Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

“Then let’s start at the beginning,” I said. “You know where I’ve been coming from. I’ve put most of what I know in the newspaper. Why don’t you walk me through your investigation a little bit? What led you to the conclusion Jose de Jesus Encarceron is behind all this?”

The Director started talking but I was beyond listening. My brain was trained to seek narratives. And now that the Director’s once-scattered story was falling into place, it was hard to slow the thoughts streaking through my head. All those questions suddenly had found answers.

Where did 100 percent pure heroin come from? Newark airport. Who was responsible for making seizures at Newark airport? The National Drug Bureau. Who would have unfettered access to the impounded seizures without worrying about chain of custody or being accountable to a higher authority? Field Director Randall N. Meyers.

Who could have more easily skated under, over, and around the detection of all levels of law enforcement? It wouldn’t be some lab guy. It would be someone deeply embedded in the agency that was. . what was the speech Monty/Pete had given me? I couldn’t quite summon the language. But it had something to do with being the guys in charge.

Just look at the way the Director had hopped on the Ludlow Street investigations, claiming jurisdiction before the bodies were even stiff. The overburdened Newark cops were all too happy to give it to him, of course. From that point, the Director could spin the investigation any way he wanted, falsifying evidence, pinning it on someone else, or just forgetting to assign any detectives to the case. Talk about guaranteeing the perfect crime: the guy responsible for bringing the perp to justice was the perp himself.

And sure, someone in Washington might notice the Newark office hadn’t solved that pesky quadruple homicide. But what would they care? The Director could please his bosses with other successes. He certainly didn’t lack for motivation: every time his agents made another successful seizure at Newark airport, it was just more supply for his operation.

The only people who might hold him accountable for the Ludlow Street investigation were the families of the victims-who didn’t have much pull or, in some cases, didn’t even exist-and the press, i.e., me. And when I came inquiring, all the Director had to do was make up a plausible story. In this case, he had made up some ridiculous, impossible-to-confirm-or-deny fairy tale about Jose de Jesus Encarceron-the equivalent of pinning it on the bogeyman. And he had Monty Pete to parrot it for him to the media.

Was L. Pete in on it? Of course he was. He was Wanda’s “boss,” the little guy with the suit and the badge that Tynesha sucked off. Or at least that was a reasonable guess. After all, he’d offered to take her to a game at Giants Stadium. He had offered to take me to see the Jets-who, of course, play in Giants Stadium. Nice to know L. Pete held me in the same high esteem as his favorite hooker.

Suddenly I became aware the Director was standing, rearing to his full six feet five. He was every ounce of three hundred pounds, but his weight was much more solid than I had first surmised. Lift a Honda? Hell, he could lift a Cadillac.

He was done talking. And he was looking at me like I was supposed to say something.

“That’s all very interesting,” I said, feeling like the kid in math class who had been caught daydreaming. “What was it that gave it away?”

“That gave what away?”

“You know, what you just said,” I said.

“I’m sorry?”

“The thing.”

“What thing?”

The Director was staring me down like he was on one of his hunting vacations and I was an antelope at the end of his rifle sight. And-I don’t know why this took me so long to figure out-it suddenly dawned on me that’s exactly what I was. He hadn’t brought me here for a story. And he wasn’t tickling that gun on his shoulder because he liked how it felt.

He had lured me into his office to kill me. Right here. Right now.

“Is something the matter?” the Director asked.

My fight-or-flight response was kicking in, and I could feel those ancient juices that had been saving mankind’s ass for thousands of years surging through me. I’m not sure what prehistoric generations of the Ross family did a hundred millennia ago when faced with a predator on the plains of Africa. But I knew what I was going to do. There was no fighting this guy, who was big, mean, and, oh yeah, armed.

So I flung myself away from the chair and ran.

In three long strides, I covered that great tract of carpet and made it to his door. I didn’t know if he was pulling his weapon, if I was about to feel a bullet in the back of my head, or if my sudden move had caught him by surprise. But I wasn’t turning around to check.

I slammed the door behind me, like that would do some good. I knew L. Pete’s office was to the left so I cut hard to the right, down the hallway in the opposite direction. I heard the Director’s voice from behind the closed door shouting for Monty.

The fifteenth floor of the National Drug Bureau’s Newark Field Office was one big rectangle, designed completely without imagination. On the exterior side of the hallway, there were offices. On the interior side, there was a mix of offices and what appeared to be secretaries’ stations filled with cubicles.

Maybe there were hiding places, but damn if I could slow down to find a decent one. I raced past the elevators, knowing they weren’t going to do me any good: I didn’t have time to wait for a car to arrive and, in any event, I didn’t have the swipe card to operate one.

The stairs were my only shot. But where were the stairs? I looked around for an exit sign.

“Go that way,” I heard the Director shout at Monty. “Guard the stairs.”

So much for that.

I disappeared around the next corner just as the Director had rounded the first one. That gave me about a hundred-foot lead on him but I didn’t dare round another corner. Eventually, I was going to run into Monty coming from the other direction. No time. I had no time.

I started grabbing at door handles, hoping to find an open office, but none of the doors budged. Goddamn paranoid flatfoot pensioners, locking their offices when they went home at night. Didn’t they ever think about the possibility that a desperate newspaper reporter might need to slip under their desks to escape their homicidal boss?

I was on my seventh door when, finally, I found the one that had been left slightly ajar. I slipped in and closed it as softly as I could. I had bought myself time, but how much?

The office was sparse: a desk with a chair, a filing cabinet, a potted plant, and absolutely no place to hide. I reached into my pocket for my cell phone but, of course, it wasn’t there. So I tiptoed to the desk phone and picked up. Hello, 911? I’m trapped in a federal office building where I’m about to be killed by a high-ranking government official. Hello?

But, no, I couldn’t get that far. I couldn’t even get a normal dial tone-just this monotone buzz. I looked at the phone in frustration. The screen said: “Enter passkey.”

Of course. Uncle Sam wasn’t going to stand for anyone making free phone calls. The phone wasn’t going to save me.

I looked at the window, but I was fifteen stories up. There was no surviving that kind of fall. So I studied the phone again. Maybe it might save me. If I got lucky. I punched in 813. My birthday. What the hell. But the line stayed monotone.

“You have to admit, Carter, my business plan is brilliant, isn’t it?” the Director called out. “I mean, have you ever heard of a better brand name for heroin than ‘The Stuff.’ It’s elegant, don’t you think? It’s going to become the first national heroin brand, you know. It will be like Kleenex, perfectly synonymous with the product it represents.”