Restoration Heights

by Wil Medearis

  “Because having money doesn’t make you want it any less,” Derek said. “In my experience it’s the opposite.”

  “At Buckley’s level, though—what’s left to want? There are less than two dozen wealthier families in the world. A million in cash isn’t going to change that, isn’t even going to register. I’ve met him, I’ve spoken to him, to him and Franky both. I know how Franky treats him. This was his idea, I’m sure of it.”

  “What does Buckley get out of it, if not the money?”

  “He’s infatuated with Franky. He always has been. And Franky was probably as desperate for cash three years ago as he is now. So he concocts this plan—Buckley wouldn’t say no, he’s been letting him walk all over him for a decade now.”

  “Buckley Seward is that much of a mark?”

  “For Franky he is. I need to talk to Mitchell Yang.”

  “Hold on a second. What were we just talking about? You need to set goals, make decisions off of them. If Mrs. Leland finds out you are still working on this she will pull her offer. You’ll lose the money.”

  Reddick paused. “Fuck her money. What would I do with all that time off anyway?”

  “If I’m being honest? You’d blow it playing basketball.”

  “Ha. I gotta run.”

  “Yeah, listen—I’ll pick you up in like twenty minutes.”

  “You’ll what?”

  “Have you been outside today? It’s freezing. I’m not taking the train.”

  “You’re coming?”

  “Come on, bro. You and I both know you won’t understand a thing that banker says without me to translate. Give me twenty. Oh, and Reddick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Dress nice.”

  Derek showed up in a slim charcoal suit, no tie. He looked like a different man, older and alert with power, as likely to be a Wharton classmate of Franky and Buckley’s as to be helping Reddick pin them for fraud. Reddick had rummaged through his closet, discovered a pair of beige slacks, a pin-striped button-down he hadn’t remembered he owned and a dark, narrow tie.

  “You look like a fifth-grader going to church,” Derek said.

  He ditched the tie in the car. They found street parking in the nest of retail blocks east of Borough Hall, got out and walked until the jewelry windows and sneaker stores gave way to glossy high-rises. Bank United was wedged into the toe of a glass-and-steel tower. There was a pair of guards at the door and an air of mechanized bureaucracy from the women behind the counter. Derek asked for Mitchell Yang. Reddick stood behind him and tried to look less like a stain on someone’s jacket.

  Mitchell was an amplified version of his school photo, short and broad, with wide jowls and a rolling tide of oil-black hair. He invited them into his office. A framed Wharton diploma on one wall, the University of Pennsylvania’s navy-and-blue shield on his mouse pad.

  Derek shook his hand and introduced them as financial investigators, private contractors. He didn’t give their real names.

  “You should have just emailed.” Mitchell looked skeptical, like he was deciding how far to play along. “I’m happy to help.”

  “I prefer face-to-face,” Derek said. “I’m looking into the financing of some property in Bedford-Stuyvesant, particularly in the area northeast of Restoration Plaza.”

  “Are you talking about Restoration Heights?”

  “I’d like to keep this conversation as narrow as possible. I want to focus on the specific properties my client is concerned about and not get pulled into the larger issues of that development.”

  “Okay, fine.”

  “We’re here because we think you can help. There are some financial irregularities that my client would like cleared up, particularly regarding a loan that enabled three pieces of property in that area to be turned over.”

  Yang glanced at Reddick and back. “So how can I help you?”

  “Tompkins Mac. I’ve got your signature on a loan they received from this bank three years ago.”

  “I can’t say that I recall that name.”

  “Franky Dutton,” Reddick said. “How about that one?”

  Yang sat back in his chair, his face even. The name seemed to ground him. “Yeah, sure, I know Franky.”

  “You were schoolmates?”

  “Different years. But yeah.”

  Derek jumped back in. “Did that personal relationship factor into your decision to extend him a loan that covered ninety-five percent of the value of the following properties on Tompkins Street?” He slid a list of the addresses across the desk. The banker looked them over casually.

  “Only in the sense that it motivated him to come to me, as opposed to someone else. Business is built on relationships.”

  “Your relationship with him was strong enough that you not only felt comfortable financing that much of the purchase, it took you less than a week to review the sale.”

  “I won’t discuss the details of our policies with you. But sure, the fact that I trust Franky helped speed things along. And that kind of leverage isn’t unheard of.”

  “It’s well above industry standard.”

  “In a market this solid we felt comfortable with our decision.”

  “You felt comfortable after a week of research?”

  “I use my best judgment on all the loans I originate. And whether we underwrite or not isn’t my call.”

  “You just passed the application down?” Reddick said. “Wink wink, nudge nudge, hey, guys, I know this is a little odd, but let it go? Or are there some falsified documents somewhere with your name on them?”

  Mitchell shifted in his chair. “Who are you really? You haven’t shown me an ID or a business card.”

  “What’s the going rate for bank fraud? You get an even share of that three million?”

  Reddick saw the number hit, a break in his frat boy composure. Mitchell blinked, pulled his indignant smile back into place—it wasn’t enough to hide his sudden fear.

  “Like shit you guys are investigators,” he said.

  “If you don’t want to talk we could take this to your director,” Derek said. “Or the CFPB.”

  “You wouldn’t be in my office with this bullshit story if that’s what you were going to do.” He was seeping fear now—disproportionate to anything the two of them represented. “What do you want? Who sent you?”

  “Nobody sent us,” Reddick said.

  “I told you people the first time—it’s not my fault the deal went down that way.”

  “You people?”

  “I made it square last spring. You said that would be the end of it.”

  “Made what square?” Reddick leaned forward, confused but eager. “Who did you talk to last year?”

  “That fucking blonde cunt. Don’t you know?”

  “Hannah?” He hadn’t suspected she would be involved here, on this side—had she gone behind Franky’s back somehow?

  “Like I would know her real name.”

  Reddick pulled Hannah’s photo up on his phone and stabbed it at the banker’s face. “Her?”

  Mitchell squinted. “What? That’s the wrong picture, buddy. I know that girl. That’s Buckley’s—that’s my friend’s girlfriend.”

  “And she’s not the girl who came to see you?”

  “Of course not. But look, I’ll tell you what I told her—I’ll zero this out once but you can’t bleed me forever. I’m not defenseless. I have friends, too, alright?”

  Reddick looked for another opening, wanted to keep him talking until he made sense—but Mitchell shut down.

  “Now get the fuck out of here before I call security.”

  “Look,” Reddick stood up. “Whatever your role here was, I don’t care. I’m trying to help someone that I think got caught up in this deal—I’m talking a girl’s life, so if you have an ounce of human compassion
inside that doughy rich-kid fat fucking chest you’ll tell me the straight truth.” He held Hannah’s photo up again. “You say you know this girl—that’s who I’m trying to help. Did she come to your office? Did she try and blackmail you?”

  Mitchell paused, let Reddick’s vitriol slide off his skin like grease. “You have no idea what you are talking about.”

  Derek put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Reddick scoured Mitchell’s face for signs of a lie. The banker held firm. Reddick backed toward the door.

  “If I see you in here again I’m calling security.”

  Derek raised his middle finger, then opened the office door.

  “Wait,” Reddick said.

  “We have to go.”

  “No, wait.” He swiped his phone, began tapping the keypad.

  Mitchell buzzed his desk phone. “Tyrell, will you send security back to my office, please?”

  “Seriously, man,” Derek urged. “We can’t be hanging out in here right now.”

  “I said wait.”

  Two large men in cheap suits came in. “Would you see these two out, please?” Yang said.

  “Let’s go,” Derek snapped.

  “Got it.” Reddick lunged at Mitchell and the two suits followed him. He held the screen up. “What about her? Is this the woman that tried to—” he looked at the security guards “—that was in your office?”

  “Get him out of here.”

  The guards put their hands on his shoulders and dragged him toward the door.

  “Come on, Mitchell. Is this the damn woman or not?”

  “We don’t want this kind of trouble, man,” Derek hissed.

  “Mitchell,” Reddick pleaded.

  The banker hesitated, then gave a half shrug. “Sure it is. Like you don’t know already.”

  The guards took Reddick out, one on each side. He tried to appear calm. Derek walked ahead of them without looking back. Once they were outside he waited at the nearest corner for Reddick to join him.

  “You alright?”

  Reddick glanced behind him, at the guards blocking the front door, glaring. “I’m fine.”

  “I realize I’m wearing a suit and all, but I can’t have someone calling the cops on me.” Derek’s face was stern. “And not just because I’m worried about my career. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I just had to show him one last photo.”

  Derek buttoned his coat, glanced around the sidewalks as if the police might yet be on their way. “So he said yes, finally? That it was Hannah that came to see him?”

  Reddick unlocked the screen and handed him his phone. Derek looked at it.

  “Cask? Isn’t this that liquor store in Clinton Hill?”

  “Yep.” Reddick reached over and zoomed into a photo on the store’s website, taken at a wine tasting. “And that’s the owner, Mia. Who apparently blackmailed Mitchell Yang last spring.”

  Twenty-One

  “How did you know?”

  They sat in Reddick’s living room, on opposite ends of his couch, drinking coffees they had picked up on their way back. The conversation in the car had been quick, chaotic; Reddick hurling facts at his friend, details that in his excitement he wasn’t sure whether he had withheld or not from earlier conversations. They had barely dug in before they were in front of Reddick’s apartment so he invited him up. A dizzy energy bounded between them, a rush of discovery, still unformed but potent.

  “I fell for it once already,” Reddick said. “Confusing those two.”

  “They don’t really look alike.”

  “Same gender, same hair. When the information is coming secondhand people are reduced to generalities.”

  “So you were on your guard against it this time. But even so, what made you think it could be Mia? There are more than two blonde women in Brooklyn.”

  “Because it couldn’t be someone new. It couldn’t be unrelated.” The facts of the case were bending, closing themselves off. There was no room for new entries. “I already made that mistake once—letting myself believe that half of the case was a dead end. Trusting Ju’waun.”

  “You said his story checked out.”

  “The mugging, yeah. That happened. The whole Mia-for-Hannah confusion, too. But he played it coy about Hannah and Franky, like he had no idea about any of it. He didn’t tell me any lies I could catch him in—he just didn’t tell me everything. That’s why he unloaded so much; he thought if he gave me enough information, then I would assume that it was all of it, and he was right.” He thought about Ju’waun’s final warning: It’s not at all like you think it is.

  “Maybe that’s true,” Derek said. “So Mia blackmailed Mitchell Yang last spring.”

  “Which prompted the argument that the girl I met at that party overheard. Mitchell wasn’t upset about Franky not paying back some money he owed him, he was upset because the deal they did three years ago was causing him to be squeezed by Mia—presumably on behalf of the Genie.”

  “Right. But I’m still not sure how that connects to Hannah. I see two separate incidents—on the one hand a missing girl, on the other a real estate fraud.”

  Reddick thought back to his bifurcated map. “But they both involve the same two groups of people. How likely is it that these crooked finance assholes would be caught up with someone like the Genie even once, much less twice?”

  “I guess that depends on how crooked they are.”

  “They have to be connected. Ju’waun was out with Hannah the night before she disappeared.”

  Derek leaned forward, rubbed the stubble at the nape of his neck. It was a side of him that Reddick hadn’t seen before—analytical, serious. He was taking Reddick’s wild thrusts and turning them over, scrubbing them for consistency. “Unless he’s telling the truth about that, too—what if he and Tyler just picked her up at a bar?”

  “No way.”

  “Then what you’ve got is a chain. Buckley and Franky connect to Hannah, who went to that party with Ju’waun, who is dating Mia.”

  “And Mia tried to blackmail Mitchell Yang for dipping into Restoration Heights money with the help of Buckley and Franky. It isn’t a chain, it’s a circle.”

  “And someone took a piece out.”

  A piece with a name. “Hannah.”

  “There’s your motive,” Derek said. “If she’s really the only link between the two groups—between Franky and Buckley on one side, the Genie and Mia on the other—then maybe someone wanted to sever that connection.”

  “And who would stand to gain by doing that?”

  “Your man Franky, for one. If you think he would go that far to cover this up.”

  “He might.” Lying to evict tenants, hurting a girl in a bar, bullying his hopeless best friend—yes, there were miles between any of those acts and murder. But if he was protecting himself, his business? People had killed for less. “He has a motive.”

  “He might, but I see two big problems with it. One, he didn’t need to go after anyone—it would be difficult to prove he did anything wrong flipping those properties to Corren. You would need hard evidence, a voice mail or an email or something, and Franky undoubtedly knows that. Absent this evidence there was no reason to murder someone—much less Hannah, who seems like a pretty minor connection between the two parties. And two—why did Mia try to blackmail Yang?”

  “Why target Hannah? I don’t know. We don’t know what she knew, what evidence she might have had. Maybe she did have an email or something like that. From what Marie said she seemed manipulative—maybe she was working a blackmail angle, too.”

  The alarm on Derek’s phone began to buzz. “Shit, man. I’ve got to go. I’m looking at a place in the East Village today.”

  They stood up, clasped hands and bumped shoulders. Reddick thanked him.

>   “I think I’m almost there.”

  “I told you that you needed me,” Derek said.

  “Did I argue?”

  “I heard it in your voice.”

  “I’ll take all the help I can get.” They clasped hands again, and Derek left.

  * * *

  Reddick went back to his room and began to restore the map. He packed the drawings away, stored his inks and other materials, aligned the pieces in their original shape. Hannah was joined in the center by Mitchell Yang, by the three men’s plot, the quick fortune made off someone else’s cash—all of the tendons he could find to connect Bed-Stuy and the Upper East Side, perhaps the only ones possible: money, exploitation, sex. A classic American cocktail of slumming and gentrification, with classic American victims. Was this it, was Hannah’s story simply another iteration of that old one—one of the nation’s few founding myths that has actually borne out to be true—that the powerful take from the weak, that there is nothing that cannot be sold—no home, no culture, no people—given the right offer?

  He felt Hannah slipping away from him, into this. He felt himself losing his grip on the people involved to the swell of larger forces, the impersonal tug of social patterns. Ju’waun, Hannah, Franky, Buckley—they all had names, they were individuals making decisions—he couldn’t let them become placeholders for theories about justice or history. He knew they were people because he had met them, they had behaviors, quirks, odors, affectations. They were all distinct. Class and race grouped people into circles where the likelihood for certain outcomes was radically different—but losing the sense that there were individuals inside those circles, that they were people with their own minds, meant surrendering entirely to an anonymous reading of history that he could not accept, that belied his own experience. These were two truths he could not reconcile.

  Why Hannah? The answer was on the map. It had to be. He traced the lines radiating out from her name, murmuring a list of possible motivations. Jealousy, revenge, secrecy, fear, entitlement, rage. Jealousy, revenge, secrecy. Jealousy revenge. Revenge.

  Revenge.

  He picked up his phone and called Derek.

  “Hey. I don’t suppose you’re stuck in traffic right now?”