The Fraud

by Brad Parks

  She continued prattling on for a while. I was now parked in front of Joseph Okeke’s former domicile, which meant I was officially wasting time yapping with Sweet Thang. I had to get out of the conversation somehow. The problem, of course, is that Stalin had gulags that were easier to escape.

  “Sweet Thang,” I said at last.

  “I know, I know, you have to go, sorry,” she said. “You know me. I just get so passionate about helping these kids. So many of them come from families that have, like, nothing. But they’re so bright and so full of energy, you feel like if someone just gave them a little bit of a chance, they’d—”

  “Sweet Thang!” I said again.

  “Sorry, sorry. Can I put you down for a visit to our place tomorrow morning at ten? I’ll send you an e-mail with all the details. And I’ll bring bagels. It’ll be fun.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock.”

  I hung up and sighed. I decided to be proud of her, for being so good at her job. Because it beat the alternative: admitting that I had been thoroughly outmaneuvered by my former intern.

  * * *

  The erstwhile home of Joseph Okeke was among a row of adjoining town houses, all of which had their own tiny patch of a front yard. The yards were enclosed with these low, black iron fences.

  They were mostly decorative. Almost anyone could hop over one. But they still served a subtle purpose. Criminals are like water: they seek the easiest path. Sometimes it didn’t take much of an impediment to divert them elsewhere.

  I opened the gate and strolled up the front walk. The unit appeared to be two bedroom, which made me wonder how a family of five was fitting into it.

  As I rang the bell, I tried to anticipate what the Okeke family would be in the midst of experiencing. Their patriarch was now two weeks gone. They probably buried him a week ago. They were now in the part of the grieving process where the funeral was over, the extended family was gone, the neighbors had stopped sending casseroles, and things were getting back to what was supposedly normal. Except, of course, nothing felt normal anymore.

  In my experience with grieving families, this was usually around the time the hurt really started to set in. To add to the pain, there may have been an insurance company trying to weasel its way out of its fiduciary responsibilities.

  I rang the doorbell again, getting the sense it was empty. Then, from next door, a woman dressed in nurse’s scrubs peeked out.

  “He don’t live there no more,” she said, then added matter-of-factly; “he died.”

  “I know. I’m looking for his family.”

  “They don’t live with him. You with the city or something?”

  “I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner. I’m writing a story about him. Did you know him?”

  “Some.”

  I pulled out a notepad, took down her name, and went for the open-ended question approach. “I’m just trying to get a sense of what kind of guy he was. Tell me about him.”

  She considered this. “I don’t know. He was pretty quiet, you know? We shared a wall but I never heard a peep from him. He was always very polite. He had lived here maybe three years? He and his wife were divorced.”

  Which explained the two-bedroom pad.

  “What kind of work did he do?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I know he went on business trips sometimes, because he’d tell me he’d be gone for a week or two and ask me to look after his place. I think he traveled back to Nigeria, but I don’t know what he did there. He didn’t talk about that much.”

  “What did he talk about?”

  “His kids, mostly. He was really proud of them. Two of them were off at college. The other one is a senior at Arts High. That’s where I went to school, so he would tell me about her a lot. She won a lot of awards for stuff. Maryam, her name is. He was always like, ‘Maryam, she was student of the month. Maryam, she won the National Merit scholarship.’”

  The woman had mimicked a deep bass voice and a West African accent for the last part, doing her best Joseph Okeke impersonation.

  “What about the other two kids?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. One’s a boy, the other’s a girl. That’s all I know.”

  “Do you know where they go to college?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sure he mentioned it, but I’d just be guessing.”

  “Did the kids ever come over here?”

  “No. I asked him about it one time and he said he and his wife had decided that the kids ought to have one home, not shuttle back and forth between two all the time. They wanted the kids to have as stable a life as possible. If he wanted to see them, he went over there.”

  “He and his wife must have been on okay terms, then?”

  “I don’t know. I never met her.”

  I looked down at my notebook, as if this would help me divine more information.

  “What else. Any hobbies?”

  “He was in Rotary. I know that. He’d talk about that sometimes…”

  Her voice trailed off, then she added, “I’m sorry. I wish I could help more. I kind of have to get going to work now. I didn’t really know him that well. I mean, we were neighbors and I liked him. We’d chitchat every now and then when we saw each other, but that was it. It’s sad what happened to him. This city—”

  She finished the thought with a headshake. Sometimes there was nothing more to say.

  “I appreciate your help,” I said, then let her go.

  She had given me a solid start. And I was liking the picture of Joseph Okeke that was emerging. Here, of course, I was just being selfish on behalf of my story. As I said earlier, having a good victim is absolutely critical. Nothing ruined an otherwise heartrending tale faster than an unsympathetic victim. If Okeke had been some man-about-town divorcé, trolling around in his BMW 328i while he blew off his family, it made him less of a tragic figure.

  But that’s not who he had been. He was an involved father, bursting with pride for his children. He was a businessman who was working hard to provide for his family. He was living a peaceful, quiet life.

  And he was in Rotary. I liked that detail. Rotary had an element of business networking to it, sure, but it was a primarily a service organization. He helped others in his community.

  It not only made him more sympathetic, it also made him more accessible to suburban readers: Joseph Okeke wasn’t just another black guy who got killed in Newark, he was a Rotarian.

  And, okay, maybe he wasn’t the perfect victim. But he was an acceptable victim. I definitely could have done worse.

  * * *

  I returned to my car and worked my phone a little until I found Okeke’s previous address, which corresponded to the current address of one Tujuka Okeke. It was closer to downtown, in an area of Newark known as University Heights.

  It took less than ten minutes to get there. This is one of the advantages of traversing a city whose neighborhoods are 163,000 people short of peak population. Traffic in the middle of the day is usually pretty light.

  What I found upon arrival was a detached, single-family home with a short driveway. It also had a fence around it, but this one was more than merely decorative. It was high enough to keep out the riff-raff, assuming the riff-raff weren’t Olympic high jumpers.

  There was one car in the short driveway. It was a Toyota, maybe three or four years old. Not as savory a piece of bait for a carjacker.

  I parked just outside. Again, I tried to prepare myself for what might await. Mrs. Okeke was not, technically, a widow. But it sounded like the split had been …

  Well, let’s be clear: the term “amicable divorce” ranks alongside “jumbo shrimp” as an oxymoron. And yet it seemed Joseph and Tujuka Okeke had parted ways in as friendly a way as possible, at least civilly enough to allow what sounded like effective coparenting. And he was still the father of her children. She would have all kinds of conflicting emotions. I was willing to bet the mention of his name would bring tears to her
eyes. The mention of his insurance company, meanwhile, might bring fire.

  The gate had been left open, so I walked up the front steps and rang the bell. It was answered by a woman with jet-black skin and short-cropped graying hair.

  “Ms. Okeke?” I said tentatively.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Carter Ross. I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner. I’m working on a story about Joseph.”

  She didn’t cry. Instead, her face twisted at the mention of the name.

  “I have nothing to say about him,” she spat.

  She gripped the door like she was about to give it a high-velocity ride back to its jamb. Then she thought better of it for a second and added, “Joseph is a fool. For what he did? He got what he deserved.”

  Then she slammed the door in my face.

  Amicable divorce, meet jumbo shrimp.

  I stayed on the stoop for another five seconds, my finger poised near the doorbell. Then I thought better. I wasn’t giving up on Tujuka Okeke. But I was going to let her breathe a little bit.

  Retreating down the steps, I returned to my Malibu and got it rolling back toward the newsroom. Clearly, postmatrimonial relations between the Okekes had not been as cordial as I thought. Still, I wondered if there was something more going on. What foolish act had he committed? And who deserves death-by-carjacking?

  It was another small thing about Joseph Okeke—like stopping at a green light late at night—that set my easily addled brain to work.

  CHAPTER 8

  I was five minutes away from the office when my phone rang again. This time I managed to interrupt my daddy-delirium before it reached seizure stage and pulled my phone—more or less calmly—out of my pocket.

  Then I saw where the number was coming from and started shaking all over again. It was someone in the newsroom.

  This was it. Tina had doubled over with a contraction just outside the copy desk and grabbed the nearest phone to demand I take her to the hospital.

  “Carterross,” I said breathlessly.

  “Carter, my boy, it’s Harold Brodie. How are you today?”

  Hearing our executive editor’s voice, which kept getting higher and breathier as he worked his way deeper into his eighth decade, did little to soothe my nerves. Despite my multitude of journalism awards and a job status that was as close to tenure as a modern newspaper gets, I was still as afraid of Brodie as I had been as a rookie on probation.

  Especially because I couldn’t figure out why he was calling. I doubted Tina would ask Brodie, of all people, to inform me she had gone into labor. And he wasn’t really the type to just pick up the phone and call reporters. As a long-ago military veteran—his first combat was at Antietam, I think—he believed in preserving chain of command. He always had the reporter’s frontline editor deliver his wishes. This was the first time in my nine years at the paper he had ever called me directly.

  “Hi…” I began, and then I paused. I had never quite summoned the nerve to call him by his first name, but didn’t want to sound like a dork—or, worse, an obsequious kiss ass—greeting him by his last name. So I just added a “there.” It came out: “Hi … there.”

  “I had a quick question for you, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  “Sure. Shoot.”

  “You and Tina Thompson, you are … well, how would you describe your relationship? She is pregnant with your child but you are not married, is that right?”

  Oh, lord. Where was he going with this? And could I get away with telling the executive editor to mind his own damn business? Then I thought back to that all-important commandment: Thou Shalt Not Piss Off Harold Brodie.

  “Well, yes, sir, I’d say you’ve got things right.”

  “And you are betrothed?”

  “I’m still working on that part, sir.”

  “I see. Well, I had a little proposition for you. Madge and I, we like to … well, back in the seventies, they used to call it ‘swinging.’ I’m not sure what the term is these days. But you’re such a good-looking fellow and Madge has always been sweet on you. I was wondering if you’d like to come over and have a ‘go’ with her tonight while I get to know Tina a little better. I have to admit, I’ve always had a bit of a fetish for women at the very end of gestation. There’s just nothing quite like the lactate-swollen bosom of an expectant mother. I bedded my first pregnant woman when I was barely more than a boy myself. Why, in my salad days, they used to call me ‘mommy hopper.’”

  I paused to be sure, then said, “Hi, Tommy.”

  Tommy Hernandez was our city hall reporter. He was twenty-five-years-old, of Cuban heritage, and as gay as backstage at the Tony Awards. How it was he had developed a spot-on impersonation of our arrow straight, Caucasian, septuagenarian executive editor was something of a marvel. He used it as a weapon whenever it suited him.

  “Aw, man! I had been working on that one all morning,” he whined. “Where did I lose you?”

  “At ‘swollen.’ I feel like Brodie would have gone with ‘engorged.’”

  “The devil is always in the details,” he said.

  “No, the devil is you. Though I must say you are delightfully twisted.”

  “Thank you!” I could practically hear him beaming through the phone.

  “Anyhow, does this call have a purpose beyond putting a seriously disturbing image in my head?”

  “Yeah, actually, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t stepping on your toes with something I’m working on.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a rumor the Nigerian government has decided that there’s a sizable enough Nigerian population in northern New Jersey to establish an embassy here in Newark,” he said. “We’re not sure if it’s a satellite to the main embassy in New York or if they’re going to move their whole operation here. Either one is news.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Anyhow, I was talking to Kathy Carter at the prosecutor’s office about it and she said, ‘What is this, Nigeria day?’ And then she said you had talked to her about something related to Nigeria, but then she wouldn’t say what because it was on background.”

  “Yeah, I was just asking about a Nigerian ex-pat who came down with a bad case of carjacking.”

  “Oh,” is all he said. “And rumor is you’re working on this with Chillax?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because he’s the most adorable intern in the history of interns, that’s why. His face has that lost little boy thing going on, but his body is…” Here, Tommy made a noise that suggested he had just bitten into a really good steak, then finished with: “He is sooooo tasty.”

  “Yeah, and you’re sooooo dreaming if you think he likes boys.”

  “I don’t know about that. You know what position he played for his college lacrosse team, right?” Tommy said, but didn’t wait before delivering the punch line, “Long stick middy.”

  I just shook my head. “How are things with Glenn, anyway?”

  Tommy had been dating my cousin Glenn for the last eight months. My family had long suspected Glenn was gay—inasmuch as he looks like Brad Pitt yet had remained without a serious girlfriend for many years—but it wasn’t confirmed until he and Tommy ended up hooking up at my sister’s wedding. They had been together ever since.

  “He asked over the weekend if we could take a break,” Tommy said.

  “Ouch. Sorry.”

  “I couldn’t even take it that personally. I just don’t think he’s ever going to settle down,” Tommy said. “But I’m not sure I can talk to you about it. You’re not an impartial party.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, switching back to Nigeria, why were you calling the prosecutor’s office about the embassy thing anyway? What would they have to do with it?”

  “Oh, this is the good part,” Tommy said. “The only reason the whole thing came to our attention was that the land in question had a little problem with it. They were doing some site preparation but they had to stop work because they came across skelet
al remains.”

  “Cool,” I said. Macabre as it may be, there are just certain phrases that tweak a newspaper reporter’s antenna. “Skeletal remains” is one of them.

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see. All Kathy would tell me is that the remains had been taken to the medical examiner and it was under investigation.”

  “Still. Could be good. Let me know, okay?”

  “You got it,” and then Tommy switched to his Harold Brodie voice, “and I’ll try to remember that Tina’s breasts are engorged, not swollen.”

  “Yeah, you better keep your voice down,” I said. “If she hears you talking about her like that, it’s your face that’s going to end up swollen.”

  * * *

  Despite my better judgment, I completed my drive to the newsroom, parked in our garage, and walked back into the office.

  The reason for my visit as noontime neared was Buster Hays, our resident rumpled crank. Buster was our cops reporter. Except calling him a cops reporter was like calling Pavarotti a shower singer. Much as Buster annoyed me with his general grumpiness, he was an unparalleled virtuoso at working law enforcement sources. He understood how to speak their language, how to get them to talk to him, and how to wheedle things out of them they wouldn’t say to anyone else. He had a series of well-stuffed Rolodexes that contained roughly forty years’ worth of contacts, all of whom seemed indebted to Buster for one reason or another.

  When Buster went to a press conference, he usually came back with at least a half-dozen tidbits that he had gotten on the side, stuff no other civilians knew. He seldom shared this information with readers, which was part of the reason the cops didn’t mind giving it to him.