The Fraud

by Brad Parks

  Less than a minute later, “Thang, Sweet” came up on my phone.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I’m only calling to tell you I’m not talking to you,” she said.

  With Sweet Thang, not talking was its own lengthy conversation. It would involve explaining how she wasn’t talking to me, why she wasn’t talking to me, and what impact her not talking to me would have on shrimp farming in Micronesia.

  “Before you don’t talk to me, let me just first make sure: you heard about Brodie, right?”

  “Yeah. My dad told me. But while I’m not talking to you, let’s definitely not talk about that, because I’ll start crying again.”

  “Okay, fair enough. Then let’s get onto this whole you-not-talking-to-me thing,” I said. “You realize this makes you a PR person who is trying to dodge me. You remember I like to gently braise stonewalling PR people and eat them as mid-afternoon snacks, right?”

  “I know, I know, I just … back when I was at the Examiner, this was the sort of thing I used to talk to you about. I always knew that whatever problem I had, you had experienced it sixteen times before. And you could always talk to me about ten different ways to handle it and then talk to me about the best way to handle it and it would make me feel so much better about things. But now it’s, like, I don’t know, I’m not the intern anymore and I ought to be on my own. And, besides, you’re a newspaper reporter and I’m a flak and there’s supposed to be this wall between us. And you can’t go over the wall to get advice and then expect to be able to crawl back over to the other side of the wall. It doesn’t work that way.

  “I mean, really, I’m supposed to ask you to tell me how I can make sure this doesn’t turn into a scandal that harms the Greater Newark Children’s Council when you’re the person whose job it is to turn it into a scandal that harms the Greater Newark Children’s Council? I know, I know, it’s not actually your job to make it a scandal. Your job is to report the truth. But in this case it turns out that the truth is a scandal and I can’t let that happen. So whether you’re causing that hurt or are just the messenger is really just semantics. The end result is the same.”

  She may have actually surfaced to take a breath at this point, but I can’t swear to that. When Sweet Thang gets going, it’s like she has scuba gear hidden somewhere.

  “That’s the first reason I can’t talk to you,” she continued. “The second reason is when I think about Dave … I mean, this will, like, ruin him. He’ll probably lose his job and no one will hire him anywhere else once the word is out. And on the one hand, it’s like, tough luck. You do the crime, you do the time. You make your bed and all that. And if anything, I should narc him out, because what credibility do we have—with our donors, with our employees, and most importantly with our kids—if we let someone get away with being untruthful. It’s one thing to not know about it. That’s bad enough, because it makes us look like we’re clueless. But to have it brought to your attention and do nothing that’s, like, total negligence and how can we allow that?

  “But then I also just keep thinking, I don’t know, I’ve seen him in action, you know? And shouldn’t you judge someone based on what you’ve seen, not based on some mistake they may have made a long ago in a very different context when they may have been a very different person? You’re not a Christian if you don’t allow for forgiveness. I don’t want to turn into one of those fake Christians who talks about forgiveness but really just wants to get all judgy. If Jesus was alive today—and, really, I believe He lives in all of us—He would be preaching in the prisons, hoping to redeem the worst of all the offenders. And, anyway, I don’t want to make this all religious. The point is, I know Dave Gilbert and he really is the nicest, sweetest man and his heart is just in the right place and he does what he does to help kids. I know that on a deep level, in a way that can’t be swayed by some stupid newspaper article. I mean, no offense.”

  She stopped there. I waited to see if more came out of her, but she was done for the moment. After all, we weren’t talking.

  The funny thing is, Sweet Thang was right about at least one thing: I had experienced this sixteen times before, give or take. And the first time was probably when I was about her age. This was back when I was working at a smaller daily newspaper in Pennsylvania. I was writing a story about a prominent and wealthy businessman who was leading the fund-raising charge for a badly needed children’s center and pledging to kick-start it with a large donation.

  During my reporting, I learned he had done some ethically questionable things to amass his fortune and seemingly been sued by everyone he had ever done business with. Still, I didn’t want to hurt the chances of the children’s center being built. So I wrote a glowing article about him, one that neglected to mention his perpetual shadiness. He had the article framed and mounted in his office, like a prize buck.

  Within two years, the guy had disappeared overseas, leaving behind a pile of broken promises and a vacant lot with a sign announcing a children’s center that would never come to be. It left me feeling like a dupe and taught me a lesson I had never forgotten.

  “Well, let me start by saying I’m glad we’re not talking,” I said.

  “Stop making fun of me.”

  “And, look, you’re right: I have experienced things like this before. And what I’ve learned is that you have to let the truth stand for itself. If the truth is Dave has done some bad things in the past but is now trying to do good, that’s one thing. And I think it can be reported in a sensitive way that stays true to facts but doesn’t do harm to the Greater Newark Children’s Council. I don’t think anyone begrudges a Newark nonprofit giving an ex-con a second chance.

  “But if the truth is that Dave has done some bad things in the past and is still doing bad things, that’s something that needs to come out, no matter how ugly it gets. And I’ll be honest, what often gets politicians, corporations, or institutions in the most trouble is not that they’ve allowed something bad to happen. As long as they own up to it, the damage usually goes away pretty quickly. It’s when they try to cover it up that heads really roll. That’s the lesson of Watergate, Bridgegate, and every gate in between.”

  “I know, I know,” she whimpered. I was glad this conversation was happening over the phone, because Sweet Thang was pretty adorable when she was dejected and I didn’t need that kind of temptation. Even if there was no chance I was going to act on it, it made me feel guilty all the same.

  “So here’s what we’re going to do. You’ve got a key to the Greater Newark Children’s Council garage, do you not?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Good. I’ve got the VIN number for the Cadillac that was stolen last night in Newark. Let’s just check it against the one in his garage, assuming it’s still there. If it’s not a match, that’s one thing. If it matches, I think it’s safe to say we have a problem that we have no choice but to act on. But let’s get all the information first.”

  She wasn’t saying anything, a rarity. Sweet Thang had many qualities. Reticence was seldom one of them.

  Sensing her indecision, I played my trump card: “I’ve got my Chariots for Children story written, but you know it can’t run until I check this out. That’s life at Harold Brodie’s newspaper, whether he’s in the hospital or not.”

  Again, she said nothing immediately. But I did hear her sigh.

  “Okay, fine,” she said, eventually. “Why don’t you come over in an hour or so? Everyone will have gone home by that point and we can be looking around without having to answer any questions.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  She sighed again.

  “Lauren?” I said.

  “Usually, you only call me Lauren when you’re trying to be nice,” she said. “So why doesn’t this feel nice?”

  “Because the search for the truth seldom does,” I said. “But, trust me, you’re doing the right thing.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Having exhausted myself with all that mentoring—and feeling in
need of a little alone time—I meandered down the back stairwell.

  The Eagle-Examiner building is a warren of corridors, half staircases, and mismatched parts, many of which can only be reached via passageways that seem to have been laid out for the implicit purpose of getting people lost.

  It’s really something like two or three buildings that have been attached in ungainly fashion and made to appear, from the outside, like one edifice. Its blueprint—if one even existed—would look like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces didn’t line up.

  None of the floors of the buildings that have been forced together are the same height. None of the support beams are quite where they need to be. There are load-bearing walls in all kinds of inconvenient places.

  Those are some of the root causes of the architectural clumsiness. The other is that the facility has been through so many of the typesetting paradigms that have, at various points, held sway over the newspaper business. Hot type. Cold type. Then, eventually, the shift to desktop publishing.

  With each new era, the building received a retrofitting that was necessarily inelegant. After all, a newspaper had to be produced every day during the transition, meaning the two technologies existed side by side for a time.

  The result of all this slapdashery is such an idiosyncratic mishmash that it took me at least three years not to feel like I was getting lost every time I left the well-worn path from my desk to the soda machine. Eventually, though, I realized it was a wonderful place to explore. The remnants of some of the old equipment were still lying around in nooks and crannies. If you knew what you were looking at, it was like a stroll through your own personal newspaper museum. I tried to enjoy it while I could, knowing our time in the building was running out.

  As I descended, I went past the fire door that had not sounded its alarm in at least twenty years, since the building went smoke-free in the midnineties. The newsroom’s smokers, who realized the door represented the shortest route between them and a nicotine fix, had disabled it, then thwarted all efforts to repair it.

  Reaching the basement, I passed some half-empty rolls of newsprint that had been left behind in the late seventies. That was when the owners realized that since their subscribers had moved to the suburbs it made sense to move the presses there as well.

  It was a real heyday for a paper like ours. The Newark Evening News had gone out of business, leaving only us, the morning paper, without any real competition. From what I’m told our profit margins were 30 percent and all our business staff had to do to keep them there was pick up the phone when advertisers called. The newsroom didn’t even have a budget. It just spent what it wanted.

  I was lost in that fantasy as I strolled past the pressmen’s locker room. Then my daydreams were interrupted by the sound of … giggling?

  Clearly, it wasn’t any of the pressmen. There hadn’t been any of those in the building in a long time. And, besides, pressmen weren’t the giggling type.

  Tommy Hernandez, on the other hand, certainly was. And that was who I saw as I opened the door. But it was who he was kissing that really shocked me:

  A certain tall, broad-shouldered, former college lacrosse player.

  “No way!” I blurted.

  Two heads whipped toward me.

  “Chillax, you’re … you’re…” I was so surprised it took me a moment before I could finish with: “You’re gay?”

  “Yeah, brah,” he said, smiling. “Surprised my parents, too. They used to think I read Men’s Health for the articles.”

  Tommy leaned his head into Chillax’s chest. “At least you weren’t one of those poor repressed souls who thought he just hadn’t found the right girl yet.”

  “Naw, I pretty much knew from the time I was, like, five and I played doctor with the Petrocelli twins. Justina Petrocelli getting naked wasn’t that interesting to me, but her brother Justin sure was.”

  “Did your teammates know?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Chillax said, like it was no big deal. “I came out sophomore year. They were, like, whatever, dude. As long as I played my ass off, they wouldn’t have cared if I wanted to hump the school mascot.”

  “Huh,” I said, then looked at Tommy. “I guess when you texted me and said you got some good stuff, you weren’t lying.”

  “Yeah. Sorry for the little detour here,” Tommy said. “We were going to do a notebook dump with you when we got back but you were doing that thing with your computer screen where you’re like Superman with the X-ray vision and you can stare right through it.”

  “No big deal,” I said. Tina and I had once nearly consummated our relationship in the pressmen’s locker room. It would be hypocritical of me to fault Tommy and Chillax for choosing it as the place to begin theirs. “But before you guys get too busy here”—I made a circular motion with my hand—“would you mind doing that notebook dump now?”

  Tommy looked at Chillax, who looked back at Tommy. There was a wistfulness in their glances that made me feel rotten for playing the spoiler. But on the off chance I needed to write this thing quickly, I needed to have those notes.

  “I guess not,” Tommy said, at last.

  “Thanks.”

  Tommy said, “Let’s just go upstairs and type up the notes and then we can—”

  “Word,” Chillax said, not needing Tommy to complete the sentence.

  “Mind giving me the quick headline right now?” I asked as we started walking together back toward the stairway that led up to the newsroom.

  “Yeah. Kevin Tiemeyer was about to lose his job,” Tommy said.

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m guessing that’s why he was mowing his own lawn, not going out to dinner, and ditching the country club,” Tommy said. “One of USKB’s mergers had basically made his department redundant. I guess there was a question about which one they were going to keep. Kevin’s lost. They were letting him stay on for the quote-unquote ‘transition’ and then he was going to be shown the door.”

  “Did he find a new job yet?”

  “If he did, he hadn’t told anyone he worked with. I talked to a few other people in the department. It sounds like they were pretty specialized—don’t ask me to explain what they did, because I can’t—and that made it harder to find something. You’ve heard that saying that to find a new job it takes a month for every ten thousand dollars you make? They were all hunkering down for a bit of unemployment.”

  “I wonder if that’s what he and Joseph Okeke were talking about when they played golf,” I said. “What I can’t figure out is how the two of them knew each other. Banking and Nigerian telecommunications aren’t exactly related.”

  “Unless Tiemeyer had somehow financed a deal for Okeke?” Tommy offered. “All I really understood about Tiemeyer’s department is that it involved lending in some way.”

  “Possible,” I said. “I’d love to be able to nail that down. Otherwise my story would just refer to them as two golfing buddies, which sort of begs the question of how they became buddies.”

  “I got phone numbers for three of his more chatty colleagues,” Tommy said. “I could call and ask.”

  “All right. Thanks. I’ll see you guys later.”

  We had reached the newsroom. Tommy went toward his desk. But my eyes followed Chillax.

  I remembered talking with one of our sports beat writers, who once covered Jason Collins, back when the Nets played in New Jersey and before Collins came out as the first gay athlete to play in a major American sporting league. Our beat writer told me that of the fifteen guys in the Nets’ locker room, you would have put Collins in about thirteenth place in the Most Likely To Be Gay voting.

  On court, he was a plodder whose main role was to set picks that got his teammates open for baskets—which meant he spent a lot of time letting people run into him. Off the court, he was not the least bit effeminate, nor was he flamboyant in speech or action. If anything, he went out of his way to be boring. Especially when it came to how he dressed. He fit none of the gay stereoty
pes.

  Which just goes to prove one of the immutable axioms of human behavior: you never know what happens when the bedroom door closes.

  * * *

  When I returned to my desk, there was a sheet of yellow paper from a legal pad sitting on my chair. I didn’t even need to read it to know: Managing Editor Rich Eberhardt was looking for me.

  Eberhardt was a short, kinky-haired, high-strung man whose reading of the paper and retention of that material were famously, if not freakishly, encyclopedic. He devoured the thing cover to cover, right down to the home sale listings, and could often recall the arcane details from stories we had written ten years earlier.

  He spent no small part of his day roaming the newsroom with a yellow legal pad. As the keeper of the budget—our tabulation of which stories were slated to appear in the next day’s paper—Eberhardt was constantly hectoring reporters, asking them whether their stories would be ready to run. His insistence increased as deadline approached.

  One of his other primary duties was to compile the corrections. If you had a story in that day’s edition, but nothing scheduled for the next one, you dreaded seeing him and his yellow pad coming at you. It meant you had screwed up and would be publicly shamed with a printed item on page two that would likely begin “Due to a reporter’s error…”

  If I’ve made him sound like a pain in the ass, it’s because he was. Sometimes. On other occasions, he had an easy smile and was quite likable. With Eberhardt, it was sort of a moment-to-moment thing.

  In this case, I didn’t know what he wanted. Just that the yellow piece of paper said, “COME SEE ME ASAP, PLS.—RICH” in hasty scrawl.

  Eberhardt’s office was next to Brodie’s in the corner of the newsroom. Like all the other top editors’ offices, it was walled by glass. As I approached, I could see he was not alone.

  He was accompanied by Angela Showalter, the paper’s outside counsel from the law firm of McWhorter and French. She was very smart and highly capable and I’m sure if she lived in my neighborhood, I’d enjoy carpooling with her once C-3PO was old enough for swim team.