Eyes of the Innocent Read online

  “Here?” the guy said.

  “Yeah, I just remembered I’m afraid of flying,” I said, quickly pulling a twenty-dollar bill out of my wallet.

  “Hey, whatever works for you, pal,” the guy said, taking the bill as he pulled the bus to a stop and opened the door.

  I disembarked next to a cluster of print reporters, one of whom happened to be Tommy. He stared at me blankly for a second, like I was a strange new life-form crawling out of the sea, then broke himself off from the pack.

  “Are you coming from where I think you’re coming from?” he asked. He had to shout a little bit to be heard over the thumping of nearby helicopter rotors.

  “Yeah,” I said, with a perhaps-too-cocky smile.

  “How did you get in there?”

  “I happen to be a big fan of Enterprise rental car. They pick you up, you know. What’s going on out here in the media mosh pit?”

  “Nothing. It’s just a lot of pretty boys worrying about their appearance too much. It’s like I never left the club from last night.”

  “What have you been told so far?”

  “Again, nothing. They haven’t even officially confirmed that it’s Windy Byers in there. You ask them why the road is closed and all the spokesman says is it’s a police investigation. For all we know at this point, this whole thing could be for some wino who died of exposure.”

  “Oh, it’s Windy all right.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I talked to the guy who found him,” I told Tommy, then filled him in on all I learned on the inside.

  When I was done, Tommy didn’t comment on my genius as a reporter, thank me for providing such great details for the next day’s story, or compliment me on my brilliant—albeit accidental—ingenuity.

  Instead, he said, “Donato Semedo of thirteen Hanover Street, huh?”

  * * *

  Tommy took a few steps farther away from the other reporters. I got the hint and followed him over to the edge of the road, which bordered on a small, forlorn patch of marshland. A faint breeze stirred the dried stalks of pampas grass.

  “There’s something weird going on,” he said.

  “Speak, young Tommy.”

  “Remember how I told you I was going over those ELEC documents?”

  “Yeah, the Election Law stuff. I thought you were just punishing yourself.”

  “I was. But then, I don’t know. Windy’s donor list was strange. I kept coming up with all these Portuguese names. I can’t be sure, I think one of them might have been Donato Semedo. It sure sounds Portuguese.”

  “Portuguese? I thought maybe it was Italian or Spanish or something.”

  “No, it’s definitely Portuguese,” Tommy said. “It seemed like all of his donors had these fresh-off-the-boat immigrant names. And they all had addresses in the Ironbound. And I just couldn’t figure it out. Why would the Central Ward councilman get all this money from people outside his district?”

  “Beats me. Why?”

  “I still don’t know,” Tommy said. “It was something I was going to look into a little more the next time I got the chance. Then this came up. But now you’re telling me Windy has been kidnapped and killed by someone named Donato Semedo and, well, fill in the blanks.”

  “I suppose we could go pay a visit to Donato Semedo and find out.”

  Tommy pointed to the line of news trucks.

  “Well, you can,” he said. “I have to stay here and babysit.”

  “Oh, right,” I said, and was about to bid him adieu and head in my own direction, except I realized I had no means by which to do so. Unless I felt like walking back to the office.

  “Of course, I don’t have my car with me,” I said. “I’m going to need to hitch a ride somehow. Anyone else from our place here with you?”

  “Just Tina,” he said.

  “Tina?” I said, and the mere utterance of her name brought a surge of guilt, even though I had no cause. “What’s she doing here?”

  “She was on her way to the office when she got the call about Windy and she knew she could get here before anyone else. Not that it mattered—the police had already plugged up the road.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Tommy signaled his ignorance by shrugging. So I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed her.

  “Tina Thompson,” she semishouted over the sound of the helicopters.

  “Hey, it’s your favorite reporter, where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m about a hundred feet away from where you and your boyfriend are having your little chin wag,” she said. “I was going to come over, but I didn’t want to intrude. You two make a cute couple, by the way.”

  I looked to my left, then to my right, then back to my left. With all the people and confusion, I didn’t see her. Then finally I spotted her walking toward me, waving.

  She looked terrific, as usual. She was not particularly dressed up—just black slacks and a plain black leather jacket—but Tina was one of those women who didn’t have to try too hard. Her hair was up in a ponytail. Her cheeks had a rosy glow from the cold, like she was just coming in from a jog. As she got closer, she even appeared happy to see me.

  “Sorry I didn’t wait for you last night,” she said. “To be honest, I was still at the office when you texted me and I was looking for an excuse to cancel anyway. It was a long day and I was too tired for a night out.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And here I thought you were pissed at me.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “The part where you texted me that I sucked.”

  “I was just kidding,” she said, then added as an aside to Tommy, “He’s such a girl sometimes.”

  “Not in bed, I hope,” Tommy said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she replied.

  “Still?” Tommy inquired.

  “He keeps wasting opportunities.”

  “A tragedy.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said.

  Tina crossed her arms and shook her head, her eyes rolling. Tommy consoled her with a pat on the shoulder.

  “Are you two finished?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Tina said. “So what have you been up to this morning anyway?”

  I gave her the same spiel I had given Tommy but this time finished with how I needed to mooch a ride off her.

  “So, wait, where is your car again?” she asked when I was done.

  “It’s at the office … I had Enterprise pick me up there,” I lied quickly, because I didn’t particularly feel like explaining why Sweet Thang had taken me home the night before. Tina has a dirty mind. She might jump to conclusions.

  “Anyhow, let’s get going,” I continued before she sniffed out my untruth. “Come on. Time’s a-wasting. Chop-chop. Head ’em up and move ’em out.”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy,” Tina said, then turned to Tommy. “I assume you’ve got this covered?”

  “It’s pretty easy when nothing’s happening and nothing will,” he assured her.

  And we were off. Tina drives a Volvo, making her perhaps the only childless woman in American who does. But she often reminded me it was only temporary—the lack of child, that is, not the Volvo. It was a wonder she hadn’t already installed the infant seat.

  I typed “13 Hanover Street” into her nav system, which had a male voice—Nancy, wherefore art thou, Nancy—and the address turned out to be a short distance away. As we drove into the Ironbound and began snaking through its tight streets, I filled the time telling Tina about some of my previous day’s discoveries, from my chat with Detective Raines to my meeting with Rhonda Byers to the realization, thanks to Akilah’s sister, that Mrs. Byers probably wasn’t our black-hatted villain after all.

  And then we pulled up to Donato Semedo’s residence—or what was supposed to be his residence, anyway. But it wasn’t. Not unless he lived on the third baseline: 13 Hanover Street was a small neighborhood softball field.

  Not that it was any great surprise. If you were pl
anning to dump a body in a rental car, you probably weren’t going to give your real information.

  “Are you sure you remembered the address right?” Tina asked.

  “Yeah, definitely. It was Dan Marino and Dartmouth College,” I said.

  “Come again?”

  “Dan Marino was a football player who wore number 13. Dartmouth College is located in Hanover, New Hampshire. That was my mnemonic.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said sarcastically. “So what now, Dan Marino?”

  I leaned on my palm and looked out at the empty softball field, then said, “I wish I knew.”

  * * *

  Tina declared she was needed back at the office, which seemed like a fine place for me to be, at least until I figured out something better.

  As we drove toward the newsroom, we artfully avoided the conversation—or, rather, The Conversation—we needed to have about our future and plotted strategy on Windy Byers instead.

  “Why don’t you type up the stuff you got this morning and we’ll put it online,” she concluded as we got off the elevator. “No sense in saving it for tomorrow’s paper—the whole world might have it by then.”

  “No problem,” I said, and we went our separate ways.

  As soon as I walked into the newsroom, I saw Sweet Thang and noticed she was putting great effort into not looking at me. It was a rather dismal performance. Her desk naturally pointed her in the direction of mine, so she had to turn her body away at a strange angle to avoid facing me.

  I decided to spare her the agony. She had too many months left on her internship to sit that way the whole time. It would be bad ergonomics. So I went over to the chair next to her and noisily lowered myself into it. She started blushing the moment I sat down, even though she was still pretending to give all her concentration to the morning paper.

  “Hello,” I said, finally.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, lifting her face a little bit toward me but still not meeting my eye. “I didn’t even see you come in.”

  Up close, she looked even more pathetic. Her hair was still a little wet, making her blond curls droop. Her shoulders were slumped and she wasn’t sticking out her chest like she normally did. She was wearing pants, which was unusual—Sweet Thang was more of a skirts and dresses kind of gal—and a bulky sweater. There may have even been a sports bra underneath.

  More than anything, she came across as embarrassed, like she had been scolded. And I was a little surprised to discover my primary thought toward her, which used to involve things you only see late at night on Cinemax, was now something more like pity. Or maybe it was just concern. I wanted to protect her.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Ohimjustfinethankyou,” she said, a little too quickly.

  “Come on, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Lauren,” I said, and when I used her real name, she made eye contact for the first time. “It’s okay. Whatever happened last night, it’s fine by me. It was maybe going to be something, but it wasn’t. It’s not a big deal.”

  “You’re not … mad at me?” she asked, gazing up at me with what the romance writers would call imploring blue eyes.

  “Mad at you? No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good!” she said buoyantly. “I have a present for you.”

  “You do?”

  “Two, actually!”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “The first is, I couldn’t sleep last night, and I felt bad you never got to taste the banana bread I made for Bertie. So I made you some. I used buttermilk. I hope that’s okay.”

  She reached into her bag and extracted a Saran-wrapped loaf so large she needed two hands to grip it.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised more than anything.

  “Don’t worry. This isn’t bread with strings attached. It’s just friendship bread,” she added.

  “Right. Friendship bread. Thank you.”

  “The second gift,” she said, reaching into her bag and pulling out a stapled document, “is this.”

  She handed it to me. My eyes scanned the first page, which I immediately recognized as a mortgage—mostly because the word MORTGAGE was written at the top.

  “Chuck called me this morning,” she said proudly. “He found it in a filing cabinet last night. I went over to the courthouse on my way in and got it from him.”

  “Great work,” I said, glancing up at her to see a proud smile form on her lips.

  I turned my attention back to the document. The mortgagee was, of course, Wendell A. Byers Jr. The mortgagor was a bank from Indianapolis. The mortgage amount was $324,000. But it was when I got to the part about the interest rate that things got, well, interesting.

  The rate was a mere 3.15 percent. I went to an online mortgage calculator, which told me that made the monthly payment about $1,400. That, plus an escrow payment—call it $500 for property tax and $100 for homeowners insurance—brought the total payment to $2,000.

  It was a sweetheart deal. And I would imagine Windy, who was paid $80,000 a year as a Newark councilman, plus whatever work he could boondoggle on the side, could swing $2,000 a month.

  But as I read further, I saw it didn’t last. The initial rate was just for thirty-six months. For the remaining 324 months, I had to refer to something called the “adjustable rate rider,” which was attached hereto in Exhibit B.

  Lawyers always make things so clear.

  I turned to the back of the document, where Exhibit B told me that the rate was “LIBOR plus 8.99 percent.” Like I said, clear as mud.

  “Do you know what LIBOR is?” I asked Sweet Thang, who did not attempt an answer.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Go over to Buster Hays and ask him. He’s the kind of guy who knows this sort of thing. But don’t tell him I’m the one who wants to know. He’ll give you a hard time.”

  Sweet Thang went over to Buster who, as one of the legions of older men enamored of her youthful beauty, was all too happy to help. They had a brief conversation—Buster was lit up like Christmas Eve the entire time, the horny old goat—and Sweet Thang returned.

  “It stands for London Interbank Offered Rate,” she said.

  “That really doesn’t help me.”

  “It’s an index,” she explained. “It has something to do with an average of a bunch of things and I guess it’s something bankers worry about a lot.”

  “Okay. So LIBOR plus 8.99 means … what?”

  “Well, he said the LIBOR fluctuates, but lately it’s been below two percent,” she said.

  That meant once the introductory rate on Akilah’s house expired, the new interest rate would reset to somewhere around 11 percent. I turned to my mortgage calculator and typed in the new number. The monthly payment was now more than $3,000—more like $3,600 with the escrow factored in.

  I went back to the beginning of the mortgage and looked at the dates. The reset, I realized, had happened December 1.

  Windy Byers’s booty call had just gotten a lot more expensive.

  * * *

  It was the great Nora Ephron, penning lines for the Carrie Fisher character in When Harry Met Sally, who observed that everyone thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor—and not everyone could possibly have good taste and a sense of humor.

  The same could be said in the sad-but-familiar case of Wendell A. Byers. Everyone thinks they’re smart enough not to get swindled in real estate deals—and, clearly, not everyone is. Certainly not Windy Byers.

  It turns out that the all-powerful councilman was not much different from so many other Americans at the peak of the subprime boom: he allowed himself to be sold an overpriced house with a bad loan, and then, when the financial feces hit the fan, he got stuck with it.

  I laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Sweet Thang asked.

  “Windy Byers,” I said. “Getting suckered by a teaser rate, then panicking when it runs out. I guess keeping a woman on the
side suddenly wasn’t as fiscally sound, so he told her to take a hike.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened?”

  “Well, only two people know for sure, and one of them is now a corpse stinking up a rental car,” I said.

  “And the other…” Sweet Thang began.

  “… is Akilah Harris,” I finished. “Think you can find her?”

  Sweet Thang looked down at the desk.

  “But where do I—” she began whining, and I cut her off.

  “Let me rephrase: you have to find her. You’ve got her cell number. She slept in your apartment two nights ago. You’re best friends with her mom. You’re pretty tight with her sister, too. If anyone can locate this girl, it’s you. I know you can do it.”

  “You really believe in me?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  She grabbed a notepad off her desk, stood up, stuck her chest out like the proud young woman she was, and walked out of the newsroom—leaving me alone with a massive loaf of banana bread.

  I walked to the break room, grabbed a plastic knife and paper plate, and sawed off a nice slice of mid-morning snack. I took it back to my desk but had barely gotten the first bite in my mouth when Tina was standing in front of me, scowling at what remained of the loaf.

  “What the hell is this?” she demanded.

  “It’s … it’s friendship bread,” I said meekly.

  “And what the hell is that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what Sweet Thang called it.”

  “Friendship bread? That little sorority girl is giving you something called friendship bread?”

  “I suppose some would call it banana bread. Would you like some?”

  “All that refined sugar and bleached flour?” Tina mocked. “I think not.”

  “Come on. Bananas have potassium. And there are nuts, too—think of all the protein.”

  Tina narrowed her eyes at me further. I felt like she was reading the bottom line of an eye chart that was printed on the inside of my skull.

  “You were with her last night, weren’t you?” she said at last. “That’s why you couldn’t make our dinner.”