Faces of the Gone: A Mystery

by Brad Parks

  “I’m sorry, I have got to stop carrying on like this,” she said in a broken voice.

  “Oh, no, it’s really okay. I understand,” I said, feeling like a jackass, because, let’s face it, I didn’t have the slightest clue what it felt like to have a daughter die facedown in a vacant lot. Miss B straightened herself and fixed her red-rimmed eyes on me.

  “Mr. Ross, let me just take you to what you came for,” she said. She stood and wobbled into one of the bedrooms. I followed.

  “This was Wanda’s room,” Miss B said. “The baby’s crib was in my room. The three kids were in the other bedroom. Wanda had this room to herself.”

  The shades were drawn, making the room darker than the others. It was also messier. There were clothes and dance costumes strewn about the floor, panty hose draped on the lampshade, a small Macy’s worth of makeup piled next to the vanity. The bed hadn’t been made. The air smelled stale. No one had been in here since Wanda’s death.

  “I wanted her to have her own bedroom because, well, I knew what she was doing in here and I didn’t want the children to see it,” Miss B said, heading toward the closet. “She thought I didn’t know about this.”

  “Did you ever ask her to stop?” I said, and it came off sounding more judgmental than I wanted.

  “I don’t think she would have,” Miss B said. “Maybe it sounds odd to you, but I didn’t think it was my place. A single mother trying to do for her children, that’s a powerful thing, Mr. Ross. She always talked about how badly she wanted these kids to have opportunities like suburban kids and I think that’s what she was trying to provide—in her own way. She would have died for those kids.”

  Miss B led me over to the closet, opening the door and pulling on a chain that caused a bare lightbulb to illuminate. She parted some of the clothes and pointed to a cardboard box.

  “It’s all in there,” she said, still holding the clothes aside, not wanting to go any further.

  “Thanks,” I said, bending low to pick it up. It didn’t have much weight to it.

  “I don’t think I can be in here. I’m going in the other room with Tynesha. Holler if you need anything,” she said, closing the door behind her.

  I gingerly sat on the chair in front of the vanity, shoved aside some of the cosmetics to make room for the box, and pulled open a flap to look inside. I didn’t have a great deal of experience pawing into dealers’ stash boxes, but I had to assume this was fairly typical: there was a jar of baking powder, a few straight-edged razors, a tiny scale, and a heaping pile of dime bags.

  Even though they were called “bags,” they actually resembled tiny envelopes. Each was filled with one tenth of a gram of heroin. Ten bags was known as a bundle. Five bundles was a brick. A brick went for about $300 wholesale—or about $6 a bag. The dealer selling a dime bag for $10 each was going to clear $200 for his $300 investment, but only dealers in the suburbs could get away with charging that much. In the inner city, where there was more competition, dime bags went for $7 or $8.

  Wanda’s stash consisted of two bricks, two bundles, and a large pile of loose bags, some of which appeared to have been opened. Most of the bags had the same brand name stamp on them. Yeah, heroin really does come in different brands. People unfamiliar with drug culture always get a kick out of that.

  Some of the brands seized in drug busts we had written about had names like Body Bag, Blood River, Head Bang, Power Puff, Instant Overdose—the idea being that the more dangerous your brand sounded, the more potent your dope must be. When a brand got hot, people would line up around the corner just to get it.

  Wanda’s brand was a name we hadn’t written about before.

  It was called “The Stuff.”

  The Director came up with the brand name himself and was proud of it. It was an easy name to remember, straightforward and instantly identifiable. People always used the word “stuff” when they talked about drugs.

  Now they could talk about The Stuff. It was simple, yet distinguished. The Director also designed the logo: an American bald eagle whose talons clutched a needle. The words “The Stuff” were written in fancy script underneath.

  He had several stamps of the logo created and spread them around the production department. Each of his technicians was reminded to make sure every dime bag of The Stuff had the logo stamped on it. But the Director always spot-checked each shipment, just to make sure.

  He even kept a The Stuff stamp on his desk. He loved that logo. The Director’s dealers loved it, too. Within the crowded heroin marketplace, it was a logo—and a name—that stood out. You didn’t have stuff unless you had The Stuff.

  The Director scoffed at all those cretins who tried to outdo each other with gory, violent names. Who really wanted to be snorting something called “Walk of Death” or “Corpse Powder”? It was so literal. It would be like naming a tissue brand “Sir Sneez-A-Lot.”

  The Director liked to think of The Stuff as being the Kleenex of the heroin world. He imagined a day when the brand went national, when people everywhere would ask for it by name, when only injecting a batch of The Stuff would do. Just like everyone asked for a Kleenex. It had a ring to it.

  And, really, the principle behind branding heroin and branding tissues—or clothes, or cereal, or any other product—is identical. You need to be able to differentiate your product to the consumer. Then you build brand loyalty. That was true whether you were talking about denim jeans, corn cereal, or illegal narcotics.

  The Director’s only regret was that he couldn’t push his brand out there even more. He sometimes fantasized about what he would do if he were allowed to advertise. He imagined billboards, radio spots, print advertisements, online campaigns, merchandising opportunities, a clothing line, all of it. And it was all terrific.

  But the only person he could share his ideas with was Monty, who naturally told him how wonderful they were. And that didn’t mean much. The Director could have defecated on Monty’s shoes and Monty would have told him it was ice cream.

  No, the Director told himself sadly, his marketing genius was never going to be appreciated. Sometimes, he would take the stamp on his desk and imprint it on a glossy piece of paper, just to see what it would look like on a magazine cover.

  And then he would ball it up and throw it away, saddened that the world could never know the brilliant man behind The Stuff.

  CHAPTER 4

  I picked up one of the dime bags and examined the picture on it more closely. It was an eagle, sort of like the one on the back of a quarter, except instead of clutching arrows, this one had a syringe in its talons—a national symbol for junkies.

  Then I started combing through the stash box, staring at its contents until suddenly it became obvious what Wanda had been doing: the empty bags, the razor, the baking soda, the scale. Wanda had been running her own cutting operation. It involved opening the The Stuff bags, diluting it with the baking soda, then repackaging it in the unstamped bags. It was a quick way to augment supply.

  The Stuff was obviously the top-of- the-line name-brand product she sold to her best customers. The blanks were like the generic brand that she sold to everyone else. On an impulse, I grabbed four of the bags—two of The Stuff and two of the generic—and dropped them in my pocket. I briefly debated the ethics of doing so, since I was sort of tampering with evidence. I also briefly debated the sanity . . .

  Why, no, Officer, that heroin isn’t mine. My interest is, uh, purely professional . . .

  But, ultimately, I knew I’d regret it later if I didn’t take some product samples while I had the chance. Heroin was clearly the link between those four bodies. Having some of it in my possession just seemed like a good idea. Maybe we could have it tested at a lab? Maybe it would make a nice photograph?

  And maybe I was just out of my bleepin’ mind. But before I chickened out, I repacked the box, replaced it in the back of the closet, then rejoined Tynesha and Miss B in the living room, where they were sniffling into their tissues.

  �
�Should we head to the funeral home now?” I asked.

  Miss B nodded and began preparing herself for a trip outside, allowing me a few more moments to dwell on all those pictures of Wanda.

  We often ran head shots of people who died quick and violent deaths in our paper, and there was something about them I found endlessly fascinating. Especially when they captured some happy moment—a graduation, a wedding, a retirement, whatever. I just couldn’t help but think: If the guy in that photo had known he had three years until he got splattered on some drunken trucker’s grill plate, would he have lived differently? Would he have left his wife or spent every second with her? Would he have gone on a cruise around the world? Or just gone to the racetrack every day?

  If Wanda had known the choices she was making would have left her dead before her thirtieth birthday, would she have chosen differently? Maybe. Except, of course, Wanda probably never thought about her thirtieth birthday. It’s a common problem among the impoverished, the lack of future focus. People are so worried about surviving today they don’t have the luxury of thinking about tomorrow.

  “Sometimes, I think I could just stare at her picture all day, too,” Tynesha said, walking up alongside me. I suddenly became aware they were waiting for me.

  “All right, let’s go,” I said.

  Our departure brought about much less Nextel blurping than our arrival did. The white man hadn’t been that interesting, after all—he had come and gone without arresting anyone or buying anything.

  I fired up the Malibu, flipped the heater on high, and drove us downtown to one of the funeral homes that had been serving Newark’s black community for more than a hundred years. I had never been to this one before, but knew the type. And I could practically guarantee the folks there were tired of burying people like Wanda Bass. In this city’s death business, the customer demographics had skewed young far too long.

  We didn’t seem to have an appointment, but we were still ushered into the office of Mrs. Rosa Bricker, who had the role of funeral director down pat. She was friendly, but not too friendly. She cared, but not too much. She was warm, but in a detached kind of way. She dealt with death the same way an accountant deals with taxes: as a practical problem worthy of attention but not hysteria. She was, above all else, professional. After we were properly introduced—having a reporter in

  the room didn’t seem to faze her—she slid a packet labeled “Price List” across the desk at Miss B. The basic services included embalming, dressing, viewing ceremonies, transportation, and so on, and they went for around $3,500. That didn’t include the casket, which ranged from your basic three-hundred-dollar pine box all the way up to the Z64 Classic Gold Solid Bronze Sealer With Velvet Interior. It went for a hair over 10 Large. Calculating in monetary terms I could understand, that was about 2.8 used Malibus.

  Miss B was doing her best to keep her composure, but it wasn’t hard to see how floored she was. She obviously didn’t have enough savings to get Wanda near the cemetery, much less in the ground. There was a grim joke in the funeral home business that the shorter the driveway, the more expensive the funeral. Rich people just wanted to get on with probating the will. It was the poor folks—the ones who couldn’t really afford it— who felt the need to have showy funerals.

  Miss B didn’t even have a driveway.

  “Do you . . . do you offer payment plans?” she asked. “Naturally,” Mrs. Bricker said. “But if I might make a suggestion, you might want to make an application to the Violent Crimes Compensation Board. They pay up to $5,000 for funeral costs. We can assist you with that.”

  “I would appreciate that,” Miss B said, then started breathing normally again.

  Mrs. Bricker pulled some paperwork from her drawer. Much of it had been filled out in advance. This obviously wasn’t her first time with a murder victim.

  “We have a package we offer for families who are using Violent Crimes money,” Mrs. Bricker said, pushing a piece of paper across her desk at Miss B. “It covers all essential services, including a burial in a sealed casket with a headstone. You would be responsible for any additional costs, although we’ve tried to make the package as inclusive as possible.”

  As Miss B began filling out the required form, I caught myself feeling relieved, which was odd. I didn’t know Wanda. Up until an hour ago, I didn’t know Miss B. And I grew up in a house with a long enough driveway that pricey funerals struck me as pointless. What did I care if Wanda Bass was buried in a pine box? More to the point: what did she care?

  But I did care. I cared because of Miss B and Tynesha. I cared because the girl in those pictures had had a lousy life and an even lousier death. She deserved a little something unlousy coming her way, even if it was too late to do much good.

  Miss B caught me off guard with her next question.

  “Can I see Wanda now?”

  My innards did a somersault–back handspring combination and for a moment I thought I was going to regret some of the previous night’s overexertion. Mrs. Bricker’s smooth surface didn’t ripple for a moment. Instead, she folded her hands on her desk and looked straight at Miss B.

  “We can certainly see her if you wish,” Mrs. Bricker said. “But I will tell you we had to do quite a bit of restoration work. It may be difficult for you to view her right now. You may want to wait until we’ve had the chance to dress her, do her hair, and put on some makeup.”

  “I can handle it,” Miss B said.

  “It can be traumatic,” Mrs. Bricker said, more firmly. “I’d advise against it. It will be a much more positive experience if you wait.”

  “I will see my daughter now,” Miss B said with a certain edge that seemed to settle the matter.

  “Very well,” Mrs. Bricker replied, smoothly picking up the phone on her desk. She said a few soft words to the person on the other end and hung up.

  “Come with me,” she said, rising from her desk.

  I was hoping someone would ask me to stay in the office, which I would have happily done. It’s not that I have anything against dead bodies. I just prefer living ones.

  Alas, no one said a word. So I brought up the rear as we were led downstairs and through a door marked STAFF ONLY. The room we entered was brightly lit, slightly chilly, and tiled from floor to ceiling. Jugs of pinkish liquid—embalming fluid, I assumed—were stacked against the far wall. In the middle were three stainless steel gurneys. Two were empty. The third was very much occupied and draped with a white sheet.

  An underling, dressed in scrubs, nodded at Mrs. Bricker as he departed.

  “We don’t allow families in here if there is more than one body present—out of respect to the other families. But as you can see, Wanda is alone here today,” Mrs. Bricker said, and it seemed to be for my benefit. I guess she didn’t want EagleExaminer readers thinking her funeral home lacked discretion.

  Miss B, who didn’t seem to be hearing anything, stood about five feet from the gurney, her eyes locked on the figure underneath.

  “I’m going to roll back the drape now,” Mrs. Bricker said.

  When Miss B nodded slightly, Mrs. Bricker neatly folded back the sheet.

  It wasn’t Wanda. Well, technically, it was. But it was some grotesque version of her. Her face barely resembled the beautiful woman I had seen in the pictures. The cheeks were swollen. The eyes were sunken. The forehead looked like it had been shattered and put together again—which it probably had been. All the features were just slightly off.

  “Are you sure that’s Wa—” Tynesha began, then stopped herself.

  “We started the work as soon as we received the body from the medical examiner yesterday,” Mrs. Bricker said, answering the question Tynesha sort of asked.

  Miss B uprooted herself and approached her daughter’s corpse. She first touched the hair, then gently cupped the jaw, then brushed her fingers across the lips. The tears were rolling down both sides of Miss B’s face, onto her chin, and into the folds of her neck. But no sounds were coming out.

 
; “As I said, the restoration was extensive,” Mrs. Bricker continued. “I worked on her myself for several hours.”

  “Can I just be alone with her for a moment or two?” Miss B asked.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Bricker said, nodding at me and Tynesha. I didn’t need to be asked twice, and made quickly for the door.

  “Oh, Tynesha baby, stay here,” Miss B said.

  Tynesha rushed to her side. As the door closed, I saw them embrace awkwardly. Miss B’s eyes never left her daughter’s broken face.

  Back in the hallway, Mrs. Bricker leaned against the wall and crossed one foot over the other. The sudden relaxing of her posture surprised me. Up until that point, she had been nothing but formal. Now that she was out of eyeshot of the customer, she felt she could stand down just a little.

  “Wow, that’s tough,” I said, slumping against the other wall.

  “That’s why I told her to wait,” Mrs. Bricker said. “But I could tell she was going to be a stubborn one.”

  I nodded, as if I, too, knew Miss B was going to be a stubborn one.

  “You get any of the other bodies from down on Ludlow Street?” I asked.

  “No, just this one.”

  “You get used to stuff like that?”

  “I’m around death all the time,” she said. “Sometimes it agitates me our society has so many superstitions about it. It’s really just a natural thing. It happens to everyone eventually.”

  “No, I mean do you get used to what happened to Wanda?” I said. “I mean, what did happen to her? You heard that in there. Her own best friend barely recognized her. I’m sure you did what you could, but . . .”

  It was among the less articulate questions of my journalism career. Mrs. Bricker took it in stride. I suppose it was a nice change for her to talk with someone who wasn’t near- hysterical with grief.

  “I’ve seen worse, but that was a pretty difficult reconstruction,” she said. “You have to understand, when that girl came here, she only had half a face.”