Eyes of the Innocent: A Mystery (17 page)

I could much more easily believe this was the result of some romantic entanglement. But if the spilled blood was to be believed, Byers’s disappearance was not a peaceful one—which ruled out the run-off-with-the-girlfriend/boyfriend scenario.

Then again, there was nothing yet to say the blood belonged to Byers. For all we knew at this point, it had another owner. Perhaps Byers was not the kidnapped but the kidnapper, having belted someone over the head, dragged his victim out of the house, and gone on the lam until he could concoct a cover story.

In other words, the blindfold and oven mitts were firmly in place. So I did what any good reporter does when facing such uncertainty: I procrastinated by checking my e-mail.

It was, by and large, the usual mix of urgent messages from our hyperactive HR department (send in your vacation pictures for the company newsletter!); press releases I would never read (the office of a congressman from New Orleans sent me three or four a day because I once wrote a story that contained the word “Louisiana”); and come-ons from that seemingly massive group of African princes who needed but a small loan to claim their long-lost fortunes (doesn’t it always take $50,000 to become a multimillionaire?).

I nearly turned away without reading any of them. Except there was one message, which claimed to be sent by “Concerned Citizen,” that stood out. It had the subject line “keep digging.” Curious, I clicked twice and read:

ms. mcmillan and mr. ross,

i saw your story today in the eagle-examiner on that woman with the two kids. theres a reason you couldnt find the mortgage. there are things going on at the courthouse which if i told you you wouldnt believe. keep digging and youll find it.

im sorry i cant give you my name. but i could get fired for talking to you and i have kids to feed and i need this job.

signed,

a concerned citizen.

I leaned back and reread it. As a reporter, you get anonymous mail all the time. Much of it is nonsensical, rambling, Unabomber-style stuff good for a laugh—and not much else. But every now and then you get something like this that sticks to your ribs. You learn to separate the credible from the crazies, primarily by judging grammar and spelling. Other than the aversion to apostrophes and the e. e. cummings approach to capitalization, this one wasn’t bad.

Mostly, it brought back the things that had been gnawing at me since Sweet Thang first called me from the courthouse. Where was that silly mortgage? Who made it disappear? And, perhaps most important, why?

*   *   *

I lifted my eyes from the screen and realized I had allowed myself to get a little too engrossed, which meant I didn’t notice Sal Szanto huffing toward me. And now it was too late: 245 pounds of pear-shaped, middle-aged Italian-American editor was already standing over me, close enough I could smell the stale coffee on his breath. So much for being able to see the enemy coming.

Szanto was one of those editors who didn’t believe in leaving his office, except in cases of emergency or lunch. As it was now past lunchtime, it could only mean he was in crisis.

“Did you get it?” he asked, without prelude, with an urgency that just made it impossible not to mess with him a little.

“Hi, Sal, nice to see you,” I said. “There’s something different about you. Did you switch antacid brands?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m wearing a different deodorant, too. It’s called Garbage Guard. They tell me it works great, so why don’t you cut the garbage and tell me whether you got the bracelet or not.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“Not yet.”

“Why the hell not?” he demanded.

“Here,” I said, fishing the bracelet out of my pocket and dangling it in front of him. “Why don’t you give it to her? Go ahead. Be the hero.”

Szanto turned to look in the direction of the intern desk pod, a place from which Sweet Thang was, of course, still absent.

“Where is she?”

“I think you’re beginning to realize why I haven’t given it to her yet,” I said.

Szanto swung back toward me, annoyed, what little patience he had long since spent. I don’t know what it was, but the more frustrated he got, the more I enjoyed screwing with him.

“Do you know where she is?”

“I assume she’s off somewhere looking for her bracelet.”

“Did you call her cell?”

“No, Sal, I sent smoke signals which were then relayed by drummer-messengers perched on a series of hilltops,” I said. “It’s the newest, most sophisticated method of communication yet devised. I don’t think humankind will ever come up with anything better.”

Szanto drew breath as if he was going to let me have it, then stopped himself.

“Look,” he said, sinking into a chair next to me, releasing a huge cloud of java-tinged exhaust. “I just need you to help me out here. You know how fixated Brodie gets about certain things, right?”

“I do.”

“He’s like one of those little dogs, the little white ones with the black splotches that want to hump your leg all day long,” Szanto said. “What do you call those?”

“Jack Russell terrier?”

“Exactly. He’s a Jack Russell terrier. And right now, I’m just a lonely ankle, and I’ve had this dog’s tiny little schlong banging into me all day—bang, bang, bang, bang. I mean, can you imagine what kind of day that is?”

“Don’t even want to.”

“No, really, you don’t. Trust me,” Szanto said. “Anyhow, the whole reason Brodie is giving me this undue attention is this bracelet. Apparently, Sweet Thang called her daddy crying, and her daddy called Brodie and asked for a favor, and with everything else going on, Brodie still thinks I have nothing better to do than to make sure he can do a favor for his buddy. So if you could please, please just get this girl her bracelet back, and tell her to call her daddy, who can then call Brodie, you’d really be doing
me
a favor.”

“Okay, I’ll do it just as soon as she walks in the door,” I assured him, then turned my attention toward my computer screen, which is International Body Language for “we’re done with this conversation and now you can go away.”

Except Szanto was acting like he didn’t understand it.

“Not soon enough,” he said.

“Huh?” I said, still keeping my head down.

“You got to go find her.”

“Excuse me?” I said, and looked up at him, trying to effect my best vacant stare, as if I didn’t know who he was or what he was talking about.

“Find her. Find Sweet Thang and give her that bracelet.”

“You’ve
got
to be kidding me.”

He didn’t reply, just grinned—one of his four smiles for the year, so he must have been serious.

“You’re not kidding me.”

He shook his head.

“Sal, I sent Sweet Thang off on what is probably a dead-end reporting errand to Baxter Terrace,” I said. “I called her, at least twice. I don’t know why she’s not answering her phone. Maybe she stopped at the mall and decided to buy the entire Nordstrom shoe department on her way back in. But she’ll be back any second. And when she gets here, I’ll give her the bracelet.”

Szanto shook his head again.

“Not good enough,” he replied. “Look, the sooner you get that bracelet to that girl, the sooner my half-hourly e-mails, phone calls, and just-checking-in visits from Brodie stop. And I just can’t take him. I can’t take any more of that today.”

He clasped his clubbed fingers together in a pleading gesture. His eyes were big and wet, and in a moment of weakness—brought on by an awareness of the abuse I piled on him and a small amount of guilt that at least one of his stomach ulcers probably had my name on it—I agreed.

“Okay.” I sighed. “Fine. I’ll call you the moment I hand her the bracelet.”

“Thanks,” Szanto said, raising himself with a grunt from the chair next to me. He clapped me affectionately on the shoulder—another quarterly event—then walked away.

*   *   *

Before committing myself to another Baxter Terrace jaunt, I dialed Sweet Thang’s numbers one last time. Both went to voice mail.

I looked at the time on my phone, which read 2:13. She and I departed Jersey City around nine-thirty. If she drove straight to Baxter Terrace, she would have gotten there no later than ten. That meant Sweet Thang and her buoyant personality had spent more than four hours in one of the nation’s most depressed public housing projects. It sounded like a reality show gone horribly wrong—instead of
Dancing with the Stars,
it was
Prancing in the Projects.

There was no telling what had kept her there all that time. It was daylight, so I wasn’t concerned about her well-being. Well, okay, I worried about it a little. Mostly, I was just curious: What had she been doing all this time?

I filled my drive thinking about the possibilities. As I walked through the courtyard toward Bertie Harris’s apartment, I heard a series of birdcalls—a macaw, a chickadee, and an osprey. Okay, I’m making that up. But it sounded like different birds than last time.

Going through the open portal of Bertie’s building, I hiked the three flights up to the landing where I had been so thoroughly stonewalled the night before. I raised my fist to rap on the door but then paused mid-strike, having heard a noise from inside. What was that? Was it … laughter? I paused, just to make sure. Yes, laughter, the deep, chuckling kind you hear from two longtime friends who know just how to get each other going.

I also smelled something powerful enough to overcome the natural stench of the projects. Was it … baking bread?

I thought about eavesdropping a little more, but I just had to know. I knocked.

“I’ll get it,” I heard Sweet Thang call.

She opened the door, looking delighted—if a little surprised—to see me.

“Oh, my goodness, hi!” she bubbled. “It’s so great of you to come over. We’re having the best time! Come on in. I’m just making some banana bread.”

I stepped over the threshold feeling a little uncertain, given the rebuke I had experienced the last time I visited. But no, everything had changed. There would be no screaming, no hateful glares, no slamming of furniture. Sweet Thang was here. Baking was happening. A transformation had taken place.

Especially when it came to the apartment’s occupant, who was sitting at a card table in the far corner, a coffee mug in front of her, smiling pleasantly. She was older, but it was always hard to tell with black women. I was thirty-two and already had wrinkles. She’d probably be in her casket thirty years from now and still not have any.

As a skilled observer of the obvious, I concluded this had to be Bertie Harris. She and Akilah had the same cheekbones, the same lean build, the same no-nonsense ponytail, the same dark coloring.

“Mrs. Harris, I’m Car—” I started.

“I know who you are,” Bertie replied agreeably.

“I’m sorry abou—”

“I know you’re sorry about last night. And I’m sorry, too,” she said. “Lauren explained to me how it is for a reporter on deadline. You was just trying to do your job.”

This had to be the easiest reconciliation in the history of human relations. I ought to have Sweet Thang do my advance work more often.

“Well, please accept my apology all the same,” I said.

“You’re right,” Bertie said to Sweet Thang, who was in the kitchen, “he
is
cute.”

“Told you,” Sweet Thang chirped back.

As I blushed, Bertie took a sip from her coffee, utterly comfortable with my presence. I tried to relax, still feeling like I didn’t quite belong, not wanting to screw up whatever it was Sweet Thang had done to build a trust with this woman.

I wasn’t going to sit down until offered a place (we cute boys have manners), nor was I going to take off my jacket (we cute boys aren’t presumptuous), so I sneaked a furtive glance around the apartment (we reporters are nosy). The furnishings—a small couch, a recliner, a coffee table, and that folding table—were older and a bit worn. But I had certainly seen worse.

The television that had been blaring
Entertainment Tonight
was still playing but with the sound down. It had to be at least a forty-two-inch screen, which surprised me a little. You don’t see many of those in the projects—sad to say, but nice belongings usually get stolen within a week of their arrival. That the TV was still here either meant it had just arrived; the local addicts were too lazy to steal from the third floor; or, more likely, Bertie Harris was so well regarded around here no one messed with her.

In the pictures that were scattered about the place, I saw Akilah with what appeared to be some older brothers and sisters—again, so much for the lonely-orphan story.

“I’m going to leave it in there another few minutes,” Sweet Thang announced as she came back into the room and took a seat at the folding table. “The middle is still just a little gooey.”

“Mr. Ross, you better marry this girl if you have any sense,” Bertie said. “It’s not every day you find a woman who can bake.”

“Wait until you taste it first,” Sweet Thang said.

“I don’t need to. I can smell it. It’s wonderful.”

“I was just lucky you had some soft bananas,” Sweet Thang replied. “My recipe doesn’t work unless they’re good and ripe.”

They kept bantering about the subtleties of perfect banana bread and I could only watch in amazement. Here was this woman in the midst of a family tragedy; a woman who, just last night, would have thrown me out her window if she had the strength. Yet she and Sweet Thang were instant buddies.

That was Sweet Thang’s gift, one I didn’t necessarily have but could at least recognize and appreciate in a fellow reporter. She made people
want
to talk to her.

One of the few traits that I’ve found universal among
Homo sapiens
is the desire to be understood by other
Homo sapiens
. It’s a need that translates across every racial, gender, and socioeconomic barrier. Whether you’re talking about the CEO or the janitor, the congressman or the undocumented immigrant, people just want to be listened to. It’s why we talk so damn much.

Most of the time, we harbor the suspicion no one is really paying attention. Or, if they are, they still don’t get it. But every once in a while, we bump into someone like Sweet Thang, the rare person who actually makes us feel heard.