Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

“The uncle didn’t know much or didn’t say much. But I talked to some other people. Shareef was a drug dealer, obviously. He was a solo operation. He didn’t have any kind of crew or anything.

“Let’s see, what else,” Tommy said, continuing to scan his notes. “A couple of months ago he paid for a bunch of neighborhood kids to go to Great Adventure.”

“Ah, a real Robin Hood, this one,” I interjected.

“Yeah, it seems like business had been good lately. People said he bought himself a new Chrysler 300-you know, those Bentley knockoffs. Everyone in the neighborhood assumed he was getting too big for his britches so someone decided to permanently remove him from his turf. I guess he was starting to take customers away from other dealers.”

“Sounds a lot like our other three victims.”

“Uh-huh,” Tommy said.

“He sold heroin, I assume?”

“Yep,” Tommy said, still flipping pages. “Oh, this was kind of cute. Apparently the brand he sold was called ‘The Stuff.’ ”

I felt a jolt, like the wind had been knocked out of me.

“The Stuff? Are you sure about that?”

Tommy turned some more pages. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly stake my shoe collection on it,” he said. “I got that from a junkie who kept asking if she could borrow twenty bucks. So I don’t know if I could consider my sourcing beyond reproach. But, yeah, she said his brand was called ‘The Stuff.’ Pretty funny, huh?”

“In more ways than you know. That’s the same brand Wanda Bass was selling. I saw it myself in her bedroom when I visited her mother’s house.”

“Really? Huh. Think it’s a coincidence?”

“I don’t know. I mean, how many brands of heroin are sold in this city?”

“Beats me. A hundred?”

“At least. What are the chances two dealers from completely different parts of the city would end up selling the same brand?”

Lights were going on in Tommy’s attic.

“About the same as the chances two dealers from different parts of the city would end up dead together in a vacant lot at the far end of the South Ward,” he said.

I allowed myself to bask in the moment and savor the buzz I was feeling. There was nothing like the moment when a story started coming together.

“Tommy,” I said. “I do believe we’ve just found the missing link between the Ludlow Four.”

Of course, believing it and proving it were two different matters. And in the proof department, we still had some work to do. I knew I would only be able to talk Szanto out of that stupid bar story if I could definitively tell him that each of the Ludlow Four sold the same brand of heroin.

It would pain Szanto to hear it, of course. But in the twisted logic of newspapering, being wrong can be somewhat forgiven as long as you have something to right it with: another big scoop. And this story, if I could nail it down, would certainly qualify as one, especially with all the attention that was starting to surround the Ludlow Four.

The New York newspapers, which normally treated the other side of the Hudson River as if it were some distant curiosity, had been following the story each day. The grisly details of the crime and the brazen nature with which it was carried out made for good copy. One of the tabloids even put it on its cover, an unusual honor for out-of-state news.

With the newspapers beating the drums, the TV stations-who only decide how to play ongoing stories after they read the papers-had stayed on the bandwagon, too. Each local nightly news telecast was featuring sound bites from a steady stream of local antiviolence activists, who were eager to jump in front of the cameras and exclaim “this has to stop” or “enough is enough.”

None of it was actually news, of course, just reaction to the news. Only the newspapers were going to push the story forward. And being able to establish the connection between the victims would definitely keep us out in front of the competition. Szanto would like that. Brodie would love it.

Now we just had to make sure it was true. Tommy volunteered to head back to Shareef’s neighborhood and do some double-checking with his new friends there.

That left Devin Whitehead and Tyrone Scott. Devin would be easy enough. I picked up the phone and dialed my man Tee.

“Yeah,” Tee said. He always answered his cell phone that way. I guess it was part of the tough-guy image.

“What’s up, Tee?”

“You tell me, you’re the one calling.”

“Right. Are those knucklehead kids hanging around outside your store?”

“Of course.”

“You mind asking them what brand of heroin Dee-Dub was selling.”

“You mean what brand he was allegedly selling?” Tee corrected me.

“Right. Allegedly.”

“Hang on,” Tee said.

I heard the electronic bee-baa that went off whenever Tee’s front door opened, then could make out the sounds of the street and some muffled voices. I drummed my fingers for a few moments, checking my e-mail as I waited. Great news: Human Resources had an upcoming series, “Cholesterolapalooza.”

Tee brought his phone back to his mouth.

“You gotta do something for me,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to put you on speakerphone. Just answer my questions honestly.”

“No problem.”

Suddenly the ambient noises were a lot louder.

“Carter, you there?” Tee asked, half yelling.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Okay, first question, ‘Are you Carter Ross, Bird Man extraordinaire?’ ”

“Correct.”

“Are you, in fact, white?” Tee asked, and I heard some snickering.

“As white as they come.”

“Just to be sure about this, I need to hear you say something really, really white.”

I rolled my eyes.

“And can you explain to me what would qualify as really, really white?” I asked.

“Actually, that’ll do it,” Tee said, and the voices in the background erupted with laughter.

“Order in the court, order in the court!” Tee howled, though he was laughing, too. “Okay, okay, now that we have established you are a card-carrying member of the Caucasian persuasion”-more snickering-“can you please tell the court, ‘Who you was hanging with last night?’ ”

“Uh. . Well, this woman took me back to her place. .”

“Oh, now you bragging,” Tee said, and the voices cackled again. “Order! Order, I say! Okay, before you and your lady friend did whatever it is white people do, what did you do then?”

Where the hell was he going with this?

“I, uh, spent some quality time with the Brick City Browns,” I said.

“Aha! And did that ‘quality time’ involve the use of any controlled dangerous substances? Let me remind you, Mr. Ross, you are under oath.”

“Uh, Tee, you don’t have any cops listening to this, do you?”

Tee clicked off his speakerphone, bringing the phone to his mouth.

“C’mon, man!” he said. “What self-respecting black man would be hanging out with the Jake?”

“The Jake?”

“Yeah, you remember that TV show, Jake and the Fat Man ? Jake was the cop.”

“Oh, right,” I said, still thoroughly bewildered as to what he was driving at. “Anyway, what was the question?”

Tee put me back on speakerphone.

“The question, Mr. Ross, is, ‘What was you and the Browns doing last night?’ ”

Suddenly, it started to make sense.

“Well, Judge Tee, I would have to say we were smoking some high-quality hydroponic ganja.”

The background voices burst out in a chorus of disbelieving expletives.

“I told you! I told you!” I could hear Tee crowing. “Twenty bucks! Twenty bucks!”

I was taken off speakerphone again, though I could still hear a lot of indistinct noises punctuated with occasional laughter. It took another minute for Tee to return to the phone.