Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

“Uh, I wouldn’t worry about that much,” I said, as we climbed back into the Malibu. “I wouldn’t call her my type. I try to avoid women who could break me in half during lovemaking.”

“Well, I try to avoid women, period, so I guess I can’t blame you.”

I cut off our banter so I could concentrate on my driving. It was getting closer to that crazy time of night. Much of Newark’s reputation as the Scary Capital of the Eastern Time Zone is undeserved. During daylight hours, I feel as safe in Newark as I do on the streets of Manhattan. It’s nighttime that gives the place a bad rap. Around eight o’clock, the city’s crazy quotient slowly begins to rise, with steady increases in addictions being serviced, darkly clothed people cutting across the street at odd angles, and questionable characters on nefarious errands. The crazy quotient usually crests around 1 A.M.-slightly later on weekend nights-then gently decreases until the sun rises. It’s the familiar beat of the city’s daily rhythm.

“So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Tommy asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

“Well, we don’t know anything about Shareef Thomas yet,” I said. “I guess that would be a good place to start.”

He nodded and slipped away to do. . whatever it was Tommy did after work. I considered heading inside for a quick e-mail check. But when I thought of what was likely waiting for me-pointless press releases from PR firms and notices about ergonomics training from the Human Resources Department that were marked “High Importance”-I decided to call it a night.

My home is a tidy bungalow in Nutley, a nearby town known for its ballsy name and for being the childhood home of Martha Stewart. If that makes Nutley sound like a place where everyone spends their time scrapbooking and making decorative birds’ nests out of matchsticks, it shouldn’t. Nutley isn’t really a Martha Stewart kind of town. It’s more of a Roseanne Barr kind of town. No one in Nutley is quite sure how Martha sprang from our ranks. If you saw how tacky the Christmas decorations are, you’d understand.

Nutley is just a solid, middle-class Jersey suburb. Everyone works a decent job, drives a mid-sized car, gripes about their property taxes, obsesses over their minuscule lawn, orders pizza on Friday night, and watches football on Sunday afternoon. And while it may have a few too many twenty-something Italian guys who still live with their mothers, I like it all the same. The truth is, I enjoy lawn care. There’s nothing like pulling a few dandelions to soothe job stress.

By the time I got home, my cat, Deadline, was pacing back and forth, waiting to be fed. But that was really nothing unusual. Deadline spends most of his waking hours-both of them-pacing, waiting to be fed. As soon as you come near him, he runs to his bowl and looks at you expectantly, even if it’s already full. Sometimes, I reach my hand into the bowl and rustle the food around to make him think he has been fed again. You know how most cat owners will rave about how smart, sensitive, and intuitive their pet is? Not me. I can admit it: Deadline was pretty much last on line when they handed out the kitty brains.

And in some ways it was appropriate, because he was the last vestige of what had been a truly brainless relationship. I adopted Deadline-then a cute, black-and-white domestic shorthair kitten-at a time when I foolishly thought I was going to be able to provide a stable, happy, two-parent home for him. The girl I was with at the time had moved in. There was talk of more serious things to come. There was even a shared Netflix account.

Then Deadline’s mommy decided life in Nutley, New Jersey, just wasn’t for her. I should have seen it coming. She wanted a guy you might find in the pages of Esquire. I’m more a Sports Illustrated kind of guy. She ended up leaving me for a designer at her advertising agency, a dandy fellow who used lots of product in his hair, lived in a loft in SoHo, and didn’t worry so much about staying faithful to the Scotts’ four-cycle lawn care program.

That left me and Deadline to our shared bachelorhood. Which was fine. Deadline never liked her much. Maybe he wasn’t so dumb after all.

The next morning, Hays’s story led the front page:

“A return trip to the scene of a previous crime proved deadly for Shareef Thomas and three accomplices, who Newark police believe orchestrated a robbery at the Ludlow Tavern several months ago-and have now paid the ultimate price.”

The story went on with the necessary background about how police had now identified the “Ludlow Four,” and how they hoped to have a quick resolution to the heinous crime. And, sadly, there was no quote from a National Drug Bureau spokesman, since one L. Peter Sampson was afraid of his own shadow and one Carter Ross couldn’t make him believe it was cloudy.

I poured myself some Lucky Charms-they are magically delicious, after all-and finished reading the story, at the end of which I felt like chucking my bowl against the wall. Hays’s cops were just so wrong. Newark bar owners get held up all the time. If they put contracts out on everyone who did it, there would be no one left at the bar to drink.

I made my commute in seventeen minutes and had just settled in to wade through my daily helping of pointless press releases when Sal Szanto suddenly became aware of my presence.

“Crtr!” he croaked. I entered his office just as he cleared his throat explosively.

“What’s up, boss?”

“Brodie still has major wood for this Ludlow thing. What’s the deal with the bar these people held up? Who owns it? Why hasn’t the guy been arrested yet? And how did he plan this hit? I’m seeing some kind of profile of this bar. You know: ‘It appears to be just another neighborhood bar, but the Ludlow Tavern had something more sinister going on inside.’ Something like that. How does that sound?”

“Sounds like you can write it yourself,” I said.

“Aw, don’t start that. Come on, what do we know that we didn’t know this time yesterday?”

“That Hays is an old-fashioned screwup.”

“No,” Szanto said, “I actually did know that yesterday.”

“Yeah, but you probably didn’t know he was going to strip a story across the top of A1 that’s just wrong.”

Szanto put his elbow on the arm of his chair, resting one of his chins in his palm. As the managing editor for local news, he ultimately had responsibility for this story. If Hays screwed up, it meant Szanto screwed up. So Szanto-and, for that matter, the Eagle-Examiner as a whole-was now invested in Hays’s story being right.

“The Associated Press picked it up and gave us credit, you know,” he said gravely. “Radio, TV, they’re all giving us credit, too. And you want to tell me it’s wrong? You got anything to back that up or are you just in the mood to make my ulcer bark at me?”

“Nothing concrete,” I admitted. “But I got a pretty strong hunch. Hays is taking the word of his cop source. And I think the cop is just throwing something out there. You know how it is for those guys: if they don’t at least pretend they’ve got something while a story like this is hot, everyone just assumes they’re not doing their job, starting with the mayor. When the story cools down, they’ll quietly arrest someone else or just drop it. But for now, they can’t let everyone know they’re clueless.”

Szanto ground his teeth for a moment.

“Aw, Jesus Christ,” he said at last. “So what’s your theory?”

“Well, I don’t necessarily have one yet,” I said. I just had three drug dealers in three different parts of the city and a fourth victim who was still a big question mark.

Szanto grumbled something as he reached for some Tums.