The Fraud (2 page)

Once they determined you had neither guns nor drugs, they let you go. Police in Newark had better things to do at that time of day than ticket minor traffic scofflaws.

Red-light cameras, installed at the insistence of a crusading celebrity mayor a few years back, had complicated matters slightly. By forcing drivers to come to a complete stop, they turned numerous city intersections into a carjacker’s version of a turkey shoot.

The other issue at play was the growing sophistication of vehicle antitheft systems. Whereas yesterday’s car thief could mesh together a few wires and quietly misappropriate your motorized carriage without bothering you, the current generation must forcibly take it from you with the keys still in it.

The irony is lost on no one: two innovations meant to improve safety and deter theft have had the opposite effect, leading to the proliferation of a crime than is far more violence-prone and confrontational than the one it replaced.

It’s the law of unintended consequences, and in Newark it remains well enforced. Over the past five years, carjackings in Essex County, which includes Newark, had more than doubled. It had gotten to the point where the county, with eight hundred thousand people, was on pace to finish with some five hundred carjackings for the year. That’s an average of more than one a day, nearly three times as many as all of New York City despite having just one-tenth of the population.

What made Newark such a carjacking hotbed was at least partly genetic. The city was the grand theft auto capital of America during the eighties and early nineties. Boosting cars was in its DNA. Newark’s delinquents were well-schooled on the subject of car-swiping, whether it was to resell, for a joy ride, or to have a “clean” vehicle in which to commit another crime.

But there was also a lot of geography at play. These days, cars have VIN numbers etched in all kinds of hard-to-reach places, making them difficult to unload domestically. Hence, the more sophisticated carjacking rings sold their merchandise abroad—mostly Africa and some of the more lawless parts of Asia.

The easiest way to get their product to that marketplace was via the Port of New York and New Jersey, which straddled Newark and Elizabeth. If you stole a car in Brooklyn or the Bronx, it could take you an hour—and two bridges—to get it there. That was a risk. If you stole it in Manhattan, you had to go through a tunnel. That was suicide.

If you stole it in Newark, you could have it loaded onto an ocean-bound container ship before the police even knew to start looking for it.

I don’t want to say we at the
Eagle-Examiner
had been ignoring this particular criminal epidemic. We had done a few perfunctory stories about the problem, dutifully reporting the numbers. But at the clinging-to-life anachronism that is a statewide daily newspaper, gone are the days when we had a fully staffed city desk and stuffed-to-the-seams suburban bureaus, ready to report on any threat to our readership. We had been forced to prioritize and up until one Tuesday morning, those priorities had not included deep inquiry into the subject.

The tragic shooting of a man named Kevin Tiemeyer during an apparent carjacking-gone-wrong was about to change that. It had happened too late at night—or I guess, technically, too early in the morning—to make it into any of that day’s print editions.

But by the time the New York metropolitan area awoke, hungry for its daily helping of bad news, the shooting in Newark had become breakfast. And it had the look of lunch, dinner, and beyond, a meal that would be served until the public’s appetite for it was fully sated or until we ran out of stuff to report, whichever came last.

As I hastily donned my workaday reporter’s uniform of pleated slacks, a button-down shirt, and a patterned tie—all of which I carefully selected by closing my eyes and reaching into my closet—I listened to the latest on an all-news radio station. It began the top of the hour with the Tiemeyer story.

At this early stage, when the police had little information and were giving out even less, there wasn’t much to report beyond the bare details of Mr. Tiemeyer’s demise. He worked for United States Kinship Bank, better known as USKB, one of those huge banking conglomerates that seemed to have tentacles in anything that involved money. He drove a Jaguar. He was a married father of two who lived in tranquil Scotch Plains and had the misfortune to choose the wrong way home. A press conference was scheduled for later that morning. More details would be forthcoming.

I am aware there are critics of “the media”—two words some folks can’t seem to say without a sneer—who would accuse us of sensationalizing crime simply to sell papers, attract Internet traffic, or drive ratings. These, after all, are the metrics with which we woo the advertisers who ultimately pay our salaries. I’m not na
ï
ve enough to deny that our news judgment is influenced by certain financial imperatives.

But I always remind these sneering detractors what’s behind those paper sales, Web clicks, and TV eyeballs. It’s that a large portion of the public—
AKA
citizens,
AKA
people,
AKA
you and me and, yes, even those media-bashers—are more likely to tune in for bad news than for good news. We have the statistics to prove it.

In that way, the media is really just a mirror, one that reflects back at people the things they most want to see. Believe me, if puppies and flowers pulled ratings, that’s all you’d see on your nightly news. But the fact is, many ships made safe transatlantic crossings in April 1912, but more than a hundred years later people are still yapping about the
Titanic.

So I was unsurprised when I received a text from my editor, Tina Thompson, requesting an audience as soon as I saw fit to report for work.

“I still don’t understand why he didn’t just do the Newark Cruise,” I texted back.

I received her reply as I drove in. “I know. Law-abiding citizens are the worst.”

*   *   *

The newsroom was mostly empty when I arrived, not because I was particularly early, but because this has become its natural state in recent years. Where once this large, open space was filled with clusters of seasoned reporters vigorously making New Jersey safe for democracy, there are now vast seas of unused desks, vacated by staff reductions that never seemed to end.

The paper’s corporate owner had recently announced plans to “downsize our footprint”—read: cram us somewhere cheap and sterile—and sell the building that had served as the
Eagle-Examiner’s
home for more than half a century. It had yet to find a buyer. Apparently, there is little call for time-battered office space.

If and when we have to move, I will do so with sadness. But, in truth, only a little. The things I love about this business—the adrenaline rush of deadline, the feeling that the stories I wrote mattered, the privilege of putting out a newspaper alongside my lovably malcontented colleagues—will survive no matter where we happen to be plying our craft.

For the time being, my personal empire was still a desk in the far corner against the wall, where no one could sneak up on me. I annexed it a few years back when the veteran reporter who owned it took a buyout. Staff reductions do have their benefits.

Tossing my bag next to my chair, I stuffed a fresh reporter’s pad in my pocket—TOPS is my preferred brand—and presented myself at the glass-walled office of Tina Thompson.

At the relatively young age of forty-one, Tina’s sharp news instincts, intelligence, and drive had allowed her to rise to the lofty title of managing editor for local news. It was a big job, inasmuch as local news dominated the
Eagle-Examiner
. Among her responsibilities were the city desk, the suburban bureaus, and me.

She was also nine months pregnant with my child. If you think a man with my fancy vocabulary and expensive education ought to have been smart enough to avoid such a tricky arrangement, you’ve clearly never been introduced to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. It’s the idea that one can be gifted in one area while deficient in another.

On the bell curve of managing romantic relationships, I am several standard deviations below the mean.

I started talking as soon as I entered her room.

“Just to make sure I’ve got this right, we have basically been turning a blind eye toward the rising tide of carjackings that have been terrorizing this city for, oh, call it four years now,” I said, selecting the chair closest to the door. “But the second a rich white guy from the suburbs gets killed, we’re going to start hopping around like a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest?”

Tina set down her midmorning beverage snack—some kind of gruesome-looking wheatgrass concoction—as she replied. “Not to answer your question with a question, but let me ask you something: how many poor black guys get murdered in this city every year?”

“About a hundred, give or take.”

“Very good. Now, how many rich white guys suffer the same fate?”

“I see your point,” I conceded. “I just get tired of being so predictable.”

“Okay, so come up with something different.”

I had been thinking about this on the way in. “Let’s broaden our reporting a little.”

“Broaden it how?”

“Look, of course our hearts go out to the Tiemeyer family. What happened to him is awful and unconscionable and I can’t even imagine what they’re going through right now. But somewhere out there, there’s another family who also recently lost a loved one in a carjacking. And they’re going through the same thing. Yet because that loved one checked a different box on his census form, his death was more or less ignored. That family is probably waking up this morning, looking at all the fuss over someone else, and saying to themselves, ‘What the hell?’ Let’s actually make them feel like our hearts go out to them, too. We’ll give readers what they want about Kevin Tiemeyer, but we’ll show them what carjacking normally looks like, too.”

Tina shifted her weight. After a brief delay, her belly shifted with her. For a borderline exercise addict who welcomed refined sugars like Gandhi welcomed knife fights, it had been quite an adjustment to have a stomach that moved on its own. The benefits—the extra body in her curly brown hair, the glow to her skin, the prime parking at chichi grocery stores and so on—had not come close to compensating for the discomfort.

“Okay,” she said after a brief pause. “Just don’t get too frothy with whole black-white thing. Let’s just let people draw their own conclusions—or not, if they chose to. As long as you play that part down the middle, I think Brodie will go for it.”

By Brodie, she meant Executive-Editor-for-Life Harold Brodie. He was well into his seventies but showed no signs of relinquishing control of the paper. It was starting to occur to folks that perhaps his retirement party and his funeral would be simultaneous events.

“Okay,” I said. “Who else is working this?”

“Investigative reporter Carter Ross, I’d like you to meet our carjacking beat writer, Carter Ross.”

“Seriously?”

“Which one of our forty-seven layoffs did you not get the memo on? I’ve got Buster Hays going to the press conference later this morning and working the cops for a daily story. After that, it’s all you, big guy.”

“You can’t even toss me an intern or two?”

Tina went to her computer and consulted the spreadsheet that told her what her reporters were allegedly doing. My species, which is to say experienced journalists who were above the age of thirty and made a living wage, was teetering on the brink of extinction. Most of the names on her screen were eager twentysomething interns whose paychecks barely covered the payments on their student loans.

“I could give you Chillax,” she said.

Ah, Chillax. Some months ago, at the beginning of his time with us, this particular intern—actual name: Sloan Chesterfield—was being harassed to file a story by one of our famously overstressed managing editors. The young man looked up and, invoking that noxious combination of the words “chill” and “relax,” said, “Dude, just chillax, okay?”

He would never again be referred to by another name within the confines of the
Eagle-Examiner
newsroom.

“Yeah, I guess he’ll do,” I said.

“Good. By the way, did you get the crib assembled?”

Tina and I were still living apart. I had attempted to propose to her at least five times in the last nine months. I say “attempted to” because even though I bought the ring, cleared it with her parents, felt it with all my heart, and fell to one knee, she pulled me back to my feet each time. She said I wasn’t allowed to ask the question yet.

This didn’t hurt me. No. Don’t be silly. Because I’m a guy and I don’t have feelings. Or at least that’s what I read in a magazine once.

Besides, she had promised to move in with me once the baby came. In this results-oriented world of ours, I figured that would constitute a happy ending. We had decided my two-bedroom house in Bloomfield was a better fit for our new family than her one-bedroom condo in Hoboken. Hence, I was in the final stages of turning my former junk room into a nursery.

“Yep,” I said cheerfully. “Crib is all put together. Only ended up with five extra parts.”

Tina looked stricken.

“Kidding,” I assured her.

“And your phone is charged?”

I patted my pocket and nodded. Tina was now in her thirty-eighth week. Lately, the moment my battery dipped one bar below maximum, I went scrambling for a plug.

“How is C-3PO today?” I asked.

Like many couples, we had given our fetus a cute-to-us nickname. Tina had originally called him “Carter Jr.” When I exercised veto rights over that one, she started calling him “Carter the third” instead. The shorthand for that became C-3, which soon morphed into C-3PO. At Tina’s thirty-six-week checkup, our obstetrician, Carly Marston, told us the baby was upside down, so I briefly lobbied to change it to “Breach Baby.” But by that point C-3PO had already stuck.

We did not have indisputable video evidence that he was a boy—we decided not to find out—but Tina was convinced she was carrying my male heir.