The youngest reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Who is Kenneth Lee?
“Excellent question,” he said aloud.
Was Kenneth Lee the college student who had taken down a sitting governor and shared that Pulitzer by the time he was a senior? The nonfiction author who had spent sixteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list at twenty-three? The arrogant idiot who had spurned a job at the Star-Ledger after graduating from Rutgers because he wanted to work for the New York Times or the Washington Post? The rookie beat writer who joined the New York Daily News only to become inexorably downsized from the payroll two years later? The reporter who shuffled with his tail between his legs back to the Star-Ledger/NJ Advance Media only to find his stories crushed by the soft whims of the paper’s new owners? The idiot so desperate to regain some measure of relevance that he fabricated sources for a Big Pharma exposé?
A Pulitzer at twenty-two, disgraced by twenty-seven, irrelevant at twenty-nine. He looked at his workstation, a Stilvoll Crescendo C2 Maximus desk he’d bought with money from the book advance. Atop its sleek surface was a desktop Mac with two large screens that he rarely used anymore. Then, as he did every night in his Groundhog Day existence of self-flagellation, he looked at the framed certificate on his wall.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
KNOW ALL PERSONS BY THESE PRESENTS THAT
THE NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
HAS BEEN AWARDED
THE PULITZER PRIZE
FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
FOR THE WORK OF LISA CLATCH, SPENCER MILLER and KENNETH LEE
He stared at the Pulitzer Prize. The question could no longer be Who is Kenneth Lee? or even Who was Kenneth Lee? From this night moving forward, it would be: Who will Kenneth Lee be?
Lacking only the theme music from Rocky, Kenny got up and moved to the corkboard on his wall. It was overstuffed with shopping lists, flyers he had never read, recipes he had never cooked, recycling schedules, and assorted odds and ends. He removed all of them, stripping it bare.
He opened the junk drawer in the kitchen for a pack of index cards and a Sharpie.
He sat down on one of the stools by the small kitchen island and started writing names on the cards: Satkunananthan Sasmal. He had to really squish the last six letters of Satku’s name, since he’d started to write too big before realizing how many fucking letters there were in Satkunananthan.
He tore up the card, realizing that would make the Rocky theme playing in his head skip, but he wanted the board to look clean for the inevitable Netflix documentary. Then he wrote Satku’s name in smaller letters so that they all fit. It really was a lot of fucking letters.
Next, on separate cards he wrote: Tharani Sasmal, Chief Bennett Dobeck, PO Michelle Wu, PO Niket Patel, Det. Charlie Garmin, and Det. Vince Rossi. On another card: Trenton gangs? And another: Indian drugs?
Then he wrote: WHY WOULD ANYONE KILL SATKU SASMAL?
And on a final card he wrote in big block letters: WHAT’S THE STORY ABOUT?
He tacked them on the board, organizing the Sasmals on the left and the police on the right. He left plenty of room below the cards to allow for the inevitable branching. He looked at it for a minute. Begrudgingly, he filled out a new card: PO Benjamin Dobeck. He placed it under Wu’s and Patel’s cards just in case his friend knew more than he let on.
Kenny congratulated himself by finding a relatively clean glass and pouring a Knob Creek. He was going to need a new bottle. He wasn’t sure if he could afford one until next month. He stared at the board for several long minutes as he sipped the bourbon.
WHAT’S THE STORY ABOUT?
No offense to poor Satkunananthan, but it wasn’t about his murder. It wasn’t about drugs, or even about gangs. He downed the last of the bourbon and smiled. He grabbed the Sharpie and on a new card, he wrote:
SUBURBAN SECRETS.
7
HAD Dante lived in modern times, an entire circle of hell would have been reserved solely for coaches who ran suburban soccer practices in the heat and humidity of August. At eight thirty in the morning, Andrea lay prone in her Eno Lounger DL camping chair at West Windsor Community Park as Elijah ran cone drills with a group of other disinterested boys.
Ruth had taken Sadie, Sarah, and some other children to the playground across the road that divided the park. Such a wanton act of leaving the children unsupervised would have earned Jeff’s scorn, had he known about it. But Ruth was earning five dollars and Andrea was getting an hour’s respite, so the risk of murder or kidnapping seemed a good trade-off to her.
Jeff and Andrea had opposite parental approaches, and in many ways their approaches bucked gender stereotypes. Jeff was all in on the twenty-four-hour news cycle fearmongering. He seemed to believe that several million children were kidnapped each year in West Windsor alone. He was vocal about keeping the kids close at all times, even—especially?—if that didn’t mean close to him.
Andrea, on the other hand, lived in the real world. She was Queens-bred and held a philosophy that shit happened and sometimes shit happened to you, but mostly it happened to the other guy. She refused to helicopter parent and hoped that approach would lead to self-reliant adults instead of missing or deceased children. She figured the odds were in her favor.
Plus, getting out of the chair and waddling fifty yards to the playground in this heat was not in her game plan. She sat with fellow Cellulitists Crystal Burns and Molly Goode, whose sons, Henry and Brett, were both in the soccer camp with Eli. Though it had taken a tremendous amount of coaxing on Ruth’s part, Crystal had let her four-year-old daughter, Brittany, go along with Ruth’s entourage. Since Brittany already had her own cell phone, Crystal continued to text her child heart emojis while the women chatted.
Andrea looked at her friends. Even in the humidity, Molly looked graceful, as if her existence was drawn from black-and-white photographs of a 1940s movie star. Sweat knew better than to trickle down her forehead. And sweat avoided Crystal’s blond helmet for a different reason: it was blocked at her pores by the hair spray. They were too put together for Andrea’s tastes, but she knew that was mostly jealousy. Both were done spitting out babies and they had more freedom in their lives.
Andrea’s reverie ended when she heard the coach’s Scottish brogue berating one of the children for the unforgivable sin of missing a cone during dribbling drills. More freedom hadn’t gotten them very far, she thought.
As Crystal texted, she said, “I can’t believe there was a murder in our town. It’s scary.”
“It was a robbery, I’m sure,” said Molly.
“It’s still scary,” said Crystal.
One of the soccer balls bounced toward them. It rolled between their encampment and a group of four Indian women. For a moment, no one moved to retrieve the ball. Then the youngest of the Indian women got up. She was pregnant, too, Andrea noticed, though earlier in her pregnancy and still thin as a rail. The woman cast a quick look at them, clearly forgiving Andrea’s lack of movement but not the inertia of Crystal and Molly. Had this woman heard their comments? Had she known the deceased?
Andrea and these women would nod hello to each other as they set their chairs up. They would often see each other and talk briefly at school or a sports function, and they would even work together on the PTA, but it seemed to Andrea they never got close to each other.
Andrea hated it. Her best friends in elementary school had been African American and Puerto Rican. Her roommate her first two years in college had been a Nigerian transfer student and they’d loved spending time together. And her roommate her last two years had been a Chinese transfer student, but the less said about that, the better, since Andrea’s obsession about Morana had gotten her killed.
But something had happened. Something had changed. Suburban isolationism? Tribalism? Even within her own subset of Cellulitists, she was closer to Jewish Crystal and Brianne than Protes
tant Molly.
The Indian woman playfully kicked the ball back to one of the children who had trotted over to retrieve it. Then, to the surprise of the Cellulitists, Andrea said to the pregnant young woman, “Did you hear about yesterday?”
She cast a look toward Andrea, then to her cluster, and then back to Andrea. “Yes. We know the Sasmal family. Everyone does.”
“They own a lot of the gas stations, right?” Andrea asked.
“And a banquet hall on Route One,” the woman replied. “And a gold exchange.”
“I’m sorry . . . if you knew them, I’m sorry for your loss,” said Andrea. “Have you heard anything about it?”
The other women shifted their attention to the conversation. “It was a robbery,” said one of them. She was old enough to likely be the grandmother of the seven-year-old out on the field. “They rob us all the time,” she continued.
“They?”
“The ones from Trenton, the gangs,” she said.
“I hadn’t heard about that happening in West Windsor,” said Andrea, because she followed the local police blotter and hadn’t seen enough mentions to indicate a pattern, but also because she wanted to keep the conversation going.
“Our homes are broken into because they know we have gold,” said the older woman. “The police do nothing.”
“Really?” asked Crystal.
“Really,” she said. She didn’t say, “you privileged white cow,” but it was implied in her tone. “We complain, but they do nothing. They say they can’t get the Trenton or Ewing police to do anything, so they don’t do anything either.”
A third Indian woman said, “My neighbor was robbed. Twenty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. You know what the police officer said? A young blond-haired white boy. He said he didn’t think it was a good idea to keep that much jewelry in the house. It made us a target for thieves.”
“Blame the victim,” said Molly.
“Yes!” said the woman who had too much jewelry in her house.
“I’m Crystal,” said Crystal, who felt pleased with the opportunity to put several non-Caucasian names into her contact list. “This is Molly and over there is Andrea.”
“I am Priya,” said the oldest woman. “This is Raxa, Aman, and Sathwika.”
“How many months?” Sathwika asked Andrea, eyeing the other woman’s belly as she cradled her own.
“Seven.”
“Wow,” she replied. “I’m at four. Have we met? I feel like I know you.”
Andrea smiled. “I feel like we all know each other.”
The women smiled at each other through that—no pun intended—pregnant pause. Andrea didn’t want to lead. She learned more by watching and listening. Thankfully, Crystal had never met a conversation she couldn’t extend.
“Okay, I understand how you could be frustrated with the police,” said Crystal. “But, you know, you can keep the jewelry in a safe-deposit box at the bank.”
“We do,” said Sathwika. “We just don’t keep it all in one location.”
“How much jewelry do you have?” asked Molly as they all laughed.
“More than you think, less than we want,” said Sathwika.
“I wish my husband got me more jewelry,” said Molly.
“I grew up in New York City, so I hated all races, creeds, genders, and religions equally,” Andrea said, surprising them with her directness. “My parents always talked about the anti-Semitism they grew up with in Queens, but I never felt it. I grew up with Latinx and African Americans and Asians. I know cities are different, but what kinds of things do you or your kids have to deal with out here?”
“We had four banks turn us down for a mortgage fifteen years ago when we wanted to move here, even though we were putting twenty percent down,” said Priya. “We had to go to an Indian bank.”
“When I go to get makeup at Bluemercury they always direct me to the only Indian girl working there,” said Aman.
“I called for a pizza two weeks ago and the man told me they didn’t have any curry pizza,” said Raxa.
“No way,” said Crystal.
The other women laughed. “I get that from the Chinese restaurant over on Plainsboro Road, too,” said Aman.
“They don’t put curry on their pizza either?” asked Crystal. It took a moment for them to make sure she was joking, then they laughed.
“We get pulled over by the police all the time when we’re driving,” said Raxa.
“For what? Speeding?” asked Molly.
“No, usually driving too slow,” said Sathwika. And it was the white women’s turn to realize she was joking. They laughed.
“You do drive slow,” said Crystal.
“But not as slow as Chinese women,” said Sathwika.
They all laughed louder.
“Do you have problems with the police?” asked Andrea.
“Always,” said Priya. “If I have a party, my white neighbor calls to complain about the noise by eight p.m. and the police are knocking on my door by eight fifteen. I could set my clock by it. But when they had a graduation party for their son, we called the police to complain about the noise at one in the morning and they never responded.”
All the Indian women nodded their heads in agreement.
“That’s happened to all of you?” asked Crystal.
Again the women nodded.
“I think we’re all just jealous because you have such great parties,” said Molly.
“Everything is harder, even small things,” said Priya. “Getting public works to fill in a pothole, getting a permit to take down a tree.”
“A friend of mine couldn’t get a pool permit,” said Sathwika. “It took over a year before they were finally turned down.”
“A year? That seems like a lot,” said Crystal.
“They said they lost her application—twice—then they said she couldn’t because they live too close to Big Bear Creek and had too much water underground.”
“That doesn’t sound like prejudice,” said Molly.
“Her white neighbor four doors down has a pool,” said Sathwika. “Ironically, the pool is also white.”
“Oh,” said Molly.
Andrea liked Sathwika’s wit and saw a keen light in her eyes. She wondered, possibly for the first time since having returned to West Windsor years ago, how similar and how different their lives were. Most of her Indian peers had been born here. They were first generation, but their parents had seen their lives bifurcated in terms of language, religion, and culture.
Yes, they tended to stick together, but were they really any more clustered than Jews? Or the Latinx community who gathered for weekend soccer games on the Duck Pond Road fields? Or the Chinese doing their tai chi every morning at Morris Davison Park?
She looked at her friends, then at the Indian women.
“I think Brianne’s neighbor—sorry, Brianne’s our friend—I think her neighbor had her pool permit rejected a few years ago, too,” said Crystal. “And she’s Chinese. What is her name? I can’t remember. But at least they’re not just prejudiced against you.” There was an awkward pause before Crystal realized what she’d said. “Oh my God, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out that way.”
The other women laughed and dismissed it. “No,” said Priya, with a smile. “It’s good when they are equal-opportunity bigots. You know where you stand with them.”
“Do you think the police will try to solve the boy’s murder?” Andrea asked.
“I don’t think they will try hard,” answered Priya.
Andrea turned to Sathwika, curious how she would respond. “What about you?”
“I think the Sasmals are more likely to get their pool permit approved before Satku’s murder is solved,” she replied.
“They had a pool permit rejected, too? Really?” asked Crystal. “Wow, I f
eel jealous now. It’s the most popular club in West Windsor and I wasn’t invited.”
“It’s not a club you want to be a member of,” said Sathwika.
Because people were dying to get into it, thought Andrea.
And then she stopped herself as a warmth flushed through her. She had conceived of something so quickly, so unexpectedly, that even giving it thought was ludicrous. Then again, she hadn’t had a rush of clarity like that since Morana.
Andrea knew why Satkunananthan Sasmal had been killed.
Now all she needed to do was find a single shred of evidence to support her theory.
8
THERE was nothing quite like cruising through Trenton, New Jersey, in a Prius, Kenny thought as he cruised through Trenton, New Jersey, in a Prius. The state capital and long one of its most depressed cities, Trenton was a place where timid suburbanites only went when they had to. In order to get the skinny on the Sasmals and the Indian drug trade in West Windsor, Kenny needed to reach out to some of his unsavory contacts. He’d made a call and arranged a meeting at Cadwalader Park.
He knew that for years there had been Indian drug trafficking in his town, but he wasn’t sure if those drugs came from Trenton or elsewhere. The best way to get the answer to that question was to ask someone who sold drugs. He’d known Terry Vereen since high school. Kenny and some friends would cruise into Trenton on Saturday nights to buy weed, and Terry had just gotten started in the trade. He was an entrepreneurial young man who knew Kenny’s brother, Cary, from AAU basketball clinics. For a brief time, Cary had been called the Asian Equation among the local basketball crowd. Terry and his cohort respected Cary’s game, and that meant Kenny wouldn’t get hassled.
Since he could barely afford water now, much less weed, Kenny hadn’t spoken with Terry in two years. He parked on West State Street in front of a few houses that almost looked habitable. He walked through the park toward the statue of John Roebling, where they’d agreed to meet.
Terry strolled toward him. He walked with a limp now and had gained at least fifty pounds. The gold front teeth were also new and they kicked up a spark of sun. “The famous Kenneth Lee, in the hood,” he said with a smile. They shook hands. “How’s your brother?”
Suburban Dicks Page 5
