Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

I returned to my desk but quickly found myself yawning, always a sign the needle on my caffeine-o-meter was dipping low. I went to get a Coke Zero from the break room, where the reproductive-minded Tina Thompson was eating a late lunch, probably laced with ground-up fertility drugs. She was wearing a tight, rust-colored V-neck sweater that rather nicely showcased her upper half. I’m definitely a sucker for a woman with a nice set of shoulders, and Tina’s were better than most.

“You should avoid that stuff,” she said as I fed money into the soda machine. “Excessive caffeine has been shown to lower sperm count.”

“Really?” I said. “In that case, does this thing sell Red Bull?”

“I thought all men wanted to spread their seed,” Tina said. “Isn’t it supposed to be some kind of biological imperative?”

“Actually, I come from a long line of sterile males. Goes back generations.”

“Har har,” Tina said. It was a pretend laugh but she still rewarded me with a real smile. I don’t know what it was, but Tina had this one particular smile she used on occasion. It was at once coquettish and demure, but it also left little doubt she could make your toes curl in bed.

I distracted myself with the soda machine, which refused to dislodge my Coke Zero without a gentle bump. Sometimes you really had to rock the thing, which inevitably prompted someone to inform you that ten people a year die from vending machines falling on them.

“So what are we offering our readers tomorrow with regards to the Ludlow Four?” I asked.

“Oh, the usual shock and outrage. The mayor is promising to put more police officers on the streets. The antiviolence groups are clamoring to get their names in the paper. Some of the people on Ludlow Street are forming a neighborhood watch group. That sort of thing.”

“Team Bird coverage continues.”

“Yeah. Brodie has been humping my leg like a horny leprechaun all day,” Tina said. “And I might be flattered by that. But after he’s done with me, he goes over to Szanto and humps him. Besides, you ever notice Brodie has old-man hair issues? He’s got it coming out his ears, his nose, and he’s got those eyebrows that are sprouting like old potatoes. It’s a little gross.

“How’s your bar story going?” she asked.

“Uh, it’s not.”

“Oh?” she said, giving me the toe-curling smile again. “Swimming upstream, are we?”

“Off the record? Yeah.”

“Good. I’m with you,” Tina said. “I just can’t believe how much everyone hopped into bed with Hays’s story. Yeah, great, radio and TV picked it up. I just hate it that being first with a story has taken precedence over being right. What’s your angle?”

I thought of telling her my suspicion that all four victims were jailbird heroin dealers. But hard experience had taught me you didn’t share a story idea with an editor until you knew it was true.

“I’m still working on that,” I said.

Tina crinkled her brow and I admired her collarbones for a second.

“Well, whatever it is, keep working it,” she said. “I’ll cover for your little upstream swim as best I can.”

“Oh, Tina, how can I ever repay you,” I said, grinning.

She winked. “I’m sure I’ll figure out something.”

I returned to my desk, keeping a wary eye out for Sal Szanto.

I think, deep down, Szanto knew I would rather gargle razors than propagate the error that was Hays’s story. And therefore he had to know I was ignoring my assignment. Eventually, that would work out okay, because he would come around to the conclusion that getting the story right was a triumph for journalism-even it meant wiping some egg off the paper’s face.

But in the meantime, he would be much happier if I at least pretended I was working on the bar story. There were two ways to continue the charade: lying to him when he asked me for an update, which made me feel uncomfortable; or avoiding any meaningful interaction with him, which is the option I chose.

So when I saw Szanto lugging his pear-shaped body toward my desk, I immediately flipped out my cell phone.

“Carter Ross,” I said into the mouthpiece then paused a beat so my imaginary friend could answer.

“Oh, hey, how are you?” I said, giving Szanto the “one minute” finger. “That’s great. Thanks for calling me back. It’s wonderful to hear from you.”

I had almost succeeded in turning Szanto away when my phone rang for real. Szanto looked at me quizzically.

“Uh, hi,” I said, scrambling to answer. “We must have gotten cut off. Can you hear me now?”

“What the hell you talking about?” answered Tee Jamison, my T-shirt man.

“So, anyway, where were we?” I said. Szanto was still staring at me.

“We wasn’t anywhere,” Tee said. “You forget to take your pills this morning or something?”

Finally, Szanto turned back to his office, apparently satisfied I was going to be a while.

“Sorry, I just had to. . never mind,” I said. “Anyway, what’s up?”

“You been down to the vacant lot where they found them bodies yet today?”

“No, why?”

“I’m just hearing some weird stuff. Meet me down there in fifteen?”

“You got it,” I said. Tee hung up, but I kept the phone at my ear until I was around the corner, out of Szanto’s sight.

I made good time to Ludlow Street. That was one of the advantages of working in an economically devastated city: less traffic. In short order, Tee rolled up behind me in a new Chevy Tahoe that could have swallowed my Malibu whole and still had room for dessert.

“Why is the poor black man driving this big fancy SUV while the rich white kid is driving this little tin can?” I asked.

“How many times I got to tell you: there’s money in the hood,” Tee said. “We just make sure you white people don’t know nothing about it.”

“Ah, my tax dollars at work,” I said.

Tee was dressed in a camouflage jacket with a black hooded sweatshirt underneath, having perfectly dressed the part of the urban tough. I wore a charcoal-gray peacoat and dressed the part of the insurance salesman.

“So why am I out here in the cold?” I asked.

“You gonna have to check this out,” Tee said, walking toward the shrine that had, as predicted, grown substantially. “Damn, it’s just like everyone’s been saying.”

“What is?”

“His shrine, man.”

“Dee-Dub’s shrine?”

“Yeah.”

I looked at the small cluster of candles and flowers dedicated to the memory of Devin Whitehead. It looked no different from the other victims’ memorials.

“Uhh. . okay, what am I missing?” I asked.

“It’s what the shrine is missing,” Tee said. “It ain’t got no brown in it.”

“And that means. .?”

“Damn. Didn’t they teach you nothing in college about the hood?” Tee said. “Dee-Dub was supposed to be one of the Browns, you know what I’m saying? When one of them dudes gets killed, there is always a big-assed shrine filled with everything brown you can find. Brown bandanas. Brown bags. Brown teddy bears. One of them niggas even stole a UPS truck once.”

“A UPS truck?”

“Yeah, you know them commercials. . What can brown do for you?”

“Oh, right,” I said. “So the fact that there’s no UPS truck here means. .”

“It means Dee-Dub wasn’t with the gang no more.”

“Is it possible he got kicked out?”

“Oh, it’s possible,” Tee said. “It’s possible Tyra Banks is going to ask me to father her baby. I just don’t think it’s going to happen, you know what I’m saying?”

“No, Tee, I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying, dudes like Dee-Dub don’t get kicked out of gangs like the Browns. It just don’t happen. Not to an OG like him.”