Restoration Heights

by Wil Medearis

  “The BQE never quits, man. Why, what’s up?”

  “I was hoping you could check something for me. When you accessed those sales records, for Tompkins Mac—did you see who the seller was?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got it on the seat next to me. Give me a sec.” There was a rustle of fabric on leather seats, then he came back on. “Let me see. It was a private individual, a woman—I remember thinking how pissed I would be if it had been my mother. Not that she would have sold. Where is it. Oh yeah, here. Looks like...a...Jeannie Tucker.”

  “Jeannie Tucker?”

  “Yeah, a local landlord. Like I said, it reminded me of my mother, so I did a quick search to see if she owned anything else. She has a couple other properties nearby.”

  “Feeling sentimental?”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  “Do you have a list of those other properties?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is Cask on it?”

  “Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah.”

  “How about a dry cleaners named Clean City?”

  “That’s on here, too. Who is she, Reddick?”

  Jeannie. Genie.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Reddick, what are you thinking? Who is she?” A pause, then, “Is Jeannie Tucker the Genie?”

  “I’ve got to go right now.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid. Whatever you’re thinking—don’t do anything stupid.”

  But Reddick barely heard him—he was already hanging up.

  * * *

  He took that knowledge back to the map and ten minutes later he had it. He knew why Hannah disappeared, why Buckley reacted the way he did—the pieces sliding into place like gears.

  He called Mrs. Leland. Thomas answered.

  “Put her on the line.”

  “Good day, Reddick.”

  “Put her on the line, Thomas.” There was a pause as he brought her the phone. “Mrs. Leland?”

  “I hope you have come to the right conclusion, Reddick.”

  “I know where Hannah is.”

  She sighed. “I see. I’m disappointed that you won’t see reason.”

  “I know who is behind this and I’m going there now. I only ask one thing. Check up on me. After all the work I did for you—you owe this to me. Make sure I come back. That’s it. If I don’t—call the police, and tell them what I’m about to tell you. Okay? Tell them and make sure it ends with me.”

  “You’re being very dramatic. Buckley’s fiancée is in Oregon.”

  “Buckley’s fiancée isn’t anywhere at all.”

  “So you are refusing my money?”

  “With respect, Mrs. Leland—fuck your money.” And then he told her what he knew, and where he was going.

  “You don’t have proof of any of this?”

  “Clean City. Remember that. If I don’t come back, you’ll find all the proof you need there. Clean City.”

  He hung up and got his coat.

  Twenty-Two

  It was stuck on the end of a row of brick townhouses, squat and square, the roof a full floor lower than the rest of the block. It used to be some sort of garage. It was the kind of inconsequential building that you knew would be gone in five, ten years. The odd asymmetry of ending the block on a low note, like a bookend to keep the townhouses upright—not remotely enough character to survive what was coming. Just a corner you couldn’t be bothered to notice.

  The lobby was as he remembered. The outdated fliers, the lone chair, the shambled stack of magazines. The sense of a business without customers, plodding through numb days. No one behind the counter. He rang the bell. It was almost a minute before anyone showed—the same kid as last time shuffled disinterestedly to the counter.

  “You think today is spring?”

  “What?”

  “Last time you was in here. You said you wanted to clean that coat, but you said you would wait until it was warm out.”

  “I did?”

  “You said until spring.”

  Reddick gathered himself. “I’m not here about my coat.”

  “Yo, really.”

  “I need to see the Genie.”

  “We clean clothes, dude.”

  “What, is there a code or something? Do I say it three times fast? With my eyes closed?”

  Patiently. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “I’m talking about Jeannie Tucker. I’m talking about Hannah Granger. I’m talking about Sons of Cash Money and Mia and everyone else who runs errands for her. I’m talking about all the shit I already know, all the hoops I’ve jumped through to get this far. You think you can put me off? Take your shot.”

  He walked toward the low swinging doors at the end of the counter. The kid slid over to block him.

  “The fuck, dude? You do not want this. You don’t even know how much you do not want this.”

  Reddick clenched his jaw and pushed through the doors. The kid raised his arm to block his chest. Reddick slid past him.

  “Yo. Yo, dude.” Reddick felt his hand on his shoulder, trying to turn him, squeezing hard enough that he prepared to duck.

  “TJ.”

  Reddick stopped, looked back. The kid’s fist was poised to strike. Reddick stared at it blankly.

  “TJ.” Again, a woman’s sandy contralto, twisting from the rear door. “You might as well let him in.”

  TJ let go of Reddick with an indifferent shove.

  “Come on back,” she said.

  He went through the rear door into a refurbished garage. The conversion was haphazard and incomplete. The concrete floor had been coated in thick varnish, oil stains trapped and preserved like fossils. The ghost of a rolling door survived in the outline of the new bricks that had filled it in. There were no windows to the outside. Pieces of unidentifiable machinery huddled in a corner, beneath a quilt of dust, beside worn metal cabinets. In the center of the room was a baggy sofa and matching chairs, cinnamon leather glistening like river stones. A large ashtray and an unlit joint rested on a table in front of them. A door to the right led to a small room, an add-on—interior windows revealed a table and chairs. A pyramid of money was piled on the table. Two men counted it. On the wall behind Reddick was an enormous flat-screen showing a live feed of the entrance to the cleaners, of the men counting money and of a handful of other rooms. The wall between the cleaners and the neighboring townhouse had been removed; a stairwell led to the upper floors next door.

  The Genie sat on the leather couch, alone.

  “So here I am, Reddick.”

  “You know my name.”

  Her hair was pulled into tight rows that brushed the nape of her long neck. She had a wide mouth and placid eyes. Below her angular shoulders she was solidly built, a heavy woman in her midsixties. Rich colors darted among the folds of her sweeping dress, the fabric fanned across the sofa, over her coiled legs. A pair of brown flats rested neatly on the floor beside her. Her voice tumbled from her chest, deep but rough.

  “As much of my business as you have wormed into, I better know your name. Come sit down.”

  She nodded at one of the chairs. Reddick didn’t move.

  “I said come and sit down. You’re here, aren’t you? In my inner sanctum? The lair of the big bad monster you’ve been chasing. You’d better make the most of it. Summon whatever you’ve got left of that righteous rage.”

  “I can do this from back here.”

  “Why not be comfortable?”

  “You wanted revenge.”

  She grinned, shifted in her seat. “I did. Tell me about it.”

  “You found out something was off with the financing. When Franky flipped the property so quickly you knew that you had been cheated and you went digging—I don’t know how, but you found out about Mitchell, and Buckley. So you decided to
make them pay. You found something you could use against Mitchell—or maybe you just threatened him—and you sent Mia, because you could trust her. So that’s one down, two to go—how am I doing so far?”

  “I said I would hear you out.”

  “Whatever you had on Mitchell wasn’t enough to squeeze Franky or Buckley. You needed more information. You needed someone close to them. You needed Hannah.”

  The Genie reached for the joint and lit it. He was more afraid of what she would say than what she would do. He feared her knowledge, the clarity it would bring—he feared the stinging disappointment of resolution. This could end no other way—he had traced back along a web of connected actions, pursued some bleached fact from which everything else flowed, hidden by a gnarled and complicated logic—whatever he found could bring no satisfaction. The thing that comes first is the toughest thing to live with. It must be accepted without resort to explanation, without metaphysics or theory—a dumb mute stone of truth. Whatever she said was all he would have to sustain him.

  “You probably feel brave,” she said. “For coming here. This is your truth to power moment, right? You stand in front of me, you unravel this whole grand plot, and what do I do, exactly? What’s my role?” She took a long pull from the joint, settled back into the couch and exhaled. “I provide you with satisfaction. I give you a moral clarity that you want so badly you believe you are willing to die for it. Because that’s the next step, yeah? You make your speech, I confirm it—maybe fill in a little detail here and there, just to help the fit, just to actively engage in your truth-building, then I call in—I don’t know, TJ or someone, and he puts a gun to your head and turns out the lights, and just before it all goes black you smile. I can see it. A nice cinematic smile. A close-up so that everybody knows you died with a martyr’s peace. Because you found the truth.” She smiled, and held out the joint. “Because you had courage, boy.”

  He waved away her offer.

  “What’s the matter? You turn down my chair. You turn down my smoke. White boys love this strain.”

  “I’m not here for your forgiveness.”

  “Come on, boy, I am fucking with you. Just sit down already.”

  “And I’m not here to die, in peace or otherwise. I let someone know where I was going, someone you can’t touch—if I don’t come back the cops will be at your door. They’ll find all of this.” He gestured at the counting room.

  “Of course—you set a trap. For an extra layer of satisfaction during your close-up.”

  “Let me see her.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait for this.”

  She picked up her phone, typed a brief message, then smoked quietly while they waited. He heard footsteps on the stairwell. A girl came down.

  “Hannah. This is Reddick. He’s been looking for you.”

  He had conflated the two versions of her—the reality was somewhere in between the girl in the photo and the girl in the alley. She had dyed her hair licorice black; the contrast diminished her magazine-cover cheekbones, pulled at the dark line of her slack mouth. She was shorter than he remembered, her skin rougher, her features less refined. He realized how alike her face was to his—not for any specific resemblance but in their disjointed Americanness, their odd motley of incongruent pieces. They each carried a history of incompatible parts.

  “Yeah? Have we met?” Sober, her voice lost some of its nasal whine, its bratty-girl caricature.

  It was the proof he wanted, the confirmation of what he saw in the map. Getting it unnerved him. “Yes. Two weeks ago. Almost two weeks ago.”

  “Jeannie, what did you want?” she asked.

  “This. I wanted exactly this.”

  “It was a Sunday night,” Reddick said. “You were outside without a coat. Drunk. There was a party in my building and you had come out for, I don’t know, air, a cigarette. We went into the alley together. I was taking out my garbage. Your phone—someone texted you. And you left.”

  It was as bare a telling as he had managed yet. He saw how spare it was, how ordinary. A glancing encounter in a city composed entirely of glancing encounters. Standing in front of her now he couldn’t articulate what in that moment had moved him, couldn’t separate it from any number of other incidents that had passed by unnoticed. He couldn’t connect the body in front of him to the person he had been chasing.

  Hannah laughed, a husky, boyish sound that rolled from her chest, a register lower than her speaking voice. “I’m sorry, dude, but I don’t remember that at all. I must’ve been pretty fucked-up.”

  “Yeah.”

  She laughed some more, enthralled with the comedy of her lost memories. “I probably had some pills. This was Saturday?”

  “Sunday. Two Sundays ago.”

  The timing finally registered on her face, a flash of caution. “Where was this?”

  “Bed-Stuy. Near Restoration Heights.”

  She frowned. “Are you sure that was even me?”

  “You went missing the next day. Buckley was frantic.”

  “Buckley?” Suddenly panicked. “What the fuck, Jeannie? Who the fuck is this?”

  “You want to tell her, Reddick, or should I?”

  “I don’t know if I have anything left to say.”

  The Genie laughed. “Did you come here to speak truth to power, or to have power speak the truth to you?”

  “I just needed to see. To know I was right.”

  “You want to fill me in here?” Hannah asked.

  “Why don’t you both sit down.”

  Reddick, finally, obeyed. He and Hannah went to opposite chairs, forming a triangle with the Genie at the apex. Hannah picked up the Genie’s smoldering joint.

  “Hannah, you were incautious. I told you to stay inside until we got paid.”

  “I wanted to celebrate. That job took, like, eight months—you never said it could go so long. It felt like I was getting out of jail.”

  Reddick thought of the Sewards’ house, the lavish art. “Was it really that bad?”

  “It’s hard to be something you aren’t. Harder than you think.”

  “You would have had everything.”

  She sneered at him. “I couldn’t stick it out for the long haul, and with his lawyers I wasn’t gonna leave that marriage any richer than I came in. It wasn’t that I minded being somebody’s beard, or having to pretend I wanted to fuck him. Honestly I just hated being around all that faggy art.”

  “I’ve tried to give her culture,” the Genie said. “But some lessons won’t be learned.”

  “I learned enough to make him believe in me, to get his snobby parents on my side. I learned enough that he didn’t mind me fucking around so long as I never brought up Tony.”

  Beard. Tony. Reddick was a step behind. “Tony—you mean Anthony Leland, the state senator?”

  Hannah shrugged indifferently. “Buckley’s one true love. Everyone knew it, both mothers, the staff.” She rolled her eyes. “Ugh, the staff. You should have heard them go on, like they were watching Romeo and Juliet.” She dropped her voice an octave, reeled in her loose vowels. “‘Oh, if only Buckles and Tony could be together, isn’t it just tragic?’”

  The lifestyle blogs, the images of the two men at work or play—how could he have missed it? They were lovers. Buckley was trapped beneath a lie. It explained the power of Franky’s grip. Their college liaison had been cruel play for him—but for Buckley it was a glimpse of freedom, of a life compatible with his instincts. It also explained the urgency behind Mrs. Leland’s involvement—because here was a scandal worth fearing. Her son could shake off ties to a corrupt development, could outlast allegations of some role in the disappearance of his friend’s fiancée—but a male lover would bury his ambitions. He was married, he had a family and he had picked the wrong political party. Sarah’s words came back to him—the only people who care about a little cock-sucking are Repub
lican politicians.

  “You could have spoiled it,” the Genie chided. “You let Franky see you with two of my boys.”

  “I told him I picked them up at a bar,” Hannah said. “Franky is so stuck on himself that as long as I went home with him he wouldn’t bother to question anything. It’s not like I was ever going to see him again and I was entitled to one last decent piece of ass. As a reward for time served.”

  “It was such an obvious con,” Reddick said. “I don’t know how it took me so long to see it.”

  “Those motherfuckers owed me money,” the Genie snapped. “A whole lot of fucking money.”

  “Franky, Mitchell, Buckley—they took you for a ride with that deal,” Reddick said. “Why did you sell? Why do you all always sell to these arrogant developers when you know they don’t care about the neighborhood?”

  “‘You all,’” she sneered. “The mysteries of the black heart, right? You want me to speak for my people.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “You all never do. I know why I sold. Yeah? I know what my reasons are. You want that and I’ll tell you. You want something else, you want to understand the motivations of a people? I’ve got some sorry news. There is no people. That’s the hard lesson this country taught me. It is the heart of my success. You want this to be a community but it’s only a territory. Individuals stuck in the same place, battered by the same forces. Of course they respond the same way. If the building you’re standing in is on fire, then you’ll try to get out, and everyone standing in there with you will try to get out, too—but that doesn’t make you a community, just a bunch of individuals trying not to burn alive. Behaving rationally. That’s why I sold. Because it was rational. I bought those buildings when I was twenty years old, when I still carried a gun—when you didn’t go out in this neighborhood alone. I bought all three properties for sixty-five thousand dollars and my boys shook their heads, told me I was wasting money, that I was parroting my callow West Indian neighbors who thought they could buy their way into respectability. Who prostrated themselves before the false idol of honest work. You run girls, my crew said, you run drugs—why would you want to be a landlord. That’s what we got Jews for.” She looked to see if Reddick laughed. He didn’t. She sighed and continued. “I ran my first girls out of one of those buildings. I grew weed, stacked money and bricks of anything I could move. Fifteen, twenty years of that and I realized the properties were worth more legit. By then I had buildings all over Bed-Stuy and Clinton Hill—some in parts that had turned straight, some in parts that stayed rough. Mostly older tenants, on borrowed time. The day was going to come when someone showed up with a barrel full of money and I was only waiting on the right time to cash out. The money they were throwing at us—are still throwing—that’s money you have to be a goddamned fool to turn down. Clean-ass white money, too. Clean as Buckley’s and Franky’s. Why should I care what happens to this neighborhood. History? This is just a place where I earn a living. When I help people, when I lend them a hand—it’s only because we’re all stuck in the same inferno. But there comes a time when you got to get yourself out.”