by Brad Parks
I steered us back in the direction of Sunday night two weeks previous.
“Look, I can’t pay you for your story, but I can tell you that when we write about this sort of thing, it makes it harder for people to ignore it. I’m not talking about the people around here—you guys have no choice in the matter. I’m talking about lawmakers in Trenton, about rich people who think the problems of the city aren’t their own, about people who can make a difference with their influence and their dollars. It doesn’t happen instantaneously, but I’ll tell you if you keep those people engaged long enough, they help turn the tide.
“So,” I concluded, “I guess the question you have to ask yourself is: What kind of city do you want to live in? What kind of city do you want your kids to live in? You want to it be a place where you get killed for driving a nice car or a place where the good people fight back?”
He was nodding by the time I got to the end. “Yeah, Papi. I get it. But you can’t use my name. Those ’bangers know I snitched and they come back and shoot up my store.”
“What makes you think it was gangbangers who did it?”
He gave me a look like the answer should have been obvious. Don’t they do everything around here?
“I wouldn’t want to put you in that kind of danger,” I said. “Look, at this point, I don’t even know your name, so I can’t very well put it in the paper. Let’s keep it that way and you can talk to me without worrying about things.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding again. “What you want to know?”
“What did you see?” I asked, hauling my reporter’s notepad out of my pocket so I could get it all down.
He pointed to the barred window behind him, one that gave him a view of the whole intersection. “I watched the whole thing, Papi. This dude in this BMW rolled up and stopped and these two guys with guns jumped him.”
“Did you get a look at the guys?”
“Not really. They had ski masks on. A black one and a blue one. There’s a streetlight, so I saw them, but they never took off their masks.”
That meant Johnny would make a pretty lousy witness if this thing ever went to trial. But that didn’t make him useless from my standpoint. I wasn’t there to convict anyone beyond a reasonable doubt. I was there to tell a story.
“Okay, so the guys jump him. What next?”
“They made him get out of the car.”
“Describe the man for me.”
Johnny paused to consider this. “He was older. Not, like, super old. But, you know, like middle-aged. He was black. Real black. Like Africa black.”
“How do you know? African Americans are sometimes very dark-skinned, too.”
“Yeah, but this guy dressed different.”
“What was he, wearing a dashiki or something?”
“No, no. But you know, their clothes, they’re not ghetto. They’re like white people clothes, except they’re cheaper-looking, you know?”
I nodded. It meant Joseph Okeke was probably buying knockoff designer stuff, which was available in abundance in downtown Newark. The garments were meant to look like Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger, but there was always something a little off about them. Even a sartorially disinterested person such as myself could see it.
“All right. So he got out of the car. Did he raise his hands like it was a stickup?” I asked. These kind of details would help me bring the thing to life on paper later.
“No. He kept them down.”
“Did he look nervous or … how did he act?”
“I don’t know. He just got out of the car. Then one of the guys, the guy in the blue mask, he came around to him and started pointing the gun at him. He started yelling at him. And the guy started yelling back. It was like they were having some kind of argument or something.”
“What were they saying?”
“Couldn’t hear it. The door was closed,” he said, looking in the direction of his front door.
“Okay, what next?”
“Well, the guy in the blue mask, he just shot the guy. I was like, ‘Oh, damn.’ I mean, he didn’t need to do that to take the guy’s car, you know?”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. Soon as they started shooting, I ducked. I don’t need to be catching bullets, Papi. I stayed down until I was sure they were gone.”
I nodded, trying to envision the scene as Johnny had described it. I asked a few more follow-up questions, trying to elicit more details. Johnny wasn’t being evasive. He just didn’t seem to remember any. It sounded like the entire scene hadn’t taken more than two or three minutes.
When I felt like I had gotten everything useful, I put my pad back in my pocket and made the offhand comment, “This is why I don’t stop for red lights in Newark late at night.”
And that’s when Johnny hit me with this little nugget: “That’s the weird thing, Papi. The light wasn’t red. It was green.”
“He stopped for a green light,” I repeated. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and left it at that.
Stopping for a green light. Maybe there was some other reasonable explanation for it. The problem was, the only person who could say for sure was no longer around to do so.
CHAPTER 6
Blue Mask woke up not to an alarm or to a loud noise, but to a cat. The thing belonged to his great-aunt. It kept trying to curl up in the crook of Blue Mask’s leg, which was located on the great-aunt’s couch, which the cat very much viewed as being her property.
“Get off me,” Blue Mask growled, jerking the cat off the couch with a sweep of his leg.
The cat landed softly on her feet and offered one disdainful meow before stalking off.
Blue Mask rolled off his side. There was a lump in his pocket that had been pressing—painfully, he now realized—into his hip. He sat up, rubbing away the ache from the lump.
He had been sleeping on his great-aunt Birdie’s couch for three weeks now, ever since he maxed out of his latest sentence, a fifteen-month stretch for possession of controlled dangerous substances with intent to distribute. Or, in the shorthand of a criminal justice system overwhelmed by such young men, simply, “CDS.”
It was his sixth such conviction as an adult and his second time going to prison for it. That, along with a trilogy-length juvenile record, had been sufficient that most of his family had given up on him.
There were only two people still willing to take him in. One was his sister. But he didn’t like messing with her. She used to ’bang, just like him. She had since gone legit. And now she had this tendency to get all up in his business, telling him he should go back to night school and get his GED, ridiculous stuff like that.
That made Birdie his only other option. She was a small, withered woman who ate sparingly and had a nose that sort of looked like a beak. Hence the nickname. Birdie got up in his business, too. But she was older and more easily misled. Besides, she just wanted to lead him to Jesus. Blue Mask would take Jesus over night school every time.
The deal he and Birdie had struck was that he could sleep on her couch if he attended church with her on Sunday mornings and Bible study on Thursday night.
Oh, and he wasn’t allowed to sell drugs anymore. But that was fine with Blue Mask. Thanks to his black-masked associate, who had recruited Blue Mask the day after he returned home from prison, he had found a much more lucrative occupation.
Working a drug corner in a place like Newark was no kind of get-rich-quick scheme, anyway. The margins were just too low. Selling a dime bag for six bucks when you bought it for five, you could bust your ass all night and be lucky to come away with fifty dollars for the effort.
But jacking cars? That was good money. He and Black Mask had split a $3,500 payout for the Jaguar.
It took more nerve, yeah. But Blue Mask was discovering he had plenty of that. He might not have understood exactly why, except during his latest stretch, one of the social workers had
told him he had something called antisocial personality disorder.
Blue Mask was so intrigued he went to the prison library to learn more. Apparently, it meant he didn’t feel remorse for his bad acts like most people did. He was what the literature referred to as a “sociopath.” An outmoded term for it—the one Blue Mask liked better, because it sounded cooler—was psychopath.
Within that diagnosis, there was a range of possibilities. Some sociopaths were little more than unrepentant litterers and glib liars who never committed a serious crime. Others could shoplift or swindle old people out of their retirement accounts but would draw the line at physically hurting anyone. Others could go all the way to murder and not feel a thing.
Blue Mask now recognized he was one of those. And, what’s more, he read an article that said he was probably born that way. It made jacking cars feel like a calling, one he hoped to be able to continue for as long as possible.
Already, in just three weeks, he was close to having saved enough to get his own place. It was in an apartment complex known not to get too particular about credit checks or employment requirements, so long as you could pay three months in advance. It was, for that reason, a pretty sketchy place. But Blue Mask was fine with it. As long as it had a bed—and lacked a damn cat.
Blue Mask swung his legs off the couch. He reached for the remote control and turned on the television, still rubbing where the lump had been.
Whatever station Birdie had been watching the night before was starting the top of the hour with a news update. Blue Mask was about to change the channel, until the screen flashed up with a familiar face.
It was the white dude. The one Blue Mask had shot the night before. He cranked up the volume as some scrawny Hispanic chiquita with a frowny face pretended to be concerned as she read from a teleprompter.
“Authorities are searching for two assailants, described as black males in their late teens or early twenties, and are asking anyone with information about this crime to come forward. The reward for information leading to an arrest is now at fifty thousand dollars after—”
Blue Mask couldn’t even hear the rest. And it wasn’t because he was suddenly nervous about being caught. No, no. He was too busy being thrilled.
Thrilled by the attention. Thrilled by the sense of power. Thrilled that someone thought catching him was worth fifty freakin’ grand.
The first time he killed someone, that old African guy, no one had seemed to notice. He had seen a poster in the ’hood, announcing a reward of $10,000. That was all.
Chump change. Blue Mask much preferred it this way. But it did present him with a practical issue, one related to some merchandise he had to offload. Not the car, of course—that was already gone, to a place where Black Mask had promised no one would be able to find it.
It was the lump in his pocket: a Rolex watch, the one he had taken off the white dude. He had to fence it before things got too hot.
CHAPTER 7
With a better grasp on how Joseph Okeke died, it was time for me to learn more about how he lived.
The browser on my phone told me that Mr. Okeke last laid his head at an address just a few blocks from Goncalves Grocery No. 4. And so, having departed that purveyor of processed food products, I was on my way there when my phone rang.
Now, I am a newspaper reporter. I spend half my life talking to people—people who frequently chose to initiate contact by calling me. Sometimes I feel like my phone is an invasive parasite that has attached itself to my ear and refuses to let go. People phone me all the time, all day long. But did I think about any of the two hundred of them who might have a perfectly prosaic reason for doing so?
Of course not. Lately, every time my phone rang, some instinctive part of my brain started screaming: This is it. It’s daddy time! Go! Go! Go!
It certainly didn’t help that C-3PO was a breach. Tina had done some exercises to get the baby flipped around. Then the doctor had tried to turn him under guided ultrasound. Nothing worked. The little guy was stubbornly clinging to the butt-down position.
We had a C-section scheduled for next week. But Dr. Marston had given us a scary lecture about how we couldn’t dawdle if Tina went into labor between now and then. In particular, if her water broke and the baby started coming out, there were two very real dangers.
One was head entrapment, which is exactly what it sounds like: the baby’s body is able to slip out, but the head—the largest part of the baby—gets stuck when the cervix closes around it.
The other, even more dangerous, possibility was something called a “cord prolapse,” which is what happens when the umbilical cord comes out first and then gets ruptured as the rest of the baby tries to come out behind it.
Dr. Marston warned us that cord prolapse can lead to “very negative outcomes.” I’m sure most parents would leave it at that. But, being journalists, Tina and I asked what, exactly, that meant.
“It means you have less than ten minutes to get the baby out or it will die,” Dr. Marston said.
“Oh,” we said, both nearly feeling our hearts rip in two.
Hence, I was already short of breath as I fumbled to fish out my phone, my hands shaking so badly I was struggling to accomplish that simple act. I was sure it was Tina. Her water had broken. Her contractions were coming on fast and furious. There was a bulge of umbilical cord sticking out and—
Then I actually looked at the screen on my phone, which read, “Thang, Sweet 2.”
My vitals instantly returned to normal. I considered not answering. Again. Sweet Thang was one of the interns who had briefly graced our newsroom with her youthful vitality. She had been given her molasses-laden moniker by some troglodyte on the copy desk because she was a bright-eyed, honey-haired, recent Vanderbilt graduate; and because our copy desk has a sense of humor.
She had two phones because she could talk down the battery of one in less than a day. During her time with us, we had been through a lot together. First, I nearly deflowered her (don’t ask). Then we settled into a platonic relationship that included a near-death experience while reporting on a corrupt house-flipping scheme.
Sweet Thang considered me a mentor, and I let her maintain that illusion. The truth was, she had been a gifted natural reporter long before she met me. I had nothing to teach her. Her only weakness as a reporter—that she led with her heart, every time—was also her greatest strength as a human being.
She had since moved on to a calling to which she was perhaps better suited, joining the do-gooder brigade in Newark’s nonprofit community. As was often case in that resource-deprived world, she wore as many hats as her head could fit, plus a few more. She served as spokesperson, marketing manager, events coordinator, donor wrangler, grant writer, envelope stuffer, and floor sweeper. She had been trying to get me to write a story about her employer for a while now. I had been avoiding her calls, strategically returning messages to her office voice mail when I knew she wouldn’t be there.
It was certainly nothing personal, because I liked her a lot. It was just this allergy I had to doing puff pieces.
But with those reporter’s skills of hers came a certain amount of tenacity. Her once-weekly calls had become twice-weekly calls. I had no doubt she would keep ratcheting up the pressure until I at least came up with a good excuse to put her off. And since I now had that excuse—a breaking story about the carjacking that was suddenly all the news in our fair region—I decided it was time to take her call.
At the last second before it went to voice mail, I answered with, “Carter Ross.”
“Hey, Carter, it’s Lauren McMillan.”
“Hey, Sweet Thang! How’s, the job going at, uh—”
I had blanked on the name of the nonprofit she now worked for.
“The Greater Newark Children’s Council,” she filled in. “We’re doing fabulous, thank you. We just had our third annual Greater Newark Five-K and Kid’s Fun Run—I sent you an invitation, by the way, but I didn’t see you there—and we’re deep into the pl
anning to roll out our Brick City Baby Brick Buy. You know, buy a brick to support the babies of the Brick City? It goes toward prenatal care and new mother education. Catchy, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. My Malibu was closing in on a row of tidy, roughly ten-year-old town houses, one of which had until recently been home to Joseph Okeke. I hoped Sweet Thang would hurry up and get around to pitching whatever story she was selling so I could politely blow her off and get on with my day.
And then she obliged me. “But what I really wanted to talk to you about was our Chariots for Children campaign. It’s a great program where people donate their cars to us and we help them maximize their tax write-off. And then we either rehab the car and use it in one of our programs or we sell it off. So it’s a win-win slash win-win-win. But what we really need is some publicity. The Kars for Kids people have totally dominated the market, and we need to get word out there about Chariots for Children. We have this big media push starting next week and we were hoping you could kick it off by writing a story for Sunday’s paper about the—”
“Yeah, that sounds great except I’ve got this big story right now and—”
That’s when she dropped the bomb: “Uncle Hal said you’d be able to do it.”
Her father and “Uncle Hal”—AKA Executive Editor Harold Brodie—were best pals. It was how Sweet Thang had gotten her internship in the first place. And it put me in something of a bind. Among the Ten Commandments of working for the Newark Eagle-Examiner, “Thou Shalt Not Piss Off Harold Brodie” is very near the top.
“You, uh, talked to Brodie, huh?”
“Yeah, we chatted on Saturday. He and Madge were over for dinner at my parents’ house.”
Madge. As in Brodie’s wife. The only first name I had ever addressed her by was “Mrs.”
“Anyhow,” she continued, “I’ve got a kid who would make for the perfect anecdotal lede. He’s really sweet and he’s just a love. Oh, and he’s really photogenic, so don’t forget to put in a photo assignment. We can start with interviewing him, because he’s the kind of kid who the program will help. Then I’ll show you where they rehab the cars. We have our own repair shop, which means more of your automotive donation ends up helping kids in need. Then I can hook you up with some donors if you want, so they can talk about how easy it is. We have this one woman, who—”