by Matthew Iden
The action increased as I cut left on Park towards 14th Street, a main north-south artery for the District. I was still solidly in a residential space, though just a five-minute walk south was a shopping zone full of big-box stores and chain stores that had gone up several years before in a spate of renovation and revitalization. The few times I’d driven by, I’d just found it ugly—they were the same shops and warehouse-sized megastores you could find repeated in any part of the country. Based on what I’d recently learned about commercial development in Washington, DC, I couldn’t help but wonder if the whole shebang was as shady as the other developments I was looking into.
The address Denton had given me was off Newton Street. As I walked on 14th towards my destination, I could see a crowd gathered on and around the steps of an old school. Even from this distance it had the coordinated vibe of a protest. I slowed down as I came within earshot and sauntered towards the crowed, watching faces and bodies.
There were two main groups, that was clear; the protestors and the…protestees? The occasion for the brouhaha seemed to be a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the development, with chagrined guys in suits trying valiantly to read from prepared statements and smile for the photo op while a small horde of t-shirt- and jeans-wearing twentysomethings I recognized from the PoP office—bolstered by a modest gathering of locals—yelled abuse and waved signs. A few news stations had their two-person teams there, covering the local color for this evening’s news hour. The reporters had their arms crossed, looking bored, while the cameramen busied themselves getting wires and cords just right. One good-looking field reporter I knew from too many hours spent watching the tube was smoking a cigarette like it was her last, tapping the ash against the links of a nearby cyclone fence.
Now that I knew who was in what camp, I looked at the broader context, searching for outliers. One pair came to my attention quickly, a Laurel and Hardy combination of a whip-thin Hispanic guy and a heavyset white dude with white hair and a white goatee. They were on the protestee side of things, dressed in suits like their counterparts, but sporting wraparound shades and looking more wary and alert, with that certain professional look that said they were more likely to smack people around than schmooze them. Their gaze was passive, but locked on the protestors.
I looked around for Denton and spotted him pacing along the fringe, directing Jerry, the PoP volunteer I’d first talked to at their office, to take pictures of the event. Where his minions sported the latest in casual wear, Denton was looking sharp in a gray suit and tie. He saw me, said something to Jerry, then headed in my direction.
“Singer,” he said in greeting.
“Denton,” I said back. “What evil is being perpetrated today?”
He turned to stand beside me, so we were both facing the ruckus. “You’re looking at the dedication of the brand-new Newton Integrated Business Scene.”
“NIBS? Are you serious?”
“Yes. Brought to you by the one and only Jeremy Rheinsfeld, president of Atlantic Union—he’s the short guy with the curly gray hair on the right.”
I squinted. “And Toby Waites on the left?”
“The one and only,” Denton said, shooting me a glance. “You’re current on your city council politics, Mr. Singer.”
“I try. He was indirectly responsible for my employment for almost thirty years.”
“Well, Waites is directly responsible for the eviction of about three hundred families today. Atlantic Union was just awarded the contract to infuse new life into this tired old neighborhood by knocking down a school and community center, plowing under hundreds of occupied homes, and replacing all of it with a sorely needed shopping district that is precisely like the one eight blocks away.”
Something occurred to me. “This isn’t Waites’s ward, is it? What’s he doing here?”
“No, it isn’t. This is John Cruz’s ward. He’s standing in the back, there. But Waites is the rainmaker, the one who brings in the developers, so he’s the one who gets to talk to the cameras.”
I grunted. On the steps, Rheinsfeld had relinquished the mic to Waites, a pudgy man of middle height and a comb-over. “If they’re at the dedication stage, it’s a little late to protest, isn’t it?”
He made a face. “It’s a done deal, unfortunately, but we want to raise a stink anyway. Try to draw some media attention to it, get some city residents thinking.”
“Does that really work?”
“You’d be surprised. We’ve been able to block Rheinsfeld from getting his hands on about a half dozen different major properties in the city, usually by getting to the community groups before he does. Or before Waites can make his empty promises.”
“I’m surprised AU doesn’t own the city by now,” I said.
“Nah, they just think they do,” Denton said. “But I do know they take their failures personally. One property, the old Trumble theater, you know it? Yeah, it’s gotten to good old Jerry something terrible that he hasn’t been able to level the place and put in a renaissance plaza or some other strip of shops. He’s been trying to get around us on that for years.”
“He must have a hell of a network, to catch wind of all those potential deals.”
“Yep, although half of his brokers work in City Hall. They just pick up the phone when they hear about a block being condemned or a councilman eager to get a fresh look in their ward. Always in time for an election, of course.”
“Speaking of brokers, you know the name Pat Zimmerman?”
Denton, distracted and watching the steps of the school, held up a hand. “Hold on a sec.”
He started forward, having heard or seen something I hadn’t, circling the outside of the pack until he was in a small empty space of his own. He nodded to Jerry to make sure he had a clear shot of the suits on the steps, then glanced towards another one of the PoP volunteers who was in the pack of protestors. Obviously working off a script, the volunteer made a quick hand motion and the chanting and yelling suddenly stopped. Jerry raised the barrel of the lens. The reporters, bored and checking their phones a moment earlier, lifted their heads.
In the stark silence that followed, Denton—in his operatic voice—yelled, “Mr. Waites, Atlantic Union’s redevelopment of the Newton Street neighborhood is going to unnecessarily displace hundreds of families, destroying a community and DC institution that’s been in place for more than seventy-five years. Why did you ignore the public petition, signed by more than four hundred residents, that People Over Power brought to you over a year ago?”
The news cameras swung to cover Waites, who blinked owlishly before replying. “My office reviewed the petition the instant it was received, Mr. Denton. While I appreciate the emotional impact the development will have on the residents here, they’ll be able to return to an even better Newton Street than when they left it. The local civic and home owners’ associations agree with me. They all support the project.”
“The local civic and home owners’ associations were bought off before the ink on the paperwork was dry, Councilman,” Denton boomed. The TV cameras were now split between covering the charismatic protestor and the squirming, middle-aged politician. “And speaking of bought off, some might question the timing of Atlantic Union’s contributions to your own campaign fundraising. Like the check that arrived at your office the day Atlantic Union was awarded the contract for this project.”
Waites swelled in place. “I have not been influenced by campaign contributions and there’s not a shred of evidence that I’m aware of to suggest that I have. If you don’t want to find yourself on the wrong end of a slander suit, Mr. Denton, I suggest you consider your next words very carefully.”
Denton replied, Waites responded, and they had a lively back and forth with Denton getting the better of it, until Rheinsfeld leaned forward and tapped Waites on the shoulder. They had a quick conference out of range of the microphone. Waites put his hand over it automatically, anyway. Then the councilman spoke again. “Thank you
for coming out today, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll have a proper press conference at my office tomorrow. Press corps only.” The last line was delivered towards Denton. The party began to break up. The PoP kids began chanting their slogans again, but the news teams had snagged their five minutes of footage and B-roll and were already walking their gear back to their vans as the suits filed off the steps and into waiting cars.
I’d followed the exchange with something between amusement and admiration, but my attention shifted when—the second after Denton had started speaking—I saw Laurel and Hardy, the two gorillas masquerading as city administrators, ease off the steps. Hardy began circling the crowd while Laurel went over to a nearby Cadillac and pulled out a camera with telephoto lens as long as my forearm. Moving together, with Hardy pointing and writing down notes, the two started systematically taking pictures of the PoP volunteers. The kids, watching raptly as their hero took on Big Bad Toby Waites, were completely unaware they were being documented and cataloged like some rare species of butterfly.
Halfway through the Denton-Waites tête-à-tête, I pushed away from the telephone pole I’d been leaning on and circled behind Laurel and Hardy. When I got within sniffing distance, I pulled out my phone and started taking pictures of them taking pictures. I got three before Laurel heard me and glanced over his shoulder. I focused on him and got a great portrait shot of his long, greyhound mug scowling.
“Fuck are you doing?” he asked. Hardy turned around, his pen hovering comically over his notebook, like he was taking dictation from his friend.
“Just taking some snaps,” I said. The camera was fast. I got three more stills of both of them while we stood there. “Seems like the thing to do on this side of the street.”
“Don’t do that,” Hardy growled, no longer looking like a secretary with a hormone problem. He was taller—and substantially wider—than he’d appeared on the steps.
“Do either of you guys know how to change this to video?” I asked, squinting at the screen. “I’m always stuck taking pictures.”
I had their attention now. Hardy had put his pen in a pocket and started to walk towards me, his hand outstretched. Did he really think I was going to hand over my phone?
“This is going to make an awesome collage,” I said, backing away at a slow pace, taking pictures as quickly as I could tap my finger. They chased me in slow motion, unwilling to cause a scene, until we were on the opposite sidewalk. I slipped the phone in a pocket and stopped abruptly. They pulled up short, unsure.
I dropped my cute face. “Not so cool when it’s your picture being snapped, huh? Want to tell me why you’re so interested in the junior members of PoP? You wouldn’t be collecting information so you can build files on them, would you? To start tracking them, make their lives miserable, maybe?”
“Who are you?” Hardy asked.
“Nobody,” I said. “Just an amateur photographer. I mean, thirty years as a cop means I can pick a couple of gene-pool rejects like yourselves out of a crowd, but I really just like taking pictures.”
“Shit,” Laurel said, apropos of nothing. By now, Denton and Waites had finished with their grandstanding. Over my two admirers’ shoulders, I could see Rheinsfeld making his way towards us.
“Harmon! Martinez!” he barked. The two of them turned around obediently and the Atlantic Union mogul made a curt gesture towards the Cadillac. I thought they’d shoot me dirty looks as they walked away, but they spun on their heels and headed back to their boss like they were on strings. It hurt my ego—I thought I was worth a bit of bluster, after all, maybe even a threat or two—but I was mollified a few minutes later when, as the Cadillac pulled away, Laurel leaned out the open window and took a dozen pictures of me, pointing the barrel of the lens in my direction like a gun.
“Enjoy the show, Singer?” a voice asked.
I turned. It was Denton. He looked pleased with himself. Behind him, his PoP crew was milling around, high-fiving and stacking signs. The news vans pulled away, heading back to the studio.
“It was bombastic,” I said.
“You don’t approve?”
“Both of you seem born to the stage. But I like your character better.”
“A little bit of theater gets us on the news,” he said, spreading his hands. “Nobody listens to a boring activist.”
“You know those two lug heads that were with Rheinsfeld?” I described them.
“No. Should I?”
“Not necessarily. But one took pictures of your PoP gang while the other took notes. They were about as subtle as a flying brick. Looked to me like they were putting together files on your people. I was wondering if it was the first time.”
“Rheinsfeld’s never bothered us before,” he said, his face darkening. “Maybe we’re touching a nerve.”
“Maybe. You might want to send a memo to the loyal few. They should know if they run the risk of getting their heads knocked in or their tires slashed. Or their next credit application revoked. Who knows what kind of reach Rheinsfeld has?”
Denton was biting his lip, obviously thinking of something, but scowled at my last line. “Maybe you should think about what it’s like to have your house plowed under while you watch, you think this is all so funny, Singer.”
He had a point. “Sorry. I make fun of things too much, sometimes. You’re doing good work. I guess I would just go about it a different way.”
“Like how?”
I patted my pocket. “Take a couple pictures, make some people mad, see what tumbles out.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Driving back from the rumble in Columbia Heights, I sighed and squeezed the steering wheel, wishing I had something half as solid to hold on to when it came to this case. Crashing an activist’s protest and making Jeremy Rheinsfeld’s hired thugs angry was fun, but it didn’t get me anywhere on the case.
Part of the problem was that there wasn’t any place to this thing. A lifetime ago, as a homicide cop, I hadn’t been any more enamored of getting out of bed at 4:00 a.m. to go to the crime scene than the next guy, but at least the alley or the bedroom or the car gave me a concrete place to begin. It was a zero point from which to start adding things, the where to which physical evidence and rumors and tidbits of information adhered themselves until you had something real and solid, a grounding sense of where to begin. This thing had lots of people to talk to and reams of tangential information, but it all seemed to float in the air, never landing, never coalescing into something tangible.
Okay, reset. Wendy Gerson had been killed in spectacular fashion, but beyond the significance of the crime scene being a train platform, there wasn’t anything I was going to glean from walking the Waterfront Metro again. Any other places that I might start from were either gone or inaccessible—her office was out of reach, her condo stripped clean, her childhood home of no help.
I eased the car to a stop as I joined a line already waiting at the light on Columbia and 15th. A rare breeze was blowing north from the river today and I had the windows down. The radio chatter was like a jar of flies buzzing near my ear, so I snapped it off and listened instead to the sounds of the city. I was in a mixed-use area, where mom and pop stores grew in between swaths of two-story homes. A vacant lot was a mild blight on the otherwise homey urban landscape, though a large sign planted dead-center in the lot like a flag laying claim to a new world promised development was on its way. Glancing around, I saw the windows of the brownstones on the edges of the lot were boarded and city notices had been tacked to the doors.
The view tripped a thought which in turn caused a creeping sensation to steal over me. I swore. Why wasn’t I thinking straight? There was one really important place—maybe the most important place—that I hadn’t even seen yet that had factored in Wendy Gerson’s life.
Or, more to the point, her death.
There was nothing to announce the location, no yellow tape or picketing college kids. A year, a month, or even a week ago, I would
’ve blown past the micro-neighborhood without a second glance, attributing the deserted buildings to the normal swing and sway of urban development and shifting economics. Now, my recently educated eye saw a pattern in the types of homes condemned, the presence of empty yards turned into parking lots, the boldly placed signs with Atlantic Union’s blue and white tidal wave logo.
But the Quarters Renovation and Rejuvenation Project wasn’t much to scream and shout about, at least not yet. While the signs promised scads of renovated townhomes suitable for smart urban living, the neighborhood I was looking at was five square city blocks squashed against the high, octagonally-bricked wall that hid the two-mile-long Southeast Freeway from view and dampened some of the sound. The plots seemed caught between abandonment and development, eerily reminiscent of Hollywood scenes from a post-nuclear holocaust movie. Brick, two-story tenements, an apartment building, and even a school appeared as though their inhabitants, warned of some impending doom, had simply stood and walked out one day. Most of the buildings weren’t even boarded. Not worth it since many of them would be knocked down anyway.
I parked, got out of my car, and started walking the streets of the Quarters, trying to picture what the neighborhood had looked like, what it had felt like, in decades past. The buildings seemed from the 1940s and ’30s, and I could imagine the story of a vibrant DC community—friendships, rivalries, affairs, births, deaths—flowing in and around the simple city blocks. A sense of displacement settled over me, a wrongness in place and time. The hum of tires on the nearby freeway told me that the city was still alive, but what I was walking by seemed to contradict that simple truth.
I strolled through the neighborhood, taking lefts and rights at random, until I came to an abandoned lot. Encircling it was a hastily erected chain-link fence, sagging in the middle, which held a sign advertising parking for the Washington Nationals stadium games. Rubble in the corners of the lots spoke to the fact that this hadn’t been empty all that long ago.