The Girl Next Door

CHAPTER 2

In the forty minutes I had to write the remaining three hundred words of my feature obit on Nancy, I mostly ignored the thought that I ought to be writing a story about a homicide instead.

I told myself that, in all likelihood, wacky old Jeanne was just letting her imagination get the best of her. Sure, Nancy was having “problems at work.” News flash: we all have problems at work. The only people who don’t are the unemployed.

If Nancy was still among the aspirating, Jeanne wouldn’t have given that late-night phone call another thought. Death has this tendency to take ordinary words and mundane conversations and magnify them ten-thousandfold, because it makes them the last words and the last conversation. Really, how many times have you heard someone say, with utmost gravity, “That was the last thing she ever said to me.”

So Jeanne was just taking those final utterances-which Nancy never intended to be profound-and blowing them out of proportion, letting them lead her mind to some frightening place. Grief does strange things to people’s heads. And hippies are notorious for being predisposed toward conspiracy theories.

Then again, so are newspaper reporters. So, yes, I was a little curious what made Jeanne think Nancy’s death was something other than what it seemed.

I studied that 510 number in my phone for a few seconds, debating whether I should call it. In my younger days, I was the kind of hard-charging reporter who probably would have. But now, in the dotage of my early thirties, I had finally gained the wisdom necessary to let it rest for a while. Wooing sources is not unlike Friday night at the bar. Sometimes you have to play a little hard to get.

So I mentally shelved Jeanne Nygard and concentrated on writing Nancy the send-off she deserved. Naturally, it ended up being a bit long, but I had a reputation for overwriting to uphold. With exactly three minutes to spare, I hit the button that sent it over to the copy desk, where my elegant prose would have to withstand the ritualistic assault known as “editing.”

Then I stood and quickly surveyed the newsroom. Unlike most workplaces in America, newspapers have eschewed cubicles, partitions, walls, or any other attempts to divide space into discrete units. The Eagle-Examiner newsroom-sometimes called “the nest,” because of the whole, you know, eagle thing-is just a great plane of desks. It’s set up that way so we can yell at each other, unhindered by any barriers that might break up the sound.

Only a handful of editors get actual offices, and even those are walled-in glass for maximum transparency. I selected the fourth office from the left and ambled over to find the assistant managing editor for local news sitting in her chair, tucked in a convoluted ball, engrossed in her computer screen.

“Hey, I’m filed,” I said.

“I’m overjoyed,” Tina replied. And although she didn’t appear to remove her attention from the screen long enough to look at me, she added, “It’s a good thing you’re wearing that suit.”

“And why is that?”

She finally lifted her eyes.

“I got free tickets to the symphony tonight and you’re my date.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You may now express your pleasure.”

“I’m … so pleased?” I said, raising my pitch at the end so she wouldn’t miss the question mark.

“Next time, you will express more pleasure than that,” she said, then unwrapped herself with a series of quick, sumptuous little stretches.

When Tina isn’t doing yoga, she’s jogging. She couples those twin obsessions with an aversion to carbohydrates. It’s not a lifestyle I would recommend for everyone, but she seems to enjoy the discipline. It certainly had rather admirable effects on her physique, which she showed off with a wardrobe that tended toward the form-fitting, sleeveless, and short-hemmed side of the fashion spectrum. It led to complications in my life that didn’t exist when my editor was a pear-shaped, middle-aged Italian guy.

“Who says I don’t already have plans tonight?” I asked.

“What, like a hot date? Come on, I already heard you struck out with Sweet Thang.”

“Sweet Thang” was the nickname bestowed on a former intern at the paper. She and I had engaged in a brief flirtation that never went anywhere, and it was now an entirely moot point-she had departed newspapering in favor of a job at a nonprofit in New York City, which was probably a better fit for her philanthropically oriented soul.

I held my chin high and said, “I’ll have you know I happen to be highly sought after by a great variety of women.”

“Who … the cougars from Montclair?”

“Well, them, yes,” I said. “But I also happen to have caught the eye of a rather fetching younger woman.”

Tina reached around to the back of her head and released a hair clasp, allowing a cascade of thick, brown curls to fall on her shoulders.

“One, you’re lying,” she said. “Two, do we really have to play this game?”

“What game?”

“The one where you pretend you actually have a love life.”

She had me there. My last serious relationship was now several years in my rearview mirror, and it had ended rather poorly. The lady and I had been living together at my house in Nutley-the house also ended poorly, but that’s another story-and we were entering that period in our late twenties when we spent a lot of time going to friends’ weddings. I thought we were heading in the same direction, even thought I was happy about it. Then she explained to me I wasn’t, then explicated all the reasons. The short version: she didn’t like anything about me, after all. I’m not even sure I had digested the long version by the time she was off shacking up with someone new.

And now? I seemed to have become a rather committed bachelor. I had sporadic and nonrecurring dalliances with the opposite sex, though nothing that stuck. My life pretty much consisted of deadline (the job) and Deadline (the cat).

“Well, okay, fair point,” I said. “I’m just not a big symphony guy.”

“Come on, I’ll wear a dress and pretend not to notice when you stare at my legs all night.”

“Tempting offer.”

“Perhaps you missed the point earlier,” she said. “It’s not an offer. It’s an order.”

* * *

As promised, Tina changed into a regulation-issue Little Black Dress, one that stopped several inches above the knee. She coupled it with a dash of perfume, a thin gold choker, and four-inch heels. And it was a good thing we were leaving the building because she was starting to set off all the smoke detectors.

We took her car-a Volvo being a better fit for the symphony than a used Malibu-and scooted across town to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, a handsome brick edifice that really shines when lit up at night. Built in the late nineties, NJPAC was trumpeted as the catalyst that would bring nightlife roaring back to downtown Newark in a way not seen since the city’s long-ago heyday.

And while those expectations had perhaps been unrealistic-they were building a concert hall, not a miracle machine-there was no disputing that the surrounding area, while still a bit grungy, was far better off for its presence. In a lot of ways, it was typical of the urban renewal process. People somehow thought it should happen instantly, simply because you poured money into a shiny new building. But the fact was, it had taken America many long decades of concerted effort to systematically destroy its cities. It would take at least that long to build them back up.

And sure enough, Newark was getting better. A new arena, the Prudential Center, had eventually joined NJPAC downtown. A cultural community was slowly taking hold. New restaurants were cropping up. So now at least when suburbanites announced they were going to Newark for the evening, their peers looked at them only slightly crookedly.

Tina and I arrived at seven-thirty for an eight o’clock show. The Eagle-Examiner was one of the event’s sponsors, which meant we were invited to a special, preshow cocktail party. Once inside the building, we found the gathering simply by following the sound of overly boisterous chatter.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been sober long enough today,” I announced as we entered.

“Yeah, why don’t you do something about that for both of us,” said Tina, who didn’t seem to notice or care that she was being ogled by every man in the room with usable eyeballs.

I elbowed my way toward the bar, procured a Sam Adams for the gentleman and a white wine for the lady, and returned to find Tina alone but still not lacking for attention.

“Wow, that was a tough choice,” I said. “They had both of my favorite beers up there.”

“What are those?” Tina asked.

“Free and Free Light.”

“You can dress him up, but you still can’t take him anywhere,” Tina said, shaking her head.

We scanned the crowd, which was decked out in its finery, as if the orchestra would refuse to play if a single person wore jeans. There was nothing like the symphony to bring out the heavy-duty pretense in people, and it was being layered thickly in every corner of the room: men acting more important than they really were, women masking insecurities in catty comments, wannabe aristocrats hoping not to be outed as members of the proletariat.

As a newspaper reporter, I’m required to move in all strata of society. I get to observe human behavior everywhere, from the meanest housing projects to the gilded symphony hall. And what always strikes me is that when you strip away the superficial differences in clothing, setting, and dialect, groups of people everywhere are more or less the same. We all have our pretenses. We all posture to a certain degree. But, ultimately, most of us are just trying to find a way to fit in.

Still, in any crowd, there’s always one guy who-in a strictly symbolic sense-thinks his dick is bigger than everyone else’s. And in this crowd, that man was the guy in the middle of the room with the pocket square: Gary A. Jackman.

“Speaking of people you can’t take anywhere…” I said, pointing Tina’s attention toward our publisher.

We studied him for a moment. Something was obviously off. His face was flushed, as if he had just been running. His hair, which I had never seen even slightly out of place, was mussed in a haphazard way. His tie was askew. His voice was too loud. His posture, much like the amber-colored beverage anchored in his right hand, was sloshing from side to side.

“Is he…” Tina started, giggled, then finished: “Oh my God, Jackass is drunk.”

“Correction: Jackass is hammered,” I said.

Tina tittered some more, putting her hand in front of her mouth to hide her giggling.

“That is just so regrettable,” she said. “He’s not a very subtle drunk, is he?”

I didn’t find it quite as funny as Tina. For better or worse, this was the man charged with being the public face of the Newark Eagle-Examiner. And here he was, surrounded by some of the finer members of polite New Jersey society, totally inebriated. He wasn’t just embarrassing himself. He was embarrassing all of us.

“About as subtle as a car alarm,” I said. “It just makes me … Oh, would you look at that!”

At that moment, Jackman was in the midst of spilling his drink on the unsuspecting woman standing next to him. She was wearing a red cocktail dress, which immediately acquired a dark stain down the front. The woman was mortified, but it was about to get worse: Jackman removed his pocket square and started attempting to dry her off, essentially groping her breasts in the process. The woman twisted away to free herself from molestation, but he didn’t seem to understand and clumsily pursued her for several steps until she finally got away.

The entire group around Jackman was politely pretending nothing had happened. For his part, Jackman was too oblivious to know how ridiculous he looked. In the meantime, a waiter had supplied him with a fresh drink. I noticed everyone was now giving him a wider berth.

“What a fool,” I said.

“Oh, give Jackass a break,” Tina said. “He’s under a lot of pressure these days. He’s just blowing off some steam.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I guess ruining a perfectly good newspaper can be tough on a guy.”

“Say what you want. I know he’s not exactly beloved in the newsroom, but he’s doing everything in his power to save our paper right now. It’s got to be a strain.”

“Yeah, why don’t you run over and give him a backrub to relieve the tension?”

“I’m serious,” Tina said. “Those negotiations can’t be easy.”

“What negotiations?”

Tina was about to answer when she was interrupted by a chiming sound being piped in from somewhere above us. The show was about to start.

“Drink up,” she said. “Let’s go find our seats.”

* * *

I drained my beer as Tina finished her wine, then she grabbed my arm and escorted me into the concert hall, where she made for the front of the orchestra section.

“Not exactly the cheap seats, huh?” I said.

“My best reporter is worth every penny I paid for these,” she replied.

“I thought you said they were free.”

“Exactly.”

“Ouch. Now you’re hurting my feelings.”

“If you’re nice, I’ll make it up to you later.”

She gave me a flirty smile and a quick peck on the cheek. Tina had a long history of being all bark, no bite. So I mostly just dismissed the comment as the wine talking. Still, as we made our way to our seats, she pulled more of her body against my arm, bringing me in close enough that I fell under the spell of her perfume. Before I could exert any control over my brain, I began wondering what she might or might not be wearing under her dress and, more to the point, how I could get myself in a position to find out.

We had to break contact when we made it to our row, which snapped me out of it. I reminded myself Tina was, essentially, my boss. And as nice as it might be to temporarily ignore the prohibition on reporter-editor fraternization, we both knew it would make things too weird in the long run.

Or at least I think we did.

“Anyway, you were asking about the union negotiations,” Tina said as we settled into our seats. “Have you really not heard about them?”

“Sorry, I don’t sit in meetings all day where these sorts of things are discussed, remember? You’ll have to enlighten me.”

Tina stared straight ahead for a second, as if she needed to summon the strength to explain it all.

“Gosh, I don’t even know where to start,” she said. “You know we’re losing money, right?”

“Buckets of it, yes.”

“Well, one of the reasons is that a lot of the contracts we signed with our unions date back to better days,” Tina said. “So, for example, even though our revenues have plummeted, the guys who drive our distribution trucks are still working under a collective bargaining agreement that guarantees them a three percent raise.”

“No kidding. Damn, where do I sign up for that?”

Our newsroom wasn’t unionized. Once upon a time, it hadn’t seemed all that necessary. As reporters and editors, we fancied ourselves highly specialized, highly skilled, highly mobile workers who did not need group representation: if management didn’t keep wages competitive, we would-in the fine tradition of LeBron James-take our talents elsewhere. We told ourselves unions were for auto workers and factory linemen, people who worried their jobs would be outsourced to Bangladesh, not for stars like us.

Then our business collapsed, taking those illusions with it. Suddenly we were no different from employees in any other contracting industry. And we had grown so comfortable during the good ol’ days, we didn’t have any kind of collective bargaining to give us some shred of leverage.

So I hadn’t had a pay raise in six years. The pay cuts started three years ago. And really, I was just happy to have hung on to my job. Szanto and a lot of my other (now former) colleagues weren’t as fortunate.

“Yeah, well, we’ll go out of business if we can’t renegotiate those deals, and Jackman obviously knows that better than anyone,” Tina said. “And it’s not just the drivers. It’s the delivery people, the press operators, pretty much all the unions. None of them want to give in. But they’re also realistic enough to know that if the paper goes under, they won’t have jobs.”

“And a three percent pay raise doesn’t do much for you if you’re no longer getting a paycheck in the first place,” I said.

“Exactly,” Tina said. “So it’s like this big game of chicken. We tell them we need concessions. They say they’ll go on strike if we keep pressing for them. We say we’ll go out of business if we don’t get them. And round and round it goes.”

The audience was getting settled in, as were the musicians, who were fiddling with their instruments and readying themselves for the appearance of their concertmaster and conductor.

“I guess it just bothers me that all I ever hear about is how we need to cut costs. You never hear about new revenue initiatives,” I said, as a drummer tested the timpani. “It’s going to take a pretty bright person to figure out how a newspaper can monetize the Web, and I don’t have a lot of confidence Jackass is the guy.”

Just then, as if on cue, Jackman came stumbling down the aisle toward us. He was being loosely steered by an usher, who led him to a row two ahead of ours, where there was just one empty seat. Naturally, it was in the middle of the row. And Jackman, whose dexterity was several scotches behind him, began falling over people on his way toward it.

“Jackass is made of tougher stuff than you think,” Tina said, keeping her voice lower now that he was in the vicinity. “I know he plays the part of the dandy. But at the paper he worked at in Michigan, he pretty much broke one of the unions he was negotiating with. He just refused to blink. Supposedly it got pretty nasty.”

“Nasty … how?”

“Well, he bashed some guy’s brains in, for one.”

“What!”

“I’ve heard this story from a few people, so I’m pretty sure it’s true. The union was trying to intimidate Jackass and sent some muscle to his country club, just to scare him, show him they meant business. The story I heard is that Jackman took a seven-iron and buried it in the guy’s skull.”

“Holy crap! Didn’t he face assault charges or anything?”

“Apparently the guy who came at him was carrying a concealed gun. He hadn’t pulled it, but it was on him, so Jackman was able to claim self-defense, and his golfing buddies backed him up. There were no charges.”

I shook my head as I watched Jackman find his seat and sink heavily into it.

“All I’m saying is, don’t underestimate Gary Jackman,” Tina finished. “The man has brass balls.”

I was about to comment on Jackman’s balls when suddenly, from two rows ahead of us, there was a commotion. A woman let out a horrified shriek. Two men jumped up from their seats, as if there were debris falling on them from above. Another man stood up and was staring down at a whitish mess dripping from his tuxedo pants. It was difficult at first to discern what, exactly, had happened.

Then it all became clear: Gary A. Jackman, the Newark Eagle-Examiner’s dandy, brass-balled publisher, had thrown up on the guy next to him.

* * *

Once Jackman was escorted out and order was restored, the actual performance began and things got a lot less interesting. The orchestra was from somewhere in Europe-the Netherlands, perhaps, or maybe Belgium … I honestly don’t know how anyone (besides the Dutch and the Belgians) keeps those two countries straight.

After the first piece, Tina was chirping about how some well-respected music magazine-not Rolling Stone, apparently-had named the orchestra the best in the world. They certainly passed the Carter Ross Classical Music Test: I drifted off during the first movement of the second piece. Call me boorish or uncultured, but I’ve always found falling asleep at the symphony to be one of life’s greater pleasures. And if you look around at any of your finer concert halls, you’ll see I’m not alone.

At intermission-or, as I delighted in calling it, “halftime”-I convinced Tina we had received enough refinement for one night and that, as newspaper people, it was time to get back in touch with our more populist roots. So we snuck out and made our way down the street to Kilkenny Alehouse, a comfortable establishment with a beautiful wooden bar, an array of flat-screen televisions, and a plethora of beer on tap. My kind of place.

Tina stuck with white wine as I bounced between ales. We put away several rounds, yammering about the miserable state of our chosen profession. But, at the same time, Tina and I had long since decided that if the ship was going to take us down, we might as well keep dancing on the decks until it slipped under the water.

Then we started trading war stories, remembering our brushes with disaster, recounting our triumphs. Even though the bar was all but empty on a Monday night, Tina and I had pulled our chairs together as if a crowd of people had forced us into close quarters. The contact was delicious. Tina’s legs kept brushing against mine. Her hands took turns resting on various parts of my person. And her brown eyes, which had gone just slightly watery as a result of the wine, glowed with particular intensity.

I wasn’t sure how many hours had passed by the time we teetered out. But a hot July day had given way to a pleasant, temperate summer evening. The air was so perfect-neither too hot nor too cold-it was almost like it didn’t exist. And a nearly full moon hung above us, large and lanternlike.

As we made our way down the street, toward a car neither of us had any business driving, Tina had draped herself on my right side, with one arm wrapped tightly around mine and a hand on my chest.

The next thing I knew, we had veered into the darkness of a small alleyway and we were kissing. It was unclear whether I had pinned Tina up against the brick wall or she had pulled me there. Either way, I had one arm wrapped around her, cushioning her against the bricks. My other hand was running up and down her side, making the wonderful journey from her upper thigh, to the curve of her hip, to her rib cage and then back again.

Her hands, meanwhile, were planted on my ass, which she was using as a handle to draw me even closer to her.

I had no idea what was happening, nor did I care to stop and examine it. Our mouths just felt too good together. She started letting out these little moans and I heard myself doing the same. My hand had reached her firm, small breast, which I could easily feel through the thin fabric of her dress. Tina had been grinding our lower bodies into each other, with the expected results, then separated just enough to begin fumbling with my belt buckle.

Then suddenly she wasn’t.

“Oh my God, this can’t happen,” she said, turning herself perpendicular to me and taking perhaps two steps away.

“Sure it can,” I said, moving toward her and putting both arms around her shoulders. “Neither of us should be driving anyway. Let’s just get a hotel room and enjoy this.”

“No, I … That can’t happen,” she said, breaking out of my grasp.

“Why the hell not? We seem to do this all the time. Maybe that ought to tell us something.”

She looked down at herself to make sure her dress was properly adjusted, then started walking purposefully-if drunkenly-back toward the NJPAC. The show had obviously been over for a while, but there were still a few police officers around directing what traffic still lingered in the area. I let her stalk away for a moment, then caught up to her as she crossed Broad Street.

“Hotel,” I said.

“We can’t. I’m your editor.”

“Great. I’ll find a new one.”

“That’s not the point,” she said, walking faster.

“Then what is the point? We’ve been doing this dance for a while now. You keep telling me you want to have a baby with me. I keep telling you I don’t just want to be a sperm donor daddy. Let’s compromise: we’ll have the baby and do all the other stuff that goes with it, too.”

“You’re just drunk and horny. You don’t mean that-”

“I do, too,” I cut in.

“And even if you did, I don’t want that. I’ve told you that. I’m not the girl you or anyone else is falling in love with.”

“And why not? I have feelings for you, and I know you have feelings for me. Why don’t we give them a chance?”

She was making bad time in her high heels, and finally, in one remarkably fluid motion, she took them off and transferred them to her left hand. She broke into a fast jog. It was all I could do to catch up with her and gently grab hold of her arm.

“Tina,” I demanded. “Why not?”

She wheeled around and, for a moment, I thought I was going to get eight inches worth of high heel embedded in my face. Instead, I heard:

“The first guy I fell in love with was a total jerk. The second guy I fell in love with was even more of a jerk. And then, just to confirm it wasn’t a fluke, the third guy I fell in love with turned out to be a jerk, too. After a while, I started thinking maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m toxic. Maybe I just turn them into jerks.”

“Now you’re the one who’s sounding drunk. Let’s get a hotel room and-”

“I’m toxic. Don’t you get that? You’re a great guy, Carter. I want to have a baby with you more than anything, and I hope it’s a boy who turns out to be just like you. But I don’t want to fall in love with you, and I don’t want you falling in love with me. I don’t want to turn you into just another jerk.”

With that, she ran to an idling taxi, leaving me standing on a sidewalk just outside NJPAC, a small cadre of bored cops looking at me like I was prize idiot for letting a beautiful woman get away.

I remained there for a little. Then I flagged down my own cab, giving the driver my address in Bloomfield. I arrived home to find Deadline in his usual spot (the exact, geometric middle of my bed) and shoved him aside so I could begin the predictable tossing and turning.

Strangely, though, it wasn’t the thought in the front of my mind that kept me awake. It was the one wedged off to the side. Of all things, I kept playing over my conversation with Jeanne Nygard:

She was having problems at work … Nancy had reason to fear for her life … It wasn’t an accident.

Could someone really have wanted to kill a waitress/delivery girl? Somewhere in the midst of my fitfulness, I resolved to indulge my curiosity by looking into it for a day, maybe two, if only so I could put it to rest.

* * *

The next morning, I saw that Jeanne Nygard had been thinking about me, too. When I retrieved my phone from the pants I had been wearing the night before, it told me I missed a call from her 510 area code number. She didn’t leave a message, so I decided-in keeping with my hard-to-get tactic-I wouldn’t call her back.

Instead, I shook off a minor hangover, quickly ran through my shave-shower-breakfast routine, and caught a bus into downtown Newark. In addition to retrieving my car, I had to go into the newsroom and make an appearance in Tina’s office. I was entered in an event at the Awkward Olympics: the About-last-night-athalon.

Tina was obviously gearing up for the competition as well because I was still on the bus when I received an e-mail from Thompson, Tina. The subject: “Good Morning.” The body: “Come see me when you get in.-TT.”

I considered dawdling but then decided to get it over with. As soon as I arrived at the nest, I forced myself toward her office.

“Hey,” I said, tapping on the glass but not wanting to enter without being asked.

“Come on in,” she said.

I complied. Figuring we had parted ways around midnight, and it was now ten A.M., it had given us both ten hours to sober up and start feeling abashed about the evening’s events. Tina was wearing a subdued light blue blouse, a chagrined expression, and puffy dark smudges under her eyes. Plus, the woman who never drank coffee-she told me caffeine wasn’t good for developing fetuses and she didn’t want any coffee in her system when she conceived-had an extra large Dunkin’ Donuts cup in front of her.

“I’m sorry I just ran off without thinking of how you were going to get home,” she said. “That was awful of me. I-”

“It’s okay, Tina. I took a cab, too.”

“Still,” she said. “I was halfway back to Hoboken by the time I realized what I did. I almost told the cab to turn around, but then I thought you’d probably rather walk than see more of me.”

“It’s okay, really.”

Tina smiled weakly, then took a long pull on her coffee. I glanced at the side wall of her office, which contained a dry erase board filled with story ideas we would probably never get around to doing. Then I stared at the small stack of newspapers behind her. Tina, meanwhile, was straightening paper clips on her desk.

“So you, uh, made it home okay?” I said, just to say something. Obviously, she did make it home okay, because otherwise she wouldn’t be sitting in her office, making pointless small talk while an eight-hundred-pound gorilla was doing jumping jacks in the corner.

“Yeah,” she said. “You?”

“Yeah.”

I coughed gently into my hand and stretched out my legs. Tina twisted to her right until two of her vertebrae made a popping sound, then twisted back to her left. The gorilla switched from jumping jacks to mountain climbers. I guess he was working on his core strength.

“See?” Tina said, finally breaking the silence. “This is why we can’t sleep together.”

“I meant what I said last night,” I blurted. “I think we should give our relationship a chance.”

“We’re not having that conversation right now.”

“Tina, that kiss-”

“We’re definitely not having that conversation right now.”

“Okay, when are we having that conversation?”

“I don’t know. Maybe never.”

“Tina…”

“No,” she said sharply. “We’re not doing this. Please.”

She punctuated the “please” with an emphatic jerk of the head, like she wanted to create a page break between that conversation and a new one.

“So how do we move forward from here?” I asked.

“The same way we did yesterday. I’m your editor. You’re my reporter. That’s the real reason I called you in here. I have a story I need you to work on.”

“Oh,” I said, a little taken aback. It was the last thing I expected to hear. Tina plowed forward:

“We’re getting word there’s a bear in Newark.”

“A what?”

“A bear. As in the furry, forest-dwelling creature. Except this one isn’t in a forest. It wandered into Newark overnight and is now rambling around Vailsburg.”

“I actually have something I’m working on at the moment. Mind putting someone else on it?”

“Have you looked around the newsroom lately, Carter? I would put ‘someone else’ on it, but ‘someone else’ took a buyout three years ago, and ‘the other guy’ got laid off last year,” she said, not bothering to hide her annoyance. “We need a writer on this thing. If we get the right art, this could lead the paper. You know how Brodie loves animal pictures.”

I did. It had just been a long time since that particular partiality-which ran the gamut from bears to dogs to escaped pet alligators-had been my problem. Those kinds of stories were generally farmed out, as it were, to bureau reporters or interns, not members of the investigative team. And yeah, maybe it was a little bit of a diva move, trying to duck this assignment. But I didn’t get into journalism so I could write searing exposes on zoo animals.

“What about Hays? Can’t he do it?”

“Hays is the only full-time reporter we have covering every crime between here and Morristown. And besides, he’d end up writing this as straight news.”

“What about Whitlow?”

“Whitlow is on vacation.”

“What ab-”

“Stop it, Carter,” she snapped. “You don’t make the staffing decisions around here, and you certainly don’t get to second-guess them. I’m your editor and I’m telling you this is your job. End of conversation.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. This is the stupidest-”

“End of conversation. Go.”

Tina buried her attention in her computer screen, as if to emphasize our dialogue had, indeed, come to a close. I couldn’t help but feel this was personal. I had crossed some kind of boundary with Tina last night, gotten a little too close to someone who preferred to maintain a rather generous buffer zone. Saddling me with a stupid daily story was her way of planting me firmly back on the other side of the line.

“You can take an intern with you if you want someone to help with the legwork,” she said, without making eye contact. “I don’t think Lunky has anything to do right now.”

“Aww, come on-Lunky?”

“Yeah, you know, the big-”

“I know who he is. I’ve also heard he can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”

“Probably true,” Tina said. “So I suggest you don’t share your Bubblicious with him.”

* * *

If Tina thought I was going to waste my day dodging piles of bear scat in Newark, she had another think coming. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t beneath using interns to do my work for me. And so, in giving me Lunky, she had unwittingly provided me an escape from this lowly task.

“Lunky” was the clever nickname the editors had given to Kevin Lungford. He was one of the newest members of the ever-rotating battery of indentured servants who have become increasingly predominant in most newsrooms, mostly because of their remarkable ability to subsist on salaries that qualify as human rights violations.

Our editors thought of the interns as packages of ramen noodles: cheap, portable, and surprisingly filling, but not something you put a lot of care into making. I, on the other hand, tried to take an interest in their personal development. I guess it’s because I don’t have time to volunteer at animal shelters. I push for the humane treatment of interns instead.

Our interns come in all shapes, colors, and talent levels. Some of them are actually quite good, or at least have the potential to become good.

Others are like Lunky. In the few weeks he had been here, the only thing that had distinguished him at all was his size, which was, to be sure, quite impressive. He was about six foot five and had the kind of heft to his chest and shoulders that suggested his weight was somewhere in the neighborhood of 275. He had an abundance of bushy hair protruding out of a massive skull, with a sloped forehead a pronounced ridge above his brow, all of which made it tempting to surmise he had some Neanderthal DNA floating around in him. Combine his general, hulking appearance with the last name Lungford, and it didn’t take long for his nickname to originate or stick.

The rumor was Lunky had played defensive end on his college football team-probably at one of those jock schools that had majors like “Personal Communications”-and that the sports department had hired him without much vetting, mostly with the intention of having him bat cleanup for their softball team.

But for reasons that were still unclear, sports promptly shipped him over to news, where he wasn’t considered much of a value-add, either. His byline had, so far, been suspiciously absent from the newspaper. From what I gathered, people tried not to talk to him. So he hung around the newsroom, all day and halfway into the night-long after most of the other interns had gone home-with apparently nothing to do.

As I approached him, sitting in a chair that looked too small for him, alone in the raft of desks where we stick the interns, I actually felt sorry for him. Poor Lunky, dim, dull, and friendless, was reading a thin paperback that more or less disappeared in his massive hands. I couldn’t tell what was on the cover, but it was about the size and shape of a comic book.

“Hi, Kevin,” I said. “I’m Carter Ross. We’ve been assigned to work on a story together.”

He held up a finger, as if he didn’t want to break his concentration from the exploits of the Green Lantern. I watched him read for a second-at least I couldn’t see his lips moving-then he finally looked up.

“Sorry, I just got to a good part,” he said, then turned his attention back to his reading. “Listen to this: ‘The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. What is a day? What is a year? What is summer? What is woman? What is a child? What is sleep?’”

I felt my head cocking to one side.

“What … What are you reading?”

“Emerson.”

“Excuse me?”

“Emerson.”

“As in Ralph Waldo?”

“Of course,” Lunky said. “I actually started out with Thoreau-he was going to be my ‘summer beach read,’ if you will. But I just wasn’t getting the most out of my Thoreau because I wasn’t as current as I wanted to be on my Emerson. Trying to understand Thoreau without being solid with Emerson would be like”-he paused, groping for the right analogy-“trying to make sense of a baby without having ever met its mother.”

“Uhh,” I said, mostly because it expressed the sum total of my knowledge about the subject. As an English major at Amherst, I should probably have been a little more conversant on all things transcendental. But I put in more hours at the student newspaper than I ever spent in the stacks. I usually just tried to fake my way through these kinds of discussions.

“This is some incredible stuff,” he continued, fanning back pages in what I now recognized was no comic book. “Check this out, ‘… why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields.’”

Lunky leaned back, blown away. “There is more wool and flax in the fields! Can you imagine writing that in 1836? The nerve it took.”

His eyes were fixed on some far-off point, his thoughts weighted with profundity.

“Kevin, I thought you … played football in college.”

“Huh? Oh yeah.”

“Where did you go to school again?”

“Princeton.”

Oh. Yeah. A real football factory, that place.

“I finished my undergraduate degree in the spring,” he said. “I’m actually starting my Ph.D. in English there in the fall. I’m planning to write my dissertation on Philip Roth. He grew up here in Newark, you know.”

“Yeah, I, uh, knew that.”

“I visited his boyhood home yesterday-81 Summit Avenue, as any good Roth fan knows. I spoke to a lady who lives there now. She was so nice. She let me look around the house and everything. I’m endeavoring to better understand his milieu: see the things he saw, learn about his influences, get some real-world Newark experience before cloistering myself in academia.”

“Yeah, well, speaking of real-world Newark experience … We, uhh … We’ve been assigned to work on a story about a bear.”

“Bears are highly symbolic in Eastern European literature,” Lunky lectured.

“Yes, I’m sure they are. But right now there’s a bear-not a figurative bear, an actual bear-wandering around Newark. Which is sort of unusual because Newark is, you know, kind of urban.”

“Ah yes, indeed,” Lunky said philosophically, considering this information. “I guess I can see how that would be newsworthy-in a certain voyeuristic sense.”

I smiled with what I hoped was insincerity. “Yes, the philistines get quite a charge out of this sort of thing.”

Missing my attempt at irony, he said, “Okay. So where is it?”

“Well, that’s part of the challenge.”

“I see. How do you suggest we go about finding it?”

“It’s a bear in Newark, New Jersey,” I said. “We head down South Orange Avenue and listen for the sound of screaming.”

“Oh,” he said, then after a thoughtful pause asked, “Where’s South Orange Avenue?”

* * *

Realizing Lunky was going to need a little more mentoring than the average intern, I got him armed with a notepad and a pen-things he might have forgotten, if left to his own devices-and walked him out to the parking garage. We got into our respective cars, and I gave him instructions to stick to my bumper like the elbow patches to his professors’ tweed jackets. We wound our way out of downtown toward the Vailsburg section of Newark and what I hoped was a rendezvous with something dark and furry.

Vailsburg is a small chunk of western Newark that, a century ago, was actually considered the countryside. These days, approximately 87 percent of its surface area is covered by manmade substances-primarily concrete, asphalt, and discarded chewing gum. It is not easily confused with grizzly country.

As I trolled down South Orange Avenue with my window down, I kept my eyes and ears peeled for something that would suggest the regular order of things was askew. Not long after passing over the Garden State Parkway, I found what I was looking for: a teenaged kid-who appeared to be a member of the Junior Gangbangers League-had shimmied up a light stanchion and was clinging to it like he planned to still be there the next time the census came around.

I hand-signaled to Lunky to pull over, and soon we were on foot, approaching the kid. He was whip thin with a big head of braids, and his clothing choices suggested he frequently consulted the league’s fashion manual, “31 Ways to Dress Like a Blood,” which advocated a lot of red accessorizing-red bandana, red shoes, red hat, and so on.

“Excuse me,” I said, “you haven’t seen a bear by any chance, have you?”

He looked at me like he couldn’t understand how white people managed to do so well on the SAT.

“You think I’m up here ’cause I like the view?”

“Which way did it go?”

He pointed down a narrow side street with a shaky finger.

“The one day I come down here without my piece and look what happens,” he said, shaking his head.

I looked in the direction he pointed. “I don’t see anything. I’m guessing it’s probably safe to come down now.”

“Helllll no!”

I grinned. Here was a kid who probably stood out on this busy street corner all day long and half the night. In a state where there are roughly 150 pedestrian fatalities a year-and exactly zero people killed by bears-a fast-moving Chevy was, statistically speaking, a far greater threat to life and limb. But this youngster didn’t look like he wanted to engage in a breakdown of the mortality and morbidity tables with me.

“Aw, come on, it’s just a little bear,” I teased.

“Yeah, but what if he likes dark meat? You’d be all right. But I’d be lunch.”

“Skinny guy like you? You wouldn’t be much more than an appetizer.”

“Laugh it up, white boy. I ain’t going nowhere.”

I listened for sirens but didn’t hear any. So I turned to Lunky and said, “This young man has seen the bear. Interview him. I’m going to go find the little critter.”

I bid them good-bye and started jogging down the middle of the side street. A few houses in, I saw an old woman on her porch, looking wary, clutching a broom-as if that would give her all the defense she needed when the bear decided to climb her front steps. She was craning her head to the right.

“That way?” I asked.

“I think so. You with animal control?”

“No, ma’am, I’m with the newspaper.”

“And you chasin’ that thing? You some kinda crazy?”

I kept jogging, which I suppose answered her question. About midway down the next block, I found the source of everyone’s excitement on the left side of the street: a mass of black fur roughly the height of a Great Dane, with tulip-shaped ears and dirt-covered hindquarters.

In my entirely inexpert opinion, I judged this to be a young adult male Ursus americanus, maybe 150 or 200 pounds and well fed. He had knocked over a garbage can and was having a fine time pawing through its contents, his nose eagerly exploring the various odors. Banana peels. Potato chip bags. Chicken bones. It was bear manna.

Every once in a while, he’d take a nibble at something and I’d get a glimpse of his rather well-developed incisors. So I kept a safe distance, probably a hundred feet or so, though I wasn’t particularly worried. This fella was so happily engaged in yesterday’s dinner he was oblivious to my presence. Bears have good hearing and an excellent sense of smell but notoriously bad eyesight. As long as I kept quiet and stayed downwind, he’d never know I was there.

Then, to my horror, I felt a sneeze coming.

It started as a mere suggestion, a small tickle somewhere in my sinuses. I thought I could keep it at bay until the feeling passed, only it kept getting more insistent, like it wouldn’t be denied. I held my finger under my nose to try and stop it, because isn’t that what they always did in cartoons? But that only made it worse. So did a variety of other efforts: Lamaze-style breathing, biting my lower lip, making funny faces.

None of it worked. The more I fought it, the greater the urge to sneeze became. Plus, I could tell my resistance was only going to make the inevitable explosion that much more percussive. When I finally succumbed to the sneeze and let it loose, it sounded roughly like a shotgun.

The bear immediately looked up.

I froze.

He regarded me with interest, no longer engrossed by the balled-up diaper he had been sniffing. He held his nose in the air and then, in an ominous development, reared up on his hind legs, with his front paws dangling, like he was some kind of circus bear.

Except, of course, I don’t think he was planning to dance around on a giant beach ball for my amusement. I’m no park ranger, so I didn’t know what this signified. Mere curiosity? A display of aggression? A challenge to his hegemony over the Jones family garbage can?

I once read a wilderness safety pamphlet that said if you ever encountered a bear in the wild, you were supposed to be big and noisy-the idea being that bears are naturally shy and would easily be scared off. So I went up on my tiptoes, raised my arms in the air, and said something that sounded like, “Raaaarrrr!”

But I guess this bear was more of an extrovert than most, because he just tilted his head and sniffed at me some more, thoroughly unimpressed by my version of big and noisy. I let out my roar again, though perhaps it was less convincing this time, because it sounded more like, “Rarrr?”

The bear dropped back on all fours and I felt my shoulders relax.

Then he charged.

* * *

For a second or two, I just stood there as he lumbered toward me with a pigeon-toed gait, making a guttural noise that was somewhere between a woof and a bark. I seemed to recall the wilderness safety pamphlet counseled that you should never turn and run, that you should hold your ground. Running doesn’t work, the pamphlet advised, because bears are faster than people. Plus, bears were big into what it called the “bluff charge,” meaning he would pull up before he reached his target.

So this was a bluff. Just a big, nasty, snarling, drooling, growling, menacing, intimidating, teeth-baring … bluff.

As he narrowed the gap between us from a hundred to perhaps seventy feet, I told myself he would stop short any second, just put on his bear brakes and come to a skittering halt. This was all about the sound and nothing about the fury.

I just wished the sound-which was throaty and primal and utterly believable-wasn’t making my sphincter tighten.

I couldn’t really just stand there, could I? I began to question the wisdom of the pamphlet. What if it was misinformation put out by the bears themselves? Some kind of slick, bear propaganda? Shouldn’t I, as a trained journalist, weigh the veracity of my source a little more carefully-and, more to the point, weigh the possibility the source might be hungry?

The rational part of my brain kept repeating those simple safety tips. Don’t run. Stay calm. Running only makes matters worse. This is a bluff.

Then a different part of my brain, a more instinctive part, took over. Hey, stupid, it said. This bear is about to bluff your head off. Run, stupid. Run!

So I ran.

With my imaginary tail tucked between my legs and a frightened yell escaping my throat, I began desperately scrambling up the street, back in the direction of South Orange Avenue, hoping perhaps that when the bear saw I had dropped all claim to his garbage bag, he would return to his rotting vegetables in peace.

But no, as I allowed myself a quick peek back, I saw he was still after me. And he was getting closer. Apparently, that damn pamphlet was right about only one thing: bears are faster than humans.

I dashed through the first intersection without bothering to look for cars, gaining new appreciation for the wisdom of my young gangbanger friend. Fast-moving Chevys are a lot less scary, after all.

As I continued up the next block, I passed the old woman on the porch, still clutching her broom. She started yelling encouragement.

But not at me. At the bear.

“That’s right! Get ’im!” she hollered. “He crazy. We got enough crazy ’round here already!”

“Aw, come on!” I protested, through ragged breath. “Can’t you at least root for your own species?”

I looked back again and saw I was at least not losing any more ground. As long as I kept sprinting, I’d be fine. Too bad I’m not a world-class half-miler. As I got closer to South Orange Avenue, I was starting to feel the burn in my legs and lungs, and I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it up. I rounded the corner, with the bear in hot pursuit, and saw my gangbanger buddy, still high up in the air.

“Run, white boy, run!” he crooned. “I’m the appetizer, but it looks like you the main course!”

I glanced up at him covetously and began calculating whether there was room for two up in that light stanchion. Then I spied a much better, much larger safe haven.

Lunky.

My hulking intern was just completing his interview, and I don’t want to say I hid behind him, but, well, I hid behind him. Lunky seemed confused by what I was doing. I just grasped his back and positioned him so the full breadth of his body was between me and the bear.

This turned out to be the smartest thing I did all day. The bear took one look at Lunky and dug his paws into the asphalt, coming to a stop so quickly I thought he was going to roll over on himself. Even in Newark, the call of the wild has a pecking order. And Lunky was definitely the biggest bear on this block.

“Mister Ross,” he said, “are you okay?”

I was. But only because the bear was now dashing toward the nearest tree, a stout-looking sycamore. He clambered up with surprising agility, flaking off large chunks of exfoliating bark as he went, only stopping when he got to a branch about fifteen feet in the air. Then he turned and warily eyed Lunky.

“I’m fine,” I said, still panting.

I bent at the waist, put my hands on my knees, and spent a minute or so sucking whatever oxygen I could ply from the humid July air. Finally I straightened and said, “Well, that was a nice jog. I’m going to take my leave of you now. You got this situation under control?”

Lunky cocked his head to the side and considered me with the same kind of empty-headed curiosity as the bear. I filled in the blanks for him.

“You talk to some of the people who have seen the bear and get their reactions,” I said. “Get some old people, some young people, some people in the middle. Then come back later this afternoon with a nice full notebook and we’ll make a story out of it.”

“But what about the bear?” he pleaded.

I glanced up at the tree and said, “Put him down as a no comment.”

* * *

As I walked back to my car, I whipped out my phone and placed two calls. The first was to the photo desk, which would love a picture of a treed bear in Newark for A1. The second was to animal control, which would have the unenviable task of figuring out how to get the thing down.

Then, feeling reasonably confident in Lunky’s ability to shag a few usable quotes, I set about my own work. That began with a call to Detective Owen Smiley of the Bloomfield Police Department. I’m always a bit leery about working on stories in the town where I live-what I write doesn’t always win me popularity contests, especially with the authorities-but there are certain advantages, like when the third baseman on your rec league softball team is a cop.

As I merged with the northbound traffic on the Garden State Parkway, I called his cell phone and immediately heard, “Smiley here.”

“Hey, Owen, it’s your left fielder.”

“Wuzzup, lady-killer!” he greeted me. Owen is married with either two or three or four small children-I’m not sure how many, as it seems like his wife is perpetually pregnant. He thinks that because I’m single, I must be hooking up all the time. I don’t disabuse him of the notion, if only because he enjoys living vicariously through my bachelorhood.

“Not much,” I said. “You playing this Thursday?”

“You bet.”

“Good stuff,” I said, then went for the subtle shift in topic. “Say, did you catch that hit and run by any chance?”

“Which one?”

“The one with Nancy Marino, the papergirl.”

“Marino … Marino … You mean the one last Friday?” he said, like I was asking him to recall a cold case file from 1978.

“That’s the one,” I said.

“Yeah, I caught it. Why, you interested?”

“Maybe. Call it a case of morbid curiosity. Her family thinks there might be something more to it.”

“Oh well…” he said, like he was struggling with how to say something. “We’re off the record, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, off the record, you got to find a way to tell this family to move on,” Owen said. “Hit and runs like this, if we don’t get something right away-an eyewitness who snags a plate, a surveillance camera, a suspicious repair shop visit, something like that-we aren’t going to get anything. Unless the guy who did it gets some kind of attack of conscience and turns himself in. Forget it. If the family wants us to, we’ll put out a reward for information. I can get that approved pretty quickly.”

“Reward, huh? Does that work?”

“People are motivated by all sorts of things.”

“So you don’t have any other leads?” I pressed him. “Our story mentioned an anonymous caller. Were you able to track that down?”

“I tried. Prepaid cell phone. Could be anyone.”

“What about the tips line? Anything come in on that?”

“Nada.”

“Huh,” I said. “Well, thanks anyway.”

“Sure. If you hear anything, let us know.”

“Will do. See you Thursday,” I said.

“Thursday,” he confirmed, then ended the call.

I drove in silence the rest of the way to Ridge Avenue, just me and my Malibu. There are some reporters who don’t feel compelled to visit the scene of a crime they’re writing about, but I’m not one of those. Even if days have passed since the event in question-and the ambulances are gone, the blood is cleaned up, and the police tape has blown away-I still want to walk the ground where it happened and give my senses a chance to work for me.

Sometimes I jot down some notes. Sometimes not. Sometimes I want to just feel the place.

In this instance, the feeling I got from Ridge Avenue was one of utter ordinariness. It was an archetypal Bloomfield neighborhood, with that not-quite-city, not-quite-suburb feel. The single-family houses were small, neat, and cozily packed together. They were all at least fifty years old, built for the waves of workers who were fleeing the city two generations ago. I could hear the rush of the Parkway from a few streets away-the Jersey equivalent of a white noise machine-but it was otherwise quiet.

The street, while called an avenue, was really more like a lane. Cars parked on either side further constricted traffic flow. So while it was technically two-way, there was really only room for one car to pass.

I pulled my Malibu to the curb midway down the block, where Nancy had been hit, and looked for some small piece of evidence a life had ended there. But, of course, there was none. The residents of Ridge Avenue had been temporarily disrupted by the accident Friday morning, probably talked about it for the next day or two, but had otherwise gone on with their lives. The victim was no one they really knew.

Cutting the engine, I sat there for a moment, imagining I was a paperboy, quickly rolling out of my car to deliver that morning’s edition. I opened the door like I was in a hurry, without really bothering to see if anyone was coming, as Nancy Marino had likely done. That’s when I realized how little chance she had: the street was so narrow, I was in the middle of it by the time I stepped out of my car. Had some drunkard been barreling down the street behind her, he couldn’t miss.

I was standing in the middle of the street, notepad in hand, scribbling down these and other thoughts when something caught my eye. It was just a brief fluttering in my peripheral vision, but there it was again: a curtain in the house to my right, being drawn slightly.

Someone was watching me.

This, of course, happens all the time to newspaper reporters. Stand out in the middle of the road with a notepad, writing furiously, and folks tend to want to know what you’re up to. Are you an insurance adjuster? A tax assessor? Are you casing the neighborhood?

Sometimes people get edgy and call the cops, which always turns out to be a hassle. I try to defuse the situation before it gets to that point by simply introducing myself. Most people are actually relieved when they learn you’re a newspaper reporter, because it means you’re not there to jack up their taxes or steal their flat screen.

I walked up the short driveway of the house, which had dark red clapboard siding and a down-on-its-luck vibe about it. There were weeds where there had once been flower beds, unkempt shrubbery and high grass in the yard. Whoever lived there wasn’t all that concerned about competing in the neighborhood garden competition. I bounded up a small set of concrete steps, then knocked on the door. I could hear movement inside that sounded like small children, but no one answered. I knocked again. More movement. Still no answer.

“Hello?” I said. “I don’t want you to be concerned. I’m just a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner. I’m writing about the accident that happened here last week.”

The house went quiet. The children had finally been shushed, and the adults were hoping I’d take the hint and go away. But there are times when common courtesy is something a newspaper reporter has to leave at home, so I knocked again.

“The woman who was killed delivered newspapers,” I said. “I was wondering if you or anyone else on the street might have seen anything.”

Finally, a reply: “No habla.”

* * *

I retreated from the front stoop, wondering if I had just found my anonymous caller. On that hunch-and because I like bothering him-I pulled out my phone and dialed my on-staff Spanish interpreter. Tommy Hernandez is second-generation Cuban-American, the son of immigrant parents who insisted the family speak Spanish at home. He’s also our Newark City Hall beat writer and one of our finest young reporters. He has been with the Eagle-Examiner two years now, and while he was still technically an intern-our paper had long ago stopped granting full-time status to new employees on the fear that they might actually expect to be paid a living wage-his internship has been rather indefinitely extended.

Tommy has a keen eye for detail, a well-developed sense of story, and an easy way of chatting with people that made them want to talk back. If I felt like kidding myself, I could say I had been a role model for him and helped him develop these skills. But it’s more accurate to say Tommy came out of the box with these talents and I had, on occasion, exploited them for my own purposes.

Sort of like I was doing right now. He picked up on the third ring.

“Are you at a clothing store?” he demanded. “If so, I want you to drop the plain blue shirt, put down the penny loafers, and step away from the cash register.”

Tommy is as gay as taffeta and chintz, and he’s got some rather pointed opinions on matters sartorial. He finds my WASPy fashion sensibilities a bit on the starchy side.

“But what am I supposed to wear to the lawn party in the Hamptons I’m going to this weekend?” I asked, playing along. “Veronica and Muffy are expecting me.”

“Come out and salsa with me instead. It wouldn’t hurt you to discover that people’s hips can actually move while dancing.”

“That’s just a rumor being spread by you Puerto Ricans in an attempt to bring my people down,” I said.

Tommy said something in Spanish that I assumed was an insult.

“Yeah, right back at you,” I replied. “Anyway, as charming as it is to swap pleasantries, I was hoping you could help me out with a quick interview en espanol, por favor.”

“I’ll do it, on one condition.”

“Shoot.”

“Please don’t ever try to speak Spanish around me again. It hurts my ears.”

“Deal,” I said, giving him the red house’s address and extracting a promise that he’d hurry.

I spent the next twenty minutes pacing up and down Ridge Avenue, knocking on doors, getting the same load of nothing the police had gotten. The neighborhood busybody, a nice white-haired lady, assured me that she had talked to everyone on the block-just because she felt so bad about what happened to “that poor girl”-and neither she nor anyone else had seen anything.

“What about the people over there?” I asked, pointing to the red house.

“Oh well, they’re Mexican,” the woman said, as if being Mexican rendered them sightless.

“Yes, I know, but they still might have seen something. Maybe they’re the ones who called it in.”

The woman glanced furtively to the left and right.

“They’re illegal aliens,” she said, pronouncing each syllable very deliberately so it came out as “eee-lee-gal ale-eee-ans.”

Which likely explained why they didn’t want to open the door for a nicely dressed, officious-looking white man or give their names to the police. I thanked the woman and resumed my wait for Tommy, who eventually pulled up behind my car, parked, and got out.

Tommy is small, dark, and wiry. He works out, but only for tone, not for bulk. So I’m not sure he would have cracked 140 pounds on the scale. His clothes-which today consisted of black chinos, a snug-fitting gray shirt, and shoes that were undoubtedly the height of queer couture-are always quite dapper.

“Make it quick,” he said. “I’ve got my own stories to work on, you know.”

I gave him a rundown of what I knew, ending with my suspicion that someone in the “Mexican” family was the anonymous caller.

“That’s the place,” I said, pointing to the house. “You want me to come with you, or would I get in the way?”

“You might as well come. They probably just pretend not to speak English so they don’t have to talk to dumb americanos like you.”

“Can’t blame them,” I said, as I repeated my walk up the driveway and concrete steps toward the house, this time with Tommy at my side.

Our approach had been watched from the front window, from behind the slightly drawn shade.

Tommy knocked, coupling it with two sentences in Spanish. Whatever he said must have disarmed the inhabitants somewhat because they stopped their we’re-not-home act. The door opened slightly, and a short, barrel-chested, dark-skinned man with wide eyes and distinct meso-American features appeared behind it. He was wearing a clean white T-shirt and khaki pants splattered with a dozen different paint colors.

Tommy immediately unleashed a burst of rapid-fire Spanish. The only words I understood were “Newark Eagle-Examiner.” The man listened, then returned the volley with one of his own. They went back and forth a few more times, and I got the sense the exchange was becoming friendlier. Then suddenly Tommy was smiling and nodding, while gesturing at me and saying something through grinning teeth. I was the butt of some joke, which was fine by me. I was here as the straight man, after all.

“Do you have a press pass?” Tommy asked me.

“Yeah.”

“Show it to him.”

I dug my press pass out of my wallet and passed it through the crack. The man studied it for a moment, handed it back to me, and said, “Un momento, por favor.”

The door closed.

“So what’s the deal?” I asked in a not-quite-whisper.

“I think you’ve found your caller.”

“Yeah, what’d he see?”

“Not sure yet. That’s why we’re doing the interview, remember?”

“Oh, right,” I said, looking down to the street, at an elevation drop of perhaps five to ten feet. All of Ridge Avenue was on a gentle slant, and we were on the high side, which would have provided a good view of whatever happened below.

“And by the way, they’re from El Salvador, not Mexico,” Tommy added.

“They here legally?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. So don’t ask.”

“Yeah, but … it seems like the cops interviewed everyone on the block except them. And I’m sure the Bloomfield police have some Spanish-speaking officers. So they must have hid from the cops. And if they hid from the cops…”

Tommy fixed me with a flat stare.

“You figure that out all by yourself, did you?” he asked.

I cracked my best winning smile. “Young man, I’m a trained newspaper reporter. I’m capable of making logical deductions beyond the reach of most ordinary citizens.”

“Yeah, well, in case I haven’t made it clear: don’t ask. Don’t even ask anything that might sound like a roundabout way of getting at their status. We don’t want them getting spooked.”

“Got it.”

“Oh,” Tommy added. “And stick with ‘mister’ and ‘missus.’ El Salvadorans are very formal.”

Before I could reply, the door opened wide.

“Please,” the man said. “Come inside.”

* * *

We entered to find a plump, round-faced woman sitting on a folding chair with a roughly three-year-old boy on her lap. An older sister who was perhaps five stood obediently beside her mother. The furnishings were sparse, just a couch, a folding table, and a few plastic chairs. Children’s toys were scattered across the floor. The Virgin Mary smiled down at us beatifically from one of the walls. Next to Mary was a cross, with Jesus still hanging there-which, of course, meant this family was Catholic. We Protestants let poor ol’ J.C. come down from there several hundred years ago.

“This is Mr. Felix Alfaro,” Tommy said.

“Hi, there,” I said, sticking out my hand toward the man. “Carter Ross.”

“Hello, Senor Ross,” Mr. Alfaro said, smiling widely as we shook. “I sorry, I no speak the English so good. But I learning.”

“Your English is already better than my Spanish,” I assured him. I nodded in the direction of the woman, who I assumed was Mrs. Alfaro. “Good afternoon, ma’am,” I said.

“You like drink? Some coffee?” Mr. Alfaro asked.

I was drawing the breath to say “no, thank you,” but as my tongue reached toward the top of my palate to form the n, Tommy saved me from that faux pas.

“Si,” he said. “Yes, please.”

Tommy shot me a glance that might as well have been a jab in the ribs. Mrs. Alfaro had already risen, deposited her son in front of some trains, and headed toward the kitchen to get the coffee. I don’t drink coffee-can’t stand it, actually. But this was clearly an instance when I would pretend otherwise.

As the honored guests, we were invited to sit on the couch, which had a horrific plaid pattern that dated back to a more disco-intensive era. Mr. Alfaro sat in a folding chair across from us, and soon words I could not understand began pouring out of his mouth. Tommy listened, grinning at first, then getting serious. He added a word here or there, asked a question or two, then laughed twice at the end.

“He says he hopes we like the coffee,” Tommy said. “Mr. Alfaro’s family grew coffee for generations. He was raised on a small coffee plantation. Then his family got chased off in the civil war. But he says coffee beans are still in his blood. He hopes to be able to save enough money to someday return his family to its land.”

Mr. Alfaro listened to Tommy’s translation, pleased with what he heard.

“And he says most American coffees are blends that ought to be lining garbage cans,” Tommy said.

Mr. Alfaro nodded enthusiastically at this sentiment.

“Maxwell House,” he said, making a face like he had just swallowed a heaping mouthful of sidewalk grit. “Baaah.”

We all laughed heartily at this-everything is funnier when you’re trying to be polite-and Mrs. Alfaro returned with four mugs, serving me first. I took a small sip, feeling like I was being watched the entire time. I acted like I was considering the brew for a moment, as if my taste buds were searching for the gentle hint of peach, the almond subtext, the caramel finish.

“Excellent,” I said,

Mr. Alfaro smiled proudly. I had just complimented ten generations of Alfaros in one word. Mrs. Alfaro seemed pleased. Tommy looked relieved. The Virgin Mary smiled some more. And I tried not to grimace when the bitter, acidic taste flooded into my mouth.

As everyone else helped themselves to their mugs-milk, no sugar, for all-Tommy began chattering, and I could tell we were getting down to business. Mr. Alfaro listened gravely, his eyebrows moving closer together as he concentrated. Still, I surmised he liked what he was hearing. When they completed their negotiations, I looked at Tommy expectantly.

“He said he feels a … a”-Tommy groped for the right word-“a duty to do the right thing and tell the truth about what they saw. But he said he doesn’t trust the police. It sounds like no one really trusts the police down in El Salvador. So I assured him we would not go to the police.”

“Right,” I said to Mr. Alfaro. “No police.”

He nodded. Tommy continued:

“He said we can quote them, because I explained they wouldn’t be helping at all if we can’t quote them. But we can’t use their name. We can identify them as ‘a resident who asked not to be named.’”

“That sounds fair,” I said to Tommy, then gave Mr. Alfaro some good eye contact as I said, “No names.”

Mr. Alfaro immediately turned to Mrs. Alfaro, speaking in a low and rapid voice. It became obvious Mrs. Alfaro was the witness to the accident. She just wasn’t going to say anything without her husband’s permission. He finished by barking a quick order at the children who, led by the older girl, scampered upstairs.

Mrs. Alfaro waited for the children to clear out, then began telling her story. I removed my notepad from my pocket and Tommy-speaking in the first person, as if he were Mrs. Alfaro-provided the translation in short bursts:

“I’m an early riser … I often wake up before the children … I like to look out the window and watch the sun rise … It reminds me of home … One morning, I saw a black … a black, sorry…”

Tommy interrupted Mrs. Alfaro with a question, which generated a response, then another question, then another response. There were some hand gestures, and I heard automobile brands being discussed.

“It was a black SUV, but she doesn’t know what kind,” Tommy said. “She said she first saw it on Tuesday morning. It was large and black and had a big, shiny grille plate, which sounds like just about every SUV out there to me. But I think that’s going to be as good as she can do.”

“Okay,” I said.

Tommy returned to being the voice of Mrs. Alfaro: “I had never seen the truck before Tuesday, and then it appeared several mornings in a row last week … It would park and wait, park and wait … Always following the girl who delivers the papers … Then it would drive away when she drove away … I kept thinking, ‘What is he doing here? What does he want?’…”

I could imagine that a black SUV casing the neighborhood in the early morning would be of some concern to her-whether she was here legally or not.

“Then Friday morning last week, I saw the SUV parked up the street again … And the woman who delivers the papers was there, in front of our house … Then the car was driving … It was driving … no, it was speeding actually, very fast down the road, very fast…”

Mrs. Alfaro’s voice was accelerating as well, her face flushing from the excitement. Tommy was concentrating on her mouth, almost like he was lip-reading rather than translating.

“I saw the woman getting out of her car … The black SUV was going very fast … I could hear the roar of the engine, but the woman didn’t seem to be paying attention … The driver, it was like he was pointing, no, aiming toward the woman … I could see the SUV was going to hit her and I wanted to scream, but I knew she couldn’t hear me … And then the car hit her…”

Mrs. Alfaro was shaking her head, then she finished:

“It hit her very hard, without stopping … Her body flew into the air, almost like it weighed nothing … And then the car ran over her … I screamed to Felix, ‘She got hit by the car! She got hit by the car!’ … And then Felix called the police … We were hoping that if an ambulance got there fast enough, they could save her … But she was dead … She was dead … It was terrible … May God rest her soul.”

Everyone thought they knew him, or at least thought they could guess his story. They looked at him, looked at what he had achieved, saw how important he was, and they assumed he had been born to it.

He never bothered to correct them. Some men who grow up poor are proud of where they came from, constantly bragging about their lowly beginnings and how bad they had it, because they feel it makes their glorious climb to the top all the more impressive. He wasn’t one of those. To him, that was the whole point of outgrowing humble beginnings-it meant you never had to revisit them.

But the truth, which few people knew, was that he started at a low station. His family was filled with totally unremarkable types, the kind of people who were born, lived, and died without the wider world ever being aware of them. They were cogs in the machine, nothing more.

His father was an off-the-docks immigrant who worked for a grocery distributor, loading and unloading produce trucks-tomatoes, oranges, whatever was in season. The man never complained about it, until one day he just wore out. He was a few months short of retirement when he suffered a massive heart attack, right there on the loading dock. The forklift he was driving at the time slammed into a wall, spilling a couple skids of lettuce. One of his coworkers said it looked like he was dead before the lettuce even hit the ground. Within a half hour, the mess was cleaned up and someone else was driving the forklift.

His mother, who had come with his father from the old country, was a homemaker, living in the same fifth-floor walk-up apartment from the day she got married until the day she died. Her husband wouldn’t let her take a job, and in some ways it didn’t matter: she never wanted one anyway. She was content to raise her children, spend time with the other women in the neighborhood, play her bingo, and smoke her Pall Malls. After her husband passed, she got by on their meager savings and a small Social Security check. Then lung cancer got her. She didn’t so much wear out as she wasted away.

He never talked about his parents. He loved his mother right to the end but, in truth, was always ashamed of his father, with his lack of ambition. His father had never pushed him, never demanded he do anything in school besides show up, never insisted he better himself in any way.

No, all his motivation was strictly internal. He pushed himself, mostly so he didn’t end up like his old man. He worked and schemed and angled. He took shortcuts now and then, cheated when he had to. He did anything he could to move up life’s ladder. And he’d do anything he could to stay there.

He wasn’t going to be another cog.