Eyes of the Innocent

CHAPTER 3

Between the melodrama in Sweet Thang’s voice and the unsightly number on my clock, it took me a few moments to parse her first utterance. And, in true Sweet Thang fashion, she was frantically piling more words on top of the initial ones, creating a verbal traffic jam that was causing extensive delays in the non-E-Z Pass toll lane that was my early-morning brain.

Somewhere in the midst of a detailed description of all the items on her charm bracelet-just after the “oh-so-cute sombrero” she got on a trip to Puerto Vallarta and during the “darling little gondola” her father brought her back from Venice-my overloaded ears got the message to my slumbering vocal cords that it was time to wake up.

I shoved aside Deadline, who had taken his half of the bed out of the middle, and willed myself to sit up.

“Slow down, slow down, slow down,” I begged. “Your jewelry is gone?”

“I already said that!”

“I know, but I just now understood it,” I said. “Don’t you know what time it is?”

“What does that matter?”

“It’s”-I looked at the clock again-“six-nineteen A.M. This is not an hour of the day when I function.”

“But I’m in crisis!” she whined. “And Akilah is gone.”

“Wait, Akilah? As in Akilah Harris?” I asked. “What does this have to do with Akilah Harris?”

“Weren’t you listening?”

“I thought we already established this: no.”

“I just told you, Akilah spent the night…” she said.

I said a word that would need to be bleeped on network television, then added several more. But Sweet Thang, unheeding of my profanity, had already set her mouth back to the races.

“… I was at the bar last night, waiting for you-I don’t want you to think I just stood you up for no reason-and I got a call from her. She said she didn’t have anywhere else to go and I couldn’t just turn her out on the streets. So I picked her up in Newark and drove her back to my place in Jersey City…”

“You did not. Oh, my God, you did not.”

“… and I just felt like after her hard day, she shouldn’t have to sleep on my pull-out couch, because it’s kind of lumpy in spots and the mattress is kind of thin because it has to still be able to tuck in when it’s in couch mode…”

“I can’t believe this,” I was mumbling, entirely to myself. “I can’t effing believe this.”

“… so I told her she could sleep in my room. Because I have this Select Comfort bed. You know, that’s the kind with the sleep number on it? And I told her if she wanted more firm she could dial a higher number, and less firm she could dial a lower number. My Gram Gram got it for me for graduation; it’s totally the best present ever, because it’s like having your own personalized, individualized bed…”

“This just is not happening,” I continued. “Even you’re not this dumb.”

“… so I let her borrow some pj’s-and I heard that, it’s not dumb to be generous, it’s Christian-and she seemed to be settled in just fine. I went into the living room and pulled out the couch and was watching reruns of The Hills and she was dead asleep. I mean, I heard her snoring and everything…”

“Just let me know when I get to say ‘I told you so,’ ” I interjected.

“… and then I went to sleep-not yet, by the way, let me finish-and in the morning I got up and she was gone. And so was all my jewelry. I have one of those jewelry boxes that’s sort of like a little armoire, with little cabinet doors you can swing open and the little knobs on it, you know? It’s really cute. Anyway, I leave it out on my dresser, which is where I like to keep it, so I can see my jewelry when I get ready in the morning and envision how it’s going to look with my outfit…”

“Of course you do.”

“… also, I hate tangled jewelry, it drives me IN-sane. So the way I lay it out, with the earrings on their trees and the necklaces on their stands and the bracelets arranged in chronological order of when they were given to me and the rings laid out alphabetically by color? Well, that and the jewelry box, it kind of takes up most of the dresser. But when I came in just now, the dresser was bare. And the jewelry box was gone. And Akilah was gone. And I don’t care about most of the stuff-it’s just stuff, after all-but I really, really have a sentimental attachment to that charm bracelet. It just reminds me of all the places I’ve been and all the things I’ve done and I’ve had it since I was a little girl and it’s pretty much my most treasured possession.”

She hesitated, and not knowing how long it would be before she actually came to a full pause, I interrupted.

“So, to sum up, your stuff is missing…”

“Primarily my charm bracelet, yes.”

“… and you called … me?” I said, laying on the incredulity as thickly as possible. “Shouldn’t you call the police? Or your insurance company? Or, hell, Zales or something?”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you already. It wouldn’t be Christian. I can’t do that to Akilah.”

“I’m sure Jesus would have reported the crime,” I said.

“I’m sure He would have turned the other cheek.”

“No, Jesus Christ would have thrown His weight around with the Jersey City Police Department to make sure they were looking into it, maybe even used His influence with the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office,” I said. “You need to read the Old Testament more. Sometimes God gets good and pissed off and it only makes sense His only begotten son would be a chip off the old block.”

“Don’t blaspheme,” she said curtly. “And I am absolutely not, under any circumstances, going to tattle on Akilah.”

“Tattle?” I spat. “What’s next? She didn’t commit larceny, she’s just a bad sharer?”

“That poor girl has enough troubles in this world. I am not going to add to them simply because I have been deprived of a few material possessions.”

“So, again, why are you calling me?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t”-I could practically hear her lower lip begin quivering-“I didn’t have anyone”-cue the sniffles-“anyone else to call,” she finished, and began bawling.

But, of course, she was still talking.

“I’m”-gasping inhale-“scared and I”-shuddering exhale-“don’t want to be”-tiny stifled sob-“alone.”

Over the next six tearful minutes, we agreed that I should drop everything else I was planning on doing, not pause for breakfast, take the briefest of showers (I won that battle despite a fierce onslaught of whimpering), and come over to her apartment.

It wasn’t exactly what I planned for my morning, but there’s something about the weeping, frightened, vulnerable female that this particular Heroic Male simply cannot ignore. Saddle the gallant steed, shine the armor, locate the damsel, and Mrs. Ross’s boy will always ride to the rescue.

Mrs. Ross’s boy is a sucker that way.

* * *

I was shaved, showered, and dressed in fifteen minutes-no real man needs more time than that-and out the door in sixteen, pausing only to make sure Deadline had enough food to maintain his inactive lifestyle.

As I backed down the driveway, I briefly glanced at the newspaper loyally waiting for me on the front porch and felt a pang at leaving it there. Long before I started writing for one, starting the day with a daily newspaper was a cherished habit. I was raised to believe it’s just one of those things a decent, educated citizen does. Then it became my profession, and it became a kind of necessity: the reporter who doesn’t know what’s in the paper is not a very good reporter. I once had an editor who was known to quiz people as they came in the door to make sure they had read that day’s edition before they arrived at work. For me, reading the paper in the morning is like religion.

But then I reminded myself religion is all about being comfortable with hypocrisy and I kept driving. I’m sure there wasn’t anything so dire in there that couldn’t hold until after my white knight routine was done.

I made good time to Sweet Thang’s place, which was in the increasingly fashionable Newport section of increasingly fashionable Jersey City. She had given me the apartment number (12J) and her door pass code (90210-she assured me she wasn’t too young to have watched the show by the same name in reruns), and I soon found myself riding up a mirrored elevator to the top floor of a rather swank apartment building.

When Sweet Thang answered her door, she was still in her bedtime attire, which consisted of boxers, a ribbed tank top, and lots of creamy, perfect, youthful skin. She had a fresh, soapy smell and greeted me with a hug that made me a little light-headed.

“Oh, my goodness, thank you so much for coming over,” she murmured as she gave me one last squeeze, then released me. “It makes me feel like a thousand times better just to have you here. I can’t tell you how totally gross and violated I feel right now. I mean, I’m still not going to tattle on her to the police but, ewwww! How gross is it to have someone just come into your house and take stuff! Like, I would have totally given her some money if she asked for it, didn’t she know that? It’s just soooo uncool and-”

I put a finger to my lips and made a shushing noise.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I know. Babbling. Stop now.”

Her place was spacious, nicely furnished, and, I immediately surmised, not possibly affordable on her $500 weekly intern’s salary. If the ample square footage didn’t tip me off, the commanding view of Manhattan did.

“Nice place,” I said as I trailed her from the small foyer into the living room, where the foldout couch was still unfurled.

“I just painted in here,” she said. “Do you like the color? It’s from the Ralph Lauren Urban Loft collection. It’s called ‘Sullivan.’ ”

“Do you call it ‘Sulli’ for short?” I asked.

“No, but I think I’ll start,” she said, smiling.

“You’re lucky they let you paint it yourself. I’ve heard of places like this where they make you use whatever contractor the landlord prefers because they’re afraid the tenants will be too sloppy.”

“Well, my dad owns the building,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. I’d figured Daddy was loaded. I didn’t realize he was that loaded.

She added quickly: “I pay him rent, though.”

Market rate, I’m sure. She flopped down on the bed, propping herself on one elbow and stretching out her gorgeous, bare legs underneath her. She left room for me to sit on the bed.

I chose a nearby chair.

“Does your dad own other buildings?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.

“A few. Real estate is just a hobby.”

“And his day job is…”

“Investing.”

“Riiiight,” I said.

“Don’t do that,” she snapped.

“What?”

“You’re making assumptions about me!” she said. “I only told you he owned it because I thought you wouldn’t make assumptions.”

“I wasn’t making-”

“I’m not a spoiled little rich girl,” she said. “I’ve worked for what I’ve gotten.”

“Okay,” I said, but apparently wasn’t convincing.

She eyed me.

“Look, everyone has a dad,” I said. “Yours happens to be filthy rich and friends with a guy who runs a newspaper. You don’t need to apologize to me for having advantages in life. I’d only hold it against you if you hadn’t done something with them. I didn’t exactly start this race in last place myself.”

“Thanks for understanding,” she said, and we bonded for a moment, just a pair of hardworking spoiled little rich girls-even though the only real estate my parents owned was a two-story colonial.

“So you can say it now,” she said.

“Say what?”

“That you told me so.”

“Well, I guess I did,” I said. “But I have to admit I’m feeling a little responsible for what happened, because I didn’t quite tell you everything.”

“What do you mean?”

I guided her through my discovery of Akilah’s nonorphan status, finishing it off with how I tried to get the story yanked but was overruled by Uncle Hal’s space heater fetish.

She pouted.

“I thought we were working on the story together,” she huffed. “You were going to have them pull the story without telling me?”

“I was planning to tell you everything at the bar,” I said. “But I guess I got there right after you left to pick up Akilah.”

“Oh.”

“About that…”

She rolled over on her stomach, smothering her face in her pillow. I couldn’t help but admire her tight little ass as she loosed a muffled scream and kicked her legs in a minitantrum.

“Ahh hhhann oooeee ahh ddiii daaa,” she said.

“Come again?”

She lifted her head: “I can’t believe I did that.”

“You want your lecture now?”

She nodded and fixed me with a big blue-eyed gaze.

“Okay,” I began. “It goes like this: as a reporter, you’re going to be constantly tripping on people who need help-sometimes a lot more help than you can possibly give them. You will, of course, care about them. That’s good. That’s human. But remember, it’s not your job to save them and you couldn’t if you wanted to. It’s your job to write about them. If someone else decides to save them after that? Bully for them-and bully for you, because your words obviously inspired someone.

“Otherwise? Lay off. You have to remember these are people who have been failed by a whole lot of folks in their lives, and one or two goodhearted acts by a stranger isn’t going to turn things around for them. You won’t last six months in this line of work if you make all the problems you see your business. Got it?”

She nodded again, blinking the big blue eyes several times.

“End of lecture,” I announced. “Now, why am I here again?”

“I was hoping you might have a few ideas how I could get my charm bracelet back.”

I started shaking my head and was about to launch into an explanation of how thoroughly improbable that was, when I heard the gallant steed whinny, reminding me sometimes the Heroic Male has to conquer long odds to fulfill his quest.

“Oh,” I said, sighing, “I guess I’ve got a few.”

* * *

My first idea was breakfast. I waited for Sweet Thang to shower and dress, failing miserably at filtering out the inappropriate thoughts floating through my head as she did so. I resisted the urge to sift through her things as she got ready, though I couldn’t help but marvel at the general Martha Stewart Living feel to her place. Every paint color appeared to have been deliberately picked and matched with some other fixture or accessory in each room. It was an impressive display of decorative genius-if a bit sickening.

Sweet Thang emerged from her bedroom in a light blue knit dress, and I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice how nicely it clung to her. We left her apartment and made our way to the nearest diner, which in the great state of New Jersey is never more than a few blocks away.

I went with the pancakes, always safe. Sweet Thang surprised me by ordering a No. 2-two eggs, two pancakes, two sausages, juice, toast, and coffee-and surprised me even more by finishing it. Breakfast, she explained between bites, is the most important meal of the day.

As we chewed, I formulated our strategy. Someone had to go see Bertie Harris, our only firm connection with Akilah. And, after the first impression I made the previous evening, we would be better off if the someone wasn’t me. I’m sure she and Walter the Beemer would make quite an impression at Baxter Terrace.

My assignment would involve a visit to Reginald Jamison, one of my best sources for all things hood related. He made a surprisingly good living selling silk-screened T-shirts out of a storefront on Clinton Avenue. Everyone called him “T-shirt Man,” which was then shortened to “Tee.” I was probably one of the few people who came into his store who knew his real name was Reginald.

Tee and I had gotten to know each other a few years back when I did a story that cast him in a favorable light as an entrepreneur. We had been buddies ever since. I liked having a guy plugged into the streets. He liked the novelty of having a white friend-in some parts of Newark, it was almost like keeping an exotic pet.

Tee was about 250 pounds of muscle, tattoo ink, and braids, all of which gave off the impression he was one tough gangsta, a front he maintained when it served him. In reality, the dude was about as hard as a roll of Charmin. He had a wife he doted on (mostly because she’d kick his ass if he didn’t). And he had a sentimental streak that was even wider than his biceps. I once caught him watching a bootleg DVD of Love Actually in the back of his store.

As a businessman, he was strictly legit. Still, he grew up with most of the illegitimate businessmen in the area, so he was well acquainted with the city’s informal economic infrastructure and didn’t mind sharing his contacts now and then.

By the time I made it to Tee’s place, it was about ten o’clock.

“Aw shoot, Whitey’s here, hide the weed!” Tee crowed when he saw me.

“C’mon,” I said, “since when does white man need to actually see the weed before he makes an arrest? You know I’ll just plant it on you later if I have to.”

“Good point,” he said as we shook hands, then slipped into his exaggerated white man’s voice: “To what do I owe the pleasure of your appearance, Mr. Ross?”

“I got a hypothetical question for you,” I said.

“Yeah, but it probably ain’t all that hypothetical, right?” he said, switching back to his normal voice.

“Well, let’s just say you’re a citizen of Newark who has recently come into a substantial amount of jewelry and you want to liquidate your holdings,” I said. “Is there a merchant in the city who provides such a service without probing too deeply into the origin of the items in question?”

“Now, why you think I know something like that?” he said in a fake rage. “Why is it anytime Whitey needs to know about stealing stuff, he come see his black friend, huh? Because that’s all the black man is good for, huh? How come you’re not coming here to ask me my thoughts on municipal bonds?”

“Because I’m not in a high enough tax bracket to take advantage of the benefits of munies,” I answered.

“Oh,” Tee said. “Well, in that case, yeah, I know the guy you gotta see.”

“Who?”

“This is off the record, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, allegedly”-“allegedly” is one of Tee’s favorite words-“you go see Maury.”

“Maury?”

“Yeah, that’s the name of the pawnshop. The dude who own it ain’t named Maury-it’s named after some Jewish dude who owned it a thousand years ago. But people still call him ‘Maury’ anyway. Everyone in the hood knows: you got some stuff, you need some cash, you go to Maury.”

“And he’s, uh, not known to ask many questions?”

“Most of the rest of the pawnshops make you fill out all kinds of paperwork, do this ninety-day waiting period thing, all that. Maury is known to be a little less strict with his bookkeeping,” Tee said, then added, “allegedly.”

“And if I strolled in, asked for Maury, and inquired about some particular jewelry?”

Tee laughed.

“He’d assume you’re a cop and suddenly get real hard of hearing, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“I do. So what’s my plan?”

“Well, break it down for me here. What are we dealing with?”

I told Tee the whole sordid tale of Akilah and Sweet Thang, finishing with my frantic 6:14 A.M. wake-up call and the small amount of culpability I felt in the whole mess.

“So you got yourself some tasty little honey and you’re trying to get her stuff back?” he cooed. “Oh, that’s sweeeet.”

“Yeah, I’m just made of cotton candy. Do you think you can introduce me to this Maury character?”

“Oh, I don’t actually know him,” Tee said. “I just know him by reputation.”

“So you know someone who knows him?”

“Let me make some calls,” Tee said. “I’ll holler at you later?”

I was about to answer when I was interrupted by the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony coming from my pocket.

“That’s my editor,” I said. “Like the ringtone?”

“Remind me to download you some LL Cool J.”

“That’s, what, a drink or something?”

Tee just shook his head and muttered, “White people.”

* * *

I waved at Tee as I left his store and went into the street to answer the call.

“Good morning, sunshine!” I said.

“Tell me you got something,” Szanto barked.

“Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Windy Byers,” Szanto said, exasperated. “Brodie somehow thinks there’s a Pulitzer somewhere in this. He’s got a boner that could win him the county pole vault championships.”

Wendell A. Byers Jr.-nickname: Windy-was a Newark councilman. He was a bit of an idiot and lot of a blowhard, the kind of guy who had the habit of talking when he should have been listening. I had met him enough times that a picture of him appeared in my mind. He was African-American, but he straightened his salt-and-pepper hair, which was brushed back across his head. He was in his fifties, but the weight he carried made him look older. And he had one of those meticulously groomed, pencil-thin mustaches, and it was etched across his fleshy, flaccid face.

His father, Wendell senior, had also been a Newark councilman. And that, apparently, was enough for the citizens of the Central Ward, who had been sending someone with that name to represent them for the last forty years or so. As a result of this honor, Windy Byers spent a long and thoroughly undistinguished political career being driven around in a city SUV, pretending he was important. It was unclear what the citizens got out of the deal.

“Uh, I’m sorry, what’s happening with Windy Byers?” I said.

“He’s missing. Didn’t you read the paper this morning?”

I cursed my lousy karma: of all the mornings to not glance at the paper before I left. I thought about offering any number of creative excuses-most of which would have required knowledge of viruses that cause temporary blindness-but decided on the truth instead: “No. I kind of had a little emergency this morning.”

“You want to tell me what’s more important than a kidnapped city councilman?”

This was not going to be easy.

“Sweet Thang’s charm bracelet,” I answered. I was glad Szanto couldn’t see me, because I was grinning like an idiot and it would have driven him berserk.

“Come again?”

“You know the story Sweet Thang and I wrote yesterday?”

“Yeah. It got bumped off A1 by the Byers story and buried on the county news page-not that you would know because you didn’t read the paper. Anyway, what about it?”

“Well, you may or may not be aware, but Sweet Thang is a rather kindhearted young woman and she, uhhh…” I paused, groping for the right words. I had hoped to have this little mess cleaned up before anyone needed to learn about it. Sweet Thang was going to have a hard time living this down. And I was going to have a hard time explaining it in a way that wouldn’t have Szanto shotgunning Tums.

“Have I not made it clear I’m in a hurry this morning?” Szanto barked.

“Sweet Thang let Akilah Harris stay at her place,” I blurted. “And sometime in the middle of the night, Akilah stole Sweet Thang’s jewelry and took off. I’ve been trying to get it back.”

I could practically hear the new hole being torn in Szanto’s stomach.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“I am.”

“And this is what you’ve been doing with your morning?”

“I have.”

What followed was a rant spiked with language you are unlikely to hear from your local librarian. He strongly suggested that I, as his investigative reporter, ought to stop worrying about the missing jewelry and start worrying about the missing councilman.

Then he hung up.

“Nice chatting with you,” I said to the empty phone line.

I sighed. I knew exactly how this was going to play out. I would be assigned to put together some kind of Sunday piece that Told the Real Story-or however much of the Real Story we could assemble between now and then. In the meantime, it was Tuesday and we, as a newspaper, would spill countless barrels of ink during the coming days, covering every detail of the life and perhaps-death of Windy Byers, all the while pretending he was something other than a hack local politician who had ridden his father’s half-good name to a long and undistinguished career in service to the public/himself.

I wasn’t keen on canonizing him like that. On the bright side, at least I wouldn’t have to get a space heater reference high up in whatever I wrote.

My first step in this whole process was, of course, to do what I should have done first thing this morning: read the paper. I hopped in my Malibu and started looking for one, which was harder than you might think. This being Newark, we couldn’t keep newspaper boxes on the street. Otherwise, for seventy-five cents, some homeless guy-sorry, Housing Challenged American-was going to break in just as soon as we filled the box, swipe all thirty copies, and sell them on the street for reduced rates, netting himself the fifteen dollars he would need to keep his belly full of Wild Irish Rose until the next morning. What we did, instead, was cut the petty larceny out of the equation: we hired the homeless guys directly and put them to work selling the paper for us.

On the street, the Eagle-Examiner was known as “The Bird.” People who delivered or sold it were known as “Bird Flippers.” I think all involved enjoyed the double entendre.

Still, after the morning rush hour, most of the Bird Flippers had already made enough money to be happily inebriated the rest of the day, so it took a little while before I found one still manning his post.

I tossed him a buck, told him to keep the change-the last of the big spenders, that’s me-and settled in to have a look.

* * *

As Szanto said, the disappearance of Wendell A. Byers Jr. was stripped across the top of A1. It was obviously late-breaking, and the layout person-who was either too rushed or too lazy to redesign the entire front page-had simply swapped out the Akilah Harris piece in favor of the Byers news.

The story appeared under the byline of Carl Peterson, our night rewrite guy. When Peterson first came to the paper, his approach may have charitably been called “new journalism.” Now it was just called overwriting. He stuffed his copy with adverbs and adjectives, filling the small spaces left in between with cliches. He wrote how the disappearance of the “beloved Central Ward councilman” and “scion of a Newark political dynasty” was being treated as “a deeply suspicious event” by police who “strongly suspect foul play.” The councilman’s wife, described as “thoroughly overwrought with anxiety,” reported her husband’s absence Monday evening, setting off a “city-wide manhunt” in which “concerned constituents” were being enlisted.

The only problem with Peterson’s prose was disentangling the facts from the compositional exertions. And in this case it was especially difficult because Peterson didn’t seem to have many facts beyond: (a) the honorable councilman failed to return home to Mrs. Honorable Councilman; (b) she called the cops; and (c) the police had at least a half-cocked notion something untoward had happened. There was no mention of what led police to that conclusion, or whether there had been any ransom demands, or whether he had even been kidnapped in the first place.

Not that I blamed Peterson for the lack of information. As night rewrite man, he was hostage to whatever dispatches he got from reporters (usually not much for a deadline story like that) and whatever the Newark police felt like telling him (usually even less).

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. There were so many ways this thing could go-involvement with the mob, involvement with a girlfriend, involvement with a girlfriend who was herself involved with the mob. Without at least some hint of a direction, I’d be like Fred Flintstone in his boulder-wheeled car: moving my legs a lot but not really going all that fast.

I needed a cop to whisper something in my ear. And the cop that immediately came to mind was Rodney Pritchard, a homicide detective I became friendly with a while back. I had written a blow-by-blow story of how he tracked down and apprehended a fugitive wanted for murdering his wife. Pritch caught the guy so unawares he actually answered the door to his apartment hideout while eating a piece of jerk chicken-allowing Pritch to deliver the once-in-a-career line, “You’re under arrest, now drop the chicken.”

My story made Pritch mildly famous, helping to launch him on a long winter of law enforcement awards banquets. So now we were the kind of buddies who tell each other secrets. Or at least that’s what I hoped as I dialed his number.

“Yo, Pritch, it’s Carter Ross,” I said breezily. “What’s shakin’?”

“Sorry, you got the wrong number,” Pritch said, then hung up.

I was just about to drop Pritch from my Secret-telling Buddies List when he rang me back.

“Sorry about that,” he said in a hushed voice. “It’s hot around here.”

“So what’s going on with this Byers thing?”

“I don’t know, man, you tell me,” Pritch said. “I mean, who the hell just takes a councilman? You have to be either very pissed or very dumb.”

“Who’s handling the case”

“Fellow named Raines caught it.”

“He any good?”

“He’s okay.”

“Would he talk to me off the record? Tell him I won’t quote him, but I’ll find lots of ways to make him look like a dogged and heroic investigator in print.”

“I don’t think it would matter,” Pritch said. “Raines isn’t in it for the newspaper clippings. He’s pretty by-the-book. I’ll be honest with you, he’s so straight, I don’t even think I can ask him for you.”

“Fair enough. What about you? You hearing anything? Watercooler talk?”

“What have we told you guys officially?”

“That all of Newark is playing a game of Where’s Windy and your guys seem to believe he didn’t just wander off to Florida for the weekend without telling anyone.”

“Well, we got a good reason for believing that.”

“I’m listening.”

“We found blood in his house,” Pritch said.

“Really,” I said as I grabbed a notebook and started scribbling. “Like, a lot of blood?”

“A little blood, from what I hear.”

“How little? Are we talking ‘oops, I cut myself shaving’ or ‘oops, a samurai left his sword in my head.’ ”

“Probably closer to the shaving accident,” Pritch said. “But I don’t know a lot of people who shave in the foyer of their house, and that’s where we found it.”

“Is it definitely his?”

“We don’t know. Labs aren’t back yet. But who else’s could it be?”

Anyone’s. Cops were so short on imagination sometimes.

“By the way,” Pritch said. “You didn’t get this from me, right?”

“Of course not. I don’t even know you,” I assured him. “What is the current thinking on why anyone would feel like stealing Windy Byers?”

“It’s too early. Our guys either don’t know or ain’t sayin’. Between you and me, I don’t think they have a clue.”

“But it doesn’t sound like some botched robbery or something?” I said. “I mean, you take a councilman, it’s because you meant to take a councilman, right?”

“Well, I’ve heard his laptop was missing. But it was just the laptop. I’ve had too many cases where people report one thing ‘stolen’ and then it turns up somewhere later.”

“Sure,” I said. “So we’re told the wife reported him missing. What’s her deal?”

“From what I hear, she was out at some church group thing on Sunday night,” Pritch said. “She comes back home and her husband isn’t there, but she doesn’t think anything of it. She just thinks he’s out at a political event or something. Then the next morning she wakes up to an empty bed and calls us.”

“Our story said she called Monday night.”

“Yeah, we probably just told you guys that so you wouldn’t jump all over us for not calling you about it earlier. The public information office does stuff like that all the time.”

Didn’t we know it.

“Anyone think the wife has something to do with this?” I asked. “You know, she found him cheating, killed him, got rid of the body, then reported him missing?”

“That’s a theory.”

“Is it the official theory?”

“I don’t know,” Pritch said. “Look, I gotta run. I’m crouched in the stairwell talking to you like you’re the girl I keep on the side. And I just don’t like you that much.”

“All right. Do me a favor and keep your ears open. I owe you lunch.”

“You owe me more than one,” Pritch said, then hung up.

* * *

My next call was to Tommy Hernandez, our fabulous gay Cuban intern. Since Tommy was now one of our City Hall beat writers, Councilman Byers was one of his responsibilities. General rule of thumb in journalism: if one of your key sources vanishes suspiciously, you’re going to be busier than a paisley top with plaid pants.

He answered after half a ring.

“Hey, I’m in Byers’s neighborhood,” Tommy said, not bothering with salutations. “Come meet me here.”

“Got cross streets for me?”

“It’s on Fairmount, just north of South Orange Avenue,” Tommy said.

It took six minutes to get from Tee’s neighborhood to the scene and only a few seconds to figure out which house belonged to the councilman. If the police tape didn’t clue me in, the TV trucks parked out front did. I parked, got out, and had a look around.

The councilman’s neighborhood had clearly seen better days. Uh, make that better centuries. I’m sure sometime around World War II it had been a great little place to raise a family. Now, after decades of mortgage redlining and highway construction, absentee landlordism and slumping schools, the GI Bill and white flight-and all the other things this country allowed that led its suburbs to prosper at the expense of its cities-there were only faint memories of what had been.

The slate sidewalks, once a smooth runway for baby boomers’ strollers, were now a jagged moonscape of broken rock. The elm trees that once lined the street were down to a few straggling, struggling survivors, creating a more desolate effect than if they had all been chopped down.

The same could be said for the houses. Some had long ago been flattened and turned into vacant lots. Others looked so unkempt, unwanted, or abandoned you only wished they would have a sudden meeting with a wrecking ball. Then there were a few that defied the odds and, with regular painting and maintenance, had aged gracefully. It only made me more wistful, wondering what the street would look like if it had just been cared for a little more through the years.

And you could blame the federal government, whose policies helped create this mess. Or you could blame the whites, who turned and ran when things started getting tough; or the blacks, who let it get even worse; or the schools, which warehoused urban kids instead of educating them; or the churches, which too often had their doors closed when they should have been open; or the economy, which no longer provided the kind of factory jobs that made a city go; or, well, take your pick.

It was everyone’s fault. And no one’s fault. And I wondered if I would ever live to see the day when the sidewalks were smooth, the street was shaded by trees, and the houses all had fresh paint.

None of which was going to get my story written. So I started going up and down the block until I found Tommy, dutifully going door to door, talking to neighbors. I caught him coming down the steps of a sagging old duplex, having just been shooed away by someone’s great-grandmother.

“Do you shop in a catalogue that’s called ‘Old and Boring’ or do you go to normal places and it just turns out that way?” Tommy asked. “I mean, khaki pants, blue shirt, red tie. Was that your boarding school uniform or something?”

Tommy was not a big fan of my fashion sensibilities, which he accused of slipping into a coma sometime around 1997.

“Oh, it takes many long seconds of work each morning to look this dull,” I assured him. “How’s the canvassing?”

“The usual,” Tommy said, waving toward the houses. “It happened at night and these are all old people who wouldn’t dream of going out after dark. They didn’t see anything.”

“And they keep their TVs turned up high to drown out the sound of the sirens,” I said, nodding in the direction of University Hospital. “So they didn’t hear anything, either.”

“You got it.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I got a little bit of scoop for you,” I said.

“That the cops found blood in the front entrance?” Tommy replied. “Yeah, I know.”

Of course he did. Tommy was that kind of reporter.

“Who told you?” I said.

“One of the guys in the Crime Scene Unit hangs out at some of the same clubs I do, if you get my drift,” Tommy said, grinning mischievously.

“Ah,” I said. “But, let me guess: this is not well-known among his colleagues at the Newark Police Department?”

“At work, he’s so far in the closet you’d think he survives by eating hangers,” Tommy said. “But he’s definitely one of mine.”

Tommy and I started walking back up the block, toward an encampment of TV cameras.

“So what’s your theory about this so far?” I asked. “Did Windy Byers run off with his girlfriend?”

“His boyfriend maybe,” Tommy said.

“Boyfriend?”

“Oh, don’t act all shocked,” Tommy said. “Sometimes I think half the brothers in Newark like it on the down low.”

Sex “on the down low,” as it is known, involved otherwise straight, mostly married black men who get together under the pretense of masculine activities (poker, beers, bowling, whatever) and have sex with each other. I didn’t know how much of it to believe, but it was a never-ending source of gossip in Newark: who did what with whom and where, who pitched, who caught. It was never confirmed by firsthand knowledge-no one ever admitted being involved-but it was not unusual to hear it whispered that a guy liked it on the down low. And if anyone would know, it was Tommy.

“Okay, so why did his boyfriend kidnap him?” I asked. “Was he afraid Byers was going to go public or something?”

“Oh, I have no idea,” Tommy said. “I just always heard stuff about Windy Byers doing it on the down low with one of his council staffers. So…”

Tommy’s voice trailed off. We were nearly within earshot of the TV news foofs, who were standing around in a pack, preening.

“What’s this, a superficiality convention?” I asked.

“No, Matos is going to make a statement,” Tommy said.

Matos was Newark Police Chief Felix Matos. And sure enough, when I looked closer, I saw the preeners had congregated around a small podium that had been crammed with microphones, each with their ridiculous little logo box attached. Yes, indeed, I was in for one of the most useless events in all of journalism: the made-for-TV press conference.

* * *

I’m not going to say I loathe local TV newspeople, but if one of them were on fire and I had a full bladder, I’d still run off and find a urinal.

It’s not that they’re bad people, per se. On a one-on-one basis, most of them are quite likable. It’s their business that went bad. Regardless of the medium, newsgathering organizations always play on that fine line between informing and entertaining. If you walk it properly, there’s a nice balance: hard-hitting investigative stuff mixed with breaking news tossed alongside human interest features-and, of course, the comics. Some meat. Some potatoes. Some veggies. Some ice cream. Good meal.

But somewhere in the race for ratings-that great quest to find and titillate the lowest common denominator-local TV news had crossed a threshold where the desire to entertain swamped the need to inform. Some of the old-timers mourned it. The younger generation didn’t seem to know any better. They were trained to go somewhere, get their sound bites, find their visuals, acquire the bare minimum of information needed to do a stand-up, and then get out. Giving people ten-second blurbs and quickly flashed images may satisfy some simian urge to marvel at shiny things. But I’m not sure it served any real purpose beyond voyeurism.

Mostly, I found it abhorrent that people still called them “journalists,” because that’s not really what they were. Any group of people who collectively worried about their hair that much could not truly be classified as journalists. They were performers.

And press conferences-which had once been meant for the press and the press only-had become more like public performances, what with the all-news channels often carrying them live. Everyone was cognizant of being on stage, under the glare of the klieg lights and the eye of the wider world, and acted accordingly. The reporters asked questions meant to show how smart they were or demonstrate how beautiful they sounded. The sources, leery of verbal slipups, stuck to the script, which reduced them to automatons whose words and actions would seldom get them confused with real human beings.

The actual conveying of information-or, heaven forbid, real understanding of an issue-was, at best, a byproduct of the whole show. If you, as a reporter, wanted such things, you had to wait until the lights went off and the cameras were being packed up and hope you could get your source alone for a real conversation, however unlikely that was.

But I could tell from the way the chief’s motorcade of SUVs pulled up to the press conference-lights flashing, sirens blaring-that wasn’t going to happen this time. This was all about the show. The chief rolled out the passenger side of his truck in full dress uniform and made great display of placing his hat atop his full head of dyed-black hair, about which he was infamously vain.

Behind the chief, disembarking from the rear door, was a woman who had to be Rhonda Byers. She had a matronly, thick-ankled look about her and was dressed in a proper, slate-gray churchgoing suit and high heels that just had to be killing her feet.

She was quickly joined by a black man with no discernible neck, who took her arm. They were flanked by police officers, who helped her wobble toward the makeshift podium. The cameras ate it up, of course-the stricken wife, bravely doing what had to be done for her missing husband.

The cops finished steering Mrs. Byers toward the microphones, where she stood, still holding on to Mr. No Neck’s arm.

“Who’s the guy Mrs. Byers is leaning against?” I asked Tommy.

“Denardo Webster,” he said.

“And that is…”

“Windy’s chief of staff,” Tommy said.

Matos strode up to the microphones, appropriately grim-faced, clutching a photo and a small note card, because apparently he couldn’t remember his lines.

“It is my unfortunate duty to report the disappearance of Councilman Wendell A. Byers Jr.,” Matos read from his card. “Mr. Byers was last seen in his home Sunday night around sixteen hundred hours”-you had to love it when cops used military time-“by his loving wife, Mrs. Rhonda Byers. We have reason to suspect a crime or crimes may have been committed and we are asking the public’s help in locating Councilman Byers. Anyone who sees this man is urged to call our tips hotline.”

With his hand trembling just slightly, Matos held up a picture of Byers. The cameras zoomed in. It was marvelous theater.

“There is no cause for the general public to be alarmed, as we believe the councilman’s disappearance may have been politically motivated.” Matos continued reading. “We are currently investigating whether a crime or crimes occurred and are bringing the full resources of the Newark Police Department and the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office to bear in our investigation.”

Matos put the card in the breast pocket of his jacket, then half turned his body so he could look at Rhonda Byers.

“Mrs. Byers would now like to make a brief statement,” he said.

This was the moment the cameras were really waiting for, of course. There was no better sound bite on a missing person story than a distraught family member pleading for the return of their loved one, especially when they started blubbering all over the place and needed comforting. Big, emotional displays always played well at six and eleven.

But Mrs. Byers wasn’t going to give that to them. She was actually quite composed under the circumstances.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, in a voice that came across as strong, even authoritarian. “I would like to make a public plea to anyone who has seen my husband or anyone who knows anything about his disappearance: please, please help us bring Wendell home. He is a husband and a father and he needs to be back where he belongs, serving his community. Thank you.”

With that, she stepped away from the podium. I had to admit, I was impressed. She had natural stage presence and the practiced delivery of someone who was accustomed to addressing a large group. I could instantly imagine her speaking before her church congregation, telling parishioners that the Ladies’ Fellowship Group was holding its Tuesday night Bible reading on Thursday this week. And unlike her husband, who would have babbled on and made something of a fool of himself, she knew how to stand up, say what needed to be said, then step aside. She was clearly the brains of the Byers family.

Matos took back the podium.

“At this time,” he said, “I will take any questions…”

The hairdos all shouted at once; a perfect beginning to a question-and-answer phase was a breathtaking exchange of noninformation, delivered in fluent copese.

Was the councilman forcefully kidnapped?

“It’s too early in our investigation to answer that question. All I can say is we have reason to suspect a crime or crimes may have occurred.”

Why do you suspect that?

“We have information to indicate foul play was involved, but I can’t get into specifics at this time.”

Why do you believe it was politically motivated?

“We are not ready to discuss possible motives at this time. But we want to stress we believe there is no danger to the general public. Our officers are investigating any and all leads and are developing more information as the investigation progresses.”

Do you believe the councilman may have been harmed?

“We have not reached any conclusions on that subject. I have to stress, this is an ongoing investigation.”

How is the family doing?

“The councilman’s family is doing a lot of praying. No more questions please.”

Always good to end with God. Matos stepped quickly away from the podium. The cameras immediately swarmed Rhonda Byers to get the footage of her being escorted away by No-Neck Webster, which was perfect: it gave Tommy and me a chance to get the chief on the side for a little off-camera time. But the chief was striding quickly toward his SUV and didn’t appear to be in the mood to stop.

“Chief, I’m told you guys found blood at his house,” Tommy said in a low voice so the clueless TV people couldn’t hear it.

“You didn’t get that from me,” Matos said, still walking.

“You gotten any ransom demands or anything like that?” I asked.

“If I did,” he growled as he climbed into his SUV, “I sure wouldn’t tell you.”

He slammed the door, and the truck quickly pulled away.

* * *

I was about to find an excuse to depart-maybe something about how hanging around TV people makes me nauseous-when my phone provided me one. Beethoven’s Fifth began its signature “du du du duuuuuh” in my pocket. Tommy raised an eyebrow at me.

“Szanto,” I said. “A man like that needs his own ringtone.”

“A man like that needs a haircut and eyebrow tweezing,” Tommy corrected me.

“Well, that didn’t come with the phone, so the ringtone will have to do,” I said. “Give me a shout later, okay?”

“Got it. Buy yourself some ties that are a little less Republican in the meantime, okay?”

I smiled and flipped him off as I walked away, then brought the phone to my ear.

“Eagle-Examiner reporter Carter Ross here,” I said, oozing cheer. “How may I help you?”

“One, stop being a wiseass,” Szanto retorted. “Two, I want you to find that charm bracelet.”

“Excuse me?” I said.

“I want you to get Sweet Thang her charm bracelet back. That’s your new assignment.”

“Ooookay,” I said. “I’m officially confused here. I thought I was supposed to be investigating the disappearance of a public official.”

Even over the phone, I could hear the sound of molars mashing against each other. Szanto made a noise that came from somewhere deep in his chest and began speaking deliberately.

“Sweet Thang called Daddy. Daddy called Brodie,” he said. “You figure it out.”

“And Windy Byers?”

“Wherever he is, he can wait.”

“Boss, do you really-”

“Dammit!” Szanto exploded. “If you don’t find that charm bracelet, you’re going to be covering Girl Scout meetings in Hunterdon County for the rest of your career! Are we clear?”

And naturally he hung up before I could answer.

“Once again,” I said, “nice chatting with you.”

I went back to my Malibu to think for a few minutes, trying to help my brain ease through the shift to my new assignment. Ordinarily, one of the things I like about my job is that I never know where a day is going to take me. I just wish this day could make up its mind.

I rang Sweet Thang’s cell phone-the first one, not the second one-to see if she was making progress but got her voice mail, on which she sounded even more bubbly than in real life, if such thing was possible.

“Hey, it’s Carter,” I said. “Call me.”

Then, because I didn’t know what else to do-and because it was only around the corner-I scooted over to Akilah’s burned-out house, just to snoop around.

I climbed the front steps, thinking of all the hopes Akilah once had for the place, all of which had burned up along with those two precious kids. There was no telling how much of what Akilah had told us was a lie-twenty percent? fifty? seventy? — but there had to be at least some shred of truth in her story. She had made a grab for the American Dream, and somewhere along the way it became a Newark Nightmare.

“Hello?” I said as I entered. “Anyone here?”

There wasn’t, of course. But I had to check, in case squatters had moved in already. As a rule, squatters are like large spiders: they frighten you a little bit, but chances are they’re a lot more scared of you than you are of them. They were, by and large, harmless.

With the coast clear, I proceeded upstairs, where I was looking for … what exactly? I didn’t know. I was hoping I’d know when I found it.

Assuming the floor didn’t collapse on me first. And given the structural damage the house sustained in the fire, that was always a possibility. So I walked as gingerly as possible. The first doorway I encountered appeared to lead to a guest room. It was fairly well toasted, and the furniture had been tossed-the fire department often turned things over to make sure there were no embers hiding underneath.

The children’s bedroom was pretty bad, too. And I could feel my throat tighten when I saw the boys’ bunk bed. They should have spent a childhood in that room, whispering all their hopes to one another with the lights out-the older boy in the top bunk, the younger boy on bottom-figuring out the world one hushed conversation at a time. I walked out of the room quickly, hoping the sick feeling in my stomach would subside.

It didn’t, mostly because my next stop was the master bedroom, Akilah’s room, which looked like it had been the scene of an inferno. The ceiling had been painted black by smoke, and the fire burned clear through to the roof in spots. The side of the room closest to the street was particularly charcoaled.

Akilah’s bed was strewn in several pieces-again, fire department handiwork-but the dresser with the TV the kids had been watching was basically untouched. In the far corner of the room, I saw an empty bag of Cheetos. Akilah had mentioned she left the boys with snacks. So that was their last meal. A bag of Cheetos.

As I mulled over the injustice of that, something else occurred to me: all the rooms had been burned to some degree. I had covered enough fires in my career to know that was unusual. Accidental fires start in one place-a short circuit in a wall, a cigarette butt in a couch, a toaster in a kitchen-and the damage spreads out from that central spot. In this case, the damage seemed to be all over, like it had started in multiple places at once.

Which meant this fire wasn’t an accident.

Arson. Of course it was arson. I thought about my first impression when I saw the house, how surprised I had been to see it wasn’t a ratty old tenement, like all the other Newark fires I wrote about. The new houses seldom burn. I should have known then it was arson.

The only real question was who struck the match. Akilah Harris? I knew she was a liar and a thief already. Still, it was a pretty big leap from there to murdering your own kids, right? But if not her, then who?

I was so lost in my thoughts, I almost didn’t hear the noise coming from downstairs. A door opening? Footsteps?

I went quickly to the top of the stairs.

“Hello?” I shouted.

No response. But I did see a quick glimpse of someone stealing out the back door. It took me a moment to process it-perhaps a moment too long-but then it struck me:

It was Akilah Harris.

For years Primo concentrated on home rehabs. It was what he knew, what he was good at. He had his scam. He worked it. The money flowed.

But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Primo always found himself yearning for more, but he was ultimately hamstrung by economics: the exponential growth in his business was only possible for so long. Without outside money, he could keep five, maybe ten, houses going at any time. Any more than that and he started having cash flow problems.

It was all about financing. Merely reinvesting his own profits was only going to get Primo so far. Major developers needed major financing-big loans that allowed them to leverage thousands of dollars of assets into millions of dollars of liquidity. It was their lifeblood.

The problem was, no one with serious cash was looking to throw money at someone like Primo. Home rehabbers were seen as unshaven hicks in pickup trucks, fly-by-nighters who might just chuck it all and go fishing. Their trade was considered grubby, unglamorous, and, most damningly, untrustworthy.

No, the venture capitalists and investment bankers were looking for the new home builders. They wanted the beautiful renderings of the four-hundred-thousand-square-foot mixed-use retail/residential projects with the 240-unit condominium project next door. They wanted 3-D models complete with the little cars in the parking lots, four-color brochures printed on glossy paper, builders who had corporate offices and a professional feel. They wanted something they could sell with a straight face to their clients.

Yes, Primo had to get into new construction if he was to be taken seriously. Still, it was a very different business from rehabbing. And it brought with it a new layer of complexity. There were permits, licenses, a thousand different codes and guidelines governing everything from sewer hookups to the width of a stairwell tread.

It was all new for Primo. The rehab business was almost totally unregulated: it was virtually impossible to draw up any kind of ordinance that reined in the activities of a professional house flipper yet still made it possible for Joe Fixit to do renovations on his house. Legally, you couldn’t write a law that separated the two.

New home construction was different. Especially in a crowded state like New Jersey, every aspect was regulated and then overregulated. And it could quickly get you wrapped up in more red tape than you’d ever seen. In Newark’s City Hall they used industrial-sized spools of the stuff.

Some folks liked to blame the City Hall workers for this, perpetuating the myth of the lazy government employee. But that was absurd, akin to blaming a single tree because you couldn’t get through a forest. The truth was, Newark had been ruled by a succession of political machines for decades. Blacks, Italians, Irish, Jews-they all took their turns. And each machine contributed its own patronage hiring, adding one civil service position at a time until it created a bureaucracy that had become baffling even to the bureaucrats.

It frustrated Primo endlessly at first. But then he finally figured out the secret: to get through it, you needed to have a friend on the inside, someone who could pick up a phone and get the governmental mountain to move with a single word.

The only real issue was making sure you found the right friend.