Tower of Babel

by Michael Sears

  The proposed development project would be to the south. Ted tried to gauge how high one hundred stories would look. Impossible to tell. And didn’t all developers lie about the number of stories? Trump Tower on Fifth skipped a dozen floors. He’d read of a fifty-six-story building in Hong Kong where the penthouse was listed as the eighty-eighth floor because the number eight was considered lucky. Yet that seemed no more unusual than omitting the thirteenth floor in American high-rises. Number of floors was a poor measure of height. The new residential high-rise on Park was 150 feet taller than the Empire State Building but was listed as having fourteen fewer stories.

  There was a tall chain-link fence on the far side of the street where someone had attached a four-by-eight color poster. Despite its size, Ted couldn’t make out anything but the banner across the top: spike the spire. He waited for a break in the traffic and dashed across.

  The poster was lit by streetlamps that turned every reflective surface into a mirror. It took his eyes a moment to adjust. There was a second line of letters, smaller than the first, below the main message: citizens united for sustainable growth. A few sentences of print followed. He scanned the paragraph without really reading it, taking in the stock phrases “rampant overdevelopment,” “environmental impact statement,” “community dislocation,” and others. The banner ran along the top of an artist’s rendering of the proposed LBC project.

  Painted from a street point of view, the building looked menacing, stretching upward into a dark grey cloud. He stepped back for a different perspective and tried to fit the image into the skyline. One World Trade would still be taller, but there was an elegance to the varied planes of that structure. This thing, on the other hand, was to be a series of cubes set atop one another, diminishing slightly at regular intervals but overall a mass so great it would have its own gravity field. The structure wasn’t ugly—nor was it distinctive for anything other than size—but it would be an eyesore from any angle. It would be taller than everything east of Manhattan and located in a borough where the overwhelming majority of structures were one to three stories tall. Air traffic to LaGuardia was already routed away from this area, but controllers would have to take the building into account in emergency situations. The influx of vehicular traffic would make the streets impassable. The increase in number of residents would overwhelm current police, fire, sanitation, schools, and public transportation. The sheer arrogance of the project was impressive.

  “Tower of Babel,” the man said in a hoarse voice, rhyming the last word with cable or label. This was a first for Ted. In his experience, native New Yorkers—and most transplants—pronounced the word to sound like rabble or babble. Or Babylon, for that matter, the last express stop on the Long Island Railroad before the Hamptons.

  He looked over his shoulder. It took a moment to find the dark shape huddled against the subway pillar. The shadow emerged into the light and took form.

  The man was impossibly thin, dressed in a long dark overcoat more appropriate for January than May. His skin was mottled, and his hair was covered by a ragged grey knit watch cap. A long grey beard, surprisingly well-groomed, cascaded down his chest. On his feet he wore tattered boat shoes, the toes wrapped in duct tape, the backs broken down flat so that he shuffled as though wearing slippers.

  “Do you know your Bible?” the man asked.

  Tower of Babel. Ted knew the story. Twenty-some years of Catholic education had not been wasted on him, but he had spent more time studying the Acts than Genesis. “I’m more of a New Testament guy,” he said.

  “The Lord punished the people for their arrogance. They tried to build a tower to heaven, and he destroyed them by creating different languages, so that when they spoke, they couldn’t understand each other.”

  “I remember something about Nimrod,” Ted said.

  “An arrogant king.”

  Ted didn’t remember that part. “A mighty hunter?”

  “The god of the Hebrews will return and stop this abomination. Look around you here. The confusion of tongues has already begun.”

  “Yeah, well, I think that’s been going on for quite a while now.”

  The man straightened to his full height and glared angrily. His hands became apple-sized fists. As Ted was a full head taller and at least thirty years younger than the man, the effect was more comedic than threatening.

  “Ron Reisner is the devil!” the man bellowed.

  “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  Somewhat mollified, the man relaxed his stance and took a step closer. “You carry a world of troubles, son. Lay down your load.”

  “Are you a preacher?” Ted asked.

  “One does not need to be ordained to see the light.”

  Ted needed a guide. “You know the neighborhood?”

  “My flock.”

  There was no profit in being coy. Ted plunged ahead. “How about a lady named Barbara Miller?”

  “The name is not unusual.”

  “She owned property on the next block.”

  “I don’t know her, but I can introduce you to people here who might. Why do you seek her?”

  “She’s owed some money. I’d like to see she gets it. I can make it worth your while.”

  The man shook his head in disbelief. “There is more to that story.”

  Ted nodded in agreement. “And I plan on taking a cut. That’s what I do.”

  “An honest thief.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I’m only a mercenary.”

  “Meet with me tomorrow morning, and I will introduce you to some of the people I watch over.”

  Ted handed him a twenty. “Eleven o’clock all right?”

  He took the bill reluctantly. “I don’t ask for handouts.”

  “It’s not a handout. It’s payment in advance for services rendered. If this pans out, there will be more.”

  “It will go to a good cause.”

  Ted hoped that meant the man was going to get a hot meal rather than a cold drink.

  Uber would be backed up taking Mets fans home. “Where’s the best place for me to get a cab around here?”

  -12-

  The next morning, Ted grabbed an egg sandwich on the corner and ate it while waiting for an Uber. Why was it tougher to get a ride after rush hour than during? He checked in with Lester after giving the driver his destination.

  “I don’t know how long this is going to take,” Ted said. “I’ll call again when I’m done.”

  “I’ll be at the courthouse.” Cell phone use was restricted in parts of the building. “If I don’t answer, I’ll get you right back.”

  The Preacher was waiting on the corner of 113th Street. Ted was five minutes early.

  “I told my people you mean no harm to this woman you seek. I hope that is the truth.”

  “Usually the people I am looking for are very happy when I find them.”

  “Come with me.” He led the way down Roosevelt Avenue to a pizza joint that also offered Mexican food. The breakfast rush was long over, and the staff behind the counter was getting ready for lunch. A thin brown-skinned man with multicolored tattoos running down both arms reached across and vigorously shook the Preacher’s hand before giving Ted a skeptical look.

  The Preacher raised both hands, palms out. “I am here as this man’s guide. You do me honor to hear him speak.”

  Ted introduced himself. “I won’t take much of your time. I’m looking for an older woman. A local landlord named Barbara Miller. I don’t know if she lives around here or just owned property.”

  “Miss Miller is good people, yo. What you want to bother her?” The man talked in a full-speed, overanimated fashion, like a late-night TV shill for Ginsu knives or the Hurricane Spin Mop.

  “You’re a friend?” Ted said. “Then you’ll understand that I have to respect her privacy.”

  “She’s my landlord.
Not for the business. My apartment.”

  New Yorkers rarely evinced positive feelings for their landlords.

  “She must be special,” Ted said.

  “She takes care of her buildings. She got a management company that does all that, but she tells ’em to do it right. Something breaks? They fix it. Like, yesterday. No lie.”

  “How would I find her?”

  “I can give you the management company.”

  “That’s a start,” Ted said.

  The man checked his cell phone and rattled off a number. “They’re in Brooklyn.”

  “But you don’t know where I might find her?”

  “Like where she lives? I don’t know. I mean she’s here in the neighborhood. Or she was. She gets the sopa de lima sometimes. To go. I ain’t seen her, though, in a long time.”

  “Months? Years?”

  He thought about it. “More than a year. She liked to shop in the neighborhood.” He turned to the Preacher. “You gonna take him to Manny’s?”

  “Manny has the fruit market down the block,” the Preacher explained. “We’ll go there next.”

  “Yeah, you talk to Manny,” the counterman said. “She in trouble?”

  “I hope not,” Ted said. “She’s owed some money, and I’m trying to get it to her. That’s all I know.”

  “What are you, then? Like an angel or something?”

  “Something.”

  Ted and the Preacher stepped out into the checkered sunlight filtering down through the subway tracks above.

  “Tell me about Manny,” Ted said.

  “A good man.”

  A train passed overhead, killing any chance of continuing the conversation.

  To call Manny Singh’s emporium a “fruit market” was akin to calling Trump Tower a multiuse high-rise. It was accurate without being descriptive. The store was Costco-sized, and though fruit bins were the prominent feature outside the entrance, inside one could purchase comestibles from dozens of cultures. There was a team of sushi chefs preparing plastic trays of fish, seaweed, and rice; across the aisle was a halal butcher. The aromas of spices, teas, coffee, and flowers melded into an exotic cloud that spilled out onto the sidewalk, luring in shoppers. Manny, in crisp white shirt and tie and a deep maroon turban, kept watch over his domain from the front door, greeting everyone who passed inside.

  A huge grin broke out on Manny’s face as the Preacher raised a hand in greeting. “Welcome, friend,” Manny cried.

  “Sat Sri Akaal,” the Preacher replied, his arm also raised, as in tribute.

  “Sat Sri Akaal,” Manny echoed. “You bring the sun.”

  “I bring a stranger.”

  Manny examined Ted sternly for a moment. “Strangers are welcome here. This is the seeker you mentioned?”

  “I am,” Ted answered. “I’m looking for a Barbara Miller.”

  Manny’s face betrayed nothing, but Ted felt a slight chill of suspicion. “Follow me.” Manny took them into a tiny office, where the Preacher and Ted sat on pallets of canned soda. Manny faced them across an ancient green industrial metal desk.

  “Barbara Miller?” he said. “A very nice woman. Gentle. Polite. I have known her many years.”

  “I’m trying to find her,” Ted said. “Has she been around lately?” He knew he was pushing it, moving too fast, but Manny’s suspicions irked him. He tried to swallow his impatience.

  “She is also very wealthy. What do you want with her?” Manny did not squint skeptically or allow an incredulous inflection to come into his speech, but he managed to convey the fact that he was not going to be satisfied with a bullshit answer.

  Ted’s only option was to trust the man. It was the first step in getting the guy to trust him. Ted told him about the surplus money.

  “This does not make sense. The Barbara Miller I know owns many properties in Corona. She hires a good management company to run them. Why would she let any of them be taken this way?”

  “I don’t know. She’s old? Old people do these kinds of things. I see it all the time. Can you give me some of the other addresses? I’ll check them out.”

  Manny rattled off the locations of three other buildings. None of them were anywhere near the site of the proposed development project.

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  “No. She told me she was moving to a condo on the ocean. Rockaway? Long Beach Island? I don’t remember.”

  “When was this?”

  “At least three years ago. Maybe a little more. It was very cold. January or February. I asked her why she wasn’t going to Florida or someplace warm.” He laughed. “She said she didn’t like big bugs.”

  -13-

  It wasn’t much, but it was far from a wasted morning. Ted had something to work with, and that beat trying to weave fog into mittens. He left the Preacher with a hefty contribution and called Lester. There was no answer, but Lester called back in less than thirty seconds.

  “What’s up?”

  “You’re at the courthouse? Take down these addresses. Find out whatever you can, and text it to me. Then go down to the county clerk and check tax records. I’m getting a slice, and I need to hear from you before I’m done eating. Call me when you’ve got it all.”

  Ted didn’t want to leave Corona without coming up with more information about Miss Miller. She could be dead and buried or alive and kicking a few blocks away.

  One slice turned into two. He made notes on a napkin and calculations on his smartphone. By focusing on the numbers, he was able to tune out some of the Mexican rap music coming out of the overhead speakers.

  Though he’d seen only the bare bones of the court docs, Ted knew that Barbara Miller had lost three buildings. According to ACRIS, the city’s online real estate records, she owned nine others. Even if all twelve buildings were standard three-story walk-ups, the combined rents would have added up to a nice piece of change. In Manhattan, most midsize landlords had been driven out of the business by a crushing combination of competition, government taxation and regulation, and massive amounts of capital, both foreign and domestic. But in the outer boroughs, it was still possible, though becoming harder every year, for a business like Miller’s to survive. And be quite profitable.

  He estimated taxes, water bills, management costs, and insurance. He already knew—again from ACRIS—that six of the properties were not mortgaged, so it was a safe assumption that the others were no different. As long as her maintenance costs were under control, Barbara Miller was netting well over a million dollars a year.

  Manny was right. It made no sense. People ran into all kinds of troubles in their lives—rich people as well as poor and those struggling in the middle—and Ted thought that he had heard all of their stories. But this case was unlike any other. Miss Miller was old, granted, and therefore liable to have been hospitalized, developed dementia, or died. But the management company should have taken care of paying the bills and collecting rents. That was both what they were paid for and how they got paid. They would have to be his next call. He’d need to give it some thought first. They weren’t going to easily open up for him.

  As soon as he heard from Lester.

  Ted finished the second slice and flipped through an abandoned copy of El Diario while he waited. Spanish had been the dominant language of the streets when Ted was growing up, but he’d never conquered the accent. He understood a little of what he heard, if the idioms were familiar, but he had trouble framing sentences more complex than those needed for ordering a meal. But he could read it well enough—given both time and a picture above a story to lend some context. The news didn’t read any better in Spanish.

  libre, pero sin hogar

  Six men, arrested and then released by Immigration, had returned home to find their apartments emptied, their belongings gone, and the buildings boarded up and awaiting demolition. The feds—ICE and
Homeland Security—had raided two buildings in Queens a month before, netting two men ostensibly wanted in Peru for terrorist activities and four alleged undocumented aliens. That was background. The current story was that all six people had been released as evidence mounted that they were all legal immigrants—the Peruvians had been in the States for decades and both were citizens. But while they had been in custody, their apartments had been emptied and the buildings sold to a development company. Ted wasn’t surprised to see that it was LBC—Reisner. When contacted, the recent landlord of the buildings had claimed to have no responsibility, though he’d offered the men $1,000 as a “hardship donation.” Buried in the last paragraph was a quote from an ICE spokesman, apologizing for the unfortunate situation and claiming that they could not reveal the sources that had led to the raid.

  The story danced admirably on the knife-edge of hinting that LBC had orchestrated the deal, duping both the feds and the citizens. The implication was probably not actionable, or the editors would never have let it through, but the point was clear to anyone with a skeptical frame of mind. Most New Yorkers fit that description.

  It was past time to have heard from Lester. If he’d struck out, Ted needed to follow up on the bits and pieces he had. He was about to punch the buttons to call him when the cell phone buzzed in his hand.

  Cheryl. He gritted his teeth and answered. “Molloy.”

  “I’m payin’ you, and I expect updates. Did I tell you that? Every day I want to hear what you’re doing.”

  “Cheryl. Good to hear from you.”

  “Don’t give me that. Where are you?” She paused in her attack for a nanosecond. “And what the hell are you listening to?”

  “I’m working, Cheryl. In fact, I can’t talk long. I’m expecting to hear from one of my investigators on a good lead.”

  “Do you know who shot my Richie?”

  “No. I don’t know. I told you, let the damn cops handle that. That’s what they do. Meanwhile, I am following up on that surplus-money case.”