Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

Because I knew how this stuff worked. The foot soldiers would be given lighter sentences in exchange for their testimony against the Big Boss. Yes, Your Honor, I murdered four people and torched all those buildings, but La Cabra made me do it. Van Man would do twenty or thirty years but would end up enjoying his old age as a free man. Meanwhile, his victims got no reprieve on being dead.

But there was one way to possibly change that equation: if I could get to the foot soldier first and put his name in the paper, there would be pressure for the NDB to do something about it. The families of the victims would be clamoring for justice, and this crime had become high profile enough that they might be able to get someone with pull-a congressman, maybe-to listen.

So I just had to find a way to infiltrate a Colombian drug lord’s local organization, implicate it in a major international drug-smuggling ring, and find compelling evidence it had committed a series of heinous crimes. I could have that wrapped up by, what, dinnertime?

Or not.

Knowing L. Pete wasn’t going to be any assistance mapping out La Cabra’s network, I had to leverage the information he had given me to try to get more from somewhere else. And, really, I could only think of one guy I knew who might even have more information. I picked up the phone and dialed Irving Wallace, hoping his part of the government-whatever part that was-had an agenda different enough from the NDB that he wouldn’t mind being helpful.

“Yes,” he said.

“Hi, Irving, Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner .”

Pause. “Are you in your office?”

“Yeah.”

Click.

Ten seconds later, my phone rang.

“Carter Ross.”

“Hi, it’s Irving.”

“You want to explain to me why that was necessary?” I asked.

“Because someone could have been impersonating you.”

“Besides Buster Hays, no one knows we’ve ever spoken,” I said. “And I’m sure Buster isn’t sharing.”

“Good thing, too,” he said. “I understand your sources get their houses blown up.”

Obviously, someone had been watching the news.

“Cheap shot,” I said. “Now that you’ve hurt my feelings, you have to help me. What can you tell me about Jose de Jesus Encarceron?”

“I don’t know. That he’s not very nice, I guess,” Wallace said. “I’m just a lab guy, remember? I know what his drugs look like after they’ve been passed through a spectrometer.”

“Aw, come on. I’m sure you hear little tidbits from. . whoever it is you work for.”

“Say the magic words.”

Magic words? What magic words? Oh.

“Off the record,” I said.

“Very good,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, I want to know what kind of muscle he has on the street here.”

“Where, in Newark?”

“Yeah.”

“He doesn’t,” Wallace said.

“What do you mean? Of course he does.”

“In the Northeast, guys like Encarceron just supply the product. They’ve never been able to get down to the street level. I’m not sure they even want to. They’ve always left it to the local thugs.”

“Someone told me-off the record, of course-that Encarceron’s people here are responsible for Ludlow Street,” I said.

“Really?” Wallace said, sounding surprised. “Is it someone who knows what they’re talking about?”

“They ought to.”

“Huh,” he said. “Sounds to me like someone is trying to snow you.”

I made Irving Wallace promise to call me if he heard anything-a lot of good that would probably do-and was just about to settle in for some serious head scratching when the three o’clock editor’s meeting let out and Hurricane Tina washed ashore on my desk.

“Goddammit, Carter. Where the hell have you been?” she said with quiet intensity.

“I had an errand to run,” I said. “We were out of nondairy creamer in the break room.”

“You prick,” she bristled. “If I have to surgically attach an electronic monitoring bracelet to your balls, I will.”

“Watch out,” I said. “That might lower my sperm count.”

“Yeah? You should see what dying does to your sperm count.”

“Ah,” I said. “So that’s why you haven’t gotten into necrophilia.”

She had clearly been outzinged. So rather than hit me with another comeback, she put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. A lock of hair fell across her face and I felt the urge to tuck it behind her ear for her. But Tina was determined to stay indignant, so she blew it out of the way and continued scowling at me.

“So do you want to fill me in on what’s been going on around here?” I asked.

“No. I want to wring your neck. But I’ll tell you anyway: Whitlow, Hays, and Hernandez have been putting together a story on today’s series of fires and explosions that we will link to the Eagle-Examiner’ s front-page report about the Ludlow Street murders.”

I nodded.

“Their story will not carry a byline,” she said. “That’s our new policy. Until this Unabomber-wannabe is caught, all Ludlow Street stories are unbylined.”

“What, no one else wanted the joy that is filing a total home destruction insurance claim?”

“In other news,” she continued. “We’ve received and declined about twenty interview requests for star investigative reporter Carter Ross.”

“Aw, damn,” I said. “How am I supposed to get my fifteen minutes of fame?”

“Well, given how you did with your first five on the News at Noon, I’d say we’re doing you a favor.”

Now I was outzinged. I thought about sharing what I had learned from my new buddies at the NDB but decided it could wait.

“I’m still pissed at you,” Tina said. “But if you behave yourself for the rest of the day, I’ll make you my world-famous veal scaloppine when we get home tonight.”

“Consider me on my best behavior,” I said, raising three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“Yeah, I almost believe that. I’m telling the security guards in the parking lot that if they see you unaccompanied, they should shoot to maim.”

“Good thing they’re old and blind,” I said.

“You better hope so,” she said.

She stormed off, taking her Category 5 wrath with her. I was just starting to scan my e-mail box-spaces in Human Resources’ Ramadan Awareness seminar were going fast-but before I could learn what I needed to be aware of (besides hungry Muslims) Tommy approached my desk.

“Is it safe?” he asked.

“You mean if you continue standing here will someone try to firebomb you and your Gucci shoes? I make no guarantees.”

“No, I was talking about Tina,” Tommy said. “I think I’d rather take my chances with the bomb.”

“She’ll get over it. How was Booker T?”

“I would say your friend in the van saved the City of Newark a lot of money in demolition.”

“You ask about Red and Queen Mary?”

“Yeah. No one had seen them this morning. But as of a half hour ago the fire department hadn’t recovered any bodies, so maybe there are none to recover.”

The cynical side of me wondered how hard they were actually looking. Anyone trapped in that building would be a person who long ago ceased to be of much consequence to society.

“What about Brenda Bass?” I asked.

“I made the usual round of calls to the hospitals and got the usual crap about confidentiality laws. But on a hunch I called the burn unit at University Hospital and one of the nurses slipped.”

“Slipped?”

“Yeah, she was like, ‘How did you know she was here?’ And I was like, ‘I didn’t, honey, you just told me.’ ”

“Wow. The intern with the veteran move. Nice job,” I said. “Anyway, how’s your story coming?”