Eyes of the Innocent

CHAPTER 4

I descended the staircase in three long strides and a jump, hitting the landing with both feet and bolting out the door. If I had given it a second’s thought, I probably wouldn’t have gone after her. Much like the proverbial dog chasing the car, I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught her.

But I wasn’t thinking at that point, just reacting. I burst into the backyard, which was small and fenced in on three sides. Akilah had chosen to go over the back fence and was just getting down the other side.

“Akilah, wait!” I shouted, which was probably stupid. If she felt like talking to me, she wouldn’t be making like this was the Urban Steeplechase World Championships. She sprinted through a narrow alleyway toward the front of the houses on the next street.

I tore off after her, more or less throwing myself over the back fence, showing all the grace of a wounded elephant. I landed awkwardly, stumbling as my ankle buckled but, thankfully, did not give way. I was able to right myself, then follow her down the alley into the next street.

I emerged in time to see Akilah rounding a corner and set my legs churning. In a game of chase, she had some advantages: this was her neighborhood, not mine; she was younger and thinner; and she was probably more motivated. But I still had longer legs and kept in decent enough shape from my regular-okay, semiregular-workouts that I could run a six-minute mile. So I knew I could reel her in. Eventually.

But I soon realized this wasn’t going to be a footrace, rather hide-and-seek. As I rounded the next corner, I caught a fleeting glance of her turning into a hulking brick apartment building. I followed her through a propped-open door into a large once-impressive lobby with marble floors and a chandelier hanging overhead. Straight in front of me, up a short flight of steps, was an elevator. But the numbered lights above it told me it was already on the fifth floor. No way Akilah had managed to go up that far in the fifteen seconds she had been inside.

Stairs. She had gone for the stairs. I found them to the left of the elevator shaft and shoved open the door. I could hear someone several flights away, running upward, panting.

“Akilah, I just want to talk,” I yelled as I launched up after her, taking steps three at a time. I could tell I was gaining ground. From above me, I heard a fire door opening. But which one? Fourth floor? Fifth? My thighs were burning by the time I got to the fourth floor and peeked out into the hallway. No Akilah. I went back to the stairs and galloped up another flight, leaning out the door for another look. This time I spied Akilah’s small body disappearing out a window at the end of a hallway onto a fire escape.

She took the time to shut the window, which was getting stuck on the layers of flaking paint that all but inhibited its function. I reached the windowsill, heaved the glass back open with one shove-it’s not my fault I’m bigger and stronger than her-and rolled out.

I was surprised to find her still on the fire escape when I got there.

I was somewhat less surprised to find she had pulled a knife.

I righted myself. We were perhaps ten feet apart. The knife didn’t scare me too much. But being five stories up sure did. The platform was made of that metal grating you can see through-I hate that stuff-and I fought a brief wave of panic as I realized I was sixty feet in the air on a rickety fire escape that probably hadn’t passed inspection in my lifetime.

“Don’t come closer,” she said wildly, slashing the air with the knife. “I’ll cut you.”

“Easy, easy,” I said. “Just take it easy.”

The knife was a threat but, truthfully, not much of one. Akilah weighed perhaps a hundred pounds and had a wingspan at least a foot shorter than mine. In order to really hurt someone with a knife, you have to either catch them off guard or overpower them physically-neither of which was going to happen here. Still, I didn’t want to get too close, putting us at something of an impasse.

“Stay right there!” she shrieked. “Don’t come no closer.”

“Okay. It’s okay,” I said, trying to make my voice sound calm. “No one’s going anywhere. We can just talk.”

“You don’t know nothing,” she said. “You don’t know nothing about my problems. You don’t have a clue.”

“Just relax, honey,” I said. But she wasn’t listening.

“This guy, he’s coming to get me. He burned down my house and now he’s trying to kill me just like he killed my babies.”

“Akilah, I’ve got no idea what you’re-”

“He’s crazy. Just crazy. He killed Boo. He killed my babies. He killed them! He killed them!”

“Akilah,” I said forcefully. “Listen to me: I’m not going to hurt you. I just want Sweet Thang’s jewelry back, okay?”

I thought that would relax her-the docile white boy was only on a crusade for a harmless little charm bracelet. Instead, she stared back at me in something beyond horror.

“You work for him!” she shrieked. “Oh, my God, you work for him!”

She turned and tore off down the fire escape, jumping down the steps instead of running down, shaking the entire structure in a way that made the bottom of my stomach feel like the top. A headline immediately flashed in my head: EAGLE-EXAMINER REPORTER PLUMMETS TO DEATH WHILE CHASING CHARM BRACELET. I gripped onto the side of the building, scratching at the brick to get a handhold, sure the entire rig was going to peel off the side.

But it held. Meanwhile, my panic cost me several seconds. By the time I recovered and willed myself to look down-did I mention I hate those see-through grates? — Akilah had reached the end of the fire escape and, not bothering with the ladder, leaped the final dozen feet down to the alley. She hit the ground and rolled, like a seasoned stuntman, then popped up quickly and rounded the corner.

I thought about going after her. I could have probably chased her down again. But then what? She threatens me with the knife, she raves some more, we reach another impasse.

“Akilah!” I yelled in desperation. “I just want the charm bracelet!”

But she was already gone.

I inched over to the window, tossed it open, and happily rolled back inside, grateful to once again have solid subfloor under my feet. I sat down to catch my breath, feeling the lactic acid in my legs. Meanwhile, bits of our conversation-if you could call it that-were playing back through my head.

This guy, he’s coming to get me …

He burned down my house and now he’s trying to kill me …

He killed Boo. He killed my babies …

You work for him … Oh, my God, you work for him!

As I rubbed my thighs and tried to figure out what was going on, I was certain of only one thing: I still had a lot to learn.

* * *

When my heart rate finally returned to merely dangerous levels, I lifted myself off the floor and rode down in the elevator-no more stairs for me, thanks. I was back to the warmth and safety of my Malibu when the phone rang. The number that flashed up was listed in my phone as “Office Incoming.”

“Carter Ross,” I said.

“You are despicable,” I heard in return.

“Hi, Tina,” I said. “How’s the weather where you are?”

“Angry with a ninety percent chance of I’m-going-to-kick-your-ass,” she said. “I want you to imagine something. Can you do that for me?”

“I think so.”

“Imagine you’re in the eleven A.M. story meeting and you’re the city editor. You do know what the eleven A.M. meeting is, right?”

“A bunch of editors gather around a conference table and decide how they’re going to ruin the next day’s paper?”

“You got it. Now, imagine you’re the city editor, and a big story has broken in … the city. Are you with me so far?”

“I think so,” I ventured.

I felt like there was a great horned owl winging overhead and I was a small burrowing animal, trying to scurry through a field, scared out of my wee rodent brain, unsure where or when the attack would come, hoping against hope that I could make it to safety.

“Okay, now you’re being a good little city editor, trying to plan your coverage. And you happen to ask, ‘What’s our investigative reporter Carter Ross contributing to this?’ Can you imagine asking that question?”

The bird was circling overhead now, and I felt my weak, furry legs scrambling frantically, uselessly. The field was too big. I was too small. My tail kept getting snagged in the tall grasses. I could hear the beating of wings getting closer.

“Why would I ask a question about what I’m doing?” I said, futilely trying to stall the attack. “Don’t I already know what I’m doing?”

“No, you’re not Carter Ross. Try to keep up: you’re the city editor,” she replied patiently, in that kindergarten-teacher voice most women over the age of thirty can summon instantly. “Remember, you have to imagine you’re the city editor?”

“Oh, right.”

“Okay, good. So anyhow, you’ve asked this question about Carter Ross. And do you know what the reply is?”

“Am I supposed to know this one?” I asked.

“No, not yet.”

“Okay, then no.”

Where was the edge of the woods, anyway? Where was my den, my nest, or whatever home I had managed to scrape out for myself with my continuously growing rodent incisors? Did the mouse ever win in those nature shows?

“The reply you get,” Tina said, sighing dramatically, and now I knew the attack was coming-the owl was swooping down from the left. No, the right! It’s too late for Mr. Mouse! Too late!

“The reply,” she continued, “is that Carter Ross, the investigative reporter, is off chasing after a young girl’s charm bracelet-although, really, he’s probably just chasing the young girl. Ha ha ha.

“Now,” Tina said, “how would that make you feel, Mr. City Editor?”

The owl’s talons closed around my tiny, trembling body and I was lifted off the ground, my meager eep-eep-eep cry all but drowned out by the victorious hooting as the owl flapped skyward.

“I don’t know,” I said meekly. “Since we’re pretty clearly talking about you, why don’t you go ahead and tell me how it made you feel.”

“Well, let’s see here,” she said, sarcastically pretending that she was suddenly considering the question. “As an editor at this paper, I feel it’s a pretty foolish waste of resources that we’ve got major news breaking and you volunteered to go play Superhero getting Sweet Thang’s charm bracelet back…”

“I didn’t volun…” I tried to interrupt, but by this point her voice was too loud for her to possibly hear me. She had her prey secured and was bragging to the other owls nearby that she had caught a meal.

“… and as a woman, I feel pretty foolish for having ever occasionally professed that I may have slightly cared for you. Because if you’re that much of an idiot, there’s no way you meet the minimum IQ requirement to be my child’s sperm donor daddy anyway. So how did it make me feel? Frustrated, sad, and angry. Yes, I would say that would be a start.”

Her volume had reached a level where it was no longer necessary to hold the phone to my ear-arm’s length was as close as I dared go without risking permanent hearing loss. I kept it there until I was fairly certain the screaming was over.

“Are you done?” I asked.

“Probably not,” she spat back.

I sighed.

“Look, Tina, what exactly is this all about?”

“What is what about?”

“This whole jealousy thing,” I said. “I mean, let’s just say-and this is strictly for sake of argument-that I wanted to date Sweet Thang. Or let’s say it’s not Sweet Thang, because I realize there are complications there. Let’s say it’s some other woman you don’t know and will never meet. So long as it doesn’t lower my sperm count, what’s it to you?”

There was a pause. Was the great bird considering releasing its quarry? Would I be reunited with my earth-dwelling, grub-eating clan of fellow furry friends?

Uh, no.

“I … can’t … believe … you,” she finally said, enunciating each word like she was teaching an ESL class. “You didn’t really just do that, did you?”

“Do … what?”

“You just tried to have The Conversation with me over the phone?” she said, capitalizing the t and c with her tone. “Now it appears you couldn’t be my child’s sperm donor because you are a less evolved species. Who tries to have The Conversation with a woman over the phone?”

“I, ahh, was just asking a ques-”

“That’s it,” she declared. “You’re taking me to dinner tonight. You can’t possibly expect me to have The Conversation at any less than a four-star restaurant. Pick me up at eight.”

And that was it. Had I, in fact, escaped? Was I free to continue my burrowing and gnawing? For the moment, I must say I felt safer. Warmer.

Which probably just meant I was already in the owl’s stomach.

* * *

For whatever Tina’s thoughts on the absurdity of my task, I was still under orders to track down a charm bracelet-and, I must say, was getting nowhere in a hurry on my assignment.

Asking Akilah directly was out of the question, unless I was ready to commit to some serious cardio training or, at the very least, buy a stun gun. I tried reaching Sweet Thang on her cell phone-both of them-to see how she was coming along with Mrs. Harris. But when “Thang, Sweet” and “Thang, Sweet 2” went to voice mail, I hung up rather than leave a message, slightly annoyed I hadn’t heard from her yet.

Not knowing what else to try, I called Tee to see if he was getting any traction.

“Yeah,” Tee said. His typical salutation.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s your white friend.”

“You know, I do have two of them, so you’re going to have to narrow it down.”

“You’re cheating on me? I had no idea. Who’s this other honky in your life and why have you never spoken of him before?”

“Well, I don’t really consider him all that white. Not like you,” Tee said. “He’s a bit of a wigga.”

“I’m sorry, a wigga?”

“Yeah, a white dude who act like a nig-”

“Got it,” I said quickly. “Anyhow, talk to me. Tell me some good news.”

“Well, I made some calls.”

“And?”

“It look like Maury don’t got too many friends. At least he ain’t got the same friends I do.”

“Oh” is all I could think to reply.

“I reached out to brothers who know everyone, and they still don’t know Maury,” Tee said. “I mean, everyone knows him, but nobody knows him. Not well enough to make an introduction, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, I think I got you,” I said. “Well, thanks for the effort.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said. And I was about to bid him farewell and hang up, except he added: “How bad you need this jewelry back, anyway?”

I thought about those Hunterdon County Girl Scout meetings with which Szanto threatened me. After the second or third year, the annual cookie sale story was going to get pretty stale. Not even I liked Samoas that much.

“I would say I’m pretty desperate at this point.”

“So you got an emergency, huh?”

“I do.”

“All right,” Tee said. “I didn’t want to do this. But if you say it’s an emergency, I’ll break the glass.”

“Shatter it.”

“I mean, I ain’t got no choice.”

“None.”

“Okay, I’ll get right on it.”

“Super.”

“Because it’s an emergency.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I have to.”

“Right.”

“Okay then. I’m going to do it.”

“Fantastic,” I said, then just had to ask: “Tee, what are we talking about?”

He paused dramatically.

“I’m going to call Mrs. Jamison,” he said at last.

Tee always referred to his wife as “Mrs. Jamison.” He tries to lead people to believe he’s just being cute. But, really, he’s afraid of her.

“And what’s Mrs. Jamison going to be able to do?” I asked.

“You haven’t met her yet, have you,” he said, more as a statement than a question.

“No.”

“Wait until you meet her. You’ll understand.”

“She’s that tough?”

“She’s so tough she can slam a revolving door,” Tee said ominously.

“Well, then I’ll be glad she’s on our side.”

“Meet us outside Maury’s in fifteen minutes,” Tee instructed me.

“You sure she’ll do it?”

“I’m a man. My woman do what I tell her to do.”

“In other words, you already called her and she already said yes,” I said.

“Exactly. See you in fifteen. Don’t be late. Mrs. Jamison don’t like waiting.”

By the time I made it to Maury’s and parked, Tee was already out front, dressed in camouflage wind pants and a puffy black jacket. Tee is about five feet ten. The woman standing next to him was nearly as tall, with tight blue jeans, a New York Knicks jacket, and her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She looked like she could boil water just by staring at it.

“Hey Tee, thanks for doing this,” I said, shaking his hand then turning to his wife. “You must be Mrs. Jamison. I’m Carter Ross. Nice to meet you.”

I reached out my hand to shake with her, but she left it hanging there like she was trying to figure out if I carried a deadly strain of avian flu.

“So, you lost a necklace or something?” she said. She had a big, resonant voice. I was betting a choir somewhere would have been thrilled to have her in their alto section.

“Well, it’s actually a whole lot of jewelry-an entire jewelry box full,” I said. “But the one piece I really have to get back is a charm bracelet.”

“And this belongs to your … girlfriend, is that right?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tee nodding.

“Yes, ma’am, my girl … girlfriend.”

“And you’re planning on marrying this girl?” she demanded. Again, I saw Tee nodding, this time with more force.

“Yes, yes, ma’am.”

“That’s good. Because I don’t want to be doing no favors so you can get some cheap booty call. I do not condone intercourse unless it is going to lead to marriage. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, then willed myself to sound more convincing. “I’m going to make an honest woman out of her, just as soon as I save up enough money for a nice ring. I don’t want to make it some cheap thing. I was thinking two, three carats.”

“You hear that, Reginald! He’s going to get her a nice ring,” Mrs. Jamison boomed, backhanding Tee in the gut. Tee’s stomach, much like the rest of him, is pretty solid beef. But he still grimaced a little.

“I swear to you, this man, if I hadn’t told him exactly what to get, he would have gotten me a ring out of a cereal box,” Mrs. Jamison continued, then stuck out her left hand so I could inspect it. “As you see, he came though in the end, didn’t you, baby?”

She gave Tee a quick, full-lipped kiss. Tee appeared grateful he wasn’t getting smacked again.

“C’mon,” she said, as she headed toward the entrance. “Let me do the talking.”

* * *

Maury’s Pawnshop, Check-Cashing, and Payday Loans was what you might expect from a hock shop buried deep in a Newark neighborhood, only more disgusting. In front of the semishattered glass door were three concrete steps, each crumbling at the edges. A WE’LL BE BACK sign with a clock face on it was attached to the inside of the door, but the plastic hands had been ripped off, leaving one to guess when, if ever, someone might return; or, for that matter, why they’d want to.

Inside the cramped waiting area, I got the distinct impression little about the place had been updated since the original Maury opened shop-sometime shortly after he returned from the war, judging from the decor. It had that Norman Rockwell feel to it, except this was the version Rockwell painted when he was old, bitter, and off his antidepressants.

The faux wood paneling had several fist-sized dents in it. The linoleum had been scuffed straight through to the plywood floorboard in spots. In one corner, there was a gumball machine without a lid-and, therefore, without gumballs. The chrome-framed chairs bolted to the floor in the middle of the room had all lost their arms, and their seat cushions had taken a beating through the years. On the wall, a poster produced by the American Pawn-Owners Association-featuring a smiling, Stepford Wife-looking woman saying, “We buy and sell your finest previously owned merchandise”-had been thoroughly and profanely vandalized.

The only things I guessed were not purchased by the original Maury himself were the NO WEAPONS ALLOWED, EXCEPT FOR SALE sign and the two-inch-thick bulletproof glass that now covered the space between the countertop and the ceiling. The glass apparently worked, because I counted six bullet-sized pockmarks peppered across the front.

Behind the glass, a pudgy, indolent-looking Hispanic guy was engrossed in a Mexican soap opera, the kind whose plotline seemed to consist almost entirely of buxom women showing their cleavage to swarthy men with well-groomed mustaches.

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Jamison said, and not timidly. Still, the man didn’t budge. His full attention was fixed on a woman wearing a red dress that showed off approximately seventy-five percent of the total surface area of her breasts.

“ExCUSE me,” Mrs. Jamison said again, this time loud enough to penetrate the bulletproof glass. The man tore his eyes away from the screen and turned toward us. A small piece of Plexiglas covered a circular cluster of airholes that served as the only means of communicating with the outside world. He slid it open to better hear us-not that Mrs. Jamison had trouble projecting.

“Hi, sugar, what’s your name?” Mrs. Jamison said.

The man looked alarmed-this was not how his interactions with customers typically began-but he answered, “Pedro.”

“Pedro, I’m here to see Maury,” Mrs. Jamison informed him.

“Who are you?”

“You tell him Mrs. Jamison is here to see him.”

She said it so matter-of-factly-as if Maury would know exactly why she had come calling-that Pedro got off his chair and went into the back room. Mrs. Jamison rested her elbow on a small ledge in front of the bulletproof glass, quite secure in her ownership of the space around her.

I scanned the store a little more. The glass was divided into four cubbyholes-two for clerks and two to display some of the wares for sale-a mix of guns, electronics, and some serious bling.

Tee once explained to me that bling served a dual role in the hood. It was a status symbol, of course. But it was also a form of insurance, a means to sock away money during the good times so you were never flat busted when things went bad. Example: a guy flush from some gainful venture lays out $9,000 for a secondhand diamond necklace. He does this so he can enjoy and display the fruits of his success. But he also acquires it in case his next venture goes bad-that way he’s got seed money to start all over again. Sure, Maury or his numerous competitors might only give the guy a $7,000 return on his “investment.” But that’s a worthwhile deal for our urban entrepreneur. And, best of all, his safety net is never farther away than his neck.

Tee, who seemed to be reading my mind, muttered, “Man, some nice insurance policies here.”

“Reginald!” Mrs. Jamison said sharply. “We didn’t come here to shop.”

“I was just lookin’,” Tee said, chastened.

Pedro returned and mumbled, “He’s no here.”

I was about to call balderdash on Pedro-how could you say he’s not here when you spent three minutes talking to him? — but as soon as I drew the breath to speak, Mrs. Jamison put her hand on my arm. She was in control of this situation.

“Pedro, you and I have just met, but I fear we’re off to a bad start,” she said in a voice that perfectly straddled the line between calm and scary. “Surely, a man of your intelligence understands all men must build relationships based on mutual trust. When you betray that trust so early in a relationship, it really makes me question your decency as a man. Is that really how you want to be known, Pedro? Is that what you want put out into the universe?”

Pedro’s eyes were starting to grow wide. I wasn’t sure how much of the actual language he was absorbing. But, as linguists have repeatedly proven, nonverbal cues are every bit as important as verbal ones in conveying meaning. And Mrs. Jamison’s nonverbals were nearly as loud as her verbals.

“Now,” she continued, “you have a mama, don’t you, Pedro?”

Pedro nodded.

“Did your mama raise you to lie to another woman like that?”

Pedro shook his head.

“Okay, Pedro, then let’s try this again. I’m here to see Maury, and I ain’t going nowhere until I do. So why don’t you run back to that little room and tell him that.”

She made a shooing motion with her hand. Pedro’s feet stayed rooted, but the uncertainty was all over his face. Did he defy his boss? Or piss off this crazy lady who was babbling in that scary voice about who-the-hell-knows-what?

Mrs. Jamison gave him some gentle nudging.

“Pedro, I don’t want to have to raise my voice. Believe me, you do not want me to raise my voice,” she said. “So let me make this clear to you: you’re in that little box right now. But you’re going to have to come out eventually. And when you do, I’m going to rip you in half with my bare hands.”

Without pausing, Pedro slid off his chair and walked quickly toward the back room.

* * *

The man who emerged from the office moments later was not Pedro. It had to be Maury. He was a tall, gangly middle-aged black man who appeared to have stepped straight out of 1981, with a head full of Jheri curls-in all their greasy, ringletted glory-and a smile that included at least three gold-capped teeth. I wondered, amid all this pawned merchandise, if the caps were previously owned, too. I also wondered where he kept his Rick James albums.

He opened the Plexiglas.

“I’m told by my assistant there are some unruly customers out front?” he said, but he had a fairly prominent lisp, so it came out as, “I’m told by my athithtant there are thome unruly cuthtomerth out front.”

“You must be Maury,” Mrs. Jamison said.

“That’th what people call me.”

“I’m Mrs. Jamison.”

“Yeah? Tho?”

Maury peered at us over the top of his dark glasses, Jheri curls just barely brushing against the jacket of his purple-yes, purple-three-piece suit. Underneath was a pressed white shirt with a banded collar, a perfect accent for an outfit that might be described as priest-meets-pimp. I couldn’t see what he was wearing on his feet, but I was guessing there were some two-toned shoes down there. Maury was clearly a man with that kind of style.

“You have a piece of jewelry that belongs to this gentleman’s fiancee,” Mrs. Jamison said. So now Sweet Thang was my fiancee? Tina was going to love that.

“Who thaid that?”

“I’m saying that.”

“And who are you again?”

“I’m Mrs. Jamison.”

Maury pondered that for a moment, pointed at me, and asked, “Who’th he?”

“This is Mr. Carter Ross. And his fiancee is very unhappy her jewelry was stolen from her.”

“Thtolen!” Maury said, as if the mere concept repulsed him.

“Allegedly stolen,” Tee interjected.

Mrs. Jamison glared daggers at him.

“What?” he said. “Until something is proven in a court of law, it’s just an allegation.”

Mrs. Jamison’s glare had upgraded to machetes.

“A’ight,” Tee said. “I’ll shut up now.”

Maury wasn’t focusing on either of them but rather on the oddity in the room. The white man.

“You a cop or thomething?” he asked.

The question, while clearly tossed in my direction, was handled by my self-appointed spokeswoman, Mrs. Jamison. “He’s a newspaper journalist,” she said. “He is a top, top editor at the Eagle-Examiner.”

Sure I was. Why not? If I was engaged to Sweet Thang, I might as well be a top, top editor. Whatever that was.

“Yeah?” Maury said, sounding impressed.

“Yes and, sugar, believe me, if he don’t like you, he’ll write an expose blowing your whole operation out of the water,” Mrs. Jamison said. “They’d put your picture in the paper and everything.”

I tried to look serious, like I was already planning out how the front page would look. It was, of course, patently unethical to abuse my position as a newspaper reporter to threaten someone like this. But Maury didn’t seem like the kind of guy who was going to write a letter of complaint to Columbia Journalism Review. And, besides, technically it was Mrs. Jamison abusing my position. That subtlety, I rationalized, absolved me of any wrongdoing.

“Tho what’th thith jewelry I’m thuppothed to have?” Maury asked

“It’s a charm bracelet.”

I thought I saw some recognition wander briefly across Maury’s face.

“I’m not thaying I have anything like that,” Maury said. “But if I did, when would I have acquired it?”

“This morning,” Mrs. Jamison said.

Maury turned toward the back room and shouted, “Manuel! Manuel, get me that thtuff from earlier today.”

Pedro appeared from the back room and said something in Spanish.

“Yeah, yeah, that thtuff,” Maury said, and Pedro disappeared again.

“Manuel?” Mrs. Jamison spat. “He told me his name was Pedro.”

“It ain’t neither,” Maury said. “Jutht like my name ain’t Maury. You got to keep your ammo-nimity in thith line of work.”

I grinned at the apparent mispronunciation and wanted to ask if he also had to keep his “anonymity,” but it wasn’t my place to intercede.

“Pedro, you have a truthfulness problem,” Mrs. Jamison shouted after him. “We’re going to have to talk about that.”

Maury again focused his attention on me.

“I mutht thtate for the record, Mr. Roth, thith ethtablithment doeth not traffic in thtolen merchandithe. But there are thome unthcrupulouth people in thith world who may mithreprethent the originth of thome itemth and take advantage of my generouth nature.”

Mrs. Jamison arched her right eyebrow, crossed her arms, and let out a perfectly skeptical, “Uh-huh.”

“Now, how would you dethcribe thith thtolen merchandithe?”

Again, a question for me. But this time I was going to have to come up with an answer. I had meant to get more specifics about the bracelet, but Sweet Thang wasn’t returning my phone calls for some odd reason-where was that girl, anyhow?

So I was on my own. What did Sweet Thang’s charm bracelet look like? I knew somewhere in my brain, in the part charged with important tasks like quoting movie passages and song lyrics, there was an excruciatingly detailed description of the charm bracelet-albeit one that was provided between 6:14 and 6:19 earlier that morning, when I was not yet functioning.

I rewound through my day, through my bouncing around Newark, my breakfast with Sweet Thang, my lecherous thoughts while she was in the shower, my hasty nonnewspaper-glancing departure from my own house, my jarring wake-up call, and …

There! Just after the jarring wake-up call. I was hearing Sweet Thang’s voice in my head now, saying something I wasn’t comprehending in the moment. But somehow it had stuck in there, in a small crevice next to the John Cusack Say Anything monologue. And I found myself pulling it up with near-perfect recall.

“Well, it’s a charm bracelet,” I said. “I’ve never seen it, but she told me about it. Some of the pieces include a sombrero she got in a trip to Puerto Vallarta. There’s also a darling little gondola her father brought her back from Venice.”

“Excuse me, did you just say ‘darling’?” Tee asked.

“Reginald!” Mrs. Jamison scolded. “At least someone listens to his woman.”

She drew her hand back but did not let it fly. Tee cringed anyway. Maury placed his chin in his hand, giving himself a moment to think about it.

“Thombrero, huh?” he said. “I may have theen thomething like that.”

He walked to the back room, Jheri curls bouncing, and returned moments later with a gold charm bracelet suspended between his fingers.

“Thith it?” he asked.

He held it up. It had to be Sweet Thang’s. It just looked like something a Vanderbilt coed would own.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”

“Well, now, thith ith a very rare piethe of fine jewelry we’re talking about here,” Maury said. “I don’t think it’th pothible for me to part with thith piethe for leth than a thouthand dollarth.”

“How about you part with that piece and we won’t press charges for receiving stolen merchandise,” Mrs. Jamison countered. “This gentleman’s fiancee is a white girl and she could go to police headquarters and fill out a report and everything. You know how cops like to help white girls.”

Maury considered this a moment.

“Hundred buckth.”

“Twenty.”

“Done,” Maury replied, and started hitting numbers on his cash register.

Just like that, I happily parted with a portrait of Andrew Jackson, and Maury slipped Sweet Thang’s charm bracelet through the revolving box in the bulletproof glass.

Maury pointed a finger at me.

“Don’t try coming back for the retht of it,” he warned. “I thtill have to be able to make a living, you know.”

Some living. The sheer sleaziness of the place finally overwhelmed me, so I just waved at him as we walked out the shattered front door. He didn’t have to worry about me coming back.

* * *

I bid the Jamisons farewell, thanking Tee for his assistance and promising his wife one last time I would make an honest woman out of Sweet Thang just as soon as I could find her an engagement ring that would shame the Hope diamond.

As I drove back toward the office, I turned on my radio, tuning it to an all-news station to see if any of my colleagues in the media had learned anything useful about Windy Byers. I didn’t have to wait long for the story, which led the top of the hour. The announcer referred to Byers as the “beloved Newark councilman” who hailed from a “Newark political dynasty” and so on. I love it when the radio guys just read from the newspaper. Sometimes you can practically hear the newsprint crinkling under the microphone. The station cut to a clip of the Matos press conference, going for the sound bite about how the Byers family was doing a lot of praying.

I flipped the radio to FM and felt myself frowning. Having successfully retrieved Sweet Thang’s charm bracelet-great journalistic triumph that it was-I now presumed I would return to real, actual reporting on the Byers story.

And I didn’t know where to start. Reporting can be a bit like exploratory surgery, except you perform it wearing oven mitts and a blindfold. Sometimes you’re not even sure what part of the body to cut open. As a general rule, you never know where you’re going until you’ve already been there. I often wished I could start at the end, having already acquired all the necessary hindsight. It would save so much time.

When I arrived in the newsroom, it had that big-story buzz about it. Editors who normally sauntered around like they had no place to go were walking with alacrity. Reporters who might ordinarily be leaning back as they gabbed with sources on the phone were hunched over, hard at work. Buster Hays, resident dinosaur, had three Rolodexes open at the same time, pulling out business cards that were probably older than I was. The forever-silly Tommy Hernandez was staring at his computer screen with a fold between his neatly trimmed eyebrows, perhaps the first time I had seen so much as the slightest crease in his otherwise unworried countenance.

And the beauty of our newsroom was that, like most newsrooms, you could see it all unfolding before you. There were no walls, no partitions, no cubicles to wreck your view-just tightly clustered islands of desks stretching over a sea of open space.

I marched over to mine, which was against a far wall, an auspicious spot whose principal advantage was that it allowed me to see the enemy (editors) approaching from a good distance. My desk had once been used by an old-time city reporter who chain-smoked like Chairman Mao and, as legend had it, quit his job because he refused to comply with the new policy when the newsroom finally went smoke-free in the mid-nineties. The desk sat empty for years after that-to aerate, I assume-but when I moved in, there was still an ashtray sitting atop. I don’t smoke, but I kept it there, in memory of my predecessor and as a monument to a bygone time in the history of our industry.

Sadly, the computer sitting on my desk was roughly as old as the ashtray. No one knew the exact age of our terminals: they already qualified as antique when I started at the paper; by now, the only way anyone could figure out how long they had been there was through carbon dating. We were assured they would be replaced just as soon as advertising revenues rebounded. In other words, we had a long wait.

As my machine clicked and rattled to life, I began playing around with various Windy Byers theories, seeing if I could find one that fit. The police chief said they thought it was “politically motivated,” but I was having a hard time digesting that one. Byers was a hack who had been in the game long enough that he knew how to play by the rules and avoid pissing off important people. He had no policy initiatives that could have engendered anyone’s ire. It wasn’t like he had unpopular or dangerous ideas inasmuch as I’m not sure he had ideas, period.

I could much more easily believe this was the result of some romantic entanglement. But if the spilled blood was to be believed, Byers’s disappearance was not a peaceful one-which ruled out the run-off-with-the-girlfriend/boyfriend scenario.

Then again, there was nothing yet to say the blood belonged to Byers. For all we knew at this point, it had another owner. Perhaps Byers was not the kidnapped but the kidnapper, having belted someone over the head, dragged his victim out of the house, and gone on the lam until he could concoct a cover story.

In other words, the blindfold and oven mitts were firmly in place. So I did what any good reporter does when facing such uncertainty: I procrastinated by checking my e-mail.

It was, by and large, the usual mix of urgent messages from our hyperactive HR department (send in your vacation pictures for the company newsletter!); press releases I would never read (the office of a congressman from New Orleans sent me three or four a day because I once wrote a story that contained the word “Louisiana”); and come-ons from that seemingly massive group of African princes who needed but a small loan to claim their long-lost fortunes (doesn’t it always take $50,000 to become a multimillionaire?).

I nearly turned away without reading any of them. Except there was one message, which claimed to be sent by “Concerned Citizen,” that stood out. It had the subject line “keep digging.” Curious, I clicked twice and read:

ms. mcmillan and mr. ross,

i saw your story today in the eagle-examiner on that woman with the two kids. theres a reason you couldnt find the mortgage. there are things going on at the courthouse which if i told you you wouldnt believe. keep digging and youll find it.

im sorry i cant give you my name. but i could get fired for talking to you and i have kids to feed and i need this job.

signed,

a concerned citizen.

I leaned back and reread it. As a reporter, you get anonymous mail all the time. Much of it is nonsensical, rambling, Unabomber-style stuff good for a laugh-and not much else. But every now and then you get something like this that sticks to your ribs. You learn to separate the credible from the crazies, primarily by judging grammar and spelling. Other than the aversion to apostrophes and the e. e. cummings approach to capitalization, this one wasn’t bad.

Mostly, it brought back the things that had been gnawing at me since Sweet Thang first called me from the courthouse. Where was that silly mortgage? Who made it disappear? And, perhaps most important, why?

* * *

I lifted my eyes from the screen and realized I had allowed myself to get a little too engrossed, which meant I didn’t notice Sal Szanto huffing toward me. And now it was too late: 245 pounds of pear-shaped, middle-aged Italian-American editor was already standing over me, close enough I could smell the stale coffee on his breath. So much for being able to see the enemy coming.

Szanto was one of those editors who didn’t believe in leaving his office, except in cases of emergency or lunch. As it was now past lunchtime, it could only mean he was in crisis.

“Did you get it?” he asked, without prelude, with an urgency that just made it impossible not to mess with him a little.

“Hi, Sal, nice to see you,” I said. “There’s something different about you. Did you switch antacid brands?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m wearing a different deodorant, too. It’s called Garbage Guard. They tell me it works great, so why don’t you cut the garbage and tell me whether you got the bracelet or not.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“Not yet.”

“Why the hell not?” he demanded.

“Here,” I said, fishing the bracelet out of my pocket and dangling it in front of him. “Why don’t you give it to her? Go ahead. Be the hero.”

Szanto turned to look in the direction of the intern desk pod, a place from which Sweet Thang was, of course, still absent.

“Where is she?”

“I think you’re beginning to realize why I haven’t given it to her yet,” I said.

Szanto swung back toward me, annoyed, what little patience he had long since spent. I don’t know what it was, but the more frustrated he got, the more I enjoyed screwing with him.

“Do you know where she is?”

“I assume she’s off somewhere looking for her bracelet.”

“Did you call her cell?”

“No, Sal, I sent smoke signals which were then relayed by drummer-messengers perched on a series of hilltops,” I said. “It’s the newest, most sophisticated method of communication yet devised. I don’t think humankind will ever come up with anything better.”

Szanto drew breath as if he was going to let me have it, then stopped himself.

“Look,” he said, sinking into a chair next to me, releasing a huge cloud of java-tinged exhaust. “I just need you to help me out here. You know how fixated Brodie gets about certain things, right?”

“I do.”

“He’s like one of those little dogs, the little white ones with the black splotches that want to hump your leg all day long,” Szanto said. “What do you call those?”

“Jack Russell terrier?”

“Exactly. He’s a Jack Russell terrier. And right now, I’m just a lonely ankle, and I’ve had this dog’s tiny little schlong banging into me all day-bang, bang, bang, bang. I mean, can you imagine what kind of day that is?”

“Don’t even want to.”

“No, really, you don’t. Trust me,” Szanto said. “Anyhow, the whole reason Brodie is giving me this undue attention is this bracelet. Apparently, Sweet Thang called her daddy crying, and her daddy called Brodie and asked for a favor, and with everything else going on, Brodie still thinks I have nothing better to do than to make sure he can do a favor for his buddy. So if you could please, please just get this girl her bracelet back, and tell her to call her daddy, who can then call Brodie, you’d really be doing me a favor.”

“Okay, I’ll do it just as soon as she walks in the door,” I assured him, then turned my attention toward my computer screen, which is International Body Language for “we’re done with this conversation and now you can go away.”

Except Szanto was acting like he didn’t understand it.

“Not soon enough,” he said.

“Huh?” I said, still keeping my head down.

“You got to go find her.”

“Excuse me?” I said, and looked up at him, trying to effect my best vacant stare, as if I didn’t know who he was or what he was talking about.

“Find her. Find Sweet Thang and give her that bracelet.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He didn’t reply, just grinned-one of his four smiles for the year, so he must have been serious.

“You’re not kidding me.”

He shook his head.

“Sal, I sent Sweet Thang off on what is probably a dead-end reporting errand to Baxter Terrace,” I said. “I called her, at least twice. I don’t know why she’s not answering her phone. Maybe she stopped at the mall and decided to buy the entire Nordstrom shoe department on her way back in. But she’ll be back any second. And when she gets here, I’ll give her the bracelet.”

Szanto shook his head again.

“Not good enough,” he replied. “Look, the sooner you get that bracelet to that girl, the sooner my half-hourly e-mails, phone calls, and just-checking-in visits from Brodie stop. And I just can’t take him. I can’t take any more of that today.”

He clasped his clubbed fingers together in a pleading gesture. His eyes were big and wet, and in a moment of weakness-brought on by an awareness of the abuse I piled on him and a small amount of guilt that at least one of his stomach ulcers probably had my name on it-I agreed.

“Okay.” I sighed. “Fine. I’ll call you the moment I hand her the bracelet.”

“Thanks,” Szanto said, raising himself with a grunt from the chair next to me. He clapped me affectionately on the shoulder-another quarterly event-then walked away.

* * *

Before committing myself to another Baxter Terrace jaunt, I dialed Sweet Thang’s numbers one last time. Both went to voice mail.

I looked at the time on my phone, which read 2:13. She and I departed Jersey City around nine-thirty. If she drove straight to Baxter Terrace, she would have gotten there no later than ten. That meant Sweet Thang and her buoyant personality had spent more than four hours in one of the nation’s most depressed public housing projects. It sounded like a reality show gone horribly wrong-instead of Dancing with the Stars, it was Prancing in the Projects.

There was no telling what had kept her there all that time. It was daylight, so I wasn’t concerned about her well-being. Well, okay, I worried about it a little. Mostly, I was just curious: What had she been doing all this time?

I filled my drive thinking about the possibilities. As I walked through the courtyard toward Bertie Harris’s apartment, I heard a series of birdcalls-a macaw, a chickadee, and an osprey. Okay, I’m making that up. But it sounded like different birds than last time.

Going through the open portal of Bertie’s building, I hiked the three flights up to the landing where I had been so thoroughly stonewalled the night before. I raised my fist to rap on the door but then paused mid-strike, having heard a noise from inside. What was that? Was it … laughter? I paused, just to make sure. Yes, laughter, the deep, chuckling kind you hear from two longtime friends who know just how to get each other going.

I also smelled something powerful enough to overcome the natural stench of the projects. Was it … baking bread?

I thought about eavesdropping a little more, but I just had to know. I knocked.

“I’ll get it,” I heard Sweet Thang call.

She opened the door, looking delighted-if a little surprised-to see me.

“Oh, my goodness, hi!” she bubbled. “It’s so great of you to come over. We’re having the best time! Come on in. I’m just making some banana bread.”

I stepped over the threshold feeling a little uncertain, given the rebuke I had experienced the last time I visited. But no, everything had changed. There would be no screaming, no hateful glares, no slamming of furniture. Sweet Thang was here. Baking was happening. A transformation had taken place.

Especially when it came to the apartment’s occupant, who was sitting at a card table in the far corner, a coffee mug in front of her, smiling pleasantly. She was older, but it was always hard to tell with black women. I was thirty-two and already had wrinkles. She’d probably be in her casket thirty years from now and still not have any.

As a skilled observer of the obvious, I concluded this had to be Bertie Harris. She and Akilah had the same cheekbones, the same lean build, the same no-nonsense ponytail, the same dark coloring.

“Mrs. Harris, I’m Car-” I started.

“I know who you are,” Bertie replied agreeably.

“I’m sorry abou-”

“I know you’re sorry about last night. And I’m sorry, too,” she said. “Lauren explained to me how it is for a reporter on deadline. You was just trying to do your job.”

This had to be the easiest reconciliation in the history of human relations. I ought to have Sweet Thang do my advance work more often.

“Well, please accept my apology all the same,” I said.

“You’re right,” Bertie said to Sweet Thang, who was in the kitchen, “he is cute.”

“Told you,” Sweet Thang chirped back.

As I blushed, Bertie took a sip from her coffee, utterly comfortable with my presence. I tried to relax, still feeling like I didn’t quite belong, not wanting to screw up whatever it was Sweet Thang had done to build a trust with this woman.

I wasn’t going to sit down until offered a place (we cute boys have manners), nor was I going to take off my jacket (we cute boys aren’t presumptuous), so I sneaked a furtive glance around the apartment (we reporters are nosy). The furnishings-a small couch, a recliner, a coffee table, and that folding table-were older and a bit worn. But I had certainly seen worse.

The television that had been blaring Entertainment Tonight was still playing but with the sound down. It had to be at least a forty-two-inch screen, which surprised me a little. You don’t see many of those in the projects-sad to say, but nice belongings usually get stolen within a week of their arrival. That the TV was still here either meant it had just arrived; the local addicts were too lazy to steal from the third floor; or, more likely, Bertie Harris was so well regarded around here no one messed with her.

In the pictures that were scattered about the place, I saw Akilah with what appeared to be some older brothers and sisters-again, so much for the lonely-orphan story.

“I’m going to leave it in there another few minutes,” Sweet Thang announced as she came back into the room and took a seat at the folding table. “The middle is still just a little gooey.”

“Mr. Ross, you better marry this girl if you have any sense,” Bertie said. “It’s not every day you find a woman who can bake.”

“Wait until you taste it first,” Sweet Thang said.

“I don’t need to. I can smell it. It’s wonderful.”

“I was just lucky you had some soft bananas,” Sweet Thang replied. “My recipe doesn’t work unless they’re good and ripe.”

They kept bantering about the subtleties of perfect banana bread and I could only watch in amazement. Here was this woman in the midst of a family tragedy; a woman who, just last night, would have thrown me out her window if she had the strength. Yet she and Sweet Thang were instant buddies.

That was Sweet Thang’s gift, one I didn’t necessarily have but could at least recognize and appreciate in a fellow reporter. She made people want to talk to her.

One of the few traits that I’ve found universal among Homo sapiens is the desire to be understood by other Homo sapiens. It’s a need that translates across every racial, gender, and socioeconomic barrier. Whether you’re talking about the CEO or the janitor, the congressman or the undocumented immigrant, people just want to be listened to. It’s why we talk so damn much.

Most of the time, we harbor the suspicion no one is really paying attention. Or, if they are, they still don’t get it. But every once in a while, we bump into someone like Sweet Thang, the rare person who actually makes us feel heard.

* * *

I must have been smiling as they jabbered, because Sweet Thang interrupted my inner monologue with a question:

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “I’m just glad you girls are having fun.”

“Oh, we’ve been having a blast,” Sweet Thang assured me. “It was just so lucky I came over when I did because it was Bertie’s turn to host mah-jongg, but she was short a player and I was able to step in.”

“I thought about canceling the game, what with everything going on,” Bertie said. “But then I thought it’d be nice to have something to take my mind off things.”

My only comment was to Sweet Thang: “You know how to play mah-jongg?”

“My Gram Gram taught me.”

“Taught her good, too,” Bertie cackled. “She whupped a bunch of old ladies.”

“I just got lucky,” Sweet Thang corrected her.

“Five times in a row!” Bertie cackled and lightly slapped the table.

She sipped her coffee. Sweet Thang crossed her legs. I was still standing, still feeling like I didn’t belong.

“So,” I said, “how long have you lived here?”

“Too long,” Bertie replied. “You wouldn’t believe it, but this was still a pretty nice place when I moved in here. Now?” She shook her head. “It’s shameful what this place has become. Every time I hear they want to knock it down, I cheer. They just can’t seem to get around to it.”

She was finished on that subject and we lapsed into silence. I heard the oven tick and creak as the gas turned on. The volumeless television was on a local all-news station that, at this time of day, repeated the same loop every half hour. I suddenly felt the urge to leave. I didn’t know what Sweet Thang had managed to create with Bertie Harris, whether it would help our story or not, but I felt like an intruder. It was time to do what I came to do and make my exit.

“Oh, by the way, Lauren, here’s your bracelet,” I said, pulling it from my pocket and handing it to her.

“Oh, my goodness, thank you!” Sweet Thang said, fingering the oh-so-cute sombrero from the Puerto Vallarta trip. “I was so worried, I even called my dad. I’m going to text him right now and tell him I got it back.”

And then Daddy would tell Brodie, who would stop his Jack Russell terrier impersonation on Szanto, who would undoubtedly be grateful.

“Where did you find it?” she asked, fingers flying.

“Atalittlepawnshop,” I replied quickly, hoping Bertie wouldn’t pick up on it.

But she did.

“You pawned your bracelet?” Bertie asked.

Sweet Thang tossed me a pleading glance, but I lobbed it right back. I didn’t know what she had and hadn’t told Bertie Harris about her thieving daughter, and it wasn’t my place to do so. This was Sweet Thang’s deal.

“Akilah stole it from me,” she said, finally.

Bertie sighed and set down her coffee cup so she could rub her temples. She closed her eyes.

“You let her stay with you and she stole your bracelet,” she said, shaking her head, forcing out a sigh. “You were a good Christian and she was a thief in the night. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. She stole your bracelet.”

“She didn’t mean to…” Sweet Thang started. “I’m sure she felt like she didn’t have a choice. She needed the money.”

“No,” Bertie said immediately, forcefully. “Don’t make no excuses for that girl. I been making excuses for her all her life and look where it got us. Akilah has always been a … a difficult girl. Lord knows I’ve tried with her.”

Bertie let loose another sigh, this time with a bit of a groan mixed in.

“I took her to church, I made her do her homework, I taught her to have respect. Respect! It was just like I did with my other children, and they all ended up successful. They all got out.

“Her older sister went to college,” Bertie continued, shaking her head and counting her children on her fingers as she went. “One of her older brothers went to the army. The other got himself a good job, a union job. But Akilah, she…”

“You did the best you could,” Sweet Thang said, patting her on the hand and looking at her with those tell-me-more eyes. And the thing was, she really wanted to know. Other reporters got away with faking that sometimes. But that was the essence of Sweet Thang’s gift as a reporter. She didn’t have to fake it. Deep down, she really did care.

“Akilah had a different father from the other children,” Bertie said. “We split when she was young, but she still had too much of her father in her. She was always a wild child, always doing her own thing. You couldn’t talk no sense into her. I gave her all the mothering I could and it still wasn’t enough.”

“She told us she was an orphan, that her mother died when she was young,” I said.

“I bet there were times she wished I did,” Bertie said. “But I’m still here.”

Bertie started sniffling. Sweet Thang retrieved a box of Kleenex. It was like interviewing Akilah all over again-it had that same kind of confessional feel, and there were once again sopping tissues involved. I could only hope this time we weren’t being served a steaming load of something that belonged in a cow pasture.

“She got pregnant for the first time when she was sixteen. I mean, I was raising a daughter in the projects, what did I expect?” Bertie said. “I told my pastor I didn’t want to have nothing to do with that child or its mother, but he told me I had to forgive her and so I did. And then that baby died. And it just about broke my heart.”

So, at least that much of what Akilah had told us was true, after all. Bertie blew her nose.

“Then she started fooling around with that damn married man,” she said, putting her hand across her heart like it was about to give. “We got a saying, Mr. Ross: ‘Ain’t nothing dumber than love.’ And let me tell you, there wasn’t nothing dumber than Akilah and that married man together.”

She was done blowing her nose for a moment. She was getting angry now.

“I just couldn’t take it after that. He got her pregnant”-she said the word with special disdain-“then he got her pregnant again. He had a wife and children, a whole other family, and he kept Akilah on the side, like a whore of Babylon. And she kept having his kids. I just couldn’t understand how that man’s wife could put up with that monkey business.

“But he’s a politician,” she finished, shaking her head as if that explained everything.

“Really?” I asked, suddenly more than a little intrigued. “What’s his name?”

“Oh, he’s … oh, now, what’s that fool’s name? It’s…” She tapped her head, like it would make it come to her.

“Well, I’ll be!” she said, pointing to the television. “That’s the man right there.”

I looked at the screen, whose forty-two inches were filled by a Missing Persons poster depicting Wendell A. Byers Jr.

Primo was no stranger to bribery, having used it expertly through the years to nourish his home-rehabbing business. When you were talking about home inspectors or appraisers, it was relatively simple. Offer a man a week’s salary for something that took him only a few seconds and cost him nothing-something like signing his name to a piece of paper or changing a few figures here or there-and chances are he was going to do it.

For those few who had crises of conscience, Primo made it clear there were painful consequences for not accepting a small gratuity in exchange for a little cooperation. Coercion and persuasion. Stick and carrot. It was a powerful combination, one that allowed a man to rationalize his moral weakness. Primo had yet to find a working man who failed to take him up on his offer.

With politicians, however, it was a different deal. It was a game of finesse, not brute force. These were powerful people, after all. They were not easily threatened.

There was one thing that made it easier for Primo, however. Under New Jersey law, what he and most people would consider a bribe was actually legal. It was called a campaign contribution.

Sure, there were caps on how much one could donate. But those were circumvented easily enough-with all the donors and all the candidates, it was nearly impossible for any law enforcement agency to check where a donation was really coming from. The state’s campaign finance laws, intended to be a moat guarding the castle of electoral credibility, were little more than a puddle.

The real difficulty, Primo quickly realized, came in discovering which politicians could be bought for a sizable campaign contribution, and which ones would thank you for your generosity and then lose your phone number as soon as you asked for a favor.

There was some expensive trial and error. And it involved some ass-kissing and attending events Primo didn’t particularly care to attend, simply to gain access to the key people. But ultimately Primo had discovered the effort was worthwhile. Because once you got the right person on your side, you could make government do virtually anything for you.

It was all about influence-or, rather, the perception of influence. From a statutory standpoint, an elected leader actually had very little authority over government. Only a few positions within a municipal or state government were political appointments, people who could be hired and fired at the whim of an elected leader. The majority were civil service positions. Firing them was an arduous process.

That might seem to make them difficult to influence. But the thing Primo discovered was that most civil servants didn’t truly understand how government worked. And they were paranoid about losing their jobs. So when an important person-or, again, someone they perceived as being important-told them to do something, they usually did it without question, no matter what the statutes might have to say on the subject.

Studies have shown it repeatedly: Human beings are programmed to accept leadership, totalitarian or otherwise. Even in America-land of the free, home of the brave, the country that created the notion of rugged individualism-most people will follow orders they believe are coming from above.

So for Primo, the whole game was about finding someone willing to use his influence to make government work the way Primo wanted it to. He took his time and wasted some donations to find that person.

But, finally, Primo came across a city councilman who seemed willing to do just about anything for cash.