Faces of the Gone: A Mystery

by Brad Parks

  “The only thing I remember about him is that when he was done he gave me all the usual, ‘Oh, baby, that was great . . . Oh, baby, you’re the best.’ And then he didn’t give me a tip or nothing. You know what he did?”

  I spread my hands in an I-got-no-clue gesture.

  “He told me maybe if I sucked him off again sometime he would take me to a game at Giants Stadium,” Tynesha continued. “I didn’t say nothing, because he was Wanda’s boss. But I was thinking, ‘A game? Are you for real?!?’ Sometimes, guys are just too stupid for words.”

  Tynesha refused my offer of a quick trip to the Jersey Gardens Mall for a clothing run, saying she felt like she didn’t want to spend that much time away from Miss B. We parted with promises to keep in touch and I went back to the office to regroup.

  The Saturday newsroom is a relatively relaxed place, consisting mostly of interns who are still groggy from the night before. Feeling a little woozy myself, I settled into my desk. Out of habit, I glanced at my office phone’s voice mail light. It was off, but the caller ID was showing eleven missed calls. They were all from the same number, a 908 area code. Someone, who was apparently desperate to talk to me, didn’t believe in leaving messages.

  I was about to begin figuring out who my persis tent caller was when my phone rang: the 908 number flashed on my caller ID for a twelfth time.

  “Carter Ross,” I said.

  “Irving Wallace,” came the reply.

  I could feel my pulse surge and I instinctively drew in my

  breath. I didn’t want to talk to Irving Wallace. Not right now. It’s not that I avoid confrontation—hell, I’m a reporter, I thrive on confrontation—it’s that I wasn’t ready for this one yet. I liked to have my gun fully loaded before I went into a showdown with someone like Irving Wallace, and I felt like I had barely gotten the first bullet in the chamber.

  “Why, hello, Irving. How are you this fine day?” I said through gritted teeth. I had a loathing for this man like I had never felt for another human being, but I had to try not to let my voice betray it.

  “Fine, thanks,” he said. “Just running around doing errands with the family, you know, the usual Saturday routine.”

  The breeziness in his tone was chilling. But wasn’t that the essence of antisocial personality disorder? He could commit multiple murders and go on with his life as if nothing were happening. Because that’s what killing people felt like to him: nothing.

  “Right,” I said. “Errands.”

  “We’re off the record, yes?”

  “Oh, off the record, sure,” I said, shaking my head at the nerve this guy had.

  “Okay, off the record, I’ve been figuring out some things with regard to that heroin you gave me that I think you’d find interesting—very interesting,” he said. “Ordinarily I might handle it through my own channels, but I really don’t know who I can trust at this point. So I think if it just spills out in the newspaper, that’ll be best.”

  “If what spills out?” I said.

  The line went silent for a few moments. I tried to keep my breathing steady.

  “It’s not something we can discuss over the phone,” he said, finally. “There are some things you’ll have to see with your own eyes. We really need to talk about it in person.”

  Sure we did. It’d just be a cozy chat between Irving, me, and his .40-caliber handgun.

  “When can we meet?” I asked, because I wanted to appear to be playing along.

  “I’d like to do it right now, but I just can’t—a ten-and-under girls’ basketball team needs its coach,” he said. “But let’s do it tomorrow morning. Do you work on Sundays?”

  Amazing, the calendar Irving Wallace kept. Let’s see: shopping with the wife and kids on Saturday morning, check; coaching the girls’ basketball team on Saturday afternoon, check; killing the pesky newspaper reporter on Sunday morning, check.

  Still, the Summit Squirt Girls’ Basketball League schedule was a break for me. It gave me time—time to do more reporting without looking over my shoulder, time to figure out a plan.

  “We’re a daily newspaper,” I said. “I work whenever I have to.”

  “Great,” he said. “I can’t have you coming by my office—even on a weekend, someone might see you. So why don’t you come to my house for brunch tomorrow? It’s a Wallace family tradition. We do waffles, eggs, toast, the whole thing. Then after brunch we can go to my study and I’ll lay everything out for you.”

  He’d lay me out, is more like it. I would go to the Wallace household to find the wife and kids were gone. He’d offer some flimsy excuse then need to show me something—in the basement, probably, where he could kill me and clean up the mess easily. Then he’d eat his waffles and toast. Then he’d load my body in the white van parked in his garage, find some way to dispose of my corpse and my car, and no one would ever be the wiser. He even thought he had the ideal cover: everyone in our circulation area knew someone was trying to kill me. So when I turned up missing, he could just say I was still alive when I left his house and I must have been grabbed on the way back to the office. The smug bastard figured no one would suspect the gentle government scientist.

  It was the perfect trap, except for one thing—it’s not a trap when you know what’s coming.

  “Brunch it is,” I said. “Can I bring anything?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “For brunch,” I reminded him. “Can I make something? Bring some juice? Just trying to be a good guest.”

  How about that: I was keeping up his pretense better than he was.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “No, just a pen and a notepad. I’ll take care of everything else.”

  The shopping. The cooking. The killing.

  He gave me his address and directions, not that I needed either. He was so easy about the whole thing, almost charming. But isn’t that what people always said about Ted Bundy?

  “We go to the early church service, so we’ll be home by ten-thirty,” Wallace said. “Why don’t you plan on being there around eleven?”

  “Sounds fine. See you then,” I said, hanging up.

  The clock on my computer read 2:14. I had less than twenty- one hours to go.

  I

  • • •

  looked around the newsroom with eyes that could barely focus. There were a dozen emotions and a hundred thoughts bouncing

  around inside me, each clamoring for my attention. There was rage and relief and nervousness. There were schemes and gambits and ploys. I couldn’t untangle one thing from the other.

  It was time to compartmentalize. If I didn’t start dealing with things one at a time, I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish anything. First order of business: I had a story to write. Irving Wallace had to wake up and find something in his Sunday paper, or he’d get suspicious. Plus, I’d promised the Sunday editor.

  A story. No problem. I had written thousands of stories, I told myself. Just treat this one like all the rest. Quotes. I needed quotes. I started with the Newark police, calling their Public Noninformation Officer, Hakeem Rogers.

  “What the hell do you want?” Rogers answered. “Good afternoon, Lieutenant Rogers,” I said, trying to ooze as much falseness as my voice could muster. “Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner here.”

  “Why are you calling me? You seem to know everything already.”

  “Why, whatever are you talking about, Officer?” I asked sweetly.

  “Stop being a dick. You printed a victim ID before we located the family.”

  I dropped the courteous act: “Hey, it’s not our fault you guys suck at finding next of kin.”

  I heard Rogers huffing through the phone. “Is there any reason you’re calling or can I hang up on you?” he asked.

  “Anything new on the Rashan Reeves investigation?”

  “That investigation has been turned over to the National Drug Bureau. Since it’s no longer our investigation, I have no comment.”

  “Okay. Anything new on the
explosions or fires?”

  “National Drug Bureau. No comment,” he said again.

  “Fair enough. You ever give them that sketch my friend was nice enough to provide you last night?”

  “Yeah, we gave it to them,” Rogers said. “I think they’re lining their trash cans with it as we speak.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when we told them the ID was offered by a drunk, homeless guy, they said it was useless.”

  “It’s got to be worth something,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s their business now. Anyway, since we no longer have any investigations that are of interest to you, can I get on with enjoying a Saturday afternoon surrounded by people who love me?”

  “Assuming you can find any? Sure,” I said, happy to get one final shot in.

  I leaned back in my chair, feeling a twinge of desperation. Sure, I could give the Sunday editor a nicely written rehash of what we had already reported—we had tossed enough out there that needed tying together. But journalistically, that was unsatisfying. Unless you had at least some new information to offer readers, you may as well have been a third-grader writing a book report.

  It was just frustrating: the National Drug Bureau seemed to have been given jurisdiction over everything that mattered in Newark, and the NDB had been little more than a big stone wall of disinformation and nonanswers from the start. I was beginning to hope the toe fungus I had wished on L. Pete earlier was now spreading to his jock.

  Just then, I got a call on my cell phone from a blocked number. “Carter Ross.”

  “Carter, Pete Sampson from the National Drug Bureau.” “Hey, Pete. I was just thinking about you.”

  “That’s great, just great,” he said. “Your story today was really well done.”

  “Thanks. I understand you guys have taken over that investigation.”

  “Yes. Yes, we have,” L. Pete said cautiously, then paused like he didn’t dare to say anything else, lest it get him fired.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” I prompted.

  “Remember that exclusive interview I promised you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could you be at our offices in ten minutes? My boss wants to do it right now. With everything happening, he says time is of the essence.”

  An interview with L. Pete’s boss. Maybe the big stone wall was about to come tumbling down.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll see you in ten.”

  Before we hung up, L. Pete gave me instructions to park in a secure lot under the building—there would be plenty of room on a Saturday, and it would save me having to find a spot on the street.

  “Thanks for agreeing to come so quickly,” L. Pete said. “When this is all over, we’ll have to go to a Jets game. I’ve got season tickets. We’ll have a few beers, swap war stories.”

  “Sure,” I said. “See you in a bit.”

  I hastily collected my notepad and threw on my jacket. Then, as an afterthought, I stuffed my digital recorder in my pocket, just in case L. Pete had a boss whose mouth moved faster than my pen.

  • • •

  As I drove toward the NDB’s Newark Field Office, I was actually feeling optimistic for the first time since my house blew up. Maybe it was how L. Pete prefaced that one sentence—when this is all over . . . — but I was allowing myself to daydream about getting Irving Wallace locked up then putting my life back in order. I would use the insurance money to build a new bungalow—a better bungalow, one with a home theater instead of a living room. I would buy new electronics equipment, new clothes, new kitchen appliances. I would buy furniture with salsa-resistant fabric.

  I was somewhere in the midst of thinking about the golf

  clubs I would buy—Callaway irons and TaylorMade woods? Or just go all Titleist?—when Tommy called me. “Hey,” he said in a hushed voice. “The guy finally came home . . . in a van.”

  “What kind of van?” I asked in a whisper, even though I suppose I could have talked at normal volume.

  “I don’t know. I guess you would call it a minivan,” Tommy said. “I couldn’t give you make and model. But it’s one of the big, boxy ones.”

  I realized I never got much description from Mrs. Scalabrine about exactly what kind of van Irving Wallace had been driving. That was a detail I’d have to sort out later.

  “What color is it? White?”

  “More of a tan, actually,” Tommy said.

  Which was close enough to white. Mrs. Scalabrine saw the van in the early morning. The rising sun can play tricks with colors, what with all that refracted light.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “Well, he parked,” Tommy narrated. “A blond woman— looks like bottle blond—popped out of the passenger side. Then three kids got out of the back. They’re unloading groceries.”

  Well, at least Irving Wallace hadn’t lied about one thing: he really was shopping with the family. I wondered if his wife knew she slept next to a murderer every night.

  “How tall is he?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s tall. I mean, it’s hard to tell for sure, but I’d put him in the six-four, six-five range for sure.”

  “Does he look like the sketch?” I demanded.

  Tommy hemmed for five seconds, then hawed for five more.

  “Don’t force it,” I cautioned. “The sketch could be a bit off. I’m sure Red would be able to pick the guy out of a lineup.”

  “It’s . . . it’s just hard to tell,” Tommy said. “He’s got a hat on, so I can’t see him that well. It’s not easy going from a sketch to a real face, you know?”

  “Okay, okay. That’s okay,” I said quickly, to reassure myself as much as anything. “No problem. Where are you watching him from?”

  “Two houses down on the opposite side of the street.”

  “Good,” I said. “By the way, Irving Wallace just called me in the office not long ago. He invited me to brunch tomorrow at his house—said he had an important story to give me.”

  “That’s scary,” Tommy said. “Are you going to go?”

  “Oh, hell, no. Not when the quote he wants to give me goes, ‘Bam, bam, you’re dead,’ ” I said. “What I’m trying to figure out now is—”

  “Oh, shoot,” Tommy interrupted. “He’s looking right at me. I gotta go.”

  Tommy hung up and I felt a little panic setting in. But, no, he would be fine. If he saw Wallace coming, he’d be able to get away in plenty of time.

  There was the small problem that if Wallace spotted Tommy, he’d know someone was on to him—even if he didn’t know it was us. It would make him more cautious.

  Then again, this would all be a moot point in about fifteen minutes, when my new friends at the National Drug Bureau told me they were poised to arrest Wallace and execute a search warrant on his residence and office. I was about to get caught up in that daydream again when I reached the NDB’s Newark Field Office. Following L. Pete’s instruction, I pulled under the building. A guard stopped me for a moment, then waved me through after I identified myself.

  The parking area was empty save for a smattering of dark, government- issue sedans. Apparently, anyone working on a Saturday was important enough to be furnished wheels courtesy of my tax dollars.

  I took the elevator up to the lobby, where a couple of marshals—the same square-jawed types as before—were waiting for me. With a series of nods and polite gestures, they gave me the metal-detecting/wanding/patting routine. They took an extra moment or two over my recording device and let it slide only after I demonstrated it for them. But they paused over, of all things, my cell phone.

  “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you for your phone,” one of the square-jaws said.

  “Why, you need to make a call?”

  “No, sir. Elevated threat level today. Cell phones can be used as detonators.”

  “Okay,” I said, waving it around, “but no dialing any of those nine-hundred numbers you fellas like so much. I know they say there are young bo
ys waiting to turn you on, but those are really middle-aged women doing those voices.”

  “Sir?” he said, holding out his hand, unamused.

  “Fine,” I said, handing it to him. “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Just a moment, sir,” he said, then picked up the phone on the wall.

  My wait was much briefer than it had been the last time— the key difference being that they were marginally happy to see me. L. Pete himself came down to the lobby to retrieve me.

  “Hi,” he said, extending his hand and smiling with far too much enthusiasm. “Thanks for being prompt.”

  We shook hands and he gripped as hard as he could. Why do some short guys always try to prove they possess superior forearm strength? Did they want us to know that, despite their lack of stature, they could still open stubborn mayonnaise jars?

  “Nothing makes a journalist move faster than the promise of an easy scoop,” I said.

  “Right, right,” he said, waving me onto the elevator. He slid his card through the slot on the control panel, then pushed the button for the fifteenth floor. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll be glad you came.”

  As the elevator launched us skyward, I took the opportunity to turn on the recorder in my pocket. I suppose it wasn’t the most polite thing to be recording a conversation without the other party’s knowledge. But in New Jersey it wasn’t illegal. And what L. Pete’s boss didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  When we disembarked, I was ushered past a succession of closed office doors until we reached the one in the corner, whose name plate announced it belonged to Field Director Randall N. Meyers. L. Pete knocked softly.

  “Yes?” a powerful voice inquired from behind the door.

  “It’s me, sir,” L. Pete said.

  The powerful voice replied, “Come in, Monty.”

  “Who’s Monty?” I asked as L. Pete opened the door.

  “Oh, that’s me,” L. Pete said. “I’ve gone by ‘Pete’ since grade school. But when Randy found out my first name was Lamont, he started calling me ‘Monty.’”

  The Director surveyed the young man who followed Monty into his office and was almost disappointed. This was his nemesis? This was the greatest threat his operation had ever known? This was Carter Ross?