Faces of the Gone: A Mystery

by Brad Parks

  “Uh, actually, I’m not here for that,” I said as I pulled out my notebook, and she froze.

  “Dammit, I told Lucious not to send me no cops! Come on, baby, give me a break and I’ll—”

  “Relax, I’m not a cop,” I said. “I’m a newspaper reporter. I work for the Eagle-Examiner. I’m writing a story about Wanda Bass. I saw the flowers you sent her. I wanted to talk to you about her.”

  She crossed her arms over her bare chest and shot me a look from behind those amber contacts that said an ass-kicking might be forthcoming.

  “Why, so you can write that an exotic dancer got herself killed?” she spat. “You know, you newspaper guys really piss me off. All your stories are like, ‘Oh, well, a dancer got smoked, but who cares, she was just a ho.’ Why you always got to write that it’s a dancer?”

  This was uncomfortable. I had a personal policy about not getting into journalism ethics arguments with topless women in bordellos. Especially not when I needed them as sources.

  “Well, we write it because it’s true,” I said. “If a car mechanic gets killed, we write it was a car mechanic. We can’t control what the profession is.”

  “Oh, come on, you know it ain’t the same. You write that some banker gets killed and everyone goes, ‘Poor little white boy.’ You write that an exotic dancer gets killed, and everyone is, like, ‘Well, she was probably a hooker. She had it coming.’ And Wanda sold drugs on the side. So people will think, ‘a hooker and a drug dealer, she deserved to die twice.’ But let me tell you, Wanda had a family. She had kids. She was a person. Why don’t you write that for a change?”

  “I’d like to, that’s why I’m here,” I said, trying to turn the conversation to something more productive. “I want you to tell me about who Wanda was as a person.”

  Tynesha eyed me.

  “Look, if I wanted to write another hooker got killed, I could have done that from the office, without bothering to talk to her friend,” I pressed. “Why would I have come out here and let you grope my ass if I didn’t truly care about who Wanda was?”

  Finally, a break. “You know you liked it when I groped your ass,” Tynesha said, not smiling but at least not frowning anymore.

  “Every second of it,” I said, allowing just the slightest bit of a grin.

  “What you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. It’s Carter Ross.”

  “Damn, that’s a white boy name all right.”

  “Is your real name Tynesha?”

  “Tynesha Dales. I dance under my real name. I know I ain’t supposed to. But I’m too damn tired half the time to keep up with fake names.”

  “Okay.” I paused. This was a little awkward: “I’d like to shake your hand, but maybe you should put your top on first.”

  “What, this embarrass you?” she said, shaking her breasts at me. Then, thankfully, she pulled a T-shirt out of the dresser.

  “You’re a prude,” she said.

  “No, just Protestant,” I said, opening my notebook. “So how long did you and Wanda know each other?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Since she came here. I was already here. Three years, maybe?”

  “What kind of family did she have?”

  “No dad, of course. Her mom is a decent woman but she’s disabled and can’t work. So she watches Wanda’s kids and Wanda supported all of them.”

  “How many kids?”

  “Four.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Yeah, it was kind of a, what do you call it? When bad stuff just keeps happening over and over and over?”

  “A vicious cycle?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. A vicious circle. She was a real pretty girl. Long legs. Beautiful hair. Beautiful eyes. She was too pretty. She got pregnant the first time when she was fifteen, sixteen. Then the dad took off. As soon as he did, she was out trying to find herself a man to take care of her and the baby. That got her another baby, then that guy took off, so she started trying to find another guy. And it just kept going like that. A vicious circle.”

  “How old are the kids?”

  “The oldest is maybe eight? Nine? The youngest was born about six months ago.”

  “Damn. That’s a handful.”

  “Yeah. An expensive handful. She didn’t want to do what I do—she couldn’t when she was popping out all them kids—so she started selling drugs to my clients. We was kind of a onestop shop: I’d give them love, she’d get them high, and the men would leave real happy.”

  “And a couple hundred bucks poorer,” I said.

  “Damn straight,” she said. “Speaking of which, this is costing me money, sitting here talking to you and not doing my thang. I got, you know, customers to serve.”

  “When can we talk again?”

  “I don’t know if I got much more to say.”

  “Come on. Let me buy you lunch tomorrow.”

  An eyebrow arched. “You’d buy me lunch?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “What kind of lunch?”

  “Any kind you wanted, I suppose.”

  “Yeah? Even a nice place? Like . . . Red Lobster?”

  “We could even do better than that,” I ventured.

  “Yeah?” she said. “You mean, like, we could go to that, um, Australian place?”

  Australian place? Then it clicked.

  “You mean an Outback Steakhouse?”

  “That’s right!” she said. “An Outback Steakhouse! I always wanted a white boy to take me to an Outback Steakhouse.”

  “Well, then, be here tomorrow at noon,” I said. “Your white boy will be awaiting you.”

  I

  had half a mind to bolt the Stop- In Go-Go and leave Tommy inside. But for as funny as that struck me—ditching a gay guy at a titty bar—it also met the constitutional threshold for cruel and unusual punishment. I found him at the bar, by himself, sulking. “Can we get out of here?” he said. “It’s too hetero.”

  I led him outside, where the night air smelled crisp, like snow—a nice change from the dankness of the Stop- In Go-Go. “So, did you conquer the Sure Thing?” Tommy asked as we neared my car.

  “Yeah, we had mad, wild sex.”

  “Oh, so that’s why you were out so quickly,” Tommy shot back. “Anyway, she tell you anything useful?”

  “Told me Wanda Bass was selling drugs to her clients.”

  “Let me guess: she sold heroin, too.”

  “I don’t know. She broke it off before I got any further. But we have a lunch date tomorrow. She insisted we go to a fancy foreign restaurant.”

  “The International House of Pancakes?”

  “Close. The Outback Steakhouse.”

  “Well, just try not to get her pregnant when you end up going for a little afternoon delight.”

  “Uh, I wouldn’t worry about that much,” I said, as we climbed back into the Malibu. “I wouldn’t call her my type. I try to avoid women who could break me in half during lovemaking.”

  “Well, I try to avoid women, period, so I guess I can’t blame you.”

  I cut off our banter so I could concentrate on my driving. It was getting closer to that crazy time of night. Much of Newark’s reputation as the Scary Capital of the Eastern Time Zone is undeserved. During daylight hours, I feel as safe in Newark as I do on the streets of Manhattan. It’s nighttime that gives the place a bad rap. Around eight o’clock, the city’s crazy quotient slowly begins to rise, with steady increases in addictions being ser viced, darkly clothed people cutting across the street at odd angles, and questionable characters on nefarious errands. The crazy quotient usually crests around 1 A.M.— slightly later on weekend nights— then gently decreases until the sun rises. It’s the familiar beat of the city’s daily rhythm.

  “So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Tommy asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

  “Well, we don’t know anything about Shareef Thomas yet,” I said. “I guess that would be a good place to start.”

  He nodded and slipped a
way to do . . . whatever it was Tommy did after work. I considered heading inside for a quick e-mail check. But when I thought of what was likely waiting for me—pointless press releases from PR firms and notices about ergonomics training from the Human Resources Department that were marked “High Importance”—I decided to call it a night.

  My home is a tidy bungalow in Nutley, a nearby town known for its ballsy name and for being the childhood home of Martha Stewart. If that makes Nutley sound like a place where everyone spends their time scrapbooking and making decorative birds’ nests out of matchsticks, it shouldn’t. Nutley isn’t really a Martha Stewart kind of town. It’s more of a Roseanne Barr kind of town. No one in Nutley is quite sure how Martha sprang from our ranks. If you saw how tacky the Christmas decorations are, you’d understand.

  Nutley is just a solid, middle-class Jersey suburb. Everyone works a decent job, drives a mid-sized car, gripes about their property taxes, obsesses over their minuscule lawn, orders pizza on Friday night, and watches football on Sunday afternoon. And while it may have a few too many twenty- something Italian guys who still live with their mothers, I like it all the same. The truth is, I enjoy lawn care. There’s nothing like pulling a few dandelions to soothe job stress.

  By the time I got home, my cat, Deadline, was pacing back and forth, waiting to be fed. But that was really nothing unusual. Deadline spends most of his waking hours—both of them—pacing, waiting to be fed. As soon as you come near him, he runs to his bowl and looks at you expectantly, even if it’s already full. Sometimes, I reach my hand into the bowl and rustle the food around to make him think he has been fed again. You know how most cat owners will rave about how smart, sensitive, and intuitive their pet is? Not me. I can admit it: Deadline was pretty much last on line when they handed out the kitty brains.

  And in some ways it was appropriate, because he was the last vestige of what had been a truly brainless relationship. I adopted Deadline— then a cute, black-and-white domestic shorthair kitten—at a time when I foolishly thought I was going to be able to provide a stable, happy, two-parent home for him. The girl I was with at the time had moved in. There was talk of more serious things to come. There was even a shared Netflix account.

  Then Deadline’s mommy decided life in Nutley, New Jersey, just wasn’t for her. I should have seen it coming. She wanted a guy you might find in the pages of Esquire. I’m more a Sports Illustrated kind of guy. She ended up leaving me for a designer at her advertising agency, a dandy fellow who used lots of product in his hair, lived in a loft in Soho, and didn’t worry so much about staying faithful to the Scotts’ four-cycle lawn care program.

  That left me and Deadline to our shared bachelorhood. Which was fine. Deadline never liked her much. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.

  The next morning, Hays’s story led the front page: “A return trip to the scene of a previous crime proved deadly for Shareef Thomas and three accomplices, who Newark police believe orchestrated a robbery at the Ludlow Tavern several months ago—and have now paid the ultimate price.”

  The story went on with the necessary background about how police had now identified the “Ludlow Four,” and how they hoped to have a quick resolution to the heinous crime. And, sadly, there was no quote from a National Drug Bureau spokesman, since one L. Peter Sampson was afraid of his own shadow and one Carter Ross couldn’t make him believe it was cloudy.

  I poured myself some Lucky Charms—they are magically delicious, after all—and finished reading the story, at the end of which I felt like chucking my bowl against the wall. Hays’s cops were just so wrong. Newark bar owners get held up all the time. If they put contracts out on everyone who did it, there would be no one left at the bar to drink.

  I made my commute in seventeen minutes and had just settled in to wade through my daily helping of pointless press releases when Sal Szanto suddenly became aware of my presence.

  “Crtr!” he croaked. I entered his office just as he cleared his throat explosively.

  “What’s up, boss?”

  “Brodie still has major wood for this Ludlow thing. What’s the deal with the bar these people held up? Who owns it? Why hasn’t the guy been arrested yet? And how did he plan this hit? I’m seeing some kind of profile of this bar. You know: ‘It appears to be just another neighborhood bar, but the Ludlow Tavern had something more sinister going on inside.’ Something like that. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds like you can write it yourself,” I said.

  “Aw, don’t start that. Come on, what do we know that we didn’t know this time yesterday?”

  “That Hays is an old-fashioned screwup.”

  “No,” Szanto said, “I actually did know that yesterday.”

  “Yeah, but you probably didn’t know he was going to strip a story across the top of A1 that’s just wrong.”

  Szanto put his elbow on the arm of his chair, resting one of his chins in his palm. As the managing editor for local news, he ultimately had responsibility for this story. If Hays screwed up, it meant Szanto screwed up. So Szanto—and, for that matter, the Eagle-Examiner as a whole—was now invested in Hays’s story being right.

  “The Associated Press picked it up and gave us credit, you know,” he said gravely. “Radio, TV, they’re all giving us credit, too. And you want to tell me it’s wrong? You got anything to back that up or are you just in the mood to make my ulcer bark at me?”

  “Nothing concrete,” I admitted. “But I got a pretty strong hunch. Hays is taking the word of his cop source. And I think the cop is just throwing something out there. You know how it is for those guys: if they don’t at least pretend they’ve got something while a story like this is hot, everyone just assumes they’re not doing their job, starting with the mayor. When the story cools down, they’ll quietly arrest someone else or just drop it. But for now, they can’t let everyone know they’re clueless.”

  Szanto ground his teeth for a moment.

  “Aw, Jesus Christ,” he said at last. “So what’s your theory?”

  “Well, I don’t necessarily have one yet,” I said. I just had three drug dealers in three different parts of the city and a fourth victim who was still a big question mark.

  Szanto grumbled something as he reached for some Tums.

  “So since you don’t have a theory, Hays’s story still could be right,” Szanto said.

  “I guess,” I admitted.

  “I’ve got to be straight with you, I think everyone around here would be a lot happier if you just wrote about that bar,” Szanto said. “If the cops are wrong, that’s on them. Put the damn bar story in the newspaper and let’s move on.”

  In other words: don’t rock the boat.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, purposely agreeing in as tepid a way as possible.

  “Great. Look, I’m not going to tell Brodie about this Hays thing. It’s not smart to upset him when he’s aroused.”

  “You’re the boss,” I said as I left his office.

  “So you’re doing the bar story,” he shouted after me. I pretended not to hear him.

  I went back to my desk and finished reading my e-mail, which allowed me to learn I could get a discount if I signed up for Weight Watchers at Work. I lingered over the rest of the newspaper, then stalled rather than face the inevitable moral crisis: follow my conscience or follow the boss?

  Maybe I could just do the bar story. It would be easy enough. I could turn it around in two days. The police would like it. Brodie would be happy. Szanto would be thrilled.

  The only problem was, I would have to remove all the mirrors from my house because I wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of myself. I mentally shelved the idea of the bar story and returned to fleshing out my theory—whatever my theory was.

  I clearly needed to learn more about Shareef Thomas before I even had a theory, so I started doing some public-record searching. I soon identified at least three Shareef Thomases running around Newark—at seven different addresses. It was time to start knocking on doors.
/>
  Better yet, make the intern do it.

  “Hey, Tommy,” I said as he slinked into the office. “You look like you could use an errand or seven.”

  W

  hile Tommy was out knocking on doors, I had a date— with a hooker and a Bloomin’ Onion. I threaded my way through the ghetto, which seemed especially empty on this frigid morning. The wind had been fierce overnight, strong enough to knock over garbage cans. Trash was blowing everywhere—Jersey tumbleweed.

  I pulled up in front of the Stop- In Go-Go at 11:58—habitual punctuality is a WASP curse—and waited for fifteen minutes. I was beginning to wonder if I had been stood up when Tynesha came out the front door, dressed in off-duty clothes: a pair of unflattering jeans, a puffy black jacket, and low-heeled boots. I beeped lightly and waved for her to hop in, but she stormed up to the driver’s side and gave me an icy amber glare. I lowered the window.

  “I ain’t going to lunch with you. I just came to give you a piece of my mind,” she spat.

  “About what?”

  “About that crap in your newspaper today. I thought you said you wanted to write about what kind of person she was. Instead you write that she robbed a bar? Are you kidding me? Wanda didn’t rob no bar! She didn’t know no Shareef, or whoever he was. You know how much that upset her mother to read that? I thought—”

  “Hang on, hand on,” I said, holding my hands out like a traffic cop. “I know the story was wrong. And I’m sorry.”

  She inhaled like she was going to keep on yelling, then stopped.

  “You know it’s wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why did you write it?”

  “I didn’t. Another reporter at our paper wrote it. He took the story straight from the cops. I told him he was making a mistake. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “So y’all just write a story that’s not true?”

  “It sort of works that way sometimes,” I said. “We write what we think is correct at the time, relying on sources we believe to be credible. Sometimes those sources turn out to be wrong. It’s not perfect. All I can tell you is I’ll try to set the record straight later.”