Faces of the Gone: A Mystery (20 page)

hen I arrived at Brown Town, I realized Bernie Kosar was being quite literal when he talked about the source hanging around: in the darkened living room, next to the fish tank, there was a chubby young black man dangling from his heels.

He had been tied to an exposed pipe in the ceiling and was suspended upside down, bat-style. He had a sock in his mouth that had been secured by duct tape wrapped around his head. He was wearing boxers—and only boxers. He did not seem pleased about any of this.

In addition to Bernie, the guy in the Kevin Mack jersey was also standing sentry.
“We caught this nigga trying to steal a Drew Barrymore movie,” Bernie said, giving the guy an evil look as we walked past.
He and Kevin Mack guided me down the hallway into the kitchen, out of earshot of the prisoner.
“We don’t really give a damn about the Drew Barrymore thing,” Bernie told me. “That bitch’s movies are all the same anyway.
“But he was carrying this backpack,” Bernie continued, holding up a nylon bag with a key chain full of soda can tabs attached. “And we found this in it.”
Bernie flipped me an envelope. I looked inside to find four glossy eight-by- ten photographs that made me flinch. Each picture was an extreme close-up of a lifeless, shattered, bloody face. It was, to my utter astonishment, the Ludlow Four. Overcoming my revulsion, I pulled the pictures toward me for closer inspection.
I held up one of the pictures and blurted, “That’s Wanda Bass. I saw her in the funeral home after they patched her up. That’s definitely her.”
“Yeah, and that’s Dee- Dub,” Bernie said, pointing to another photo. Then he held up a single sheet of paper that bore The Stuff’s stamp at the top. “This came with it,” he said.
It was written like a corporate memo: “TO: All Employees, FROM: The Director, RE: Reminder about Cutting.” I read it quickly, then went back over it more slowly. It answered some of the questions that had confounded me. Why kill the dealers? They had diluted the brand. Why kill all four at once and leave them together in a way that would garner so much attention? Because being noticed was the point. Who did the killing? The Director.
Whoever that was.
“Where the hell did he get this?” I asked.
“He won’t talk to us,” Bernie said. “But we figured he’d have to talk to you, you being a reporter and all.”
If only that were true.
“Well, it’s not like I have subpoena power,” I said. “Why didn’t you just call the cops?”
“We ain’t exactly the cop-calling type, Bird Man,” Bernie said matter- of- factly.
“No, I guess you’re not,” I said, frowning until an idea came to me. “Okay, but we can still act like cops. You guys be the bad cops. You know, the tough guys, threatening him and stuff. I’ll be the good cop, protecting him from you. We’ll work him that way. Okay?”
I didn’t think playing bad cop would be too much of a stretch for either of them.
“Cool,” Bernie said, clearly enjoying the idea. Of course he did. It was just like a scene from one of his bootleg movies.
“Just follow my lead,” I said.
We went back into the living room, where Bat Boy eyed us. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-two or twenty-three. And the baby fat made him look even younger.
“I’m telling you, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, as if we were in the middle of a conversation. “I don’t think we should hurt him.”
I turned my back on Bat Boy and winked, then faced him again. Bernie was a little slow to react, but Kevin Mack caught on perfectly.
“Forget it. I’m cutting his dick off,” he said angrily, pulling out a thick- bladed hunting knife. From under the sock, a muffled scream escaped Bat Boy’s throat. I turned away again so Bat Boy couldn’t see how hard I was working to suppress a laugh.
“Look, let’s at least give him a
chance
to talk,” I pleaded. “
Then
you can cut his dick off.”
“A’right,” Kevin said, walking over to Bat Boy. “I’m going to take this thing off his face now. But if he screams, I’m cutting his dick off. You hear that, sucker?”
Bat Boy nodded, and Kevin Mack roughly ripped off the duct tape. The guy didn’t have a lot of hair, but it still couldn’t have felt good.
“Owww,” he whined.
“Keep it down,” Kevin Mack said, putting the point of the knife on the fly opening of the guy’s boxers. Yes, bad cop was definitely well within Kevin Mack’s theatrical repertoire.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Bat Boy said in a high, panicked voice.
“Take it easy,” I told Kevin Mack. Bat Boy was legitimately scared witless and I had this brief moment of ethical pause. Should I be interviewing a source who was being forced to talk against his will? For that matter, was it a good idea to willingly participate in what was essentially a forceful kidnapping? What would
Editor & Publisher
have to say about such journalistic tactics?
And then I thought, oh right, screw
Editor & Publisher
. No one was trying to kill them.
“Remember what happened the last time you did that?” I said. “Remember all the blood? I am
not
helping you clean that up again.”
I turned to Bat Boy. “Nothing bleeds quite like a penis wound,” I said, in a scholarly manner. “I’m not sure how familiar you are with anatomy, but the dorsal gonadal artery and the medial erectile vein converge at the base of the penis. If you sever both, you get a real gusher on your hands. You should have seen the last guy. He was hanging upside down just like you and he ended up with a face full of penis blood.”
Bat Boy looked like he was buying it. I turned to Kevin Mack.
“Hey, what did you end up doing with that last guy’s Johnson anyway?”
“Fed it to the fish, remember?” Kevin Mack said with perfect timing.
“I swear,” I said to Bat Boy. “I think this bloodthirsty bastard enjoys this.”
“Well, the fish sure did,” Kevin Mack said. “They kept pecking at it, knocking it around, having fun with it. The big fish would gnaw on it for a while, then the little fish would dart out and take a chunk. That little blue one over there in the corner, he was a penis-eatin’ fool. I swear, he’s been begging for another one ever since.”
Even though it was hard to tell through his chocolate- brown skin, I thought I detected Bat Boy blanching.
“Look, I’m sure this guy is going to be more reasonable than the last one,” I said. “Maybe if you could give me a little time alone with him, we can get this resolved, okay?”
“A’right,” Kevin said, heading back into the kitchen with Bernie, leaving me alone with Bat Boy.
I bent down on one knee, so Bat Boy and I could be face-to- face.
“Listen,” I said in a soothing voice. “I’m a nice guy. Really, I am. These other two guys? They’re not so nice. But I did them a favor recently so maybe now they’ll do me a favor and let you off easy. But you’re going to have to cooperate, or I can’t guarantee you’ll ever be able to pee standing up again. Got it?”
He nodded.
“Good, now what’s your name?”
“Rashan Reeves.”
“Very good, Rashan. That package with the pictures in it, where did you get it?”
“It was in my last shipment,” Rashan said. “I was getting four bricks and they just put it in there.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
Rashan whimpered, his eyes shifting wildly about. He bucked a little bit, but wasn’t going anywhere. The Brick City Browns were handy with knots.
“Don’t make me call in my friends,” I warned.
“I don’t know, man,” he said quickly. “They make me wear this blindfold. Honest.
I do not know.
The boss is called ‘the Director’ and that’s the only name I ever heard anyone call him. They say it like he all-powerful, like ‘nobody mess with the Director.’ His people come in this white van, and as soon as I seen the van, I put on the blindfold. And that’s it.”
I believed him. This Director guy seemed nothing if not organized—he was sending out memos, for goodness sake. Nobody with that level of competence would allow a street-level hustler to know much about the operation.
“So how do you know when it’s time to pick up another shipment?”
“I do it the same time every week.”
“Same place?”
“Naw, they call me and tell me where to meet them. Then I put on a blindfold and get in a van so I can’t see nothing.”
“A white van?”
“Yeah.”
Of course it was a white van. I wondered if the Director had a fleet of them, or just one. Bat Boy, still upside down, patiently awaited my next query.
“They always call you from the same number?” I asked.
“Different numbers. I think they use them throw-away cell phones.”
“They always give you the same amount of product?”
“Yeah.”
“But what if you haven’t sold all your product from the week before?”
“Don’t matter. I signed a contract.”
“A contract?” I said. Generally speaking, distributors of Class 1 narcotics were not known to be real caught up in the use of legal instruments.
“Yeah, I sign a new one every couple of months. It’s basically, like, I agree to sell so much product and they agree to provide it to me, and it’s all done out ahead of time. My contract right now is for four bricks.”
I did the math. Four bricks was two hundred bags. Even assuming he sold each bag at a $2 profit, that was still only $400 a week. So, basically, he was risking jail, getting smoked by a fellow dealer, stabbed by a wacked-out customer, or killed by his own employer—all for twenty grand a year. True, the hours were flexible. And it was tax free. But I was guessing the health plan sucked.
“And how did you hook up with these guys? Who recruited you?”
“This dude in prison.”
“Which dude?”
“The drug counselor dude,” Rashan said. “One of my boys told me all I had to do was
pretend
I had a drug problem, get treatment for it, and then
pretend
I was cured, and they would let me out early. So that’s what I did. Knocked six months off my stretch.”
Ah, the redemptive power of recovery.
“So you met a guy in counseling who hooked you up?” I asked.
“No, no. The dude who hooked me up
was
the counselor.”
“The substance abuse counselor?” I asked. Just when I thought I’d heard everything.
“Yeah. He took me aside one day and asked me if I wanted to make easy money selling the best stuff on the market. I heard all kinds of stories about how hard it was to get a job when you get out because no one hires ex-cons, so I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And when I got out, one of his boys found me.”
“What’s the counselor’s name?
“Umm . . .”
“Don’t make me call my friend in the next room.”
“No, no, come on, man,” he pleaded. “I’m just trying to think . . . It was Mr. Hector . . . Mr. Hector . . . Alvarez. Yeah, that’s it. Hector Alvarez.”
Hector Alvarez. I guess that sounded like a plausible name for someone who worked for José de Jesús Encarcerón. But it also sounded like a name my pal Rashan Reeves could have made up on the spot. There was one way to check. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Tommy.
“You have a lot riding on this phone call, Rashan,” I said as I waited for Tommy to pick up.
He answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Tommy, it’s Carter.”
“Where have you been? Tina just asked me if I had seen you.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That you were in the bathroom.”
“Good man,” I said. “Now can you do me a favor real quick? Look up and see if a guy named Hector Alvarez works for the Department of Corrections.”
We had a database of all state and local employees that, from an information standpoint, was nothing short of gold. It came to us courtesy of an Open Public Records Act request our newspaper made each year. It made snooping on public employees as simple as a few mouse clicks.
“Yeah, got him,” Tommy said. “Hector I. Alvarez. Born 10/25/1963. Hired 11/01/2003. He made $38,835 last year.”
“Excellent. Can you get an address for him?”
“Hang on,” Tommy said, and I heard his keyboard chattering away. I cupped my cell phone and turned upside down so I could look at Rashan.
“When you get out of here, you might want to send a thank- you note to Tommy Hernandez, care of the
Eagle-Examiner,”
I said. “He just saved something precious to you.”

t didn’t take much convincing to get Rashan to join my field trip to Hector Alvarez’s house. Anything that didn’t involve his penis in close proximity to Kevin Mack’s hunting knife sounded like a pretty good idea to Rashan.

By the time he was untied, redressed, and debriefed—a short, scary lecture from Bernie Kosar about the consequences of ever again tussling with the Browns—it was after five. A cold, blustery night was settling in outside. Rashan had his backpack returned to him, soda can tabs still attached, then was blindfolded and released into my recognizance. As an honorary member of the Brick City Browns, I was bound to protect the secrecy of Brown Town’s location. So I escorted him to my car, then drove around for a few blocks before allowing him to remove his blindfold.

It wouldn’t have surprised me at any point if Rashan had simply bolted. After all, it was clear I wasn’t the muscle. It was possible Rashan was afraid the Browns would hunt him down if he ran. Or he might have felt beholden to me for having helped save him from horrible disfigurement. Either way, he had become quite docile, even cooperative.

And as we drove across town toward Hector Alvarez’s home—the address Tommy gave me was on Sanford Avenue, in Newark’s West Ward—he seemed amenable to chatting.

“So tell me again how Alvarez picked you out,” I asked. “I don’t know, man. I was just going through the program like everyone else. I was getting toward the end. I think he knew I was about to be released. And he asked me what I was planning to do when I got out. I told him I didn’t know. Then he started telling me about The Stuff.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That it was the best. That I’d make a lot of money. That junkies went wild for it.”
“Did they?”
“Oh, hell yeah. I got out like four months ago. My first contract was for two bricks—I was a little worried about biting off more than I could chew. But I didn’t have no problems selling it. So I went up to four. I sold out every week. I didn’t even have to find customers. They was finding me. I was thinking about going up to six or eight bricks, but now I don’t know. I might quit.”
“Why?” You know, besides the fact that it was illegal, immoral, and dangerous.
We idled at a stoplight. Rashan was staring out the passenger side window as he spoke. “That Ludlow Street thing, man,” he said. “That’s some cold business. I don’t want to end up like that because some dude thinks I didn’t follow my contract.”
“Was that really in the contract you signed? The part about not cutting?”
“Yeah, man. I mean, I guess it was. I didn’t realize they were that serious about it, though.”
“You keep a copy of the contract?” I asked hopefully.
“Nah.”
“Too bad,” I said. There’s something about documents supporting a story—any kind of documents—that editors absolutely love. I would estimate documents were the source of a third of all Brodie’s newsroom erections.
“So did you know any of the Ludlow Four?” I asked.
“Nah.”
“None of them?”
“Nah. I don’t know any of the other dealers,” he said. “It’s like we all got our separate little things going on. The guy who gives me The Stuff, he tells me I’ll never have to worry about competition. He said we all got our own turf and we’ll never bump into each other.”
“So that’s why you don’t quit?”
“Yeah, man,” he said. “It’s like guaranteed profit. Where else is a guy like me going to make that kind of money?”
Twenty lousy grand a year? How about down at the ports. In a trade union. Driving a truck. In fact, there were dozens of jobs where a young man like Rashan Reeves could make much better money and do it legally—but only if he was willing to be a little patient, get some training, and establish a decent work history.
“I think this is it,” I said as we pulled up across the street from the Sanford Avenue address Tommy had given me. It was a two-story duplex with separate entrances adjacent to each other. Both sides were dark and there were no cars in the short driveway.
“Hang here for a second,” I said.
I got out just in time to get sideswiped by a cold gust of wind. I walked quickly up the five stairs on the front porch. Hector Alvarez’s address had an
A
after it, so I rang the doorbell on the left.
I hadn’t necessarily formulated a plan for what I would do if Alvarez actually answered but it didn’t matter. There was no one home.
Still, there were signs of continued occupancy: only one day’s worth of mail in the box, a girl’s bike chained to the railing, jackets hanging in the foyer. There was definitely a lived-in aura. It seemed worthwhile to stay for a while to see who might show up.
“Mind hanging here for a little bit?” I asked when I returned to the warmth of the Malibu.
“You mean, like a stakeout?” Rashan asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Cool,” he said, sounding genuinely enthused. “You got yourself a pretty cool job, huh?”
“There are lots of cool jobs out there, Rashan,” I said. “We’ll have to find you one someday.”