Eyes of the Innocent: A Mystery (32 page)

“What’s going on?” he asked as he climbed in.

As I tore off toward the Ironbound, I told him about Sweet Thang’s bone-chilling scream, my inability to convince the authorities to take it seriously, and the existence of the so-called Puerto Rican man.

“I think I know who he is,” Tommy said. “But he’s not Puerto Rican. I think he’s Brazilian.”

“Tell me more.”

“Remember how you asked me to check out all the dead donors and see if maybe there was something they had in common?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I was looking at the names for a while, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. They were just a bunch of dead guys who lived in the Ironbound and they … Red light, red light, red light.”

I looked up and saw, sure enough, a traffic light. And it was red.

“Sorry,” I said, wearing off a layer of brakepad but managing to get the car stopped just a foot or so over the line.

“No problem. Anyhow, after a while I stopped looking at the names and honed in on the addresses instead. You know, like maybe there was a pattern there?”

“Okay,” I said, gunning the car as soon as the light turned.

“And it turned out there was,” Tommy continued. “All of the houses had been flipped.”

“Flipped?”

“Yeah, you know, bought for a low price, rehabbed, then sold…”

“I know what flipping is,” I said.

“Sorry. Anyhow, once I caught onto the pattern, it was pretty easy to see. Basically, after all these old people died, their houses had been bought by an LLC—that stands for ‘limited liability company,’ by the way.”

“I know what—”

“I know, I know, sorry. I just didn’t know what any of this stuff was before I started covering it. Anyway, it’s all these different LLCs, never the same one twice, buying these houses and flipping them for, like, twice the original price or more six months later.”

“Okay,” I said as we passed under the railroad tracks by Newark Penn Station. “So, to play devil’s advocate, who’s to say these LLCs have anything to do with one another?”

“Well, they don’t appear to, except I recognized one of the names: Bahia Partners LLC,” Tommy said. “I remembered from a council meeting I covered not long ago where they were voting on selling some city land to Bahia
Group
LLC. Then I started looking through the council minutes from the last few years—our library has them on file—and I started seeing a few other land-buying LLCs that turned out to have very similar names to LLCs that had flipped properties. There was, like, Amazonas Associates LLC and Amazonas Company LLC, Esperito Santo Investments LLC and Esperito Santo Financial LLC…”

“I get it, I get it,” I said. “Someone got tired of thinking up new names so they just started recycling the old ones with a small twist on them.”

“Yeah, and it turns out they’re all names of states in Brazil,” Tommy said. “And you’ll never guess who was always proposing the land sales to those particular LLCs.”

“Oh, but let me try,” I said. “Councilman Wendell A. Byers.”

“Very good,” Tommy said. “You’re pretty smart for a guy who thinks khaki is the new black.”

*   *   *

I had to slow down once we crossed into the Ironbound and onto Ferry Street, the only road in Newark that is reliably crowded at just about any hour of the day.

As we crept along, I assembled the narrative in my head. A house flipper who wanted to get into new home construction knew it would be handy to have a city councilman in his pocket. So he started using the names of dead people to make campaign donations well above and beyond the legal limit. In return, the councilman supports the developer in making city land purchases, likely at generous rates.

It sounded like your garden variety Garden State corruption. So where did that cozy little relationship go wrong?

I couldn’t figure it out. Or, more accurately, I didn’t have the time to give it proper thought. Having passed Monroe, Madison, and several other dead presidents, I finally made it to Van Buren Street. It was one way, the wrong way, so I had to hook around on Polk. He was a better president anyway.

Finally I reached the address, which belonged to a small, wooden-framed, single-family house with no apparent sign of activity.

“Okay,” Tommy said. “What now?”

“Well,” I said. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me.”

“Damn. Me, either.”

I looked around for an aging white Datsun and saw it parked down the street, which wasn’t especially surprising. If this guy really was a contractor of some sort, he probably shouldn’t be real busy late in the afternoon on a raw day in February.

Another car pulled onto the block and I recognized it as a city-owned SUV.

“Let’s go,” I said. “That’s Denardo Webster, Windy’s chief of staff.”

“And down low lover?” Tommy asked.

“One and the same.”

I got out of my car and hailed Denardo, who pulled alongside with his window down.

“Okay, here’s the deal: this is the Spanish dude’s house,” I said, pointing across the street. “We need to figure out who his boss is. Then we need to figure out where the the boss is. And we need to figure it out fast.”

“And you’re thinking the Spanish dude’s boss is the guy that killed Windy?” Denardo said.

“I am.”

“All right,” Denardo said. “Just do me a favor: when we find this bastard, I want a few minutes alone with him to explain my grief over losing my friend.”

He could have all year, as far as I was concerned.

“No problem,” I said.

Denardo parked in front of us. He grabbed a city council badge off the dashboard—what was he going to do with that? Table some resolutions? Recommend further study?—and joined Tommy and me.

As we crossed the street to confront an unwitting Hector Gomes, I wondered what we must have looked like to an outsider. There was me, the whitest man in Newark; Denardo, the black man-mountain; and Tommy, a scrawny, nattily dressed Cuban kid.

What an odd trio. Yet here we were, the best and perhaps last hope Sweet Thang and Akilah had at making it to tomorrow.

We reached the front door, and as I considered the etiquette of knocking versus ringing, Denardo lowered his shoulder and barreled into it, grunting as his three hundred-plus pounds connected and splintered the wood around the lock.

“Cheap door,” Denardo said as it gave way. “That’s the problem with these house flippers. They don’t build stuff to last.”

Tommy and I followed Denardo as he stormed into the living room, where we found a slightly built Hispanic man dressed in a thin white T-shirt, frantically pulling up his boxer shorts.

“Police,” Denardo shouted, waving his city council badge. “Let’s see those hands.”

The hands shot into the air, and as we all took in the scene before us—the open porno magazine, the box of tissues, the small tent he was pitching in his shorts—we all quickly reached the same conclusion: Hector Gomes had been fondling his love monkey.

“Oh, that’s just
un
fortunate,” Tommy said.

“Would you look at this little pervert?” Denardo said. “I mean, what’s this?”

Denardo picked up the magazine, which had been bestowed with the very subtle title
¡Gigante Tetas!
As advertised, it featured some women whose breasts appeared to have been significantly aided by science. Denardo waved the magazine above his head as if it was evidence of the most heinous turpitude.

“This violates morals laws! There are codes and statutes—you’re breaking the Public Decency Act!”

There was no such thing, of course. And if any lawmaking body tried to render illegal what Gomes had been doing, it would have to first build some pretty big jails, because every guy in America would need to be locked up. But this was not a moment to split legal hairs.

“I ought to take you downtown right now,” Denardo continued. “Hell, I ought to take you to immigration services. You know they’ll revoke your green card for this!”

His erection fast subsiding, Gomes looked miserable. I almost felt bad for the guy. We had just interrupted the best part of his day. But I could also see where Denardo was heading with this, and given the stakes, I wasn’t going to stop him.

“But it happens to be your lucky day,” Denardo said. “Because we ain’t here to bust perverts. We need some information. You think you can play ball with us?”

Tommy couldn’t help himself: “Oh, I think it’s pretty clear he can play ball.”

I brought my hand to my face so Gomes couldn’t see the smile. Denardo didn’t let it break his momentum. He put one foot on the couch and lowered his face until he was a few inches away from Gomes, who weighed roughly one third of a Denardo. I don’t know if Gomes was intimidated. But I was intimidated for him.

“Now, you know who I am, yes?” Denardo said quietly.

Gomes, his hands still in the air, nodded. Obviously, he would have recognized Denardo from the numerous times he had run errands to the Springfield Avenue office.

“And you know who I work for, right?”

Gomes nodded again.

“Okay, now I want to know who
you
work for. I want to know where all that money you’ve been giving me has been coming from.”

Gomes looked at me, then at Tommy, then cast a forlorn glance at
¡Gigante Tetas!
But none of us were going to help him with his dilemma. His boss was obviously a bad dude, a man who would not react kindly to an employee’s betrayal; and yet here was this crazed, neckless black man in front of him, spouting off about green cards and other topics that tended to get immigrants, even legal ones, very nervous. Gomes knew he was going have to piss off one of these men. So which one?

But ultimately one threat was only theoretical while the other was directly in front of him, huffing fried chicken breath into his face. Besides, Gomes had been caught, quite literally, with his pants down. He had no will to fight. This was surrender.

He slowly let his hands sink to his sides and then whispered just one word:

“Primo.”

*   *   *

He said the name reverently, as if we would know instantly who he was talking about. But Tommy, Denardo, and I just stared at each other stupidly.

Denardo recovered first.

“Who’s Primo?” he demanded.

“That’s what everyone call him,” Gomes said, with the medium-heavy accent of someone who started speaking English sometime after adolescence. “I don’t know his real name. No one know his real name.”

“In Spanish,
primo
means ‘cousin,’ ” Tommy interjected. “But it can also be a nickname, sort of like ‘Buddy.’ I’m sure it’s the same in Portuguese.”

“Well, whatever, he ain’t no buddy of mine,” Denardo said, then turned back to Gomes. “If you don’t know his name, how do he give you a paycheck?”

“Cash,” Gomes said. “Everything is cash with Primo. I always gave you cash. Primo do cash with everyone.”

“So, what, you ran errands for him?” I asked.

“I’m an electrician,” Gomes said, with a small hint of pride. “But sometime he ask me to do things. Primo ask you to do things, you do them.”

“What, he threatens people or something?”

“He don’t have to,” Gomes said. “One time a man try to cheat him on some lumber. He end up floating in the river with three nails in his head. Primo say nothing. But everyone know who kill him.”

I immediately thought of Windy Byers rolled up in that car, nails sticking out of his body at odd angles. In my imagination, he had a look of horror on his face, like he could still feel those stainless steel spikes in his brain.

Then I thought of Sweet Thang. I’m sure she told this lunatic she was a reporter. Everyone knows you don’t just kill newspaper reporters, right? It makes for bad publicity.

Then again, you don’t just kill a city councilman, either.

“Didn’t anyone report him to the police?” Tommy asked.

“No one want to mess with Primo,” Gomes said. “I should no be talking to you. I am as good as dead now. I will have to go somewhere and hope Primo never find me.”

“You won’t have to if we can get to him quickly,” I said. “He didn’t kill a lumber thief this time. He killed a city councilman. There are going to be people who make sure he goes to jail a long time for that. We just need to find him.”

Gomes lit up.

“He has an office no far from here,” he said. “He do all his business there. Sometime I think he live there. I give you directions.”

“Hell no,” Denardo said. “You’re coming with us.”

Gomes acquiesced meekly. He went to grab his pants, which were crumpled on the floor next to the couch, but Denardo put out an arm bar.

“Oh, no, you’re coming like that. I don’t want you running off.”

If Gomes complained, I probably would have let the man have his pants—his dignity had suffered enough for one day. But he just accepted the order. I got the sense the guy was actually happy to be on our side. It didn’t sound like Primo was exactly a joy to work for. Guys like that tend not to take classes on enlightened management.

“Let’s move it,” I said. “We might not have much time.”

If we were the odd trio coming in, we were now the ridiculous quartet: the whitest WASP in Newark, the black man-mountain, the queer Cuban, and an electrician in his boxer shorts.

Gomes hopped in Denardo’s SUV while Tommy and I followed in the Malibu. As we turned back on Ferry Street, heading away from downtown, I saw Denardo’s beefy hand shoot out the driver’s side window and stick a flashing light atop his SUV. Then he hit the siren—no doubt installed for all those pressing city council emergencies—and we were soon zooming down the road’s middle stripe as traffic swerved out of our way.

We veered off Ferry Street onto Wilson Avenue, zipping through an industrial part of town, underneath Routes 1 and 9 and the New Jersey Turnpike, over potholes large enough to jar loose dental fixtures. We took a tire-screaming left at Avenue P, passing the off-airport Enterprise rental car location where the mysterious Donato Semedo—perhaps aka. Primo—had dumped Windy.

At some point, Denardo silenced his siren, though we were still cruising at speeds that would have put us in good company among the Avenue P drag racers. Then he jammed the brakes and turned down a small dirt side street that may or may not have been marked—I was too intent on tailing him to notice.