Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

His erection fast subsiding, Gomes looked miserable. I almost felt bad for the guy. We had just interrupted the best part of his day. But I could also see where Denardo was heading with this, and given the stakes, I wasn’t going to stop him.

“But it happens to be your lucky day,” Denardo said. “Because we ain’t here to bust perverts. We need some information. You think you can play ball with us?”

Tommy couldn’t help himself: “Oh, I think it’s pretty clear he can play ball.”

I brought my hand to my face so Gomes couldn’t see the smile. Denardo didn’t let it break his momentum. He put one foot on the couch and lowered his face until he was a few inches away from Gomes, who weighed roughly one third of a Denardo. I don’t know if Gomes was intimidated. But I was intimidated for him.

“Now, you know who I am, yes?” Denardo said quietly.

Gomes, his hands still in the air, nodded. Obviously, he would have recognized Denardo from the numerous times he had run errands to the Springfield Avenue office.

“And you know who I work for, right?”

Gomes nodded again.

“Okay, now I want to know who you work for. I want to know where all that money you’ve been giving me has been coming from.”

Gomes looked at me, then at Tommy, then cast a forlorn glance at ?Gigante Tetas! But none of us were going to help him with his dilemma. His boss was obviously a bad dude, a man who would not react kindly to an employee’s betrayal; and yet here was this crazed, neckless black man in front of him, spouting off about green cards and other topics that tended to get immigrants, even legal ones, very nervous. Gomes knew he was going have to piss off one of these men. So which one?

But ultimately one threat was only theoretical while the other was directly in front of him, huffing fried chicken breath into his face. Besides, Gomes had been caught, quite literally, with his pants down. He had no will to fight. This was surrender.

He slowly let his hands sink to his sides and then whispered just one word:

“Primo.”

* * *

He said the name reverently, as if we would know instantly who he was talking about. But Tommy, Denardo, and I just stared at each other stupidly.

Denardo recovered first.

“Who’s Primo?” he demanded.

“That’s what everyone call him,” Gomes said, with the medium-heavy accent of someone who started speaking English sometime after adolescence. “I don’t know his real name. No one know his real name.”

“In Spanish, primo means ‘cousin,’ ” Tommy interjected. “But it can also be a nickname, sort of like ‘Buddy.’ I’m sure it’s the same in Portuguese.”

“Well, whatever, he ain’t no buddy of mine,” Denardo said, then turned back to Gomes. “If you don’t know his name, how do he give you a paycheck?”

“Cash,” Gomes said. “Everything is cash with Primo. I always gave you cash. Primo do cash with everyone.”

“So, what, you ran errands for him?” I asked.

“I’m an electrician,” Gomes said, with a small hint of pride. “But sometime he ask me to do things. Primo ask you to do things, you do them.”

“What, he threatens people or something?”

“He don’t have to,” Gomes said. “One time a man try to cheat him on some lumber. He end up floating in the river with three nails in his head. Primo say nothing. But everyone know who kill him.”

I immediately thought of Windy Byers rolled up in that car, nails sticking out of his body at odd angles. In my imagination, he had a look of horror on his face, like he could still feel those stainless steel spikes in his brain.

Then I thought of Sweet Thang. I’m sure she told this lunatic she was a reporter. Everyone knows you don’t just kill newspaper reporters, right? It makes for bad publicity.

Then again, you don’t just kill a city councilman, either.

“Didn’t anyone report him to the police?” Tommy asked.

“No one want to mess with Primo,” Gomes said. “I should no be talking to you. I am as good as dead now. I will have to go somewhere and hope Primo never find me.”

“You won’t have to if we can get to him quickly,” I said. “He didn’t kill a lumber thief this time. He killed a city councilman. There are going to be people who make sure he goes to jail a long time for that. We just need to find him.”

Gomes lit up.

“He has an office no far from here,” he said. “He do all his business there. Sometime I think he live there. I give you directions.”

“Hell no,” Denardo said. “You’re coming with us.”

Gomes acquiesced meekly. He went to grab his pants, which were crumpled on the floor next to the couch, but Denardo put out an arm bar.

“Oh, no, you’re coming like that. I don’t want you running off.”

If Gomes complained, I probably would have let the man have his pants-his dignity had suffered enough for one day. But he just accepted the order. I got the sense the guy was actually happy to be on our side. It didn’t sound like Primo was exactly a joy to work for. Guys like that tend not to take classes on enlightened management.

“Let’s move it,” I said. “We might not have much time.”

If we were the odd trio coming in, we were now the ridiculous quartet: the whitest WASP in Newark, the black man-mountain, the queer Cuban, and an electrician in his boxer shorts.

Gomes hopped in Denardo’s SUV while Tommy and I followed in the Malibu. As we turned back on Ferry Street, heading away from downtown, I saw Denardo’s beefy hand shoot out the driver’s side window and stick a flashing light atop his SUV. Then he hit the siren-no doubt installed for all those pressing city council emergencies-and we were soon zooming down the road’s middle stripe as traffic swerved out of our way.

We veered off Ferry Street onto Wilson Avenue, zipping through an industrial part of town, underneath Routes 1 and 9 and the New Jersey Turnpike, over potholes large enough to jar loose dental fixtures. We took a tire-screaming left at Avenue P, passing the off-airport Enterprise rental car location where the mysterious Donato Semedo-perhaps aka. Primo-had dumped Windy.

At some point, Denardo silenced his siren, though we were still cruising at speeds that would have put us in good company among the Avenue P drag racers. Then he jammed the brakes and turned down a small dirt side street that may or may not have been marked-I was too intent on tailing him to notice.

The street ran along the side of a vast warehouse, the old-fashioned kind made of painted cinder block. Denardo eased to a halt just before the end of the building and pulled over to the side of it. I followed his lead and soon the four of us were joined in a small huddle between the cars.

“The office is over there,” Gomes said in a hushed voice, pointing around the corner. “It’s on the second floor. There’s a parking lot and some stairs that go up there.”

“Can Primo see the parking lot from his office?” I asked.

“Only if he’s looking,” Gomes replied.

He could only see if he was looking. Thanks, Confucius.

“So what’s the plan?” Tommy asked. All eyes were on me.

“Well…” I said, stalling to give myself time to think of something.

“You got two females in trouble,” Denardo said. “I say we bust in. If we jump on this dude quickly, he won’t know what hit him.”

“Yeah, but what if he’s armed?” Tommy asked.

“He’ll only have time to get off one shot, at most,” Denardo said. “There are four of us, so that means three of us will get through.”

I got the sense someone had watched too many action movies.

“Whoah, whoah, whoah,” I said. “This isn’t Little Bighorn. No one is charging into battle to get shot.”