Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

“What do you think the police are going to do to me?” Akilah asked.

The question had clearly been addressed to me, the white guy with the tie.

“It depends on how hard-assed the prosecutor’s office feels like being,” I said. “If you had other children still in your care, there might be pressure to get the kids removed from you and put in foster care. And to make sure you never got them back, the prosecutor might throw the book at you-child endangerment, negligent homicide. But as it is, they might not feel the need to go after you as much. Do you have a record?”

She shook her head.

“Well, that’ll help,” I continued. “There’s a possibility if you cooperate with them, they’ll let you plead to something that’ll give you probation and nothing more.”

“I deserve to go to jail,” she said, without hesitation. “For what I did? I hope they send me away for a long time.”

I hoped they didn’t. I’m not saying I wanted to nominate Akilah for Mother of the Year. But throwing this young woman in jail wasn’t going to solve much of anything. I seriously doubted the state of New Jersey could mete out a punishment more severe than the life sentence of pain and regret she had already received for losing those two boys.

And ultimately, what was she really guilty of? Of making a tragically poor decision about child care, sure. But beyond that? She was a single mother who wanted to raise her children someplace other than the projects and had been too unsophisticated to avoid the usurious scumbags who preyed on that desperation.

The real villain here was that industry of scumbags. It started with that “older man,” whoever he was, whose job it had been to hustle fresh meat for the Puerto Rican man, whose job it was to sign them up. But it didn’t stop there. Next were the lending executives, who were underwriting the borrowing with impossibly reckless loan products, approving mortgages for people who obviously did not have the means to pay them back. Then came the investment bankers who were bundling and packaging those bad loans into securities that were somehow rated AAA, which proved to be the lipstick on the proverbial pig.

Some of those Wall Street crooks-the ones that didn’t get bailed out-got a little bit of comeuppance when those securities were suddenly worth pennies on the dollar. The crooks on the street? The Older Man and the Puerto Rican man? They were still out there, finding new ways to enrich themselves on the misery of others.

And while I couldn’t stop them from doing it, I could at least hit them with the only weapon a newspaper reporter had: public embarrassment. The Older Man’s role in the whole thing was probably a little too tangential to go at him, presses blazing. But the Puerto Rican man, if I could find him, was a nice target. A story with the headline “Sleazy Bastard” above it would do just fine.

“Tell me a little more about the Puerto Rican man,” I said. “You keep a phone number for him? A business card maybe?”

She shook her head.

“Do you remember his name?” I asked.

“It was like…” She groped around her memory for a second or two, then gave up. “I don’t know.”

“What did he look like?”

“He wasn’t tall or nothing, but he was built,” Akilah said. “He had a goatee he pet all the time, like it was his cat or something. He was dark skinned, for a Puerto Rican. He was bald…”

She paused to try and think of more, but nothing was forthcoming.

“About how old?”

“I don’t know. Forty? Fifty?”

Or more. Or less. To twenty-four-year-olds, I think any age over thirty-five becomes a blur.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Not in a long time.”

“Can you think of anyone who might know more about the guy?”

“I mean, you can go into the projects and ask around. People there will probably remember him.”

I nodded. They probably did remember. Whether they would tell a cracker like me was another issue.

“Did you keep any of the paperwork?”

“I never got no paperwork,” she said.

That was probably not true. But it didn’t matter. That’s why the Founding Fathers, in their infinite and righteous wisdom, created the blessing that is public records: so reporters like me could snoop around.

The county kept copies of mortgages down at the courthouse. And while that would only provide me the name of the lender, not the mortgage broker, I could work backward from there. Because while I had no legal rights to Akilah’s closing documents-which are not public record-Akilah did. I could gently assist her in getting the necessary papers from her lender. Problem solved.

I’d have my sleazy bastard in no time.

* * *

Our breakfast long since demolished, I threw a tip on the table, then paid our bill at the register up front. As we walked back to my car, tears started rolling down Akilah’s cheeks. Naturally, that set Sweet Thang’s waterworks going, too. They both hopped in the Malibu’s backseat, leaving me to chauffeur us to Akilah’s place. I felt sort of like a white Morgan Freeman driving a black Miss Daisy. Except in this case, Miss Daisy kept wiping her runny nose on her shirtsleeve.

When we arrived, Sweet Thang hopped out with Akilah. They swapped cell phone numbers, then hugged. Sweet Thang watched Akilah disappear inside the front door, then climbed back in the front seat.

“I told her she could stay at my place tonight if she wanted,” Sweet Thang said.

“That is such a bad idea,” I said as I got us under way.

“That girl has nothing and I have a foldout couch in my apartment,” Sweet Thang countered. “It’s the Christian thing to do. Don’t you ever ask yourself what Jesus would do?”

I was tempted to tell her it was a moot point: Jesus came along about 1,950 years before foldout couches. But I didn’t want to turn this into an argument about religion-or convertible furniture-so I tried to put a halt to it.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just invite a source to spend the night,” I said. “And you’re going to conveniently forget to mention this to anyone back at work. Fair?”

“Whatever,” Sweet Thang spat.

I realize I may encourage a slight blurring of the line between reporter and source, but there still is a line. I find a good rule of thumb for journalism ethics is to think of what the headline would be if another newspaper decided to write about how you covered a particular story. JOURNALIST SHOWS SYMPATHY TO MOURNING MOTHER is something I could live with. JOURNALIST HARBORS FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE didn’t have as nice a ring. I hefted a large sigh.

“What?” Sweet Thang said.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, what is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me,” Sweet Thang scolded. “If you’re going to be my mentor, we need to have open lines of dialogue. Communication is the most important part of any relationship. We have to be able to share our thoughts and feelings.”

I was suddenly having a flashback to my last serious relationship. She had moved into my cozy little bungalow in Nutley and had taken to redecorating it room by room. Then she decided to redecorate me. She wanted me to put product in my hair. And wear flatfront pants. And pay more attention to men’s fashion magazines than I did to my fantasy football team. And, above all else, she wanted me to share my feelings, and share my problems, and share my fears.

I’m not saying I’m one of those emotionally constipated men who doesn’t have a clue what’s going on between his ears. At the same time, there are certain areas where a man has to be able to set his own agenda. Hair product is one of them. So, finally, I shared with her. I shared that no matter how many times she asked, I wasn’t going to join her for a manicure. She left me soon after for some guy at her advertising firm. You can probably find them at a nail salon right now.