Faces of the Gone Page 4

  “Have fun wasting your time.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, groping for something to put Hays in his place. “It’s my time to waste.”

  Retreating from the Dinosaur’s Den, I stomped back to my desk, all the while stewing that I hadn’t come up with a snappier rejoinder. It’s my time to waste? Dammit. Couldn’t I have at least managed some kind of comeback that involved him filing his stories on an IBM Correcting Selectric II?

  I hauled up the National Drug Bureau’s Web site, which featured whole photo galleries of agents posing in front of large piles of powdery junk, then clicked on their “For the Media” link. After about sixteen more clicks—government efficiency at work—I found a number for their Newark Field Office and the contact name L. Peter Sampson, Press Agent.

  Agent Sampson’s voice mail informed me he was in the office today but currently unavailable. I looked at the clock. Five thirty-two. No way a federal bureaucrat was still hanging around. Luckily for me, his recording concluded by saying that if I was a reporter on deadline, I could call his cell phone.

  “Why, yes, I just so happen to be a reporter on deadline,” I said out loud, to no one in particular, copying down the number. I hung up and immediately dialed it.

  “Agent Sampson,” an enthusiastic, Boy Scout–sounding voice answered.

  “Hi, Agent Sampson, Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. It has been explained to me that low-and mid-level PR people live in constant fear they’ll be fired because of something a miscreant like me puts in the newspaper. It turns them into sad little creatures, analogous to any timid, furry animal of your choosing. With few exceptions, they’re not all that smart, startle easily, and don’t like leaving their holes for long. Above all else, they hate surprises. And a reporter calling unsolicited after hours qualified as a surprise.

  “What, what can I do for you?” he said cautiously.

  He sounded very much like a guy who didn’t want the world to know his first name—L. Peter Sampson, indeed. I wondered what his friends called him. L. Pete? L. Peter? Or just plain L.?

  “We’re working on a follow-up story about this quadruple homicide in Newark, the one down on Ludlow Street,” I said. “I’m looking into the theory that it’s drug related.”

  “What makes you think it’s drug related?” L. Pete said, his voice quickening, sounding even more panicked.

  I went into a brief summary of my reporting, glossing over the parts I didn’t really know and concluding, “. . . so, it’d just be nice to have a quote from you guys saying a crime of this nature could be drug related.”

  “I’m, I’m not authorized to give a quote.”

  A PR guy not authorized to give a quote? What’s next, a plumber not authorized to flush toilets?

  “I’m not trying to say you guys did anything wrong,” I explained in an attempt to calm him. “I just want an authoritative voice on drugs to add to the story. How about a quick interview with your boss?”

  My attempt to soothe his nerves—to lure the timid, furry animal out of his hole with a few kind words and some bits of bread—was backfiring. I was only scaring him more.

  “My, my boss?”

  “Yeah.” I scanned the Web site and pulled the name off the roster. “Randall N. Meyers.”

  “What’s he got to do with it? We don’t have anything to do with this case.”

  “I know, but it’s a big case and I thought, with all the times we put news about your guys’ airport busts in the paper, Randall Meyers would be a name our readers would recognize and trust on this subject.”

  That’s it. Soften him up. C’mere, little guy. C’mere . . .

  “Randy won’t . . . uh, Agent Meyers won’t . . . is unavailable for comment.”

  “So you guys are a no comment,” I said. I didn’t know if I would stoop this low, but no comments could be useful as a sleazy, backdoor way to force unverified news into the paper, the classic being “Senator Gobble D. Gook had no comment on whether he was beating his wife.”

  “No, no,” L. Pete corrected me. “I didn’t say ‘no comment.’ I said ‘unavailable for comment.’ It’s different.”

  So it was. It was also less useful. And frankly, I was beginning to lose interest in this exchange, which wasn’t at all going the way I hoped.

  “All right,” I said. “If you guys don’t want to be mentioned as respected experts on this subject, that’s up to you, I guess.”

  It was my last attempt and I thought he just might take the bait. But no, he took it as his exit strategy, quickly thanked me for calling, then hung up.

  I was still pouting a little when Tommy returned from the flower shop.

  “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “Just a conversation that didn’t go well,” I huffed. “My life needs better scriptwriters.”

  “Yeah. You should get those people from Will and Grace. They’re not doing anything these days. You could stand to get in touch with your queer side.”

  “I thought hanging out with you filled my daily gay quota.”

  “You can never get too much gay in your day,” Tommy said.

  “Now what would your father think if he heard you say that?” I asked. Tommy still lived with his parents. At home, he was so far in the closet he was rearranging his sweaters.

  “He’s so clueless, he’d probably think I was talking about vitamin supplements,” Tommy replied.

  “Very nice. How was the flower shop anyway?”

  “Helpful,” Tommy said, flipping open his notebook. “The owner was this sweet little Costa Rican lady. She kept talking about how she had a daughter my age and how I looked like such a nice boy and how I should come back when her daughter was around.”

  Tommy is a good-looking guy, to be sure—dark, handsome features; small, wiry body; neat, natty clothing. But his sexual orientation is as obvious as three snaps in a Z-formation.

  “So we have a flower shop owner with no gaydar whatsoever,” I said.

  “Yeah, but luckily she does have caller ID. Tynesha placed the order from this number,” he said, showing me his pad.

  “Great,” I said, hauling up a reverse lookup service on my screen. I typed in the number. No luck.

  “Well, so much for the easy way,” I said. “Let’s try it the old-fashioned way.”

  I dialed the number. Tommy leaned over by the earpiece so he could eavesdrop.

  “Hello,” said a female voice I assumed belonged to Tynesha. It was cold, impersonal.

  “Hi, is Tynesha there?” I said.

  “Heeyyy, baby,” Tynesha said, having suddenly warmed up by a hundred degrees. “How you doin’ today, cutie-pie?”

  “Uh, I’m fine,” I said, confused.

  “Where you get my number from, honey? Lucious give you my number?”

  “Lucious?”

  “Yeah, what price he give you?”

  “Uhh,” I said, trying not to sound like an utter imbecile. “I’m not sure.”

  “Okay, let’s just call it a hundred, okay? A hundred and you can do whatever you want for an hour. One-fifty for two.”

  My confusion instantly evaporated. Tynesha was a hooker.

  Tommy doubled over in noiseless laughter.

  “An hour . . . an hour would be great,” I said, blushing. “Where can I find you?”

  “You know where the Stop-In Go-Go is?” she said.

  “The Stop-In Go-Go,” I said. “You mean that place in Irvington?”

  “Yeah, baby. I’ll be dancing there tonight,” she purred. “I’d looove to see you there. I can just tell from your voice you’re a gorgeous white boy.”

  Tommy was now quietly hitting his fist on the table as he bit his lip to keep from laughing aloud. I swatted at him. This was hard enough without his histrionics.

  “What time are you dancing?” I said.

  “I’m on stage from six to seven and again from nine to ten. In between, I’m all yours, baby.”

 
; “Great,” I said, unsure of what else to say. My career in journalism had helped me develop a great many skills. Soliciting prostitution had not been one of them.

  “So,” I continued, “how does this, you know, happen? I’ve never done this before.”

  “Of course not, baby,” she said. “Neither have I.”

  I didn’t want to think about how thoroughly untrue that was.

  “No, I mean, how will you know who I am?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, baby, I’ll know who you are,” she said. “You’ll be the one who tips me the most during my dance.”

  I had to admit, she was good.

  “Right,” I said. “Of course I will be. I guess I’ll see you later on, then?”

  “Bye, baby. I’m looking forward to it.”

  I hung up the phone and Tommy finally let his pent-up laughter explode outward.

  “Nice job, stud!” he howled when he was done, then started another laughing fit.

  Half the heads in the newsroom turned our way.

  “Carter has a date with a hooker tonight!” Tommy exclaimed.

  Suddenly, Tommy wasn’t the only one laughing. They all were—and hooting, and whistling, and mocking. Some comedian from over on the copy desk started clapping, and soon I was getting a full standing ovation. I could feel my face, which had already been red, cycling through about six different shades of scarlet until it settled on something close to purple.

  “You know me, anything for a story,” I said, waving my hand in the air to acknowledge the cheers, which slowly died down. “Let’s get out of here, Tommy.”

  I walked out of the newsroom to a variety of catcalls—“Go get ’er, Casanova,” “Remember, she won’t kiss on the mouth,” and, lastly, “Don’t forget to double-bag.”

  The Director enjoyed the irony of how he had gotten into business in the first place. He was always reminding Monty: they owed all their success to the U.S. government and the things it had done unwittingly to prop up the East Coast heroin trade.

  The first was to declare war on Colombian cocaine during the mid and late eighties. For a while, the Colombian cartels stubbornly continued to harvest their coca crop. But even they couldn’t fight glyphosate—an herbicide better known by its stateside brand name, Roundup. Using spy satellites to determine where coca crops were being planted, the U.S. government helped the Colombian government dump tons of the gook on the countryside from airplanes. The Aerial Eradication Program, as it was known, was hailed as a tremendous success in the War on Drugs.

  But while the government was congratulating itself on the plummeting cocaine traffic on America’s streets, the Colombians were busy rolling out a new product line. And it was one the feds and their spy satellites weren’t looking for: heroin. It was an almost instant hit. The Colombians had been hooking America on cocaine for years and had the supply routes, distribution systems, and retail muscle to move massive quantities of the drug at never-before-seen purity levels.

  The heroin of the seventies was perhaps 5 or 10 percent pure. The rest of it was baking soda or aspirin or whatever additive a dealer could find to cut it with. The heroin of the new millennium was 50, 70, even 90 percent pure and delivered its high—and addictive powers—with corresponding efficiency.

  The second thing Uncle Sam did to help the Director’s operation was to declare a War on Terror. After 9/11, America’s picture of evil changed overnight. It was no longer the swarthy Colombian drug lord in a linen suit. It was now the straggly bearded Muslim extremist. For every new wall of protection the U.S. built against the Middle East menace, a piece of the wall that once kept the Colombians at bay came tumbling down.

  New Jersey proved a particularly ideal entry point. It had the infrastructure, with a major international airport, a bustling seaport, and a vast highway network sprawling in every direction. It had the geography, being wedged in between New York and Philadelphia in the heart of the Northeast corridor. And it had the demography, with a densely packed population spread over urban areas (where most drugs are sold) and suburban areas (where most drugs are stashed and, yes, consumed).

  The third thing the U.S. government did was kick the Taliban out of Afghanistan. The Taliban had ruthlessly suppressed poppy production. But with the Taliban out, Afghani farmers who had been growing poppies for generations got right back into business. All it took was a few growing seasons for Afghanistan to transform into the world’s newest narco-state.

  That meant the Colombians had competition. They responded by pushing even more product across the borders in an effort to keep up, to the point where they were getting sloppy with it.

  And it was the Colombians’ sloppiness that was allowing the Director to grow rich.

  CHAPTER 2

  My four-year-old Chevy Malibu—practical, dependable, and the last vehicle any self-respecting Newark carjacker would ever want—was parked in the garage across the street. When I bought it a year ago, I had taken endless ribbing from my newspaper friends. Apparently, a used Malibu isn’t considered the car of choice among highly eligible bachelors such as myself. My friends from Amherst, most of whom made Michael Moore look like a Bush family toady, chided me for not buying a hybrid that ran on lawn clippings.

  But while I wholeheartedly support the development of renewable energy sources, damn if I’m going to drive some oversized golf cart. I’ll give up my gas-powered V6 just as soon as someone gives me an alternative that actually moves when I press down the accelerator.

  As I got in the car, I turned on the radio, switching to a Top 40 station. The same liberal friends who disapproved of my choice of transportation also rolled their eyes at my music. But there’s only so much NPR a man can take.

  “Oooh, I love this song,” Tommy said.

  “Should I be worried I agree with you?”

  “What do you mean? You’re worried you might actually have good taste for once?” Tommy said, turning it up and singing along, loud and off-key. Nothing like driving through Newark blasting music that announces, “We’re not from here.”

  We soon crossed into Irvington, a city that’s like Newark but with fewer redeeming qualities. Irvington was once a blue-collar town that was only slightly down on its luck. Then Newark demolished its public housing high-rises, dispersing all the crime and dysfunction that had once been concentrated there. Irvington, like other towns nearby, had been caught completely unprepared and went into the toilet practically overnight.

  The Stop-In Go-Go was no exception. Occupying a dingy, windowless corner storefront, it had as its only neighbors a bodega and a liquor store. Its backlit sign—which featured the silhouette of a curvaceous, long-legged dancer—had to be at least half a century old.

  “If it gets out in the gay community I went to a place like this, I’ll be forever ostracized,” Tommy said as we parked and exited the car.

  Intellectually, I knew strip clubs were offensive: they objectified the female gender, perpetuated wrongheaded ideas about sexuality, and opened young women to all kinds of potential exploitation. For those reasons, I avoided them.

  Unless, of course, I was drunk. If you threw a couple beers in me, I had to admit I didn’t mind watching a woman take off her clothes. And judging by how much it lightened my wallet by the end of the evening, I could make a fair argument the exploitation went both ways.

  The Stop-In Go-Go was not actually a strip club, mind you. It was a go-go bar, and in Jersey there was a difference: strip clubs could go all-nude but didn’t have booze; go-go bars had alcohol, but the dancer’s choicer bits needed to stay covered. Granted, a careless dancer might “unintentionally” flash a little nipple or a bit of muff. Accidents happen in every industry.

  As we entered, we were barreled over by a smell that was one part male pheromone, two parts Coors Light, and three parts stale sweat. The Stop-In Go-Go may have been poisoning the environment in any number of ways, but the overuse of cleaning products wasn’t one of them.

  “I’m afraid to sit down,” Tommy whisper
ed. “I might stick to something.”

  “That’s half the charm,” I said. “What are you drinking? This is no place to be sober.”

  “How about a cran-apple Cosmo?” he asked.

  “I don’t think they’ve heard of those here,” I said as I caught the attention of the bartender. “Two Buds, please.”

  “We’re not going to start talking about sports now, are we?” Tommy asked.

  “No, I think just being here is sufficient torture for you,” I said, then flipped two twenties down on the bar and turned to the bartender. “Mind giving me change in singles?”

  “Oh, my God, you’re not really going to?” Tommy asked, horrified.

  “Of course I am. I’ve got to play the part. I’m just wondering how exactly I’m going to put this down on my expense report.”

  I grabbed the two beers and my pile of singles, then turned my attention to the small stage in the middle of the room. There, two dancers gyrated in robotic fashion to some tiresome bit of club music, their expressions blank, their minds elsewhere. The only person who could have possibly been more bored was Tommy.

  One of the women was a thick-legged, bleached blonde who occasionally graced one of the patrons with a come-on in Russian-accented English. The other woman had to be Tynesha, a not-insubstantial black woman wearing just enough clothing to keep the Stop-In Go-Go from getting fined.

  I sat down at one of the barstools ringing the stage and gestured for Tommy to sit next to me. Tynesha started dancing our way, wasting no time pouncing on fresh meat. I pulled a single out of my pocket and held it in the air. Chum couldn’t have made a shark come quicker.

  “Thanks, baby,” she said as I slipped her a dollar, being careful not to let my hand linger in a way that might later be deemed professional misconduct.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  “Oohhh. You’re my white boy. I knew you’d be gorgeous.”

  I forced a smile. Her eyes were amber-colored, from contact lenses. And when she smiled back it gave her a freaky look—the golden-eyed harlot.

  I went to introduce Tommy, but he had vanished. He was probably off in a back room, swapping skin-care regimens with one of the dancers.