The Girl Next Door

CHAPTER 7

For a long moment, I just lay there, panting. I had rolled off Nikki and was pinned between the shrubs and my house’s foundation, with a bug’s-eye view of a few small weeds that had crept up in the bare dirt. I began taking inventory of what might or might not be broken, dismembered, or paralyzed, but quickly determined I still had all my parts and they seemed to be functioning as would be expected. Except for a few scratches and perhaps a bruise or two, I had done nothing more serious than perhaps use up one of my nine lives.

I looked over at Nikki, who was crumpled at an awkward angle, with her head resting against the house, her torso on the ground, and her legs up in the air, supported by the shrubs. Her dress, with its thin fabric, was bunched up around her midsection, exposing her strong, rounded thighs and green, seamless underwear. It struck me she ought to be tugging the dress down. But Nikki wasn’t moving.

“You okay?” I said.

No reply.

“Nikki?”

Nothing.

I scrambled toward her on my hands and knees, then stopped. Even in the shadow of the shrubbery, there was enough light from a nearby street lamp that I could see her hair was wet with blood. There was a red smear mark, vivid on the painted concrete, leading in a short arc from where her head had crashed into the foundation to where it was currently propped.

“Oh, Nikki,” I said. “Nikki, honey, can you hear me?”

It was a stupid question. She couldn’t hear anything. Her eyes were closed, and it was difficult to tell if she was even breathing.

Or alive.

A small jolt of horror surged through me. I wish I could say I was one of those cool, calm, collected types, capable of blocking all but the essential facts, processing them, and acting accordingly. But that’s why newspaper reporters make lousy emergency responders: we’re trained to take in everything, leaving nothing out. So there I was, noting the cut and color of Nikki’s underwear instead of saving her life.

I forced myself to think back to a thousand first-aid classes taken a million years earlier, when I was a Boy Scout and a camp counselor, doing things responsible kids do, getting certified in this or trained in that. You weren’t supposed to move someone with a potential spinal cord injury. That part came back to me quickly. But, then, wasn’t oxygen the first priority? Didn’t I have to make sure she was getting some?

Then a long-ago video appeared in my mind, where some perfectly calm woman came across an inert body, bent down to assess it, then turned to the equally composed person with her and, in a totally inflectionless voice, said, “No breathing, no pulse, call Eee-Emm-Ess.”

I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket, brought up the dialing screen, and shakily punched the nine key, followed by the one key twice. Then I hit Send.

“Nine one one, what is your emergency?” a voice queried.

“Please,” I moaned into my phone. “Please come quickly. A woman is hurt badly.”

“What is your exact location?”

I faltered-because for a moment I couldn’t remember I was in my front yard-then recovered and gave my home address. The operator started asking me questions about the nature of the woman’s injuries.

“No time. Just come,” I said, and planted the phone back in my pocket, returning my attention to Nikki.

I got as close to her as I dared without jostling her, then made myself very still. I couldn’t see any breathing, so I reached out toward her arm, which was splayed on the dirt, and grabbed her wrist to check her pulse. To my relief, I could feel a small thumping-weak but extant. Then I looked at her chest and saw it rising and falling slightly beneath that summer dress.

My next concern was the blood. There seemed to be a lot of it, too much of it. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and I didn’t dare touch her. I tried as best I could to get close to her scalp and see if I could locate the wound, but all I could see was wet, blood-matted hair.

It was about that time I heard the first siren. Then I heard several. They were crying out at varying pitches and rhythms, everything from the long, low fire engine’s blast to the short bleep-blipping of an ambulance. We had to be the only emergency in Bloomfield that night because they seemed to be coming from everywhere. I grabbed Nikki’s hand.

“Help’s coming,” I said. “Just hang with me.”

The ambulance got there first. A short, stout guy and a tall, thin guy, both in tight T-shirts and multipocketed pants, hopped out of the back of the truck, with one of them carrying a duffel bag laden with even more pockets. I released Nikki’s hand, stood up, and shouted, “Over here, she’s over here.”

“What’s going on?” the short one asked, as he walked up my lawn.

“A car tried to hit us,” I said. “I had to push us out of the way and she hit her head.”

The short guy glanced at his partner and they shared some silent agreement on the subject-something along the lines of, Sounds like the worst excuse for domestic violence we’ve ever heard, but let the cops sort it out.

“She’s breathing and has a pulse,” I continued, trying to be helpful. “But she’s bleeding from the head. I tried not to move her.”

“What’s her name?” the second one asked.

“Nikki.”

“Nikki, are you okay?” he started yelling. “Nikki, are you there?”

She was about as chatty with them as she was with me. So they got to work, stabilizing her neck, rolling her onto a backboard, mauling my shrubs in the process. One of them started raking his knuckle down her sternum, which looked like it must have hurt like hell. I couldn’t discern the medical purpose of it-unless they were now encouraging torture in CPR-but Nikki didn’t stir.

A second ambulance had showed up by this point, as had a fire truck. I kept getting shoved farther out of the way. I could see they had gotten a breathing mask on her face and a collar on her neck. They seemed to be doing other stuff, too, I just I couldn’t tell what. Then they lifted her into the back of the ambulance.

I was just sort of tagging along at that point, and they weren’t paying much attention to me until the tall guy turned and said, “We’re taking her to Mountainside if you want to follow us in your own vehicle. Just don’t follow too close. Nikki doesn’t need any more trauma right now.”

* * *

The next few hours at Mountainside Hospital were a blur of antiseptic corridors, stiff-backed waiting room chairs, interrupted naps, and at least two less-than-fun conversations.

The first was with a lady from the admissions staff, to whom I had to explain that I knew next to nothing about the young lady I had accompanied to the hospital. No, I didn’t know her address. No, I wasn’t sure if she had insurance. No, I didn’t know how to contact her next of kin. No, I wasn’t really her boyfriend. Before long, the woman had decided I was some guy who hired a hooker, then decided to throw her around a bit, and so she was treating me with all the warmth and kindness you might expect.

The next uncomfortable chat was with a pair of young Bloomfield cops, who came to ask me questions. I told them what happened, giving them as many details as I could-which, admittedly, were quite few. They were noticeably unimpressed by my version of the events and were debating whether to arrest me or just take me out back and rough me up a bit. Guys who hurt nice girls like Nikki are not looked upon fondly by the law enforcement community.

The only thing that saved me was my insistence they would find tire marks on my lawn. I also dropped the name of Detective Owen Smiley at least four times, promising he would vouch that I wasn’t a total scum bucket. They still weren’t entirely convinced, but they eventually left me alone, making vague noises about how I shouldn’t go on any extended trips, in case they had more questions. They never asked if I thought someone might be trying to hurt me, which was probably good. It would have been tough explaining that one of the potential suspects was the injured girl’s father.

Sometime toward dawn, Nikki was considered stabilized enough that I was allowed to enter her room. I glanced at her, lying sedately with gauze wrapped around her head, but mostly had to focus my attention on a guy in blue scrubs who didn’t introduce himself but was likely a doctor. He had that full-of-himself air about him.

He explained to me what I probably could have figured out myself: Nikki had sustained what he called a “mild traumatic brain injury” (what they used to call a “concussion”) and might be out for a few more hours. The gash on her head turned out to be superficial. It just bled like crazy, as head wounds tend to do. They had given her an MRI and determined there was no “intracranial hemorrhaging” (what they used to call “bleeding”) or “cerebral contusions” (what they used to call “bruises”) inside her skull. Her respiration was fine, her oxygen level was adequate, her blood pressure had started a little low but was improving. When she came to, she might be disoriented, confused, or suffer from short-term memory loss. But even if she seemed fine, I should summon a nurse.

The doctor asked if I had any questions, but he was already inching out of the room, so I let him go. I didn’t need medical science to explain to me that Nikki had bumped her head. Bad. And she needed some time to rest and give her body a chance to make itself better.

I pulled a chair next to Nikki’s bed and held her hand for a while, because it felt like the hospital thing to do. Then I thought maybe I should talk to her a little bit. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with people who have lost consciousness? Give their brain a little bit of something to chew on in hopes you could make it hungry for more?

“You looked beautiful tonight,” I said, sounding hoarse and throaty. “I was planning on telling you that when we got into my house, but I sort of got interrupted.”

I looked at her, her chest rising and falling steadily, her color surprisingly good. Then again, she was Greek and this was the middle of the summer, so I suppose that shouldn’t have been quite so remarkable. I stroked her hand a little bit.

“That SUV that tried to run us over is probably the same one that got Nancy. I didn’t really get a look at it. Or the driver. But I think I know who’s behind it.”

And it might be someone you know pretty darn well, I thought. But that hardly seemed the right thing to say to whatever small part of Nikki was still processing information.

She breathed some more. I babbled some more.

“You have to understand, I’m coming out of this thing-I’m not even sure I could call it a relationship-with someone who was basically my boss,” I continued. “It was pretty messed up already. And then she fired me. Yeah, I got fired yesterday. I didn’t want to tell you that. Because what girl wants to think she’s on a date with some unemployed loser? So I guess you could say it’s over now. The relationship. My job. Yeah, all of it is over.

“Anyhow, I don’t think this thing with you and me is some kind of rebound situation. But it might be. I probably should have warned you about that. I usually try to be up front about my emotional baggage. But you were so nice to talk to. And you looked so damn hot in that dress with that little tie on the side. It’s like you were some kind of present, and all I wanted to do was pull the string and unwrap it so I could see what was inside.”

I looked over at the clock. It was quarter past five in the morning.

“Oh yeah, and I’m sorry I tackled you,” I said. “You should know I’m generally not that rough with women.”

Suddenly, a smile crept across her face, and she croaked out, “That’s too bad.”

“Nikki? Nikki! Are you awake?” I said, standing up, as if I was in the presence of a miracle. I had never been around a person as they regained consciousness-or around someone who lost it, for that matter-but it had the feeling of rebirth. She coughed and opened her eyes.

“I actually woke up when the doctor was still in here,” she said in a stronger voice. “But you guys didn’t notice. And then I just sort of felt like resting for a while.”

“So you, uhh, heard everything I said just now, huh?”

“It’s fine. I’m glad you liked my dress.”

I felt my face getting red.

“And sorry you lost your job,” she continued. “You don’t have to feel bad about that. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Yeah, about all that rebound stuff…”

“Don’t worry about it. It was just a first date.”

“And some date it’s been,” I said, gesturing to the surroundings. “I want you to know, I don’t take just any babe to a classy joint like this.”

She smiled and closed her eyes again. I took her hand and let her relax for a while.

“Nancy’s funeral is this morning,” she said, her eyelids still shut.

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“I want to go.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea. In any event, I don’t think they’re going to let you out of here.”

Her eyelids opened, and she fixed those two lovely green eyes on me.

“Can you go for me? Tell her I’m sorry I couldn’t make it.”

I patted her hand and assured her I would. It seemed to be the least I could do.

* * *

I fetched the nurse, who did the necessary poking, prodding, and assessing, then left us in peace. Mostly, I just hung around as Nikki dozed. I might have caught a small nap myself, bringing my evening’s sleep to a grand total of perhaps three hours. Then I had to go home and ready myself for a funeral.

When I returned to my house in daylight, it was difficult to tell what might have happened there the night before. I expected the SUV would have left deep, vivid tracks. But it had been so dry and the ground was so hard, it was difficult to make out where it had been. The trampling of my lawn and shrubbery was more from the EMTs than anything else.

Upon entering my front door, I was greeted by Deadline, who had not been affected by the previous evening’s folderol, except for one important disruption to his daily routine: he hadn’t gotten his morning kibble. And he was rather frantic about this. He took one glance at me, walking in the front door, then ran to his food bowl in the kitchen. When he realized I wasn’t getting the hint, he came back and looked up at me, impatiently, as I thumbed through some mail. Then he dashed to the kitchen, because clearly I would fall in line and follow this time. He returned again, his anguish so pronounced-why doesn’t this moron take the hint? — that I finally walked toward the kitchen to remedy the situation.

That’s when I noticed Deadline was leaving bloody paw prints on the hardwood floor. There were three distinct sets of tracks-one for each trip-and I followed them into the kitchen, where they became even more vivid on the off-white tile.

Then I saw a brick, sitting in the middle of the room. There was broken glass scattered all about, which explained why my cat was bleeding. A strip of paper was wrapped around the brick.

“Oh, what the…” I started to say.

But I interrupted myself. The paper had block lettering on it:

MESSAGE FOR CARTER ROSS

Deadline, sitting by his food bowl, let out an urgent meow. I walked over to him, crunching on the broken glass, and scooped him up so he couldn’t frolic through any more of the wreckage. He allowed me to inspect his paw, which had a small cut in one of the pads. I know even less about feline first aid than I do about human first aid, but the wound didn’t seem mortal.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t have my cat bleeding all over the place. The police were probably already looking at me hard for assault and battery. I didn’t need to add animal cruelty to my booking.

I dumped some food in the bowl, then took it and the cat into the bathroom, where I unrolled a length of toilet paper and wrapped it as tightly as I could around his bloody paw. Then I set him down and observed. He attacked the kibble, unconcerned about his injury, so I closed him in the bathroom and returned to the mess in the kitchen.

The brick looked old and well used, like it had been tossed around a lot in its day. The paper, which appeared to have been torn off a standard 8?-by-11 sheet, had been tied tightly to the brick with two pieces of twine-one lengthwise, one widthwise-in a very neat, tidy little package.

I bent down and studied the “MESSAGE FOR CARTER ROSS” up close. The lettering seemed to be self-consciously anonymous, as though the writer wanted to make sure it could not later be identified by a handwriting expert. It had been done in black ink, probably a disposable ballpoint pen.

“You couldn’t have just sent me an e-mail?” I said out loud.

Picking up the brick, I pulled on the first string, then the second, then the third, letting the twine fall to the floor. I unfurled the paper and turned it over to find the same block writing on the backside:

BACK OFF. OR YOUR NEXT.

I stood there for perhaps a minute, brick in one hand, note in the other. Oddly, what really bothered me about it was not that they had brought my cat into this fight or that I had to replace a broken kitchen window. It was that either Jackman-or Gus Papadopolous, or the rent-a-goon they were using-didn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re.” It’s one thing to be threatened. It’s quite another thing to be threatened in grammatically incorrect fashion. I felt like some basic right as a literate American had been violated. I folded the note and tucked it in my notepad.

So, obviously, the drive-by had been a scare tactic, with the ol’ brick-through-the-window routine tossed in to make sure I didn’t miss the message. What I couldn’t figure out is why I was being left alive at all. Whoever I was dealing with didn’t place much value on human life. Maybe he just couldn’t figure out a way to kill me and make it look like an accident, and he thought frightening me off the story would accomplish the same purpose.

I crunched across the glass, grabbed a broom from my pantry, and began sweeping, trying to make sure I found every last shard, shaving, and splinter-because if I didn’t, Deadline would. Somewhere around the third dustpan full, I started feeling strangely heartened to know I was still considered trouble. It gave me new hope there was something out there-maybe at the National Labor Relations Board-that would make this all come together, with or without confirmation of the threats Jackman had made in Jim McNabb’s presence, with or without evidence of the nefarious link between Jackman and Papadopolous.

I just had to stay alive until I found it.

* * *

My transformation from hospital-weary caretaker to spit-polished funeral-goer took fourteen minutes. On my way out, I remembered to let Deadline out of the bathroom. Though, really, he probably wouldn’t have minded spending the day in there: when I opened the door, he was passed out on the rug, having gorged himself on Iams Weight Control. The toilet paper that was once on his paw was now a shredded mess on the floor, but the bleeding had stopped. So I left him alone. Never disturb a happy cat.

The funeral was held a short drive away in Belleville at St. Peter Roman Catholic Church, a beautiful Gothic-style stone building that had been erected back in the days when people still knew how to make churches-not like these days, when so many of them can be confused with warehouses or big-box stores. Just to the right of the church was a cemetery, where a plot had been dug, draped, and made ready to accept a new resident. A row of white plastic chairs had been set up, giving close family members a graveside seat for the interment.

I parked in the lot across the street, which was filling up like it was Easter Sunday, and walked toward the front entrance. I stopped and looked at the marquee, which told me St. Peter offered a Sunday Mass in Spanish. I’m sure some of the old Italians in the area probably griped about a bunch of Spanish-speakers coming in and taking over their church. What they didn’t remember is, once upon a time, the Irish who founded St. Peter probably griped about the Italians. And someday the Ecuadorians and Peruvians coming into the area would grumble about someone new.

And really, they were all worshiping the same God; living the same American story; experiencing the emotions of thousands of births and baptisms, confirmations and communions, weddings and funerals. And it was tempting, standing in front of a church built by people who were long dead, to be so humbled by one’s own insignificance as to wonder what any of it could possibly mean. What’s one more life-or death-when we all just end up in the cemetery next door anyway?

But I suppose at a certain point you have to resign yourself to the simple fact that while you don’t get many years on this planet-in the grand scheme of things-you sure do get a lot of days. So you might as well get on with the business of doing with them what you can.

And maybe someday, someone wandering through the cemetery would see Nancy’s headstone, do a bit of quick math on her dates of birth and death, and wonder what ended her life after just forty-two years. And if they got real curious, I wanted to make damn sure that if they typed the name “Nancy Marino” into some supercomputer of the future, the archives would be waiting for them with the real story. Because that’s what I had chosen to do with my days on this Earth.

I was standing there, still stuck in this thought, as Jim McNabb came strolling up.

“Good morning,” he said solemnly. “Am I interrupting anything?”

“Nope, just pondering mortality,” I said, staring up at the steeple. “And the things that really matter.”

“Oh yeah? And what really matters?”

“Getting the story. Finding the truth. No matter what it costs.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at the steps.

“What’s it cost you so far?” he asked.

“Well, my job, for one. After I left your place yesterday, I got myself fired. My girlfriend, for another. She and the job sort of went hand in hand. I might lose my house, too. I don’t exactly have a lot of savings to cushion being out of a paycheck. But all of that stuff is just, I don’t know, fleeting.”

“You don’t give up, do you?” he said, taking a hand out of his pocket and clapping me on the shoulder affectionately.

“Not if I can help it.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, I don’t know what your beliefs are. But I’m going to go in there and spend a little time on my knees,” he announced. “For Nancy and for me. We could all use a little confession now and then, you know?”

“Yeah, sure. I guess you’re right,” I said, and followed him inside.

It was five minutes to ten, a little later than I liked to arrive for a funeral, and the place was already near capacity. I recognized many of the same people from Monday’s wake, including an odd pairing three-quarters of the way back, sitting on opposite sides of the same aisle: on the left, a foppish-looking man with ash-blond hair and, on the right, a mostly bald man with thin strands stretched across his pate.

Jackman and Papadopolous. Together. Again.

I wanted to confront them, make a scene even. But this was hardly the right setting-especially when I wasn’t entirely sure what was really going on. Yeah, they were probably in cahoots. But for all I knew, Nancy’s murder had been entirely Gus’s doing and Jackman had nothing to do with it. Or it was just as possible it was all Jackman and no Gus.

Nevertheless, the brick-through-the-window thing needed to be answered. I had to do something to show these guys that I wasn’t cowed by bullying. So I did what writers do: I composed a snarky note.

I pulled out my notepad, opened to a clean page, and in the same big, anonymous block lettering my brick-tosser had used, I wrote:

MESSAGE FROM CARTER ROSS

Then I tore out the sheet, turned it over, and continued:

“YOUR” IS A POSSESSIVE PRONOUN. “YOU’RE” IS A CONTRACTION OF “YOU” AND “ARE.” PLEASE LEARN THE DIFFERENCE.

I made another copy of the note, then walked the short distance up the aisle to where they were sitting. I turned and faced both of them.

“Hello, gentlemen,” I said, plastering a fake smile on my face.

I then stuffed my pieces of paper in the breast pocket of each of their suits. Gus was so stunned by the assault he didn’t even move. Jackman physically recoiled, though he was more taken aback than anything-I had mashed his pocket square. I gave each of them a final head nod, then turned and walked toward the front of the church without looking back.

It wasn’t the big scene I was really aching to cause. But, as juvenile as it was, it felt nice to be on the offensive for a change.

* * *

The only open seating that remains two minutes before the start of a crowded funeral is, inevitably, up front, close to the casket, where no one really wants to be. And that’s where I landed, in the row directly behind the pews that had been reserved for family.

I hadn’t been seated for more than a minute when Jeanne Nygard was escorted in on the arm of her husband, Jerry. She had managed to find herself a black dress-no hippie-dippy floral pattern, for once-but was still wearing Birkenstocks. She was immediately followed by her stern sister, Anne McCaffrey, who had on another totally sensible charcoal gray skirt suit that, to the unschooled eye, was indistinguishable from all her other totally sensible suits.

Jeanne slowly made her way down the row until she was directly in front of me. She sat but turned immediately, peering at me through those photochromic lenses that were still dark from the sun.

“I’ve been trying to call you,” she said in a voice that was just a bit too loud.

The stern sister pounced before I could answer.

“Jeanne, no!” Anne hissed.

Jerry wasn’t far behind. “Hon, we talked about this,” he growled.

“I’ve been trying to call you, but your phone has been off,” she repeated, making a point of twisting a little farther away from her sister and husband as if to emphasize that she was ignoring them.

“Sorry about that,” I replied softly. “I have a new phone number.”

Jerry turned around, pointed at me, and whisper-shouted, “You leave her alone! This is none of your business!”

Jeanne was still disregarding her family’s protestations, focusing on me as she said, “I need to talk to you as soon as possible.”

“Jeanne!” Anne barked.

“Come to Nancy’s house after the funeral,” Jeanne continued. “We’re having a reception. We can talk there.”

“That’d be fine,” I said, while Anne was saying something along the lines of “Don’t you dare!”

Satisfied, Jeanne turned back around. Anne glared at her sister while Jerry was trying to shoot me dirty looks. But any further hostility was cut short by an organ sounding the first mournful notes of a funeral procession.

I spent the next hour or so fathoming the mystery of Christian death in the light of the resurrection, observing as the rite of committal was administered, trying not to screw up any of the prayers. Then it was off to Nancy’s house.

Which, naturally, got me thinking about potato salad. A motivational speaker I heard once-can’t remember his name-had a monologue about potato salad. His conclusion, basically, was that life is all about what happens between birth and potato salad. And you have to accomplish what you can before the potato salad. Because after the potato salad, it’s all over.

The joke, of course, is that after you die, your family and friends spend a few days saying wonderful things about you-things they might never have said when you were still alive-and then they take you out to some grassy spot, leave you there, and go back to your house and eat potato salad.

And before long, that’s what we were all doing: eating potato salad at Nancy’s place.

Her house turned out to be a small, white 1950s ranch with a sunken garage beneath the main floor. There were folks congregating on the front lawn, which had a decent-sized tent on it. Jerry Nygard was among them, and he put his hands on his hips when he saw me, like I would be scared off when I realized how offended he was by my presence. I thought about going up to him and offering him a Coke.

Instead, after a morning of mourning, I needed to find myself a bathroom. So I invited myself inside the house.

The front door opened into a small living room. There was some food set out on the coffee table, but it had yet to attract any visitors, who were all still under the tent. At the far end of the room was a swinging door-probably to the kitchen-and a hallway that cut down the middle of the house and led, I hoped, to a bathroom. I started walking in that direction and was just about to take a left when I heard what sounded like Anne’s voice coming from behind the swinging door. I caught her midway through a sentence that ended:

“… a spectacle out of our sister’s death.”

Then I heard what was unmistakably Jeanne replying, “What do you propose? That we let the legal system work it out?”

Anne: “Well, obviously not. She can’t very well testify now, can she?”

Jeanne: “So what do you propose?”

Anne: “Drop it. Just let it drop.”

Jeanne: “I’m not going to let a murder drop.”

Anne: “It wasn’t a murder.”

Jeanne: “You don’t know that.”

There was a momentary standstill. I heard the rattling of a pot, the running of water, the clicking of a gas stove being ignited, and then the soft whooshing of the flame coming to life. I kept myself perfectly still, not even daring to swallow, lest it make too much noise.

“Do you really trust this guy?” Anne resumed.

“He seems like a nice young man,” Jeanne answered.

“Yeah, but would he, you know, blow things out of proportion?” Anne asked. “Reporters do that, you know.”

By “reporters” I realized, of course, they were talking about me. But bursting into the room and insisting I wasn’t like all those other lowly journalists-who skulk around people’s houses and eavesdrop on their conversations-was clearly out of the question. So I just hung on and hoped Jeanne would do my fighting for me.

“I don’t think he would,” Jeanne said. “He seemed very reasonable to me.”

Attagirl. Sure, I might have worded it a little more strongly, but that would do.

Jeanne added: “If anything, he seemed more reserved than I thought he should be. He talked about the need to be prudent.”

“He did?” Anne asked.

I did? Then I remembered I had. Well, actually, Jeanne had used the word “prudent,” and I just repeated it. But if she needed me to be Mr. Prudent, I could keep my speedometer at fifty-five, my seat belt fastened, and both hands on the wheel.

“Oh yes. He said there might not be a story, and he wouldn’t charge around throwing out false allegations.”

Yes, yes I had. I heard the scraping and jostling of cookware, then Anne finally said: “You know, I suppose there’s no harm in showing it to him. If I’m right and there’s nothing to it, there’s not a story. And if you’re right, I guess we have to do it.”

“Good,” Jeanne said.

Great, I thought. Of course, now I was intensely curious as to what “it” was.

“But can we ask him to come back later?” Anne asked. “I just don’t want to do it now. This is a funeral, for goodness’ sake.”

“You promise we’ll show it to him?”

Anne hefted a resigned sigh. “Yes, I promise.”

I heard the suction of a refrigerator door being pulled open and the soft ringing of bottles clinking against each other. “Do we have any mustard?” Anne asked.

“It’s out in the tent, I’ll get it,” Jeanne said.

“No, just relax. I’ll get it,” Anne replied.

I heard footsteps coming toward me and quickly backed several steps away down the hallway, then pulled on the first door handle I saw. Anne swung open the kitchen door just as I was pulling on a handle that, it turned out, led down into the basement.

“Hi, I’m sorry, I was looking for a bathroom,” I said, as apologetically as possible. I was just a guest in need of relief, not a guy who had been helping himself to her private conversation.

I had caught her by surprise, and she just said, “Next one down.”

“Thanks.”

I closed the door to the basement, pivoted, and started making toward the bathroom. I was almost home free when she finally recovered enough of her senses to ask, “Were you outside the kitchen just now?”

I turned back toward her. She was wearing a denim apron over her sensible suit, but it didn’t diminish the feeling that I was suddenly on the witness stand under cross-examination. Which meant it was in my best interest to play as stone-dumb as possible.

Luckily, I’m good at that.

“Uh, that depends, which room is the kitchen?” I said, looking around like it might be hiding in the crawl space above me.

“It’s … never mind, forget it,” she said. “Look, I know this may sound rude, and maybe it is. But can I ask you to leave when you’re done? I’m just … I’m not comfortable with having you here right now.”

“I’m sorry, did I do something wrong?” I said, as if I was still quite perplexed.

“No, it’s just that … It would really just be better if you came back later.”

“Later? I’m not sure I understand…”

“I have a document I’d like to show you,” she explained. “But it’s not appropriate for right now, with all these guests here.”

So the aforementioned “it” was a document. That was good. Documents are always good where a reporter is concerned.

“Sure,” I said. “Later. Later is fine.”

“Could you come back at five today? I think my sister, Jeanne, wants to be with me when I show it to you.”

“Uh, yeah, five is fine.”

“Good,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

“Definitely. Go, go,” I said, waving her away. “I’ll see you back here at five.”

I did what I had come inside to do, then showed myself out. I cut across the lawn, past a tent full of people eating potato salad.

* * *

In a way, Anne had done me a favor in kicking me out. I didn’t really have the time to be hanging around, trading empty bromides about death with Nancy’s friends.

I got in my car and started driving, mostly to get the air-conditioning going. I thought about the to-do list rattling in my head and decided the first item was to place a call to Peter Davidson of the National Labor Relations Board and learn what his business had been with Nancy. I got his voice mail, and just as I was leaving the end of my message, another call came through on my phone. I switched to the new call.

“Carter Ross.”

“Smiley here,” I heard back.

“Hello, Detective. I thought I might be hearing from you. I nearly wore out your name with a couple of your colleagues last night.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m told,” he said. “I just started my shift and I got this note from two guys on patrol saying you threw a woman into a concrete wall and then made up some story you were really saving her from a hit and run? Please tell me that’s not how you roll with the ladies.”

“It’s not, it’s not,” I assured him. “And, unfortunately, the story about the hit and run is true.”

“Oh yeah? For real?”

“Yeah, and the damsel in distress could have told your officers as much last night-she just happened to be unconscious. She’s awake now, so she could give you a statement if you need it.”

“Oh. Wow. That, uh, changes things.”

“How so?”

“Well, there’s someone out there who should have some pretty heavy charges against him.”

I don’t know why, but I hadn’t considered that attempting to run someone over with your car was probably frowned on by the law.

“At minimum, he could be charged with aggravated assault,” Owen continued. “We could also hit him with possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose-in this case, the car. Depending on how good our evidence is and whether we could prove he was actually trying to hit you, we could even go at the guy for attempted murder. Trying to hit someone with your car and missing is the same thing as firing a gun at someone and missing. Just because you’re a bad shot-or, in this case, a bad driver-doesn’t make you any less culpable.”

“Right, of course.”

“Did you see anything?”

“Nothing other than a big set of headlights trying to run my ass down.”

“No plates? No description of the vehicle?”

“Sorry.”

“Too bad,” he said. “Well, in any event, I need to get that statement from your lady friend. Those patrol officers were ready to charge you, and they wrote you up in their report. My bosses are going to think I’m playing favorites with a friend if I don’t give them something.”

“I hear you. Can you meet me at Mountainside Hospital in fifteen minutes? I should pay her a visit anyway.”

“Yeah? You, uh, getting a little some?” he asked.

“Why, Officer, I do believe kissing and telling is unlawful under New Jersey Criminal Code.”

“So that means you haven’t sealed the deal?”

As usual, the sex-deprived, married father of three-or four, or however many kids he had now-was in search of titillation. I felt bad disappointing him, but I said, “Afraid not.”

He clucked his tongue. “Too bad. I’ll see you at the hospital,” he said, and we hung up.

So, despite my previous intentions not to take this to law enforcement, the police were now involved. I asked myself how I felt about that, and I realized pretty quickly that I felt relieved. I needed some allies, especially ones who were trained in the use of firearms.

Detective Smiley and I pulled into the Mountainside Hospital parking deck at the same time and found spots next to each other-me in my Malibu, him in a brown Ford. If the stereotypical cop is a big, lumbering, doughnut-munching guy with a flattop, Owen is pretty much the opposite. He’s small, quick, and hard-bellied, with dirty blond hair that’s long enough to get in his eyes on occasion. I guess police grooming standards were relaxed for detectives.

“So,” he said as soon as he got out, “this victim. Would you describe her as … attractive?”

“You’re asking strictly as an investigator, I assume?”

“Oh, of course.”

“Actually, you might know her: Nikki Papadopolous. She’s a hostess at the State Street Grill.”

“The one with the sweet bod?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“Go, lady-killer!”

He stuck out his fist for a bump, and I reciprocated, all the while feeling like I was back in high school gym class, talking about who “put out” and who didn’t.

“Yeah, you might want to be careful about how you use the phrase ‘lady-killer’ if you end up writing a report about this.”

“Fair point,” he said, and we entered the hospital, taking the elevator up to see the patient.

I stopped outside her door and said, “Let me just make sure she’s up for receiving visitors right now. Give me a second.”

Owen nodded, and I knocked lightly on the door, entering when I heard Nikki say, “Come in.”

She was sitting up in bed and smiled when she saw me. But there was something reserved about it. And I soon understood why. I was about to be dumped by a woman in a hospital bed-a first, even for me.

She gave me a variation of the old “it’s not you, it’s me,” line. Except it wasn’t me or her. It was Gus. Her father, she explained, “totally flipped” when he learned his daughter had been in my company the previous evening.

That’s because I’m on to him, I wanted to say but didn’t. Instead, I allowed her to explain that while she knew she needed to live her own life, she didn’t want to aggrieve her father too greatly. And if being with me was that difficult for dear Babba, it probably meant our relationship was doomed because her family would always be important to her.

Given that our one and only date ended with her unconscious and upside down in my shrubbery with her underwear showing, I couldn’t exactly launch a compelling argument as to why she was making a bad decision. Plus, there was the small complicating factor that I was very possibly in the midst of an investigation that would get her old man thrown in jail.

So I let her off easy and we agreed, if nothing else, it had been a memorable first (and only) date. I gave her a kiss on the cheek before I left-her perfume had finally worn off, so I was able to do it without getting dizzy-and told her Detective Owen Smiley of the Bloomfield Police Department was waiting to take her statement.

Then I bid her farewell and slid back out into the hallway, where I waved Owen in.

“She’s all yours,” I said. “I’ll be down the hall in the lobby. Let’s chat when you’re done.”

* * *

I camped myself on a couch, whittling away the next half hour or so fiddling with my iPhone. Like most new technology, it was simultaneously a great productivity enhancer and a total time waster. Then again, I suppose most of the microchipped gizmos and digital doodads we’ve developed in the last thirty years or so pretty much fall into that category.

So it was I ended up in an extended e-mail conversation with Lunky. I had configured the e-mail settings so that instead of appearing as “Lungford, Kevin,” his messages came in as being from, simply, “Lunky.” Oh, I do amuse myself so.

Lunky was trying to convince me that Philip Roth really should have won the Pulitzer Prize for Sabbath’s Theater (“his true masterpiece”) and not American Pastoral (“a brilliant but slightly lesser work”). If anything, he informed me, American Pastoral and Sabbath’s Theater were opposites of one another-in one the protagonist is too optimistic to live, and in the other he’s too cynical to die. In Lunky’s opinion, the Pulitzer committee rewarded the former rather than the latter simply as an acknowledgment it had goofed.

Just to prod Lunky, I wrote back that I thought Portnoy’s Complaint was Roth’s finest work, prompting a long screed from Lunky that while Portnoy showed glimpses of Roth’s genius, it was essentially “rudimentary”-really just “the crude sketching of a man who was later to become a master artist.” In particular, “having Portnoy masturbate with raw liver is, to say the least, unrefined.”

Naturally, I hadn’t read any of those books-and since I wasn’t fond enough of liver to cook and eat it, much less pleasure myself with it, I can’t say I was planning to put Portnoy on my reading list. Lunky was just beginning to uncork his thoughts on why Human Stain was the last worthwhile Roth composition-and why everything since only evinced a once-great writer who had slowed a step or two-when Owen came walking down the hallway.

“Well, it turns out you’re the hero after all,” he said.

“I’m so relieved, Officer,” I replied, wiping the nonexistent sweat from my brow.

“But Nikki in there is the star.”

“Oh yeah? Why?”

“While you were playing middle linebacker, she managed to get a description of the vehicle.”

“She … wow,” I said. “I didn’t even think to ask her.”

“That’s why you pay all those taxes to the town of Bloomfield, so the genius detective can pose the pertinent questions.”

I thought about the mechanics of it and realized she had had a much better chance at seeing something. I had turned and faced her as soon as I became aware something was charging up my lawn, whereas she had remained facing it for much longer.

“So let me guess: we were nearly run over by a large black SUV.”

“A Cadillac Escalade, yeah. Nikki said the last thing she saw was that big grille plate with a Cadillac crest on it,” he said. “Wait, how’d you know? You told me you didn’t see anything.”

“I didn’t.”

“So, what, you suddenly recovered a lost memory? You know that won’t play on the witness stand. It’s in the patrol officer’s initial report that you couldn’t ID the vehicle. Defense attorneys shred people for stuff like that.”

“Just call it reporter’s intuition.”

Owen grunted, clearly unconvinced. I gave myself one final chance to churn over the ramifications of allowing the long arm of the law to reach all the way into my story. But I realized it was already in there.

“Okay,” I said, releasing a large breath. “The person who tried to run us over is the same person who killed Nancy Marino, that hit and run I called you about the other day. I spoke to a witness on Ridge Avenue who said she saw a large black SUV intentionally run down Nancy.”

“You … how is that possible? We talked to everyone on that block.”

“You didn’t talk to these folks. Trust me.”

Owen got a faraway look for a moment, then said, “That red house. The one on the high side of the street. I thought it was abandoned. That house was right in front of where the accident happened. The people there would have been able to see everything. I knew I should have tried that house again.”

“No comment. My source spoke to me on the condition that I wouldn’t go to the police.”

“So they’re illegal,” Owen said.

“No comment,” I said again. “My word is my word. All I can tell you is that I’ll go back to my source and try to convince her to cooperate.”

“Well, tell her we don’t care about her family’s immigration status. Not when she’s a witness to a crime. That’s department policy.”

Owen pushed his hair back away from his eyes and was pacing around the waiting room, working hard on all this new information. He was carrying the notebook he had used to take Nikki’s statement and periodically slapped it against his hand.

“Let’s talk hypothetical for a second,” I said. “Just say we got that witness to cooperate and tell you what she saw. Now, let’s say I have another witness-who, again, is not quite in a cooperative mood just yet-who would say he heard a man making threats against Nancy Marino the night before she was killed-”

“This clearly isn’t hypothetical,” he interrupted.

“And let’s say the man who was making threats had an adversarial business relationship with Nancy,” I continued. “And that it’s possible he was conspiring with another man who also had a good reason to want to be rid of Nancy. Would that be enough to arrest both guys?”

“Well, I’d have to talk to the prosecutor’s office, obviously, but we’ve arrested people on less than that,” Owen said. “That’s the beginning of a pretty strong circumstantial case, especially if you’ve got the threats. And obviously, we’d be able to get some search warrants and do some more investigation and try to make it less circumstantial. Can you really deliver all those things?”

“I think so.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this earlier?” he asked, shoving his hair back again.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“What’s complicated?”

I took a deep breath, then said, “Because one of the suspects is that girl’s father. He owns the State Street Grill.” I jerked my thumb in the direction of Nikki’s hospital room. “And the other is Gary Jackman.”

“Who’s Gary Jackman?”

“He’s the Newark Eagle-Examiner’s publisher.”

“When you say publisher, you mean, like, the publisher?”

I nodded.

“Ah,” he said. “Well, I can see how that would make your life complicated. But it doesn’t affect mine one bit. Suspects are suspects. How do these guys know each other?”

“Well, I haven’t quite figured that out yet. But I saw them chatting at Nancy’s wake. Then I saw them sharing a table at the diner, talking about something pretty intensely. And they were sitting near each other again at the funeral this morning.”

He frowned. “That’s a start, I guess. Maybe when we pull phone records, bank accounts, and e-mails, we’ll start to see more. How soon do you think you can get these hypothetical witnesses in line?”

“Hopefully within the next six hours,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. Then before departing, he added: “Give me a call if you need any help. And keep your eyes open when you’re on the sidewalk.”

* * *

In my younger, dumber days, I might have just puttered over to the Alfaros’ house, knocked on the door, and relied on a well-considered logical argument-make that: logical to me argument-to carry the day, as if I were trying to win a Lincoln-Douglass-style debate at Millburn High School. I blame my WASP upbringing for the overreliance on things like logic and my underappreciation for, well, everything else.

But one of the things I had (finally) learned is the importance of having friends whose worldview was substantially different from my own. For all the politically correct halfwits who defined “diversity” in terms of skin color or ethnicity-things that might just be window dressing, depending on the individual-the real value in diversity is having people around who think differently from you, friends who can tell you when your logical is someone else’s crazy.

In this case, I needed a friend who could tell me how to overcome a natural suspicion of the police. And that friend was Reginald “Tee” Jamison.

I had written a story about Tee-a burgeoning T-shirt entrepreneur, hence the nickname “Tee”-a few years back. And we had become buddies, for however unlikely we looked together. Tee is about five foot ten, 250 pounds, with lots of braids, tattoos, and muscles. If you put him in tony downtown Millburn, he’d be the kind of black guy who would make white people subtly reach for the car door lock button.

What they didn’t know is that while he came packaged as a thug-in dress, speech, and manner-he had the soul of an artist and the emotional sensitivity of a woman in her third trimester. I once caught him in the back of his shop with a tissue in one hand and a Nicholas Sparks book in the other.

Having lost his cell number, which was stored in my other phone, I Googled the number for his T-shirt shop and dialed it.

“Yeah,” he said, which is how he always answered any phone, home, work, or cell.

“Hey, Tee, it’s Carter.”

“How come your name didn’t pop up on my caller ID? I almost didn’t answer it. You got a different number or something?”

“No, I’ve gone into business as a major dope dealer, so now I use burners.”

“You see that on The Wire or something? Because you know it don’t work that way no more.”

Tee is constantly explaining the ways of the hood to me. He sees it as his duty to educate the ignorant. Tee is a strictly legitimate businessman, but he remains familiar with the methodologies of those who aren’t.

“I’ll make a note of it,” I said. “In the meantime, I need your input on something.”

“Go.”

“Okay, where to start. So … in your neighborhood, people don’t like the police that much…”

“Is that so?” Tee said, making himself sound like a white New Englander with a head cold. “This is the first I’m hearing of this. Somebody ought to write a stern letter and put those unruly Negroes in line.”

“Nah, we don’t write letters about You People anymore. We call in the National Guard and tell them you’ve just looted a liquor store.”

I was glad the waiting room was empty. Someone overhearing this conversation might take it just slightly the wrong way.

“Good point,” he said, returning to his usual voice. “Anyway, go on.”

“Okay, now let’s just say there was a circumstance where you needed someone in your neighborhood to cooperate with the police. What would you do?”

“I wouldn’t do nothing. Didn’t I tell you about the time-”

“Yes, but let’s not get into that,” I interrupted. Police were constantly harassing Tee on account of his fitting a certain profile. Tee kept his friends close and his lawyers closer.

“Let’s just say that despite your past experiences, you really needed someone to cooperate with the cops,” I continued. “How would you convince them?”

“I’m not sure you could. People hear you talk to the police around here, they start calling you a snitch and the word gets out. And you’re pretty much done, you know what I’m saying?”

“Okay, but let’s say you really, really needed someone to talk to the cops. Like, your life and livelihood were at stake. What would you do?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Money.”

“As in reward money?”

“Yeah. You got to make sure a brother gets paid,” Tee said. “When the police are coming with money, it ain’t just about what you can do for them no more. It’s about what they can do for you. As long as you’re ratting out someone who wasn’t no good anyway? If people hear you got paid, they okay with it. They figure you probably got some bills or you need it for, like, a family situation, you know what I’m saying?”

Reward money. Owen had mentioned it early on, and I had completely forgotten about it.

“What about with Hispanic people who might be concerned about their immigration status?” I asked.

“Money looks just as green to Spanish people as it do to everyone else,” Tee pointed out. “You just need to, you know, position it in the right way.”

“And how’s that?”

“Like it ain’t coming from someone like you. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“I’m not saying black folks and Spanish people get along great or nothing. But they see someone like me, they’re gonna know it ain’t no trick, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, yeah. So, uh, what are you up to this afternoon anyway?”

“I’m already grabbing my car keys,” he said. “Where are we going?”

I gave him the address on Ridge Avenue, then said, “But cool down for just a bit. I may need a little more time to round up all the necessary elements. Can you give me a half hour?”

“This ain’t one of those things where you really mean an hour, but you’re telling the black guy a half hour because you figure I’ll just be late anyway. Is it? Because I’m on to that trick.”

“No. A half hour. I mean it.”

“Okay,” he said. “See you then.”

* * *

My iPhone buzzed at me just as I hung up, telling me I had another e-mail from Lunky. But I didn’t have time just now to hear about why Nathan Zuckerman wasn’t really Philip Roth’s alter ego.

I had to assemble my team to approach the Alfaros. First, I rang Owen, asking him if he could quickly hustle some reward money from his bosses. He asked for fifteen minutes to get the proper approvals.

Then I called Tommy, giving him a brief rundown of all that had occurred-laying heavy on the part that Jackman would be in handcuffs by the end of the day-and telling him his translation skills were needed. I also told him if he helped me, I’d give him two tickets to a Broadway show of his choosing. I expected griping and moaning about being under orders from Jackman and all that. But he readily agreed. Tommy is a sucker for Broadway.

With my Alfaro Attack Team assembled, I turned my attention to the other critical piece: Jim McNabb. Judging that he had been allowed enough time to eat his share of potato salad and clear out from Nancy’s place, I called his cell phone. We exchanged greetings, and then I got to the point.

“Jim, you in a place where you can talk for a second or two?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m in the car. What’s up?”

“Well, I didn’t want to tell you about this at the funeral, but someone tried to have me run over last night.”

“Oh yeah? No kidding!” he said, sounding more excited than concerned.

I should not have been surprised this would have piqued Big Jimmy’s easily addled curiosity. So I gave him a full accounting of the previous evening, Nikki’s injuries, our trip to the hospital, and the visit from Detective Owen Smiley.

“So the cops are in on it, huh?” McNabb said, when I was through.

“They are now, yeah.”

“And that girl said it was a Cadillac Escalade?”

“Fancy killer, huh?”

“Yeah, real high class, this guy,” he chortled. “So what are the cops going to do?”

“I think they’re getting ready to make some arrests,” I said. “And it’s not just Jackman. There might be another guy involved. It looks like they both might have had a reason to want Nancy eliminated.”

“Yeah? Really? Who’s the other guy?”

“Gus Papadopolous. He owns a diner in Bloomfield. Ever heard of him?”

“No. How did he help Jackman?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like Jackman didn’t act alone, and I think Papadopolous might be the XFactor.”

I had reached my Malibu, still waiting for me faithfully in the parking garage, and started the engine.

“Jim, this thing has gotten … Well, it’s always been serious. But now it’s getting really serious. I know we said ‘off the record,’ and I intend to honor that as far as the newspaper is concerned. But this is a lot bigger than the newspaper, and it’s a lot bigger than you getting some heat with your board. At some point, we stop being a reporter and a source, and we start being responsible citizens with a duty to perform under the law. We’re talking murder charges, here.”

“You really think they’re ready to press charges?”

“Well, yeah … If I can establish that Jackman made those threats. I didn’t tell the cop about you by name, but I’m not going to be able to keep a lid on this forever. The cop told me the threats might be the key to the case.”

I had pulled out of the parking garage into daylight, turning back in the direction of Ridge Avenue.

“Yeah. Yeah, I see that,” he said, and I felt some relief. Logical arguments didn’t work with everyone, but they did work with guys like Jim McNabb.

“Look, I still want to be as sensitive as I can to your needs here. So let’s do it like this: you give me the name of that bar, and I’ll get a bartender who will be willing to tell the cops what he overheard. Then the cops will come looking for you. But in the meantime, you can lawyer up a bit. Your lawyers can insist that the cops only question you on very specific areas-basically, confirming what the bartender has already said. That way, the parts of your conversation with Jackman you’d rather not be known stay unknown. You follow me?”

I pulled onto Broad Street, which was getting sluggish with mid-afternoon traffic. I could hear McNabb breathing through the phone, so I knew I hadn’t lost the call. But I also knew I hadn’t won him over just yet. If I really needed to, I would threaten to give his name to the cops. He would know as well as I did the prosecutor’s office would hit him with a subpoena, and that would be the end of it. But I didn’t want to have to haul out that stick just yet. I wanted to give him a few more nibbles at what was, relatively speaking, a carrot.

“Jim, I need the name of that bar,” I said.

More breathing followed a sigh that had the full force of his gut behind it.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Look, let me take you there. I’d still rather handle this as quietly as possible. I don’t want you mucking around, making a lot of noise. I’m pretty sure the bartender who was there that night is working again tonight. How about you meet me after work and we’ll go there together?”

“Sure. That sounds fair.”

“Five o’clock okay?”

I thought about my date with the Marino sisters and their supersecret document, whatever it was.

“Better make it six,” I said. “I’ve got something else before that.”

“Okay. Six o’clock. You sure about all this? Them charging Jackman and everything? I can’t be sticking my neck out if they’re not charging him.”

“Yeah, Jim, I’m sure. Just relax.”

Soon, I hoped, we would all be able to relax.

The brick-throwing had been pure improvisation. He happened to have a few bricks rumbling around in the back of his SUV, left over from a landscaping project. He always kept twine in his glove compartment. The idea developed from there.

He debated whether to even bother but eventually decided it couldn’t do any harm. It might have been the final piece to convince Carter Ross to back off. What said you were dealing with an old-school tough guy-the kind who wouldn’t be afraid to follow through on his threats-better than a brick through the window?

He should have known better. Ross just didn’t scare that easily. Seeing Ross at the funeral-as apparently resolute as ever-made that altogether too obvious. This was the one reporter who wouldn’t quit until he was in the grave.

It was finally time to make arrangements for that. His first task was to find a place. He had a few spots in mind and the second one he scouted turned out to suit his needs. It was deep in the swampy reaches of the Jersey Meadowlands, the kind of spot where the mob had been stashing bodies for decades.

His next task was to retrieve his weapon. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives once estimated 87 guns a day are “lost” by gun shops-or stolen from them-putting an estimated 31,755 untraceable guns on the street every year.

He didn’t know what happened to the other 31,754 untraceable guns from last year. But he knew one of them had ended up in his possession: a Smith amp; Wesson M amp;P Compact.357 Sig, billed by the shady thug who sold it to him as a perfect firearm for personal protection and concealed carry. When he bought it, he hadn’t known what he would even use it for. But he figured it would be nice to have a little insurance, just in case.

Now it was time to cash in the policy. After the funeral, he drove home and clambered up to his attic, back to the medium-sized box in the corner labeled “Dad Sentimental” that he knew neither his wife nor children would ever disturb. He slit open the tape, pulled out some dusty photo frames and nicked award plaques he no longer needed, until he found the wad of old T-shirts he had used as a swaddle for the gun.

His old hunting knife-long and cruel and still sharp-had been wrapped in the same bundle, still in its sheath. He took that out as well, just in case, then continued digging until he found a box of bullets. The same thug who sold him the gun told him these rounds would have “the stopping power” he needed.

That assurance came back to him now, and he hoped it was true. He needed Carter Ross stopped.