Faces of the Gone: A Mystery (14 page)

fter a night of uninterrupted, undrunk slumber, it would stand to reason I would feel unhungover, uncrappy, and in all other ways more human than I had the day before. Yet as the sun crept around the shades of my bungalow’s master bedroom, I still felt lousy. Someday, science will have to explain why a bad night’s sleep hits you harder the second day.

Deadline had commandeered a disproportionately large part of the middle of the bed, leaving me wedged to one side. He grunted when I stirred, opened his eyes partway to shoot me a dirty look, then yawned dramatically. With his morning exercises thus dispatched, he settled back in for a well-earned nap.

By the time I got out of the shower, it was after ten and Deadline was engaged in his other primary activity—pacing in front of his food bowl. So I gave him some breakfast, gave myself some breakfast, then grabbed my laptop and flopped on the couch.

I considered doing a little more reporting, maybe calling up the National Drug Bureau, feeding them what I knew and getting them to repeat it back to me—just to give the story a little more of an official grounding. Then I thought about having to deal with their press agent, L. Peter Sampson, Mr. I’m Not Authorized to Blow My Own Nose. And I decided to spare everyone the hassle.

No, it was time for me to write. People don’t always think of newspaper reporters as “writers,” inasmuch as our compositions are seldom confused with art. You know the statistical theorem that says a bunch of monkeys sitting at typewriters would eventually reproduce the complete works of Shakespeare—if you gave ’em a couple trillion years to do it? It would take the monkeys about forty-five minutes to come up with some of the slop that passes for raw copy around our shop.

Still, when you take into account that a newspaper reporter’s sole creation is the written word, we have to be considered writers. And, as writers go, we’re tough, resilient, dependable. We quietly scoff at the softer breeds. I mean, really, some magazine writers consider themselves “on deadline” when they’re three weeks away from having to deliver copy. Where I come from, that’s not a deadline. That’s two weeks off and a few leisurely days at the office.

Then there are those namby-pamby novelists who write what the critics deem to be “literature.” They’re the bichons frisés of the writing world—they’re poofy, pretty, and everyone fawns over them. But the moment things get tough, they’re hiding under the kitchen table, making a mess on the floor.

Newspaper reporters? We’re the Australian cattle dogs of the writing world. Maybe we don’t look that great. We certainly don’t smell that great. But you can kick us in the head, trample us, stick us out in the rain or heat. Whatever. We’re still going to get the herd home, no excuses.

And so it was time for me to start herding. Or writing. Or whatever. I decided to start with something snappy. Something quick. Something smart.

“The Stuff wasn’t the right stuff for four Newark drug dealers,” I wrote, then immediately highlighted and erased it. Not only did it have a glaring cliché, it was about as smart as people who mistakenly drive in the EZ- Pass-only lane and then try to back up.

Okay. Maybe something a little straighter.
“The four people found murdered on Ludlow Street earlier this week sold the same brand of heroin, sources indicate,” I wrote, then erased that, too. If it was any straighter, it’d be a candidate for the papacy.
Okay. Let’s go back to snappy/quick/smart.
“It’s the heroin, stupid,” I typed, then immediately regretted the day I entered journalism.
I got up. It had been fifteen minutes, right? I peed, even though I didn’t need to. I scratched Deadline’s head. I noticed some cobwebs in the upper corner of my living room, grabbed some paper towels and cleaned them out.
Random bits of ideas started forming. Maybe I could start with something about the police being offtrack? No. It was possible they were just trying to throw us off with this bar-holdup angle, all the while knowing about The Stuff.
Perhaps I could start with something about Wanda, the beautiful girl whose dreams of being a dancer were cruelly snuffed out? No. It would take too long to get to the point.
The best thing I could do was follow the oldest and greatest newspaper advice ever given: write what you see. What had I really seen in this case?
Of course. Those dime bags. I sat back down and began typing a detailed description of them, and before I knew it, I was on my way. After a couple hours of typing—not to mention four Coke Zeros, two snacks, and thirteen mostly unnecessary trips to the bathroom—I was nearing something resembling a story when my cell phone rang. The caller ID was showing Szanto’s number.
“This is Carter Ross,” I said. “I’m sorry I can’t answer the phone right now—”
“Shhvvttt,” Szanto growled. “You got anything I can read yet?”
I glanced at the clock on my computer screen. “I’m close. But it’s only two-thirty, what’s the hurry?”
“The hurry is Brodie wants this to lead tomorrow’s paper and I don’t want to walk into the three-o’clock meeting without having seen it. So why don’t you just stop pretending like you’re the second coming of Bernard Malamud and send it in?”
That was one of Szanto’s favorite sayings.
“Okay, I’ll e-mail it to you in a second,” I said.
“How long is it?”
We measured length of stories in column inches—how long it would be if laid out in standard type and column width.
“About thirty-five,” I said, which is about twice the normal length.
“Maybe you haven’t heard this yet,” Szanto said. “But times are a wee bit tight in the newspaper industry. We’ve had a few little cutbacks in space that makes it difficult to run longer stories. Any of this ring a bell?”
“I know, Sal, I know,” I said. And I did. On some days, the number of column inches we devoted to news coverage was half what it used to be. I added: “Don’t worry, it’s worth it.”
“Jzzss Krrsst,” he grumbled, then hung up.
I gave the story one more quick read—it was decent, though Bernard Malamud had nothing to worry about—then sent it in.
“Well, Deadline,” I said to my cat. “What now?”
Deadline, who had slipped into one of his twenty-eight daily comas, had no answer.

gainst my better judgment, I decided to go into the office. It was time to see if I could find someone who might tell me a little more about my heroin samples, preferably someone with a white lab coat. I knew that with the right assortment of gadgets, the right chemist could tell me how pure my heroin was and where in the world it originated.

Sadly, such people do not advertise their services. My knowledgeable-though- often- misguided research assistant, Mr. Google, pointed me toward friendly people who wanted to help me beat my company’s drug-testing program. I found one laboratory that claimed it specialized in identifying unknown substances and testing the composition of known ones. But when I called them and told a nice scientist the substance she’d be testing was heroin, she suddenly was in a hurry to get off the phone.

I called another lab where a chemist suggested I
not
tell him it was heroin, that way he could accept it without knowingly breaking any laws. He also said I could expect a three-to-sixweek turnaround. For an additional fee, he told me they’d “put a rush on it” and get it to me in two weeks. I must not have mentioned I worked for a daily newspaper.

After a few more unsuccessful phone calls, I resigned myself to asking for help. Worse, I realized where that help was going to have to come from: Buster Hays.
Hays is a cantankerous son of a bitch, but he’s also a cantankerous son of a bitch who has sources and connections all over law enforcement. Somehow, don’t ask me how, he had managed to build up enough goodwill that everyone seemed to owe him favors. And ultimately he was enough of a team player—in his own grouchy, condescending way—that he’d didn’t mind cashing in a favor to help you.

But only after you groveled for a bit. And from the self- satisfied grin on his face as I approached his desk, I think he knew he was about to be the recipient of some concentrated groveling.

“Hi, Buster, got a sec?”
“What’s up, Ivy?” he said, practically taunting me. I told him about The Stuff, about the story that was going in

the next day’s paper, and about what I needed done to the heroin samples I had found. As I talked, a change came over Hays’s face. He didn’t belittle me, nor did he try to stick up for his story. He seemed genuinely miffed he had gotten it wrong.

“So the thing about the bar robbery, you think the cops are just making it up?” he asked.
“I bet your cop source probably believes he’s right. I mean, who knows? Maybe Shareef Thomas really did rob that bar at some point? Or maybe he just happened to look like the guy who did? In the absence of any other information, it’s probably the best theory they had to go on. And once they committed themselves to that premise, maybe they overlooked evidence that pointed in another direction. You know how it goes.”
Hays nodded. “I feel like printing a retraction,” he said ruefully.
If I’d wanted to bust Hays’s balls a little bit, I would have said something like, “Oh, we’ll be printing one. It’s thirty-five inches, it’s leading tomorrow’s paper, and it’s got my name on it.” But I didn’t need to be scoring rhetorical points at the moment. I needed his help.
“So I’m trying to find someone who can run some tests on those heroin samples I got,” I said. “You know anyone like that?”
“You know, it’s funny, but yesterday I got a call from a guy who does that sort of thing,” Hays said.
I looked at him for a long second to see if he was busting
my
balls, but he appeared quite earnest. “You did?” I asked
“Yeah, a guy named Irving Wallace. I hadn’t heard from him in a month of Sundays, but he saw my byline on the Ludlow Street story and gave me a holler. He was all interested in it for some reason.”
“You think he’d help me?”
“Maybe. He sure seemed curious about the story,” Hays said. “You’re not going to have to quote him, are you?”
“I guess not. He’s just doing a test for us.”
“Good, because he works for a part of the federal government where they don’t like to see their names in the paper.”
Hays started flipping through one of his Rolodexes. He had four of them—one from each century he had been working here. Naturally, he was one of the holdouts who refused to modernize and put his sources in a computer. He was into Rolodex number three by the time he found what he was looking for.
“Here he is. Irving Wallace,” Hays said as he copied the number onto a piece of paper. “This guy is the best forensic chemist on the East Coast. Drop my name and promise you won’t quote him. He’ll have that test done for you by suppertime.”

“Everything okay with the story?” I asked.
“It’s fine,” he said.
In Szanto talk, “fine” was a high compliment. If you were

waiting for something that actually sounded like praise, chances are you would be waiting a while. He handed out a “good” about three times a year. “Very good” was a biennial event. I’m not sure anything beyond that—great, spectacular, superior— was even in his vocabulary. I was pleased with my “fine.”

Tina Thompson trailed Szanto out of the meeting. She gave me a thumbs-up. “Great work,” she said.
“Yeah, you like it?”
“Well, it’s a bit overwritten, but I would expect nothing less from you,” she teased. “On the whole, it’s a great piece of reporting.”
“How’d it go over in the meeting?”
“Well, Brodie made it clear he liked it, so . . .”
So I knew how that went. When Brodie hadn’t made up his mind about a story, he’d be real quiet, which inevitably gave rise to spirited debate. But when he indicated he liked it, all the other editors would pile on to insist they also liked it—with the possible exception of Szanto, who was a notorious contrarian.
“Great,” I said. “Thanks.”
Tina was turning to walk away when something— the way her curls framed her face? the way her sweater hugged her body?—caused me to blurt out, “We should grab a drink tonight to celebrate.”
“Okay,” she said, like it was nothing.
“I’ll check in with you later,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, and gave me a little wave.
It happened so quickly, almost like my subconscious had been doing the talking for me. What the hell was my problem? The woman was less than twenty-four hours from ovulation. Hell, for all I knew that little watch of hers was off and she was ovulating
right now.
Once we got to the bar and had a drink or two, nature would take over. I might as well have volunteered to be her sperm donor.
Deep down, did I want to get Tina pregnant? Or was I just an incurably horny male who—because of hormones or pheromones or whatever—recognized Tina as an easy mark?
Then again, maybe it could just stay innocent. A drink or two between colleagues. A hearty farewell handshake. A return to the peace and solitude of my Nutley bungalow.
Uh-huh.
I did my best to shelve all those thoughts as I sat back down and punched in the phone number Hays had given me.
“Yes,” a terse voice said on the other end.
“Irving Wallace, please.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, this is Irving Wallace?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, I’m Carter Ross with the
Eagle-Examiner
—”
“No comment.”
He wasn’t trying to be funny, but I laughed despite myself.
“I didn’t even ask you a question yet,” I said.
“No comment.”
“Look, sir, I’m sorry to trouble you. But I’m working on a story about this quadruple homi cide in Newark and I’ve got some heroin samples I need tested. Buster Hays tells me you can help.”
A pause.
“Heroin samples, huh?” he said, sounding intrigued.
“Yes.”
“And it relates to the Newark murders?”
“Yes.”
“And you know Buster Hays?”
“Yeah, I work with him.”
Another pause.
“I’ll call you back,” he said, and abruptly hung up. “Sounds great,” I said to the empty phone line.
Feds. They were always so paranoid. I placed the phone back in its cradle and checked my e-mail, where there was more of the usual spam from Human Resources. I was just beginning to learn about an important discussion group on peanut allergies when my phone rang.
“Carter Ross.”
“Hi, Carter. Irving Wallace,” he said, sounding like he had undergone a robotectomy and was now human. “Sorry for the runaround. I just wanted to check you out.”
“Do people often call you up and impersonate newspaper reporters?”
“Can’t be too careful these days,” he said. “Buster says you’re okay. Actually, Buster says you’re a smart-ass Ivy League type. But he also said you’re a fine young reporter and I should help you. So what can I do for you?”
“I’m hoping you can tell me the purity and origin of some heroin samples I got off the street.”
“You want just standard GC/MS?”
“Uh . . .”
“Because I can do that, LC, FTIR/ATR, IRMS, ICP/MS, Raman, whatever you need. We’re a full- service shop.”
“You’re talking to a newspaper reporter, remember?”
“Oh, right, sorry. GC/MS stands for gas chromatography/ mass spectrometry. LC is liquid chromatography. FTIR/ATR is Fourier transform infrared . . . I’ve lost you, haven’t I?”
“Thoroughly.”
“Okay, let’s start with remedial instruction,” Wallace said patiently. “Heroin is derived from poppy seeds. Poppy seeds come from poppy plants. Poppy plants grown in different parts of the world have unique chemical signatures. My equipment reads the signature.”
“Gotcha. How soon you can turn it around?”
“You’re in luck. My gear is calibrated for heroin right now. I can have it in a few hours.”
“Terrific,” I said. “I’ll drop off the samples right now. Where can I find you?”
“It’s better I have someone find you. Be outside your building in fifteen minutes.”
“Great,” I said. “What part of the government do you work for, anyway?”
“What, didn’t Buster tell you?”
“No.”
“That’s because he doesn’t know.”
The next sound I heard was the line clicking dead.