Eyes of the Innocent: A Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

long time.”
    I hoped they didn’t. I’m not saying I wanted to nominate Akilah for Mother of the Year. But throwing this young woman in jail wasn’t going to solve much of anything. I seriously doubted the state of New Jersey could mete out a punishment more severe than the life sentence of pain and regret she had already received for losing those two boys.
    And ultimately, what was she really guilty of? Of making a tragically poor decision about child care, sure. But beyond that? She was a single mother who wanted to raise her children someplace other than the projects and had been too unsophisticated to avoid the usurious scumbags who preyed on that desperation.
    The real villain here was that industry of scumbags. It started with that “older man,” whoever he was, whose job it had been to hustle fresh meat for the Puerto Rican man, whose job it was to sign them up. But it didn’t stop there. Next were the lending executives, who were underwriting the borrowing with impossibly reckless loan products, approving mortgages for people who obviously did not have the means to pay them back. Then came the investment bankers who were bundling and packaging those bad loans into securities that were somehow rated AAA, which proved to be the lipstick on the proverbial pig.
    Some of those Wall Street crooks—the ones that didn’t get bailed out—got a little bit of comeuppance when those securities were suddenly worth pennies on the dollar. The crooks on the street? The Older Man and the Puerto Rican man? They were still out there, finding new ways to enrich themselves on the misery of others.
    And while I couldn’t stop them from doing it, I could at least hit them with the only weapon a newspaper reporter had: public embarrassment. The Older Man’s role in the whole thing was probably a little too tangential to go at him, presses blazing. But the Puerto Rican man, if I could find him, was a nice target. A story with the headline “Sleazy Bastard” above it would do just fine.
    “Tell me a little more about the Puerto Rican man,” I said. “You keep a phone number for him? A business card maybe?”
    She shook her head.
    “Do you remember his name?” I asked.
    “It was like…” She groped around her memory for a second or two, then gave up. “I don’t know.”
    “What did he look like?”
    “He wasn’t tall or nothing, but he was built,” Akilah said. “He had a goatee he pet all the time, like it was his cat or something. He was dark skinned, for a Puerto Rican. He was bald…”
    She paused to try and think of more, but nothing was forthcoming.
    “About how old?”
    “I don’t know. Forty? Fifty?”
    Or more. Or less. To twenty-four-year-olds, I think any age over thirty-five becomes a blur.
    “When was the last time you saw him?”
    “Not in a long time.”
    “Can you think of anyone who might know more about the guy?”
    “I mean, you can go into the projects and ask around. People there will probably remember him.”
    I nodded. They probably did remember. Whether they would tell a cracker like me was another issue.
    “Did you keep any of the paperwork?”
    “I never got no paperwork,” she said.
    That was probably not true. But it didn’t matter. That’s why the Founding Fathers, in their infinite and righteous wisdom, created the blessing that is public records: so reporters like me could snoop around.
    The county kept copies of mortgages down at the courthouse. And while that would only provide me the name of the lender, not the mortgage broker, I could work backward from there. Because while I had no legal rights to Akilah’s closing documents—which are not public record—Akilah did. I could gently assist her in getting the necessary papers from her lender. Problem solved.
    I’d have my sleazy bastard in no time.
    *   *   *
    Our breakfast long since demolished, I threw a tip on the table, then paid our bill at the register up front. As we walked back to my car, tears started