Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

“Hey, Tina,” I said. “Gotten yourself knocked up yet?”

“Jesus Christ!” she said, without looking up. “Did you know that excessive time riding a bike can cause sterility in males? That’s it. No more bike messengers for me.”

She threw the book down.

“Might want to take it easy on the X-ray technicians, too,” I suggested.

“Hey, if he’s six foot one, a hundred eighty-five pounds, with dark hair and blue eyes, I might let him throw one in me anyway,” she said with a flirty grin.

I’m six one. One hundred eighty-five. Dark hair. Blue eyes. I’m not a bad-looking guy. Occasionally, I’m even somewhat dashing. But I’m not under any illusion Tina is attracted to me. Just my sperm. So far, my little swimmers had held off on her overtures. Though I’m a little worried about what might happen if she got them drunk someday. They’re weak-willed. And Tina has that hot-older-woman thing going on, with yoga-toned arms, never-ending legs, and expressive brown eyes that seemed to be winking at me even when they were still.

“Too bad I’m a born-again virgin,” I said. “I’m going to Virgins Anonymous and everything. Just celebrated my three-month anniversary of celibacy.”

That last part was actually true, sadly, though not by choice. I was just in a little slump. That didn’t mean I was going to hop into bed simply because Tina patted the pillow. I wasn’t ready to become one of those Modern Fathers who parade around with Precious Bundle strapped to his chest in a Baby Bjorn all day. Nor was I particularly interested in spawning a child who would someday refer to me as “my biological father.”

“Fine, have it your way,” she said. “You’ll cave someday.”

Alas, she was probably right. Tina was wearing a button-down white blouse that was just slightly see-through and an above-the-knee charcoal-gray skirt with black tights. And in one motion-she recrossed her fabulous legs and tucked a lock of curly brown hair behind her ear-I could already feel my resolve crumbling.

“So you look like you’ve spent all day in a meat locker,” she said. “You get anything out there?”

“Other than frostbite? No.”

“Buster Hays has a cop source who says they’re looking into a theory that this has something to do with a robbery at the Ludlow Tavern,” Tina said.

“What’s the theory?”

“That one of the victims helped stick up the place a couple months ago then had the balls to walk back into the place and order a drink. Supposedly, the owner had him whacked.”

“Which one?”

“The one with the Muslim name. . uh, Shareef Thomas.”

“So who are the other three people?”

“Accomplices?” she said, sounding uncertain. “I’m not sure they know.”

“The police got any good evidence to back up this theory?”

“Source won’t say. But do the Newark police ever have good evidence?”

She had a point. I once covered a murder trial where-no lie-the whole case had been pinned on the eyewitness account of one drug addict who admitted to being high at the time of the shooting. “I was high,” she said on the stand. “But I have a really good memory.” The jury disagreed, deliberating for about thirty-five minutes before returning a not-guilty plea.

“What does Hays think?” I asked.

“That they may be on to something. His cop made it sound like this was a really hot lead.”

“Huh,” I said. “Brodie still got wood for this thing?”

“His flag has been at full staff all day long,” Tina said.

Before that imagery developed any further, I ended our conversation and went back to my desk.

I started punching the victims’ names into my computer, seeing what it might tell me. Between Lexis-Nexis, New Jersey voting records, the Department of Corrections Web site, and the other public records to which a reporter had instant access, you could usually piece together a solid bank of information on a person within a few minutes.

Unless their names are Wanda Bass, Tyrone Scott, and Shareef Thomas, all of which were too common for me to get anything definitive. The only name that returned much of anything was Devin Whitehead. I got his Department of Corrections profile, which included six convictions for possession and possession with intent to distribute. I also got his last known address, which was in the Clinton Hill section of Newark.

And that was a good break, because I happened to have a source there.

My guy in Clinton Hill is Reginald Jamison, but I think the only person who calls him “Reginald” is his wife. Everyone else calls him “the T-shirt Man,” or just “Tee.”

Tee has a small storefront on Clinton Avenue. He and I became acquainted a few years back when I did a story about RIP T-shirts, which happen to be Tee’s specialty. RIPs had become a disturbingly prevalent urban fashion trend: anytime some too-young kid got killed, his boys rushed to have a T-shirt made in his memory. Every RIP T-shirt was different, but they followed a basic formula, featuring the deceased’s photo, the dates of birth and death, and the words REST IN PEACE. The people who wore them essentially became walking tombstones.

More than half of Tee’s business came from RIP T-shirts. And while he hated the idea that he was profiting from these kids’ deaths, he was also a businessman who figured if he wasn’t making these things, someone else would. He assuaged his guilt by putting extra care into the design, so each T-shirt would be special to the grieving family.

The story I wrote about Tee had given him some good publicity and I became a semiregular visitor to his store. We couldn’t have been raised in more different circumstances-while I was taking SAT prep classes, Tee was dropping out of high school to support three younger siblings. But we were close to the same age, shared a fundamental curiosity for the world, and enjoyed each other’s company because of it. Tee could explain the hood to me, while I translated white people for him. Plus, Tee had a natural eye for news. He could have made a great reporter.

Instead, he was just one of my best sources. And as soon as I got buzzed into his store that afternoon, he greeted me with, “I wondered when I was going to hear from you.”

“And why is that?”

“You’re here about Dee-Dub, right?”

Dee-Dub. D.W. Devin Whitehead. Got it.

“Good guess.”

“Everyone’s talking about it. Figured you’d get here sooner or later. I’m making his T-shirt right now.”

I walked over to Tee’s computer, where he designed all his shirts. Sure enough, Devin Whitehead’s face was on the screen, waiting to be immortalized on a Hanes Beefy-T. I did quick math on his dates. He was exactly two weeks shy of his twenty-first birthday.

“Can you believe that? Twenty years old.” Tee shook his head and I could tell he had been near tears. Tee looks like a badass-five ten, at least two hundred fifty, most of it muscle, braids, and tattoos-but the dude could cry from watching a car commercial.

“You know him well?” I asked.

“A little bit. He was one of those knuckleheads who hang outside my store. But he was a good kid.”

The definition of a “good kid” in Newark was perhaps a little different than it was in the suburbs. Out there, being a good kid meant you did your homework, made it home by curfew, and participated in resume-building extracurricular activities that would compare favorably on a college application. In Newark, it meant you hadn’t shot anyone.

“Gang?”

“Allegedly.”

“Allegedly” was one of Tee’s favorite words. He used it with the appropriate sense of sarcasm.

“Which one?”

“You ain’t gonna write nothing bad about him, are you?” Tee asked warily. “I know his mama. If his mama found out you got it from me, she’d smack me upside the head. And his mama is one big bitch.”