Faces of the Gone

CHAPTER 3

I was escorted up a flight of steps, and from the creaking I could guess it was a typical specimen of Newark’s mostly wooden, mostly dilapidated housing stock. Once inside, I was led to a room and made to sit on a sofa that felt and smelled like expensive leather.

“Mind if I take off this blindfold?” I asked, but didn’t get an answer.

I heard the door open and could sense the lights dimming. I felt someone come up from behind me and untie the knot on my blindfold. Except when the bandana came off my face, I couldn’t see a damn thing; someone was shining a huge flashlight in my eyes.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “You guys saw this in a movie once, right?”

“I thought I told you this wasn’t no comedy club,” said my friend, who was the one holding the flashlight.

“Look, guys, I just need a little information here. Can we drop the KGB act?”

My friend looked over to someone else, who must have consented, because the flashlight switched off. As soon as my eyes adjusted, I saw I was in a faintly lit room, surrounded by members of the 1987 Cleveland Browns. Or at least with guys wearing their retro uniforms. Number 34, Kevin Mack, was my friend, the one who approached me on the street. The big guy, the one who had picked me up, was wearing Number 63, an offensive lineman’s number. Was that Cody Risien? Could be. He was the only offensive lineman from that team I could remember.

And the one who appeared to be the leader was wearing Number 19. Bernie Kosar.

“How you know Tee?” Bernie Kosar asked.

“I wrote a story about him once. We’ve been buddies ever since.”

“Yeah? Tee says you all right.”

“I try to be,” I said.

I furtively glanced around to get a better sense of my surroundings. It was a good-sized room, expensively furnished with the spoils of the Browns’ prosperity. The sofa was a never-ending sectional that felt sturdier than the house it sat in. There was a massive flat-screen TV directly in front of me, a similarly enormous fish tank to my right, and floor-to-ceiling boxes against the wall to my left.

“So what you want with the Browns?” Bernie asked, making some kind of quick hand gesture when he said the word “Browns,” almost as if he were a Catholic genuflecting after the Lord’s Prayer.

“Well, I want to know a little about Devin Whitehead.”

“Man, we ain’t got nothing to do with that,” Bernie said. “How come everyone thinks we did it?”

“Well, he used to run with you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“So. .” My voice trailed off.

“Yeah, but he hadn’t run with us in a long time,” Bernie said. “He went to jail and when he got out he didn’t want nothing to do with us no more.”

“Yeah, why is that?”

Bernie looked at Kevin Mack and Cody Risien, sharing some silent communication. Then he turned back to me.

“So tell me something, Bird Man: you like to party?”

I laughed despite myself.

“Are you asking me if I want to smoke pot?” I said.

“What if I was?”

“I’d say I hope you have a lighter because I left mine at home.”

Bernie produced a lighter and marijuana cigarette that was the length of my hand and the thickness of my thumb. It could have almost doubled as a nightstick.

“My God.” I choked. “Are we going to watch Pink Floyd-The Wall after this?”

No one laughed. So I lit the end and took a drag, holding the smoke in my lungs for as long as I could bear, then handed off to Kevin Mack. I had smoked maybe half a dozen times in my life, and not at all since college. By the third pass, I already felt like my head was a helium balloon floating on a string, somewhere above my shoulders.

“Damn,” I said. “This is smooth.”

“We grow it ourselves,” Bernie said proudly.

“Where?”

“In the basement. We got the high-intensity sodium-chloride grow lights, the heating mats for optimal germination, the liquid seaweed fertilizer. The fertilizer is key-it packs some high-quality nitrates, yo. Nothing but the best. That’s pure, hydroponic pot you’re smoking, Bird Man.”

“You guys must make a fortune off this stuff,” I said, taking another hit.

“Naw, man, this is just for us,” Bernie said. “We don’t sell it.”

“Come on, cut the crap,” I said, blowing out a large cloud of smoke. “How many hits do I have to take before you believe I’m not a cop?”

“Naw, man. I’m serious. That’s why Dee-Dub left us. While he was in jail, we switched operations. We don’t sell drugs no more.”

“Really? So how can you afford all this?” I said, looking around the room.

“C’mere, I’ll show you,” Bernie said.

I tried to rise from the couch, but as soon as I got about halfway up, my buzz caught me and took me out at the knees. Suddenly the room got slanty. I could feel myself going over and made an attempt to stay upright, but my legs wouldn’t bear any weight. I staggered one step, two steps, then lost it, slamming into the wall of boxes as I went down. Several of them came toppling over on my head, spilling their contents on the floor.

The Browns thought this was hysterical-the white man who couldn’t handle his weed. As they were high-fiving and enjoying my distress, I sat there dumbly, staring at what had slipped out of the box. It was DVDs of a new Adam Sandler movie, one that wasn’t even out at the box office yet.

“What the. .” I started, and then it dawned on me. “Bootlegs? You guys sell bootleg movies?”

“Hell, yeah,” Bernie said, still laughing a little. “There’s more money in bootlegs than there is in drugs. Every brother in this city wants to sell you drugs. So now a dime bag of dope goes for six, seven bucks. A bootleg movie goes for five, and ain’t no one blow your head off because you selling bootlegs on their corner. Plus, a whole lot more people in this city watch movies than do dope. Hell, most of them are afraid to go out at night because of the dope, so all they do is watch movies.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said, feeling so high I was unsure if the whole thing was real.

“Yeah, and the Newark cops don’t bother us none,” Bernie said. “Bootlegging movies is a federal crime. It’s FBI business. And the FBI, man, once they figure out you ain’t a terrorist, they ain’t interested. So we got the best of all worlds: less competition, more demand, no police.”

A sound business model. I was impressed.

“So why wouldn’t Dee-Dub want a piece of this?” I asked.

“I don’t know. When he got out of the joint, he was all hot about this new source he had for smack. Kept talking about how it was the best in the world.”

“How long ago did he get out?”

“Dee-Dub? Like a year ago?” Bernie paused and looked to Kevin Mack, who nodded.

“Yeah, a year ago,” Bernie said. “He was all fired up. He said this stuff could make us all rich. And I’m like, ‘Yo, dawg, we already getting rich selling bootlegs. And ain’t nobody shooting at us.’ But he wouldn’t hear it.”

“So you let him go?”

“Man, this ain’t slavery. If he don’t want the Browns, the Browns don’t want him,” Bernie said, and suddenly all three were genuflecting again. “He had been doing his own thing for a while. Make sure you put that in your article because I’m sick of people talking bad about us. The Browns didn’t have nothing to do with this.”

I knew I should ask more questions, pump them for as much information as I could. But my usual journalistic vigor and innate curiosity was being sapped by one simple thing:

I was as high as the Himalayas.

Within an hour, the pot made us instant friends. They taught me everything there was to know about the production of bootleg movies. I somehow ended up giving them a geology lecture, most of which I probably invented, because I don’t think I know a thing about geology. They offered me honorary membership in the Brick City Browns, saying they could use a token white man for diversity purposes. I asked if honorary membership involved initiation in the form of participating in illegal activities. They informed me that, in my case, they could waive that requirement.

As Cody Risien drifted off into a contented slumber, Bernie Kosar informed me I was allowed to come and go as I wished, provided I swore to uphold the secrecy of Brown Town’s location. I consented, allowing me to stumble out of the Browns’ secret hideout without my blindfold.

It turned out the house was right in front of where I had parked. I was still stoned, but deemed myself sufficiently sober to drive, which was only the first of several bad decisions that night.

It was, by this point, completely dark. I wasn’t sure how much more I was going to be able to get accomplished on the story given my condition. And I was getting a killer case of the munchies.

All of these were perfectly good reasons to call it quits and head back to my Nutley bungalow and dim-witted cat. But somehow, in my mentally diminished state, I convinced myself I should make an appearance at the office. All I had to do was keep a low profile and avoid Szanto.

Right. Low profile. I was invisible. Like Wonder Woman’s airplane. The only way the viewers at home could see me was because of the pencil-thin outline drawn for their benefit.

I crept back to the office, going five miles under the speed limit the whole way. I parked (crookedly) in the far corner of the company garage. I moseyed my invisible self toward the front entrance, kept my head down. .

. . And damn near barreled over Harold Brodie.

Luckily, it was enough of a glancing blow that it only knocked the old man to the side. The Eagle-Examiner’s executive editor looked appropriately startled. I guess it wasn’t every day one of his reporters hip-checked him. But as my mind started racing-how did Wonder Woman get the invisible plane to work if she couldn’t see the controls? — Brodie, to my horror, had recovered and seemed to want to stop and chat.

“Good evening, Carter,” he said. Brodie’s voice was this pleasant, grandfatherly falsetto. “In a hurry?” he asked.

Words started pouring out of my mouth without stopping to check in at my brain.

“Yes, sir. Time is money, you know. And money makes the world go round. And the world wasn’t built in a day. And you’ve got to take it one day at a time. Which brings us back to time being money. So I guess you could say I’m trying not to waste money, time, or the day.”

Oh, God, I began to think, I’m going to get myself fired.

“I thought it was ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ ” Brodie said, still pleasant, still grandpa.

“Well, that’s true, too, but Rome is part of the world. And I don’t want to single out Italians as being slow builders. I mean, frankly, who would even want to live in a city that had been built in a day? It’s like those suburban tract houses that get tossed together in a week and a half-they’re always crap.”

Okay, not fired. Worse than fired. The high school sports agate desk.

“I suppose that’s true,” Brodie said, as if I had just offered some piercing philosophical insight. “So how’s that bar story going?”

Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap.

I was certain things couldn’t get any worse for me, but then they did. Because instead of answering him, I started laughing.

Actually, not laughing. Laughing merely would have been awful. I was acting like a twelve-year-old girl reading the sex column in Cosmo. I was giggling.

“What’s so funny?” Brodie said, looking confused. He had been the paper’s executive editor for the last quarter century. I’m pretty sure no one had giggled in his presence before.

“Oh, nothing, sir,” I said, and only giggled harder. “Well, gotta go!” I said, and tried to make for the front door.

“Wait a second,” Brodie said, grabbing my arm and sniffing loudly. “Why do you smell like you’ve just been at a Grateful Dead concert?”

“Uh, I’m working on this Jerry Garcia retrospective. .”

“Son, don’t give me that poppycock. I was born at night, but not last night. Have you been smoking marijuana?”

“Carter Ross, 31, of Nutley, committed career suicide yesterday. .

“Yes, but I can explain,” I said.

Brodie stood there with fists stuck into his hips. Grandpa was pissed. “I’m listening,” he said, his helium-sucker voice managing to take on an ominous tone.

“Oh, you want the explanation now?” I asked.

. . He left behind no note. Police said there was no sign of foul play. .

“That’s the general idea,” Brodie said.

“Well,” I said, trying to wrest the story from my racing mind. “It started when Tee said there wasn’t a UPS truck at DeeDub’s shrine-you know, the whole ‘What can brown do for you’ thing? And then he told me to stand on the corner, where gangbangers blindfolded me and took me for a ride around the block and around the block and around the block. We were in this van.”

. . He is survived by the world’s dumbest cat. A funeral service for his dead career will be held every day between now and his retirement from some sad-sack PR firm 25 years from now.”

“And then,” I plowed ahead, “and then they took me into this room where I had to toke up with the Cleveland Browns so they knew I wasn’t a cop. And then they were cool with me and we talked. And then I knocked over the boxes of the Adam Sandler movie? And then I decided to come back to the office like I was in Wonder Woman’s plane, except apparently I’m not in it anymore, because you can see me.”

I stopped there, because somewhere in my head there was this tiny voice telling me I had said enough. Brodie fixed me with a hard stare from underneath his overgrown, Mr. Potato Head eyebrows.

“So, what I think you’re saying is, you smoked marijuana with some sources to get them to trust you?” Brodie asked.

“Well, actually, so they wouldn’t shoot me. But yes.”

Brodie lifted his hand, and for a second, I thought he was going to smack me right across the face. I flinched, except he was. . patting my shoulder?

“That’s fantastic!” Brodie shouted with a high-pitched hoot, his eyebrows waving at me from above his delighted eyes. “Well done, Carter! Very well done, my boy! You did what you had to do to get the story. That’s the kind of dedication I want to see in all my reporters. I’m proud of you. Keep up the good work, son!”

Brodie charged down the steps, still cackling.

“Smokin’ pot to get the story!” he exclaimed as he walked away.

“Reports of the demise of Carter Ross’s career were greatly exaggerated. .”

Having gained the endorsement of the executive editor, I felt emboldened as I entered the newsroom and flopped noisily into my chair.

“I am so high,” I said, and laughed when I realized I was talking to myself.

I tried to look at my e-mail, but the words kept floating off the screen and freaking me out. So I decided to relax and savor the feeling of being utterly baked at the office. I’m sure that was by no means a first in the Eagle-Examiner’s illustrious history. But it was a first for me.

Still, for as much as I was enjoying myself, there didn’t seem to be any point in being stoned alone, with no one to play with. I gathered my things, and went to the elevator, where I was joined at the last moment by Tina Thompson.

“How come you’re grinning like the cat who ate the canary?” she asked.

“To be honest, I’m a little stoned,” I said. “Actually, I think I’m a lot stoned.”

“Really?” she said. “You mean, for real?”

“I kind of had to pass the peace pipe with the boys from the Brick City Browns to convince them I wasn’t a member of the law enforcement community,” I said.

“No.”

I nodded, feeling like a life-sized bobble-head doll, my skull wobbling on top of my shoulders. Tina clapped her hands together and laughed. It was a delightful laugh. We boarded the elevator together.

“Well, then you must be hungry by now,” she said.

“I’m favished.”

“What the hell is ‘favished’?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s a combination of ‘famished’ and ‘ravenous.’ ”

“Then you’re definitely not driving. I’m taking you to dinner.”

She quickly slid her arm through mine and pressed against me, allowing me to feel the firmness of her breast against my triceps. Before I knew it, I was being escorted through the parking lot, to her car, which would take us. . on a date? How exactly had this happened again? The executive editor had congratulated me for getting stoned on company time and now I was going out on a date with the city editor.

We hopped in her new Volvo-the perfect car for a safety-conscious mother-to-be-and I was soon being treated to the spectacular natural beauty of one of New Jersey’s most scenic roadways, the Pulaski Skyway. That was the way to Hoboken, which is where Tina lived. It was not especially near Nutley. I was starting to get that feeling this might turn into a sleepover.

Tina was quiet. Which meant I wasn’t the only one contemplating the very adult act that might be taking place by the end of the evening.

“So how did this happen to you?” I asked as we made a left turn away from the Holland Tunnel traffic, toward Hoboken.

“How did what happen?” Tina said.

“This whole biological clock thing. You used to take your birth control pills in the break room. Now you wear a watch on your wrist that tells you the exact hour when you’re ovulating.”

“Oh, you noticed that, huh?”

“Hey, I have to know when to keep my guard up,” I said.

She laughed and playfully patted my thigh. My upper thigh.

“Well, first of all, the whole biological clock thing is a load of crap.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You turn thirty-eight and you start picking up brochures for birthing centers just like that?”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t think it’s an age thing. I think I just reached the point where I was tired of being the most important person in my life. I’ve been so selfish for so long. I’m sick of focusing on myself. I want to put someone else’s needs first.”

It was as good a reason as I’ve heard for wanting to have a child. It was also about as far from my own experience as I could imagine. I had enough problems just taking care of myself.

At the same time, I had this vague feeling that Tina’s life was heading in a more meaningful direction than mine. And the truth was, this career-minded, hard-running, yoga-disciplined woman was going to make a great mother-the kind of mother I’d want my own kid to have. I could suddenly imagine a tiny little Tina: the curly brown hair, the twinkling eyes, the mischievous laugh. And in that moment I resigned myself to allow whatever was about to happen between us.

It’s not that I had suddenly given myself over to believing in fate or destiny or any of that malarkey. Because that quickly leads you to a place where free will doesn’t exist, and that’s no fun whatsoever. I did, however, feel that previous decisions had put me in a circumstance where my next action had become a foregone conclusion. So I might as well stop fighting it.

Or maybe that was the pot talking.

Either way, when Tina got us a romantic table in the back corner, I didn’t protest. And when she ordered a bottle of red wine, I nodded in approval. And when her leg brushed against mine under the table, I enjoyed the sensation. And when a second bottle of red wine appeared, I didn’t let it go to waste. And when Tina announced at the end of the meal she was in no shape to drive me back to Nutley-so I had to come over to her place-I complied.

We walked arm in arm back to her condo, a one-bedroom with a view of Manhattan, leaning on each other the whole way. It was closing in on midnight and I had been buzzing constantly since about five in the afternoon, with the red wine taking over where the pot left off. I was ready for love.

As we rode up the elevator, she nestled against me. I enjoyed the smell of her hair and the faint note of her perfume. I had half a mind to pin that lithe body of hers against the wall as soon as we walked in her front door.

But no. This was her seduction scene. I was going to let it unfold her way. She unlocked the door and pointed me toward the couch.

“I’ll be right back,” she whispered.

“I’m looking forward to it,” I said in a deep, lusty growl.

I did a quick survey of the landscape. Tina’s pad was filled with sturdy, sensible furnishings-and no shortage of potential landings for two adventurous lovers. The chair. The sofa. The coffee table. They’d all hold just fine. I was beginning to toy with the possible combinations when Tina returned, still dressed in the same clothes, carrying a blanket.

She immediately interpreted my confused look.

“We’re both far too drunk,” she said, handing me the blanket and pushing me down on the couch. “It’s not right.”

She bent over and kissed me on the cheek.

“Besides,” she whispered in my ear, “I don’t reach peak fertility until Friday.”

My only wish that next morning was that I be allowed to file a motion for clemency in the Court of Hangover Appeals. Hangovers are supposed to be punishment for wicked behavior. My argument, therefore, was that I didn’t deserve this hangover-especially not a red wine hangover, known to be among the most vicious in nature.

After all, I had merely been acting in self-defense. In their infinite wisdom, the judges would surely see the logic: the reason I drank wine was because I had smoked pot; I had smoked pot because I didn’t want to get shot by gang members; therefore, I drank wine because I didn’t want to get shot by gang members. Self-defense.

Alas, there was no court in the land with the benevolence to hold such proceedings nor the power to commute my sentence. So I awoke with a skull full of broken glass, a stomach full of bile, and a mouth full of squirrel excrement.

“How was I last night?” I said as I wandered into Tina’s kitchen, squinting at the brilliance of her track lighting.

“Since I didn’t have to fake anything before I fell asleep? I’d say you were just fine.”

Tina was wearing Lycra leggings, a windbreaker, and running shoes.

“Don’t tell me you’ve already been jogging,” I said.

“It’s the best way to get over a hangover. Blows the whole thing right out of your system.”

“I’ll stick with water and aspirin, thanks.”

“Suit yourself. Want some eggs?” she asked, pointing to a fry pan full of them. I have a general rule about eggs: I will eat a chicken’s leg, wing, or breast, but I draw the line at eating its embryonic fluid.

“Thanks, no,” I said. “But a toothbrush might be nice.”

“There’s a new one in the medicine cabinet. I had been hoping the baby’s father would use it the morning after we conceived. But I suppose you can have it.”

I laughed. “So, let me get it straight: in exchange for some random guy’s sperm, you’re planning to give him a toothbrush?”

“Hey, I’m going to feed him breakfast, too,” Tina said.

I wandered into Tina’s bathroom, and instantly wished it hadn’t been mirrored. I know most folks don’t think thirty-one is old. But thirty-one never looks more decrepit than when it’s been smoking weed, drinking wine, eating salty food, and sleeping in its clothes. It was like I went to bed as Carter Ross and woke up as Yoda.

I brushed, rinsed, brushed again, rinsed again, and still felt like I hadn’t rid my mouth of the squirrel turds. Only time, and the proper amount of penitence in the Church of the Throbbing Headache, would do that.

I returned to find Tina removing a bagel from the toaster.

“Well, if you won’t eat eggs, you will most certainly take a bagel. You can’t start a day on an empty stomach.”

She stopped herself and looked surprised. “Wow, I really sounded like a mother, didn’t I?”

“Right down to the shrill inflection. Are you sure I didn’t get you knocked up last night?”

“I’m hoping you’ll be a little more memorable than that,” she said.

The use of the future tense was a little worrisome. Alas, it was probably accurate. On the Easy Lay Scale-where 1 is a nymphomaniac crack whore and 10 is a fair maiden whose chastity belt key is guarded by a fierce army of eunuchs-my performance the night before rated about a 1.3.

I sat down with the bagel and was soon joined by Tina and her omelet.

“So, not to overtax your tender mind,” she asked. “But what do you think your plan of attack is with Ludlow Street this morning?”

“I was thinking of eating this bagel, bumming a ride back to my car, then sleeping off this yucky feeling until mid-afternoon while Tommy does all my work for me.”

“What’s your backup plan? Your first plan sucks.”

I bit off a large chunk of bagel, chewed and swallowed-not an easy task, being as my mouth was still a little low on saliva. But it gave me the necessary moment to regroup my thoughts.

“First order of business is to chat up Wanda Bass’s family,” I said. “I’ve gotten in good with her former best friend.”

“Is that the, uh, prostitute you visited the other night?”

“One and the same.”

“By the way, you didn’t, uh. .”

“Jesus, Tina, no!” I said, and tried my best to appear injured by her impudence.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I just had to check. Can never be too careful.”

This was getting uncomfortable, having my city editor taking a personal interest in whether I was dipping my pen in dirty inkwells. I made a mental note to never start another flirtatious, potentially sexual relationship with a city editor for as long as I lived. Then again, since most city editors were rumpled, balding, middle-aged men, that probably wasn’t going to be a real tough covenant to keep.

“As I was saying,” I said, shooting her one last wounded glance, “I think I can manage to get a little closer with Wanda Bass’s mother. Maybe she’ll know something.”

“Great. Anything I can do to help?”

“Well, for one, stop asking me if I’m banging hookers,” I said, and she actually blushed. “Two, if you can keep Szanto off my ass, I’d sure appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Tina said. “I’ll just mention at the morning story meeting that I spoke with you and that you’re making excellent progress. I just won’t say on what.”

Tina showered then spent the next twenty minutes walking around her apartment in a towel as she got ready, seemingly going out of her way to let me see that, yes, her collarbones were every bit as wonderful as I thought. And her legs were even better. The evil temptress was back on the job, getting me primed for when her wristwatch told her the moment was right.

If there’s one good thing about having a hangover in Hoboken, New Jersey, it’s that you’re not alone. Hoboken’s typical resident is a recent college graduate who’s living like he’s still the pledge captain at Alpha Beta Chi. So as we walked to Tina’s parking garage, I was at least comforted in knowing Brother Flounder was out there somewhere, grimacing his way through the morning with me. The only difference between us was I should have been old enough to know better.

Tina drove us to the office as gently as she could, though I felt like I was about to redecorate her Volvo with the contents of my stomach every time we hit a pothole. Good thing the ten-mile trip between Hoboken and Newark only has about three million of them.

As we approached the building, I became aware of another potential danger. If anyone saw me hopping out of Tina’s Volvo wearing yesterday’s rumpled clothing, they wouldn’t exactly have a tough time deducing where I spent the evening. They would fill in their own conclusions from there.

And once that rumor got started, there would be no stopping it. Journalists are essentially trained gossips, which makes newsrooms absolute cesspools for loose talk. Before long, even the delivery boys would believe Tina and I were knocking boots.

The key was for no one to witness me getting out of Tina’s car. But that hope was killed-make that: hung, drawn, and quartered-when Tommy Hernandez pulled up next to us in the parking garage. Tommy was perhaps the worst gossip at the paper: not only a journalist, but a gay one.

“Well,” I said as I unbuckled my seat belt. “This is going to be awkward.”

“What is?” Tina asked.

“Did you see who just pulled in?”

“Who?”

“Tommy.”

“So?”

“So by lunchtime half of Newark is going to think we’re shagging.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she said as she got out. “He probably won’t even notice.”

But Tommy noticed. His eyes had already tripled in size and he had clapped his hand over his mouth in sheer delight.

“Oh. . my. . God!” he said, gleefully pointing at us. “You two are doing it!”

“Would you believe me if I denied it?” I asked.

Tommy thought for a moment, head tilted. “No,” he said.

“Well, we’re not.”

Another moment’s reflection, this time with the hand on the chin. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t believe you.”

“No, honestly, I got drunk. She let me crash at her place. That’s it.”

“Oh, come on,” Tommy said. “You have to do a little better than that. Couldn’t you at least say you had car trouble and she was giving you a ride? Or that you were coming from the same breakfast meeting? Or that you’re wearing the exact same ugly pleated pants from yesterday by accident?”

I could only shake my head.

“Even better,” Tommy continued. “You could tell me you were doing it and throw in all kinds of salacious details and brag you’re the world’s greatest lovemaking superhero-which would lead me to believe you weren’t doing it.”

“Listen to me,” I said. “There’s nothing going on. Can you please just pretend you didn’t see this?”

“The golden-boy investigative reporter and the hotshot city editor arrive for work in the same car and you expect me to say nothing? Nothing?? It’s just not possible.”

“Look,” I said, growing desperate. “If you gossip about this-which would be slander, since it isn’t true-Tina is going to assign you to the Hunterdon County livestock beat.”

“Hey, leave me out of it,” Tina said. “And since when is it slanderous to say you slept with me?”

“But I didn’t!” I said, exasperated.

“Yeah, but so what if people think you did?” she demanded, crossing her arms. “Would that be so awful?”

“Wait a second, he didn’t sleep with you?” Tommy said.

“No,” Tina replied.

“Oh, that sucks,” Tommy said, pouting.

“Wait, you believe her and not me?” I asked.

“Think about it,” Tommy said. “Tina tells everyone everything about her sex life anyway. You’re the only one who’s a priss about it. So if Tina says you didn’t do it, you must not have done it.”

I didn’t know whether to be exasperated or relieved. Tina was still pissed, albeit more in a theoretical way than a real way. Then again, when applying female logic, I doubted the distinction mattered much.

“No, seriously, what would be wrong with people thinking we slept together?” she demanded. “You find that embarrassing or something?”

“She’s got a point,” Tommy said. “She’s a lot hotter than you are. If anything, she should be embarrassed to have slept with you.”

“Thank you, Tommy,” Tina said self-righteously.

Tommy moved to Tina’s side and put his arm around her to emphasize that I was now facing a united front. This was clearly going nowhere good. I was outnumbered in a hypothetical debate about something I hadn’t even done. And, on top of that, my head was pounding, my mouth was dry, and my stomach was still feeling all those potholes.

“If I were you, I’d be proud to have slept with such a fine-looking woman,” Tommy said. “Well, I mean, I’d rather be sleeping with her younger brother. But I’d still be proud.”

“Can I just please surrender?” I asked. “This is too much to handle before I’ve showered for the day.”

Tina narrowed her eyes and shook an index finger in my direction.

“You’re lucky I’m only after your sperm,” she said.

“Men,” Tommy huffed.

They turned and walked into the office together without another word.

I thought about following them, then remembered my clothes still smelled like happy grass. So I returned to my peaceful Nutley bungalow, where Deadline was pacing nervously in front of his empty food bowl. I poured in an extra helping, and he hungrily attacked. Eating was one of the few things Deadline did well. Sleeping and pooping were the others.

A day of sleeping, eating, and pooping was sounding like a fine idea at the moment. But I forced myself into the shower. I was the toughest man alive. It was the 1970 NBA Finals and I was Willis Reed. I would play hurt.

By the time I completed my heroic comeback, it was after eleven, which I deemed fashionably late enough to call Tynesha.

I deemed wrong.

“lllo?” her sleepy voice answered.

“Tynesha, I’m sorry. It’s Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner. I thought you’d be up by now.”

“Not unless the building’s on fire,” she said, coming to a little.

“Right, sorry. I’ll call you later.”

“Don’t worry about it, baby. What’s up?”

“I was wondering if I could talk to Wanda’s mama. You said Wanda lived with her mama, right?”

“More like her mama lived with her,” Tynesha said, not bothering to stifle a yawn. “Wanda paid the rent.”

“Think her mama knew what was going on?”

“Her mama’s a pretty sharp lady. Miss B knew a lot, probably more than Wanda realized. But I’m not sure she’ll talk about it with you.”

“I’ll take my chances, if that’s all right.”

“I’m supposed to see Miss B this afternoon to help her pick out a casket at the funeral home. You want to come with us?”

Picking out caskets ranked pretty low on my list of favorite activities. Funeral homes ranked even lower on my list of favorite places. But it was either that or hang around the office and duck under my desk whenever Szanto came near.

“Do you think she’ll mind some random white guy tagging along?” I asked.

“It’s okay. You’re with me. Besides, she ain’t got no car and neither do I. Without you, we’d be taking the damn bus.”

A half hour later, I met Tynesha in front of the Stop-In Go-Go. She tumbled into my car offering several choice complaints about the cold, which felt like it had come to New Jersey on a Get Out of the Arctic Free card. I cranked up the Malibu’s heater a little more, and we made our way to Wanda’s place, a rundown, four-story brick apartment building on South 18th Street.

Out front were three obvious markers of urban malaise: the obligatory NO LOITERING sign; another sign that read WE ACCEPT SECTION 8, the federal rent vouchers given to low-income families; and, finally, a pair of teenaged boys-lookouts-who might as well have had bullhorns and been screaming, “Drugs here. Get your drugs here.”

We got out of the car and walked up the front steps, hearing the familiar tweeting of Nextel phones on walkie-talkie mode, the preferred method of communication among the well-connected gangsta set. The alert was being sent out: a white man was entering the building.

Once inside, we were serenaded by another familiar song on the urban soundtrack: the chirping of smoke detectors in need of batteries. A landlord once explained to me the tenants stole the batteries almost as fast as you could put them in, so most landlords stopped bothering.

Knocking on the door to Wanda’s apartment, I was expecting the worst-trash-strewn floors, leak-stained ceilings, the stench of ages-and instead got June Cleaver’s house. The smell of baking pie practically knocked me over as the door opened. Fresh flowers were tastefully arranged on a tiny table in the alcove. Framed artwork decorated the wall above it.

“Hi, Miss B,” Tynesha said.

“My baby,” Miss B said, smothering Tynesha with a motherly hug. Not many women would have been big enough to envelop Tynesha that way. But Miss B was living on the bottom right corner of the panty hose size chart.

“Hello,” she said to me as soon as she released Tynesha. “I’m Brenda Bass.”

She said it cordially enough, but it had a steely I’m Brenda Bass, who the heck are you? ring to it.

“Hi, Miss Bass, I’m Carter Ross, I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner. I’m writing a story about Wanda.”

“Oh, no thank you,” Miss B said instantly. “Wanda doesn’t need any stories written about her.”

“It’s okay, Miss B,” Tynesha said. “He wants to write about the human side of things-like a personal story.”

I bounced my head up and down in earnest agreement.

“And how’s he going to do that?” she said, talking as if I weren’t there.

“He just wants to chat with you a little bit, maybe look around for clues.”

More head bouncing.

“I don’t like the idea of some man”-she looked at me and downgraded my status-“some reporter going through her things.”

“It’s okay, Miss B. He’s all right.”

Miss B gave me a once-over, starting at my toes and working her way up, which I took as the cue to begin my sales pitch. Any reporter who doesn’t know how to sell himself is going to end up being a reporter who doesn’t get many good stories.

“The police are just ready to sweep this thing under the rug,” I said. “And they’re going to get away with it if we let them.”

Miss B had made it up to my shoulders by this point.

“They’re trying to push this story that your daughter held up some bar,” I continued. “I don’t think that’s true, but I need to prove it and I need your help.”

She was now at eye-contact level, which she held for a moment. Her next question took me off guard.

“Do you like apple pie, Mr. Ross?”

I grinned. “It’s Carter. And, yes, I adore it.”

“Well, good. When I grieve, I bake. Except with my diabetes, I can’t eat it. And Lord knows those children get too much sugar as it is, especially now. You want some pie, Tynesha?”

“You ever know me to turn it down?”

“Good girl. Come on in, you two. But keep your voices down, the baby is asleep.”

Miss B limped toward the kitchen, leaning on a cane and flinging the right side of her body forward. I swear, Newark might lead the nation in limpers. It seems like most adults of AARP-eligible age have developed one. Decades of dreadful nutrition and poor health care tend to do that.

Tynesha and I followed slowly behind. The Bass apartment was every bit as well kept inside as it was in the alcove. Everywhere I looked, there were nice little touches-and pictures of a young woman that stopped me cold.

It was Wanda. And she was gorgeous: dark, flawless skin; warm, brown eyes; high, perfect cheekbones; long, thick eyelashes.

In all the pictures, she had the same smile. It was nice, but there was something in it, this hint of vulnerability that caught me. She had been this girl who just wanted to love and be loved back, even though she only found men who thought of love as a strictly one-way, strictly physical thing. It made her ripe for exploitation and there were all too many people around her who did just that.

I could feel this lump rising in my throat. Up until that moment-for all my bluster about wanting to know Wanda as a person-she hadn’t really been human to me. She had just been a story. Her death was this abstraction, a piece of a narrative I was forming in my head.

She was real now. And I could see her life all over these walls. Wanda as a baby. Wanda at her baptism. Wanda in dance classes. Wanda at an eighth-grade graduation ceremony. Wanda heading off to the prom. Wanda with her own babies.

“I told you she was too pretty,” Tynesha said in a low voice.

“I see what you mean.”

“Damn,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied, still battling the lump. “How did she get into dancing, anyway?”

“She used to talk about how she had wanted to be a Rockette. She had the legs for it. Then she got knocked up when she was just a kid and it changed everything. The Rockettes don’t want no pregnant high school dropout from Newark.”

“I guess not.”

“Anyway, the baby’s father was just some no-good punk who talked about how he was going to support his child-and then he took off. So she started dancing go-go. I always told her she would have made a lot more money in Manhattan dancing for white guys. She was too skinny for guys here. They want a little junk in the trunk, you know?”

Tynesha clearly was not lacking in the trunk junk department.

“But she wanted to stay close to her baby,” she continued. “And when she got knocked up again, there was no way she was going anywhere else. Then she got knocked up again. Then she started dealing. Then she got caught. Then. . I don’t know, she just got caught.”

Miss B dragged herself back into the living room with that lopsided gait, somehow managing to walk with her cane and carry two slices of pie at the same time.

“C’mon, eat something,” she said, setting the pie down on the coffee table and gesturing toward the couch. “You’re both too skinny. Sit yourself down.”

I took a seat, took the pie, and suddenly realized I had entered the voracious phase of hangover recovery.

“That crust is made with real lard, Mr. Ross,” Miss B said, parking herself in an easy chair. “Don’t let any old fool Betty Crocker recipe mess with your head. The only way to make a crust is to make it with lard.”

I took a bite, then three more. It was dynamite. I shoveled in most of the piece before I realized I should probably, y’know, chew once or twice.

“You make a great pie, Miss B,” I said, having reduced a generous wedge to a smattering of crumbs. “And I must say, you keep a lovely home.”

“I just wish the building weren’t so awful,” she said. “It used to be a real nice building, with nice families who cared about how things looked. You should have seen it back in the day.”

“So maybe it’s a dumb question, but why do you stay?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s home, I guess. My husband died right in that bedroom,” she said, pointing behind her. “He was thirty-nine. Heart attack. Just like that. Wanda was maybe eight or nine. After that, I just felt like if I left, I’d be leaving him. So I stayed for a little while. And then a little while turned into a long while.”

I looked at Miss B, trying to guess her age. Wanda had been twenty-five. That put Miss B in her mid-fifties, assuming she had been roughly the same age as her husband. She looked older. I suppose losing your husband and your daughter would do that.

“How did Wanda handle her father’s death?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Miss B said, sighing. “Wanda was such a daddy’s girl. Sometimes I can’t help but think maybe if her daddy had stayed around, things would have turned out different. Maybe all those boys she had babies with would have been more respectful.”

Or maybe, the amateur shrink in me thought, Wanda wouldn’t have been so desperate for male approval if her father were still in her life.

“Tynesha was telling me Wanda wanted to be a Rockette,” I said. “Did she dance a lot as a little girl?”

Miss B sighed again, this time more forcefully. She shifted her weight, folding and unfolding her hands across her lap.

“Mr. Ross,” she said finally. “I appreciate you showing an interest in Wanda. But I, I know what she was. I know what she did for men-”

“I told you, Miss B, she never turned no tricks!” Tynesha interrupted, but Miss B held up her hand.

“And I know she sold drugs. She didn’t tell me, but I knew. A mother knows.”

“That still doesn’t mean whoever killed her should get away with it,” I said.

“I know that. But, I don’t know, Wanda wasn’t real happy. She was a sweet girl, real sweet. Oh, honey, if you could have seen her with her babies”-Miss B paused to collect herself-“she just had a big heart.

“But she kept thinking that having these babies with these men was the answer. What ghetto girl thinks that way? That Prince Charming is waiting for her on the corner? And by the time she had two or three, you tell me, is Daddy Number Four really going to stick around and support another man’s kids? And every time her baby daddy would run off and crush her dreams, it just made her that much more empty.”

Miss B started dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

“Wanda was a Christian,” she continued. “I know you think that sounds strange, doing what she did. And maybe I’m a fool but, I don’t know, I just think she’s in a better place now.”

“You know she is, Miss B,” Tynesha said. She reached out across the arm of the easy chair and grabbed one of Miss B’s hands. Miss B had stopped dabbing and was just letting her tears flow. She exhaled loudly.

“I’m sorry, I have got to stop carrying on like this,” she said in a broken voice.

“Oh, no, it’s really okay. I understand,” I said, feeling like a jackass, because, let’s face it, I didn’t have the slightest clue what it felt like to have a daughter die facedown in a vacant lot. Miss B straightened herself and fixed her red-rimmed eyes on me.

“Mr. Ross, let me just take you to what you came for,” she said. She stood and wobbled into one of the bedrooms. I followed.

“This was Wanda’s room,” Miss B said. “The baby’s crib was in my room. The three kids were in the other bedroom. Wanda had this room to herself.”

The shades were drawn, making the room darker than the others. It was also messier. There were clothes and dance costumes strewn about the floor, panty hose draped on the lampshade, a small Macy’s worth of makeup piled next to the vanity. The bed hadn’t been made. The air smelled stale. No one had been in here since Wanda’s death.

“I wanted her to have her own bedroom because, well, I knew what she was doing in here and I didn’t want the children to see it,” Miss B said, heading toward the closet. “She thought I didn’t know about this.”

“Did you ever ask her to stop?” I said, and it came off sounding more judgmental than I wanted.

“I don’t think she would have,” Miss B said. “Maybe it sounds odd to you, but I didn’t think it was my place. A single mother trying to do for her children, that’s a powerful thing, Mr. Ross. She always talked about how badly she wanted these kids to have opportunities like suburban kids and I think that’s what she was trying to provide-in her own way. She would have died for those kids.”

Miss B led me over to the closet, opening the door and pulling on a chain that caused a bare lightbulb to illuminate. She parted some of the clothes and pointed to a cardboard box.

“It’s all in there,” she said, still holding the clothes aside, not wanting to go any further.

“Thanks,” I said, bending low to pick it up. It didn’t have much weight to it.

“I don’t think I can be in here. I’m going in the other room with Tynesha. Holler if you need anything,” she said, closing the door behind her.

I gingerly sat on the chair in front of the vanity, shoved aside some of the cosmetics to make room for the box, and pulled open a flap to look inside. I didn’t have a great deal of experience pawing into dealers’ stash boxes, but I had to assume this was fairly typical: there was a jar of baking powder, a few straight-edged razors, a tiny scale, and a heaping pile of dime bags.

Even though they were called “bags,” they actually resembled tiny envelopes. Each was filled with one tenth of a gram of heroin. Ten bags was known as a bundle. Five bundles was a brick. A brick went for about $300 wholesale-or about $6 a bag. The dealer selling a dime bag for $10 each was going to clear $200 for his $300 investment, but only dealers in the suburbs could get away with charging that much. In the inner city, where there was more competition, dime bags went for $7 or $8.

Wanda’s stash consisted of two bricks, two bundles, and a large pile of loose bags, some of which appeared to have been opened. Most of the bags had the same brand-name stamp on them. Yeah, heroin really does come in different brands. People unfamiliar with drug culture always get a kick out of that.

Some of the brands seized in drug busts we had written about had names like Body Bag, Blood River, Head Bang, Power Puff, Instant Overdose-the idea being that the more dangerous your brand sounded, the more potent your dope must be. When a brand got hot, people would line up around the corner just to get it.

Wanda’s brand was a name we hadn’t written about before.

It was called “The Stuff.”

The Director came up with the brand name himself and was proud of it. It was an easy name to remember, straightforward and instantly identifiable. People always used the word “stuff” when they talked about drugs.

Now they could talk about The Stuff. It was simple, yet distinguished. The Director also designed the logo: an American bald eagle whose talons clutched a needle. The words “The Stuff” were written in fancy script underneath.

He had several stamps of the logo created and spread them around the production department. Each of his technicians was reminded to make sure every dime bag of The Stuff had the logo stamped on it. But the Director always spot-checked each shipment, just to make sure.

He even kept a The Stuff stamp on his desk. He loved that logo.

The Director’s dealers loved it, too. Within the crowded heroin marketplace, it was a logo-and a name-that stood out. You didn’t have stuff unless you had The Stuff.

The Director scoffed at all those cretins who tried to outdo each other with gory, violent names. Who really wanted to be snorting something called “Walk of Death” or “Corpse Powder”? It was so literal. It would be like naming a tissue brand “Sir Sneez-A-Lot.”

The Director liked to think of The Stuff as being the Kleenex of the heroin world. He imagined a day when the brand went national, when people everywhere would ask for it by name, when only injecting a batch of The Stuff would do. Just like everyone asked for a Kleenex. It had a ring to it.

And, really, the principle behind branding heroin and branding tissues-or clothes, or cereal, or any other product-is identical. You need to be able to differentiate your product to the consumer. Then you build brand loyalty. That was true whether you were talking about denim jeans, corn cereal, or illegal narcotics.

The Director’s only regret was that he couldn’t push his brand out there even more. He sometimes fantasized about what he would do if he were allowed to advertise. He imagined billboards, radio spots, print advertisements, online campaigns, merchandising opportunities, a clothing line, all of it. And it was all terrific.

But the only person he could share his ideas with was Monty, who naturally told him how wonderful they were. And that didn’t mean much. The Director could have defecated on Monty’s shoes and Monty would have told him it was ice cream.

No, the Director told himself sadly, his marketing genius was never going to be appreciated. Sometimes, he would take the stamp on his desk and imprint it on a glossy piece of paper, just to see what it would look like on a magazine cover.

And then he would ball it up and throw it away, saddened that the world could never know the brilliant man behind The Stuff.