Restoration Heights

by Wil Medearis

  “Hey!” Reddick sat up. “I just want to talk!”

  The figure turned and sprinted east, across the site toward the furthest wall. Reddick clambered to his feet and ran after it, snow inside his clothes now; his bruised shin, his aching tailbone rebelling. He wasn’t gaining quickly enough, the soft, clinging terrain mitigated his speed, equalized them. He yelled again. They lurched, high-stepping, stumbling across the open expanse toward another storage area, in the corner—pyramid stacks of cinder blocks and rebar behind a chain-link fence, fifty feet away from the outer wall. The figure grabbed the chain fence, swung one leg over at a time, reached the plywood wall and began to slide a loose panel over. The careful work gave Reddick time to close the distance.

  “I don’t want to hurt you!”

  Reddick reached the chain fence and grabbed it, ready to vault it in stride, but his jeans snagged the exposed wire at the top. He went over almost prone, landed on his back from four feet up—a harder repetition of the fall he had just taken. This time the impact emptied his lungs, rattled everything he had already loosened. He coughed and rolled onto his hands and knees.

  “Hey, you alright?” It was a boy’s voice, high-pitched and adolescent.

  Reddick tried to answer, coughed again, then raised his hand and nodded. He looked up. The boy was peering over the tops of the cinder blocks, standing in a gap he had made by shifting over the loose panel. Reddick hobbled to his feet and the boy backed away.

  “I just wanted to talk to you, man.” Reddick finally wheezed.

  The boy backed out of the site, raised both arms, and extended his middle fingers. “Fuck you, you creepy old cracker.” He skipped backward for two steps, reveling in his victory, then turned and sprinted down the slate sidewalk.

  Eleven

  “Did you think it was her?”

  “I did. I mean, I didn’t stop to consider how irrational it was. Thinking about her body, about where she might be, and then seeing someone.”

  “A kid. A boy.”

  “Yeah, but the build was right. The height was right. It’s hard to get too specific underneath all this winter gear, you know?”

  “Sounds crazy to me.” Derek leaned forward in his chair, took another forkful of ropa vieja. They were in the Cuban restaurant on Bedford. Once he regained his breath Reddick had realized that he was starving and texted his friend. He hadn’t bothered to swing home and change. His clothes dried slowly as they worked through their entrées.

  “Did you go back and check out the trailer?”

  Reddick nodded. “Yeah. It was just an office. Some file cabinets, a mostly empty desk.”

  “And you thought, what?”

  “I don’t know. That she had run away and was hiding. Living there or something.”

  “But you found a room where you think Franky killed her.”

  “Or Buckley.”

  “Whichever. You said there were bullet holes.”

  “There were holes, made recently enough—since the room was painted. I don’t know—if the person I was following turned out not to be her.”

  “Which it wasn’t.”

  “Right, but I figured, even if it wasn’t, whoever it was might have seen something. Like maybe it wasn’t their first time breaking into the site.”

  Derek shrugged. “Maybe. But all of this, this whole case you’ve built—it’s all in your head.”

  Reddick smashed a croqueta in two with his fork, stabbed and ate half of it. “That’s not true—there are facts here. Mrs. Leland thought it was suspicious enough to reach out to me. Buckley was so evasive that his own staff noticed. Those are subjective responses, sure—but Buckley and Franky did argue. Those kids in my building did see Franky with Hannah the night she disappeared. His company does own a townhouse nearby, and someone had been hanging out on the top floor. One of the last people she was seen with was picking up envelopes of cash for who knows who. I don’t have any idea what I ran into at Cask, but it wasn’t normal. And finally, a fucking girl is missing while the only people who actually know her aren’t doing shit about it. Those things aren’t in my head. Those things are real.”

  Derek held up his hands, conceding—if not to the point then at least to Reddick’s passion. “Yesterday you asked Clint to look into this guy’s background. A cop. You asked a cop for help. And now you’ve committed not one, not two, not three—four crimes.”

  “Four?”

  “You stole the man’s phone, one. And you broke into three different places—an apartment, a house and a construction site. That’s two, three, and four.”

  “I returned the phone. I didn’t steal anything.”

  “Breaking and entering. Not entering and stealing. You broke and you entered.”

  “Alright, lawyer, damn.”

  Derek shook his head, laughing. “Not me, man. But you’re going to need one if you keep this up.”

  “I took photos in the townhouse.” He removed his phone, showed Derek the images. He cranked the brightness, revealed grainy details.

  “I don’t know what you think these mean. Those holes could have been made by anything—you said yourself that there was no sign of blood, no recent cleaning. On some level you know how flimsy this is, which is why you thought you were chasing the girl a half hour after you snapped those photos of her supposed murder scene.”

  He brushed aside Derek’s skepticism. All of this formed something; he couldn’t see it yet but he could sense it. “Someone had been using that room to hang out in—why not Hannah and Franky? They could have gone there after the party. After we talked in the alley.”

  “They could have gone anywhere. They could have taken a car back to his place, or to any of a dozen other FDP properties, preferably one that was a little more finished.”

  “I know. I’m not saying this proves they didn’t. I’m just saying that it proves that they didn’t have to. It could have all taken place right here. In Bed-Stuy.”

  “Why are you so determined to connect her disappearance to this neighborhood?”

  “I don’t know—it feels right. It was my first instinct.”

  “An instinct isn’t a fact.” Derek shrugged, stabbed a plantain. “Look—the murder, fine. Maybe that happened in the townhouse, even though you have zero evidence to make you think that it did. But there’s no way Buckley buries her body on the site of a project he’s dumped so much money into.”

  Reddick put his fork down. “Money? What?”

  “It’s his first major venture. He wouldn’t jeopardize it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You didn’t know this?”

  “Not at all.”

  “That Buckley Seward is part of Corren Capital?”

  “I thought Corren was that guy from Nevada? The casino guy that’s been in the news.”

  “He’s the principal, yeah. He’s the face. But there are other stakeholders.”

  “And Buckley Seward is one of them?”

  Derek nodded. “How did you not know this?”

  “It didn’t come up when I searched his name. I mean, I knew about Corren, from the protests. But if you look up the Sewards, I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.”

  “You just don’t know where to look. It’s common knowledge.”

  “Common for whom?”

  “For me, at least. For the people I work with. For the people who follow this kind of stuff.”

  “How could you not have mentioned this to me?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “You just assumed that? You wouldn’t, I don’t know, check with me just to be certain?”

  “I’m supposed to keep track of what you don’t know? Look. What I do, my work, that is serious. All of this other stuff is just fun. Shooting hoops, hanging out with my mom, talking about this shit with you—it’s a break for me. An i
nterlude. I didn’t give it that much thought, honestly.”

  “So the work that I’m doing right now, trying to find out what happened to Hannah, that’s not serious?”

  “We’re being straight? Not really. It’s another game, out on the fringes—it doesn’t affect what matters. This is my home. But I left for a reason. Bed-Stuy isn’t a place that things happen in, it’s a place that things happen to. It’s the object, not the subject. It gets pushed but can’t push back.”

  Reddick leaned over the table. “That’s exactly why this is serious. This is pushing back. Now more than ever. If we connect one of the financial backers of Restoration Heights to a disappearance, a murder.”

  “Then what? You think that will stop it? You think anything can stop it? You gotta quit hanging out with Sensei. He’s contagious with that delusional shit.”

  “There are the other two sites that haven’t broken ground yet. If we connect the project to a murder—the publicity, the scrutiny—maybe we could at least stop those two. Limit the damage.”

  “A murder that had nothing to do with the development itself. If it even happened. At worst it’s a crime from a single backer who everyone else could disavow.”

  Reddick stopped to think. The server cleared their plates, brought them more water.

  “What if it wasn’t, though? What if I have everything wrong, if she wasn’t killed in a jealous rage? What if her disappearance had something to do with Restoration Heights?”

  “Come on. The love triangle thing? At least that kind of fits. I can see it going down that way if I try hard enough. But this is out of nowhere.”

  “I’ve thought these two were connected from the beginning. In my gut. Maybe I was just looking for that connection in the wrong place. I was looking at the end, instead of the beginning. The results instead of the cause.”

  “You want to know why your gut feels that way? I can tell you. You won’t like it, but I can tell you.” He leaned forward. “It’s because you’re hung up on this idea that rich people are invading your neighborhood. There’s a Seward—excuse me, a future-Seward—at a party in your building, there’s a huge development going up down the street. You can’t stand it. Is this the only apartment you’ve had in Brooklyn?”

  “I stayed with friends in Bushwick for the first six months after I moved.”

  “So you know how that went down, how quickly it flipped. But you moved down here where you thought you were safe. You thought Bed-Stuy was too black to change.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”

  “With you I almost believe that. Almost. You’ve got people to play ball with, you’ve got a bodega that spots you the difference when you’re short a dollar. The same families on the same stoops in the summer, telling you good morning—you’re a simple guy. That’s all you need. You have no eye for the future. You see this place in the moment. But you know what I see?”

  “Do I want to?”

  “I see black capital. There isn’t much of it in this country. But it’s here. The culture stuff, I leave that for the romantics, for you and Sensei. What I see are little pockets of wealth, of potential wealth. For me it isn’t a question of whether or not to sell to a developer, for me it’s a question of are you getting a good return, and do you have some other place with the same combination of security and potential growth to put that money into if you sell. All I want from Bed-Stuy is to see the wealth it represents grow and spread among the community, among the people that are already here. The forces that scare you, that piss you off—those are opportunities, man. You know my mom’s place, the first one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She gets phone calls every day. That’s not an exaggeration. She gets a phone call every single day from someone who wants her to sell. She usually tells them the same thing, that she’s not interested. But occasionally, maybe once every couple years, she plays along, maybe sets up a meeting, goes far enough that they have to put up a real figure. And then she pulls out. She’s done it for a decade and a half. She writes the numbers down. You know what it looks like when you put them on a chart?” He held his arm up in a slash aimed at the coffered ceiling. “That includes the crash in 2008. For most situations, in other cities, in the case studies we looked at in school, that kind of steady growth isn’t just good. It’s fictional. But this is real, the fundamentals are sustainable. Every borough is becoming Manhattan.”

  “You say that like it isn’t horrible.”

  “It isn’t for the people that own property here. You think the Hasids were picketing when it happened to Williamsburg? Once you see the wave coming you can either ride it or be buried by it. The things you and Sensei are worried about are imaginary. You see this food we’re eating? You think this is here without gentrification? Black people want good food, too. Remember when that Jamaican spot moved into a larger space? Added a bunch of tables, raised their prices. How do you think they were able to do that? What changes do you think they were responding to? The forces you are opposing—if we play it smart those forces are a gift. What I’m talking about is real economic growth for black people. True opportunities for upward mobility, the kind that don’t come around that often, not on this scale.”

  “I don’t know if it’s fair to call them imaginary. Also Franky really is an asshole. Most of those guys really are assholes.”

  “First, their personalities are irrelevant. And second, you don’t even know them. It’s all just symbolism for you. This whole thing, the girl, all of it.”

  “They talk about symbolism in your MBA program?”

  “Miami is a good school, bro.”

  The waitress brought the check.

  “Look. You want my advice? You want to make this real, and not just about you trying to strike back against people you resent? Check out those two dudes she was with. Tyler and what’s-his-name.”

  “Ju’waun.”

  “Exactly. Check out Tyler and Ju’waun. You know that A, they are in some way involved in shady shit, and B, they’re connected to Hannah because someone told your man to stop asking about them.”

  “Don’t ask about the blonde.”

  “Exactly. That is suspicious as hell. I know you don’t want them to be involved, but you’re giving them a pass they haven’t earned. White guilt isn’t like you, Reddick.”

  “Well...”

  Derek rolled his eyes. “Don’t say it.”

  “It’s hard to feel guilty when my grandfather...”

  They were both smiling. “Watch who you say that shit to. You’re gonna end up a meme on Black Twitter.”

  Reddick mimed a Howdy Doody pose, squeaked, “But I can dunk,” in his best 1950s white-guy parody.

  “Looking just like that,” Derek said.

  They both laughed, counted out cash for their halves of the bill.

  “I’m not giving them a pass,” Reddick said. “The momentum of the case today, it took me in another direction.”

  “Then slow down a little bit. I’m starting to think this is interesting. It’s strange as hell the way you’ve gotten into it but I’m with you. I’m at least curious. I just think you’re looking in the wrong places. Tomorrow you should follow up on those guys. Go talk to Trisha again. Go to Cask.”

  “I’m not welcome in Cask.”

  “Apologize, then. Or provoke her some more, just to see what happens. Dig into that side the way you did Franky.”

  “Okay. You’re right. I have to work tomorrow but after that, I will.”

  “Work? They taking you back?”

  Reddick told him about his phone call with Lane.

  “Let me guess. You were hoping to do a little snooping while you were there.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Nothing I say will stop you. But don’t get caught. Don’t steal any phones. And keep your mind open.”

  * * *

/>   He took a long shower, as hot as he could stand it, trying to loosen the cold from his marrow. Buckley was invested in Restoration Heights. He wouldn’t have buried the body there—Derek was right, he wouldn’t have jeopardized his investment. It also gave new context to the unease he showed when Reddick mentioned Bed-Stuy. He didn’t want Hannah and the development linked.

  Reddick turned off the water and toweled dry, his skin shining and pink from the heat. He could hear voices from the living room—Dean and Beth must have come in while he was in the shower. He wrapped the towel around his waist and slipped into the hallway, traced by steam.

  Beth saw him in his towel, catcalled. “Are we gonna get a show?”

  “Hello, Beth.” He crossed the narrow hall into his room. He heard Dean whistle as he shut the door. He was worn-out from the day—he wanted quiet, sanctuary, the case map. He needed to trace the ramifications of Buckley’s investment, to see what connections it formed. He needed to see what it meant for Hannah, how it changed her relationship to the names around her.

  He pulled up her photo. For a few minutes, chasing that boy, he had believed she was alive, that she could be helped—a flair of hope, quickly stamped out. His only real chance to save her had come and gone in that alley. He wondered again what he might have done differently. Should he have kissed her? He had barely wanted to—his desire had been shallow, fleeting. If he had done it and it had stopped there, would that have changed anything? Or had he needed to go further? If he had taken her upstairs she would be alive—but the next morning, when she sobered up, could either of them have endured his decision?

  He put his phone down, hung the towel from the top of an empty easel and got dressed.

  “I was starting to think you weren’t coming out,” Beth said. She defaulted to flirtation when she had been drinking. Reddick glanced at Dean, who sat dead-eyed, staring at his phone. It was just before ten o’clock.