All These Ashes, page 8
The voice of Newark City Hall popped out of his chair and swatted at his hair and face like he was under attack by a swarm of bees. The sticky sweet wine was already mixing in with the military-grade grooming product he used to achieve his impossibly coiffed appearance, ensuring his next shower would be a project.
“What is wrong with you?” he asked.
“There’s a list, but mostly financial insecurity and a short temper,” I replied. “You’re lucky I didn’t flip the table.”
“Because I used a little subterfuge to get you here?” he asked.
“No, because you sent cops to get physical with me twice in two days, and then you pulled this stupid bullshit,” I replied.
He kept waving his hand near his hair, like that might air dry the mess I’d made, but all it did was speed up the pink droplets sliding down his too tanned face.
“Do you have any facts to support that allegation?” he asked.
“I’m not at the paper anymore, as you so often like to remind me, so that doesn’t matter,” I replied.
It was around then that I noticed most of the restaurant was watching us. I looked over my shoulder and saw the maître d’ approaching. Now he had a face to match the crazy voice from the phone.
“Is everything alright, sir?” he asked Lynch.
Lynch looked like he wanted to complain and have whatever passed for a bouncer at Don Pepe throw me out. But that would have rendered his stupid little ruse pointless.
“Everything’s fine, my friend just has a…difficult sense of humor,” he said, sitting down.
Lynch reorganized his table setting, folded a napkin back over his lap and motioned for me to join him, like this was a normal business meeting and not one that started with a lie and misdemeanor battery.
“Was all this cloak and dagger shit really necessary?” I asked as I sat down.
A busboy came by and nervously poured water. Maybe he was worried I’d hurl liquids in his direction too.
“Would you have met up with me otherwise?” Lynch asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then it was necessary,” he said, rolling his eyes and straightening the creases on his suit jacket. “I do wish you’d get over this rivalry you think we have. There’s no reason for you to hate me.”
There were plenty of reasons. Press secretaries and reporters lived at cross purposes. Technically, Lynch’s job was to provide information, but only the sanitized kind. His real job had always been to block me from learning anything worth knowing. He was also from Philly, making him an asshole on an almost biological level.
But in Lynch’s case, things went beyond the usual flack-reporter feud.
“I can think of three reasons,” I replied. “Stephanie. Krystal. And Deonna.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re not on the record, Lynch. Hell, I don’t even know what that would mean for me anymore,” I said. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t know who they are.”
He held his hands out, offering a half-hearted shrug, expression never changing.
Dameon Lynch would never admit those were the names of the three city hall employees who’d contacted me four years earlier, describing late-night text messages from burner phones, bumping bodies in hallways with hands landing in places that couldn’t be coincidental. The way the longtime married mayor always announced he’d be staying at his second apartment downtown when they were around. The way he reacted when they kept telling him no.
It took me months to convince them to go on the record. Late-night calls that were more therapy sessions than interviews. Interviews that turned into confessions. Deonna had caved to his whims at one point, thinking Watkins’s lust could be satiated with one visit to the apartment. Not knowing he’d want it to be a weekly occurrence. Not knowing the things he’d call her, the threats he’d make, when she stopped showing up.
Two weeks before the story was to publish, Lynch asked me to get drinks. Tried to coax names out of me. Told me he’d heard whispers I was working on a story about sexual harassment and that he wanted to make sure I didn’t print something I couldn’t take back. That I was a good reporter with good intentions and he didn’t want to see my career collapse under a libel lawsuit. He kept slipping in names.
Each of theirs came up at one point. I didn’t betray them. Not intentionally. But he must have read something in my face, because Deonna was the first to recant a week later. Her brother worked for the housing department, and he’d gotten suspended out of nowhere.
Stephanie backed off next, and while I could never be sure, the social media images of her moving into a new apartment in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn led me to assume Lynch and a duffel bag of money got to her before I could place a check-in call.
Krystal still wanted to fight it. She’d been born in Newark. Didn’t want to see her city run by a lecherous piece of shit. But it was years before the words “Me” and “Too” had become conjoined twins. One woman’s word, even with some corroborating texts and really specific details, wasn’t going to be enough against a sitting mayor.
She was devastated when I told her the story was dead. She told me I was a failure. She wasn’t wrong.
Lynch got off easy when I dumped the wine glass on his head. I should have ordered a bottle and broken it across his jaw.
He flagged the waiter down, but kept his eyes trained on me.
“Another glass, please, and an extra napkin if you can spare it,” he said.
“Oban, eighteen year,” I added, before the waiter could ask or Lynch could offer.
Lynch’s eyes bugged. I didn’t really care about the scotch, but the reaction suggested this was on his tab, not the city’s.He was here on his own accord.
“Expensive pour,” he said. “I took you for a shot and beer type. I’m impressed.”
“Wow, you really commit to the role,” I replied. “You’re trying to glad hand? Work me? I dumped a glass of wine on your head, like, three minutes ago.”
“There’s no upside in revenge. Though you will be getting a receipt for my dry cleaning,” he said. “I didn’t want to be seen at your apartment or office, whatever you call it. You would not have taken my calls. I needed you in a place, and now you’re here. All you’ve achieved is mussing my hair.”
There was a lot for me to hate about Dameon Lynch, but if I had to zero in on one thing, it was his calm. Lynch seemed to have an internal reset button, an ability to shrug off slights in deference to achieving what he wanted. I’d seethe over an unjust parking ticket for weeks and plot revenge against the meter maid’s entire family. You could set Lynch on fire, but he’d figure out a way to get you back at the table if he needed something from you while he was still smoldering.
The waiter dropped off our drinks, including Lynch’s extra napkin. He dabbed at his forehead and the collar of his damp shirt again. I waited for a scowl, a complaint, something. But he just placed the cloth on his lap and leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin leaning on his folded hands. Waiting.
“Are you going to tell me what you want?” I asked.
Lynch reached down and produced the brown messenger bag I’d seen him carry everywhere since we first met at one of Watkins’s press conferences years earlier.
“That what’s going to clear Abel Musa’s name?” I asked.
“Nothing short of an act of God can clear Abel Musa’s name. I assumed you dispensed with that fantasy once you realized I was the one contacting you,” he said. “But Mr. Musa is, nonetheless, the reason we’re here. Your obsession with him is troubling.”
“Obsession? I tried to talk to the man once.”
“Then you showed up at a memorial for his victims. A memorial I’ve attended for the past eight years and never seen you at once,” Lynch said. “And you appear to be running around with the disgraced detective who hasn’t done any good for this city since arresting Musa all those years ago. Why you’re trying to save your business, or your career, is beyond me. But you clearly seem to be in need of something to do. So, I’m here to provide a better use of your time.”
“Ya know, doing this job as long as you have, I thought you’d have the basics down by now,” I said. “When has telling me the story’s not a story ever worked? Has it ever worked on any reporter?”
“Plenty. And unsurprisingly, they all remain gainfully employed,” Lynch said. “But I’ll bite. Officially, on the record. Abel Musa is a murderer. There is nothing conspicuous about his release, nothing noteworthy, except perhaps evidence of the existence of karma, seeing that he is now terminally ill after being spared the death sentence he so richly deserved. You can quote that. I’m not here to protect anyone from secret truths being unearthed, Mr. Avery. If anything, I’m here to help you expose some.”
I wanted to laugh, but he was too confident. He pulled two white envelopes from the bag, both brimming at the lip. The corner of a photograph seemed to be peeking out of one, but not far enough that I could see who or what had been captured in the frame.
“Off the record, of course, I can’t say I missed our verbal sparring matches from your time at the paper. But your sudden re-appearance in my life did make me curious. I obviously read about your involvement in last year’s running catastrophes with the police department, but then you seemed to slink away again until I saw you at the hospital. So, I got to wondering where you had gone in between,” Lynch said. “And what did I find? A depressingly small amount. The occasional byline in a disreputable tabloid, the domain name for your little PI business website lapsed. And all that credit card debt…you’re underwater, Mr. Avery. I’m simply here to remind you how to swim.”
“You looked into my fucking finances, Lynch?” I asked. “Now who’s obsessed?”
“Running a credit check on you took no more than ten minutes of my time,” he replied. “You need money. You need viable work. You’re not going to find either by chasing down an embarrassing non-story, so allow me to point you in a direction that might provide both.”
Lynch opened the envelope on the left and shook some of its contents onto the table, cupping a hand around what was there in case an erstwhile waiter or busboy happened to peek.
I leaned in to see what hook Dameon Lynch had been baiting me with all day and instantly regretted it.
The pictures showed two young women poolside, both in their mid-to-late twenties or early thirties, starring at each other, , skin glistening in the sun. The one with the dark hair and ruby red lipstick on the left seemed to have walked her hand on the thigh of her friend on the right. The images laid out across the table like a comic strip and I watched them tell a story that went from low-level flirt to full-on lip lock. The last one showed them walking away, arm and arm, in the direction of what looked like a hotel.
Lynch opened the second envelope, and more pictures rained down. Explicit ones, showing what happened once the women got upstairs. But there were more images in that pile, taken in what seemed to be a variety of locations. The more photos Lynch displayed, the less clothing each woman wore. Things got NC-17 in a hurry. These photos probably hadn’t been meant for anyone but the people in them.
The women’s hair styles changed as I kept looking, a streak of red coming and going from the younger woman’s appearance, depending on where the photo was taken. Whatever this relationship was, it hadn’t been brief.
I couldn’t tell exactly where the pictures were taken, but the youth in the face of the woman on the left at least gave me an idea of when. She’d looked older when I saw her the night before.
Mariana Pereira. Newark’s North Ward councilwoman, and maybe, its next mayor.
“I’m sure you recognize one of the parties here,” Lynch said. “The other, I’m told, was a canvasser in her initial council race. In other words, a subordinate. I imagine a campaign sexual misconduct piece might put your name back on a front page faster than your misguided cold case crusade.”
“No,” I replied.
“No, this isn’t a story? No, you don’t believe me?” he asked. “If it’s the latter, I assure you I have some documentation confirming the younger woman’s employment.”
“No, I’m not getting involved in this,” I said. “This isn’t news, this is mudslinging. You’re afraid that she can take you in November.”
“Ms. Pereira doesn’t inspire fear in the mayor, I can promise you that. He doesn’t even know I’m here,” Lynch said. “But I will admit to being personally concerned that the city’s voters might have the wrong impression of the councilwoman based solely on that video and her unfortunate run-in with the police last year. They deserve a fuller portrait, including how she might deploy her influence to force her own desires—”
“Stop. Don’t. Do not go there. You of all people do not get to fucking go there,” I said. “The woman is saying this was non-consensual?”
Lynch didn’t speak.
“The woman saying she felt pressured?” I asked.
Still nothing. He had a script. I’d knocked him off it.
“You haven’t talked to her,” I said.
“The provenance of this information is irrelevant. The reality of it is,” Lynch said. “I’m not here to tell you what to do, Russell. But as much as you irritate me, I have always respected you as a journalist. Quite frankly, you entertain me. Your ability to navigate spin has always impressed. All I’m asking is that you use those same critical eyes now. You’re chasing this Musa canard because you’re seeing what you want to see, an opportunity and a chance to right a perceived wrong. I’m offering you the same. Don’t run away from it just because you don’t like where it’s coming from.”
Lynch stood up, sliding the envelopes my way, then scooping up his wine and draining the glass.
“I’ll get the bill on my way out. Don’t waste that scotch,” he said. “Depending on what you do here, it might be a while before you can afford more.”
Seven:
I didn’t waste the scotch.
Then I went home, where I also made sure I didn’t waste the two glasses worth of bourbon left in the Woodford Reserve bottle I’d bought before money got tight. The combination of a pending headache and the sudden awareness of my limited liquor budget redirected me to the fridge, where I snatched up one of the loose Presidente beers I’d grabbed at the corner store. Then another. Thankfully, sleep snuck up from behind twenty minutes into an old episode of Burn Notice before I could track down drink number six.
Dozing off probably spared me from a serious hangover, but I was still rubbing my temples and taking slow, labored sips from a purple Gatorade as I sat in the Impala the next morning. Lynch’s comments had plotted my course, but they hadn’t sent me straight to Mariana Pereira’s door like he’d probably hoped.
I’d taken the pictures he left on the table. Of course, I’d taken the pictures. You don’t leave live ammunition laying around like that.
Sifting through the two envelopes he’d put in front of me, I found the additional evidence Lynch promised. Somehow, he’d also gotten chat logs between Mariana Pereira and the other woman, explicit exchanges that functioned as captions to the photos.
Most of it was simply the embarrassing sex talk many of us have and all of us hope never sees the light of day. Kink specifics and a likely clue into what I’d find in Mariana’s browser history. None of that would have mattered if the women hadn’t seemed to enjoy leaning into the boss-employee dynamic of their fling. There were references to fooling around in a campaign office. The “Maybe I’ll give you a promotion if…” kind of flirting that’s only a problem in lawsuits and political campaigns. If Lynch wanted to paint a picture that Mariana Pereira was unethical, that she leveraged her position into dalliances with her staff, she’d basically handed him the brush.
But did Lynch really think I was desperate enough to write that kind of story? Maybe that was what he took away from looking into my finances, or maybe he was having trouble getting traction for the story elsewhere and getting a little desperate himself. I tried to tell myself he was wrong, that I’d never write that kind of garbage, even if it might force some editors to remember I existed. But if that was true, then why hadn’t I thrown out the photos?
Not liking any of the answers to that question, I decided to focus on the Twilight Four instead. I reached down into my backpack, pulled out the documents from Henniman’s file relating to Kurtis and Lavell Dawkins, and focused on a different puzzle for the time being.
Lynch had been right about one thing. In the brief time I’d been looking into the Twilight Four killings, I’d been doing it at someone else’s direction. Henniman had sent me to Musa. Henniman had been over my shoulder the first time I saw the case files. Henniman had taken me to the Bell family memorial at Weequahic Lake. Hell, he’d even driven me there.
There was nothing wrong with what Bill was doing, but by his own estimation, he’d gotten the case wrong the first time. It needed fresh eyes.
It seemed the Bell family was the sun the Twilight Four killings orbited around. Cynthia had been the speaker for her dead relatives in the press. Sixteen-year-old Shayna, with her big smile and bright future, was the victim most of the articles focused on.
But there were two headstones somewhere with the last name Dawkins on them. When we first looked at the files in Henniman’s home, Bill seemed to run past the Dawkins boys’ struggles with their foster family as a possible motive.
A second look at those concerns led me to Highland Avenue, a side street off the Bloomfield Avenue corridor near Branch Brook Park, one of the few parts of Newark that seemed like it melted into suburbia. My eyes were trained on a two-story home with a wide porch and enough grass out front for kids to run around in, the kind of residence where a family might grow. A house that was a rare specimen in the Brick City’s sprawl of co-ops, projects, duplexes and cramped apartments.
