Eyes of the Innocent Read online

  “You’re not kidding me.”

  He shook his head.

  “Sal, I sent Sweet Thang off on what is probably a dead-end reporting errand to Baxter Terrace,” I said. “I called her, at least twice. I don’t know why she’s not answering her phone. Maybe she stopped at the mall and decided to buy the entire Nordstrom shoe department on her way back in. But she’ll be back any second. And when she gets here, I’ll give her the bracelet.”

  Szanto shook his head again.

  “Not good enough,” he replied. “Look, the sooner you get that bracelet to that girl, the sooner my half-hourly e-mails, phone calls, and just-checking-in visits from Brodie stop. And I just can’t take him. I can’t take any more of that today.”

  He clasped his clubbed fingers together in a pleading gesture. His eyes were big and wet, and in a moment of weakness—brought on by an awareness of the abuse I piled on him and a small amount of guilt that at least one of his stomach ulcers probably had my name on it—I agreed.

  “Okay.” I sighed. “Fine. I’ll call you the moment I hand her the bracelet.”

  “Thanks,” Szanto said, raising himself with a grunt from the chair next to me. He clapped me affectionately on the shoulder—another quarterly event—then walked away.

  * * *

  Before committing myself to another Baxter Terrace jaunt, I dialed Sweet Thang’s numbers one last time. Both went to voice mail.

  I looked at the time on my phone, which read 2:13. She and I departed Jersey City around nine-thirty. If she drove straight to Baxter Terrace, she would have gotten there no later than ten. That meant Sweet Thang and her buoyant personality had spent more than four hours in one of the nation’s most depressed public housing projects. It sounded like a reality show gone horribly wrong—instead of Dancing with the Stars, it was Prancing in the Projects.

  There was no telling what had kept her there all that time. It was daylight, so I wasn’t concerned about her well-being. Well, okay, I worried about it a little. Mostly, I was just curious: What had she been doing all this time?

  I filled my drive thinking about the possibilities. As I walked through the courtyard toward Bertie Harris’s apartment, I heard a series of birdcalls—a macaw, a chickadee, and an osprey. Okay, I’m making that up. But it sounded like different birds than last time.

  Going through the open portal of Bertie’s building, I hiked the three flights up to the landing where I had been so thoroughly stonewalled the night before. I raised my fist to rap on the door but then paused mid-strike, having heard a noise from inside. What was that? Was it … laughter? I paused, just to make sure. Yes, laughter, the deep, chuckling kind you hear from two longtime friends who know just how to get each other going.

  I also smelled something powerful enough to overcome the natural stench of the projects. Was it … baking bread?

  I thought about eavesdropping a little more, but I just had to know. I knocked.

  “I’ll get it,” I heard Sweet Thang call.

  She opened the door, looking delighted—if a little surprised—to see me.

  “Oh, my goodness, hi!” she bubbled. “It’s so great of you to come over. We’re having the best time! Come on in. I’m just making some banana bread.”

  I stepped over the threshold feeling a little uncertain, given the rebuke I had experienced the last time I visited. But no, everything had changed. There would be no screaming, no hateful glares, no slamming of furniture. Sweet Thang was here. Baking was happening. A transformation had taken place.

  Especially when it came to the apartment’s occupant, who was sitting at a card table in the far corner, a coffee mug in front of her, smiling pleasantly. She was older, but it was always hard to tell with black women. I was thirty-two and already had wrinkles. She’d probably be in her casket thirty years from now and still not have any.

  As a skilled observer of the obvious, I concluded this had to be Bertie Harris. She and Akilah had the same cheekbones, the same lean build, the same no-nonsense ponytail, the same dark coloring.

  “Mrs. Harris, I’m Car—” I started.

  “I know who you are,” Bertie replied agreeably.

  “I’m sorry abou—”

  “I know you’re sorry about last night. And I’m sorry, too,” she said. “Lauren explained to me how it is for a reporter on deadline. You was just trying to do your job.”

  This had to be the easiest reconciliation in the history of human relations. I ought to have Sweet Thang do my advance work more often.

  “Well, please accept my apology all the same,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Bertie said to Sweet Thang, who was in the kitchen, “he is cute.”

  “Told you,” Sweet Thang chirped back.

  As I blushed, Bertie took a sip from her coffee, utterly comfortable with my presence. I tried to relax, still feeling like I didn’t quite belong, not wanting to screw up whatever it was Sweet Thang had done to build a trust with this woman.

  I wasn’t going to sit down until offered a place (we cute boys have manners), nor was I going to take off my jacket (we cute boys aren’t presumptuous), so I sneaked a furtive glance around the apartment (we reporters are nosy). The furnishings—a small couch, a recliner, a coffee table, and that folding table—were older and a bit worn. But I had certainly seen worse.

  The television that had been blaring Entertainment Tonight was still playing but with the sound down. It had to be at least a forty-two-inch screen, which surprised me a little. You don’t see many of those in the projects—sad to say, but nice belongings usually get stolen within a week of their arrival. That the TV was still here either meant it had just arrived; the local addicts were too lazy to steal from the third floor; or, more likely, Bertie Harris was so well regarded around here no one messed with her.

  In the pictures that were scattered about the place, I saw Akilah with what appeared to be some older brothers and sisters—again, so much for the lonely-orphan story.

  “I’m going to leave it in there another few minutes,” Sweet Thang announced as she came back into the room and took a seat at the folding table. “The middle is still just a little gooey.”

  “Mr. Ross, you better marry this girl if you have any sense,” Bertie said. “It’s not every day you find a woman who can bake.”

  “Wait until you taste it first,” Sweet Thang said.

  “I don’t need to. I can smell it. It’s wonderful.”

  “I was just lucky you had some soft bananas,” Sweet Thang replied. “My recipe doesn’t work unless they’re good and ripe.”

  They kept bantering about the subtleties of perfect banana bread and I could only watch in amazement. Here was this woman in the midst of a family tragedy; a woman who, just last night, would have thrown me out her window if she had the strength. Yet she and Sweet Thang were instant buddies.

  That was Sweet Thang’s gift, one I didn’t necessarily have but could at least recognize and appreciate in a fellow reporter. She made people want to talk to her.

  One of the few traits that I’ve found universal among Homo sapiens is the desire to be understood by other Homo sapiens. It’s a need that translates across every racial, gender, and socioeconomic barrier. Whether you’re talking about the CEO or the janitor, the congressman or the undocumented immigrant, people just want to be listened to. It’s why we talk so damn much.

  Most of the time, we harbor the suspicion no one is really paying attention. Or, if they are, they still don’t get it. But every once in a while, we bump into someone like Sweet Thang, the rare person who actually makes us feel heard.

  * * *

  I must have been smiling as they jabbered, because Sweet Thang interrupted my inner monologue with a question:

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” I replied. “I’m just glad you girls are having fun.”

  “Oh, we’ve been having a blast,” Sweet Thang assured me. “It was just so lucky I came over when I did because it was Bertie’s turn to hos
t mah-jongg, but she was short a player and I was able to step in.”

  “I thought about canceling the game, what with everything going on,” Bertie said. “But then I thought it’d be nice to have something to take my mind off things.”

  My only comment was to Sweet Thang: “You know how to play mah-jongg?”

  “My Gram Gram taught me.”

  “Taught her good, too,” Bertie cackled. “She whupped a bunch of old ladies.”

  “I just got lucky,” Sweet Thang corrected her.

  “Five times in a row!” Bertie cackled and lightly slapped the table.

  She sipped her coffee. Sweet Thang crossed her legs. I was still standing, still feeling like I didn’t belong.

  “So,” I said, “how long have you lived here?”

  “Too long,” Bertie replied. “You wouldn’t believe it, but this was still a pretty nice place when I moved in here. Now?” She shook her head. “It’s shameful what this place has become. Every time I hear they want to knock it down, I cheer. They just can’t seem to get around to it.”

  She was finished on that subject and we lapsed into silence. I heard the oven tick and creak as the gas turned on. The volumeless television was on a local all-news station that, at this time of day, repeated the same loop every half hour. I suddenly felt the urge to leave. I didn’t know what Sweet Thang had managed to create with Bertie Harris, whether it would help our story or not, but I felt like an intruder. It was time to do what I came to do and make my exit.

  “Oh, by the way, Lauren, here’s your bracelet,” I said, pulling it from my pocket and handing it to her.

  “Oh, my goodness, thank you!” Sweet Thang said, fingering the oh-so-cute sombrero from the Puerto Vallarta trip. “I was so worried, I even called my dad. I’m going to text him right now and tell him I got it back.”

  And then Daddy would tell Brodie, who would stop his Jack Russell terrier impersonation on Szanto, who would undoubtedly be grateful.

  “Where did you find it?” she asked, fingers flying.

  “Atalittlepawnshop,” I replied quickly, hoping Bertie wouldn’t pick up on it.

  But she did.

  “You pawned your bracelet?” Bertie asked.

  Sweet Thang tossed me a pleading glance, but I lobbed it right back. I didn’t know what she had and hadn’t told Bertie Harris about her thieving daughter, and it wasn’t my place to do so. This was Sweet Thang’s deal.

  “Akilah stole it from me,” she said, finally.

  Bertie sighed and set down her coffee cup so she could rub her temples. She closed her eyes.

  “You let her stay with you and she stole your bracelet,” she said, shaking her head, forcing out a sigh. “You were a good Christian and she was a thief in the night. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. She stole your bracelet.”

  “She didn’t mean to…” Sweet Thang started. “I’m sure she felt like she didn’t have a choice. She needed the money.”

  “No,” Bertie said immediately, forcefully. “Don’t make no excuses for that girl. I been making excuses for her all her life and look where it got us. Akilah has always been a … a difficult girl. Lord knows I’ve tried with her.”

  Bertie let loose another sigh, this time with a bit of a groan mixed in.

  “I took her to church, I made her do her homework, I taught her to have respect. Respect! It was just like I did with my other children, and they all ended up successful. They all got out.

  “Her older sister went to college,” Bertie continued, shaking her head and counting her children on her fingers as she went. “One of her older brothers went to the army. The other got himself a good job, a union job. But Akilah, she…”

  “You did the best you could,” Sweet Thang said, patting her on the hand and looking at her with those tell-me-more eyes. And the thing was, she really wanted to know. Other reporters got away with faking that sometimes. But that was the essence of Sweet Thang’s gift as a reporter. She didn’t have to fake it. Deep down, she really did care.

  “Akilah had a different father from the other children,” Bertie said. “We split when she was young, but she still had too much of her father in her. She was always a wild child, always doing her own thing. You couldn’t talk no sense into her. I gave her all the mothering I could and it still wasn’t enough.”

  “She told us she was an orphan, that her mother died when she was young,” I said.

  “I bet there were times she wished I did,” Bertie said. “But I’m still here.”

  Bertie started sniffling. Sweet Thang retrieved a box of Kleenex. It was like interviewing Akilah all over again—it had that same kind of confessional feel, and there were once again sopping tissues involved. I could only hope this time we weren’t being served a steaming load of something that belonged in a cow pasture.

  “She got pregnant for the first time when she was sixteen. I mean, I was raising a daughter in the projects, what did I expect?” Bertie said. “I told my pastor I didn’t want to have nothing to do with that child or its mother, but he told me I had to forgive her and so I did. And then that baby died. And it just about broke my heart.”

  So, at least that much of what Akilah had told us was true, after all. Bertie blew her nose.

  “Then she started fooling around with that damn married man,” she said, putting her hand across her heart like it was about to give. “We got a saying, Mr. Ross: ‘Ain’t nothing dumber than love.’ And let me tell you, there wasn’t nothing dumber than Akilah and that married man together.”

  She was done blowing her nose for a moment. She was getting angry now.

  “I just couldn’t take it after that. He got her pregnant”—she said the word with special disdain—“then he got her pregnant again. He had a wife and children, a whole other family, and he kept Akilah on the side, like a whore of Babylon. And she kept having his kids. I just couldn’t understand how that man’s wife could put up with that monkey business.

  “But he’s a politician,” she finished, shaking her head as if that explained everything.

  “Really?” I asked, suddenly more than a little intrigued. “What’s his name?”

  “Oh, he’s … oh, now, what’s that fool’s name? It’s…” She tapped her head, like it would make it come to her.

  “Well, I’ll be!” she said, pointing to the television. “That’s the man right there.”

  I looked at the screen, whose forty-two inches were filled by a Missing Persons poster depicting Wendell A. Byers Jr.

  Primo was no stranger to bribery, having used it expertly through the years to nourish his home-rehabbing business. When you were talking about home inspectors or appraisers, it was relatively simple. Offer a man a week’s salary for something that took him only a few seconds and cost him nothing—something like signing his name to a piece of paper or changing a few figures here or there—and chances are he was going to do it.

  For those few who had crises of conscience, Primo made it clear there were painful consequences for not accepting a small gratuity in exchange for a little cooperation. Coercion and persuasion. Stick and carrot. It was a powerful combination, one that allowed a man to rationalize his moral weakness. Primo had yet to find a working man who failed to take him up on his offer.

  With politicians, however, it was a different deal. It was a game of finesse, not brute force. These were powerful people, after all. They were not easily threatened.

  There was one thing that made it easier for Primo, however. Under New Jersey law, what he and most people would consider a bribe was actually legal. It was called a campaign contribution.

  Sure, there were caps on how much one could donate. But those were circumvented easily enough—with all the donors and all the candidates, it was nearly impossible for any law enforcement agency to check where a donation was really coming from. The state’s campaign finance laws, intended to be a moat guarding the castle of electoral credibility, were little more than a puddle.

  The real difficulty, Primo quickly reali
zed, came in discovering which politicians could be bought for a sizable campaign contribution, and which ones would thank you for your generosity and then lose your phone number as soon as you asked for a favor.

  There was some expensive trial and error. And it involved some ass-kissing and attending events Primo didn’t particularly care to attend, simply to gain access to the key people. But ultimately Primo had discovered the effort was worthwhile. Because once you got the right person on your side, you could make government do virtually anything for you.

  It was all about influence—or, rather, the perception of influence. From a statutory standpoint, an elected leader actually had very little authority over government. Only a few positions within a municipal or state government were political appointments, people who could be hired and fired at the whim of an elected leader. The majority were civil service positions. Firing them was an arduous process.

  That might seem to make them difficult to influence. But the thing Primo discovered was that most civil servants didn’t truly understand how government worked. And they were paranoid about losing their jobs. So when an important person—or, again, someone they perceived as being important—told them to do something, they usually did it without question, no matter what the statutes might have to say on the subject.

  Studies have shown it repeatedly: Human beings are programmed to accept leadership, totalitarian or otherwise. Even in America—land of the free, home of the brave, the country that created the notion of rugged individualism—most people will follow orders they believe are coming from above.

  So for Primo, the whole game was about finding someone willing to use his influence to make government work the way Primo wanted it to. He took his time and wasted some donations to find that person.

  But, finally, Primo came across a city councilman who seemed willing to do just about anything for cash.

  CHAPTER 5

  So Akilah Harris was Windy Byers’s slam muffin. And Windy was Akilah’s baby daddy. And now Windy was missing, Akilah was on the run, and the kids were dead, none of which could possibly be coincidence.