by Wil Medearis
“Maybe that was by design. There are still private people out there.” She saw his face hardening. “I’m not against you. I just think you should consider it.”
“What is it, like, two o’clock?”
“Reddick.”
“I’ve got to go.” He stood up, began to put on his boots and coat.
“Don’t be like this. You wanted my help, I’m helping.”
“Yeah.”
“If all you wanted was someone to agree with you, you asked the wrong person.”
“I’m not upset.”
“I didn’t ask if you were.”
He zipped his coat, pulled his beanie over his ears. “I’ll think about what you said. I promise.”
Eighteen
The money was an avalanche caving in his objectivity. He had returned to his case map but no longer trusted what he saw. He used the X-Acto knife to carve Hannah away from Franky and Buckley, a careful line around her name and the notes beneath it. He stepped back, holding her, and looked at what was left. Nothing was damaged by her absence. Sarah was right, Mrs. Leland was right: his case had produced a pair of self-contained narratives, viable by their own logic—but did he think this only because it was the required first step to accepting the money?
He got a text from Sarah saying she hoped he would still come by this week.
He put his coat on and left. The afternoon was already darkening, the day spent before he could use it. The sky and the hardened snow were an identical humming lavender, the townhouse windows seeped orange like cracks in the shell of winter. He cut up to Madison and walked west to Franklin. He hadn’t noticed the mosque on the corner last time; a man in a ragged coat was salting the sidewalk in front of it, his movements stiff and deliberate. Reddick tried to make eye contact, to nod hello, but the man didn’t look up. Finally he gave up and crossed the street, toward the neon flicker that had called him out here, and went downstairs into Ti-Ti’s.
The bartender was leaning on her elbows in front of the only patron, a black woman in her sixties; they both looked up when he entered but only the bartender smiled. Reddick went to the battered ATM, then walked past them and took a stool in the back. The bartender remembered him.
“You were in here with Harold the other day, weren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s such a sweetheart.”
“You think he might stop by?”
“That depends. Does the day end with the letter Y?” She winked. “What can I get you, sweetie?”
She brought him a bourbon and left him to drink in silence. People arrived, separately and in couples. He had a second whiskey, felt himself sliding into another drunk evening, curdling with guilt at blowing money he was going to need until he found another job. Probably going to need. He kept one eye on the dwindling liquid in his glass, one eye on the door.
When Harold walked in, Reddick studied him for symptoms of Clint’s diagnosis. A twitch or tic, some betrayal of the paranoia that had cleaved his mind. Were there other plots he feared, were they clustered around the same themes—a panoptic government, his targeted race—or was his dread vague and diffuse, shaping all of his habits? Reddick imagined sheets of wrinkled foil draped like curtains across his windows, imagined him ducking under awnings when helicopters buzzed the city. Imagined bouts of terrified rage at personalized advertisements. But he looked the same—his beliefs, irrational or otherwise, invisible inside the meaty, exhausted shell of his body. Heavy-footed, almost shuffling, his wide wingspan made him seem like a man who was all back, who was burdened by a near limitless capacity for physical work, even as his face, his demeanor, sagged from fatigue. A man punished by his own endurance. He saw Reddick. His eyes slipped over the narrow room, as though looking for another seat, weighing his options for escape—then back to Reddick’s face. He smiled.
“You thinking of becoming a regular, young brother?” He took the stool next to him, laid his nicked hard hat on the bar.
“I like it here.”
“Uh-huh. Okay.”
“I didn’t come to talk about the Genie, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Then why are you even saying her name?” He placed a stack of small bills beside his hat. The bartender approached with an open beer. He smiled at her as she set it down, watched her pluck two ones from the stack. “Thank you, Natalie.”
She nodded and walked away, and Harold turned back to Reddick. “People got ears.” He cut his eyes toward Natalie.
“She was here the other day. It didn’t stop you from talking then.”
“I wasn’t necessarily in my right state of mind—to be honest I feel like you took advantage.”
“I didn’t realize how much you had had to drink, not right away.”
“Didn’t realize or didn’t care?”
“What do you want me to say? I was chasing something.”
“Was? So you aren’t anymore? Then why are you here?”
“I was thirsty.” Reddick sipped his whiskey, as if his claim required evidence.
“Passed a lot of bars to get to this one.”
Reddick wasn’t sure what he hoped to accomplish. Harold was the first person he had told about Hannah, the first to offer help. Now that he was here he found he wanted to talk about anything else. He let Harold’s insinuations fade into the clink and murmur of the sparse happy-hour crowd. They drank with quiet resolution.
“So I stayed at this girl’s house last night,” Reddick said, finally. It was an attempt to reset the conversation, to talk as friends.
Harold chuckled, eyed Reddick’s sullen face. “That usually puts me in a better mood.”
“Well, nothing happened, really—actually, things were happening, but it got complicated.”
“Complicated? Why did you let it get complicated?”
“We stayed up too late, talked too much.”
Harold mulled this over. “So this was a onetime thing or you gonna see her again?”
Reddick thought about her invitation, imagined himself in her studio—Leland money in his pocket, talking about her paintings, maybe preparing some new series of his own. A swell of happiness accompanied the image. All he had to do was lay off a search no one else believed was going to lead anywhere. He knew it wasn’t fair to link these things together. Sarah had made it clear that she would see him again no matter what he decided to do about Mrs. Leland’s offer—but he couldn’t stop himself from building these contingencies. They gave his options clarity.
“See her again, I’m hoping.”
The sound of girls laughing interrupted them. Three white kids spilled through the open door, hounded by a gust of winter air. They claimed seats at the top of the bar, devil’s perch, the two girls continuing to giggle while the boy went to the jukebox. They barely seemed old enough to drink.
Harold grinned wryly. “There goes the neighborhood.” He was on his fourth beer, Natalie removing and replacing each bottle in silence, subtracting the appropriate bills from the dwindling pile of his cash. The process was machine-like, determined. Its effects were beginning to show—his suspicion had evaporated, the throbbing impact of his fatigue had been dampened. He had a lucidity, a calm, that Reddick associated with their morning conversations, before the demands of the workday had taken their toll. A final peak before the inevitable slide into boozy sleep.
“So you really did come here just to have a drink?” Harold said. “That’s the truth?”
The white kid’s song hit on the jukebox—some track from West Side Story that opened with a lengthy skit, that seemingly no one in the bar knew was in the machine. The kid and his friends were hysterical as the actors’ lines, nonsensical without context, permeated the room, their faces red and crying. The attitudes of the other patrons ranged from bemusement to annoyance. Natalie reached behind the bar, to the dial for the speakers, and turned t
he volume down. The kids were laughing too hard to notice.
Harold frowned, and Reddick stared at his glass, feeling suddenly out of place, silenced by what felt like a trespasser’s shame.
“The truth?” he said. “I wasn’t just thirsty. The truth is I came here to think.”
Harold looked at the laughing white kids, and back to him. “This used to be a good place for it.”
“You’re putting me in with them?”
“Do you feel different? I mean, I see you trying—some ways you’re trying too hard and some ways not hard enough. But those differences you feel—you can’t see any of that from the outside. You look a little older than them. A little sadder. That’s what Brooklyn is now, though. A place where white kids go to become old and sad. You and those three, brother? You just look like different points of the same life.”
Reddick absorbed it, chased it with bourbon. “You know I was wrong.”
“About which part?”
“All of it. Tyler and Ju’waun. The Ge—the woman they work for sometimes. It was the wrong blonde entirely.”
“Wrong blonde?”
“That someone warned you about. I guess you never said her name, the message got confused—it doesn’t matter. None of it has anything to do with the girl I was looking for.”
Harold furrowed his brow. “I said Ju’waun. I said Tyler. I know that. How many blonde white girls do those cats know?”
“At least two, apparently.”
“Huh. Damn.”
“It doesn’t matter. The girl I was actually looking for—Hannah—I can’t even figure out if she’s actually missing.”
“It was a good story, what you told me. I liked the details, the way you framed it, with the snow all around you, and the rows of garbage. Romantic, but corrupt. Question is, brother, how did you think it was going to end? I mean for you—what did you think was going to happen? You rescue her and she’s so grateful that she becomes your girl?”
“I thought she was dead.”
“Then what? You just wanted the tragedy of it?”
“I only wanted to find out what happened.”
“Nuh-uh. That I don’t buy. That’s way too clean. Man, listen. I could see how all this got to you, so I offered to help. At a certain point, though—what did you find? I mean, ask that question honestly. Because if you had found something you wouldn’t be sitting here. And if there really was anything to this, why hasn’t anyone else backed you up?”
“There was one person who believed me. Or at least, she acted like she did—she offered to help, to exchange information. Except that I found out she only did it to make sure there wasn’t a scandal that might affect her family—her son is a politician. Now that she’s satisfied there isn’t one—unless I make it—she wants me to stop looking. She will pay me to stop.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“The fact that she’s willing to pay me makes me think there is more there.”
“True. That could be.” He frowned, his head cocked in thought. “Or, could be she’s doing it because she knows nothing has happened to her.”
“That’s too simple—it lets me off easy.”
“Sometimes the truth is simple. And simple can look easy, but it ain’t. It’s just simple. You got to find a way to accept that.”
“I’m trying.”
“But look—you got a way to profit from this shit now. That lady is offering you money. I know you got some other shit that you do—this is New York. Everybody has a screenplay or a blog or some shit.”
Reddick was sure he had told him about his art—hadn’t he? Or had it not even seemed important enough to bring up?
“I make paintings.”
“Then go do that shit. Stop asking about this missing white girl that—for real?—sounds like she ain’t even missing.”
* * *
He grabbed Chinese on his way home and ate, in silence, on the couch. It was nearly nine o’clock. Harold had left once his stack of cash was gone—a self-imposed limit, he said, to avoid future indiscretion—while Reddick stayed for another. The alcohol had only made him more muddled.
After a few minutes he heard the rattle of Dean’s keys in the door.
“Hey man, I was hoping you’d be around.” He was with Beth. Reddick apologized first; Beth and Dean followed suit, each of them careful to acknowledge the legitimacy of the other’s feelings without wholly conceding their point. Beth cracked a joke. They opened beers while Reddick finished eating.
He told them about his conversation with Mrs. Leland.
“What do you make of it?” Beth asked, cautiously, as though the subject might explode their fragile détente.
“I have no idea what to think. I can’t trust my own judgment. I talked to Sarah about it.”
“Sarah?” Beth smiled coyly. “Do go on.”
“It’s nothing. I mean, maybe it is, but that’s another story.” He felt himself blushing. “What I want to say is that she saw what Mrs. Leland saw. And this is why I can’t trust myself, because if I resist their versions, am I just doing it to make a point about how the money can’t sway me? But then if I accept it, am I letting myself be swayed?”
Dean nodded. “I see your point. Your judgment is undermined.”
“Dean.”
“It’s okay, Beth,” Reddick said. “It is undermined. That’s my point.”
“He could have thought of a nicer way to put it.”
“Sorry.” Dean said. “I’m just—This happens to me in my studio. I get attached to some little bit of a sculpture, some element that maybe I’ve spent a ton of time on, and when the piece isn’t working, I can’t make a decision about that element because I’m too invested in it.”
“Of course,” Beth said. “This happens all the time.”
“Right. And when it does, I get other people to look, because even if they aren’t totally objective, they’re fairer than I am.”
“I already did that, with Sarah.”
“Only you don’t trust what she’s telling you.”
“I want to. But I don’t know how I can.”
“You need more perspectives,” Beth said. “How about fill us in, and we can give it a shot?”
He considered it. “Maybe I should just show you.”
They followed him into the bedroom. He turned the light on and let them look, silently, without direction. Beth realized what it was first, while Dean was still tracing pencil lines, measuring the relationships of shapes to which he hadn’t yet bothered to attach meaning. She went right for the names.
“You’ve mapped it all out. Your theories, everything.”
“It isn’t a drawing at all,” Dean said.
“In movies they have photographs, and pushpins, but I just had a pencil and eraser. It made more sense than a notebook. It’s closer to the way I think.” He tried to see it the way they were, as strangers—crisscrossed lines, circled names and scrawled notations, the dragged tones of hasty erasure. He had that sense of public nakedness that came with showing someone his artwork, stronger than he had ever had with his paintings—as though the case map revealed him more completely.
“Is it weird that I get it now?” Beth said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well. That there was this activity generated by it. Once I think about it like that, it makes sense to me. You’ve been making art this whole time.”
“I’ve been trying to find someone. A person.”
“Sure. But what does that mean? And more specifically, what does it entail? You have this goal, this obsession—it doesn’t just sit idly in your mind. You respond to it. And that’s what I see on your wall. It’s art, Reddick.”
Dean jumped in. “It’s not just that, though. It’s more like two parallel activities. I see probing, you know? There are elements here, gestures,
that go beyond merely recording other movements, that are movements in and of themselves.”
“Don’t talk about it like that. That isn’t what I’m doing at all. I’m not making art.”
“But you are.”
“I thought you were going to help me.”
“We’re just responding to what we see,” Beth said.
“Then you aren’t looking at it the right way. You’re treating this like an end to itself, when it isn’t. This is just to help me find her.”
“You could flip that, though,” Dean said. “Why does your search have to be the end? Maybe it’s the starting point, to get your studio practice going again.”
“You’re talking about using someone else’s misfortune.”
“He isn’t, though. What he means, what I see here, is your own fascination. That’s very different.”
“We’ve been friends for a decade. We’ve seen each other do good work and shitty work. I think this is probably the most interesting your studio has ever been.”
“Same.” Beth’s expression was solemn.
“I mean, it’s just potential right now. Don’t get me wrong. But I see things here that I haven’t seen from you in a long, long time. I see passion, I see personal investment. You shouldn’t squander that.”
“I don’t want this to be art. That’s not why I care.”
“That’s just it, though,” Beth said. “When you’re an artist that’s the only way you know how to care about something. Anything that is important goes into your work. That’s what your work is, what it’s for. It’s literally the way you care. When something grabs you it has to go into the work, I mean by definition—or else it hasn’t really grabbed you. Because that’s all the work is, is fascination manifesting itself.”
“There is so much of you in this.”
“All the racial stuff is potent. It’s everything you got so worked up about the other night.” She smiled. “Look at this, the way you’ve literally cut all the black people away, just disempowered them completely. Their neighborhood is being taken away from them. And the format evokes a police investigation, which implies that a crime has been committed, which summons the whole history of racial injustice at the hands of the police. I mean that is this moment, you know?”