The Stolen (2008)
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and decrepit, one new and rebuilt.”
“I’m sure if part of the town was rebuilt, it’s only a
matter of time before the rest catches up.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Even the Linwoods’ house looked
like it had been carved out of marble recently. When I read
up on Daniel Linwood’s kidnapping, the family received
thousands of dollars in donations, public and anonymous.
No idea if that went into their house, but I’ll tell you, it
wasn’t the only one on the block that looked new. I’m wondering if Powers Construction has held the scalpel over
Hobbs County. And if so, maybe they’re tied into the mess
somehow.”
“Even if you think it’s not about the money,” Wallace
said, “it’s about the money.”
Obviously there was a strong motive for Powers Construction to want to be a part of some major rebuilding
projects in Hobbs County, as well as other towns and cities
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across the Northeast. I still felt like I was missing something. Follow the money, Wallace said. That’s what I
decided to do. I had to talk to Reggie Powers.
40
The home office of Powers Construction was located
at Twenty-Third and Fifth in Manhattan. Before calling
over, I decided to do a little research on the company.
Their Web site had one of those incredibly flashy
designs, and I could picture Reggie Powers grimacing
as he handed over thousands of dollars to some tech
geeks who’d likely never seen a working construction
side. The company logo was an intersected P and C.
Both letters looked like they were made out of curved
steel, bolts and all.
Powers was, according to the site, one of the leading
commercial and residential contractors in the entire Northeast. Their projects ranged from billion-dollar properties,
from several financial institutions, to smaller homes and
houses. They were credited for having essentially rebuilt
several small towns, and were even one of the contractors
called in to evaluate the Gulf Coast after the devastation
of Hurricane Katrina. Whatever the size of the project, it
looked like Powers Construction was the bidder to beat.
It was no secret that the construction industry had some
shady underpinnings, since the majority of contracts were
doled out to the lowest bidder. The problem therein was
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that the lowest bidders often miscalculated their budgets,
necessitating a six-million-dollar property costing north of
seven million. Yet the smarter, or shadier companies
(amazing how often the two went hand in hand), worked
out sweetheart deals to rig bids. The contractor would
offer a bid far lower than any of his competitors, which
was of course accepted. If they ran over budget, which was
almost guaranteed, the bill would be settled under the
table. This meant projects were bid on for far less money
than they actually cost, keeping other companies out of the
loop, but allowing the illegal parties to get rich based on
the sheer number of developments they partnered on.
Reggie Powers himself had quite an interesting story.
According to his online biography, he was the most influential black construction owner in the entire country.
Born in Crown Heights in 1959, Powers had little formal
education and had worked various construction jobs
throughout his formative years. Then after the Crown
Heights riots of 1991, Powers decided he was tired of
seeing his neighborhood torn apart by violence, and was
tired of seeing good men and women live in housing that
was akin to inhumane treatment. Within five years, Powers
had taken his own earnings, and with the help of lenders,
bought out a company known as TBC—Thomas Blakeman Construction—renaming it Powers Construction.
One of his first rebuilding projects was tearing down a
number of projects in which drugs and violence were
rampant. These buildings were replaced with low-income
housing. According to Powers, it was the end of the dark
days, and the beginning of a new Brooklyn.
Within a few years, Powers had become known not
only as one of the wealthiest and most influential private
contractors on the East Coast, but one of its biggest phi-298
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lanthropists. He donated time, money and manpower to
numerous towns, and was credited with helping to lower
crime rates across the board.
Of course, official biographies often swept more than
their fair share under the carpet. Not to mention that
Powers’s relative inexperience made his volcanic rise
even more shocking. I had to think that simply due to
the sheer size of Powers Construction, it would be
strange if they didn’t have some sort of bid-rigging
system going on.
Once I’d done some digging around regarding the
company profile, I decided it was time to meet the man
face-to-face. Reggie Powers. See what, if anything, he
knew. And whether he was aware that one of his employees, Raymond Benjamin, was a murderer.
I called the main switchboard at Powers Construction,
and a pleasant secretary picked up the phone. She sounded
as if she’d been there a long time, even had a cadence
nailed down.
“Po- wers Con- struct-ion, how may I direct your call?”
“Well, first I was wondering if you could give me the
extension for one of your employees. The name is
Raymond Benjamin. And after that I’d like to be transferred to Reggie Powers’s office.”
“One moment, sir,” the woman said. I heard typing on
the other end. Then I heard her mutter, Hmm, that’s odd.
“Ma’am? Are you still there?”
“Yes, sir, sorry about that. According to our database,
we do employ a Raymond Benjamin, but he doesn’t have
an office or an extension.”
“Is there any contact information for him?”
“I’m sorry, sir, not that I have access to. You’d have to
speak to our human resources department.”
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“That’s all right. Can you transfer me to Mr. Powers’s
office?”
“Sure thing, just a moment.”
She put me on hold. A minute later, a young man’s
voice came over the line.
“Mr. Powers’s office.”
“Hi, my name is Henry Parker and I’m a reporter from
the New York Gazette. I’d like to come in and speak with
Mr. Powers today. It’s a pretty urgent matter.”
“Mr. Powers has a very busy schedule today. He’s not
in the office right now, but if I can pass a message to him,
I’ll see if he has some free time.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Tell him I want to speak to him
about Raymond Benjamin and Dmitri Petrovsky.”
“Can you spell those for me, sir?”
“Just remember the names.”
“Um…okay. I’ll call Mr. Powers right now. Is there a
number where I can reach you?”
I gave the secretary my cell
phone number. He said he’d
get back to me ASAP. I hung up the phone and began to
play the waiting game again.
I tried to think how Reggie Powers might be connected
to all of this. Powers Construction employed Raymond
Benjamin, though the fact that he was a ghost at the office
pretty much confirmed that he was there to do dirty work,
collect a W-2, and that was all. But why would Reggie
Powers want anything to do with Dmitri Petrovsky? He
seemed like the least likely person on earth to want to have
anything to do with a kidnapping, especially given his
background. The more the pieces came together, the more
trouble I had making them all fit.
Ten minutes later, my cell phone rang. I picked it up.
“Mr. Parker.” I recognized the voice as Powers’s secre-300
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tary. “Mr. Powers is at a job site all day today, but he said
if you can meet him there at six o’clock, he’d be happy to
speak with you.”
“Where’s the site?” I asked.
“He’s overseeing the construction of a mall in Hobbs
County, New York, today.”
Hobbs County. Why was I not surprised. I checked my
watch. It was three-thirty. I had plenty of time to drive up
to Hobbs County.
“Give me the address,” I said. I jotted down the information, thanked the secretary and hung up. I chewed on
the tip of my pen. I had no idea what Reggie Powers would
know. I sure as hell had a few questions he needed good
answers to.
I put my tape recorder and notebook into a small
backpack, stopped in to Wallace’s office to tell him where
I was going. He told me to check in once I was done with
Powers. I got the sense Wallace understood how big this
story was getting. And that scared me.
I took the subway Uptown to my apartment, got in the
rental car and began the drive up to Hobbs County.
41
“Tomorrow,” Paulina said. She was sitting at her desk,
leaning back in her desk chair, the one the assistants
commonly referred to as the “bitch throne.” She’d caught
James Keach referring to it as such one day, but rather than
admonish the boy, she merely laughed and told him not to
be shy about it. From that day on, James commonly
referred to the chair with that moniker, using the slight
whisper of a child who can’t believe his parents permit him
to curse in the house.
The copy was set. The pictures had been laid out. She’d
pored over every inch of the article with greater focus than
any story she could remember. She couldn’t say for sure
whether this piece would be her crowning moment as a
journalist—in fact, she wasn’t sure she’d want it to be—but
in many ways it meant the most to her. It represented a clear
turning point in her career, and would mark perhaps the first
official shot of the war. To this day it had been the newsprint version of Russia versus the U.S. No casualties, lots
of trash talk and hidden agendas everywhere they turned.
Paulina’s article would change all of that. So while
nobody quite knew just who fired that first shot at Lexington and Concord, in the future they could pin this one to
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her blouse. The Parker stories had been small potatoes.
Going after a baby fish as though people would care. To
this point, Henry hadn’t been in the game long enough for
people to truly care. Like Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair,
the sting would have been worse if they had the tenure of,
well… Paulina laughed.
A bottle of Dom was waiting in her fridge. Myron’s
phone number was on her cell phone. At first she debated
calling him again—the last thing she needed tonight was
another pity party—but ending the night with a good drink
and a great lay would be the perfect capper. The end of the
beginning, the beginning of the end.
And even though she hadn’t seen him in many months,
Paulina rather wished she’d be able to see the look on
Henry Parker’s face in the morning.
42
The sun bathed Hobbs County in a beautiful mélange of
reds and golds. This could be such a breathtaking town, I
hated to think so much evil had taken place here. When I
parked the car in the lot by the construction site, I took a
moment to take it in, to breathe it in. You didn’t get many
views like this in the city, one of the trade-ins you had to
make to live there. I didn’t mind so much. Spending my
whole childhood growing up way out West, I’d seen
enough sunsets to quench a lifelong thirst. Living amid the
steel and bustle of New York didn’t quite feel like home
yet, but it was getting there.
I turned off the car and parked outside the site.
The mall was coming up well. Steel beams were exposed
everywhere. Tools and wheelbarrows and mixers were scattered about. I had no idea where I was supposed to meet
Reggie Powers. I figured there would be some sort of office
structure set apart, or he’d just be waiting for me outside.
Yet as I took a quick look around, there was no sign of him.
As I walked through the construction area, dipping
under low beams, peeking around corners, I felt a queasy
sensation in my stomach when I realized there wasn’t a
single person in sight.
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Powers’s secretary had told me Reggie would be at the
site all day. But there were no other cars on the lot. No discarded papers or bags. No sign that any human beings had
even set foot here today. Why would Reggie be here all
day if nobody else was?
A terrible suspicion grew that I was alone here. Or even
worse, not as alone as I thought.
“Hello?” I called out. My voice echoed through the
structure. A chill ran through my body, and I held the
backpack tighter. “Mr. Powers?”
Still nothing.
I exited the structure, walked around the exterior.
Several cranes were standing tall over the skeleton,
long steel beams lying at their feet. The cement trucks
were quiet, side elevators dark.
“Reggie Powers!” I called again. When again there was
no answer, I decided it’d be best to get the hell out of there.
I began to jog back toward the car, winding my way
around the side of the building. As I passed a blue van, I saw
something that made me stop in my tracks. My breath caught.
Beside the van I could make out a human hand splayed
out on the ground. As I crept closer, I could see the fingertips coated with blood. The hand belonged to a black
man.
The body was on the ground in an awkward position.
The right hand was splayed out above the man’s head, the
left arm at a ninety-degree angle. The legs were crumpled,
one stuck beneath the man’s torso. A single hole was in
the center of his head, and a pool of blood had begun to
dry.
I didn’t need to check the wallet to know that Reggie
Pow
ers had been murdered.
I whipped around, looking for something, anything.
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He’d clearly been dead a little while, so whoever had done
it had either fled the scene, or was waiting for me.
I took the cell phone from my pocket. Dialed 911. I
felt panicked as I waited to be connected, every second
not knowing what the hell was happening. Was Powers
already dead when I called his office? Or had he come
here with the intent to meet with me, then was murdered
by someone who knew…
Then I knew it. Powers meant to set me up. He knew
nobody would be at the construction site. He must have
told somebody before he arrived. And that somebody took
him out. Somebody who’d begun to think Powers was
better off dead. Somebody who felt he’d become a liability.
And when I heard the click of a gun safety being
removed, I knew immediately that Raymond Benjamin
had killed him.
“Step away from the van, Parker.”
I put the cell phone in my coat pocket. Every muscle
in my body was numb.
I recognized the voice. I’d heard it that night at the house
on Huntley, as this man tried to torture information out of me.
I slowly turned around. Hands above my head.
Raymond Benjamin was standing ten feet away from
me. He held a gun in one outstretched hand. The scar on
his cheek seemed to glisten in the darkening sky. His face
was a mask of anger and frustration.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” he said. “Killing is an
ugly, ugly thing. If you’d just let it be, Parker, this wouldn’t
be happening.”
“Petrovsky. Powers. You killed them both, and for
what? To hide your dirty secret? I know what all this is,”
I said. “All this by your hand.”
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Benjamin took a step closer. “Parker,” he said. “I’m
sorry you won’t have a chance to know any better.”
The sky exploded, a yellow blast echoing in the night,
and I shut my eyes and waited to die. When after a moment
I felt no pain, felt nothing at all except the wind on my
face, I opened them. Raymond Benjamin was dead on the
ground. Smoke wafted from a bullet hole in his back, right
where his heart had beat its last breath. And standing there,
smoking gun in his hand, was Senator Gray Talbot.
43
“It was you all along,” I said, staring into the senator’s cold