Faces of the Gone

CHAPTER 7

Now that Van Man had Uncle Sam on his ass, my chances of celebrating my thirty-second birthday had improved slightly. A smart bad guy could screw around with the Newark cops, who had never been accused of being the world’s sharpest crime-solving unit. The feds were a different matter. The feds had resources, know-how, and a certain no-nonsense attitude about things. And if they decided a case was a priority, they had a much longer attention span, as well.

Hopefully it was enough to convince Van Man to go underground and not risk emerging to, say, grease a local newspaper reporter.

Yet while these were all good developments for my personal life, it was not as promising for me professionally. Prying information out of local law enforcement was like playing with an old fire hydrant: if you kept taking whacks at it, you could eventually get it to leak. Feds were made of different material, stuff that was sealed a lot tighter.

Especially since I already had some inkling of who I was dealing with. My first experience with L. Peter Sampson, the NDB’s press guy, had set a world record for Fastest Flak Blow-off (Federal Division). The guy couldn’t wait to get me off the phone.

I quickly concluded there was only one way to solve that problem: pay him a visit. Maybe that personal touch would convince poor, frightened L. Pete that I wasn’t one of those scary reporters who was going to get him fired.

I walked Tina back to the newsroom and promised her I would spend the afternoon safely at my desk, doing my expense report. Then I went to my computer for three minutes-just long enough to get an address for the National Drug Bureau’s Newark Field Office-and scooted across town.

The NDB was housed in an appropriately stern federal building, a solidly built rectangular edifice without much in the way of architectural imagination. Upon entering, I was met by a metal detector and three square-jawed U.S. marshals.

“Can I help you, sir?” one asked.

“I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner,” I said. “I’m here to see L. Peter Sampson at the National Drug Bureau.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

He nodded, went to a nearby phone, and immediately started talking in a voice that was inaudible from twenty feet away. One of his partners, meanwhile, eyed me like I was something that had crawled out of the sewer.

As a general rule, making unannounced visits to federal agencies was not a very efficient use of a reporter’s time. Bureaucracies abhorred such displays of spontaneity from the Fourth Estate. And they discouraged them by assuring that such attempts would be met with minimum cooperation and maximum fuss.

“Can I see some identification?” the marshal asked me after he got off the phone, and I obliged him with a business card and my New Jersey State Police Press ID.

“Driver’s license, please,” he said.

“I came here on foot,” I said pleasantly. I hadn’t, of course. But I didn’t like the idea of giving Big Brother more information about myself than absolutely necessary. Plus, the guy was being a dick. The marshal frowned and returned to low-talking at the telephone. The partner was now staring at me even more contemptuously. I gave him an exaggerated smile-merely because I felt sticking out my tongue would be too juvenile.

Meanwhile, I considered how I might approach L. Pete differently this time. I had exactly zero leverage on the guy. One of the reasons the feds were so much harder to crack than the locals was that, in short, feds didn’t really need good publicity. The local police chief knows his boss, the mayor, is eventually going to have to win an election and that friendly relations with the newspaper will help him do that.

A place like the NDB doesn’t have nearly that level of local accountability. Its money comes from faraway Washington committee meetings and its employees enjoy the kind of job security only the world’s most powerful government can offer. Sure, it doesn’t mind good pub. But, more than anything, it looks to avoid bad pub.

And that, I realized, was my only recourse with L. Pete. If the carrot didn’t work, I’d have to make him think I had a big stick. Somewhere.

The marshal eventually hung up the phone and instructed me to go through the metal detector. Then the second marshal passed a wand over me. The third one patted me down.

Having been sufficiently probed, I was led across a polished floor to a small padded bench near an elevator, where I was instructed to wait. The elevator soon produced a cheerless man in a suit, who relieved the marshal and took over his job: making sure I didn’t cause trouble.

“Nice day today, huh?” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said, his expression unchanging.

“Any big plans for the weekend?” I asked.

“No, sir,” he said, and I decided to stop antagonizing the poor guy.

Fifteen minutes passed, during which time suit guy remained grim-faced and I grew bored. I’m sure, somewhere in the building, L. Pete was simply hoping I’d leave. But I wasn’t going to give him that pleasure. After a half hour passed, I took a quarter out of my pocket and began flipping it, gangster style. I thought I noticed a slight change in the suit’s face, like he was a little jealous I was getting to have all the fun.

Finally-prompted by nothing I could discern-the suit said, “Come with me.”

He slid a card into the control panel, punched the up button, then took me to the fifteenth floor. The top floor. I was escorted to an office next to a corner office, whose name plate announced it belonged to L. Peter Sampson.

“Wait here,” the suit told me. “Agent Sampson will see you shortly.”

Agent Sampson was apparently a very big fan of the New York Jets.

He had one of those Jets firemen helmets sitting on one of his bookcases, a miniature Jets helmet next to it, and a framed ticket hanging on the wall from Super Bowl III, one of the rare proud moments in the franchise’s otherwise abysmal history.

Behind his desk was one of those panoramic photos of Giants Stadium from a Jets-Bills game. On the desk, next to the usual wife-and-kid pictures, there was an autographed picture of Richard Todd and a football that had been signed by Joe Klecko, Marty Lyons, and Mark Gastineau.

A short, thin, energetic man with thinning hair and a dark suit walked in the room.

“Hi, Pete Sampson,” he said affably. “Nice to meet you in person.”

“Carter Ross, Eagle-Examiner,” I said as we exchanged an extra-firm, manly-man handshake.

“Sorry about the wait,” he said, smiling thinly. “I was in a meeting.”

“The wait wasn’t that bad. It gave me time to put my anus back in place after the body cavity search I got at the front door.”

“Yeah, that,” L. Pete said. “But, you know-Oklahoma City, 9/11-the rules have all changed. When the threat level is high, this place gets locked down tighter than a duck’s ass.”

Lovely image. Don’t get me wrong, a little small talk was a good way to start an interview. But since I didn’t want that talk to center around a duck’s anatomy, I switched topics.

“So, I’m guessing from your decorations you’re a fan of the Sack Exchange,” I said.

“Best defensive line in football. Too bad Miami was able to slow ’em down in the mud at the Orange Bowl that one year.”

“A. J. Duhe,” I said.

He shuddered. Having lived in New Jersey most of my life, I was accustomed to the inner torment suffered by Jets fans.

“Well,” he said. “I’m guessing you didn’t come here to interview me about how the AFC East is stacking up.”

“Not really,” I said. “But to keep this in football terms, my friends at the Newark police tell me they’ve handed off the Ludlow Street quadruple homicide to you guys.”

L. Pete paused for a beat, just long enough for me to hear the gears switching in his mind.

“Well, as you know, the National Drug Bureau is a federal agency ultimately responsible for fighting this nation’s war against illegal narcotics smuggling both at home and abroad,” he said, like he was quoting from a brochure. “And from time to time, we here at the Newark Field Office use that authority to claim jurisdiction over crimes we believe are extensions of that war.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “So. . you’ve got this Ludlow Street thing all figured out, then?”

“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” he said, smiling at me.

I matched his insincere smile with one of my own. Time to use the stick.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, Pete,” I said. “But this son of a bitch blew up my house this morning and killed my cat. So I didn’t really come here to get a polite no comment.

“Now, we can do this one of two ways,” I continued. “I can team up with a forensic accountant and crawl through every line of your budget. No matter what we find, we’ll run a headline that says, ‘The drug war’s answer to the $1,000 hammer,’ along with grainy head shots of you and your bosses that make you look like criminals. And your wife can explain to her friends at playdates that the article wasn’t really that bad.

“Or you can spare me the runaround and we can play nice and share some information. It’s up to you.”

It was empty saber rattling, of course. My bosses frowned on using the newspaper to carry out reporters’ vendettas. And, in any event, I didn’t really have the time-or the interest-to do the kind of intensive reporting I had just described.

But L. Pete, who looked like he had just taken a very large bite of lemon, didn’t necessarily know that. I think my sudden lack of house and cat gave me just enough credibility as a crazy that he was taking me seriously.

“I, uh. .” he began. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

He left without another word and, I’m sure, headed next door to ask his boss what to do with the lunatic reporter in his office. I hoped they would come to the conclusion I needed to be placated.

He returned five minutes later.

“Can we be off the record?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Good,” he said. “I’ve been authorized to tell you certain things but not other things. You understand we have people in the field working on this and the wrong information in the wrong hands could be disastrous. We’re not putting our people at risk, no matter how many exposes you write about us.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

He paused then said, “The first thing I’m authorized to tell you is that we have good reason to believe this is the work of Jose de Jesus Encarceron.”

“I’m supposed to know who he is?”

“Colombian drug lord, and a real badass one,” L. Pete said. “Some of the things he’s done make other drug lords look like street-corner hustlers. Our agency has a file on this guy that could fill your garage.”

“I don’t have a garage anymore.”

“Right. Sorry. Point is, we’ve been after this guy for more than five years now. And I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but those bodies down on Ludlow Street are just four more debits on a very large tab.”

“So this guy sits in his palace in Bogota, orders the hit, and the local muscle takes care of it?”

“Something like that, yes,” L. Pete said.

“So why don’t you start by going after the local muscle?”

“I’m afraid that falls under the category of things I can’t tell you.”

“And Encarceron’s people are responsible for distributing ‘The Stuff’ brand?”

“Can’t tell you that, either,” L. Pete said, shifting his weight uneasily.

“Why, because he’s slipping it past you guys at the airport and you’re embarrassed by it?” I said.

He just shrugged. “Despite what you might assume about how we’re spending taxpayer money here, we’re actually quite close to putting a case together against this guy. But we have to proceed carefully or we could screw up the whole thing.”

Now it was my turn to shrug.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t care if or when you get around to putting away this Jose de Whatever guy. I care about the guy who tried to put a stick of dynamite up my ass this morning. Specifically, I’m a little worried he’ll return to finish off the job.”

“Well, that gets around to the other thing I’m authorized to tell you.”

“Which is?”

“I wouldn’t press too hard if I were you,” L. Pete said.

“Oh?”

“We have good reason to believe Encarceron’s people consider this matter settled. All the loose ends are tied up. All the evidence is destroyed. They want to go back to business as usual.

But if a certain newspaper reporter kept nosing around, kept making himself a pest, they might feel the need to exterminate the pest.”

“That sounds a bit ominous,” I said.

“Call it what you want,” L. Pete replied. “I call it prudent advice. These are some bad hombres we’re dealing with. I am urging you in the strongest possible terms to leave the Ludlow Street investigation to our agents and trust we’ll get the job done. We can’t guarantee your safety if you keep sniffing around.”

“I see,” I said. “Are you authorized to tell me anything else?”

“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “But when we’re ready to announce our charges against Encarceron, I promise we’ll give you an exclusive interview. Seems like you’re owed the pleasure.”

“Terrific,” I said, though I really meant the opposite of terrific. I had no intention of waiting for L. Pete and his fellow flatfoots to get around to making a case against some international drug lord.

But, at least for the time being, I had to keep up appearances.

L. Pete and I swapped phone numbers and bid each other a fake-fond adieu, then I departed the National Drug Bureau’s fortress with a friendly wave to the square-jaw boys. Despite my new information, I still felt wary of large men in white vans. Not to say I didn’t trust our government but. . well. . I didn’t trust our government. And since them being wrong could result in me being dead, I felt caution was still advisable.

At the very least, I wanted to educate myself more about this Jose de Jesus character. So I spurred my Malibu back to the office, where an hour of trolling through clips on Lexis-Nexis laid out a fairly complete life story. He was young for an intercontinental villain, just thirty-four. A poor street thug from Bogota, he got his start in the business in the mid-1990s, which turned out to be a fortuitous time for an ambitious would-be drug lord: Pablo Escobar had just been killed, and the instability created by his passing made it easy enough for Encarceron to rise up the ranks.

He was pretty much your garden-variety ruthless sociopath. He terrorized and/or eliminated anyone who dared oppose him, kidnapped and/or imprisoned anyone he didn’t feel like killing, bribed and/or murdered any government official who tried to slow him down, and generally didn’t play well with others.

His nickname, La Cabra-the Goat-derived from an infamous episode early in his career. He’d killed a rival’s entire family, decapitating them and placing goats’ heads on top of the stumps. Charming.

As L. Pete said, U.S. law enforcement and U.S.-backed Colombian authorities had been after the guy for a while. Within the past few years, La Cabra had climbed the ranks of the NDB’s Most Wanted and the price on his head had reached $2 million.

But Bogota was a big city and Colombia was an even bigger country. He never stayed in the same place long. And he was generous enough with the spoils of his enterprise-hosting huge cookouts, sponsoring sports teams, paying hospital bills for indigents-that people in the barrio never gave him up. Of course, fear played a part, too. Legend had it, he had once been tipped off that someone in the neighborhood was going to inform on him. The would-be snitch’s body was dragged through the streets by two horses. One towed the head and torso, the other the butt and legs.

So, yeah, he was on Santa’s naughty list. But I couldn’t drive away the thought that something didn’t feel right. Why would a drug lord in Colombia concern himself with a few Newark street dealers? And, even if he did, why kill all four at once? And why leave their bodies where they could be so easily discovered? I can’t pretend I knew a lot about the preferred modus operandi of the Colombian cartels, but this didn’t feel like it.

Besides, the identity of the person giving the orders in South America was, in some ways, just academic. There was still someone on this side of the equator pulling the trigger. And it bothered me that my government, in its zeal to put La Cabra’s head on its mantel, was treating this trigger-puller like he was such a trivial piece in a larger game.

Because I knew how this stuff worked. The foot soldiers would be given lighter sentences in exchange for their testimony against the Big Boss. Yes, Your Honor, I murdered four people and torched all those buildings, but La Cabra made me do it. Van Man would do twenty or thirty years but would end up enjoying his old age as a free man. Meanwhile, his victims got no reprieve on being dead.

But there was one way to possibly change that equation: if I could get to the foot soldier first and put his name in the paper, there would be pressure for the NDB to do something about it. The families of the victims would be clamoring for justice, and this crime had become high profile enough that they might be able to get someone with pull-a congressman, maybe-to listen.

So I just had to find a way to infiltrate a Colombian drug lord’s local organization, implicate it in a major international drug-smuggling ring, and find compelling evidence it had committed a series of heinous crimes. I could have that wrapped up by, what, dinnertime?

Or not.

Knowing L. Pete wasn’t going to be any assistance mapping out La Cabra’s network, I had to leverage the information he had given me to try to get more from somewhere else. And, really, I could only think of one guy I knew who might even have more information. I picked up the phone and dialed Irving Wallace, hoping his part of the government-whatever part that was-had an agenda different enough from the NDB that he wouldn’t mind being helpful.

“Yes,” he said.

“Hi, Irving, Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner.”

Pause. “Are you in your office?”

“Yeah.”

Click.

Ten seconds later, my phone rang.

“Carter Ross.”

“Hi, it’s Irving.”

“You want to explain to me why that was necessary?” I asked.

“Because someone could have been impersonating you.”

“Besides Buster Hays, no one knows we’ve ever spoken,” I said. “And I’m sure Buster isn’t sharing.”

“Good thing, too,” he said. “I understand your sources get their houses blown up.”

Obviously, someone had been watching the news.

“Cheap shot,” I said. “Now that you’ve hurt my feelings, you have to help me. What can you tell me about Jose de Jesus Encarceron?”

“I don’t know. That he’s not very nice, I guess,” Wallace said. “I’m just a lab guy, remember? I know what his drugs look like after they’ve been passed through a spectrometer.”

“Aw, come on. I’m sure you hear little tidbits from. . whoever it is you work for.”

“Say the magic words.”

Magic words? What magic words? Oh.

“Off the record,” I said.

“Very good,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, I want to know what kind of muscle he has on the street here.”

“Where, in Newark?”

“Yeah.”

“He doesn’t,” Wallace said.

“What do you mean? Of course he does.”

“In the Northeast, guys like Encarceron just supply the product. They’ve never been able to get down to the street level. I’m not sure they even want to. They’ve always left it to the local thugs.”

“Someone told me-off the record, of course-that Encarceron’s people here are responsible for Ludlow Street,” I said.

“Really?” Wallace said, sounding surprised. “Is it someone who knows what they’re talking about?”

“They ought to.”

“Huh,” he said. “Sounds to me like someone is trying to snow you.”

I made Irving Wallace promise to call me if he heard anything-a lot of good that would probably do-and was just about to settle in for some serious head scratching when the three o’clock editor’s meeting let out and Hurricane Tina washed ashore on my desk.

“Goddammit, Carter. Where the hell have you been?” she said with quiet intensity.

“I had an errand to run,” I said. “We were out of nondairy creamer in the break room.”

“You prick,” she bristled. “If I have to surgically attach an electronic monitoring bracelet to your balls, I will.”

“Watch out,” I said. “That might lower my sperm count.”

“Yeah? You should see what dying does to your sperm count.”

“Ah,” I said. “So that’s why you haven’t gotten into necrophilia.”

She had clearly been outzinged. So rather than hit me with another comeback, she put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. A lock of hair fell across her face and I felt the urge to tuck it behind her ear for her. But Tina was determined to stay indignant, so she blew it out of the way and continued scowling at me.

“So do you want to fill me in on what’s been going on around here?” I asked.

“No. I want to wring your neck. But I’ll tell you anyway: Whitlow, Hays, and Hernandez have been putting together a story on today’s series of fires and explosions that we will link to the Eagle-Examiner’s front-page report about the Ludlow Street murders.”

I nodded.

“Their story will not carry a byline,” she said. “That’s our new policy. Until this Unabomber-wannabe is caught, all Ludlow Street stories are unbylined.”

“What, no one else wanted the joy that is filing a total home destruction insurance claim?”

“In other news,” she continued. “We’ve received and declined about twenty interview requests for star investigative reporter Carter Ross.”

“Aw, damn,” I said. “How am I supposed to get my fifteen minutes of fame?”

“Well, given how you did with your first five on the News at Noon, I’d say we’re doing you a favor.”

Now I was outzinged. I thought about sharing what I had learned from my new buddies at the NDB but decided it could wait.

“I’m still pissed at you,” Tina said. “But if you behave yourself for the rest of the day, I’ll make you my world-famous veal scaloppine when we get home tonight.”

“Consider me on my best behavior,” I said, raising three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“Yeah, I almost believe that. I’m telling the security guards in the parking lot that if they see you unaccompanied, they should shoot to maim.”

“Good thing they’re old and blind,” I said.

“You better hope so,” she said.

She stormed off, taking her Category 5 wrath with her. I was just starting to scan my e-mail box-spaces in Human Resources’ Ramadan Awareness seminar were going fast-but before I could learn what I needed to be aware of (besides hungry Muslims) Tommy approached my desk.

“Is it safe?” he asked.

“You mean if you continue standing here will someone try to firebomb you and your Gucci shoes? I make no guarantees.”

“No, I was talking about Tina,” Tommy said. “I think I’d rather take my chances with the bomb.”

“She’ll get over it. How was Booker T?”

“I would say your friend in the van saved the City of Newark a lot of money in demolition.”

“You ask about Red and Queen Mary?”

“Yeah. No one had seen them this morning. But as of a half hour ago the fire department hadn’t recovered any bodies, so maybe there are none to recover.”

The cynical side of me wondered how hard they were actually looking. Anyone trapped in that building would be a person who long ago ceased to be of much consequence to society.

“What about Brenda Bass?” I asked.

“I made the usual round of calls to the hospitals and got the usual crap about confidentiality laws. But on a hunch I called the burn unit at University Hospital and one of the nurses slipped.”

“Slipped?”

“Yeah, she was like, ‘How did you know she was here?’ And I was like, ‘I didn’t, honey, you just told me.’ ”

“Wow. The intern with the veteran move. Nice job,” I said. “Anyway, how’s your story coming?”

“Eh, you know what a joy it is working with Buster. If he calls me ‘little girl’ one more time he’s going to have to remove my queer Cuban foot from his ass.”

“I love it when you get all butch.”

“I really sounded tough just now, huh?” he said, then giggled.

“I was definitely scared for a second. Look at me, I’m trembling,” I said, holding out my hand, which was rock steady.

“Yeah, anyway, screw you,” Tommy said. “I only came over here to tell you about this guy who called for you. The clerk transferred the calls to me, because the guy said it was about Ludlow Street. But he only wanted to talk to you.”

Tommy handed me a number on a torn piece of Chinese menu.

“The guy have a name?” I asked.

“He wouldn’t say. He sounded like some gangbanger. That’s why I didn’t want to give him your cell number. He sounded pretty scary.”

“I’m not afraid of him. I’ve got a queer Cuban ass-kicker who will protect me.”

“Don’t you forget it,” Tommy said as he walked away.

I looked at the menu/message slip for a moment. I generally have a pretty good memory for phone numbers, but this one wasn’t jostling any brain cells (though it was making me hungry for mu shu pork).

I briefly debated whether to call the number. I was, at least according to some, a known enemy of La Cabra. There was no telling who might be trying to lure me into certain doom. Why wouldn’t the guy give his name? Why insist on only talking to me? It had the classic markings of a trap.

But I gave in pretty quickly. Ultimately, the journalistic flesh is weak: an anonymous source calling with information is just far too great a temptation to resist. I mean, maybe this was my Deep Throat, the guy who would meet me in the parking garage and tell me everything. Besides, what would one little phone call hurt?

So I dialed.

“Yo,” said a voice I couldn’t place.

“Hi, this is Carter Ross, from the Eagle-Examiner,” I said.

“Yo, Bird Man! Thanks for putting in your article that we didn’t have nothing to do with Dee-Dub.”

It wasn’t Deep Throat. It was Bernie Kosar from the Brick City Browns.

“I promised you I would,” I said. “I mean, you made me an honorary member. It seems to be the least I could do for you guys.”

Especially with sources who, on occasion, shoot people.

“Yeah, it was cool. My mom even clipped it out and saved it. It’s the first time we been mentioned in the paper for something positive, you know?”

“Well, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to feature you in the ‘Good Neighbors’ section just yet, but I’m glad it’s something,” I said. “Anyway, what’s up?”

“I got someone here you want to talk to. Can you come out to Brown Town right away?”

“Brown Town?”

“Yeah, you know, the place where we, you know. .”

“Smoked that fine marijuana?”

“Yeah,” Bernie said, laughing. He cupped the phone, but I could hear him say to his buddies: “Bird Man wants to know if this is where we ‘smoked that fine marijuana,’ ” he said, imitating my voice with exaggerated diction, then got back on the phone.

“You got a funny way of talking, Bird Man. It’s like listening to the announcer in one of them antidrug videos. Where do white people learn to talk like that, anyway?”

“We take special classes,” I replied. “I’ll be right over.”

“Okay, hurry up. This guy ain’t going to hang around all day.”

When I arrived at Brown Town, I realized Bernie Kosar was being quite literal when he talked about the source hanging around: in the darkened living room, next to the fish tank, there was a chubby young black man dangling from his heels.

He had been tied to an exposed pipe in the ceiling and was suspended upside down, bat-style. He had a sock in his mouth that had been secured by duct tape wrapped around his head. He was wearing boxers-and only boxers. He did not seem pleased about any of this.

In addition to Bernie, the guy in the Kevin Mack jersey was also standing sentry.

“We caught this nigga trying to steal a Drew Barrymore movie,” Bernie said, giving the guy an evil look as we walked past.

He and Kevin Mack guided me down the hallway into the kitchen, out of earshot of the prisoner.

“We don’t really give a damn about the Drew Barrymore thing,” Bernie told me. “That bitch’s movies are all the same anyway.

“But he was carrying this backpack,” Bernie continued, holding up a nylon bag with a key chain full of soda can tabs attached. “And we found this in it.”

Bernie flipped me an envelope. I looked inside to find four glossy eight-by-ten photographs that made me flinch. Each picture was an extreme close-up of a lifeless, shattered, bloody face. It was, to my utter astonishment, the Ludlow Four. Overcoming my revulsion, I pulled the pictures toward me for closer inspection.

I held up one of the pictures and blurted, “That’s Wanda Bass. I saw her in the funeral home after they patched her up. That’s definitely her.”

“Yeah, and that’s Dee-Dub,” Bernie said, pointing to another photo. Then he held up a single sheet of paper that bore The Stuff’s stamp at the top. “This came with it,” he said.

It was written like a corporate memo: “TO: All Employees, FROM: The Director, RE: Reminder about cutting.” I read it quickly, then went back over it more slowly. It answered some of the questions that had confounded me. Why kill the dealers? They had diluted the brand. Why kill all four at once and leave them together in a way that would garner so much attention? Because being noticed was the point. Who did the killing? The Director.

Whoever that was.

“Where the hell did he get this?” I asked.

“He won’t talk to us,” Bernie said. “But we figured he’d have to talk to you, you being a reporter and all.”

If only that were true.

“Well, it’s not like I have subpoena power,” I said. “Why didn’t you just call the cops?”

“We ain’t exactly the cop-calling type, Bird Man,” Bernie said matter-of-factly.

“No, I guess you’re not,” I said, frowning until an idea came to me. “Okay, but we can still act like cops. You guys be the bad cops. You know, the tough guys, threatening him and stuff. I’ll be the good cop, protecting him from you. We’ll work him that way. Okay?”

I didn’t think playing bad cop would be too much of a stretch for either of them.

“Cool,” Bernie said, clearly enjoying the idea. Of course he did. It was just like a scene from one of his bootleg movies.

“Just follow my lead,” I said.

We went back into the living room, where Bat Boy eyed us. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-two or twenty-three. And the baby fat made him look even younger.

“I’m telling you, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, as if we were in the middle of a conversation. “I don’t think we should hurt him.”

I turned my back on Bat Boy and winked, then faced him again. Bernie was a little slow to react, but Kevin Mack caught on perfectly.

“Forget it. I’m cutting his dick off,” he said angrily, pulling out a thick-bladed hunting knife. From under the sock, a muffled scream escaped Bat Boy’s throat. I turned away again so Bat Boy couldn’t see how hard I was working to suppress a laugh.

“Look, let’s at least give him a chance to talk,” I pleaded. “Then you can cut his dick off.”

“A’right,” Kevin said, walking over to Bat Boy. “I’m going to take this thing off his face now. But if he screams, I’m cutting his dick off. You hear that, sucker?”

Bat Boy nodded, and Kevin Mack roughly ripped off the duct tape. The guy didn’t have a lot of hair, but it still couldn’t have felt good.

“Owww,” he whined.

“Keep it down,” Kevin Mack said, putting the point of the knife on the fly opening of the guy’s boxers. Yes, bad cop was definitely well within Kevin Mack’s theatrical repertoire.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Bat Boy said in a high, panicked voice.

“Take it easy,” I told Kevin Mack. Bat Boy was legitimately scared witless and I had this brief moment of ethical pause. Should I be interviewing a source who was being forced to talk against his will? For that matter, was it a good idea to willingly participate in what was essentially a forceful kidnapping? What would Editor amp; Publisher have to say about such journalistic tactics?

And then I thought, oh right, screw Editor amp; Publisher. No one was trying to kill them.

“Remember what happened the last time you did that?” I said. “Remember all the blood? I am not helping you clean that up again.”

I turned to Bat Boy. “Nothing bleeds quite like a penis wound,” I said, in a scholarly manner. “I’m not sure how familiar you are with anatomy, but the dorsal gonadal artery and the medial erectile vein converge at the base of the penis. If you sever both, you get a real gusher on your hands. You should have seen the last guy. He was hanging upside down just like you and he ended up with a face full of penis blood.”

Bat Boy looked like he was buying it. I turned to Kevin Mack.

“Hey, what did you end up doing with that last guy’s Johnson anyway?”

“Fed it to the fish, remember?” Kevin Mack said with perfect timing.

“I swear,” I said to Bat Boy. “I think this bloodthirsty bastard enjoys this.”

“Well, the fish sure did,” Kevin Mack said. “They kept pecking at it, knocking it around, having fun with it. The big fish would gnaw on it for a while, then the little fish would dart out and take a chunk. That little blue one over there in the corner, he was a penis-eatin’ fool. I swear, he’s been begging for another one ever since.”

Even though it was hard to tell through his chocolate-brown skin, I thought I detected Bat Boy blanching.

“Look, I’m sure this guy is going to be more reasonable than the last one,” I said. “Maybe if you could give me a little time alone with him, we can get this resolved, okay?”

“A’right,” Kevin said, heading back into the kitchen with Bernie, leaving me alone with Bat Boy.

I bent down on one knee, so Bat Boy and I could be face-to-face.

“Listen,” I said in a soothing voice. “I’m a nice guy. Really, I am. These other two guys? They’re not so nice. But I did them a favor recently so maybe now they’ll do me a favor and let you off easy. But you’re going to have to cooperate, or I can’t guarantee you’ll ever be able to pee standing up again. Got it?”

He nodded.

“Good, now what’s your name?”

“Rashan Reeves.”

“Very good, Rashan. That package with the pictures in it, where did you get it?”

“It was in my last shipment,” Rashan said. “I was getting four bricks and they just put it in there.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

Rashan whimpered, his eyes shifting wildly about. He bucked a little bit, but wasn’t going anywhere. The Brick City Browns were handy with knots.

“Don’t make me call in my friends,” I warned.

“I don’t know, man,” he said quickly. “They make me wear this blindfold. Honest. I do not know. The boss is called ‘the Director’ and that’s the only name I ever heard anyone call him. They say it like he all-powerful, like ‘nobody mess with the Director.’ His people come in this white van, and as soon as I seen the van, I put on the blindfold. And that’s it.”

I believed him. This Director guy seemed nothing if not organized-he was sending out memos, for goodness sake. Nobody with that level of competence would allow a street-level hustler to know much about the operation.

“So how do you know when it’s time to pick up another shipment?”

“I do it the same time every week.”

“Same place?”

“Naw, they call me and tell me where to meet them. Then I put on a blindfold and get in a van so I can’t see nothing.”

“A white van?”

“Yeah.”

Of course it was a white van. I wondered if the Director had a fleet of them, or just one. Bat Boy, still upside down, patiently awaited my next query.

“They always call you from the same number?” I asked.

“Different numbers. I think they use them throw-away cell phones.”

“They always give you the same amount of product?”

“Yeah.”

“But what if you haven’t sold all your product from the week before?”

“Don’t matter. I signed a contract.”

“A contract?” I said. Generally speaking, distributors of Class 1 narcotics were not known to be real caught up in the use of legal instruments.

“Yeah, I sign a new one every couple of months. It’s basically, like, I agree to sell so much product and they agree to provide it to me, and it’s all done out ahead of time. My contract right now is for four bricks.”

I did the math. Four bricks was two hundred bags. Even assuming he sold each bag at a $2 profit, that was still only $400 a week. So, basically, he was risking jail, getting smoked by a fellow dealer, stabbed by a wacked-out customer, or killed by his own employer-all for twenty grand a year. True, the hours were flexible. And it was tax free. But I was guessing the health plan sucked.

“And how did you hook up with these guys? Who recruited you?”

“This dude in prison.”

“Which dude?”

“The drug counselor dude,” Rashan said. “One of my boys told me all I had to do was pretend I had a drug problem, get treatment for it, and then pretend I was cured, and they would let me out early. So that’s what I did. Knocked six months off my stretch.”

Ah, the redemptive power of recovery.

“So you met a guy in counseling who hooked you up?” I asked.

“No, no. The dude who hooked me up was the counselor.”

“The substance abuse counselor?” I asked. Just when I thought I’d heard everything.

“Yeah. He took me aside one day and asked me if I wanted to make easy money selling the best stuff on the market. I heard all kinds of stories about how hard it was to get a job when you get out because no one hires ex-cons, so I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And when I got out, one of his boys found me.”

“What’s the counselor’s name?”

“Umm. .”

“Don’t make me call my friend in the next room.”

“No, no, come on, man,” he pleaded. “I’m just trying to think. . It was Mr. Hector. . Mr. Hector. . Alvarez. Yeah, that’s it. Hector Alvarez.”

Hector Alvarez. I guess that sounded like a plausible name for someone who worked for Jose de Jesus Encarceron. But it also sounded like a name my pal Rashan Reeves could have made up on the spot. There was one way to check. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Tommy.

“You have a lot riding on this phone call, Rashan,” I said as I waited for Tommy to pick up.

He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Tommy, it’s Carter.”

“Where have you been? Tina just asked me if I had seen you.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That you were in the bathroom.”

“Good man,” I said. “Now can you do me a favor real quick? Look up and see if a guy named Hector Alvarez works for the Department of Corrections.”

We had a database of all state and local employees that, from an information standpoint, was nothing short of gold. It came to us courtesy of an Open Public Records Act request our newspaper made each year. It made snooping on public employees as simple as a few mouse clicks.

“Yeah, got him,” Tommy said. “Hector I. Alvarez. Born 10/25/1963. Hired 11/01/2003. He made $38,835 last year.”

“Excellent. Can you get an address for him?”

“Hang on,” Tommy said, and I heard his keyboard chattering away. I cupped my cell phone and turned upside down so I could look at Rashan.

“When you get out of here, you might want to send a thank-you note to Tommy Hernandez, care of the Eagle-Examiner,” I said. “He just saved something precious to you.”

It didn’t take much convincing to get Rashan to join my field trip to Hector Alvarez’s house. Anything that didn’t involve his penis in close proximity to Kevin Mack’s hunting knife sounded like a pretty good idea to Rashan.

By the time he was untied, redressed, and debriefed-a short, scary lecture from Bernie Kosar about the consequences of ever again tussling with the Browns-it was after five. A cold, blustery night was settling in outside. Rashan had his backpack returned to him, soda can tabs still attached, then was blindfolded and released into my recognizance. As an honorary member of the Brick City Browns, I was bound to protect the secrecy of Brown Town’s location. So I escorted him to my car, then drove around for a few blocks before allowing him to remove his blindfold.

It wouldn’t have surprised me at any point if Rashan had simply bolted. After all, it was clear I wasn’t the muscle. It was possible Rashan was afraid the Browns would hunt him down if he ran. Or he might have felt beholden to me for having helped save him from horrible disfigurement. Either way, he had become quite docile, even cooperative.

And as we drove across town toward Hector Alvarez’s home-the address Tommy gave me was on Sanford Avenue, in Newark’s West Ward-he seemed amenable to chatting.

“So tell me again how Alvarez picked you out,” I asked.

“I don’t know, man. I was just going through the program like everyone else. I was getting toward the end. I think he knew I was about to be released. And he asked me what I was planning to do when I got out. I told him I didn’t know. Then he started telling me about The Stuff.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That it was the best. That I’d make a lot of money. That junkies went wild for it.”

“Did they?”

“Oh, hell yeah. I got out like four months ago. My first contract was for two bricks-I was a little worried about biting off more than I could chew. But I didn’t have no problems selling it. So I went up to four. I sold out every week. I didn’t even have to find customers. They was finding me. I was thinking about going up to six or eight bricks, but now I don’t know. I might quit.”

“Why?” You know, besides the fact that it was illegal, immoral, and dangerous.

We idled at a stoplight. Rashan was staring out the passenger side window as he spoke. “That Ludlow Street thing, man,” he said. “That’s some cold business. I don’t want to end up like that because some dude thinks I didn’t follow my contract.”

“Was that really in the contract you signed? The part about not cutting?”

“Yeah, man. I mean, I guess it was. I didn’t realize they were that serious about it, though.”

“You keep a copy of the contract?” I asked hopefully.

“Nah.”

“Too bad,” I said. There’s something about documents supporting a story-any kind of documents-that editors absolutely love. I would estimate documents were the source of a third of all Brodie’s newsroom erections.

“So did you know any of the Ludlow Four?” I asked.

“Nah.”

“None of them?”

“Nah. I don’t know any of the other dealers,” he said. “It’s like we all got our separate little things going on. The guy who gives me The Stuff, he tells me I’ll never have to worry about competition. He said we all got our own turf and we’ll never bump into each other.”

“So that’s why you don’t quit?”

“Yeah, man,” he said. “It’s like guaranteed profit. Where else is a guy like me going to make that kind of money?”

Twenty lousy grand a year? How about down at the ports. In a trade union. Driving a truck. In fact, there were dozens of jobs where a young man like Rashan Reeves could make much better money and do it legally-but only if he was willing to be a little patient, get some training, and establish a decent work history.

“I think this is it,” I said as we pulled up across the street from the Sanford Avenue address Tommy had given me. It was a two-story duplex with separate entrances adjacent to each other. Both sides were dark and there were no cars in the short driveway.

“Hang here for a second,” I said.

I got out just in time to get sideswiped by a cold gust of wind. I walked quickly up the five stairs on the front porch. Hector Alvarez’s address had an A after it, so I rang the doorbell on the left.

I hadn’t necessarily formulated a plan for what I would do if Alvarez actually answered but it didn’t matter. There was no one home.

Still, there were signs of continued occupancy: only one day’s worth of mail in the box, a girl’s bike chained to the railing, jackets hanging in the foyer. There was definitely a lived-in aura. It seemed worthwhile to stay for a while to see who might show up.

“Mind hanging here for a little bit?” I asked when I returned to the warmth of the Malibu.

“You mean, like a stakeout?” Rashan asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Cool,” he said, sounding genuinely enthused. “You got yourself a pretty cool job, huh?”

“There are lots of cool jobs out there, Rashan,” I said. “We’ll have to find you one someday.”

Ten minutes later, I was in the midst of explaining to Rashan the process of how a story got into the newspaper when a brand-new red Audi A4 rolled slowly past us and turned into the driveway. A short, round, middle-aged Hispanic man got out and Rashan practically jumped over the dashboard.

“That’s him,” he said. “That’s Mr. Hector.”

“Come on, Rashan,” I said. “If you want to see how a reporter gets a story, this is a good place to start.”

Or at least it was a good start if he wanted to get a feeling for ambush-style journalism, which is what this situation demanded. I closed in fast, with Rashan right behind me. Alvarez was barely out of his car when we were already on top of him.

“Hi, Hector, Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner,” I said. “And I’m sure you remember Rashan here.”

Alvarez rocked back on his heels. He pretty clearly did remember Rashan and was too stunned to open his mouth.

“Rashan tells me you recruited him on behalf of a local drug syndicate,” I continued. “You want to tell me who you’re working for?”

Rashan and I had Hector more or less pinned against the open door of his Audi, which still had a faint new-car smell to it. Alvarez had a broad, fleshy face that was registering complete surprise.

“I, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, trying to recover from his shock but not doing very well.

“Well, then, let me remind you: Rashan was one of your patients in a drug and alcohol rehab program at East Jersey State Prison. When you realized he was nearing the end of his sentence and going back home to Newark, you offered to hook him up with a source for heroin.”

“I don’t know who he is. He’s got me confused with someone else,” Alvarez said halfheartedly. Rashan just scoffed.

“Sure, sure he does,” I said. “Let me lay this out for you right now, Hector. You’ve been doing something very bad, something I’m sure the commissioner of the corrections department would be eager to hear about. Now, if you can help me out and tell me who you work for, maybe I can forget your name, you can forget your little sideline business, and everyone can move happily on with their lives. Or if you don’t tell me who you’re working for, I’ll plaster your name in a nice big headline, and you’ll not only lose your job, you’ll end up serving time with some of the very same people you’re counseling now.”

I was pretty sure I had the man soundly beaten and just moments away from full confession. But apparently Hector Alvarez was a little more stubborn than I gave him credit for. That, and the shock was wearing off.

“He’s lying to you,” Hector said. “I’m a certified drug and alcohol counselor. I got a degree. Who are you going to believe, me or some punk?”

I glanced at Rashan, then back at Hector.

“The punk,” I said.

“Then you go ahead and print your story and I’ll sue your ass off,” Alvarez said. “My cousin is a journalist. I know how this stuff works. You can’t just print something because someone says it’s true. This punk is lying.”

Rashan shouted a few excited obscenities and faked a charge at Alvarez, who cringed. I grabbed Rashan by his backpack, and he allowed himself to be restrained-basically because he wasn’t planning on jumping Alvarez anyway.

“Calm down, Rashan,” I said. “We’re just having a conversation here. Because now Hector is going to explain how he can afford this very nice new automobile on a drug counselor’s salary.”

Alvarez gazed longingly at the Audi for a second then turned back to me like I was talking about stealing his firstborn.

“That’s none of your business,” he said.

“You make thirty-eight grand a year, Hector,” I said. “I looked it up. I can also look up how much money you owe on your house. I’m guessing between your house payment and car payment, something won’t add up. Unless, of course, there’s some, you know, outside stream of income. But I’m sure you can explain that all to the IRS after I run my story.”

“Screw you,” Hector said.

I lost control of my inner wiseass and pulled out my notepad.

“Is that your official comment, Mr. Alvarez? ‘Screw you’?”

“Suck my dick,” he said.

“Interesting,” I said, pretending I was writing that down, too. “Not only is he the Crooked Drug Counselor of the Year, Mr. Alvarez is also a homosexual.”

Alvarez slammed the door to the Audi and stormed past us toward his house. “If you got anything more to say to me, you can talk to my lawyer,” he said.

“I’m not going away, Hector,” I called out as Alvarez fumbled with his keys. “But you can end this little problem in one sentence. Just give me a name and you get to keep your job.”

He stuck the key in the lock, turned it, then looked at me.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” he said, shortly before disappearing through his front door. “You think I’m worried about my job?”

The door slammed. I stuffed my notebook in my pocket and turned to walk back to the car. Rashan didn’t follow.

“What!?” he said. “That’s it? You’re not going to go break the door down?”

“I’m a newspaper reporter, not a bounty hunter,” I said.

“But he’s lying!”

“I know. No law against lying to a newspaper reporter. It happens all the time.”

“So you just let him go?”

“I may call him later-but only when he’s cooled down,” I said. “I took a chance that ambushing him like this would catch him off guard and he’d just start blabbing. It didn’t work.”

“But you’re going to go write the story now, right?”

“Before I write it, I have to prove it,” I said. “Rashan, I know you’re telling the truth. And I could tell that guy was full of crap. But unfortunately, Hector is right: no one is going to believe a drug-dealing ex-con over someone who works for the Department of Corrections. I need to verify your story two or three different ways before my editors will even think about printing it.”

Rashan stuck out his lower lip in a convincing pout, making it clear his first brush with journalism had left him rather unsatisfied.

“This isn’t a Western, Rashan,” I continued. “The guys in the white hats don’t always win. At least not right away. Sometimes you got to keep at it for a long time before you get the payoff.”

With that particular bit of advice, I was talking about more than just journalism. But it was hard to tell if Rashan was listening anymore. I had disappointed him and now he was tuning me out.

“Get in the car,” I said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Nah,” he said. “I ain’t going back there.”

I didn’t know if he meant now or ever.

“Okay. Well, here’s my card,” I said, handing it to him. “Give me a call sometime, okay?”

“Uh-huh,” Rashan said, then, without looking at me, turned and walked off into the night, his soda can tabs jingling as he went. I watched him go until all I could see was the night reflector strip on his backpack bobbing up and down. Then I went back to the Malibu, feeling the weight of the day settle on me.

It was getting to be six, which felt a lot like quitting time. And on a normal Friday, after a rough week at the office, I might just head home, curl up with Deadline, and watch Braveheart for approximately the fiftieth time. Except now my copy of Braveheart was just one more piece of ruin in what used to be my house. And, sadly, so was Deadline.

Then there was the other standby Friday-night activity for the suddenly overstressed: going out to some local bar, getting mind-blowingly drunk, and hitting on anything under the age of forty that wasn’t utterly repulsed by me. Except there was the small problem of what I would do if I actually succeeded in luring some lovely young lady into my clutches. Hey, honey, what do you say we go back to my place. I’ve got this great little debris pile not far from here. .

No, I was pretty much cruising for another night on Tina’s couch-or maybe, if I could stop being such a loser, Tina’s bed.

I just had one last errand to accomplish before I started traveling that way. Call it a mission of guilt: I wanted to see if I could find anyone who had seen Red or Queen Mary since their building got blown up. It wasn’t going to do them a lot of good if they were, in fact, underneath the rubble of Building Five. But I felt like I at least owed it to them to check.

So I made the turn off South Orange Avenue, not far from the Wyoming Fried Chicken where my buddy North Face was likely on patrol, and soon found myself back in the odd nether-world that was the remains of the Booker T. Washington Public Housing Project.

It was its usual empty, forlorn self-though instead of six large, empty brick buildings, there were now five. The search-and-rescue mission had been called off. So it was just me and the ghosts again.

I started looking around for signs of life, peering in the corners and behind the shadows just like I had been doing a few days earlier. The wind was managing to find a way to blow up my pants, which felt even less pleasant than it sounds. I pulled my jacket closer to my body and kept hoping for that whiff of smoke or glimpse of light that would indicate I was not alone.

But I was. Obviously I was. And yet I kept standing there as, what, self-punishment? As if I could somehow atone for Red and Queen Mary dying a horrible death by standing out in the cold and looking for them? What the hell was I doing here?

I was losing it. I must be, right? Why else would I be shivering in the courtyard of an abandoned Newark housing project waiting for two dead people to show up? I felt this hysteria creeping all over me, like my rational mind was separating from me, slipping off into the ether where it would never again be found. I cupped my hands to my mouth and started yelling as loud as I could.

“Rrrreeeedddd,” I hollered. “Rrrreeeedddd!”

I kept bellowing, each time pausing to listen for a response but only hearing the sound of my own voice echoing off cold, hard brick walls.

The Director picked up the call on the second ring, looking at his cell phone like it offended him. It was unusual for one of his people to call at this hour-or any hour for that matter. They were instructed to contact Monty on routine matters. And the Director had set up his organization so most matters had become routine.

“Speak,” the Director said.

“It’s Hector. Hector Alvarez.”

The Director could practically hear Alvarez gulping through the phone. The Director did not like Alvarez, a former drug addict turned counselor. The Director had little respect for addicts. He viewed them as weak, lacking self-control.

But dealer recruitment was not something the Director wanted to do himself. He came up with the idea for recruiting in prisons early on. It just made sense. Most of the inmates were there for dealing drugs in the first place, so they already knew the business. Plus, recruiting in jail meant you weren’t taking the unnecessarily dangerous step of swiping active dealers from other syndicates or gangs.

It hadn’t taken long working through the Director’s various Department of Corrections contacts to find Alvarez. He and the Director had a few beat-around-the-bush conversations, but the Director knew the first time they spoke he had found the right man. Alvarez had the taste for the finer things in life but not the paycheck. He had that sense of grandiosity, common among addicts, that convinced him he was due more than what life was giving him.

The arrangement with Alvarez, as it was with the recruiters in the other prisons, was simple: he received a cash bounty for every dealer he channeled to the Director. Yet while the Director valued Alvarez’s service, he had little patience for the man himself-especially when he was being hysterical like this.

“Get a hold of yourself,” the Director commanded.

“I’m sorry. I just got a visit from a reporter, a guy from the Eagle-Examiner,” Alvarez said through shallow breaths. “I think he’s on to us.”

“Explain.”

“Well, he had one of the dealers with him. Rashan Reeves. I got him for you a couple months ago. Remember him?”

“I do,” the Director said. The Director knew who all his dealers were, even if they didn’t know him.

“Yeah, so the reporter is like, ‘Rashan here tells me you’re recruiting drug dealers from jail. I’m going to write a story about you if you don’t tell me who you work for.’ ”

“And you told him. . what?”

“Nothing,” Alvarez said, his voice cracking slightly. “I told him to screw off, and that was it.”

“So by ‘on to us,’ you really mean ‘on to you,’ ” the Director said coolly.

Alvarez did not reply.

“Well, you’re calling me,” the Director said. “Is there something you want me to do about this?”

“I just. . I thought you should know.”

“Fine. What’s this reporter’s name?” the Director asked, even though he already knew the answer.

“I don’t know. He said his name so fast.”

“Carter Ross.”

“Yeah, that’s it!” Alvarez said. “I swear, I didn’t tell him anything.”

“And where is Mr. Ross now?”

“I don’t know. He just left.”

The Director frowned. The Director thought he had rid the world of Carter Ross with one push of a wireless detonator. It had surprised the Director to see Ross alive and breathing on the News at Noon. Clearly, he needed to be dealt with. Immediately.

As for Alvarez. .

“So, tell me, Hector, how old is that little girl of yours?” the Director asked.

“She just turned nine,” Alvarez replied, his voice faltering.

“How nice,” the Director said. “Tell her happy birthday.”