Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

I was pretty sure I had the man soundly beaten and just moments away from full confession. But apparently Hector Alvarez was a little more stubborn than I gave him credit for. That, and the shock was wearing off.

“He’s lying to you,” Hector said. “I’m a certified drug and alcohol counselor. I got a degree. Who are you going to believe, me or some punk?”

I glanced at Rashan, then back at Hector.

“The punk,” I said.

“Then you go ahead and print your story and I’ll sue your ass off,” Alvarez said. “My cousin is a journalist. I know how this stuff works. You can’t just print something because someone says it’s true. This punk is lying.”

Rashan shouted a few excited obscenities and faked a charge at Alvarez, who cringed. I grabbed Rashan by his backpack, and he allowed himself to be restrained-basically because he wasn’t planning on jumping Alvarez anyway.

“Calm down, Rashan,” I said. “We’re just having a conversation here. Because now Hector is going to explain how he can afford this very nice new automobile on a drug counselor’s salary.”

Alvarez gazed longingly at the Audi for a second then turned back to me like I was talking about stealing his firstborn.

“That’s none of your business,” he said.

“You make thirty-eight grand a year, Hector,” I said. “I looked it up. I can also look up how much money you owe on your house. I’m guessing between your house payment and car payment, something won’t add up. Unless, of course, there’s some, you know, outside stream of income. But I’m sure you can explain that all to the IRS after I run my story.”

“Screw you,” Hector said.

I lost control of my inner wiseass and pulled out my notepad.

“Is that your official comment, Mr. Alvarez? ‘Screw you’?”

“Suck my dick,” he said.

“Interesting,” I said, pretending I was writing that down, too. “Not only is he the Crooked Drug Counselor of the Year, Mr. Alvarez is also a homosexual.”

Alvarez slammed the door to the Audi and stormed past us toward his house. “If you got anything more to say to me, you can talk to my lawyer,” he said.

“I’m not going away, Hector,” I called out as Alvarez fumbled with his keys. “But you can end this little problem in one sentence. Just give me a name and you get to keep your job.”

He stuck the key in the lock, turned it, then looked at me.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” he said, shortly before disappearing through his front door. “You think I’m worried about my job ?”

The door slammed. I stuffed my notebook in my pocket and turned to walk back to the car. Rashan didn’t follow.

“What!?” he said. “That’s it? You’re not going to go break the door down?”

“I’m a newspaper reporter, not a bounty hunter,” I said.

“But he’s lying!”

“I know. No law against lying to a newspaper reporter. It happens all the time.”

“So you just let him go?”

“I may call him later-but only when he’s cooled down,” I said. “I took a chance that ambushing him like this would catch him off guard and he’d just start blabbing. It didn’t work.”

“But you’re going to go write the story now, right?”

“Before I write it, I have to prove it,” I said. “Rashan, I know you’re telling the truth. And I could tell that guy was full of crap. But unfortunately, Hector is right: no one is going to believe a drug-dealing ex-con over someone who works for the Department of Corrections. I need to verify your story two or three different ways before my editors will even think about printing it.”

Rashan stuck out his lower lip in a convincing pout, making it clear his first brush with journalism had left him rather unsatisfied.

“This isn’t a Western, Rashan,” I continued. “The guys in the white hats don’t always win. At least not right away. Sometimes you got to keep at it for a long time before you get the payoff.”

With that particular bit of advice, I was talking about more than just journalism. But it was hard to tell if Rashan was listening anymore. I had disappointed him and now he was tuning me out.

“Get in the car,” I said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Nah,” he said. “I ain’t going back there.”

I didn’t know if he meant now or ever.

“Okay. Well, here’s my card,” I said, handing it to him. “Give me a call sometime, okay?”

“Uh-huh,” Rashan said, then, without looking at me, turned and walked off into the night, his soda can tabs jingling as he went. I watched him go until all I could see was the night reflector strip on his backpack bobbing up and down. Then I went back to the Malibu, feeling the weight of the day settle on me.

It was getting to be six, which felt a lot like quitting time. And on a normal Friday, after a rough week at the office, I might just head home, curl up with Deadline, and watch Braveheart for approximately the fiftieth time. Except now my copy of Braveheart was just one more piece of ruin in what used to be my house. And, sadly, so was Deadline.

Then there was the other standby Friday-night activity for the suddenly overstressed: going out to some local bar, getting mind-blowingly drunk, and hitting on anything under the age of forty that wasn’t utterly repulsed by me. Except there was the small problem of what I would do if I actually succeeded in luring some lovely young lady into my clutches. Hey, honey, what do you say we go back to my place. I’ve got this great little debris pile not far from here . .

No, I was pretty much cruising for another night on Tina’s couch-or maybe, if I could stop being such a loser, Tina’s bed.

I just had one last errand to accomplish before I started traveling that way. Call it a mission of guilt: I wanted to see if I could find anyone who had seen Red or Queen Mary since their building got blown up. It wasn’t going to do them a lot of good if they were, in fact, underneath the rubble of Building Five. But I felt like I at least owed it to them to check.

So I made the turn off South Orange Avenue, not far from the Wyoming Fried Chicken where my buddy North Face was likely on patrol, and soon found myself back in the odd nether-world that was the remains of the Booker T. Washington Public Housing Project.

It was its usual empty, forlorn self-though instead of six large, empty brick buildings, there were now five. The search-and-rescue mission had been called off. So it was just me and the ghosts again.

I started looking around for signs of life, peering in the corners and behind the shadows just like I had been doing a few days earlier. The wind was managing to find a way to blow up my pants, which felt even less pleasant than it sounds. I pulled my jacket closer to my body and kept hoping for that whiff of smoke or glimpse of light that would indicate I was not alone.

But I was. Obviously I was. And yet I kept standing there as, what, self-punishment? As if I could somehow atone for Red and Queen Mary dying a horrible death by standing out in the cold and looking for them? What the hell was I doing here?

I was losing it. I must be, right? Why else would I be shivering in the courtyard of an abandoned Newark housing project waiting for two dead people to show up? I felt this hysteria creeping all over me, like my rational mind was separating from me, slipping off into the ether where it would never again be found. I cupped my hands to my mouth and started yelling as loud as I could.

“Rrrreeeedddd,” I hollered. “Rrrreeeedddd!”

I kept bellowing, each time pausing to listen for a response but only hearing the sound of my own voice echoing off cold, hard brick walls.

The Director picked up the call on the second ring, looking at his cell phone like it offended him. It was unusual for one of his people to call at this hour-or any hour for that matter. They were instructed to contact Monty on routine matters. And the Director had set up his organization so most matters had become routine.