Faces of the Gone

CHAPTER 2

My four-year-old Chevy Malibu-practical, dependable, and the last vehicle any self-respecting Newark carjacker would ever want-was parked in the garage across the street. When I bought it a year ago, I had taken endless ribbing from my newspaper friends. Apparently, a used Malibu isn’t considered the car of choice among highly eligible bachelors such as myself. My friends from Amherst, most of whom made Michael Moore look like a Bush family toady, chided me for not buying a hybrid that ran on lawn clippings.

But while I wholeheartedly support the development of renewable energy sources, damn if I’m going to drive some oversized golf cart. I’ll give up my gas-powered V6 just as soon as someone gives me an alternative that actually moves when I press down the accelerator.

As I got in the car, I turned on the radio, switching to a Top 40 station. The same liberal friends who disapproved of my choice of transportation also rolled their eyes at my music. But there’s only so much NPR a man can take.

“Oooh, I love this song,” Tommy said.

“Should I be worried I agree with you?”

“What do you mean? You’re worried you might actually have good taste for once?” Tommy said, turning it up and singing along, loud and off-key. Nothing like driving through Newark blasting music that announces, “We’re not from here.”

We soon crossed into Irvington, a city that’s like Newark but with fewer redeeming qualities. Irvington was once a blue-collar town that was only slightly down on its luck. Then Newark demolished its public housing high-rises, dispersing all the crime and dysfunction that had once been concentrated there. Irvington, like other towns nearby, had been caught completely unprepared and went into the toilet practically overnight.

The Stop-In Go-Go was no exception. Occupying a dingy, windowless corner storefront, it had as its only neighbors a bodega and a liquor store. Its backlit sign-which featured the silhouette of a curvaceous, long-legged dancer-had to be at least half a century old.

“If it gets out in the gay community I went to a place like this, I’ll be forever ostracized,” Tommy said as we parked and exited the car.

Intellectually, I knew strip clubs were offensive: they objectified the female gender, perpetuated wrongheaded ideas about sexuality, and opened young women to all kinds of potential exploitation. For those reasons, I avoided them.

Unless, of course, I was drunk. If you threw a couple beers in me, I had to admit I didn’t mind watching a woman take off her clothes. And judging by how much it lightened my wallet by the end of the evening, I could make a fair argument the exploitation went both ways.

The Stop-In Go-Go was not actually a strip club, mind you. It was a go-go bar, and in Jersey there was a difference: strip clubs could go all-nude but didn’t have booze; go-go bars had alcohol, but the dancer’s choicer bits needed to stay covered. Granted, a careless dancer might “unintentionally” flash a little nipple or a bit of muff. Accidents happen in every industry.

As we entered, we were barreled over by a smell that was one part male pheromone, two parts Coors Light, and three parts stale sweat. The Stop-In Go-Go may have been poisoning the environment in any number of ways, but the overuse of cleaning products wasn’t one of them.

“I’m afraid to sit down,” Tommy whispered. “I might stick to something.”

“That’s half the charm,” I said. “What are you drinking? This is no place to be sober.”

“How about a cran-apple Cosmo?” he asked.

“I don’t think they’ve heard of those here,” I said as I caught the attention of the bartender. “Two Buds, please.”

“We’re not going to start talking about sports now, are we?” Tommy asked.

“No, I think just being here is sufficient torture for you,” I said, then flipped two twenties down on the bar and turned to the bartender. “Mind giving me change in singles?”

“Oh, my God, you’re not really going to?” Tommy asked, horrified.

“Of course I am. I’ve got to play the part. I’m just wondering how exactly I’m going to put this down on my expense report.”

I grabbed the two beers and my pile of singles, then turned my attention to the small stage in the middle of the room. There, two dancers gyrated in robotic fashion to some tiresome bit of club music, their expressions blank, their minds elsewhere. The only person who could have possibly been more bored was Tommy.

One of the women was a thick-legged, bleached blonde who occasionally graced one of the patrons with a come-on in Russian-accented English. The other woman had to be Tynesha, a not-insubstantial black woman wearing just enough clothing to keep the Stop-In Go-Go from getting fined.

I sat down at one of the barstools ringing the stage and gestured for Tommy to sit next to me. Tynesha started dancing our way, wasting no time pouncing on fresh meat. I pulled a single out of my pocket and held it in the air. Chum couldn’t have made a shark come quicker.

“Thanks, baby,” she said as I slipped her a dollar, being careful not to let my hand linger in a way that might later be deemed professional misconduct.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Oohhh. You’re my white boy. I knew you’d be gorgeous.”

I forced a smile. Her eyes were amber-colored, from contact lenses. And when she smiled back it gave her a freaky look-the golden-eyed harlot.

I went to introduce Tommy, but he had vanished. He was probably off in a back room, swapping skin-care regimens with one of the dancers.

The hour went quickly enough and Tynesha shrank my stack of singles with professional efficiency. As soon as she was relieved of her duties, she cruised up behind me and let her hand get familiar with my tush.

“Mmmm,” she said. “You got yourself one firm behind. I’m going to have fun with you.”

Tynesha was only about five seven. But I was betting if she did try to “have fun” with me, I’d end up in traction. I’m delicate that way.

“Where can we go talk?” I asked in a low voice.

“I’ve got a private room upstairs,” she whispered, giving my butt a final squeeze.

“Sounds great,” I said. She led me behind a curtain then up a narrow flight of stairs, opening the first door and turning into a small cubbyhole of a room. It contained a bed, a dresser, and more clutter than my eyes could begin to focus on.

“Okay, baby, so what it’s going to be?” she said, expertly ditching her top and pushing her breasts on my forearm in one motion. “You want the full two hours?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tynesha eyed me.

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

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

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

“What you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. It’s Carter Ross.”

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

“Is your real name Tynesha?”

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

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

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

“You’re a prude,” she said.

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

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

“What kind of family did she have?”

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

“How many kids?”

“Four.”

“Yikes.”

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

“A vicious cycle?”

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

“How old are the kids?”

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

“Damn. That’s a handful.”

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

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

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

“When can we talk again?”

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

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

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

“Sure,” I said.

“What kind of lunch?”

“Any kind you wanted, I suppose.”

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

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

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

Australian place? Then it clicked.

“You mean an Outback Steakhouse?”

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

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

I had half a mind to bolt the Stop-In Go-Go and leave Tommy inside. But for as funny as that struck me-ditching a gay guy at a titty bar-it also met the constitutional threshold for cruel and unusual punishment. I found him at the bar, by himself, sulking.

“Can we get out of here?” he said. “It’s too hetero.”

I led him outside, where the night air smelled crisp, like snow-a nice change from the dankness of the Stop-In Go-Go.

“So, did you conquer the Sure Thing?” Tommy asked as we neared my car.

“Yeah, we had mad, wild sex.”

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

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

“Let me guess: she sold heroin, too.”

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

“The International House of Pancakes?”

“Close. The Outback Steakhouse.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The next morning, Hays’s story led the front page:

“A return trip to the scene of a previous crime proved deadly for Shareef Thomas and three accomplices, who Newark police believe orchestrated a robbery at the Ludlow Tavern several months ago-and have now paid the ultimate price.”

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

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

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

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

“What’s up, boss?”

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

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

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

“That Hays is an old-fashioned screwup.”

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

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

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

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

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

Szanto ground his teeth for a moment.

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

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

Szanto grumbled something as he reached for some Tums.

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

“I guess,” I admitted.

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

In other words: don’t rock the boat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better yet, make the intern do it.

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

While Tommy was out knocking on doors, I had a date-with a hooker and a Bloomin’ Onion.

I threaded my way through the ghetto, which seemed especially empty on this frigid morning. The wind had been fierce overnight, strong enough to knock over garbage cans. Trash was blowing everywhere-Jersey tumbleweed.

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

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

“About what?”

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

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

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

“You know it’s wrong?”

“Yes.”

“So why did you write it?”

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

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

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

She was still having a tough time believing me. I took advantage of her indecision.

“Look, why don’t you hop in and we can talk about it on the way. I’d still like to buy you lunch. You can stay pissed off at me, but at least get a good steak out of it.”

She nodded-few things are as persuasive as free meat-and walked around to the other side of the car. I opened the door for her from the inside.

“The nearest Outback is over on Route 22. It’ll probably take about twenty minutes to get there.”

“That’s fine,” she said, still sounding a little surly but coming out of it. “My shift don’t start until five.”

“Great,” I said as I got us under way, running over at least three plastic bags in the first two blocks.

“So, how many days a week do you dance?” I asked.

“Six.”

“And how many days a week do you. . uhh,” I began, immediately regretting the question.

“Turn tricks?” she asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“As many as I can. I can’t do this forever, you know. I’m thirty-six. I figure I got six, maybe eight, years until I’m all saggy and nasty. I want to have enough saved up by then to open one of them fancy clothing stores.”

“You mean like a boutique?”

“Yeah, a boutique.”

“That’s cool,” I said.

“I know what you’re thinking: ‘What does a ho know about starting a business?’ ”

“No, actually, I’m thinking it’s great to have a dream,” I said. “Everyone ought to have one.”

She looked at me thoughtfully. “Yeah, what’s your dream?”

The question caught me off guard. What was my dream? Maybe it used to be working for The New York Times, but the Old Gray Lady had long ago stopped hiring, just like every other newspaper. Or maybe it was winning a Pulitzer Prize. That’d be nice. But, really, that wasn’t something I thought about a lot.

“Maybe this sounds corny,” I said after a pause. “But this is my dream already. I get to make my living telling people’s stories. I think of that as a privilege. I can’t really imagine doing anything else. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to.”

She thought about this for a moment.

“I like you, Mr. Carter Ross. You seem like you got a good heart. And I got this little voice in my head-maybe it’s Wanda, I don’t know-telling me I ought to trust you. Just don’t make me regret it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, merging onto the five lanes of road-raging good times that is the Garden State Parkway.

We drove in comfortable silence for a while and I felt pleased with my progress. In order to tell any story successfully, you have to cross the threshold where your source stops looking at you like a reporter and starts seeing a fellow human being. I thought-I hoped-I had just reached that point with Tynesha.

“So what made you and Wanda hit it off?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t get along well with the other girls. But me and Wanda just clicked-sisters from a different mother or something. All her kids called me ‘Aunt T.’ ”

“You have any kids yourself?”

“Can’t. A guy messed me up real bad one time. Couldn’t get his own equipment working so he knocked me around for a while then did me with a broom handle.”

I flinched and reflexively moved my legs together.

“Yeah. Doctor said he busted my insides,” she continued. “Probably just as well. I would have messed up raising my kids just like my mama messed up raising me.”

I let the comment pass. She didn’t need me playing amateur psychologist.

“So who’s taking care of Wanda’s kids?”

“The grandma for now, but I think the state is gonna take them eventually. Wanda’s mama don’t got no money and she has that diabetes. She ain’t in good shape. They’ll split those kids up in a thousand different directions. The baby will probably get adopted because everyone wants babies. I don’t know about the older ones.”

I did. Unless they got really lucky, they were going to live in a succession of foster homes and group homes until they were turned out onto the street at age eighteen. We all get dealt a hand to play in this life. Being orphaned in Newark, New Jersey, had to rank among the worst.

As we made our way through midday traffic toward the Outback, we downshifted to small talk. It’s amazing how much hookers and reporters have in common: we have to walk the streets in all kinds of weather, we have to relate to people from a variety of backgrounds, and we’re constantly getting dicked around by politicians.

We arrived at the restaurant to find it mostly empty and got seated in a corner booth. After we ordered our meal and received our salads, I got down to business.

“So how is it you and Wanda started working together?”

“You mean with me doing it and her dealing?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess it was when she got pregnant with her fourth baby and couldn’t dance no more,” Tynesha said. “We were pretty tight by then. I knew she had to do something to support those kids of hers, and there ain’t exactly a lot of jobs out there for pregnant dancers. I mean, there were a few guys out there who wanted to get themselves with a pregnant girl. .”

I made a face.

“Yeah, all kinds of weird suckers out there,” she said. “But Tynesha didn’t want to turn tricks. She was real firm about that. You should put that in your article. Anyway, once her baby started showing, the owner wouldn’t let her dance no more, so she started selling. See, that’s the side I want to come out. She sold to support her kids. She wasn’t no bad person.”

“I’ll make sure that gets in,” I said, using it as an excuse to remove my notepad and start taking notes.

“So where did she get her drugs from?” I asked.

“At first, she got it from Lucious, my pimp. Then one of her boyfriends hooked her up with some stuff. She got it from all over, I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“What did she sell?”

“Oh, man, I don’t even know. All kinds of stuff. Whatever she could get her hands on. She was just trying to survive, you know what I’m saying?”

“She sell heroin?”

“Yeah, some of that.”

“She ever get caught?”

“Yeah, once,” Tynesha said. “She was selling to some guy who turned out to be a cop. Ended up doing some time for that.”

“When did she get out?”

Tynesha thought for a moment.

“Well, she got pregnant right after she got out. I mean, like, she was going to find herself a man to take care of her and she was going to do it fast. She got herself another loser, of course. And he ran off. But that was. . let’s see. . that baby is six months and she was pregnant for nine months. . so she got out. . a year and a half ago?”

“Didn’t getting sent to jail make her want to stop dealing?”

“Naw. It made her more careful,” Tynesha said. “It’s like she learned how to be a better dealer in jail, like it was dealer Vo-Tech or something. Before she went to jail she was just selling to people in the bar, you know? But then after she got out, she was selling inside the bar, outside the bar. People would seek her out. It was like, man, she made it. I mean, maybe this sounds weird or something, but I was proud of her.”

“So why did she keep dancing if she was doing such good business?”

“I guess it was like a front, you know? If she stopped dancing, it would be suspicious. We get cops who come in all the time. They know all the dancers. They’d notice if she quit. I guess she just didn’t want them asking questions.”

“Do you know what she was selling at that point?” I asked as our meat arrived.

Tynesha got this look like she was trying to remember something.

“I mean, there was this one guy. I was sucking him off and he was just jabbering on and on-some guys really like to talk, you know? And he said something like, ‘Man, I love this place. You give me the best head ever and your girl gives me the best H ever.’ ”

H. As in heroin.

“Was that before or after she got out of jail?” I asked.

“Definitely after,” Tynesha said with half a mouthful of filet mignon.

Another confirmed heroin seller. Another ex-con. It was definitely starting to become a pattern.

“So if she suddenly has this best-ever heroin after she gets out of jail, you think she hooked up with a source in prison?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I guess.”

“She ever talk about where she was getting it from?” I asked.

Tynesha looked at me solemnly.

“In the hood, if you have a really good source for junk, you don’t never talk about it. Never,” she said. “Not with your neighbor. Not with your boyfriend. Not even with your best friend.”

Our date finished uneventfully, and I dropped off Tynesha in Irvington with an exchange of cell phone numbers. When I got back to the office, it was nearing 3 P.M. and Tommy was deep into the Edun jeans Web site.

“My butt would look so killer in these,” he said wistfully. “Too bad they’re like $195.”

“Who would want to drop two bills on a friggin’ pair of jeans?”

“Bono wears Edun jeans,” Tommy said with the utmost gravity.

“And Bono has a great ass? He’s old enough to be your father.”

“I hope my ass looks half that good when I’m his age.”

“So Bono has set the standard for aging asses?”

“It’s not just his ass,” Tommy said, getting frustrated with me. “It’s his whole aura. I wouldn’t expect someone who wears pleated pants to understand.”

“What’s wrong with pleated pants?”

“Nothing, if it was still 1996,” Tommy said. “Although I guess they match your 1998 shoes.”

“Okay, meanwhile, back in the present, please tell me you managed to find out something about Shareef Thomas?”

“Well, of the seven addresses you gave me, I found two vacant lots, an abandoned building, one Shareef Thomas who is alive and well-and totally mental-and two places where, to quote one woman, ‘I ain’t never heard of no Thomas Shareef.’ ”

“And the seventh address?”

“I got a door slammed in my face.”

“That’s promising,” I said, and I wasn’t kidding.

“You think?”

“Absolutely. Think of all the things a slammed door represents: a little bit of anger, some fear, definitely something to hide. I’d say you hit paydirt. Which address was it?”

Tommy shuffled some papers. “One-nine-eight South Twelfth Street,” he said.

“That’s. . where?”

“Up off Central Avenue,” Tommy said. “I kicked three plastic vodka bottles on my way from the car to the front door. There’s a homeless shelter next door. It’s pretty much wino heaven.”

“Any of the neighbors know Shareef?”

Tommy paused, a little embarrassed.

“You didn’t talk to any neighbors?”

“It was like the fifth or sixth address I looked at,” he whined. “I was getting cold. All the other addresses had been dead ends. I just thought. .”

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “Look on the bright side: now you have something to do this afternoon.”

Tommy sighed and sank low into his seat.

“That street was so nasty,” he said.

“C’mon. All you need to do is find someone who will be willing to admit to a perfect stranger that Shareef Thomas was a heroin dealer who recently got out of prison. How difficult can that be?”

“See you later,” Tommy said, sighing more as he grudgingly lifted himself from his chair. “If I don’t make it back alive, I’m bequeathing you my wardrobe. At least I’ll die knowing it went to a truly needy recipient.”

I returned to my desk but quickly found myself yawning, always a sign the needle on my caffeine-o-meter was dipping low. I went to get a Coke Zero from the break room, where the reproductive-minded Tina Thompson was eating a late lunch, probably laced with ground-up fertility drugs. She was wearing a tight, rust-colored V-neck sweater that rather nicely showcased her upper half. I’m definitely a sucker for a woman with a nice set of shoulders, and Tina’s were better than most.

“You should avoid that stuff,” she said as I fed money into the soda machine. “Excessive caffeine has been shown to lower sperm count.”

“Really?” I said. “In that case, does this thing sell Red Bull?”

“I thought all men wanted to spread their seed,” Tina said. “Isn’t it supposed to be some kind of biological imperative?”

“Actually, I come from a long line of sterile males. Goes back generations.”

“Har har,” Tina said. It was a pretend laugh but she still rewarded me with a real smile. I don’t know what it was, but Tina had this one particular smile she used on occasion. It was at once coquettish and demure, but it also left little doubt she could make your toes curl in bed.

I distracted myself with the soda machine, which refused to dislodge my Coke Zero without a gentle bump. Sometimes you really had to rock the thing, which inevitably prompted someone to inform you that ten people a year die from vending machines falling on them.

“So what are we offering our readers tomorrow with regards to the Ludlow Four?” I asked.

“Oh, the usual shock and outrage. The mayor is promising to put more police officers on the streets. The antiviolence groups are clamoring to get their names in the paper. Some of the people on Ludlow Street are forming a neighborhood watch group. That sort of thing.”

“Team Bird coverage continues.”

“Yeah. Brodie has been humping my leg like a horny leprechaun all day,” Tina said. “And I might be flattered by that. But after he’s done with me, he goes over to Szanto and humps him. Besides, you ever notice Brodie has old-man hair issues? He’s got it coming out his ears, his nose, and he’s got those eyebrows that are sprouting like old potatoes. It’s a little gross.

“How’s your bar story going?” she asked.

“Uh, it’s not.”

“Oh?” she said, giving me the toe-curling smile again. “Swimming upstream, are we?”

“Off the record? Yeah.”

“Good. I’m with you,” Tina said. “I just can’t believe how much everyone hopped into bed with Hays’s story. Yeah, great, radio and TV picked it up. I just hate it that being first with a story has taken precedence over being right. What’s your angle?”

I thought of telling her my suspicion that all four victims were jailbird heroin dealers. But hard experience had taught me you didn’t share a story idea with an editor until you knew it was true.

“I’m still working on that,” I said.

Tina crinkled her brow and I admired her collarbones for a second.

“Well, whatever it is, keep working it,” she said. “I’ll cover for your little upstream swim as best I can.”

“Oh, Tina, how can I ever repay you,” I said, grinning.

She winked. “I’m sure I’ll figure out something.”

I returned to my desk, keeping a wary eye out for Sal Szanto.

I think, deep down, Szanto knew I would rather gargle razors than propagate the error that was Hays’s story. And therefore he had to know I was ignoring my assignment. Eventually, that would work out okay, because he would come around to the conclusion that getting the story right was a triumph for journalism-even it meant wiping some egg off the paper’s face.

But in the meantime, he would be much happier if I at least pretended I was working on the bar story. There were two ways to continue the charade: lying to him when he asked me for an update, which made me feel uncomfortable; or avoiding any meaningful interaction with him, which is the option I chose.

So when I saw Szanto lugging his pear-shaped body toward my desk, I immediately flipped out my cell phone.

“Carter Ross,” I said into the mouthpiece then paused a beat so my imaginary friend could answer.

“Oh, hey, how are you?” I said, giving Szanto the “one minute” finger. “That’s great. Thanks for calling me back. It’s wonderful to hear from you.”

I had almost succeeded in turning Szanto away when my phone rang for real. Szanto looked at me quizzically.

“Uh, hi,” I said, scrambling to answer. “We must have gotten cut off. Can you hear me now?”

“What the hell you talking about?” answered Tee Jamison, my T-shirt man.

“So, anyway, where were we?” I said. Szanto was still staring at me.

“We wasn’t anywhere,” Tee said. “You forget to take your pills this morning or something?”

Finally, Szanto turned back to his office, apparently satisfied I was going to be a while.

“Sorry, I just had to. . never mind,” I said. “Anyway, what’s up?”

“You been down to the vacant lot where they found them bodies yet today?”

“No, why?”

“I’m just hearing some weird stuff. Meet me down there in fifteen?”

“You got it,” I said. Tee hung up, but I kept the phone at my ear until I was around the corner, out of Szanto’s sight.

I made good time to Ludlow Street. That was one of the advantages of working in an economically devastated city: less traffic. In short order, Tee rolled up behind me in a new Chevy Tahoe that could have swallowed my Malibu whole and still had room for dessert.

“Why is the poor black man driving this big fancy SUV while the rich white kid is driving this little tin can?” I asked.

“How many times I got to tell you: there’s money in the hood,” Tee said. “We just make sure you white people don’t know nothing about it.”

“Ah, my tax dollars at work,” I said.

Tee was dressed in a camouflage jacket with a black hooded sweatshirt underneath, having perfectly dressed the part of the urban tough. I wore a charcoal-gray peacoat and dressed the part of the insurance salesman.

“So why am I out here in the cold?” I asked.

“You gonna have to check this out,” Tee said, walking toward the shrine that had, as predicted, grown substantially. “Damn, it’s just like everyone’s been saying.”

“What is?”

“His shrine, man.”

“Dee-Dub’s shrine?”

“Yeah.”

I looked at the small cluster of candles and flowers dedicated to the memory of Devin Whitehead. It looked no different from the other victims’ memorials.

“Uhh. . okay, what am I missing?” I asked.

“It’s what the shrine is missing,” Tee said. “It ain’t got no brown in it.”

“And that means. .?”

“Damn. Didn’t they teach you nothing in college about the hood?” Tee said. “Dee-Dub was supposed to be one of the Browns, you know what I’m saying? When one of them dudes gets killed, there is always a big-assed shrine filled with everything brown you can find. Brown bandanas. Brown bags. Brown teddy bears. One of them niggas even stole a UPS truck once.”

“A UPS truck?”

“Yeah, you know them commercials. . What can brown do for you?”

“Oh, right,” I said. “So the fact that there’s no UPS truck here means. .”

“It means Dee-Dub wasn’t with the gang no more.”

“Is it possible he got kicked out?”

“Oh, it’s possible,” Tee said. “It’s possible Tyra Banks is going to ask me to father her baby. I just don’t think it’s going to happen, you know what I’m saying?”

“No, Tee, I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying, dudes like Dee-Dub don’t get kicked out of gangs like the Browns. It just don’t happen. Not to an OG like him.”

“So maybe he tried to leave the gang and they killed him?”

“Nah, because that don’t account for the other three cats that got smoked with him,” Tee said, crossing his arms as if preparing for a scholarly lecture in Hood Studies. “The Browns are pretty old-school. If they had a beef with Dee-Dub, they would put him down nice and quiet, not make some big thing out of it.”

“Good point,” I said, shifting my weight and fixing my eyes on a blob of melted wax that had once been a candle.

“However,” Tee said, pointing one finger in a professorial manner, “they might know something about what happened, being that it involved a former member. You know what I’m saying?”

“For once, yes, I know what you’re saying,” I said. “You got any kind of in with the Browns?”

Tee looked thoughtful for a moment.

“Well, let me ask you something,” he said.

“Shoot.”

“That cat of yours. You got someone who will take care of it in the event of your untimely death? I don’t want no orphaned cats in this world.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, cracking a smile. “It’s dealt with in my will.”

Tee had me follow him back to his store. It shouldn’t have been hard to trail Tee’s mammoth truck, except he squeezed it through the tiniest holes in traffic. He and I had once had a debate about what made a “good” driver. To me, it was someone who didn’t get in accidents. To him, it was someone who could make a fifteen-minute trip in ten by doing a grand slalom through three lanes of traffic, one of which was oncoming.

I could see he was talking on his cell phone, and by the time we pulled up in front of his store, he had already made some arrangements. I parked behind him and rolled down my window as he walked toward my car.

“Okay,” he said, “I got you an interview with the Browns.”

“Great.”

“There’s just one condition.”

“Okay.”

“At some point they’re going to offer you some weed,” Tee said. “I strongly suggest you smoke it.”

“And if I don’t?”

“They’ll think you’re a cop and they’ll shoot you.”

“Well, then, tell them to put on Marley and bring on Mary Jane!” I said.

“I thought you’d see it that way.”

“You coming along?”

“Hellllll, no,” Tee said. “Those dudes is messed up. I mean, I know them. If they come in my store, I’ll talk with them. But that don’t mean I hang out with them. Besides, if my wife found out I was smoking weed while I was supposed to be at the store? She’d beat me silly.”

That was another way Tee’s tough-guy look belied what was underneath: he readily admitted to being afraid of his wife.

“Well, I sure don’t want to go pissing off Mrs. Jamison.”

“Damn straight,” Tee said. “I keep telling you, that bitch is scary.”

Tee told me to drive to an intersection a few blocks down on Clinton Place, get out of my car, and wait for the Browns to find me-which, he assured me, wouldn’t take long.

I drove to the designated spot and immediately began hoping the Browns got to me before someone else did. Dusk had come quickly, and the corner had an ominous feel to it. An intersection with three abandoned houses tends to be a bit foreboding that way. None of the houses had been boarded up-or if they had, the boards had been removed. You don’t want to know about what kind of stuff goes on in an abandoned house in Newark.

Down the street, there was a row of particularly slummy-looking brick apartments, the kind where the front door hadn’t existed in decades, allowing the drug dealers free access. Each apartment had a NO LOITERING sign near the entrance, promising that Newark police would arrest anyone who disobeyed. It was a sure indication a building was bad news.

But on this block it wasn’t the only indication. There were enough shoes hanging from the telephone wires to start a Foot-locker warehouse. Broken glass-some of it old booze bottles, some of it used crack vials-littered the sidewalk. And a row of brown bandanas flying from the traffic light stanchion told me I was clearly in Browns territory.

But where were the Browns?

I got my answer quickly enough when I felt something hard and metallic sticking in my back. “Don’t turn around,” said a voice that could put skid marks in even the bravest man’s underwear.

I raised my hands.

“Put yo’ hands down, fool. You want some cop driving by here thinking this is a stickup?”

“I thought it was,” I said.

“You the Bird Man, right?” my friend said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, then this ain’t no stickup. We just going to take you for a little ride is all. And you gonna have to put this on.”

I saw a hand reach around in front of me. It was clutching a brown bandana.

“Can’t I just promise to keep my eyes closed?”

“This ain’t no comedy club, Bird Man. Put it on. And put it on tight.”

“You got it,” I said, and tied a sturdy knot around the back of my head. He tugged on it, then came around in front of me. I felt a rush of air on my face, like a punch had been pulled just inches short of my nose. My friend was checking if I could see through my blindfold. But I didn’t flinch. In truth, I didn’t really want to see what was going on.

I heard a car-no, a van? — pull up beside me. The next thing I knew, someone picked me up, bride-across-the-threshold-style, and carried me a few steps toward the sound of the engine. From the ease with which he handled my 185 pounds-think child carrying rag doll and you’ve got the idea-I knew I didn’t want to pick a fight with him.

“Watch your fingers, Bird Man,” my friend said, and I heard two doors slam.

“Thanks,” I said, not sure if he could hear me.

Soon the van was rattling down the street and around several corners. After a while, I got the distinct feeling we were really just driving in a circle-we kept making right turns. But if that’s what they had to do to feel comfortable with me, I was fine playing along.

Finally, I felt the van coming to a stop and heard the engine cut. Someone opened the back doors.

“Come on, Bird Man,” my friend said. “We going to Brown Town.”

The Director was not a religious man. Far from it. But if he was ever moved to prayer, it was for the continued existence and prosperity of Newark Liberty International Airport. Those ten thousand acres of paved swampland were the world’s most fertile source of heroin.

One flight came directly each day from Colombia. The rest came through Miami, Atlanta, or other points south. Then there were the cargo planes. Altogether, it kept the heroin pouring in day and night, 365 days a year, helping to nurse addictions up and down the Eastern Seaboard one landing at a time.

The heroin entered in the lining of suitcases, hidden in freight, sewn in clothing, tucked in nooks and crannies. Powder is an easy thing to conceal and a 747 is a massive piece of real estate with plenty of hiding places. The liquid form of heroin-which could then be extracted using methylene chloride and baked into a solid-offered other possibilities for the creative smuggler.

One kilo of heroin-2.2 pounds of powdery white gold-cost roughly $8,000 on the streets of Bogota. That same kilo was worth at least $60,000 on the streets of America, even before it was cut with cheaper products. With a cost ratio like that, there was a tremendous market-driven incentive to import as much product as possible. Caution didn’t pay. Daring did.

No one knew how much heroin poured through Newark airport. The Director wondered if his competition-primarily ethnic mobs-was getting even more of it than he was.

But, as the Director often told Monty, he got his share. He made sure of it.