Faces of the Gone: A Mystery

by Brad Parks

  She was still having a tough time believing me. I took advantage of her indecision.

  “Look, why don’t you hop in and we can talk about it on the way. I’d still like to buy you lunch. You can stay pissed off at me, but at least get a good steak out of it.”

  She nodded—few things are as persuasive as free meat— and walked around to the other side of the car. I opened the door for her from the inside.

  “The nearest Outback is over on Route 22. It’ll probably take about twenty minutes to get there.”

  “That’s fine,” she said, still sounding a little surly but coming out of it. “My shift don’t start until five.”

  “Great,” I said as I got us under way, running over at least three plastic bags in the first two blocks.

  “So, how many days a week do you dance?” I asked.

  “Six.”

  “And how many days a week do you . . . uhh,” I began, immediately regretting the question.

  “Turn tricks?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “As many as I can. I can’t do this forever, you know. I’m thirty-six. I figure I got six, maybe eight, years until I’m all saggy and nasty. I want to have enough saved up by then to open one of them fancy clothing stores.”

  “You mean like a boutique?”

  “Yeah, a boutique.”

  “That’s cool,” I said.

  “I know what you’re thinking: ‘What does a ho know about starting a business?’ ”

  “No, actually, I’m thinking it’s great to have a dream,” I said. “Everyone ought to have one.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully. “Yeah, what’s your dream?”

  The question caught me off guard. What was my dream? Maybe it used to be working for the New York Times, but the Old Gray Lady had long ago stopped hiring, just like every other newspaper. Or maybe it was winning a Pulitzer Prize. That’d be nice. But, really, that wasn’t something I thought about a lot.

  “Maybe this sounds corny,” I said after a pause. “But this is my dream already. I get to make my living telling people’s stories. I think of that as a privilege. I can’t really imagine doing anything else. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to.”

  She thought about this for a moment.

  “I like you, Mr. Carter Ross. You seem like you got a good heart. And I got this little voice in my head—maybe it’s Wanda, I don’t know—telling me I ought to trust you. Just don’t make me regret it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, merging onto the five lanes of road- raging good times that is the Garden State Parkway.

  We drove in comfortable silence for a while and I felt pleased with my progress. In order to tell any story successfully, you have to cross the threshold where your source stops looking at you like a reporter and starts seeing a fellow human being. I thought—I hoped—I had just reached that point with Tynesha.

  “So what made you and Wanda hit it off?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t get along well with the other girls. But me and Wanda just clicked—sisters from a different mother or something. All her kids called me ‘Aunt T.’ ”

  “You have any kids yourself?”

  “Can’t. A guy messed me up real bad one time. Couldn’t get his own equipment working so he knocked me around for a while then did me with a broom handle.”

  I flinched and reflexively moved my legs together.

  “Yeah. Doctor said he busted my insides,” she continued. “Probably just as well. I would have messed up raising my kids just like my mama messed up raising me.”

  I let the comment pass. She didn’t need me playing amateur psychologist.

  “So who’s taking care of Wanda’s kids?”

  “The grandma for now, but I think the state is gonna take them eventually. Wanda’s mama don’t got no money and she has that diabetes. She ain’t in good shape. They’ll split those kids up in a thousand different directions. The baby will probably get adopted because everyone wants babies. I don’t know about the older ones.”

  I did. Unless they got really lucky, they were going to live in a succession of foster homes and group homes until they were turned out onto the street at age eighteen. We all get dealt a hand to play in this life. Being orphaned in Newark, New Jersey, had to rank among the worst.

  As we made our way through midday traffic toward the Outback, we downshifted to small talk. It’s amazing how much hookers and reporters have in common: we have to walk the streets in all kinds of weather, we have to relate to people from a variety of backgrounds, and we’re constantly getting dicked around by politicians.

  We arrived at the restaurant to find it mostly empty and got seated in a corner booth. After we ordered our meal and received our salads, I got down to business.

  “So how is it you and Wanda started working together?” “You mean with me doing it and her dealing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess it was when she got pregnant with her fourth baby and couldn’t dance no more,” Tynesha said. “We were pretty tight by then. I knew she had to do something to support those kids of hers, and there ain’t exactly a lot of jobs out there for pregnant dancers. I mean, there were a few guys out there who wanted to get themselves with a pregnant girl . . .”

  I made a face.

  “Yeah, all kinds of weird suckers out there,” she said. “But Tynesha didn’t want to turn tricks. She was real firm about that. You should put that in your article. Anyway, once her baby started showing, the owner wouldn’t let her dance no more, so she started selling. See, that’s the side I want to come out. She sold to support her kids. She wasn’t no bad person.”

  “I’ll make sure that gets in,” I said, using it as an excuse to remove my notepad and start taking notes.

  “So where did she get her drugs from?” I asked.

  “At first, she got it from Lucious, my pimp. Then one of her boyfriends hooked her up with some stuff. She got it from all over, I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  “What did she sell?”

  “Oh, man, I don’t even know. All kinds of stuff. Whatever she could get her hands on. She was just trying to survive, you know what I’m saying?”

  “She sell heroin?”

  “Yeah, some of that.”

  “She ever get caught?”

  “Yeah, once,” Tynesha said. “She was selling to some guy who turned out to be a cop. Ended up doing some time for that.”

  “When did she get out?”

  Tynesha thought for a moment.

  “Well, she got pregnant right after she got out. I mean, like, she was going to find herself a man to take care of her and she was going to do it fast. She got herself another loser, of course. And he ran off. But that was . . . let’s see . . . that baby is six months and she was pregnant for nine months . . . so she got out . . . a year and a half ago?”

  “Didn’t getting sent to jail make her want to stop dealing?”

  “Naw. It made her more careful,” Tynesha said. “It’s like she learned how to be a better dealer in jail, like it was dealer VoTech or something. Before she went to jail she was just selling to people in the bar, you know? But then after she got out, she was selling inside the bar, outside the bar. People would seek her out. It was like, man, she made it. I mean, maybe this sounds weird or something, but I was proud of her.”

  “So why did she keep dancing if she was doing such good business?”

  “I guess it was like a front, you know? If she stopped dancing, it would be suspicious. We get cops who come in all the time. They know all the dancers. They’d notice if she quit. I guess she just didn’t want them asking questions.”

  “Do you know what she was selling that point?” I asked as our meat arrived.

  Tynesha got this look like she was trying to remember something.

  “I mean, there was this one guy. I was sucking him off and he was just jabbering on and on—some guys really like to talk, you know? And he said something like, ‘Man,
I love this place. You give me the best head ever and your girl gives me the best H ever.’”

  H. As in heroin.

  “Was that before or after she got out of jail?” I asked.

  “Definitely after,” Tynesha said with half a mouthful of filet mignon.

  Another confirmed heroin seller. Another ex-con. It was definitely starting to become a pattern.

  “So if she suddenly has this best-ever heroin after she gets out of jail, you think she hooked up with a source in prison?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I guess.”

  “She ever talk about where she was getting it from?” I asked.

  Tynesha looked at me solemnly.

  “In the hood, if you have a really good source for junk, you don’t never talk about it. Never,” she said. “Not with your neighbor. Not with your boyfriend. Not even with your best friend.”

  Our date finished uneventfully, and I dropped off Tynesha in Irvington with an exchange of cell phone numbers. When I got back to the office, it was nearing 3 P.M. and Tommy was deep into the Edun jeans Web site.

  “My butt would look so killer in these,” he said wistfully. “Too bad they’re like $195.”

  “Who would want to drop two bills on a friggin’ pair of jeans?”

  “Bono wears Edun jeans,” Tommy said with the utmost gravity.

  “And Bono has a great ass? He’s old enough to be your father.”

  “I hope my ass looks half that good when I’m his age.”

  “So Bono has set the standard for aging asses?”

  “It’s not just his ass,” Tommy said, getting frustrated with me. “It’s his whole aura. I wouldn’t expect someone who wears pleated pants to understand.”

  “What’s wrong with pleated pants?”

  “Nothing, if it was still 1996,” Tommy said. “Although I guess they match your 1998 shoes.”

  “Okay, meanwhile, back in the present, please tell me you managed to find out something about Shareef Thomas?”

  “Well, of the seven addresses you gave me, I found two vacant lots, an abandoned building, one Shareef Thomas who is alive and well—and totally mental—and two places where, to quote one woman, ‘I ain’t never heard of no Thomas Shareef.’ ”

  “And the seventh address?”

  “I got a door slammed in my face.”

  “That’s promising,” I said, and I wasn’t kidding.

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely. Think of all the things a slammed door represents: a little bit of anger, some fear, definitely something to hide. I’d say you hit paydirt. Which address was it?”

  Tommy shuffled some papers. “One-nine-eight South Twelfth Street,” he said.

  “That’s . . . where?”

  “Up off Central Avenue,” Tommy said. “I kicked three plastic vodka bottles on my way from the car to the front door. There’s a homeless shelter next door. It’s pretty much wino heaven.”

  “Any of the neighbors know Shareef?”

  Tommy paused, a little embarrassed.

  “You didn’t talk to any neighbors?”

  “It was like the fifth or sixth address I looked at,” he whined. “I was getting cold. All the other addresses had been dead ends. I just thought . . .”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “Look on the bright side: now you have something to do this afternoon.”

  Tommy sighed and sank low into his seat.

  “That street was so nasty,” he said.

  “C’mon. All you need to do is find someone who will be willing to admit to a perfect stranger that Shareef Thomas was a heroin dealer who recently got out of prison. How difficult can that be?”

  “See you later,” Tommy said, sighing more as he grudgingly lifted himself from his chair. “If I don’t make it back alive, I’m bequeathing you my wardrobe. At least I’ll die knowing it went to a truly needy recipient.”

  I returned to my desk but quickly found myself yawning, always a sign the needle on my caffeine-o-meter was dipping low. I went to get a Coke Zero from the break room, where the reproductive-minded Tina Thompson was eating a late lunch, probably laced with ground-up fertility drugs. She was wearing a tight, rust-colored V-neck sweater that rather nicely showcased her upper half. I’m definitely a sucker for a woman with a nice set of shoulders, and Tina’s were better than most.

  “You should avoid that stuff,” she said as I fed money into the soda machine. “Excessive caffeine has been shown to lower sperm count.”

  “Really?” I said. “In that case, does this thing sell Red Bull?”

  “I thought all men wanted to spread their seed,” Tina said. “Isn’t it supposed to be some kind of biological imperative?”

  “Actually, I come from a long line of sterile males. Goes back generations.”

  “Har har,” Tina said. It was a pretend laugh but she still rewarded me with a real smile. I don’t know what it was, but Tina had this one particu lar smile she used on occasion. It was at once coquettish and demure, but it also left little doubt she could make your toes curl in bed.

  I distracted myself with the soda machine, which refused to dislodge my Coke Zero without a gentle bump. Sometimes you really had to rock the thing, which inevitably prompted someone to inform you that ten people a year die from vending machines falling on them.

  “So what are we offering our readers tomorrow with regards to the Ludlow Four?” I asked.

  “Oh, the usual shock and outrage. The mayor is promising to put more police officers on the streets. The antiviolence groups are clamoring to get their names in the paper. Some of the people on Ludlow Street are forming a neighborhood watch group. That sort of thing.”

  “Team Bird coverage continues.”

  “Yeah. Brodie has been humping my leg like a horny leprechaun all day,” Tina said. “And I might be flattered by that. But after he’s done with me, he goes over to Szanto and humps him. Besides, you ever notice Brodie has old-man hair issues? He’s got it coming out his ears, his nose, and he’s got those eyebrows that are sprouting like old potatoes. It’s a little gross.

  “How’s your bar story going?” she asked.

  “Uh, it’s not.”

  “Oh?” she said, giving me the toe-curling smile again. “Swimming upstream, are we?”

  “Off the record? Yeah.”

  “Good. I’m with you,” Tina said. “I just can’t believe how much everyone hopped into bed with Hays’s story. Yeah, great, radio and TV picked it up. I just hate it that being first with a story has taken pre cedence over being right. What’s your angle?”

  I thought of telling her my suspicion that all four victims were jailbird heroin dealers. But hard experience had taught me you didn’t share a story idea with an editor until you knew it was true.

  “I’m still working on that,” I said.

  Tina crinkled her brow and I admired her collarbones for a second.

  “Well, whatever it is, keep working it,” she said. “I’ll cover for your little upstream swim as best I can.”

  “Oh, Tina, how can I ever repay you,” I said, grinning.

  She winked. “I’m sure I’ll figure out something.”

  • • •

  I

  returned to my desk, keeping a wary eye out for Sal Szanto. I think, deep down, Szanto knew I would rather gargle razors than propagate the error that was Hays’s story. And therefore he had to know I was ignoring my assignment. Eventually, that would work out okay, because he would come around to the conclusion that getting the story right was a triumph for journalism— even it meant wiping some egg off the paper’s face.

  But in the meantime, he would be much happier if I at least pretended I was working on the bar story. There were two ways to continue the charade: lying to him when he asked me for an update, which made me feel uncomfortable; or avoiding any meaningful interaction with him, which is the option I chose.

  So when I saw Szanto lugging his pear- shaped body toward my desk, I immediately flipped out my cell phone.


  “Carter Ross,” I said into the mouthpiece then paused a beat so my imaginary friend could answer.

  “Oh, hey, how are you?” I said, giving Szanto the “one minute” finger. “That’s great. Thanks for calling me back. It’s wonderful to hear from you.”

  I had almost succeeded in turning Szanto away when my phone rang for real. Szanto looked at me quizzically.

  “Uh, hi,” I said, scrambling to answer. “We must have gotten cut off. Can you hear me now?”

  “What the hell you talking about?” answered Tee Jamison, my T-shirt man.

  “So, anyway, where were we?” I said. Szanto was still staring at me.

  “We wasn’t anywhere,” Tee said. “You forget to take your pills this morning or something?”

  Finally, Szanto turned back to his office, apparently satisfied I was going to be a while.

  “Sorry, I just had to . . . never mind,” I said. “Anyway, what’s up?”

  “You been down to the vacant lot where they found them bodies yet today?”

  “No, why?”

  “I’m just hearing some weird stuff. Meet me down there in fifteen?”

  “You got it,” I said. Tee hung up, but I kept the phone at my ear until I was around the corner, out of Szanto’s sight.

  I made good time to Ludlow Street. That was one of the advantages of working in an economically devastated city: less traffic. In short order, Tee rolled up behind me in a new Chevy Tahoe that could have swallowed my Malibu whole and still had room for dessert.

  “Why is the poor black man driving this big fancy SUV while the rich white kid is driving this little tin can?” I asked.

  “How many times I got to tell you: there’s money in the hood,” Tee said. “We just make sure you white people don’t know nothing about it.”

  “Ah, my tax dollars at work,” I said.

  Tee was dressed in a camouflage jacket with a black hooded sweatshirt underneath, having perfectly dressed the part of the urban tough. I wore a charcoal-gray peacoat and dressed the part of the insurance salesman.

  “So why am I out here in the cold?” I asked.

  “You gonna have to check this out,” Tee said, walking toward the shrine that had, as predicted, grown substantially. “Damn, it’s just like everyone’s been saying.”