduced rates, netting himself the fifteen dollars he would need to keep his belly full of Wild Irish Rose until the next morning. What we did, instead, was cut the petty larceny out of the equation: we hired the homeless guys directly and put them to work selling the paper for us.

  On the street, the Eagle-Examiner was known as “The Bird.” People who delivered or sold it were known as “Bird Flippers.” I think all involved enjoyed the double entendre.

  Still, after the morning rush hour, most of the Bird Flippers had already made enough money to be happily inebriated the rest of the day, so it took a little while before I found one still manning his post.

  I tossed him a buck, told him to keep the change—the last of the big spenders, that’s me—and settled in to have a look.

  * * *

  As Szanto said, the disappearance of Wendell A. Byers Jr. was stripped across the top of A1. It was obviously late-breaking, and the layout person—who was either too rushed or too lazy to redesign the entire front page—had simply swapped out the Akilah Harris piece in favor of the Byers news.

  The story appeared under the byline of Carl Peterson, our night rewrite guy. When Peterson first came to the paper, his approach may have charitably been called “new journalism.” Now it was just
called overwriting. He stuffed his copy with adverbs and adjectives, filling the small spaces left in between with clichés. He wrote how the disappearance of the “beloved Central Ward councilman” and “scion of a Newark political dynasty” was being treated as “a deeply suspicious event” by police who “strongly suspect foul play.” The councilman’s wife, described as “thoroughly overwrought with anxiety,” reported her husband’s absence Monday evening, setting off a “city-wide manhunt” in which “concerned constituents” were being enlisted.

  The only problem with Peterson’s prose was disentangling the facts from the compositional exertions. And in this case it was especially difficult because Peterson didn’t seem to have many facts beyond: (a) the honorable councilman failed to return home to Mrs. Honorable Councilman; (b) she called the cops; and (c) the police had at least a half-cocked notion something untoward had happened. There was no mention of what led police to that conclusion, or whether there had been any ransom demands, or whether he had even been kidnapped in the first place.

  Not that I blamed Peterson for the lack of information. As night rewrite man, he was hostage to whatever dispatches he got from reporters (usually not much for a deadline story like that) and whatever the Newark police felt like telling him (usually even less).

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. There were so many ways this thing could go—involvement with the mob, involvement with a girlfriend, involvement with a girlfriend who was herself involved with the mob. Without at least some hint of a direction, I’d be like Fred Flintstone in his boulder-wheeled car: moving my legs a lot but not really going all that fast.

  I needed a cop to whisper something in my ear. And the cop that immediately came to mind was Rodney Pritchard, a homicide detective I became friendly with a while back. I had written a blow-by-blow story of how he tracked down and apprehended a fugitive wanted for murdering his wife. Pritch caught the guy so unawares he actually answered the door to his apartment hideout while eating a piece of jerk chicken—allowing Pritch to deliver the once-in-a-career line, “You’re under arrest, now drop the chicken.”

  My story made Pritch mildly famous, helping to launch him on a long winter of law enforcement awards banquets. So now we were the kind of buddies who tell each other secrets. Or at least that’s what I hoped as I dialed his number.