Restoration Heights Page 3

  “Mother, that is nowhere near BAM.” He seemed impatient to be done with the conversation, to be alone with his parents. “It’s nowhere near anything.”

  “Except my apartment,” Reddick said.

  “Look.” Buckley turned to him. “I don’t mean to come off like that. I simply mean that I know my fiancée, I know where she goes and I know she wouldn’t be at a party out there.”

  His smug dismissal grated. “You don’t know where she is right now.”

  “Look here—”

  “Reddick!” Lane barked.

  “I’m trying to help you, man. You won’t even listen to me.”

  “I don’t think you’re trying to help at all. I think you want to insert yourself into this situation out of some perverse desire to become a part of our lives.”

  “Are you being serious right now?” Reddick said.

  “Buckles,” his mother chided.

  “You’re like those awful people who call the police with fake tips, for attention.”

  Reddick jumped to his feet and yelled that he didn’t want his attention, that Buckley was a fucking snob and that if something happened to his fiancée it was his own fault. Lane wedged himself between them. The Sewards tried to calm their son while he fired insults back. Finally Dottie exiled both camps from the foyer, dragged Reddick and Lane down the front steps into the gallery.

  “There’s work to do down here, right? And we have you booked for—what—two more hours today?” They nodded. “You,” she jabbed at Reddick’s chest, “don’t leave this room. Understand?”

  “But you have to call the police.”

  “It’s a family matter and they are going to discuss it as a family.”

  “You have to find that guy she went with.”

  “If you can’t respect their privacy I’m going to ask you to leave right now. Do you understand? Mr. and Mrs. Seward will do what they think is best. Lane? We will speak with you privately.”

  The manager followed her up the stairs.

  * * *

  Dean joined him in the gallery. Reddick offered a terse account of the confrontation; afterward they worked in uncomfortable silence. Buckley’s hostile disbelief had left him sore and humiliated. Just before four they began to pack their tools. The rest of the crew came down and they loaded supplies and empty crates onto the truck, returning each room to order. No one talked to Reddick beyond sorting out the logistics of the work. When they were nearly done Lane appeared and pulled him aside.

  “Have you calmed down?” he asked. Reddick nodded and he continued. “The Sewards have asked me to insist that you respect their wishes. They will consider what you have said, and if they need anything else they will contact you. You are not to reach out to them or to the police, is that understood?”

  “I’m telling the truth, Lane. This isn’t right.”

  “This is how you keep your job, Reddick. It would be easier all around if I just fired you. Do you understand? I fought for you. This is the best deal I could get. Tell me that you will do as they say. Leave them alone. Don’t go to the police. Okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine, what?”

  “Fine, I won’t bother them. I won’t go to the cops.”

  “One more thing. Buckley doesn’t want you back in the house, so I’m taking you off this job. You can work in the warehouse tomorrow.”

  “Is there enough to do?” Two full-timers ran the warehouse, older guys who generally didn’t like having the freelancers around.

  “You’ll find something. I have to meet with another client in the city tonight, so I’m not going back. Just close up and punch out after you unload. Let everyone else know.”

  Reddick walked back to the truck, slipping between crawling traffic on 77th. The streets and sidewalks were shoveled clean, the brutal winter tamed into picturesque lines of white on gray branches and stone facades.

  “Well?” Dean asked.

  “I’m not fired.” Everyone smiled, and some tension drained away. A couple of the guys offered support.

  “You really saw her?” Allen asked, crouched in the truck bed.

  “I wouldn’t have said it otherwise.”

  He shook his head incredulously. “I thought maybe I just spooked you this morning.”

  “Maybe you did, but that’s not what this is about. I know what I saw.” Reddick heard the rough edge in his own voice, the sandy indignation of his questioned credibility. “I am off this job, though. Warehouse tomorrow.”

  “Yeesh. That’s gonna be dull.”

  “I know. Hey, can I ask a favor? Lane isn’t going back to the warehouse tonight, and I could really use a drink. Could one of you clock me out? I want to head downtown and grab a beer.”

  It was a common request when one of the crew had happy hour plans in the city, and they agreed.

  “Want me to come with?” Dean asked.

  Reddick shook his head. “I’m good, man. I’ll see you at the apartment tonight?”

  “Probably. I need to grab a shower.”

  They finished packing. Once everything was secure Reddick stepped into the street to wave the truck into the gnarled traffic, tapping goodbye on the door as it pulled away.

  He returned to the sidewalk and stared at the house, squeezed in a row of limestone elegance. It barely stood out—its grandeur reduced to texture, to the ambiance of fathomless wealth, an image offered to postcards and the wonder of tourists. But it was a home; there were people inside, people whose names and faces he knew and who he could help if they would let him. He had no intention of going downtown. A person was missing. He had to make them listen.

  “Are you going to try again?”

  The man who spoke was three or four inches taller than Reddick, his large frame draped in a black wool coat that sloped gently over his round belly. He extended a gloved hand. “Thomas,” he said.

  “Reddick.” He shook it, tried to remember if he had seen Thomas inside. “Do you work for them?”

  “The Sewards? No, actually—I work for another family, who live nearby. The Lelands.” He paused, as if waiting for Reddick to react to the name. When he didn’t, Thomas continued. “I have friends on the Sewards’ staff. Dottie was apparently seething after the incident you caused, and one of my friends invited me out for coffee, hoping to lay low until she had a chance to cool off. He told me what happened.”

  “And Dottie was worried about us spreading rumors.”

  “Yes, well—the Sewards, the Lelands, their world is quite hermetic. Incestuous, even, if you’re feeling uncharitable. Once you’re inside it you quickly find that there’s no drama quite like the one happening around you. You end up living their life as much as your own, and you develop favorites.” The big man shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “It’s difficult to explain to people on the outside.”

  “Favorites? Like who, Buckley?”

  Thomas nodded. “I know that family well. Buckley isn’t a terrible guy. There are things about him...he can’t really be himself most of the time.”

  “He’s too proud to let me help him.”

  “That’s not it. It must seem that way but—it isn’t that. I’m certain of it. I was told that he was very shaken up. There was something else bothering him.”

  “Something other than his missing fiancée?”

  “Did he seem scared? Or worried?”

  “He was scared—of course.” Reddick thought of the girl in Allen’s story, her gray body sprawled in the loamy shallows. In his mind she had Hannah’s face. “But that’s exactly why he should listen to me.”

  “I agree. I’m just saying don’t judge him too harshly. You don’t know everything.”

  “Is that why you’re here? To plead Buckley’s case?”

  “Yes and no, actually. The Lelands’ house is around the corner, on Fifth—I went back th
ere after our coffee and told Mrs. Leland what I had learned. She was very interested. So much so that she asked me to get you.”

  “What?”

  “I was worried that I’d missed you. She wants to hear your side.”

  “I’m not sure I should tell this story to anyone else.”

  “You said you wanted to help. This is how you do it.”

  * * *

  The Lelands’ house had a guard in the foyer, an older man in a crisp suit, seated at a Victorian desk with an array of laptops. He nodded at Thomas as the pair shed boots and coats. They went inside, to a sitting room, where Thomas instructed another staff member to let Mrs. Leland know that they had arrived. Reddick eyed the dark room. There was a large floral carpet over the hardwoods, and carefully carved furniture, cherry and mahogany, the upholstery on the chairs expanding on themes the carpet introduced—flowers, vines, sinewy arabesques. The contrast with the Sewards’ vivid modernity seemed intentional—an argument over the right way to live. After a few minutes Reddick was led upstairs, to a parlor making the same argument.

  Mrs. Leland waited for him in an olive wingback. She was a pair of decades older than Mrs. Seward, thick white hair pulled tightly back from her lined, formidable face. She smiled with political precision and beckoned him to sit. He did, and Thomas left. Two members of her staff, young girls, loitered nearby.

  “Did Thomas offer you a drink?”

  Reddick replied that he was fine but she insisted that he have something. He agreed to coffee and one of the girls scampered away.

  “Is that a Sargent?” he gestured at a small painting behind her. It was a portrait of a young girl, smiling impishly, a pale blue ribbon running through her ash-blond hair. Mrs. Leland answered without turning.

  “It’s a William Merritt Chase. That’s my grandmother when she was a child.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “We have a Sargent in the rear parlor,” she said. “I could have Thomas show it to you when we are finished.”

  “Thanks. I’d like that very much.” The girl returned with his coffee, in a Wedgwood cup and saucer. He thanked her. He thought of his earlier conversation with Mrs. Seward, after she caught him admiring the Schnabel. “We’re all artists. Art handlers, I mean. For the most part we’re all usually artists.”

  “I suppose that makes a sort of sense.” Mrs. Leland paused for a long moment, peering at him intently. This was easier than he expected, the encounter had a grooved familiarity that settled him. When he told his story to the Sewards he had been an intruder, had forced himself into their private crisis. With Mrs. Leland the relations had snapped back to their accustomed place. She wanted something from him, a service—she wanted him to tell her his story. He knew she would offer something in exchange—assistance, he hoped, in convincing the Sewards to listen. This encounter had the security, the transparency, of a transaction. He might resent his subordinate role but he understood it, a clarity that soothed him.

  Finally, “So let’s hear it, then.”

  He told her both halves of the story—first the surreal alleyway encounter and then the Sewards’ reaction to it. She listened without interruption. He gave her the same version of Hannah’s actions that he had offered to the Sewards, for the same reasons—bleached of sexual interest to keep himself clean.

  “What do you make of it?” she asked when he finished.

  “I think whoever opened that door for her knows where she is. I think the police should be in my apartment building right now questioning the people who threw that party, compiling a list of everyone who saw her that night. I think they need to be in her apartment, looking for clues. I think if they don’t act quickly they’re going to squander whatever chance they have of finding her, and all because Buckley is too ashamed to admit that his fiancée was out partying in a black neighborhood.”

  “Was it a black man who opened the door for her?”

  “No. I saw his arm. He was white.”

  “But the neighborhood?”

  “It’s...it’s mixed, now. It has changed a lot since I moved there.”

  “Gentrified, you mean?”

  “It was better before.”

  “Better for whom, I wonder?” She didn’t expect an answer. He waited for her to continue. “Do you blame the Sewards?”

  He hadn’t thought that far yet, hadn’t gotten past his frustration that they wouldn’t listen. But on the surface the answer seemed obvious. There was guilt to go around—a share for everyone at that party who watched her leave, for his own inaction, for Buckley’s intransigence.

  “I think if she—if the worst happens, they will be partly to blame. Morally if not legally.”

  “The morality of it matters to you.”

  “I don’t see how it couldn’t.”

  “A righteous crusader.”

  He suspected mockery, but saw none in her face. Only a detached, probing curiosity. “I don’t think so. I just—Is it so much of a stretch to believe in right and wrong?”

  She smiled indulgently. “Not to me.”

  “Can I ask why I’m here?”

  “You may. Perhaps I’m a moralist like you. Perhaps I believe in right and wrong, and when Thomas relayed the details of this unfortunate situation I wanted to help.”

  He answered cautiously. “So you’ll call the police?”

  “They won’t get very far without the cooperation of the Sewards. If you truly wish to act on your principles you will have to do so directly.”

  “Our principles, you mean.”

  She kept her face even. “I have met Hannah, on more than one occasion. I know the Sewards quite well. I have seen their temper firsthand. I have seen them close ranks. They are never so vicious as when they are accosted by the truth.”

  It seemed too vague, too abstract to be any help. “What kind of truth?”

  “The versions of it they cannot control.”

  “So where does that leave me?”

  “Here.” She spread her hands gracefully. “With me. Where we will try to discover whatever truth it is that has provoked them.”

  “I just want to help Hannah.”

  “And I wish to help you. Does that arrangement appeal to you?” He nodded, unsure of what precisely he had just agreed to. “Very good,” she said. “Thomas will handle the details. I wish you the best of luck.”

  She instructed one of the girls to take his cup, the other to retrieve Thomas and have him show Reddick the painting. He returned quickly, and led the art handler toward the back of the house, into another parlor. The windows revealed a spacious rear courtyard, snow cordoned into smooth pools, the edges crisp around a stone walkway and tiered fountain.

  “Here is the Sargent.”

  Reddick moved away from the window and looked at the painting. It was a small portrait of a cherubic boy, a rose shine brightening his pale round cheeks. He seemed to be moving. Reddick moved closer and the image fell apart, reassembled into a map of brushstrokes and slippery pigment, a record of gestures—three to make lips, three more a nose, a dash for eyes, a smear for hair. That the illusion of selfhood could be conjured with so little effort.

  “It’s fantastic,” Reddick said.

  “Yes.” Thomas smiled. “So was Mrs. Leland quite clear?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “She would like you to look into Hannah’s disappearance.”

  This wasn’t the help that he expected—it wasn’t help at all. “I’ll be fired if I hound the Sewards any more.”

  “There are other lines of inquiry to pursue. Do what you said the police should do. Go to her apartment. Ask questions. You live in the building where she was last seen.”

  “Why doesn’t she hire a private investigator?”

  “Because she doesn’t want a private investigator. We will cover your expenses.” Indoors, out of his coat, t
here was something delicate about Thomas, in his precisely trimmed beard and pale eyes. He had a blue-collar body but a white-collar face. His suit fit him beautifully.

  “Expenses? What does that mean?”

  “Here is five hundred dollars cash. Save your receipts and if you need more I will transfer it to you.” He gave Reddick the money with a small business card on top, printed with his name and a phone number. “Text me at this number and I will send you Hannah’s information. Her address, her photo.”

  “Why do I need that?”

  “To show people when you ask about her.”

  “She wants me to go door-to-door?”

  “She wants you to do what you think is right. Keep me updated.”

  “She wants updates.”

  “What she wants is simple.” He moved closer, until Reddick could smell the saltwater cologne on his notched lapel. He rested a massive hand on the art handler’s shoulder. “Find the girl.”

  Four

  4 to the C, fighting the rush hour crowd for air. He dug his free hand into the pocket of his jeans to fondle the five one-hundred-dollar bills folded inside. Not because he cared about the money, but because it verified his memory, offered proof that he hadn’t imagined the surreal day.

  He was headed home to change clothes and then to the Y, to play ball. Mrs. Leland’s offer demanded a response from his body. Thomas had insisted he take the cash even though he hadn’t committed to anything yet. He walked north out of the Nostrand stop and cut east on Halsey, one of the few blocks in Bed-Stuy where the wide sidewalks had been entirely cleared and salted, past rows of brownstones, their fat banisters and iron fences trimmed white with snow. Less magisterial than the Upper East Side but just as lovely. A few houses clung to their holiday lights, their courtyards sheltering a stray Santa or snowman that had survived the weeks since the new year. Nearly every home posted a sign declaring opposition to Restoration Heights. He could see the fence ahead, the resting claws of earthmovers parked for the winter, the skeletal towers sheathed in plastic, scaffolding wrapped like wire around their lower levels.