The Fraud (6 page)

Sweet Thang considered me a mentor, and I let her maintain that illusion. The truth was, she had been a gifted natural reporter long before she met me. I had nothing to teach her. Her only weakness as a reporter—that she led with her heart, every time—was also her greatest strength as a human being.

She had since moved on to a calling to which she was perhaps better suited, joining the do-gooder brigade in Newark’s nonprofit community. As was often case in that resource-deprived world, she wore as many hats as her head could fit, plus a few more. She served as spokesperson, marketing manager, events coordinator, donor wrangler, grant writer, envelope stuffer, and floor sweeper. She had been trying to get me to write a story about her employer for a while now. I had been avoiding her calls, strategically returning messages to her office voice mail when I knew she wouldn’t be there.

It was certainly nothing personal, because I liked her a lot. It was just this allergy I had to doing puff pieces.

But with those reporter’s skills of hers came a certain amount of tenacity. Her once-weekly calls had become twice-weekly calls. I had no doubt she would keep ratcheting up the pressure until I at least came up with a good excuse to put her off. And since I now had that excuse—a breaking story about the carjacking that was suddenly all the news in our fair region—I decided it was time to take her call.

At the last second before it went to voice mail, I answered with, “Carter Ross.”

“Hey, Carter, it’s Lauren McMillan.”

“Hey, Sweet Thang! How’s, the job going at, uh—”

I had blanked on the name of the nonprofit she now worked for.

“The Greater Newark Children’s Council,” she filled in. “We’re doing fabulous, thank you. We just had our third annual Greater Newark Five-K and Kid’s Fun Run—I sent you an invitation, by the way, but I didn’t see you there—and we’re deep into the planning to roll out our Brick City Baby Brick Buy. You know, buy a brick to support the babies of the Brick City? It goes toward prenatal care and new mother education. Catchy, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. My Malibu was closing in on a row of tidy, roughly ten-year-old town houses, one of which had until recently been home to Joseph Okeke. I hoped Sweet Thang would hurry up and get around to pitching whatever story she was selling so I could politely blow her off and get on with my day.

And then she obliged me. “But what I really wanted to talk to you about was our Chariots for Children campaign. It’s a great program where people donate their cars to us and we help them maximize their tax write-off. And then we either rehab the car and use it in one of our programs or we sell it off. So it’s a win-win slash win-win-win. But what we really need is some publicity. The Kars for Kids people have totally dominated the market, and we need to get word out there about Chariots for Children. We have this big media push starting next week and we were hoping you could kick it off by writing a story for Sunday’s paper about the—”

“Yeah, that sounds great except I’ve got this big story right now and—”

That’s when she dropped the bomb: “Uncle Hal said you’d be able to do it.”

Her father and “Uncle Hal”—
AKA
Executive Editor Harold Brodie—were best pals. It was how Sweet Thang had gotten her internship in the first place. And it put me in something of a bind. Among the Ten Commandments of working for the
Newark Eagle-Examiner,
“Thou Shalt Not Piss Off Harold Brodie” is very near the top.

“You, uh, talked to Brodie, huh?”

“Yeah, we chatted on Saturday. He and Madge were over for dinner at my parents’ house.”

Madge. As in Brodie’s wife. The only first name I had ever addressed her by was “Mrs.”

“Anyhow,” she continued, “I’ve got a kid who would make for the perfect anecdotal lede. He’s really sweet and he’s just a love. Oh, and he’s really photogenic, so don’t forget to put in a photo assignment. We can start with interviewing him, because he’s the kind of kid who the program will help. Then I’ll show you where they rehab the cars. We have our own repair shop, which means more of your automotive donation ends up helping kids in need. Then I can hook you up with some donors if you want, so they can talk about how easy it is. We have this one woman, who—”

She continued prattling on for a while. I was now parked in front of Joseph Okeke’s former domicile, which meant I was officially wasting time yapping with Sweet Thang. I had to get out of the conversation somehow. The problem, of course, is that Stalin had gulags that were easier to escape.

“Sweet Thang,” I said at last.

“I know, I know, you have to go, sorry,” she said. “You know me. I just get so passionate about helping these kids. So many of them come from families that have, like, nothing. But they’re so bright and so full of energy, you feel like if someone just gave them a little bit of a chance, they’d—”

“Sweet Thang!” I said again.

“Sorry, sorry. Can I put you down for a visit to our place tomorrow morning at ten? I’ll send you an e-mail with all the details. And I’ll bring bagels. It’ll be fun.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock.”

I hung up and sighed. I decided to be proud of her, for being so good at her job. Because it beat the alternative: admitting that I had been thoroughly outmaneuvered by my former intern.

*   *   *

The erstwhile home of Joseph Okeke was among a row of adjoining town houses, all of which had their own tiny patch of a front yard. The yards were enclosed with these low, black iron fences.

They were mostly decorative. Almost anyone could hop over one. But they still served a subtle purpose. Criminals are like water: they seek the easiest path. Sometimes it didn’t take much of an impediment to divert them elsewhere.

I opened the gate and strolled up the front walk. The unit appeared to be two bedroom, which made me wonder how a family of five was fitting into it.

As I rang the bell, I tried to anticipate what the Okeke family would be in the midst of experiencing. Their patriarch was now two weeks gone. They probably buried him a week ago. They were now in the part of the grieving process where the funeral was over, the extended family was gone, the neighbors had stopped sending casseroles, and things were getting back to what was supposedly normal. Except, of course, nothing felt normal anymore.

In my experience with grieving families, this was usually around the time the hurt really started to set in. To add to the pain, there may have been an insurance company trying to weasel its way out of its fiduciary responsibilities.

I rang the doorbell again, getting the sense it was empty. Then, from next door, a woman dressed in nurse’s scrubs peeked out.

“He don’t live there no more,” she said, then added matter-of-factly; “he died.”

“I know. I’m looking for his family.”

“They don’t live with him. You with the city or something?”

“I’m a reporter with the
Eagle-Examiner
. I’m writing a story about him. Did you know him?”

“Some.”

I pulled out a notepad, took down her name, and went for the open-ended question approach. “I’m just trying to get a sense of what kind of guy he was. Tell me about him.”

She considered this. “I don’t know. He was pretty quiet, you know? We shared a wall but I never heard a peep from him. He was always very polite. He had lived here maybe three years? He and his wife were divorced.”

Which explained the two-bedroom pad.

“What kind of work did he do?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I know he went on business trips sometimes, because he’d tell me he’d be gone for a week or two and ask me to look after his place. I think he traveled back to Nigeria, but I don’t know what he did there. He didn’t talk about that much.”

“What did he talk about?”

“His kids, mostly. He was really proud of them. Two of them were off at college. The other one is a senior at Arts High. That’s where I went to school, so he would tell me about her a lot. She won a lot of awards for stuff. Maryam, her name is. He was always like, ‘Maryam, she was student of the month. Maryam, she won the National Merit scholarship.’”

The woman had mimicked a deep bass voice and a West African accent for the last part, doing her best Joseph Okeke impersonation.

“What about the other two kids?” I asked.

“I don’t know. One’s a boy, the other’s a girl. That’s all I know.”

“Do you know where they go to college?”

She shook her head. “I’m sure he mentioned it, but I’d just be guessing.”

“Did the kids ever come over here?”

“No. I asked him about it one time and he said he and his wife had decided that the kids ought to have one home, not shuttle back and forth between two all the time. They wanted the kids to have as stable a life as possible. If he wanted to see them, he went over there.”

“He and his wife must have been on okay terms, then?”

“I don’t know. I never met her.”

I looked down at my notebook, as if this would help me divine more information.

“What else. Any hobbies?”

“He was in Rotary. I know that. He’d talk about that sometimes…”

Her voice trailed off, then she added, “I’m sorry. I wish I could help more. I kind of have to get going to work now. I didn’t really know him that well. I mean, we were neighbors and I liked him. We’d chitchat every now and then when we saw each other, but that was it. It’s sad what happened to him. This city—”

She finished the thought with a headshake. Sometimes there was nothing more to say.

“I appreciate your help,” I said, then let her go.

She had given me a solid start. And I was liking the picture of Joseph Okeke that was emerging. Here, of course, I was just being selfish on behalf of my story. As I said earlier, having a good victim is absolutely critical. Nothing ruined an otherwise heartrending tale faster than an unsympathetic victim. If Okeke had been some man-about-town divorc
é
, trolling around in his BMW 328i while he blew off his family, it made him less of a tragic figure.

But that’s not who he had been. He was an involved father, bursting with pride for his children. He was a businessman who was working hard to provide for his family. He was living a peaceful, quiet life.

And he was in Rotary. I liked that detail. Rotary had an element of business networking to it, sure, but it was a primarily a service organization. He helped others in his community.

It not only made him more sympathetic, it also made him more accessible to suburban readers: Joseph Okeke wasn’t just another black guy who got killed in Newark, he was a Rotarian.

And, okay, maybe he wasn’t the perfect victim. But he was an acceptable victim. I definitely could have done worse.

*   *   *

I returned to my car and worked my phone a little until I found Okeke’s previous address, which corresponded to the current address of one Tujuka Okeke. It was closer to downtown, in an area of Newark known as University Heights.

It took less than ten minutes to get there. This is one of the advantages of traversing a city whose neighborhoods are 163,000 people short of peak population. Traffic in the middle of the day is usually pretty light.

What I found upon arrival was a detached, single-family home with a short driveway. It also had a fence around it, but this one was more than merely decorative. It was high enough to keep out the riff-raff, assuming the riff-raff weren’t Olympic high jumpers.

There was one car in the short driveway. It was a Toyota, maybe three or four years old. Not as savory a piece of bait for a carjacker.

I parked just outside. Again, I tried to prepare myself for what might await. Mrs. Okeke was not, technically, a widow. But it sounded like the split had been …

Well, let’s be clear: the term “amicable divorce” ranks alongside “jumbo shrimp” as an oxymoron. And yet it seemed Joseph and Tujuka Okeke had parted ways in as friendly a way as possible, at least civilly enough to allow what sounded like effective coparenting. And he was still the father of her children. She would have all kinds of conflicting emotions. I was willing to bet the mention of his name would bring tears to her eyes. The mention of his insurance company, meanwhile, might bring fire.

The gate had been left open, so I walked up the front steps and rang the bell. It was answered by a woman with jet-black skin and short-cropped graying hair.

“Ms. Okeke?” I said tentatively.

“Yes?”

“My name is Carter Ross. I’m a reporter with the
Eagle-Examiner.
I’m working on a story about Joseph.”

She didn’t cry. Instead, her face twisted at the mention of the name.

“I have nothing to say about him,” she spat.

She gripped the door like she was about to give it a high-velocity ride back to its jamb. Then she thought better of it for a second and added, “Joseph is a fool. For what he did? He got what he deserved.”

Then
she slammed the door in my face.

Amicable divorce, meet jumbo shrimp.

I stayed on the stoop for another five seconds, my finger poised near the doorbell. Then I thought better. I wasn’t giving up on Tujuka Okeke. But I was going to let her breathe a little bit.

Retreating down the steps, I returned to my Malibu and got it rolling back toward the newsroom. Clearly, postmatrimonial relations between the Okekes had not been as cordial as I thought. Still, I wondered if there was something more going on. What foolish act had he committed? And who deserves death-by-carjacking?

It was another small thing about Joseph Okeke—like stopping at a green light late at night—that set my easily addled brain to work.

CHAPTER 8

I was five minutes away from the office when my phone rang again. This time I managed to interrupt my daddy-delirium before it reached seizure stage and pulled my phone—more or less calmly—out of my pocket.

Then I saw where the number was coming from and started shaking all over again. It was someone in the newsroom.

This was it. Tina had doubled over with a contraction just outside the copy desk and grabbed the nearest phone to demand I take her to the hospital.