by Brad Parks
“I’ll try to let you know before it runs. I may have to call with any other questions I have about Joseph. His widow hasn’t exactly been very forthcoming with me.”
“Really? Why not?”
“I don’t know, since the two times I’ve been on her front porch she’s slammed the door in my face,” I said. “Actually, if you happen to chat with her, could you tell her I’m a decent fellow who doesn’t have horns coming out of his head?”
“I guess I could but we don’t really … now that Joseph is gone, we don’t really have a reason to talk anymore. I had thought about trying to continue a relationship with Maryam. She really is a lovely girl and I enjoyed the time I spent with her. But the only thing we had in common was her father, and…”
She didn’t finish the thought. “Okay, I understand,” I said. “No big deal.”
“What do you need from her, anyway?”
“I’m still trying to track down that insurance thing,” I said. “It’s that reporter’s instinct toward protecting the little guy. If there’s an insurance company trying to screw a widow out of money, it’s the kind of thing I want to be able to put in the paper.”
I emphasized my hunger for this subject by taking a wolfish bite from my sandwich.
“Would it help if I could give you a copy of Joseph’s auto policy?” she said.
This was the equivalent of asking a boxer, Would it help if I pinned the other guy’s arms down?
“Sure would,” I said. “How’d you end up with that?”
“He left an accordion file with some papers at my house. I was going through it the other night. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It’s yours if you want it. How about you drop by my house tonight and pick it up?”
With a copy of Joseph Okeke’s policy in hand by the end of the day, I’d be able to dedicate some time tomorrow to attacking his insurance company with merry abandon.
“Sure,” I said. “What time?”
“I’m probably going to be working a little late. Then I wanted to stop by the gym on the way home. Could you come by at eight?”
She furnished me her address. I wrote it down. “I’m not going to have time to clean,” she said. “Just park in the driveway and I’ll run it out to you.”
I could have told her that, as a newspaper reporter who had trekked through his share of tenements and interviewed his share of people who were conscientious vacuuming objectors, I would be very nearly impossible to offend. But I understood a little about certain women and cleaning. Tina had once refused to answer the door for the UPS man because the living room wasn’t tidied. So I just said, “Okay. No problem.”
We lapsed back into silence for a moment. She had finished her sandwich. We had, for all practical purposes, finished our conversation. Yet there was clearly more on her mind.
Just to get on with it, I said, “What is it?”
“Nothing, I just … you’re going to figure this out, right? Who did this to Joseph?”
“I’m sure going to try,” I said. “With something like this, it’s the cops who ultimately nail the bad guy. That makes me sort of like the tour guide. I’m the one who leads them down the path and tells them where to look.”
“Good. I don’t want to sound like … I mean, I was just his girlfriend. But we had something special and it would be … I just really hope there’s justice, that’s all.”
“Me, too,” I assured her.
At that point, she stood up. She thanked me for listening to her wishes about respecting Joseph’s privacy. Soon she was heading back toward the firm of Lacks & Ragland to continue her afternoon’s toil.
I sat and finished my sandwich in a park shaped like a sword, feeling like I was soon to be armed with one myself.
* * *
When I returned to the newsroom, I went to check in on Tina again, challenging myself to find new ways to ask how she was feeling without her realizing it.
She wasn’t in her office. I left her car keys on her chair, relieved to be free of the responsibility of driving a car whose blue book value was beyond three digits. I fished into her purse and found my keys. At least now if anyone tried to rear-end me, I wouldn’t have to worry that the real threat to my well-being would come later.
On my way back to my desk, I passed Tommy, catching a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye. But that was enough. Tommy and I have been friends long enough, and have worked in close quarters often enough, that I have become an expert reader of his moods. People talk about having work spouses, that person in the office who, in a platonic way, looks out for them the way their real spouse does at home. I guess you could say Tommy has become my work husband—and I’m pleased to say that’s now legal in New Jersey.
The first thing I noticed is that he had his earphones in, which is not necessarily a bad sign. It just means he’s trying to concentrate or to avoid someone. It was the second thing I noticed that made me concerned. He had this little pout on his face. At the risk of bumping up against stereotypes about gays being happy, Tommy is not a pouter.
I sat down in the empty desk next to him. I gestured for him to pull out his earphones, which he did.
“What’s the matter,” I asked. “Is it about Glenn? He’s always had problems with commitment, so don’t take it personally that he wants a break.”
“No, it’s not that. Worse.”
“Worse?”
“Remember those skeletal remains I told you about?”
“The ones found at the construction site for the Nigerian embassy?”
“Yeah, those. I had gotten my hopes up that it was some kind of juicy mystery, a horrific crime, a great untold story.”
“And?”
“The medical examiner’s office determined the body died of tuberculosis a long time ago, back when people died of tuberculosis a lot. Basically, someone buried this guy in their backyard, then the world forgot about him and paved over him. So there’s no mystery, no crime. Boooorr-ring.”
He said the last word in a singsongy tone, then settled back into his pout. I felt for him. People who become newspaper reporters tend to be talented, intelligent, insightful people who might have been successful in any number of fields but are willing to sacrifice all kinds of comforts—a regular work schedule, an office full of normal people, a career that actually has a future—in exchange for having a job that’s not boring. We don’t deal well with downtime. If trouble does not present itself to us, we’ll usually go looking for it.
Lucky for Tommy, and for myself, I seemed to have enough swirling around me that I could share. His boredom was going to be my opportunity.
“What if I said I had a present for you?” I asked.
“A present?” he asked, brightening immediately. “What kind of present? Is it wrapped? Does it have a big, bright bow on it?”
“Well, if I did manage to wrap it, it would be in the shape of a six-foot-three, broad-shouldered former college lacrosse player.”
Tommy grinned. “And when I opened it, would it be a super-tasty intern?”
“Well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. But I will say that if you went to the USKB building on Park Place, you might find one of our reporters hanging around outside, trying to interview people who worked with Kevin Tiemeyer, the carjacking victim. You interested in going to help him?”
“Letmecheckmycalendaryes,” Tommy said.
I felt a little guilty about using an obviously straight intern as bait. But only so much. Tommy would enjoy the harmless flirting. Chillax would probably be too dim and/or too secure in his sexual orientation to notice and/or care he was being flirted with.
The real winner would be my story. Chillax was untested, and nothing about his production so far suggested he was anything special journalistically. Tommy, on the other hand, was one of the most gifted reporters I had ever worked with. He was especially good at man-on-the-street stuff, turning random strangers into instant friends who told him things. If there was anything of note to learn about the life and
times of Kevin Tiemeyer, Tommy would find it.
He quickly grabbed a notepad and went for the elevator. The last thing I heard him saying—or, really, half-sighing—were the words “long stick middie.”
CHAPTER 28
The latest job began the way all the others did: with Black Mask getting a phone call.
He knew the number, of course. It wasn’t Blue Mask—thank God, that guy was starting to freak him out. It was … what had he called them before? Ah, yes: the people with the money.
“’Sup?” he said.
“I got one for you tonight,” he heard. “You good with that?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“Good. I already changed the password.”
The password went to the e-mail account they used so that nothing would have to be said over the phone. It was an anonymous account, set up on a public computer so the IP address couldn’t be linked to anyone. The details of the job—the type of car, how he could find it, what he would get paid for it when he delivered it—were all written in an e-mail sent to the account. They changed the password with each new job, adding one to the first number in the password, then bumping the first letter down one spot in the alphabet.
“Got it,” Black Mask said. “I’ll talk to you la—”
“Wait, wait. This one is going to be a little different.”
“Yeah? How? You don’t want me to do it with … you know.”
“With what?”
“Not what. Who.”
“What are you talking about?”
Black Mask grimaced, frustrated. Not using names, while prudent, was a pain in the ass. “Am I doing this one with that person I been doing the other ones with lately?”
“You mean with my brother?”
Good. At least Black Mask wasn’t the one who said it. “Yeah, with your brother.”
“Yeah, you’re doing it with my brother. What’s wrong with my brother?”
“He’s trippin’, man,” Black Mask said. “I know you’re trying to help him out, him just getting out and all. But I think prison made him crazy. The last dude, he shot him for his watch. And I was, like, yo, just leave him be. But your brother, he was like, I don’t know, he had this look in his eyes. He was stone cold.”
“Well, it’s funny you should say that, because I actually want you to shoot the guy this time.”
Black Mask took a moment to swallow this request. “You do, huh?”
“Yeah, you got a problem with that?”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of why?”
“Because it’s … it’s messed up is all I’m saying,” Black Mask said. “Especially with the cops. You jack a car and it’s like, whatever. They let it go. You kill someone and it’s just a different … ain’t you heard the news? This last dude was a banker or something. I mean, who’s the new one?”
“It’s in the e-mail. I’ll pay you double, okay?”
This significantly shortened Black Mask’s deliberation. “A’ight,” he said.
“Tell my brother to do it if you don’t want to do it.”
“Why don’t you tell him?” Black Mask said. “He’s your damn brother.”
This brought a pause. Black Mask waited for a response, but none came. Then it clicked with him. “Oh, damn, he don’t know it’s you giving us these jobs, do he?”
The response was quick. “No. And we’re going to keep it that way.”
Black Mask just laughed. “Now you the one who’s trippin’. What, it run in the family or something?”
“You tell my brother I’m part of this, and you’re out. This is easy money I’m giving you. I can find someone else to take easy money. We clear?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Black Mask said.
“Good. Now stop being a bitch.”
“Ain’t no bitch.”
“Then stop acting like one. You ain’t been caught and you ain’t gonna be if you’re careful.”
“A’ight. Whatever.”
Black Mask ended the call. He shook his head again at the absurdity of being in business with your own brother, who didn’t know who he was in business with. Then again, the more Black Mask thought about it, the more he realized: if Blue Mask was his brother, he wouldn’t say anything, either.
The dude was just off.
CHAPTER 29
As I settled into my desk chair, I finally turned to the dilemma that I knew I would have to confront at some point.
Did I write the Chariots for Children story, knowing its director, Dave Gilbert, had an indecorous past and was quite possibly using the Greater Newark Children’s Fund as a cover for a significant criminal enterprise? Or did I renege on the promise I made to Brodie, taking advantage of a man who had practically died the night before?
It was a tough call. Don’t get me wrong, we ran puff pieces all the time on organizations or people we later exposed to be corrupt. The difference was, we were unaware of the corruption at the time the puffery appeared in our pages.
Then again, there were possibly innocent explanations for what I knew. Maybe the Cadillac CTS I had seen was not the one that had been stolen the day before. Maybe the Children’s Council executive director knew about Gilbert’s background, but brought him on anyway. After all, there were parts of Newark where probably half of the adult men had spent time in prison. It was impossible not to hire ex-cons.
I decided the best course of action was to write the piece, then stash it in Brodie’s folder in our computer system. That way I would know I had delivered on my promise, but the piece wouldn’t possibly run until some later date, by which point I had already figured things out.
It was three o’clock when I began my typing. I had promised its delivery at five. Two hours felt like the proper amount of time to write the story of Jawan Porter and the fast shoes.
It was the kind of piece that I could have probably spent the rest of my workday crafting if I wanted to get picky with the language. But somehow I doubted my literary legacy was at stake here. Sometimes, a newspaper reporter had to be cognizant of the fact that his product was the vaunted first draft of history, and that future generations of scholars would be scrutinizing his words and debating the intent behind them. Other times, a newspaper reporter had to be cognizant of the fact that his product was going to be used to give current generations of puppies a place to pee.
This was clearly a case of the latter.
I was just getting into the flow, as it were, when my cell phone rang. The call was coming from Millburn and the home of Patricia and William Ross, AKA Trish and Bill, AKA Mom and Dad.
My father, a retired pharmaceutical executive, would never call me during work. He came from an era that frowned on taking personal calls at the office—the days before e-mail, the Internet, and telecommuting rendered the delineation between personal time and work time so hopelessly muddy.
That meant the caller was my mother, a retired schoolteacher, who I might have ignored were this more clearly personal time. Except she only called me during work time when it was important. Or at least important to her.
“Hey, Mom,” I said. “What’s up?”
“It’s time, isn’t it?”
I was momentarily stumped. “Time for … what, Mom?”
“The baby,” she said breathlessly. “It’s coming, isn’t it? I had a premonition.”
Ever since Tina cleared thirty-six weeks gestation, the point at which a fetus was considered fully cooked and ready to enter the world, Mom had been claiming that being C-3PO’s grandmother gave her an intuition as to when the child would arrive. She was convinced Tina wouldn’t make it to thirty-nine weeks, when the C-section was scheduled.
And maybe Mom really did have some special insight. The more likely truth was that, with three children of her own in their thirties—and exactly zero grandchildren to show for it—she was driving herself (and everyone else around her) crazy with anticipation.
Before we knew C-3PO was upside-down, Mom had actually asked if she could be i
n the delivery room during labor because, and I quote, “It’s not like Tina has anything I haven’t seen before.”
My mother and Tina actually get along very well. Just not, you know, that well. For laughs, I ran the proposal past Tina. She did not find it as funny as I did.
Just as all the books suggested the modern, type A, control freak mother ought to have, Tina had a birth plan. Actually, that’s not wholly accurate: Tina now had anywhere from five to seven birth plans. There was her original plan, the one she created within the first hours after she learned of her pregnancy; the plan she developed after she learned the baby was breach; then a series of contingency plans, which anticipated certain points of weakness in the primary plans and grew more elaborate in response to those anticipated failures.
Unsurprisingly, none of these plans involved having my mother in the room with her.
In exchange for my mother withdrawing her request, I had promised I would call her the moment I knew Tina was in labor. And whereas once my mother, who most of the time loved me like no woman has ever loved a son, would have trusted I would be a man of his word, she had apparently lost all confidence in me.
“No, Mom, nothing is happening,” I said.
“I’m telling you, I can feel the contractions.”
“Mom, no offense, but you’re fifteen years past menopause. Are you sure that’s not just gas or something?”
My father picked up on another line and said, “I told her not to call.”
“Hush, Bill.”
“I also told her she was driving everyone crazy,” my father said.
Mom ignored him. “Are you sure she’s not in labor?”
I turned toward Tina’s office, peering at her through the glass window. She was talking with a reporter. Her body language was relaxed. Her face was composed. Her hands were resting on her belly.
“Mom, I’m looking at her right now. I’m telling you, nothing is happening.”
“Have you asked her? A woman can be having contractions and not tell anyone. Tina is a very private person, you know.”
“Yes, Mom, I know, but—”
“Is she dilated?”