Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

What a way to go.

* * *

Eddie recounted the end of his story, calling me “man” at least seven more times and saying “you know” at least a dozen. But the gist of it was that he went to report the presence of an existentially deprived passenger to his boss, who called the authorities, who came streaming in ever more massive numbers. They interviewed Eddie at some length until they finally realized he was just the guy who cleaned the car and, man, he didn’t really know nothin’, you know?

In truth, Eddie had probably reached the end of his usefulness to me, as well. He had given me some great bits of what we in the business call “color”-those little details that make a story jump off the page. There was a big difference between a lede that read “Newark Councilman Wendell A. Byers was found dead yesterday at a car rental facility near Newark Airport” and “A cleaning man at a car rental facility near Newark Airport made a gruesome discovery in Row Q yesterday morning, when he found the nail-riddled corpse of Newark Councilman Wendell A. Byers rolled up in the trunk of a red Ford Taurus.”

I thanked Eddie for his help, but as the group broke apart, I sidled up to one of the check-in guys, a black guy with short-cropped hair.

“Hey, you mind helping me with something real quick?” I asked.

“Sure, boss, what’s up?” he said, in a perhaps Jamaican, perhaps Haitian, definitely Carribean accent.

“You got one of those little handheld computers?”

“Yeah, boss,” he said, pulling it out of the pocket of his puffy jacket.

“What can you tell me about this car,” I said, rattling off the license plate number to the red Ford that had become Windy Byers’s impromptu hearse.

He did some typing, working quickly on the small keyboard with his thumbs, the only flesh exposed on his otherwise gloved hands.

“It was rented from location oh-one-five-that’s here-Sunday at 7:42 P.M. by…” He stopped at the name. “Don … Donaa…”

“Spell it for me,” I said.

“First name D-O-N-A-T-O,” he said.

Donato. Got it.

“Last name S-E-M-E-D-O.”

Semedo. Donato Semedo. What kind of name was that? Italian? Spanish? I didn’t dare pull out my pad to write it down, so I did my best to burn it into my memory. Donato Semedo. Donato Semedo.

“Does that thing give you the renter’s address?”

“Yeah, boss,” he said, tilting the computer so I could see it.

It was on Hanover Street in Newark. I didn’t know the street but could guess it was in the Ironbound, which was a German enclave back when all the streets were being named.

“Thanks,” I said, thankful to have found such a helpful check-in guy. “That thing tell you anything else?”

“Rental insurance declined,” he said. “It doesn’t say nothing about the return. He must have just dumped it here.”

That explained why the cleaner was the first to find the body.

I might have pushed for more, but I sensed an attack was coming from lower middle management. A man with straight, mousy brown hair, too-big-for-his-face glasses, and a very unfortunate mustache was approaching fast from the direction of the main building. His jacket was embroidered with JEFF on it.

And Jeff looked very excited.

“Excuse me, sir, are you with the police?” he asked.

“No,” I said, and was not inclined to volunteer more than that.

“Well, this is not a public area,” Jeff said. “And I can’t have you walking around talking with employees. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“What’s wrong with talking? It’s a free country.”

Good comeback. For a fourth grader.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said, unmoved by my patriotism.

I briefly considered whether there were any legitimate grounds by which I could protest. But ultimately I was better off bringing as little attention to myself as possible. If the authorities became aware a reporter had been traipsing around their crime scene, they might get persnickety and hit me with trespassing or disturbing the peace or loitering or one of the other charges they typically reserve for young black men hanging out on street corners.

Better to escape relatively unnoticed.

“So you’re saying I have to leave?” I asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, no big deal,” I said. “Which way to the airport?”

Jeff not only showed me the way to the shuttle but escorted me there, stood next to me with his arms crossed until it came, then made sure I was onboard with the door closed and the shuttle moving.

There were only two other passengers with me, a pair of airport-bound business travelers who had seen my prisoner of war treatment and were nervously clutching their luggage, like I was about to steal it. We passed the police barricade, and as we inched along through the narrow channel between the TV trucks, I decided it was time to join my people. I walked up to the driver and said, “You can drop me off here.”

“Here?” the guy said.

“Yeah, I just remembered I’m afraid of flying,” I said, quickly pulling a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet.

“Hey, whatever works for you, pal,” the guy said, taking the bill as he pulled the bus to a stop and opened the door.

I disembarked next to a cluster of print reporters, one of whom happened to be Tommy. He stared at me blankly for a second, like I was a strange new life-form crawling out of the sea, then broke himself off from the pack.

“Are you coming from where I think you’re coming from?” he asked. He had to shout a little bit to be heard over the thumping of nearby helicopter rotors.

“Yeah,” I said, with a perhaps-too-cocky smile.

“How did you get in there?”

“I happen to be a big fan of Enterprise rental car. They pick you up, you know. What’s going on out here in the media mosh pit?”

“Nothing. It’s just a lot of pretty boys worrying about their appearance too much. It’s like I never left the club from last night.”

“What have you been told so far?”

“Again, nothing. They haven’t even officially confirmed that it’s Windy Byers in there. You ask them why the road is closed and all the spokesman says is it’s a police investigation. For all we know at this point, this whole thing could be for some wino who died of exposure.”

“Oh, it’s Windy all right.”

“How do you know?”

“I talked to the guy who found him,” I told Tommy, then filled him in on all I learned on the inside.

When I was done, Tommy didn’t comment on my genius as a reporter, thank me for providing such great details for the next day’s story, or compliment me on my brilliant-albeit accidental-ingenuity.

Instead, he said, “Donato Semedo of thirteen Hanover Street, huh?”

* * *

Tommy took a few steps farther away from the other reporters. I got the hint and followed him over to the edge of the road, which bordered on a small, forlorn patch of marshland. A faint breeze stirred the dried stalks of pampas grass.

“There’s something weird going on,” he said.

“Speak, young Tommy.”

“Remember how I told you I was going over those ELEC documents?”

“Yeah, the Election Law stuff. I thought you were just punishing yourself.”

“I was. But then, I don’t know. Windy’s donor list was strange. I kept coming up with all these Portuguese names. I can’t be sure, I think one of them might have been Donato Semedo. It sure sounds Portuguese.”

“Portuguese? I thought maybe it was Italian or Spanish or something.”

“No, it’s definitely Portuguese,” Tommy said. “It seemed like all of his donors had these fresh-off-the-boat immigrant names. And they all had addresses in the Ironbound. And I just couldn’t figure it out. Why would the Central Ward councilman get all this money from people outside his district?”