The Girl Next Door

CHAPTER 8

The call from Peter Davidson of the National Labor Relations Board came in just as I was arriving at the Alfaro residence. I slid my notebook out of one pocket and a pen out of the other as we went through the necessary exchange of hellos and gee-it’s-hots.

“So what can the National Labor Relations Board do for you today?” he asked in a friendly tone.

“Well, I understand you guys are investigating a case involving Nancy Marino.”

“What makes you think that?”

Oh great. It was going to be one of those interviews.

“Because you recently paid a visit to one of her employers, Gus Papadopolous at the State Street Grill in Bloomfield.”

“I see. Can I ask what your interest is?”

“I’m a … freelance journalist,” I said, which sounded strange coming out of my mouth after years of identifying myself as being a proud representative of the Eagle-Examiner. “I’m working on a story about Ms. Marino.”

“Okay,” he replied, without adding more

“What can you tell me about the case?”

“Not much at this point. We’re still waiting for certain elements.”

“What elements?”

“At this point, I’d really rather not say.”

“Does it involve Mr. Papadopolous or a fellow by the name of Gary Jackman, by any chance? Or someone else from the Newark Eagle-Examiner?”

“Again, I’d rather not say.”

“Why not?”

He paused. I watched the weeds outside the Alfaro household waving as a slight wind stirred. It was the first thing resembling a breeze in at least two days.

“Have you ever dealt with the National Labor Relations Board before?” he asked.

“Nope. This is my first dance with you guys.”

“Well, some background: the NLRB was created by Congress to uphold the National Labor Relations Act and see that it’s being properly enforced. We also enforce existing collective bargaining agreements. We’ve really got a fairly narrow mandate and this … this may be something that falls outside our purview.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m not sure I can say.”

“Oh. Can you at least give me some clue here? I don’t want to have to waste your time playing twenty questions.”

As I waited for Davidson to formulate his answer, I watched the white-haired busybody-the one who had warned me about the eee-legal ale-eee-ans living in the red house-walking along with a skittish white poodle, clearly a case of a dog resembling its owner. I wondered if the poodle was wary of nonpapered Chihuahuas.

“This may be something that ultimately involves another agency,” Davidson said at last. “And if that’s the case, I want to be respectful of that agency’s rules and procedures. And, frankly, without looking them up, I don’t even know what they are. But I don’t want to hand them a case that’s been damaged by media attention in some way.”

Another agency? Why, that must mean … Actually, I didn’t have the slightest idea what that meant. I was getting a whole lot of nothing and taking it exactly nowhere.

“Can you tell me what other agency?”

“Not … not without giving you too much of a tip about what’s going on.”

“Can you at least tell me why you threatened to subpoena Gus Papadopolous?”

“Who said I threatened to subpoena Mr. Papadopolous?”

“He did,” I said, leaving out the part that I only knew this because he told his daughter.

“Well … I won’t speak to any specific conversation I did or didn’t have with Mr. Papadopolous or any other witness. But I will say in general that when an employee makes a complaint, I try to investigate all aspects of the employee’s history. I like to get a sense of what kind of person I’m dealing with. It helps me understand where the complaint might be coming from.”

“So Ms. Marino made a complaint?” I said, latching on to the first bit of decent information he had given me. He forced out a dry laugh.

“I probably need to end this phone call,” he said. “I’m not trying to be evasive. I usually cooperate with the media. But in this case, I really just have to be careful about what I say.”

“Okay, do you have to be as careful with what you write down? Is this anything I can FOIA?”

The Freedom of Information Act-the most wonderful piece of legislation enacted by Congress since the First Amendment-had been a friend to me many times over the years.

“I can’t stop you from filing a request, obviously,” Davidson said. “But I have to warn you I would probably deny the request on the grounds that it might be used in an ongoing criminal investigation.”

“Criminal investigation?” I said. “What crime?”

He laughed again.

“You’re good. I really have to stop talking to you. You’re getting way too much out of me. I’m going to end this call now. If the National Labor Relations Board can be of future assistance, please do call again. But I just can’t help you this time. So I’m hanging up now.”

And, sure enough, he did.

Not long after the line went empty, I saw Tee’s boxy Chevy Tahoe roll up behind me. The first part of my attack team was in place. I got out of my car, feeling the heat envelop me, and went over to Tee’s driver’s side.

“I told you the black man could be on time,” he said, as his window rolled down.

“Yeah, you’re a real credit to your race,” I joked. “Mind hanging loose for another second or two? We need to wait for our translator, and I have another phone call or two to make.”

“Yessuh, Mistah Ross, suh,” he said, doing his Sambo impersonation. “You knows I’s a just happy to do whatever you be tellin’ me to do, boss. Whoooweee!”

“That’s a good boy,” I said, playing along. “Now you sit tight, hear?”

“Can I dance fuh yuh now, boss?” I heard him saying as I walked back toward my car. “I’s just love to dance fuh yuh!”

He rolled up his window, and I got back in my tepid air-conditioning and placed a call to Lunky.

“Hi, Mister Ross!” he said, with proper intern enthusiasm.

“Shh. You’re not supposed to be talking to me, remember?”

“Oh yeah, right,” he said, having hushed himself by at least fifty percent.

“Are you doing anything right now?”

“No,” he said glumly.

“You up for more civil disobedience?”

“Sure!”

“I need you to go over to the National Labor Relations Board office,” I said, giving him the address I had copied off Peter Davidson’s card. “File a Freedom of Information Act request for any documents pertaining to a complaint made by Nancy Marino.”

“I’m not sure that’s what Thoreau had in mind when he advocated-”

“Kev, I gotta run,” I said as another call clicked through on my phone. “Just trust me: all those transcendentalists would have been big FOIA fans. They just didn’t live long enough to know it.”

* * *

The new caller was Detective Owen Smiley.

“You said fifteen minutes,” I teased. “It’s been at least twenty-four.”

“Yeah, well, what I got is worth waiting for.”

“That’s not what Mrs. Smiley tells me.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I wish. Just wait until you’re married with three kids under the age of five. Even a lady-killer like you will be striking out.”

I didn’t bother informing him I’d struck out plenty of times already, even without kids to blame it on.

“Anyhow,” I said. “What do you have for me?”

“Good news. We get a grant that gives us a certain amount of reward money each year. The chief tells me we’re well under budget so far, and if we don’t use it, we lose it. So he authorized ten large.”

Ten grand was a nice chunk of change for that family-for any family. I thought about the sparseness of the furnishings, the folding chairs, and the disco-era couch. Ten thousand dollars would make them feel like they had hit the lottery. Maybe they could even buy a lawn mower for all that grass in front of their house.

“I’ll have to send your chief a thank-you note,” I said.

“You’ll have to do more than that. If we take a statement from these people, we’ll have to shift Nancy Marino to a homicide in our UCR numbers. We don’t get many of those in lovely Bloomfield, so each one makes a big difference in our annual clearance rate. If I don’t close this one, it’ll mess with our numbers.”

“You’ll close. Don’t worry.”

“Okay, okay. Now, the deal with the reward is the information has to lead to an arrest and conviction. That’s how it works. You be sure to tell these people that.”

“Got it,” I said.

“And I know they don’t want the cops around. But I just might be in the neighborhood should they find ten thousand reasons to have a change of heart. So give me a call if that happens. I want my chief to know he’s not wasting his money.”

Tommy’s car rolled slowly past me and parked two houses down. The final piece of my team was now in place.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Let me go work my magic.”

Except, of course, it wasn’t really my magic I was counting on. I knew it was Tee and Tommy who were going to save this part of the day, if in fact it could be saved.

Tommy was walking up the sidewalk as Tee and I got out of our cars. We congregated in front of the house, and I did the proper introductions. The three of us were, to say the least, ill-matched. There was Tommy, the wispy, nattily dressed Cuban who accessorized his tight-cut shirt and pants with the latest Dolce amp; Gabbana sunglasses; Tee, the muscle-bound black guy, wearing winter camouflage pants, a black sleeveless shirt that showed off his biceps, and a matching black skullcap, from which his braids sprouted; and me, the tall, well-scrubbed white boy wearing a charcoal gray suit along with the world’s most boring shirt and tie combination.

The Alfaros wouldn’t know what hit them.

“So here’s the deal,” I continued. “The Bloomfield Police have authorized a ten-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the hit-and-run death of Nancy Marino. We need to convince them it’s in their best interest to do what is required to claim this reward.”

“All right. Ten grand. I can work with that,” Tee said, then pointed at me. “Your job is to keep your mouth shut.”

“Agreed,” Tommy said. “Let’s do it.”

We walked up the driveway, three men intent on their mission, ascending the concrete steps with Tommy in the lead. As we were knocking on the door, our attention turned toward the house, we didn’t notice that Felix Alfaro had walked up behind us.

“Hello,” he said.

We turned to see Mr. Alfaro, wearing a T-shirt that said TICO’S PAINTING in a script meant to look like brush strokes. Underneath, in a plainer font, it said, RESIDENTIAL/COMMERCIAL and INTERIORS/EXTERIORS. The entire T-shirt was flecked with paint splatters, and Mr. Alfaro, while smiling at us, looked properly spent from a long day of work. It was around three o’clock. At Tico’s Painting, they probably started at six and quit at two, to spare themselves working during the hottest part of the day.

“Buenos dias,” Tee said. “My name’s Tee.”

“Buenas tardes,” Mr. Alfaro replied.

Tee turned to Tommy. “Tell him we just here to talk a little bit about what his missus saw.”

Mr. Alfaro nodded like he understood, but Tommy said the appropriate words in Spanish anyway. Mr. Alfaro said, “Okay.”

Tee began addressing Mr. Alfaro directly: “Look, I’m going to break it down for you real straight. You and me, we ain’t got a lot in common, right?”

Tommy began translating. Tee waited until he stopped, then went on: “But we got one thing we definitely got in common, and that’s that we don’t trust the cops, right? What cops do to my people, I don’t even want to get started. And what cops do to your people ain’t too cool neither, you know what I’m saying?”

Another pause for Tommy to catch up.

“Now, I know he look like a cop”-Tee pointed at me-“and I know he look like he might be a cop”-Tee gestured to Tommy-“but I ain’t no cop, you feel me?”

Mr. Alfaro waited for Tommy, then bobbed his head up and down. “Yeah,” he said, grinning. “You no a cop.”

“All right. And I’m telling you they ain’t cops, either,” Tee said. “They newspaper reporters.”

Mr. Alfaro appeared to be growing befuddled about where this was all going. But Tee plowed on.

“So-and here’s where I’m just laying it on the line for you-I want you to know that we don’t care if you got any problems with your green card or nothing, you know what I’m saying? We ain’t here about that, and we ain’t going to let no one near you who cares about that. We’ll protect you and your family. You got my word on that. And this brother’s word is solid.”

Tee pounded his big, meaty chest when he said “solid.” I’m not sure how precisely Tommy was able to put all of what Tee had said into Spanish-a lot of it seemed fairly idiomatic-but Mr. Alfaro was again smiling.

“I show you something,” Mr. Alfaro said, reaching into his back pocket, pulling out a well-worn wallet and producing a small, white piece of paper.

It was a perfectly legitimate Social Security card.

* * *

Over the next few minutes, we fell over ourselves to offer apologies for the misunderstanding, and Mr. Alfaro graciously accepted them. Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder, If he and his wife were here legally, why were they so leery of the police? Why hide from them? Why talk to me with the insistence of “no police”?

Mr. Alfaro had been on the landing of his front steps the entire time we had been talking, and he finally walked up them toward his front door.

“Give me minute,” he said.

As he disappeared behind the front door, we looked at each other sheepishly.

Tee turned to Tommy. “I know why he’s ignorant,” Tee said, jabbing a thumb in my direction. “What’s your excuse?”

Tommy was about to return fire when the door reopened and we were invited into the Alfaros’ threadbare living room. The shades were drawn, as usual, but I now recognized that not as an attempt to hide from the world but as an effort to keep the house cool. There was no air-conditioning.

The children were on the floor, contentedly playing-the little boy with a train, the girl with a doll of some sort. They looked up at us with big, dark eyes, regarded us for a moment or two, then returned to their toys. Mrs. Alfaro was taking a basket of laundry upstairs and said something involving “momento.” My keen language skills told me that meant she would be a moment.

She came back downstairs and went into the kitchen to do the whole coffee thing again, I thought. But no, she returned to the living room and we all sat-Mr. and Mrs. Alfaro in folding seats, Tommy and I in mismatched chairs that had been dragged in from the dining room, and Tee on the disco couch. Mrs. Alfaro had a folded-up Spanish-language newspaper, which she occasionally used to fan herself.

Without being prompted, Mr. Alfaro launched into the backstory of their immigration status, which Tommy patiently translated. During the El Salvadoran Civil War, when his family was booted from its coffee plantation, he was still just a boy, but he realized his future was no longer in El Salvador. When he was old enough, he applied for political asylum in the United States, but that application had been rejected, for reasons he either didn’t accept or didn’t understand. So he applied for a green card. He waited nine years for his name to finally rise to the top of a waiting list. His wife was able to come over three years after that. And they held off on starting a family until they were in the United States, so their children could be born here as full-fledged citizens.

“He says he could have come here years earlier, but he wanted to do it the right way,” Tommy said.

They still sent money back to El Salvador. They spoke of their family there as if they still lived in poverty. And I couldn’t help but think, And you’re living in the lap of luxury? But I suppose it’s all relative.

After enough of the get-to-know-you stuff, I caught Tommy’s eye and gave him a small “let’s get on with it” hand gesture.

“Mr. Alfaro, I’m sorry, I just have to ask, why do you have these feelings against the police?” I asked.

Tommy translated the question, and Mr. Alfaro looked directly at me for the first time since we darkened his doorstep.

“Do you know of the Organizacion Democratica Nacionalista?” he asked.

I shook my head. He glanced over at his children, to confirm they weren’t listening, then turned to Tommy and began speaking in a low, rapid voice.

“They were the national police of El Salvador,” Tommy translated. “They were … brutal thugs … like terrorists … They roamed around the countryside with their death squads … They had a network of informants … All it took was one accusation to ruin someone’s life … One night they … a death squad … came for my grandfather … He was accused of being a Marxist sympathizer … He insisted he was no such thing-he was just a coffee grower who wanted to live in peace … They killed him and mutilated his body … And they made my father watch the whole thing.”

It was difficult to know what to say. Part of me wanted to proclaim that he was in the United States now and things were different here. Except that, in all likelihood, those death squads had probably been either financed or trained by Uncle Sam. We did a lot of shady stuff back in the seventies and eighties in the name of propping up democracy in Central America. I’m sure it felt necessary at the time-we couldn’t allow the Communist menace to get a foothold in our backyard-but it was hard to imagine how the senseless death of a coffee farmer had aided that cause.

“I was two years old,” Mr. Alfaro said. “I don’t know him, my grandfather.”

“Mr. Alfaro, I’m very sorry,” I said, and I tried to slow my speech just enough to give him some help following it but not enough to be the dumb American who talks loud and slow to be understood. “Our police here aren’t perfect. They make mistakes like everyone else. But they are, by and large, very good people who try their best to uphold the law. You can trust them.”

Mr. Alfaro swiveled his head toward his wife, then back at me. Finally, Tee-who had been squirming on the disco couch for a while now-lost his patience.

“Man, I’m getting bored,” he burst out. “Did you tell him about the ten grand? Just tell him about the ten grand. Never mind, I’ll do it.”

Tee scooted himself forward on the couch and began using large gestures as he spoke.

“If your wife here talks to the police about what she saw and they end up sending the dude that did it to jail? The cops will give you ten grand. That’s ten thousand dollars. Mucho dinero. You feel me?”

I think Mr. Alfaro followed what Tee was saying. But, just in case, Tommy talked him through it in Spanish. The Alfaros conversed briefly-actually, it seemed like Mr. Alfaro was doing most of the talking and Mrs. Alfaro, in between waves of her newspaper, was doing the agreeing. At the end, they were both smiling nervously, and Mr. Alfaro delivered a small monologue to Tommy.

At the conclusion of it, Tommy said, “Mr. Alfaro wants you to know he’s not doing this for the reward money. He’s doing it so his children can see that things are different here. He says they’re American citizens, and they need to learn to trust their government.”

“So they’re going to cooperate?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” Tommy said. “They’re going to cooperate.”

* * *

I summoned Detective Owen Smiley from his hiding spot, and he arrived ten minutes later, with another officer there to translate for him. Mrs. Alfaro made some coffee, and my little trio stuck around long enough to make sure the ice was broken and everyone was getting along okay.

Then, when it was time to get down to business, Owen announced, “Okay, the reporters go bye-bye now.”

I protested briefly-after all, I wasn’t even technically a reporter anymore-but the fact was I had places to go, people to meet, and perhaps leftover potato salad to eat.

Tommy, Tee, and I spilled out onto the sidewalk. The day had gone from hot to hotter, and the humidity reminded me of the inside of a dog’s mouth. I looked to the sky, which had a few puffy clouds that might form into something like a heat-breaking storm. But for now the forecast called for a ninety percent chance of shvitzing, with a strong possibility for continued swampiness.

“Thanks for the help, guys,” I said.

“You needed it,” Tee replied. “See you around.”

“They say the neon lights are bright on Brooaaadwaaaaay,” Tommy crooned, dreadfully off-key as usual.

“Yeah, I’ll pay up,” I said, cringing. “Your singing is an embarrassment to gay men everywhere.”

“Yeah, well, that suit is an embarrassment, period,” Tommy shot back. “When did you buy it? Nineteen eighty-four?”

“Yeah, wanna see the skinny leather tie I got with it?” I said, then switched gears. “Tommy, seriously, thank you. I know you’re risking a lot to be here, and I appreciate it. You’re a good friend and I’m lucky to have you.”

“Cut it out. I’m the one who’s supposed to get overemotional, remember? Just watch your back until the arrests go down, okay?”

“You sound like Tina.”

The skin around his eyes crinkled and he said, “Yeah, maybe there’s a reason for that.”

Before I could ask what he meant, he was gone, back to the comfort of air-conditioning, which is where I soon returned myself.

I still had a half hour before meeting with the Marino sisters, just enough time to return home and check on my wounded cat. In an unusual show of initiative, Deadline had managed to remove himself from the bathroom and trek all the way into the living room, where he had taken up residence on a windowsill. Only my cat would feel the need to bathe in sunlight on the hottest day of the year, thus sparing his body having to expend any energy to heat itself.

“No, that’s okay, don’t get up,” I said as I entered. When I saw he had heeded my command perfectly, I added, “Good cat.”

Then I went upstairs to change. I had spent enough time in my monkey suit for one day. And it was just too hot to muster the enthusiasm to don my normal uniform. Slacks and a polo shirt would have to be good enough.

Returning to my car, I noticed Constance at her usual spot, watering a lawn that was-even in the throes of a July heat wave-lush and green. Last summer I found myself rooting for water restrictions so she and her emerald island could be knocked down a few pegs. I gave her my usual I’m-going-somewhere-no-time-to-talk wave, but she stopped watering and dragged herself and her hose in my direction.

“There was some excitement at your house last night,” Constance said, showing her usual mastery for telling me things I already knew.

“There sure was,” I said.

“There were ambulances. I was so surprised. I was worried you had a fall.”

“Oh, everything is fine, thank you,” I assured her, unaware that falling at home was a potential concern for able-bodied thirty-two-year-old men. Mostly, I was trying to formulate a polite way to extricate myself from a rehash of the “excitement.” I decided if I just laughed at whatever she said next and dove into my car, that would do the trick. My car door was already open when she said something that made me a little more eager to stop and chat:

“There was a man looking at your house last night.”

“A man? What do you mean?” I asked, closing the door and walking a few paces toward her.

“Well, I wasn’t really paying attention. I was just watering my lawn”-and minding her own business, to be sure-“but I saw this man walk up your driveway, look into your backyard, then come back around front and ring your doorbell. You weren’t home.”

“About what time was this?”

“Well, I had just gotten back from the soup kitchen”-Constance volunteered and wanted to make sure everyone knew it-“so it was probably about six?”

“What did the man look like?”

“Well, I wasn’t really looking. I was watering my lawn,” she said again.

“Well, sure, but you must have gotten some sense of him. Even if you just saw him out of the corner of your eye?”

She put down the hose and crossed her arms, pursing her lips, as if this was all necessary to summon the proper concentration to answer the question.

“Well, he was … thick,” she said.

Hired killers often are.

“Is he a friend of yours?” she asked.

“Not that I … no, definitely not.”

“Well, then I would say he was a little fat. I didn’t want to be unkind, in case he was a friend of yours.”

“Tall guy? Short guy?”

“About medium.”

“White? Black? Hispanic?”

“White.”

“Old guy? Young guy?”

“It was hard to tell. I didn’t see his face. He definitely wasn’t young. But I don’t think he was old, either.”

“How was he dressed?”

“About like you’re dressed right now,” she said.

“Did you see anything unique about him? Any tattoos? Jewelry? Odd mannerisms?”

“Well, I was watering my lawn,” she said, just in case I had missed it the first two times.

“Right, right. Sorry. Did you see what kind of car he was driving?”

She paused again and looked toward the street.

“He parked it right over there,” she said. “It was a big SUV, one of those gas-guzzlers.”

“Was it black?”

“Yes, I would say it was. It had a very shiny paint job.”

“Was it a Cadillac Escalade, by any chance?”

“Well, I’m trying to think if I saw the Cadillac emblem. Those are pretty distinct, you know. It was definitely big and boxy, like an Escalade would be. But I didn’t really see. I was-”

“Watering your lawn,” I said. “Thanks. I think I might know who it was, after all.”

“Oh. Is it a friend of yours? I’m sorry I called him fat.”

“No, no, that’s okay. He, uh, sells magazine subscriptions. Those guys can be very pushy.”

“I know. Sometimes, I can’t bring myself to say no.”

Constance turned and picked up her hose, like she didn’t want her parched lawn to have to go much longer without quenching.

“I know what you mean,” I said before walking back to my car. “Sometimes you just have to get a little tough with them.”

* * *

The man Constance described didn’t sound like Gary Jackman or Gus Papadopolous. The obvious conclusion was that they had been outsourcing the ugly stuff to a hoodlum-for-hire who had come to my house to scout things out ahead of time, so that when it came time to embed me into his grille plate, he’d know the best way to go about it. I thought about Constance’s account of him: a thick and/or fat white man, medium-sized, middle-aged, dressed in slacks and a polo shirt, with no identifying marks. A quarter of the men in New Jersey probably fit that description. And if Constance didn’t see his face, she was effectively worthless where the police would be concerned.

About the only thing that made it useful, I thought as I drove across town toward Nancy’s place, is that after the authorities made their arrests, they could subpoena financial statements and look for sizable, unexplained withdrawals. Or checks made to the order of any local crime families. If this was going to be a circumstantial case-and it just might have to be-either of those things would bolster the cause.

Pulling up in front of Nancy’s ranch house, I saw the tent was still on the front yard. But other evidence of a large gathering had been tidied up and cleaned away. There were still two cars in the driveway, including what looked like an airport rental, so I knew Jeanne was still around. Anne must have been there, too. But the aggrieved sisters had retired inside. Tough to blame them: the house had central air.

Getting out of my car, I labored through the heat up the front steps, then rang the doorbell. And waited. And waited some more. I pressed the button again, holding it down longer this time. More waiting.

Unreal. If they were going to pretend not to be home, they could have at least moved their cars. Who did they think they were hiding from? Helen Keller?

I knocked on the door, rapping it hard enough to make my knuckles smart. I could already feel the moisture forming on my upper lip and brow. Sometime real soon, I was going to have to lock myself in a refrigerated room for a week.

My knuckle-knocking had done no good, so I switched to a fist and boomed on the door with the fat side of my hand. I was starting to have the thought that I should have pressed a little more to get the document when I had the chance-yet another example of hindsight acing an eye exam that foresight had flunked. The time for lying back and being patient with Nancy’s family had passed. The supposedly prudent reporter was done being patient.

I was about to shift my knocking to something more like thumping when Nancy’s oldest sister opened the door. She was slightly disheveled, with one side of her bob flattened. She was dressed in the skirt of her sensible suit but not the jacket. Her white blouse was wrinkled. Her heels were gone and she had also ditched her panty hose. Yes, Anne McCaffrey had definitely gone native.

“I’m sorry, I lost track of time,” she said. “We were napping.”

I believed her. The crease of a pillowcase was pressed into her cheek.

“Sorry,” I said, then tried to come up with a hasty fib. “I just thought maybe you couldn’t hear me over the air-conditioning.”

She stood there in her bare feet, holding the door in one hand, undecided about whether to invite me in. I could see the inside of the house had not yet been cleaned, and I decided that, in addition to being groggy, she might have been hesitant to invite me in because things were still a mess. So I sought to reassure her that I could have cared less about dirty dishes, empty cups, full ashtrays, or whatever else I might find lying around.

“I know this has been a crazy day for you. I can’t imagine how you found the time to clean up out there.”

She turned to the side and covered a yawn with her non-door-holding hand. My iPhone bleeped its new mail ring tone at earsplitting volume-I had yet to fiddle with the settings to change it to vibrate-and my hand dove into my pocket to silence it. But it was too late. The noise seemed to wake up Anne just enough to want to be rid of me.

“Mr. Ross, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to come back another day. I’m just … I’m not up for this right now. And Jeanne is asleep. She needs her rest. Are you free next week? Maybe we could set up a time when we could all meet in my office.”

Yes, it was definitely time for Mr. Ross to get assertive.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I said. “My investigation into your sister’s death has … reached a critical point. Time is of the essence. You mentioned you had a document for me. Why don’t you just give it to me and I’ll be on my way.”

“I … I don’t have any copies.”

“I’ll run to a Staples and make you ten sets,” I countered.

“That’s not the point,” she said, running her hand through her hair in a gesture of frustration. “It’s complicated.”

I realized that Anne McCaffrey, who was all about staying in command of things, was trying to keep what little control she had over this situation. I also recognized a woman at the frayed end of her rope. And yet I felt I had no choice but to keep tugging on her.

“Ms. McCaffrey, with all due respect, a lot of situations get pretty complicated. I’ve been a newspaper reporter a long time. I’ve never met anyone whose life comes in a neat package with a bow on top. I don’t expect yours does, and I wouldn’t expect Nancy’s did, either. Why don’t you just show me what you have and we’ll sort it out together.”

“Well, I’m a lawyer,” she said, as if I didn’t already know. “So I don’t expect things to be neat, either. It’s … I don’t want this to be something that becomes…”

She exhaled forcefully and winced, covering her face with her hands.

“My mother is so devastated by this, and I … I just don’t need this to be … bigger than-”

“I’m afraid that may be unavoidable,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Ms. McCaffrey, I know this might not be what you want to hear,” I said, as evenly as I could. “But by the end of the day, it’s entirely possible two men will be arrested for conspiring to murder your sister.”

* * *

For a newspaper reporter, delivering bad news to people is part of the job, something you find yourself doing with enough frequency that you get accustomed to the range of reactions.

There are the deniers, the people who immediately insist what you’re telling them couldn’t possibly be true. There are the displacers, the people who channel that immediate rush of hurt and anger at you and hold you personally responsible for whatever you’re telling them. There are the crumblers, the people who collapse into something resembling a catatonic state, to the point where they become useless. There are the bawlers, the people who immediately start crying on you or anyone else who happens to be around.

Then there are the stoics, which is the group Anne McCaffrey fell into. She was a tough nut, and she had no plan on showing me whatever emotion, if any, she was experiencing. If I had to guess, I’d say it was resignation more than anything-like this was news she feared might be coming, and therefore had braced herself to receive.

But that was just a guess. Outwardly, all she did was run her hand through her hair again, then step aside from the doorway.

“You’d better come in,” she said wearily.

I followed her into a living room still cluttered with the detritus of Nancy’s funeral reception. Anne gazed at it like it was just one more thing in life that disappointed her. Then she looked my way, as if she was placing me in the same category, though she wouldn’t be able to clean me up as easily.

“Have a seat,” she said. Nancy’s living room had a couch against the far wall, flanked on either end by two sturdy armchairs, with a coffee table in the middle of the three pieces. I selected one of the armchairs.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“It’s no trouble. I’m going to get a glass of water for myself.”

“I’m all right, thanks.”

Just then, Jeanne came into the living room. She was wearing her black funeral dress and had been inside long enough that her glasses were actually clear.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me he was here.”

“He just got here,” Anne said, trying not to sound defensive. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I wasn’t sleeping. I was just resting,” she said, then turned to me. “Hello, Mr. Ross.”

“Hello,” I said. “And please call me Carter. I think we’re going to be getting to know each other a little bit.”

“What do you mean?” Jeanne asked.

Anne eyed her sister nervously and began trying to herd her toward the couch.

“Jeanne, why don’t you have a seat, honey?”

“Why don’t you stop telling me what to do?” she snapped.

Another sister spat was not what I needed at this (or any other) moment. So I interceded before this one got any momentum.

“Anne, on second thought, I’d really like that glass of water,” I said, and she rolled with it.

“Jeanne, would you like one?”

“No, thank you,” Jeanne said testily.

While Anne was in the kitchen, Jeanne took a seat on the couch-of her own volition, of course, not because her sister suggested it. Anne returned juggling three water glasses with a grace that would have made her waitress younger sister proud. She arrayed three coasters on the coffee table-Anne was a coaster-using kind of woman-placed the glasses on the coasters, then chose her spot on the opposite end of the couch from Jeanne.

“So, Carter,” Anne said in her most diplomatic tone, “can you please repeat to my sister what you just told me?”

I not only repeated, I elaborated, narrating for them the full rundown of what I knew, from the NLRB visiting Papadopolous to Mrs. Alfaro’s statement to the police. I tried to keep the level of detail high enough that I didn’t leave anything out, yet sparse enough that I didn’t bog down the story. Still, it took me about twenty minutes to finish it all.

When I was done, Jeanne actually looked pleased, like she had been vindicated and was waiting to whip the world’s biggest I Told You So on her older sister. Anne was still stoic.

“Gary Jackman,” she said, at last. “You said that’s one of the men’s names?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that answers that,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry, Carter,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ve told us a lot, but I … we haven’t told you everything. Or anything, really. There may be more to the story. Or it may be a different story entirely.”

“There was a lot my sister was keeping from me,” Jeanne interrupted. “They were things I would have told you when we met, but I didn’t know them myself at the time.”

“I felt it was privileged information,” Anne explained, and Jeanne steadied her head just long enough to glare at her sister. This had clearly been an argument from recent days, and I just hoped they weren’t going to rehash it in front of me.

“I called you when Anne finally started telling me,” Jeanne said, “but your phone was dead.”

“Yeah, I, uh, had to switch phones,” I said. I could tell them about my employment status later. “Anyway, what about this story is going to change?”

“I should probably just show you,” Anne said. “I’ll be right back.”

She rose from the couch and walked out the front door, keeping it ajar behind her. Jeanne swayed gently. We both took sips of our water. Anne returned, bringing a burst of muggy air back into the house with her. She was carrying a brown accordion file folder. It was stiff and new and mostly empty, but she had selected a large one, obviously thinking it would expand with time. She unwrapped the band that secured the flap and handed me a sheaf of paper that had been stapled in the upper-left-hand corner.

At the top of the first page I saw: “IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY, ESSEX VICINAGE, CIVIL DIVISION.”

It was, obviously, a complaint for a civil lawsuit, with the usual captioning. There was no case number, which meant it hadn’t been filed yet. The plaintiff was listed as “Marino, Nancy B.”

There was only one defendant. He was listed as “Caesar 710.”

* * *

My eyes began poring over the document. Its first assertion was that at all times relevant to the complaint, Nancy Marino was a resident of Bloomfield, New Jersey. The subsequent facts were similarly banal stuff-that she was an employee of the Newark Eagle-Examiner, Inc., that she was a shop steward in IFIW-Local 117 and so on. I was into pages 4 and 5 before I got to the meat of the thing, and on page 7 before I started having an inkling about what was going on.

“This … this is a complaint for sexual harassment,” I said, feeling my head cock to one side.

“That’s right,” Anne confirmed.

“But…” I said, then let my voice trail off as I refocused on the paper and continued reading.

Actually, I should say I was skimming. It usually takes me three or four trips through a document like this before I really absorb it. During my first run-through, I have a hard time keeping myself from speeding to the end.

But I was getting the highlights. It started with Caesar 710 making remarks about Nancy’s appearance, including comments about her breasts. One quote that jumped off the page was, “On several occasions, the defendant stated the plaintiff should wear tighter clothing to ‘show off your body more.’”

Then he began asking her out on dates. At first, it was just invitations to drinks, which “plaintiff rejected as being inappropriate.” It escalated from there to sexual advances, descriptions of proposed encounters that became increasingly lurid. At a certain point, the complaint alleged, Caesar 710 started initiating physical contact, fondling her thigh under a table. The complaint referred to this as assault and battery.

“Assault and battery?” I asked. “He hit her?”

“Those are legal definitions,” Anne said. “Assault is any attack that causes the defendant to fear physical harm. Battery is simply touching without consent.”

I thought of what I had learned about Nancy, how she didn’t really date or seem all that interested in it. Every description of her made her sound fairly asexual. What was it that Nikki said about her? That while all the other waitresses gabbed about a hot guy coming into the restaurant, Nancy didn’t treat them any differently from the old ladies.

I could only imagine how she would have reacted to Caesar 710’s behavior. She would have been shocked, horrified, humiliated. She probably wouldn’t have known what to do about it at first.

But eventually she would have decided to fight back. Nancy Marino was no pushover.

And this complaint was part of that fight. There were other names mentioned, also in code: Caesar 413, Caesar 168, Caesar 1224. But Caesar 710 was clearly the star of the show.

“Wow,” I said, looking up from the document when I reached the end. “So who is ‘Caesar 710’?”

“I don’t know,” Anne said.

“What do you mean?”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

Anne continued: “She said Caesar 710 was vindictive and violent. We were e-mailing this document back and forth, and she said there was a possibility it would be, I don’t know, intercepted by someone. She thought if she put the real name in there, it would get reported back to Caesar 710. At the time, I just thought she was being paranoid.”

Or, more likely, she was using her Eagle-Examiner e-mail account and feared someone loyal to Jackman would have access to it.

“But … what’s the significance of ‘Caesar 710’?”

“I have no idea. It’s a little riddle she came up with,” Anne said.

It was a riddle that had me stumped. Because, on the one hand, “Caesar” could be a reference to Gus Papadopolous-with the subtle switch from Greek to Roman, because “Pericles 710” would have been too obvious. Then again, it could also be Gary Jackman, who as publisher of a major newspaper was a Caesar-like figure.

“But you’re her attorney,” I protested. “How could she not tell you?”

“No, I’m her sister,” Anne corrected me. “I never would have represented her in this. I’m a real estate attorney. Workplace discrimination is pretty far from my area. I prepared this document as a kind of guide for another attorney, just so Nancy wouldn’t have to walk into someone’s office cold. I think it helped her organize her thoughts.”

“So who’s her lawyer?”

“She didn’t have one yet. She was planning to put an attorney on retainer to pursue this claim. She had even applied for a home equity line of credit so she could afford to pay for it.”

So that explained the $50,000 loan Tommy found in his background check.

“She said she was prepared to take this thing as far as it could go,” Anne finished.

Jeanne, who had managed to sit quietly through this whole exchange, was itching to add her input.

“Can you think what it would have been like to be Nancy?” Jeanne said, with tears welling in her eyes even as her voice stayed flat. “With this … this animal saying those things? And putting his hands all over her? You’re a man. I’m not sure you know what that would feel like.”

I get this a lot, of course. People assume that because I’m a privileged white male, I am utterly incapable of understanding discrimination or persecution in any form. It’s tough to convince them otherwise without sounding totally disingenuous-“but I have a friend who’s Jewish” doesn’t get you very far-so I ignored Jeanne and turned back to Anne. Somehow, she had to know something that would confirm the identity of Caesar 710.

“Had Nancy told you about her complaint to the National Labor Relations Board?” I asked.

“Well, yes … sort of. When Nancy first came to me about this-and, mind you, she wouldn’t tell me who it was-I said her first step was to take it to her employer’s human resources person. But I don’t think she got a very satisfactory response.”

“Well, yeah, if the problem was at the diner, I can’t imagine she would have,” I said. “A mom-and-pop restaurant like that doesn’t exactly have a human resources department.”

“Well, whatever happened, I told her the next step was the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission-the EEOC. But Nancy was very union proud, as you know. And I think she wanted to feel like she was getting some kind of solution that way. So she insisted on taking it to the NLRB. But I don’t know if she heard back from them before she was killed.”

That pointed the arrow back at Jackman because Nancy was a unionized employee of the Eagle-Examiner. There was no union presence at the State Street Grill. But why would the NLRB visit there?

“Well, the NLRB isn’t being very forthcoming,” I said. “I had a Freedom of Information Act request put in today, but I’m not optimistic that’s going to get them to open up.”

I returned my attention to the cover page of the complaint and found myself staring at the captioning on top. I wind up reading a fair amount of legal documents, and something about this one struck me as a little sparse. Then it hit me: it was the lack of codefendants. Generally, with these kinds of lawsuits, the plaintiff at least starts off with a big pile of targets, whether they’re named individuals, corporations, or just John Does.

“If Caesar is Gary Jackman, why not sue the paper as well?” I asked. “Even with times as tough as they are in the newspaper business, the Newark Eagle-Examiner still has much deeper pockets than Gary Jackman personally. And if Caesar is Gus Papadopolous, throw in the diner. It’s not as rich as the newspaper, but it’s something.”

“I told her the same thing. Nancy said she didn’t want to hurt Caesar’s business, just Caesar himself.”

I tried to stop the alphabet soup-NLRB, EEOC, IFIW-that was sloshing around in my brain and instead concentrated a bit more on the “Caesar 710” riddle. Clearly, the “Caesar” part wasn’t leading me anywhere. But what about the 710? Was it a date-July 10? An address of some sort? In the old movies, wasn’t it always a locker number at a bus station?

“I’m still trying to untangle this ‘Caesar 710’ thing,” I said out loud.

“I thought Nancy would tell me when the time was right, so I didn’t give it a lot of thought. I just assumed maybe it was initials of some sort.”

Initials? Of course. Initials. I started writing “A, B, C…” down one side of my pad, then “1, 2, 3…” next to it. The 7 lined up with G. The 10 lined up with J.

“GJ,” I said. “Gary Jackman.”

* * *

There was more to discuss with the Marino family, but the mini grandfather clock in Nancy’s living room-big hand on the VIII, little hand nearing the VI-told me there was no time to do it right now. If I was going to make my date with Jim McNabb at six o’clock, I had to clear out. I made my apologies, and the sisters Marino said they understood, practically shooing me out.

“I know you said you didn’t have copies of this,” I said, handing the complaint to Anne. “But do you have a file you could e-mail me?”

“Sure. I think Nancy has it on her computer here. It might take me a few minutes to find it on there, but I’ll send it to you.”

“Great,” I said, giving her the e-mail address connected to my iPhone.

Outside, the temperature had actually backed off slightly, mostly because the sun had been blotted out by an ominous-looking line of dark clouds. The thunderstorms that would hopefully break the back of the heat wave were rolling in from the hills of Pennsylvania. After a brief bit of fireworks, it would be a nice night in New Jersey. In more ways than one.

As I drove into downtown Newark, I began working out some things. Jackman, faced with a sexual assault lawsuit from an already difficult employee, had decided he could rid himself of both problems with one action. Gus Papadopolous’s involvement was, admittedly, still unclear to me. I’d have to leave that to Owen Smiley to sort out.

At the first light I hit, I picked up my iPhone, which I had stashed in the Malibu’s cup holder, to see if Anne had sent me the file. She hadn’t. There was just an e-mail from Lunky, telling me the NLRB had, as expected, denied his FOIA request.

I returned the iPhone to the cup holder. The NLRB would be a battle for another day. Assuming I could get myself reinstated at the paper, it would probably be fought by the very Eagle-Examiner lawyers who were used to doing Jackman’s bidding. They’d probably enjoy the task of prying loose evidence of Jackman’s guilt.

I was just a few blocks away from the National Newark Building when my iPhone began singing out its new mail song. At the next light, I grabbed my phone to have a look. It was the file from Anne McCaffrey. Someday, I thought, a printout of this file would likely be marked as evidence in a murder trial-if it ever went to trial. Maybe Papadopolous would admit to helping Jackman and agree to testify against him in exchange for less jail time. Jackman would know he was done for and grab the best plea deal he could get.

Jackman might end up with something short of life in prison. No matter. He would be ruined all the same.

At precisely six o’clock, I pulled up in front of 744 Broad and called Jim McNabb’s cell phone. He answered with an ebullient, “Hey, Carter Ross!”

“Hey, I’m outside your building.”

“Great, I’ll be right down.”

I used my short wait to forward Anne’s e-mail onto Lunky, my amateur cryptographer, just to see how long it would take him to crack it. I wrote “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!” in the subject line, figuring he’d appreciate the Shakespeare reference more than most. In the body of the message, I wrote, “Professor Langdon: A code for you to crack. Who is Caesar 710? See enclosed.”

As I hit the Send button, Jim McNabb came strolling out of the building, still dressed in the same suit he had been wearing at the funeral. I stowed the iPhone back in the cup holder.

“Jim, I just want you to know, I really appreciate this,” I said as he sank heavily into the passenger side of my car.

“Well, I gave it a lot of thought,” he said. “And I just decided this is the right thing to do.”

“Good. This thing might move fast. Have you been in touch with your lawyers for when the cops come to question you?”

“Not yet. I’ll worry about that later.”

“Okay. Where are we heading?”

“Just start driving north on Broad Street. We’re getting on 280.”

I did as instructed, pulling into traffic that was moving quickly out of town. Everyone was trying to beat the storm home. The sky was now some combination of green, black, and blue, the kind of sky that makes you want to take the kids and the hogs down into the cellar. And I don’t even have kids, much less hogs. Deadline isn’t that fat.

“Hey, did Nancy ever mention anything to you about a sexual harassment complaint against Jackman?” I asked as we merged onto the highway.

“Sexual harassment?” he said.

“She was about to file this civil lawsuit against the guy.”

“Against Gary Jackman?”

“Looks that way. She referred to him as ‘Caesar 710’ in the complaint, like some kind of code in case someone intercepted the document. But it’s him, all right. Sounds like he was a real dirtbag, hitting on her, not taking ‘no’ for an answer, putting his hands in places she didn’t want them.”

“You don’t say? Isn’t that something. I had no idea.”

“Yeah, I guess she was pretty secretive about it.”

I let it go at that. We drove in silence for a while, passing over the Passaic River.

“What about the NLRB?” I asked. “She ever say anything about going to the NLRB with a complaint?”

“Not that I heard. But it’s not like I was her closest confidant, you know?”

We neared the entrance to the New Jersey Turnpike, and I got into the left lane, thinking that’s where we were heading. But McNabb corrected me.

“No, no, stay to the right,” he said, pointing to Exit 17A, which went toward Jersey City.

The end of his sentence was partially interrupted by the insistent screeching of my iPhone, telling me I had a new e-mail.

“Is that the new model?” McNabb asked, eyeing it covetously.

He went to grab it, then stopped himself short. “You mind?” he asked.

“No, go ahead.”

It was so dark, it was almost like nighttime. And my headlights were only doing so much good. We were driving through an industrial stretch of Harrison-or possibly Kearny, you never quite know. We were about to pass under the eastern and western spurs of the New Jersey Turnpike. I couldn’t imagine what bar we’d find this way. McNabb obviously hung out in some old blue-collar dive.

“I got the older model, but I’ve been thinking about upgrading,” he said as he fondled my phone. “I told you, I just love all this technology stuff. Here you are, driving along at sixty miles an hour, and you just got an e-mail from … Lunky?”

“Oh, that’s just what people call him around the office. He’s one of my colleagues, Kevin Lungford. Would you mind opening that?” I said. “Lunky likes puzzles, so I sent him the sexual harassment complaint and told him to figure out the whole ‘Caesar 710’ thing.”

“Yeah, no problem,” McNabb said, cleared his throat and began reading:

“Mister Ross, this is almost too easy. The ‘Caesar’ is a reference to the Caesar cipher, one of the oldest cryptology methods known to man, so named because Caesar used it to communicate with his generals. It’s really a simple form of alphabetic substitution, but with a three-letter shift down. So while ‘7-10’ would make you think G and J, it is actually J and M. The person in this complaint has the initials J.M.”

“J.M.,” I said out loud. “Who’s J.M.?”

There was only one person in Nancy’s life I could think of whose initials were J.M., and that was Jim McNabb.

Who was now pointing a gun at my head.

McNabb trained the barrel of the Smith amp; Wesson an inch above Ross’s ear. All the idiots who watch too many movies always stick the gun at the target’s temple. But while that might do the job, it also might send a bullet racing through one soft part of the head and out another soft part without ever hitting anything hard enough to make it expand. It was only when expanding that a bullet did the full, flesh-tearing damage that would guarantee killing a man.

McNabb felt the tension of the trigger against his right index finger and reminded himself to stay calm and take deep breaths. He didn’t think Ross would make any sudden moves. Ross didn’t seem like the type to do anything that irrational. But McNabb wanted to make real sure that if the guy tried anything, he wouldn’t get very far.

What amazed McNabb-thrilled him, actually-is how thoroughly unaware Ross had remained, right until the very moment the gun came out. Ross knew about the sexual harassment, the NLRB, even the Cadillac Escalade. Yet for all his supposedly honed reporter’s instincts, Ross had never been able to put it all together.

McNabb had played a role in that, of course, having spun that marvelous bit of fiction about Gary Jackman and the threats. None of it had ever happened, of course. Oh, there had been a meeting between the Eagle-Examiner’s publisher and representatives from the IFIW that Thursday afternoon, and it spilled into the evening. But it had just been another negotiating session. It was not followed by any trip to any bar. That one fabrication had kept Ross off track.

But McNabb knew it wasn’t going to work forever. All those twisted little lies were eventually going to get straightened out.

So he spent the afternoon preparing for a visit to “the bar,” finding the ideal place for everything to go down, planning the route, thinking about what he’d say, anticipating how his adversary might react. They were only a few hundred yards away from their destination when the e-mail came in.

The e-mail was, admittedly, a wrinkle. McNabb couldn’t simply make Ross disappear now, as he had planned. There was too much of a trail that might be followed-if someone started looking at Ross’s e-mail, if someone plied answers from the NLRB, if someone pulled all those loose strings …

But no, Ross was the only one who was even close to tying them together. And the poor sap wasn’t going to be alive to tell anyone about it.

So McNabb-aka Caesar 710, J.M., Big Jimmy, whatever anyone wanted to call him-just needed to improvise a bit, to orchestrate the reporter’s death in a way that made it look like it was something other than what it really was. Just as he had done with Nancy.

A new scheme was already forming in his mind. And the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. He relaxed and reminded himself to breathe again. He was the one with the gun. He was in control. Total control.