Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

Especially since I already had some inkling of who I was dealing with. My first experience with L. Peter Sampson, the NDB’s press guy, had set a world record for Fastest Flak Blow-off (Federal Division). The guy couldn’t wait to get me off the phone.

I quickly concluded there was only one way to solve that problem: pay him a visit. Maybe that personal touch would convince poor, frightened L. Pete that I wasn’t one of those scary reporters who was going to get him fired.

I walked Tina back to the newsroom and promised her I would spend the afternoon safely at my desk, doing my expense report. Then I went to my computer for three minutes-just long enough to get an address for the National Drug Bureau’s Newark Field Office-and scooted across town.

The NDB was housed in an appropriately stern federal building, a solidly built rectangular edifice without much in the way of architectural imagination. Upon entering, I was met by a metal detector and three square-jawed U.S. marshals.

“Can I help you, sir?” one asked.

“I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner, ” I said. “I’m here to see L. Peter Sampson at the National Drug Bureau.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

He nodded, went to a nearby phone, and immediately started talking in a voice that was inaudible from twenty feet away. One of his partners, meanwhile, eyed me like I was something that had crawled out of the sewer.

As a general rule, making unannounced visits to federal agencies was not a very efficient use of a reporter’s time. Bureaucracies abhorred such displays of spontaneity from the Fourth Estate. And they discouraged them by assuring that such attempts would be met with minimum cooperation and maximum fuss.

“Can I see some identification?” the marshal asked me after he got off the phone, and I obliged him with a business card and my New Jersey State Police Press ID.

“Driver’s license, please,” he said.

“I came here on foot,” I said pleasantly. I hadn’t, of course. But I didn’t like the idea of giving Big Brother more information about myself than absolutely necessary. Plus, the guy was being a dick. The marshal frowned and returned to low-talking at the telephone. The partner was now staring at me even more contemptuously. I gave him an exaggerated smile-merely because I felt sticking out my tongue would be too juvenile.

Meanwhile, I considered how I might approach L. Pete differently this time. I had exactly zero leverage on the guy. One of the reasons the feds were so much harder to crack than the locals was that, in short, feds didn’t really need good publicity. The local police chief knows his boss, the mayor, is eventually going to have to win an election and that friendly relations with the newspaper will help him do that.

A place like the NDB doesn’t have nearly that level of local accountability. Its money comes from faraway Washington committee meetings and its employees enjoy the kind of job security only the world’s most powerful government can offer. Sure, it doesn’t mind good pub. But, more than anything, it looks to avoid bad pub.

And that, I realized, was my only recourse with L. Pete. If the carrot didn’t work, I’d have to make him think I had a big stick. Somewhere.

The marshal eventually hung up the phone and instructed me to go through the metal detector. Then the second marshal passed a wand over me. The third one patted me down.

Having been sufficiently probed, I was led across a polished floor to a small padded bench near an elevator, where I was instructed to wait. The elevator soon produced a cheerless man in a suit, who relieved the marshal and took over his job: making sure I didn’t cause trouble.

“Nice day today, huh?” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said, his expression unchanging.

“Any big plans for the weekend?” I asked.

“No, sir,” he said, and I decided to stop antagonizing the poor guy.

Fifteen minutes passed, during which time suit guy remained grim-faced and I grew bored. I’m sure, somewhere in the building, L. Pete was simply hoping I’d leave. But I wasn’t going to give him that pleasure. After a half hour passed, I took a quarter out of my pocket and began flipping it, gangster style. I thought I noticed a slight change in the suit’s face, like he was a little jealous I was getting to have all the fun.

Finally-prompted by nothing I could discern-the suit said, “Come with me.”

He slid a card into the control panel, punched the up button, then took me to the fifteenth floor. The top floor. I was escorted to an office next to a corner office, whose name plate announced it belonged to L. Peter Sampson.

“Wait here,” the suit told me. “Agent Sampson will see you shortly.”

Agent Sampson was apparently a very big fan of the New York Jets.

He had one of those Jets firemen helmets sitting on one of his bookcases, a miniature Jets helmet next to it, and a framed ticket hanging on the wall from Super Bowl III, one of the rare proud moments in the franchise’s otherwise abysmal history.

Behind his desk was one of those panoramic photos of Giants Stadium from a Jets-Bills game. On the desk, next to the usual wife-and-kid pictures, there was an autographed picture of Richard Todd and a football that had been signed by Joe Klecko, Marty Lyons, and Mark Gastineau.

A short, thin, energetic man with thinning hair and a dark suit walked in the room.

“Hi, Pete Sampson,” he said affably. “Nice to meet you in person.”

“Carter Ross, Eagle-Examiner, ” I said as we exchanged an extra-firm, manly-man handshake.

“Sorry about the wait,” he said, smiling thinly. “I was in a meeting.”

“The wait wasn’t that bad. It gave me time to put my anus back in place after the body cavity search I got at the front door.”

“Yeah, that,” L. Pete said. “But, you know-Oklahoma City, 9/11-the rules have all changed. When the threat level is high, this place gets locked down tighter than a duck’s ass.”

Lovely image. Don’t get me wrong, a little small talk was a good way to start an interview. But since I didn’t want that talk to center around a duck’s anatomy, I switched topics.

“So, I’m guessing from your decorations you’re a fan of the Sack Exchange,” I said.

“Best defensive line in football. Too bad Miami was able to slow ’em down in the mud at the Orange Bowl that one year.”

“A. J. Duhe,” I said.

He shuddered. Having lived in New Jersey most of my life, I was accustomed to the inner torment suffered by Jets fans.

“Well,” he said. “I’m guessing you didn’t come here to interview me about how the AFC East is stacking up.”

“Not really,” I said. “But to keep this in football terms, my friends at the Newark police tell me they’ve handed off the Ludlow Street quadruple homicide to you guys.”

L. Pete paused for a beat, just long enough for me to hear the gears switching in his mind.

“Well, as you know, the National Drug Bureau is a federal agency ultimately responsible for fighting this nation’s war against illegal narcotics smuggling both at home and abroad,” he said, like he was quoting from a brochure. “And from time to time, we here at the Newark Field Office use that authority to claim jurisdiction over crimes we believe are extensions of that war.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “So. . you’ve got this Ludlow Street thing all figured out, then?”

“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” he said, smiling at me.

I matched his insincere smile with one of my own. Time to use the stick.

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, Pete,” I said. “But this son of a bitch blew up my house this morning and killed my cat. So I didn’t really come here to get a polite no comment.