The Fraud (11 page)

Maryam shook her head. “That’s just my mom. Sometimes she’d get really pissed at him for, like, no reason.”

Somehow, I doubted it was
no
reason. It was just a reason I had yet to uncover and Maryam was ignorant of. Had Joseph Okeke taken a girlfriend? Had he fallen behind on child support? Whatever it was, Tujuka Okeke probably didn’t want to bad-mouth her children’s father in their presence. It showed commendable maturity.

I debated whether I should ask Maryam about the insurance issue. There was a chance she knew all about it and could enlighten me as to what was happening. Then again, Tujuka might have been keeping it from her daughter, knowing a teenager who just lost her father already had enough stress in her life and didn’t need more. And, no, as a reporter I wasn’t strictly bound to honor that. But just because she was eighteen—and, legally, an adult—didn’t mean I had to treat her like an adult in every way.

More questions from me elicited a similar amount of nothing, or at least nothing compelling. She said he traveled a lot for business, but I knew that already. She said he liked to read, everything from crime fiction to military histories. She said again that education was important to him, so important that after moving here he had earned an MBA online from Strayer University, even though he really didn’t need one.

I inserted occasional pauses into the conversation, pouring my attention into my notebook, scribbling nonsense in the hopes Maryam would say more about a given subject. But, just like she had the previous times, she was content to stand there as what remained of the Arts High School student body filed past her on their way home.

Nothing else in our conversation really grabbed me until the end of a discourse about how much her father liked golf. Joseph’s father—Maryam’s grandfather—had been a greenskeeper at a course outside Lagos, one that catered to British colonists before Nigeria was granted independence in 1960. Joseph had grown up playing the game and still mashed a mean five iron. He made his children learn how to play, because it was the game of American business.

“He was so excited a few weeks ago,” she said. “He got this invitation to play at this fancy place.”

“Oh, yeah? What place?”

“Fanwood Country Club,” she said.

“Fanwood,” I repeated, feeling that little tilt in my head that happens when someone has given me a piece of information whose import goes beyond the obvious. “Small world. I was actually just out there earlier today.”

“He just raved about it,” Maryam said.

“You don’t know, by any chance, who invited him there?”

She shook her head.

“Has he ever mentioned the name Earl Karlinsky?”

She wasn’t sure. But as we wrapped up our conversation and swapped cell phone numbers, I couldn’t chase the possibility from my mind: what if Joseph Okeke had also known the inhospitable and perhaps mendacious Earl Karlinsky?

I didn’t know what, exactly, it would mean if he did—except that I had more to learn. I had already planned to interview some Fanwood Country Club members about Kevin Tiemeyer, if only to rub it in Karlinsky’s face.

This newest revelation had just moved that agenda item to the top of my list.

*   *   *

I am not, by nature or by preference, the most organized person in the world. My desk in the newsroom is covered with irregularly shaped stacks of papers and notebooks, the contents of which may or may not be related to the same subject. My books at home are neither alphabetized nor indexed. I eschew most forms of collating, classifying, or categorizing.

But I am absolutely fastidious when it comes to keeping track of my sources. If someone gives me their phone number or e-mail, I save it in my phone’s contact list, even if I think there is only a one in a million chance I’ll ever need it again. I then store every other relevant piece of information I know about them—their employer and job title, their professional affiliations, their educational background, the names of their spouse and children, whatever may be relevant in the future.

I will also record a quick log line about the article for which I interviewed them (“Ludlow Street murders,” or “Windy Byers story,” or what have you). It all goes into the notes file for each contact and I have rolled up somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand names during my time at the
Eagle-Examiner
.

Hence, as soon as Maryam left me to attend to her duties as yearbook editor, I whipped out my phone and pulled up my contacts. I searched the phrase “Fanwood Country Club,” knowing that I would have listed such membership in my notes.

Three names popped up. By far the most promising was Armando “Doc” Fierro. I actually smiled when I saw it.

He was perfect. He was, in Malcolm Gladwell’s
Tipping Point
parlance, a connector. He would know Kevin Tiemeyer if only because Doc was the kind of guy who made it his business to know everyone. He had been a campaign manager, cabinet member, close advisor, and all-around whiz kid for a long-ago governor. He had since served on a stunning number of official commissions, blue-ribbon panels, and boards of directors, all of which were based on his extensive latticework of personal relationships. He was now the owner-operator of a small firm that did a mix of lobbying and consulting, with a little public relations on the side—which is why he cultivated a relationship with me.

He had gotten the nickname “Doc” not because of any medical or advanced degrees, at least not that I knew of. Legend was that long-ago governor was confronting a problem and told someone, “Take it to Doctor Fierro, he’ll get that fixed up right.” People in the administration started calling him Dr. Fierro, which quickly got shortened to Doc.

He was smart, gregarious, and charming, as guys like that tended to be. I had quoted him at least half a dozen times in the paper, and there were probably twice as many stories where he had helped me by making an important introduction. He was also, as they say in the old country, fond of the drink. He didn’t need much excuse to tilt one back.

I briefly debated whether to call or e-mail and decided to go electronic. I mostly just wanted to find a legitimate way to get inside the doors at Fanwood Country Club so I could snoop around. If I did it over e-mail he’d ask fewer questions as to my motives. I typed:

Doc,

Working on a story and hoping you can help me. Also, I’m developing a terrible thirst and the rumor is your bartender at Fanwood now has one of my favorite beers on tap. In the name of efficiency, can we take care of both these urgent matters simultaneously? 5:30 tonight? Let me know.

Best,

Carter

With that taken care of, I moved to my next item of business, setting my search function to work on the phrase “Newark Rotary.”

Alas, nothing came up. Somehow, I had been toiling nine years for Newark’s finest and only newspaper, yet never come across a single Rotarian in the city. I guess there does not tend to be much of a need for hard-hitting investigations into misuse of the Rotary Happy Dollars fund.

I monkeyed around on the Web for a bit and found that the current president of the Newark Rotary Club was named Zabrina Coleman-Webster. The name was unusual enough that I was able to trace her to Lacks & Ragland, an accounting firm that had offices on Academy Street in downtown Newark. She was listed as an associate with the firm.

In the company directory, I located her direct dial line. I was about to call it when I stopped myself. The address listed was just a short stroll down the hill from Arts High, no more than maybe ten minutes. I started walking instead.

Conducting cold call interviews was sort of like sex: thanks to modern technology, there was a way to do it over the phone, but it was infinitely better to do it in person.

CHAPTER 15

In recent years there have been a proliferation of companies like Lacks & Ragland that have found Newark. They’re midsized firms that don’t want to have to pay Manhattan rents, but still desire access to public transportation—which Newark has in abundance—and close proximity to New York. They tend to be quite happy in Newark, as long as the city’s incessant dysfunction doesn’t scare them off.

Lacks & Ragland occupied all five floors of a small building on Academy Street that had been attractively renovated sometime in the recent past to include hardwood floors, exposed brick, and other features suitable to young upwardly mobile professionals.

I announced myself to a grumpy security guard who pulled himself out of that day’s edition of the
Eagle-Examiner
just long enough to lift up the phone on his desk and mutter into it.

He listened for a moment, grunted a few words at me—they may have been “she’ll be right down”—then turned his attention back to the paper. His lack of courtesy and attentiveness bothered me not in the least. I was just happy to see someone engrossed in our product.

As I waited, my phone dinged with an e-mail:

Carter,

I, too, feel a thirst coming on. 5:30 it is.

Cheers,

Doc

I had just stowed the phone back in my pocket when the elevator doors slowly eased open to reveal an African American woman in a red skirt suit. She was nicely proportioned, fortyish, and had straightened her hair, which she wore shoulder length.

“Hi, Zabrina Coleman-Webster,” she said, smiling and walking toward me.

“Carter Ross.”

“How can I help you?”

“I’m working on a story about Joseph Okeke.”

Saying the name was like flipping a kill switch on her smile.

“Oh, Joseph,” she said, in a way that was almost like a sigh. She put a hand over her heart, slumped her shoulders, and cast her eyes down. She held that pose for a few seconds, her own small moment of silence.

Then she straightened up. “Why don’t you come upstairs? We can talk in the conference room.”

“Thank you. That would be great.”

I stepped into the elevator and she punched the button for the fifth floor.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d take you to my office but the associates have to share. Only the partners get their own.”

“I understand. It’s no problem.”

The door slid shut just as slowly as it had opened. The elevator had apparently not been renovated along with the rest of the building. It groaned and creaked underneath us as it summoned the momentum to begin its journey.

As soon as it finally got underway, Zabrina said, “So how did you know Joseph and I were dating?”

I resisted—barely—the urge to blurt,
You were?!
I was glad she had her attention focused on the lighted numbers above the door that were tracking our upward progress, because it meant she didn’t see my jaw drop.

Once I composed myself, I said, “Oh, well, you know how gossipy Rotary people are.”

“I thought we kept it pretty quiet. You must be a good reporter.”

“Just lucky, mostly,” I said, which was truer than she knew.

At least now I understood Tujuka Okeke’s disgust with her ex-husband. Sure, they were divorced. But this might have been the first time he had found comfort in the arms of another woman. Even if Joseph remained devoted to his family, Tujuka would have resented the intrusion and the possible disruption to their well-oiled coparenting routine. Plus, just because she didn’t want him anymore didn’t mean she wanted someone else to have him. Jealousy and reason are only intermittent pen pals.

I wondered if Maryam knew about her dad’s squeeze. I suppose it was possible for a father to hide a girlfriend from a daughter he didn’t live with. Maryam obviously hadn’t said anything about her dad dating; but, then again, I hadn’t explicitly asked her, either. It made me ponder what else she had left out.

“It had really only been going on for a little while,” Zabrina said, filling the silence I had given her in ways Maryam had not. “I mean, the attraction had been there for a while, I guess. He’s a very handsome man. Have you ever seen a picture of him?”

“No,” I said, as we arrived at the fifth floor.

She pointed to the conference room, which was directly opposite the elevator. “Wait in there. Let me just grab my phone.”

I walked into the conference room. It was standard-issue corporate, which meant it gave me a minor case of the creeps. Your typical reporter is a free-range animal who needs large, open spaces in which to graze. It does not thrive in captivity.

“This is Joseph,” Zabrina said as she returned to the room, closing the door behind her. Holding out her phone, she showed me a photograph of the two of them that appeared to have been taken at a Rotary Club meeting. Joseph had his arm tightly clamped around Zabrina’s shoulder. He was dark-complexioned, with short hair. I recognized the cheekbones and the wide set of the eyes, both of which he had passed to his daughter.

“Isn’t he gorgeous?” she added.

As a rule, I tend not to be the greatest judge of the gorgeousness of other dudes. This probably explains why my first date to the Homecoming Dance was named Kara, not Karl. But I felt like it was only polite to summon some enthusiasm. “Oh … yes,” I said. “He’s a … a fine-looking man.”

“Yeah, and it doesn’t hurt that he had his own job and made his own money,” Zabrina added. “Let me tell you, there are not a lot of single black men in Newark who can say that. Trust me. I grew up here.”

This was mildly surprising. There are not, to my knowledge, a profusion of black female accountants. There are even fewer black female accountants who grew up in Newark.

Sensing an opening to pry into her past—and wanting to get her talking freely before I turned the conversation to her erstwhile boyfriend—I said, “Do you want to sit?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” she said. She sat at the head of the table. I selected the corner next to her, the one that faced the door.

“So obviously you decided to stay close to home,” I said.

“I don’t know if you could call it a decision. I was the typical dumb ghetto girl. I got pregnant at sixteen, dropped out of high school. I thought my baby daddy was going to support us.”

She laughed at the absurdity of the idea. “He was gone before the baby was even born.”