Eyes of the Innocent: A Mystery (15 page)

“Why would I ask a question about what I’m doing?” I said, futilely trying to stall the attack. “Don’t I already know what I’m doing?”

“No, you’re not Carter Ross. Try to keep up: you’re the city editor,” she replied patiently, in that kindergarten-teacher voice most women over the age of thirty can summon instantly. “Remember, you have to imagine you’re the city editor?”

“Oh, right.”

“Okay, good. So anyhow, you’ve asked this question about Carter Ross. And do you know what the reply is?”

“Am I supposed to know this one?” I asked.

“No, not yet.”

“Okay, then no.”

Where was the edge of the woods, anyway? Where was my den, my nest, or whatever home I had managed to scrape out for myself with my continuously growing rodent incisors? Did the mouse
ever
win in those nature shows?

“The reply you get,” Tina said, sighing dramatically, and now I knew the attack was coming—the owl was swooping down from the left. No, the right! It’s too late for Mr. Mouse! Too late!

“The reply,” she continued, “is that Carter Ross, the investigative reporter, is off chasing after a young girl’s charm bracelet—although, really, he’s probably just chasing the young girl. Ha ha ha.

“Now,” Tina said, “how would that make you feel, Mr. City Editor?”

The owl’s talons closed around my tiny, trembling body and I was lifted off the ground, my meager
eep-eep-eep
cry all but drowned out by the victorious hooting as the owl flapped skyward.

“I don’t know,” I said meekly. “Since we’re pretty clearly talking about you, why don’t you go ahead and tell me how it made
you
feel.”

“Well, let’s see here,” she said, sarcastically pretending that she was suddenly considering the question. “As an editor at this paper, I feel it’s a pretty foolish waste of resources that we’ve got major news breaking and you volunteered to go play Superhero getting Sweet Thang’s charm bracelet back…”

“I didn’t volun…” I tried to interrupt, but by this point her voice was too loud for her to possibly hear me. She had her prey secured and was bragging to the other owls nearby that she had caught a meal.

“… and as a woman, I feel pretty foolish for having ever occasionally professed that I may have slightly cared for you. Because if you’re that much of an idiot, there’s no way you meet the minimum IQ requirement to be my child’s sperm donor daddy anyway. So how did it make me feel? Frustrated, sad, and angry. Yes, I would say that would be a start.”

Her volume had reached a level where it was no longer necessary to hold the phone to my ear—arm’s length was as close as I dared go without risking permanent hearing loss. I kept it there until I was fairly certain the screaming was over.

“Are you done?” I asked.

“Probably not,” she spat back.

I sighed.

“Look, Tina, what exactly is this all about?”

“What is
what
about?”

“This whole jealousy thing,” I said. “I mean, let’s just say—and this is strictly for sake of argument—that I wanted to date Sweet Thang. Or let’s say it’s not Sweet Thang, because I realize there are complications there. Let’s say it’s some other woman you don’t know and will never meet. So long as it doesn’t lower my sperm count, what’s it to you?”

There was a pause. Was the great bird considering releasing its quarry? Would I be reunited with my earth-dwelling, grub-eating clan of fellow furry friends?

Uh, no.

“I … can’t …
believe
 … you,” she finally said, enunciating each word like she was teaching an ESL class. “You didn’t really just do that, did you?”

“Do … what?”

“You just tried to have The Conversation with me
over the phone
?” she said, capitalizing the
t
and
c
with her tone. “Now it appears you couldn’t be my child’s sperm donor because you are a less evolved species. Who tries to have The Conversation with a woman over the phone?”

“I, ahh, was just asking a ques—”

“That’s it,” she declared. “You’re taking me to dinner tonight. You can’t possibly expect me to have The Conversation at any less than a four-star restaurant. Pick me up at eight.”

And that was it. Had I, in fact, escaped? Was I free to continue my burrowing and gnawing? For the moment, I must say I felt safer. Warmer.

Which probably just meant I was already in the owl’s stomach.

*   *   *

For whatever Tina’s thoughts on the absurdity of my task, I was still under orders to track down a charm bracelet—and, I must say, was getting nowhere in a hurry on my assignment.

Asking Akilah directly was out of the question, unless I was ready to commit to some serious cardio training or, at the very least, buy a stun gun. I tried reaching Sweet Thang on her cell phone—both of them—to see how she was coming along with Mrs. Harris. But when “Thang, Sweet” and “Thang, Sweet 2” went to voice mail, I hung up rather than leave a message, slightly annoyed I hadn’t heard from her yet.

Not knowing what else to try, I called Tee to see if he was getting any traction.

“Yeah,” Tee said. His typical salutation.

“Hi,” I said. “It’s your white friend.”

“You know, I do have two of them, so you’re going to have to narrow it down.”

“You’re cheating on me? I had no idea. Who’s this other honky in your life and why have you never spoken of him before?”

“Well, I don’t really consider him all that white. Not like you,” Tee said. “He’s a bit of a wigga.”

“I’m sorry, a wigga?”

“Yeah, a white dude who act like a nig—”

“Got it,” I said quickly. “Anyhow, talk to me. Tell me some good news.”

“Well, I made some calls.”

“And?”

“It look like Maury don’t got too many friends. At least he ain’t got the same friends I do.”

“Oh” is all I could think to reply.

“I reached out to brothers who know everyone, and they still don’t know Maury,” Tee said. “I mean, everyone knows him, but nobody
knows
him. Not well enough to make an introduction, you know what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, I think I got you,” I said. “Well, thanks for the effort.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said. And I was about to bid him farewell and hang up, except he added: “How bad you need this jewelry back, anyway?”

I thought about those Hunterdon County Girl Scout meetings with which Szanto threatened me. After the second or third year, the annual cookie sale story was going to get pretty stale. Not even I liked Samoas that much.

“I would say I’m pretty desperate at this point.”

“So you got an emergency, huh?”

“I do.”

“All right,” Tee said. “I didn’t want to do this. But if you say it’s an emergency, I’ll break the glass.”

“Shatter it.”

“I mean, I ain’t got no choice.”

“None.”

“Okay, I’ll get right on it.”

“Super.”

“Because it’s an emergency.”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I have to.”

“Right.”

“Okay then. I’m going to do it.”

“Fantastic,” I said, then just had to ask: “Tee, what are we talking about?”

He paused dramatically.

“I’m going to call Mrs. Jamison,” he said at last.

Tee always referred to his wife as “Mrs. Jamison.” He tries to lead people to believe he’s just being cute. But, really, he’s afraid of her.

“And what’s Mrs. Jamison going to be able to do?” I asked.

“You haven’t met her yet, have you,” he said, more as a statement than a question.

“No.”

“Wait until you meet her. You’ll understand.”

“She’s that tough?”

“She’s so tough she can slam a revolving door,” Tee said ominously.

“Well, then I’ll be glad she’s on our side.”

“Meet us outside Maury’s in fifteen minutes,” Tee instructed me.

“You sure she’ll do it?”

“I’m a
man.
My woman do what I
tell
her to do.”

“In other words, you already called her and she already said yes,” I said.

“Exactly. See you in fifteen. Don’t be late. Mrs. Jamison don’t like waiting.”

By the time I made it to Maury’s and parked, Tee was already out front, dressed in camouflage wind pants and a puffy black jacket. Tee is about five feet ten. The woman standing next to him was nearly as tall, with tight blue jeans, a New York Knicks jacket, and her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She looked like she could boil water just by staring at it.

“Hey Tee, thanks for doing this,” I said, shaking his hand then turning to his wife. “You must be Mrs. Jamison. I’m Carter Ross. Nice to meet you.”

I reached out my hand to shake with her, but she left it hanging there like she was trying to figure out if I carried a deadly strain of avian flu.

“So, you lost a necklace or something?” she said. She had a big, resonant voice. I was betting a choir somewhere would have been thrilled to have her in their alto section.

“Well, it’s actually a whole lot of jewelry—an entire jewelry box full,” I said. “But the one piece I really have to get back is a charm bracelet.”

“And this belongs to your … girlfriend, is that right?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tee nodding.

“Yes, ma’am, my girl … girlfriend.”

“And you’re planning on marrying this girl?” she demanded. Again, I saw Tee nodding, this time with more force.

“Yes, yes, ma’am.”

“That’s good. Because I don’t want to be doing no favors so you can get some cheap booty call. I do not condone intercourse unless it is going to lead to marriage. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, then willed myself to sound more convincing. “I’m going to make an honest woman out of her, just as soon as I save up enough money for a nice ring. I don’t want to make it some cheap thing. I was thinking two, three carats.”

“You hear that, Reginald! He’s going to get her a
nice
ring,” Mrs. Jamison boomed, backhanding Tee in the gut. Tee’s stomach, much like the rest of him, is pretty solid beef. But he still grimaced a little.

“I swear to you, this man, if I hadn’t told him exactly what to get, he would have gotten me a ring out of a cereal box,” Mrs. Jamison continued, then stuck out her left hand so I could inspect it. “As you see, he came though in the end, didn’t you, baby?”

She gave Tee a quick, full-lipped kiss. Tee appeared grateful he wasn’t getting smacked again.

“C’mon,” she said, as she headed toward the entrance. “Let me do the talking.”

*   *   *

Maury’s Pawnshop, Check-Cashing, and Payday Loans was what you might expect from a hock shop buried deep in a Newark neighborhood, only more disgusting. In front of the semishattered glass door were three concrete steps, each crumbling at the edges. A
WE
’
LL BE BACK
sign with a clock face on it was attached to the inside of the door, but the plastic hands had been ripped off, leaving one to guess when, if ever, someone might return; or, for that matter, why they’d want to.

Inside the cramped waiting area, I got the distinct impression little about the place had been updated since the original Maury opened shop—sometime shortly after he returned from the war, judging from the décor. It had that Norman Rockwell feel to it, except this was the version Rockwell painted when he was old, bitter, and off his antidepressants.

The faux wood paneling had several fist-sized dents in it. The linoleum had been scuffed straight through to the plywood floorboard in spots. In one corner, there was a gumball machine without a lid—and, therefore, without gumballs. The chrome-framed chairs bolted to the floor in the middle of the room had all lost their arms, and their seat cushions had taken a beating through the years. On the wall, a poster produced by the American Pawn-Owners Association—featuring a smiling, Stepford Wife–looking woman saying, “We buy and sell your finest previously owned merchandise”—had been thoroughly and profanely vandalized.

The only things I guessed were not purchased by the original Maury himself were the
NO WEAPONS ALLOWED, EXCEPT FOR SALE
sign and the two-inch-thick bulletproof glass that now covered the space between the countertop and the ceiling. The glass apparently worked, because I counted six bullet-sized pockmarks peppered across the front.

Behind the glass, a pudgy, indolent-looking Hispanic guy was engrossed in a Mexican soap opera, the kind whose plotline seemed to consist almost entirely of buxom women showing their cleavage to swarthy men with well-groomed mustaches.

“Excuse me,” Mrs. Jamison said, and not timidly. Still, the man didn’t budge. His full attention was fixed on a woman wearing a red dress that showed off approximately seventy-five percent of the total surface area of her breasts.

“ExCUSE me,” Mrs. Jamison said again, this time loud enough to penetrate the bulletproof glass. The man tore his eyes away from the screen and turned toward us. A small piece of Plexiglas covered a circular cluster of airholes that served as the only means of communicating with the outside world. He slid it open to better hear us—not that Mrs. Jamison had trouble projecting.

“Hi, sugar, what’s your name?” Mrs. Jamison said.

The man looked alarmed—this was not how his interactions with customers typically began—but he answered, “Pedro.”

“Pedro, I’m here to see Maury,” Mrs. Jamison informed him.

“Who are you?”

“You tell him Mrs. Jamison is here to see him.”

She said it so matter-of-factly—as if Maury would know exactly why she had come calling—that Pedro got off his chair and went into the back room. Mrs. Jamison rested her elbow on a small ledge in front of the bulletproof glass, quite secure in her ownership of the space around her.

I scanned the store a little more. The glass was divided into four cubbyholes—two for clerks and two to display some of the wares for sale—a mix of guns, electronics, and some serious bling.

Tee once explained to me that bling served a dual role in the hood. It was a status symbol, of course. But it was also a form of insurance, a means to sock away money during the good times so you were never flat busted when things went bad. Example: a guy flush from some gainful venture lays out $9,000 for a secondhand diamond necklace. He does this so he can enjoy and display the fruits of his success. But he also acquires it in case his next venture goes bad—that way he’s got seed money to start all over again. Sure, Maury or his numerous competitors might only give the guy a $7,000 return on his “investment.” But that’s a worthwhile deal for our urban entrepreneur. And, best of all, his safety net is never farther away than his neck.