Eyes of the Innocent

by Brad Parks

  Besides, the quotes were what carried the story. The opening quote was perfect: “I know I shouldn’t have left them at home alone,” Harris said. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

  What made it perfect was that it would keep Szanto off my ass. It established that Akilah was taking responsibility for the tragedy. Once she blamed herself, I could get on with the business of blaming everyone else.

  It also set up the question that would hopefully pull the reader through my prose: what happened in this young woman’s life that led her to this rather desperate position, forcing her to abandon her young children? I took the narrative right up to this morning, her decision to make one final trip to the house and her reasons for doing so. Which set up the final quote:

  “I just felt like it was the only place I could be close to my boys,” Harris said. “I knew I hadn’t been there for them in life so I wanted to be there for them in death.”

  In the business, that’s what we call a kicker quote—and a fine one, at that.

  By the time I was done, Sweet Thang had been back from the courthouse for a while. To keep her busy, I had put her on fact-checking duty. Generally speaking, one’s ability to check facts exists in an indirect relationship to one’s rate of publication. Those yawning, indolent sloths at monthly magazines can—and do—spend weeks fact-checking. At weekly magazines, they still have the luxury of a few days. At daily newspapers? It’s mere hours. If we’re lucky.

  It was one fundamental vulnerability in any newspaper’s attempt to get it right on deadline. A source who lied convincingly could sometimes snow us. Fortunately for us, most of your hardcore liars—the real pathological ones—lie about lots of things. And you only need to catch them once for it to set off those alarm bells that indicate you should look sideways at everything else they said.

  There was not much about Akilah’s story that could be verified one way or another. A spokesman for the hospital said she wasn’t an employee of theirs, but she still might work there—she could be employed by any number of cleaning services that had contracts with the hospital. The pallet company, which didn’t like the idea of its name going anywhere near a story like this, refused comment. But I suppose that was to be expected.

  By the time Sweet Thang was done with those phone calls, I had a draft for her to read before I filed it.

  “Oh, my goodness, this is soooo awesome,” she gushed after she finished. “You are totally going to have to teach me how to write like this.”

  “It’s really nothing,” I mumbled false-modestly.

  “Nothing?” she said, a little too loudly. “How could you say nothing? It’s totally brilliant—the way you work in all the important facts along with all those great details, the way you use the quotes, the way it flows so perfectly. I couldn’t write it that well in a week and you did it in, like, two hours.”

  I often find it difficult to accept a compliment gracefully, so I just kept my mouth shut like the strong, silent cowboy I am and gave my best it-warn’t-nothing-ma’am shrug.

  “No, really, I want to know how you did this,” she demanded.

  I debated telling her about the frequent-urination method but decided such advanced concepts in fluid dynamics were better left to the professors at Princeton. So I gave my other standard writing advice:

  “Writing is like a muscle,” I said. “The harder you work it, the stronger it gets.”

  I immediately regretted the metaphor.

  “I bet you’ve got the biggest muscle of anyone I’ve ever met,” she gushed.

  I coughed uncomfortably.

  “Well, I’m going to file this thing now,” I said, glancing at the clock. It was 5:45, which was getting to be the time of night when the acid in Szanto’s stomach compelled him to start demanding copy.

  “Oh, definitely,” she said. “And thanks for giving me the lead byline. You totally didn’t have to do that.”

  “You earned it. Without that interview, we wouldn’t have had a story.”

  “That’s so sweet of you,” she said, then added in what was intended to sound like an afterthought: “By the way, some of the interns are getting together at McGovern’s after work for a quick drink or two. You want to join?”

  “Sure,” I said too quickly. Then, in the second it took me to consider the implications, I added, “I’ll try to stop by.”

  “Cool,” she said, giving me a little wave as she departed. “See ya.”

  * * *

  Sweet Thang wasn’t gone from my desk for more than fifteen seconds before Tina Thompson roared into the same spot.

  Tina is our city editor. At most newspapers, the city editor is some frumpy bearded guy named Bruno. At our paper, it’s Tina, a too-hot-for-her-age thirty-eight-year-old with curly brown hair, a penchant for short skirts, and abs you could play checkers on. Her hobbies include yoga, jogging, and keeping me in a permanent state of confusion.

  We were clearly … something. I liked her intelligence, her wit, her sarcasm. And did I mention her abs? We always enjoyed our time together. She obviously cared about me. She even saved my life once—long story.

  But I couldn’t accurately say Tina and I were an item, because it had never been consummated by the appropriate adult gymnastics. It was difficult to speculate whose fault that was. There were times when I had clearly been invited to show her my floor routine but stumbled on the way to the mat. Other times, I participated in the warm-ups then withdrew my name from consideration before the competition began. It all made for a relationship that had never gotten past the preliminaries.

  It was just complicated. What Tina wanted out of me was not companionship, commitment, or even recreational sex. She wanted insemination. Having spent most her life as a career-driven alpha female, Tina had recently decided she was going to try motherhood. And she was sufficiently type A in personality that she didn’t feel like wasting time with the whole dating-cohabiting-marrying paradigm. She didn’t want to fiddle around with anonymous sperm donors, either. As she explained it, she wanted her baby’s daddy to be smart, above six-feet tall, and have light-colored eyes—but didn’t want it to be some lanky, green-eyed homeless guy who managed to convince a fertility clinic he went to Stanford. That left her with six-foot-one, blue-eyed, Amherst-educated me.

  She promised it was a no-strings-attached deal. She even offered naming rights. But I was still unsure about it. On the one hand, I had what Mr. Darwin would describe as the male imperative to spread my seed. On the other hand, I was a little conflicted about someday having to explain to Carter junior that his mother had been interested in me primarily for the fifty-fifty chance I’d pass on my bone structure.

  Like I said, it was confusing. As was the fiercely territorial look she had on her face as she approached.

  “Just stop it,” she hissed.

  “Stop what?” I said, trying to summon my best innocent face.

  “Oh, Carter,” she mocked Sweet Thang’s voice in a violent whisper. “You’re so wonderful. I want to write just like you.”

  “What did I do?” I said, perhaps too defensively.

  “Oh, Carter,” she continued in the voice, “you’re such a great writer. Why don’t you have drinks with me and then come over to my place and write for me all night long?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Writing is like a muscle, Carter? And which muscle is she supposed to think you’re bragging about? Your trapezius? Why don’t you just pull her into the supply closet and ask her to play Seven Minutes in Heaven?”

  “Now you’re just being silly.”

  “Am I? Or did I just see her give you the little wave?”

  “That? That was not the little wave. That was just … a wave.”

  She closed in and clamped her hand on my chin, lifting my face for closer inspection.

  “I thought so,” she said, the whisper getting even angrier. “You have glitter on your cheek.”

  “So?” I said, wiping both cheeks quickly.

  “So Swee
t Thang was wearing makeup with glitter in it. Is that just a coincidence?”

  “Glitter has been known to become airborne,” I pointed out.

  Tina stuck her fists into her side, glared at me for a moment, then stomped off. Three strides into her stomping, she turned around and jerked her head, like I should have known I was supposed to follow her. I trailed after her. It was either that or get scolded in front of the entire newsroom.

  She went into the (thankfully empty) break room and was ready for me with an ambush when I entered.

  “She’s hitting on you,” Tina hissed.

  “Is not.”

  “And you’re flirting back!”

  “Am not!”

  “I heard her saying you gave her the first byline on that story. You want to tell me if she was dump-truck ugly with an ass she couldn’t fit through an elevator door you would have done that?”

  “She earned that byline—”

  “Liar!”

  “And besides, if her ass was that big she never would have fit in the booth at the restaurant and we never would have gotten the interview.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “I’m not sure I know what the subject is.”

  “The subject is that every male under the age of ninety in this newsroom has been following that girl around with drool pouring out their mouths for the last month, and you, of all people, are not going to join them. It’s improper, it’s unseemly, and it’s gross. She’s a child.”

  I raised my right hand like I was taking the presidential oath of office and said, “I have absolutely nothing but the purest of intentions toward that young woman. And I have no indication her feelings for me are anything besides professional admiration.”

  “You are and always have been a dreadful liar, Carter Ross. You’ve been screwing her with your eyes ever since she got here.”

  “I don’t even think I said hello to her until this morning.”

  “And let me guess, you let her tag along with you all day long because, what, you’re deeply concerned about the quality of instruction she receives during her internship?”

  “Szanto told me to work with her,” I said, still sounding far more defensive than I intended.

  “Oh, sure. Did Szanto also tell you to jump in her lap the moment she asked you out for a beer after work?”

  Couldn’t exactly dispute that one. Tina sighed and waved her arms in the air.

  “Look at you! You can’t even defend yourself! Of course you want to have sex with her. She’s twenty-two. She’s got helium balloons for tits. I should probably be worried if you didn’t want to have sex with her, because it would mean you were dead from the waist down, which would mean you’re absolutely no use to me. All I’m saying is, if you sleep with her, don’t even think about sleeping with me. I’ll find some other guy with good breeding potential to get me knocked up.”

  With that, Tina stormed off.

  I looked at my only friend in the room, the Coke machine. “Did you get all that?” I asked it.

  The machine hummed back at me.

  “Just to review,” I said. “A woman who has expressed exactly zero interest in a conventional monogamous relationship just berated me for flirting with an intern. Can you figure out what to make of it?”

  The machine hummed some more.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me, neither.”

  * * *

  Before I could make it back to my desk, I was interrupted by a strangling sound coming from Szanto’s office. It sounded vaguely like my name, so I stuck my head in.

  “You looking for me?”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “By ‘it’ do you mean the beautiful story I have crafted that you cannot wait to put on A1?”

  “Something like that, yeah.” Szanto said.

  “Just about to file,” I assured him.

  “Good. You got a quote from the mortgage company, right?”

  I looked down at my shoes and tried desperately not to look sheepish.

  “We, uh, had a little problem there,” I began.

  Szanto didn’t wait to hear the rest. He burst out with a long string of language that would have made my grandmother cover her ears, finishing it with, “… and I told you to write it hard. We can’t tell this sob story where we make the predatory lender the bad guy and not reach out to the bad guy and give them the opportunity to tell the other side.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “I had Sweet Thang run up to the courthouse and pull the mortgage. But it was missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yeah. She said the computer file didn’t exist, and when she went to look for the hard copy, it wasn’t in the books. So we don’t actually know who the mortgage company is.”

  Szanto considered this news for a moment as he gulped some coffee out of a large Dunkin’ Donuts cup he had been reusing for weeks, judging from the stains on it. He frowned at the coffee, like it had just told him to lose weight and stop smoking.

  “This coffee is crap,” he said, then took another large swallow. He frowned again.

  “Well, we can’t run the story without talking to the mortgage company, the broker, or someone to give it some balance,” he said. “I’m holding it.”

  Holding a story means it’s not going to run in the next day’s paper. While that may not sound like such a devastating thing, it’s remarkable how quickly something that’s been held for a day becomes stale. It doesn’t actually lose news value to the outside world. But it does lose buzz within the building. By the next day, the cabal of editors who make the decision about where to place stories in the paper feel like they’ve already been hearing about your story for an eternity. And given their attention spans—think: salamander—they get bored quickly. So even though it would still be new news to readers, it’s treated like old news by the editors. What is surefire A1 material on Day One becomes back-of-the-book fodder on any day thereafter, and the next thing you know your brilliant narrative is just filling space above ads for assisted living facilities.

  “Aw, come on, don’t do that,” I said. “What if I was able to find the guy who sold her the mortgage and get a comment from him?”

  Szanto grimaced. “I told the future ex–Mrs. Szanto I wouldn’t be home late tonight,” he said.

  There were already two ex–Mrs. Szantos. And with the way he treated his wives—giving them about as much care and attention as most people give their rental cars—it was pretty much assumed there would be more.

  “How about this: if I can get the broker by eight, we run the story. After eight, it holds. Deal?”

  “Fine,” Szanto said.

  “Great,” I said, peeling out of his office before he could modify the arrangement.

  I looked at the clock on the wall—6:07—and was actually feeling pretty good about things until I got back to my desk. That’s when I sat down and realized there was only one way I was going to find the goateed, shaved-headed, so-called Puerto Rican man: Go to the Baxter Terrace Public Housing Project after dark.

  Don’t get me wrong, going to the projects any time of the day wasn’t exactly my idea of fun. There were certain dangers constant to Newark’s rougher projects—junkies were not known for keeping stringent track of time, and a junkie that needed money for a fix was always unpredictable. But at least during the day there were normal people out in the courtyards. Old ladies sat on stoops, kids played ball, mothers watched their babies. The dealers were still around, sure, but the regular folks could maintain at least a modicum of social order. It didn’t matter how hardcore a gangbanger was, he still respected a grandma—his own or someone else’s—sitting on a stoop.

  But then, after dusk, the old ladies, kids, and moms would go inside, fully surrendering the turf to more insidious elements. The dealers. The gangs. The vagrants. People whose interests clearly tended toward the antisocial. There something primeval about what the darkness did to a city like Newark.

  About the only thing I had going for m
e was the element of surprise. Absolutely no one expected to see a well-dressed white man striding confidently into the middle of that environment. Sometimes I could actually see guys startle as I rounded a corner. As long as I kept moving—and didn’t stay long enough for them to recover from shock—I really had nothing to worry about.

  Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself as I went down to my Malibu and got it rolling in the direction of Baxter Terrace.

  Slated for a demolition that was forever being delayed for one reason or another, Baxter Terrace was among the last of Newark’s bad, old projects—a relic of the failed experiment that was high-density public housing. When it was first built in the 1930s, people clamored to get into Baxter Terrace. It was segregated, of course—blacks lived on one side of Orange Street, whites on the other—but desired by both races. Tenants were chosen only after careful consideration by the tenants’ association.

  After moving in, the residents—all of whom had jobs and made timely rent payments—were responsible for much of the maintenance. They cleaned the hallways and stairwells. They swept the sidewalks. They kept gardens full of flowers. The Newark Housing Authority, which owned and managed the properties, watched closely, evicting anyone who failed to toe the line. A resident who left for work without cleaning their dishes might come home to a note from the superintendent warning them not to let it happen again: dirty dishes might attract bugs.

  It’s difficult to say whether the housing authority or the tenants were more responsible for the decline from that golden era of public housing. But sometime during the late 1950s, the quality of the tenants began slowly declining, with more on public assistance—and fewer who cleaned, planted gardens, or paid rent—every year. Management became less conscientious about the white glove inspections, which allowed tenants to become even more slovenly. The housing authority fell further under the sway of City Hall, which was becoming increasingly corrupt, and many of the cleaning jobs were of the no-show variety.