Eyes of the Innocent Page 6

  Plus, as fewer tenants paid rent, the housing authority had less of a budget for maintenance. And once you start to let things slide in a high-density housing situation, they go in a hurry. The rats, mice, and roaches get a foothold almost instantly. The garbage piles up. The small leaks turn into big ones.

  The tenants’ association complained as things got worse, and the bosses at the housing authority eventually got tired of hearing it. So they busted up the tenants’ association.

  That meant the tenants were no longer picking their own neighbors, which brought even more decline in the quality of the people moving in. Rent collection dropped further, which meant even less money for maintenance. And the tenants—who no longer had any collective voice or empowerment through which to improve conditions—stopped caring about the buildings, which only strengthened the various negative feedback mechanisms already in place.

  Which was how you ended up with stairwells that smelled of urine, booze, and rat droppings; hallways that hadn’t seen a mop in years; and apartments where the humans fought an ever-losing battle with the pests that had taken up residence.

  Perhaps the most apt description of Newark’s housing projects I’ve read came from No Cause for Indictment, a book by Ron Porambo about the Newark riots, which described the projects in the late 1960s: “If never visited, these dwellings cannot be imagined. Once seen, they can never be forgotten.”

  And, if anything, the last forty years had only made them worse.

  * * *

  I parked my Malibu at the fringes of the projects, then plunged into the haystack to begin looking for the needle. It had been more than three years since Akilah Harris encountered this guy. He could be anywhere by now. Or he could be around the corner.

  My entrance into the courtyard caused a small stir among the lookouts. I could tell because in the middle of February, in the dark of night, Baxter Terrace suddenly sounded like an Audubon Society refuge—birdcalls being the latest in urban drug-selling counterintelligence.

  As had been explained to me by a dealer I got friendly with not long ago, the old alert system was very limited in what it allowed. If a lookout saw something that didn’t look right—whether it was a cop or just a well-dressed white guy like me—he did the same thing: he yelled “cops” or the radio code for an officer, “five-oh,” and everyone scattered. The guy sitting on the stash was forced to abandon his perch, making it vulnerable to being swiped by anyone who might have seen where it was hidden.

  Birdcalls allowed much more information to be imparted to other members of the operation, without the visitor being aware of what was being communicated. So while a crow’s harsh cry could harken the arrival of a member of the city narcotics unit—a significant threat—the sweet song of a chickadee might signal an officer who was merely escorting a social worker to an appointment, allowing business to continue in guarded fashion. Someone like me, a stranger on unknown business, might warrant a whippoorwill’s call.

  Where exactly a city kid learned what a whippoorwill sounded like, I have no idea. But these kids were nothing if not resourceful. It makes you wonder what they could have accomplished under different circumstances.

  And now I needed their help. If anyone would know my mortgage hustler, it would be the drug hustlers who worked the same turf, albeit different clientele. My only other alternative would be to knock on doors until I found someone who knew the guy. But given what you often found behind those doors—the frightened, the aged, the mentally ill, the belligerent, the chemically addicted—I would be better off trying to work the dealers than to waste time on trial and error.

  As I pressed farther into the courtyard, the birdcalls quieted down to a mild chatter. By now, everyone who needed to be aware of my arrival had been apprised. And yet, while they obviously knew where I was, I couldn’t see them. It was too cold for anyone to just be hanging out. I dug my hands into my pockets and kept peering into the darkness.

  Finally, two figures emerged from one of the corner buildings. I took my hands out of my pockets—no need for them to think I was armed—and walked toward them. They were both late teens from the look of them. One was tall and slender, with a head full of thick braids jutting from under a stiff-brimmed black cap. The other was shorter, with a hooded sweatshirt pulled over short-cropped hair.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you guys. I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner. I’m looking for…”

  They walked down the stairs just as I was approaching them, brushing past me wordlessly, staring straight ahead like I didn’t exist.

  “Look, I’m not a cop,” I said, following them. “I’m just a newspaper reporter working on a story.”

  “Nah” was all the one with the braids could say. And even that was muffled.

  “Guys, I just need a little help here,” I said.

  “Ain’t no snitch,” the one with the hoodie said.

  The no-snitch mentality—which had long been the rule for dealing with law enforcement in the projects—had been expanded in recent years to encompass all outsiders. And reporters were most certainly included. It was, quite frankly, a huge pain in the ass. My intentions were almost always benign—in this case, I was trying to track down a lender who may have preyed on poor people—but convincing a hardened no-snitcher of this could be impossible.

  More than anything, it just pissed me off. It wasn’t because it made my job harder. Okay, it was partly that. But it was mostly because the no-snitch mentality—and the decline of law and order it brought—had been almost as destructive to the community as the drug trade.

  “You’re a moron,” I said once they were out of earshot.

  Or at least I thought they were. Apparently, not all of today’s youth have ruined their hearing with loud music.

  “What you say?” Braids said, turning around and stopping.

  He looked more surprised than anything. I hadn’t really intended to create a confrontation with this kid—especially when I didn’t know how many friends he might have nearby—but there was no backing off now. By himself, he wasn’t much to be afraid of. It helped that I outweighed him by about thirty pounds.

  “You’re a moron,” I repeated, walking toward him. “I’m trying to do a story that will help shine light on a scumbag who preys on people from the projects. But you’re such an ignorant moron all you’re worried about is snitching.”

  Braids and Hoodie were momentarily speechless. They clearly had not expected anything resembling aggression out of the mild-mannered newspaper reporter.

  “Damn, yo, he just called you ignorant,” Hoodie said.

  “Oh, you’re ignorant, too,” I said, drawing in even closer. “Because you know where all this no-snitch crap has gotten you? As a black man in this country, you’re six times more likely to be murdered. But, wait, it gets even better, because as a young black man living in an urban area, you’re thirty times more likely to be murdered. Congratulations.”

  I knew the first factoid to be true. I made up the second one. But I didn’t think there was much chance these guys were going to call me on it. At the moment, they were just gawking at the strange white man who came into the projects to spout numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

  “So go ahead,” I finished. “Keep not snitching. I just want both of you to remember this conversation so that when I write a story about one of your funerals someday, I can find the other one and say I told you so.”

  * * *

  From an outsider’s perspective, I’m sure what I was doing would not seem particularly wise: picking a verbal fight with two young men who were quite possibly involved in the local drug trade, quite possibly armed, and quite possibly ready to call in reinforcements who could quite possibly separate me from my face.

  But I had a hunch that wasn’t going to happen. You really only got yourself in trouble in the projects if you were so strong as to be a threat or so weak as to be a target. As long as you existed somewhere in the murky middle, you were okay.
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  Besides, Braids and Hoodie were basically kids. And it’s not hard to keep kids a little off balance, especially if you’re telling them something they’ve never heard before. People don’t turn off that natural curiosity until they’re further into adulthood.

  I glared at them a little bit, just to let my last statement sink in, and finally Hoodie broke the standoff. By laughing.

  “Damn,” he said. “You one crazy nigga, you know that?”

  I chuckled.

  “That has to be the first time anyone has called me that,” I said.

  They both laughed.

  “What’s your story about anyway?” Braids asked. “You said someone is messing with people in the projects?”

  “Yeah, a Puerto Rican guy who sells people crooked mortgages.”

  Braids and Hoodie just looked at each other blankly, then at me.

  “He’s sort of short and squat,” I continued. “Shaved head. Wears a goatee. Probably drives a nice car—an Audi, maybe a Mercedes.”

  “I ain’t never seen nobody like that,” Hoodie said.

  “Only people who drive cars like that around here are…” Braids paused, not wanting to say too much.

  Hoodie filled in the blank: “They’re people you already know. You know?”

  In other words, they were pushing something with a little more kick than subprime mortgages.

  “You ever see people around here selling mortgages?” I asked.

  “Depends. What’s a mortgage?” Hoodie asked.

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked by the question. Why would a black kid raised in public housing—a kid reared in a family that had probably been in America for ten generations without owning a stick of property—know what a mortgage was?

  “It’s…” I didn’t know where to begin. “Never mind. Okay, forget the Puerto Rican guy. You know someone named Akilah Harris?”

  Braids and Hoodie exchanged glances again. But this time they were a lot more knowing.

  “Maybe,” Hoodie said. And suddenly I realized they were both smirking.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” Braids said.

  They stood there, grins widening. Obviously, Akilah was known in these parts. That was hardly surprising. Akilah was only a little older than these two. They had probably grown up with her.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Spill.”

  “I ain’t saying nothing,” Braids said, holding his hands in the air.

  “Why you want to know?” Hoodie asked, obviously curious. “You making a story about her?”

  “Her house burned down,” I said. “There were two kids inside.”

  “Damn!” Braids said.

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” Hoodie said. “Someone was saying it was on the news.”

  Despite the tragedy of the situation, they were still smiling. Something about Akilah Harris was humorous to these guys, though I couldn’t imagine what. I tried to think like a teenaged boy. What made them laugh? Toilet humor. Fart jokes. But how would that be connected with Akilah? It just wasn’t coming to me.

  “What’s so funny?” I said.

  More smirking.

  Finally, Hoodie couldn’t help himself. “You sure there were only two kids?” he said. “I figured she would have had, like, six by now.”

  Braids busted up laughing. “With, like, eighteen different daddies,” he added, which made them both laugh harder.

  Of course. The only thing teenaged boys found funnier than fart jokes was sex. And apparently Akilah Harris was known to be generous in that department.

  “So she’s a ho,” I said.

  “She’s like the biggest ho out here,” Braids confirmed.

  “Is she sleeping with someone in particular?” I asked.

  “Akilah? Shoot, who hasn’t she slept with?” Hoodie said. The boys yukked it up again and I laughed along with them, even though—if I started thinking like a mature adult for a moment—none of this was really all that amusing. I let them giggle themselves out, then tried to push the conversation away from the topic of Akilah’s promiscuity.

  “From what I’m told, she moved out of here about three years ago,” I said.

  “Maybe, I don’t know,” Braids said. “You still see her sometimes. She visits her mom or something.”

  I could feel my brow creasing. “I thought she was an orphan,” I said.

  “Akilah? Hell, no. She got a mom,” Braids said. “Her mom and my mom are like cousins. I mean, they ain’t blood. But they best friends.”

  “Are you sure that’s not her aunt? I thought her aunt raised her?”

  “Naw, that’s her mom,” Braids said. “Whoever told you she don’t have a mom don’t know what they talking about.”

  Lying was more like it. Those alarm bells in my head were starting to ring from one ear to the other. It’s possible the rest of Akilah’s story was true, that she only made up the orphan part just to engender a little more sympathy. But reporters quickly learn lies are like cockroaches: where there’s one, there’s bound to be others.

  I was already starting to feel embarrassed I had been so taken in by her saga. Akilah had Sweet Thang and me figured out from the moment she saw us—a couple spoiled white kids who would bite on the hard-life-in-the-black-city cliché, chew it up, and swallow every last morsel.

  “And you say her mom lives around here?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she right over there,” Braids said, pointing two buildings down. “Third floor. Right side. You can ask her.”

  “I will,” I said. “Believe me, I will.”

  I considered trying to take down names and phone numbers for Braids and Hoodie in case I had any more questions. But they weren’t exactly quotable sources on the subject of Akilah Harris. And the chances I would get a real answer out of either of them was so remote, I decided not to bother. So I thanked them for their time and started walking toward Akilah’s mother’s apartment.

  On the way, I had a quick phone call to make.

  “Szanto,” grunted a voice on the other end.

  “Hey, it’s Carter,” I said. “Can the Akilah Harris story for tomorrow.”

  “Why?” he said, half gargling with a mouthful of coffee.

  I told him what I learned, along with my guess that there were probably other aspects of the story that couldn’t be verified.

  “Yep, smells like garbage day at the fish factory all right,” Szanto said. “Let’s kill it.”

  * * *

  As I walked through the gaping front entrance of Akilah’s mother’s building—whatever door was there had been ripped off long ago by neighborhood pharmaceutical salesmen—it occurred to me I could probably just drop the whole thing. Akilah Harris was no longer a gripping human interest story or a victim of tragic exploitation. She was a liar whose negligence killed two children. From a news standpoint, that made her a lot more run-of-the-mill: your basic two-faced criminal, not someone worthy of reader sympathy.

  But there was something telling me to keep digging on this one. Was I outraged Akilah would dare attempt to mislead a gifted investigative journalist such as myself? Hardly. Was I just curious what else she made up? A little.

  No, it was the missing mortgage record. Things like that didn’t just happen by accident. Someone wanted something covered up. I didn’t have the slightest idea who or what. But reporters love cover-ups only slightly less than they love their own mothers—more if their mothers don’t cook well. Whisper the word “cover-up” in a noisy room full of reporters, and I guarantee we’ll all stop and turn our heads to listen. There’s just something about cover-ups we can’t resist. And it seemed worthwhile to waste a little more time trying to figure out this one.

  Besides, it beat researching manufacturer’s specifications on space heaters.

  I reached the third floor, turned left, and found a door with “Harris” typed on a small, plastic piece of tape. From somewhere inside, Entertainment Tonight had been cranked to a volume that ensured that local co
rpses were now fully aware of the latest starlet to check into rehab due to “exhaustion.”

  I knocked, wondering if it was even possible the sound could be heard above all the smugness coming out of the television. I waited.

  Apparently not.

  I knocked again, harder. This time I heard someone stirring inside. Feet shuffled up to the door. Then nothing. I had the feeling I was being examined through the peephole, which always made me slightly uncomfortable. I mean, do you smile? Look serious? Stick your eye real close and try to look back? What is proper peephole etiquette anyway?

  An angry black woman inquired, “Who is it?”

  “I’m a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner, ma’am,” I yelled, trying to be heard above the television. “I was just hoping to ask you a few questions.”

  “It’s after dark,” the voice said.

  “I’m aware of that, ma’am, but…” I began.

  “I don’t open my door after dark.”

  “Ma’am, I’m going to slip my business card under your door right now so you can see I’m Carter Ross from the Eagle-Examiner.”

  “I don’t care if you’re Ed McMahon and I may have won a million dollars, I don’t open my door after dark.”

  I rolled my eyes—could she see that through the peephole?—and groped around in my head for another approach. It was hard to work my charm through a steel door, even harder when I had to compete with Mary Hart’s breathless report about the weight loss secrets of Hollywood Hunks. I couldn’t concentrate.

  “Do you think you could turn down the TV so we could talk through the door?” I asked.

  No response. I had the distinct feeling she had gone back to her couch.

  “Ma’am?” I pleaded. This was getting pathetic. I knocked again.

  “I told you, I ain’t opening the door,” she shouted from somewhere inside the apartment.

  “Could I call you?” I asked.