Restoration Heights

by Wil Medearis

  Ten

  He had provoked Franky into calling him. He wouldn’t accept it as a coincidence. The timing was too perfect—by the time Reddick had given up trying to break into the phone and managed to return it, an hour had passed, plenty of time for Buckley to drive out if he had been summoned right away. Something he said to Franky had landed, made him nervous—that he called Buckley, that his friend responded by coming in person, could only mean one thing: they were in it together.

  Because why respond by closing ranks unless they had something to hide? It wasn’t a case of which one, but of both. Buckley’s distress the morning after she disappeared was a performance. Maybe Buckley caught them together, lost it, killed her and convinced his friend that his only route to forgiveness was accessory after the fact. But the friendship Sarah described went mostly one-way—could Franky have killed her, used his hold on Buckley to convince the man to keep quiet about the death of his own fiancée? No, it was impossible. It went down like this:

  Buckley has been jealous at least since the gala, but it doesn’t stop Hannah and Franky from seeing each other. Maybe they deny it. So Buckley wants proof, has her followed—no—does it himself. After the party last Sunday they need a place to go—she’s drunk, he is too, they can’t stomach a cab ride so they walk to the townhouse. Maybe they’ve used it before. Buckley follows and catches them in the act. The ribald shock of it, his soon-to-be wife straddling his old friend—he isn’t sure if he wants to be Franky, beneath her, or Hannah, on top of him, but his mind locks up, a spiral of rage, emotions so powerful that they override his timid decency. He kills her. He blames Franky but he doesn’t kill him, too—he’s betrayed on both sides but he can’t lose them both. Instead he convinces him to help. Reddick imagines Buckley’s voice, booming like a Shakespearean lead, you betrayed me, you owe me. The flow of power between them shifting, suddenly fluid—Franky weakened by his complicity. We have to get rid of her. What do we do? We take her to the construction site, across the street. We take her to Restoration Heights.

  He took the train back to Bed-Stuy, walked to the row of brownstones across from the stalled project. There were no signs protesting the development here—the tenants had acquiesced long ago, swallowed objections and strapped their fate to the project. They would drown or soar with it. FDP’s townhouse was ringed with a green plywood fence, half as tall as the one across the street, and flimsy. A padlocked chain wrapped the gate. He leaned against the door—there was a foot and a half of give in the chain, whoever used it last was careless. He checked to see if anyone was watching and squeezed inside.

  The renovation hadn’t touched the exterior. The stoop leaned to one side and brown paint was chipping off the handrail; the door was frail and weathered and several windows were boarded. But the building’s heart was intact, the brown bricks sturdy and indomitable. The neighborhood was spotted with houses like this, gutted shells being remade from the inside out. It was a dream project, the allure consistent across decades, for Southern blacks and West Indians in the mid-twentieth century and for white artists and young professionals in the new millennium. Take these strong bones and make them your own, hang your life upon them. This consistency made it easy to market, a symbol so clear that it sold itself. It was an easy repository for hope, the enduring walls thick enough to shelter you from the consequences of your ambition.

  Reddick tried the door. It was locked. His head and shoulders were above the line of the fence, visible from the opposite sidewalk or neighboring stoops. He turned and looked for witnesses—the streets were empty, everyone chased indoors by the drudgery of winter. All the first-floor windows were boarded over from the inside, sealed by sheets of blue Tyvek taped around the exterior lining. Getting in would ask more of him than slipping through Hannah’s unlocked window, a depth of commitment that would be harder to walk back—but each offense made the next easier. He climbed across the banister and balanced on the edge of the stoop, gripped the rail with one hand and reached to the window with the other. He peeled the plastic back and tested the wood with his fist. There was give at the top—more haphazard work. FDP should have hired better people. He loosened the Tyvek further, to give himself room, and hammered the board repeatedly. A car rolled past and he ducked. He resumed hammering and once there was a gap in the seam he slid his hand in, grabbed and shook, pushing violently. The particleboard howled as the nails slid loose. He clambered onto the sill and slipped inside.

  It was dark, the afternoon sun too feeble to follow him into the building. He propped the wood back into place over the window, took out his phone and turned on the flashlight, traced the room with its pallid beam. He was in an open foyer, with a high ceiling and faded floors. A thin layer of ochre dust coated the hardwoods and the windowsills. Construction materials were piled into one corner; a few stray ends of wood, a canvas tarp, two bags of plaster; Reddick tried not to dwell on their morbid potential. He walked into the adjacent room—there was no sound but his footsteps, the dry rustle of his coat. The bottom floor was a single apartment, separated from the stairs by an unpainted wood door. He ran his flashlight across the threshold. The hinges shone like jewels. In the hallway paper cups and bits of trash lay scattered in the dust. There were no appliances in the kitchen, no doors beneath the counters; the knotted bowels of plumbing and gas lines were exposed. He opened the faucet; it wheezed and spat and settled into a smooth flow. He twisted it shut, went into the bathroom. There were two rolls of toilet paper on the floor, one half gone, a bulb in the fixture. He found the switch, flashed it on and off.

  Upstairs the floors were finished, the nicked hardwood encased in varnish. The walls were painted in tertiary colors, pale umber and plum. Every surface clean. It was easy to imagine taking someone here, easy to imagine them impressed. But there was no furniture, no place to sit or lie down. The kitchen had no appliances and the bathroom had no mirror. It was warmer than the street but not by much; he could see the soft wisps of his breath in the dark.

  He went up to the third floor. It was in the same state as the second, renovated and empty. He circled toward the front, toward a small room. The door was open, the windows visible from the hallway and through them, across the street, the ragged white plain of the unfinished site. He went inside. When the development was finished the view might be lovely—if the green space came together as promised, the park and the benches and the playground. If you could accept the towering condos as a kind of triumph. But for now it was snow and churned earth, unfinished structures sheathed in plastic, bordered by nests of rebar, metal beams, orange netting and indiscernible components.

  He was afraid the flashlight might alert someone on the street; he switched it off and put his phone away. The sun was nearly gone but ambient light leaked in through the windows, refracted and pale as morning. It was the only room with furniture—a sofa, three Eames-like plastic chairs around it. On a table was a pair of ashtrays, a handful of butts inside each one. He thought: DNA, saliva, and sifted through them with a gloved finger, uncovered a roach. He pinched it and held it to his nose—it smelled charred and sweet. There were two more crumpled roaches in the other one. Behind the ashtrays was a Bluetooth speaker, an expensive brand, and beside that a flimsy desk lamp. A wire garbage can stood in the corner beside a thin black space heater.

  He looked for bloodstains, on the sofa and floor. He looked for blond hairs. He sat down, bent and smelled the cushions for traces of a recent cleaning. All he caught was old tobacco and marijuana. He did the same for the chairs. The walls were smooth—new drywall, fresh paint—he ran his fingers lightly across their surface, tracing for scars, for imperfections. There were hooked scuffs behind the shoulders of the couch—a few inches to the right. Reddick reached down, slid the sofa over until the shoulders lined up with the scuffs. He looked to the left of the couch. A pair of scabs clung to the newly revealed sliver of wall—spackle, unsanded, unpainted. He couldn’t read the circumference of the two holes beneath th
e sloppy patchwork—maybe a dime, maybe a nickel. He snapped dim photos, not willing to risk the flash, then slid the couch back over to cover the marks. He walked to the window and looked out.

  One of the towers was eight floors high, the other taller, at least fifteen. The plastic and the scaffolding gave the illusion of walls, of a lumbering completion. They had removed the towering cranes, to return in the spring like birds. The packed ground frozen and phosphorescent. He imagined Buckley and Franky, arguing over her body: The space heater humming, music piping into the speaker, the air cloudy with weed and spent rage. The smell of the gunshot—what was it called, cordite? And an agreement is made, hammered out. Who owes whom and how much. Which one of them is at fault, which betrayal was the first cause. What must be done to repair the damage. Where can they take her body. And then looking out, on that view, on what must have seemed like the emptiest block in Brooklyn.

  Downstairs he hammered the wood back over the window and went out the front door, setting it to lock behind him. It meant leaving the bolt unlatched, but carelessness permeated the site; it would be brushed off. Nothing was taken or broken. Outside he taped the Tyvek down, slipped back out beneath the chain. He crossed the street.

  He walked the length of the green wall, past signs that warned of hazards and advised hard hats. Past a list of the companies that made the project possible, past the diamond-shaped windows punched into the wood at regular intervals. Near the end of the block was a door, and behind it a small shed, a guardhouse. The door was chained shut—tightly this time, with barely enough give to pass a hand through. Reddick looked around at the empty sidewalks, at the townhouses across the street. There were lights on, but no faces, none that he could see. The wall was as high as a basketball rim, maybe higher—in the snow, in his boots, he could graze the top with his fingers. He flattened the chain out against the door, wiped it clean. He leaped, planted his toe on the chain—it slipped but held long enough that he got both hands over the edge of the fence. He pulled himself up and slid onto the roof of the guardhouse. Once he was clear he pushed off and he was in.

  What would they do with her? Let’s say they could have gotten in, somehow—a loose panel maybe—what would they do with her? Would this really have been their instinct—why not put her in a car, drive out to the marshes in north Jersey, take her to the river, where there was a chance she wouldn’t be found at all, rather than here, where you only have until spring? Because it was nearby, because they had no imagination. Because they didn’t want a body in their cars, the traces it would leave, the remnants. Because they panicked. Because Restoration Heights had a bottomless appetite, the hunger of unfettered commerce—for bribes and backroom deals, for the ambitions of a greedy City Hall, for your history, your family, your community. It craved, finally, a murder, if not hers then yours, anyone, a body to consecrate the ground.

  They would have tried to bury her. There were shallow, wide depressions around the site, areas that would eventually be planted with trees or paved into walkways. Maybe in the bottom of one, where the ground was less likely to be disturbed once work began again, where they would be less visible should anyone look inside while they dug. That would have meant cracking through frozen dirt—with shovels they would have had to acquire—hours of hard labor for two men who weren’t accustomed to it. Perhaps if there were no other options, or if they had help. Reddick walked to the nearest depression, a wide, sloping crater, like a satellite dish turned on its back, ten or fifteen feet deep. He slid gently to the bottom. He kicked around in the powder, unsure what he was looking for, not surprised when he didn’t find it. He shuffled out and a section of snow spilled away from beneath his feet; he went down on his hands and knees. He stood up and swore. The cold was seeping into his body, hardening his sinews, making him clumsy. He should have used the space heater back in the apartment to warm up before coming outside.

  He scrambled out and tried another depression. The ground was rough from work, the recent snow too heavy to tell if it had been disturbed. In some places metal sprouted like weeds, ends and fixtures to connect the maze of infrastructure beneath the ground to some future, mysterious function. He climbed out and surveyed the rest of the site. All of the vehicles, the shovels and scoops and claws, were parked against the western wall. There was a row of trailers beside them, stacks of heavy concrete cylinders and large rolls of orange webbing. In the center of the site were the towers, each one wrapped like a Christo.

  He walked to the shorter building and found a gap in the plastic. Inside was a forest of beams and pipes. The floor was raw concrete. Bits of snow lay frozen among chalky dust. He stamped his feet, added to it; the sound echoed flatly against the plastic. He went deeper into the building, the darkness shaped by the refracted glow. The sheeting was the color of bone. After a few minutes he saw a dark shape on the floor. He almost spoke her name—instead he moved closer. It was a heavy blanket, forest green and filthy, beside a pile of sopping fabric. Clothes, perhaps. He toed the blanket to make sure there was nothing in it. Torn magazine pages lay beside it. He knelt and prodded them with his pinky, slid one out from the pile. It was stiff from the cold, thin and brittle as veneer, the cover of some gossip magazine. The other pages seemed to belong to it. He stood up and continued searching, drifting through the dusty, improvised passageways until he arrived at the western edge of the building. There was a dark cage outside, scaffolding silhouetted through the milky plastic. He found a gap and slipped through, back out into the snow.

  The scaffolding went four stories up, the metal frozen and slick. He grabbed it and shook, testing. There were ladders between the top three levels but the one leading to the ground had been removed. He climbed the side, wedging his boots into the joints of the supports, and slid between the guardrails of the second level to reach the wood platform. From there he took the ladders.

  There were recent footprints on the top level, boot prints as large as his own. A collection of empty beer bottles rested in a small drift in one corner. He leaned against the rail. It was colder and darker up here. He was as high as most of the houses around him, the flat roofs spread out like a second, hidden surface, a layer of Brooklyn his life didn’t touch, interrupted by the spikes of tenement towers or condos, of church spires. He couldn’t see as far as he expected. He was wasting his time. If there was anything to find here he couldn’t do it, not alone, not in this weather. Maybe in the spring, once construction began again, someone might stumble over something.

  He was shivering constantly now, a sputtering motor that masked the vibration of his phone against his chest. An incoming call. He took off a glove, his fingers red and disobedient, and checked the number. Lane.

  It wouldn’t have taken Franky long to figure out who he was, not once he talked to Buckley. Maybe he realized his phone had been taken. They must have called Lockstone—Reddick was about to be fired. He prepared himself.

  “Reddick, this is Lane calling.”

  “Yeah. Hey, Lane, how are you.” Thinking, Just be quick. I’m freezing up here.

  “I’m fine, Reddick, thank you. Look, I’ve got a situation and I think you can help me out, but it might be asking a lot.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “This job, with the Sewards, it ran over. They made some changes last minute, we lost a day recrating two paintings we had already hung, we couldn’t get the replacements back in time. The thing is they need us out of there before Monday, they’re hosting a dinner, but I didn’t have anyone scheduled to work this weekend.”

  Reddick, relieved, thinking, What day is it?

  “And of course people have plans. I’ve got three handlers but we need a fourth. I’ve spoken with the Sewards. They recognize that they created this situation, so they’ve agreed to let you back on the property as long as you don’t bring up Buckley’s fiancée.”

  “So this is for, what, Saturday?”

  “Yes. Saturday. Tomorrow. I can giv
e you time-and-a-half. But you cannot screw this up. Do you understand? I had to work to save your job after what you did on Monday. This is your chance to prove me right. Show up, work hard, speak only when spoken to. Can you handle that?”

  “It’s fine, Lane.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yeah, it’s a yes. Fine. I’ll show up with a piece of packing tape over my mouth and they can peel it back when they need to ask me something.”

  “This is serious. I’m serious.”

  “I bet you’re smiling a little bit.”

  “Reddick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for doing this. Be on your best behavior and I’ll call us even.”

  He hung up and replaced his glove. Work meant less time to follow his scant leads—but it also meant being back inside the Sewards’ home, which might generate new ones. Access to Buckley’s rooms, maybe. His office. He could find time to peel away, to unearth the house’s secrets.

  He heard something—a wooden clap below him. He looked down, at the empty lot and then along the fence, the construction vehicles, the piles of materials. The door was open on one of the trailers, swinging blithely. A small figure had just walked out of it, layered in dark winter clothes, a black hat. Reddick froze, then started down the ladder. The scaffolding rattled and the figure looked up.

  “Hey!” Reddick yelled. “Hey, hold on!”

  The person began to run, tripping and sliding in the snow. Reddick hurried to the second level, went to the edge and scrambled down the side. His foot slipped, he reached to catch himself but the end of a bolt snagged his glove, tore fabric and skin. His shin bounced off the scaffolding and his other hand gave out; he plummeted backward into the snow. He landed on his heels and then his ass, thankfully cushioned by a foot of powder before he smacked into the frozen dirt. The figure stopped and watched him, maybe to see if he would get up. It was too dark to see the face. But the person was small, five and a half feet, thin. Girl-sized, he thought.