Suburban Dicks

by Fabian Nicieza

  He rolled his eyes. “I know, but remember that story we ran last year? My second assignment? On the Indian family that owns the gas stations?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I need to know if this Valero station is one of theirs,” he said. “If it is, then this story might be bigger than just being the first murder in West Windsor in decades.”

  “Why don’t you just come in and run the search?” she asked, which meant: I don’t want to do any work.

  “Because I have to go see a bunch of Girl Scouts,” Kenny replied.

  He hung up before she could respond. He looked back across the parking lot to the crime scene. The medical examiner’s van was driving away. Dobeck and Wilson talked to the officers who had been first on the scene. Would they notify the next of kin from the station or drive straight to their house? Kenny thought the procedure would be to send the detectives, but the Indian community might take that as a sign of disrespect. That was one more headache than Dobeck preferred.

  Suddenly, Kenny shifted into hypercaffeinated restless leg syndrome. He only got antsy when he was excited. And he couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

  His phone chimed. He looked at the screen. A text from Janelle: Same family.

  A second text followed. Kenny couldn’t believe she had come through for him, but there was the information: Tharani Sasmal 23 Dickens Dr.

  He pulled the car out onto Southfield and made a left as the light turned green. Chief Dobeck and Lt. Wilson were finishing up with their patrol officers.

  He had to get to the Sasmals’ house before they did.

  The thought alone made those whispers a little bit louder: You are one story away from reclaiming your reputation.

  And for the first time in years, he believed it.

  Kenny reached the Sasmal residence in five minutes. The house was a colonial in a development called the Waterford Estates.

  Growing up, Kenny had loved the bullshit names developers gave each community. As an exercise to impress their tiger parents with their eidetic memories, he and his brother would memorize the names and rattle them off. The Princeton Collection (which was collected about three miles from the Princeton border), Princeton Chase, Princeton Ivy East, Princeton Oaks, Princeton View, and the Princeton Ivy Estates. Which flowed naturally to other estates: Appelhans Estates, Dey Farm Estates, Benford Estates, Birchwood Estates, Brookline Estates, Brookshyre Estates, Chamberlain Estates, Dutch Neck Estates, Estates at Princeton Junction, Grover’s Mill Estates, Sherbrooke Estates, Wellington Estates, West Windsor Estates, Westminster Estates, Windsor Estates, Windsor Park Estates, and the ubiquitous Waterford Estates, in which he now stood.

  There was no activity in the house, but there were two cars in the Sasmals’ wide driveway, a loaded Mercedes and a silver Jaguar. Gas stations weren’t a bad business to be in. Based on the Hyundai that Kenny had seen parked at the station, the victim had drawn the short straw when it came to transportation options.

  The house was a typical 1990s McMansion, elegant in a tacky sort of way. It had a sand-colored stone front with beige vinyl siding, a two-car side garage, and minimal landscaping. Kenny guessed four thousand square feet not counting the basement. They could sell it now for nine, maybe 9.5, he thought. That was another game they’d always played, the result of having parents in real estate: How much would that house sell for?

  Kenny hadn’t done any real reporting in a long time, and he wasn’t prepared to break the news to the family. He considered his options. If he knocked on their door and told them about the shooting at the station, then his story would be about grieving relatives. The angle was in the suspected drug dealing. That would open up a wonderful can of worms about drug use in the affluent suburbs, the cultural pressure on immigrant families to assimilate and get ahead, and how violence was being imported from the unwashed wastelands of Trenton to threaten their surreal suburban Xanadu.

  A police Ford SUV rolled up. He watched from across the cul-de-sac as Dobeck and Wilson rang the bell. The front door opened and a woman greeted them nervously. A man joined her. Kenny recognized him from the article he had written: Tharani Sasmal. They spoke briefly on the porch, then the woman buried her head in her husband’s chest.

  Kenny decided he had to make a move or risk them going into the house and shutting him out. He needed a visceral reaction. He turned on his Voice Memos app and hopped out of the car, quickly crossing the front lawn. Dare he call it a trot?

  “Kenneth Lee, Princeton Post.” Before this, it had been Kenneth Lee, New York Daily News. And before that, Kenneth Lee, Star-Ledger. And when it had all started, Kenneth Lee of the Rutgers Daily Targum, the college student who had brought down the governor of New Jersey.

  As he reached the landscape bed separating the lawn from the steps, he said, “Mr. and Mrs. Sasmal, I’m sorry for your loss, but my question is for Chief Dobeck.”

  Dobeck was unfazed but annoyed. “There will be an official statement later today.”

  “Yes, I’m sure there will be,” said Kenny. “I’m just wondering if during your official statement you’ll mention whether you think the victim was murdered because he was buying drugs or because he was selling them.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” asked Dobeck with a flaring anger that scared Kenny for a moment.

  “Wait one moment, please,” interrupted Tharani, confused. “My nephew was not using drugs and he was not selling drugs!”

  “Satku was a good boy,” said the woman.

  “I apologize you have to find out this way, but my sources say he was under police investigation,” said Kenny. “So, which was it, Chief Dobeck? Buying or selling?”

  4

  KENNY Lee was surrounded by a large group of girls and he couldn’t recall a time when he’d felt more emasculated. WWP Girl Scout Troop 701601 was helping four elderly residents of the Princeton Windrows Senior Living Facility in Plainsboro dig holes for a ceremonial planting.

  The troop was comprised of six tenth-grade girls. Laura Privan, the director of the facility, was talking to them. Upon seeing Kenny, she came over to greet him. She was rarely subtle about her interest in him, and since he was rarely subtle about anything, he always thought his lack of interest in her would have been noticed by now. As he made painful small talk with Privan, Kenny saw his mother saunter out of the complex.

  Kenny’s mother was one of the youngest residents of the fifty-five-and-older facility. Huiquing Lee had bought a condo after Kenny’s father had died four years ago. Living alone in the McMansion after his death had proven too difficult, she’d said, but Kenny knew she’d been plotting to unload the house from the moment his dad’s cancer had been diagnosed. With the mortgage paid off, even after the purchase of the condo at the Windrows, Huiquing had pocketed $950,000 on the sale. She was now content to take her time and find a rich second husband twenty years her senior who’d be dead within five years of the honeymoon.

  And, as always, she was also content to skewer Kenny with her judgmental glare.

  To be fair, Huiquing hadn’t always treated him like a giant disappointment. That had started only after he’d become a giant disappointment.

  “Good morning, Blaire,” Kenny called out, using the American name she sold real estate under. She smiled with the sweetest kiss-my-ass look she could muster. She had his number, but he had hers. That had been their relationship since he was a baby. His older brother, Cary, had belonged to his father; Kenny, to his mom.

  “Who are the lucky spade specialists?” he asked Laura.

  “Oh, they are members of our landscaping committee,” she replied. “The president of the committee is Steven Appelhans. He owned—”

  “Appelhans Farms,” Kenny interrupted. “Corn and tomatoes every summer, apples and pumpkins every fall.”

  She smiled and nodded. “To his right is Annabeth Gillman. She’s a retired pro
fessor of botany from Princeton.”

  “You’re bringing out some pretty big guns for just a few trees.”

  She giggled. “Our resident pool is filled with incredibly accomplished people.”

  “And then there’s my mother,” Kenny said.

  “Stop that.” She playfully slapped his arm. “Your mother continues to sell real estate and is very accomplished.” Forty-six, divorced, and surrounded by older people all day long, Laura Privan enjoyed Kenny’s sarcastic confidence. That he knew the difference between Casanova and Casablanca was enough to pique her interest.

  “The man to Annabeth’s right is Bradley Dobeck, former chief of police for West Windsor,” she said.

  “Do you mind if I interview any of them?” Kenny asked.

  “The ladies would be best,” she said. “Mr. Appelhans and Mr. Dobeck are both a little . . .” She paused. “Not all there.”

  “Those are the most fun, but the ladies it is,” he said, grinning, as he walked away from her and toward the esteemed members of the landscaping committee.

  After the ceremonial first shovel was completed, the Girl Scouts continued to dig the holes. Kenny approached the committee women and prepared to do a little shoveling himself. “I’m Kenneth Lee, Princeton Post,” he said. “Might I ask you a few questions for an article I’m writing?”

  The women agreed, and Kenny asked his questions, then left without saying good-bye to his mother. He could take only so much of the generation gap, especially when it was measured not in distance but in depth. When dealing with Blaire, Kenny always felt like he was drowning.

  He drove ten minutes back into Princeton and scored a parking spot on Witherspoon Street, a block from the office. He checked his phone for the time. Not even noon. Amazing how long the day was when you woke up before eleven. He still had time to grab a wrap, get to the office, file the story, and make the three p.m. briefing the West Windsor Police Department had scheduled on the Sasmal case.

  The Princeton Post shared space with a printer in a small vanilla two-story building in Princeton. The exterior paint color was literally called Vanilla. The printshop, which ironically didn’t print the paper, was on the first floor. The Post occupied the second.

  He kept eating with one hand and opened his laptop with the other. He started the article on the Girl Scouts. His fingers flew over the keyboard with one hand faster than anyone else in the office could type with two.

  Since he was eight years old, the one thing Kenny could do was write. Fiction, nonfiction, book reports, essays, grocery lists. He knew how to string words together efficiently and effectively. It ravaged his parents, who expected he would one day calculate the full value of pi. The fact they were real estate agents never diminished their expectations of him. He completed the piece before finishing the rest of his lunch, and was shocked at how he felt as he hit Command-S: excited to get to the next story.

  For the first time in years, he felt a desire to write.

  He printed out the two-page article. Then he tried not to get stuck in the guilt of thinking of a community current events blurb in a weekly local as an article. He failed at that as he grabbed the pages from the printer and brought them to Janelle.

  “I can cut a couple quotes to bring it down,” he said as he handed it to his editor. “So, the briefing on the murder case is at three. Is it my story?”

  Kenny could feel the tightening of Janelle’s jaw. He could hear the jangling of her jewelry as she shifted in her chair. Since an African art exhibit in Princeton three months earlier, she had taken to wearing too much ceramic jewelry out of respect for her heritage. Kenny had contemplated coming to work in a kimono, but worried she’d know he was making fun of her. Plus, he realized kimonos were Japanese.

  “Please don’t attack them,” Janelle said.

  “Attack them?”

  “The police are not your enemy.”

  Two hours ago, Dobeck had refused to answer his question. Sasmal had demanded to know who his sources were. Kenny had gracelessly bowed out, having failed to trigger a panicked response from either of them.

  Now, standing in front of his editor, he said, “Of course they’re not our enemy.”

  “I said your enemy, not our.”

  “Fine, they’re not my enemy.”

  “You ooze unctuous disdain.”

  Kenny shrugged. “@UnctuousDisdain was my first Twitter handle.”

  “You can’t get all in their faces like you did with the robbery at the Verizon store.”

  He feigned offense. “I asked pointed questions about glaring contradictions in their account, which they repeatedly refused to answer.”

  “They withhold information from the general public on purpose.”

  “I’m aware of that, Janelle. But it’s our job to obtain that information and determine if we should put it in the story or not. I was doing my job.”

  Since they both knew he meant it as an insult, she let it hang without comment. She fluttered his two-page story. “Thank you for doing your job.”

  That one hurt. The conversation was over. She had won the verbal battle, but had he won the war?

  “I promise to be good,” he said.

  “You better be,” she replied.

  Yes, he’d won the war.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  AT TWO FORTY-FIVE, Kenny Lee sat down in the small press briefing room of the West Windsor municipal building. Victor Gonzalez was seated next to him, and his photographer, Mercy Johnson, having finally bulled her way through traffic, sat to his left. Noora Kapoor, the newest police blotter rookie for the West Windsor–Plainsboro News, sat behind him. Kenny saw Kimberly Walker, an old colleague from his days at the Daily News, sitting by herself in the last row. She now worked for NJ Advance Media. He waved awkwardly to her and she ignored him. That answered any question he had about bygones being bygones.

  The door opened and Kenny was surprised to see Lt. Wilson, a folder in her hand, stepping up to the podium on the small stage. Kenny had expected Dobeck to represent. Taking into account the chief’s normal disdain for the press, this did more than disregard protocol—this was a purposeful attempt to minimize the proceedings.

  “Thank you for coming,” Wilson started, her face so close to the microphone that she sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher talking. She hesitated, straightened up a bit, and continued. “I will be making a statement, and then I will take your questions. Please note that as our investigation is just getting underway, we do not have much information to share at this time.”

  She checked her open folder on the podium.

  “At six twenty-six a.m. our nine-one-one dispatch received an anonymous call from a motorist who saw a man lying on the ground at the Valero station on the corner of Southfield Road and Princeton-Hightstown Road. Patrol officers Michelle Wu and Niket Patel were the first on the scene, arriving at six thirty-one a.m. They found the victim unresponsive. The victim has been identified as Satkunananthan Sasmal of West Windsor, New Jersey, age twenty-two. Mr. Sasmal was employed at the Valero station, which is owned by his uncle, Tharani Sasmal, also of West Windsor.

  “There were visible signs of gunfire at the scene. Pending the official coroner’s autopsy, we will offer no details on the suspected cause of death. I will take questions,” she finished.

  Kenny raised a hand, but Wilson called on Victor.

  “Do you have a motive yet?” he asked.

  Stupid question, thought Kenny.

  “We shouldn’t speculate at this time,” she replied.

  Wilson then pointed to Kimberly. “This is the third murder of a gas station attendant in the area in the last six months,” she said. “Do you think they are connected?”

  “The other incidents you mentioned were in Middlesex and Hunterdon counties, but we don’t have enough information to make a connection or comme
nt at this time,” said Lt. Wilson, clearly ensuring her response would generate a connection.

  Kenny raised his hand but Wilson called on Noora, who didn’t even appear to have a question. She vigorously shook her head no.

  With an almost audible sigh of inevitability, she pointed to Kenny.

  “Sources have stated the police have been investigating the victim for his involvement in drug trafficking,” he said. “Does the department have a comment on these allegations?”

  Kenny could hear her cell phone, resting on the podium, vibrate. She looked down at it, then said, “We have no comment at this time.”

  “Do you confirm that the department has been investigating drug trafficking at this location?” he asked as she started to leave the room.

  “We can neither confirm nor deny that,” she said hastily. “Thank you, that is all for now,” she concluded as she exited the room.

  Kenny leaned back in his seat, basking in the glare of frustration from Victor and confusion from Noora. “Were you fishing?” asked Victor.

  “I have sources,” Kenny replied.

  Victor turned to Noora. “Have you heard anything about the Sasmals running drugs through their gas stations?”

  She shrugged. That was millennial for no. And for yes. And for several other things, but Kenny spoke fluent millennial, so he understood Noora’s shrug as a no.

  They started to rise. Kimberly remained seated in the back, scribbling notes down. As the others left, Kenny slung his bag over his shoulder and said to her, “You think the murders are linked?”

  She said nothing, closing her notebook and putting it in her bag.

  “You’re allowed to talk to me, Kim,” he said. “Being ethically and morally challenged isn’t contagious.”

  She looked at him for a while. Then she left without responding. Alone in the room, Kenny had no one to feign indifference to, so he slumped in dejection. A part of him wanted to be defiant, but he understood and accepted his guilt in a way that engulfed his soul. He started to leave when the door behind the podium opened.