Restoration Heights Read online

  “I had no idea we had such power.”

  “Promise you’ll only use it for good.”

  “Never.” They laughed and drank. Beth continued. “So that’s one. What about the other?”

  “Completely different. It was this girl who I used to flirt with in Figure Drawing. We were drinking in the studio one night, something was definitely going to happen eventually but she made the first move. We dated for weeks after that. Only Dean has ever connected it to the other incident.”

  “Because you didn’t have to do anything.” Dean straightened his glasses, tried to look persecuted. “I, on the other hand, feel like I’m always doing the heavy lifting.”

  Beth cut her eyes at Dean, so subtle that Reddick almost missed it. “Seriously, though,” she said. “You’re not going to do this thing, are you? It’s not your problem.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “Where would you start?” Dean asked.

  He thought about Restoration Heights, about whether her body could be there, blue and hard beneath the snow. It was too morbid to say out loud but he couldn’t shake the image.

  “Buckley seemed really suspicious,” he said.

  “That’s usually who it is, right?” Dean said. “When someone is killed it’s usually the spouse or partner.”

  “The husband,” Beth said. “The man.”

  “Women kill their spouses, too.”

  “Men are usually the perpetrators of violence, is all I’m saying.”

  “That’s good, because I only have male suspects. I’m playing the odds.”

  “You have suspects, then?” Dean asked.

  “Just the one.”

  “Oh, right. Buckley. The Sewards are a big-time family. There must be a ton of stuff online about him.”

  “I don’t know if we should encourage him,” Beth said.

  Dean took out his phone. “Let’s look him up.” He searched for a minute. “He’s a Wharton grad. Looks like he was in Philly around the same time that we were, getting his MBA. Here he is at the ICA. I guess he helped put this painting show together?” He turned the phone over so that Reddick could see the screen. Buckley stood on the balcony, overlooking University City, with a glass of wine in his hand. The photo was contrived but he looked sharp and confident, a privileged young man coming into power. Reddick swiped through more of the photos, gallery shots of the work.

  “I remember this show,” he said. “It was the spring before our freshman year. I had come up for a second look at U-Arts.”

  “We just missed him, then.”

  “Didn’t Sarah go to Penn?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah,” Reddick said. “She did.” Sarah was a painter who worked in the same building as Dean and Beth. She was a little older than Reddick; they had gone out a few times but it had never moved past drinks. “She would have been there at the same time he was. Maybe she knew him.”

  “Now you have a witness to question.”

  “This is not a good idea.” Beth laughed as she said it.

  “Okay, what else?”

  “I have her address.” Thomas had forwarded that information, along with her photo, after Reddick had returned from the Y. “I might go check it out.”

  “Looking for what?” Dean asked. “Signs of a struggle?”

  “Remember how shaken Buckley seemed when he got back from there yesterday? Maybe he saw something.”

  “I don’t know. He said there wasn’t a break-in or anything like that.”

  “Wouldn’t he say that, though? I mean—if he’s a suspect.”

  “How will you even get in?” Beth asked. “To her apartment, I mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Reddick thumbed the mouth of his beer. “I guess I’ll just show up and see what I can improvise.”

  “You make such detailed plans,” Dean said. “That’s always been something I admire about you.”

  “Ha ha. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Alright, so we’ve got a suspect, a character witness and a scene.”

  “There’s also the people who threw the party,” Reddick said. “They may have seen something.”

  “How will you find them?”

  “I guess knock on some doors.”

  Dean winced. “Don’t do that. I live in this building, too.”

  “I have to do something. I could start tomorrow, after work.”

  “It is kind of exciting,” Beth said. “A sort of game.”

  Reddick’s reply was sharper than he intended. “It’s not a game for Hannah.”

  The unexpected gravity of that realization killed their mood. They drank quietly. Dean and Beth skimmed their phones while Reddick stared blankly at his hands. Finally Dean spoke.

  “Reddick, you aren’t going to do this for real?”

  “I don’t know.” He finished his beer. “Yes.”

  Five

  Another early morning, another subway ride. Harold waiting across the turnstile.

  They traded daps. “What’s up, young brother?”

  “Hey, remember that story I told you yesterday? About the girl? Well, it got a whole lot weirder.” Reddick told him what happened at the Sewards’ house, the coincidence of Hannah’s identity and the family’s unexpected response.

  “See, that’s how they treat people. That’s what they’re like.” Harold said. “If you’re not one of them, what you say doesn’t matter.”

  “I know how they see me, that I’m just trash. But I didn’t think they would discount me completely.”

  “You never thought that. I would have thought it. I would have gone in knowing they weren’t gonna believe anything I said. I’ve learned to expect that from people like them.”

  “Well, you would have been right. Because Buckley wasn’t hearing any of it.”

  “So what about the girl? She just gone?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “And you’re kind of hung up on her now.”

  “I was the last person to see her.”

  “You feel responsible for it in a way.”

  “Someone has to be. Look I was—This is stupid, but I can’t stop thinking about it—You worked on Restoration Heights, right?”

  He nodded somberly. “Yeah, I did. Before it got delayed. Not saying those protestors didn’t have a point, but that’s people’s jobs right there.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. I was just—Do they ever find bodies in construction sites?”

  “Oh yeah. Not really all the time but it definitely happens, I know that. Once a project has been delayed for a little while the city sends inspectors to the site to check things out, you know, make sure nothing is out of hand, and they find some things.”

  “Bodies?”

  “Bodies. Sometimes bodies. Sometimes other things that shouldn’t be there. Drugs. Campsites for people that got nowhere else to go. You think this girl is there?”

  “I don’t know what made me think of it.”

  “In this weather if she’s there she isn’t camping. I hate to say it.”

  “I know.”

  “Listen, though. You know I grew up around there—I know some people. I mean people that are in touch. If anything shady happened, they know about it.”

  “I’m thinking this is something domestic.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m telling you, if it happened, I got some people that can find out.” He seemed revved by his own confidence, as though the stronger he asserted his claims the more he believed them. “After work I’m usually at this spot near Clinton Hill called Ti-Ti’s, and I can find out whatever you need right there. If you’re really hung up on this just let me know.”

  Reddick considered it. How would any friend of Harold’s know something about this—about Buckley Seward? There were layers of New York between them, fortified
strata of class and race designed explicitly to maintain an impassable distance.

  “I think I’m good.”

  “I can see it in your face, Reddick. You can’t let go. Let me give you my number. If you change your mind, you text me.” He took Reddick’s phone to add himself as a contact.

  “Ti-Ti’s, huh? Maybe I could come down there with you.”

  “Anytime you want. You might stick out a little bit, though. No offense.”

  “No worries, man. I’m not sensitive about that kind of stuff. You know my grandfather was black.”

  Harold glanced up from the phone, his face unreadable and solemn. After a moment he smiled. “Come on, Red. I like you, brother. You don’t have to say that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “It might be. But it don’t mean anything. You’re as white as every other white dude in Long Island City this morning. Don’t make it into a thing.”

  * * *

  At the warehouse the annoyed full-timers had no use for him. He wandered the halls, lurked among the vaults, until he found an empty crate to perch on and put his phone to work.

  First the Sewards. Twenty-sixth on the Forbes list of wealthiest families, their fortune accumulated in the old American industries—steel and oil—enabling the extensive philanthropy that had tagged their name on music halls and special exhibition spaces, on wings and renovations, across the northeast. Old money that had aged well, youthful vigor maintained by a commitment to the cultural avant-garde. Buckley had two dead uncles—cancer and an airplane—and several cousins, but no siblings. He was the sole heir for the New York line.

  The Lelands were twenty-third on the same list. The article announcing this ranking was buried on the second page of the search results—the first was all hits for Mrs. Leland’s son, a politician. Reddick followed politics haphazardly, on the whims of scandals or elections, and hadn’t heard of State Senator Anthony Leland, but the stories painted him as a rising star, a square-jawed Christopher Reeve look-alike going gray with aesthetic precision. His pedigree didn’t match his face. By the standards of most families on the list he was nouveau riche—the family was poor until Anthony’s grandfather made his fortune. This seemed to complicate Mrs. Leland’s claim that William Merritt Chase had painted her ancestor so he sorted for images, found the painting and clicked on it. Portrait of a Serving Girl. The subject had worked in the kitchen of the artist’s sister—she was the daughter of Irish immigrants who Americanized their surname and considered themselves lucky to land a job waiting on the Anglican upper class. Soon even that tenuous connection was lost, and the painting was just a family legend, a story told over Prohibition whiskey in Hell’s Kitchen, until Mrs. Leland’s father came back from the war with a lesson about pain—that its ubiquity was an untapped market. He built an opioid empire, and when the painting came up at auction his children bought it, reclaiming their history and adopting a stature their ancestors were denied. They built not only a collection around it but also a way of life.

  The question was who resented whom. Did Mrs. Leland believe the Sewards had been unfairly gifted with the life her father worked for—were they too casual with a prize she treasured? Or were the Sewards irritated at being passed on the leaderboard of the point-one percent by a family of relative nobodies? How much did a thing like that mean to people like them?

  Perhaps nothing. And any tension between the two families was a side issue to finding Hannah. What mattered was that Mrs. Leland wanted to help—he could put aside her motives.

  By noon the full-timers had succeeded in convincing Lane that there wasn’t enough work to keep him around and the manager called to send him home.

  “You’re not suspended, exactly,” Lane said. “This isn’t meant to be punitive. But we aren’t going to need you until next week, when the Seward job is finished.”

  He was happy to have the time—and Mrs. Leland’s cash would make up for the lost hours. He went back to his apartment, made a turkey sandwich and tried to figure out where to start. Her address beckoned—but the thought of going there daunted him. Some of last night’s confidence had evaporated with his buzz. He needed to build back up to it. Start with something easier.

  What had Thomas said? Ask questions. You live in the building.

  He carried his plate to the sink, took out his phone and pulled up the photo. Hannah was standing next to Buckley, caught midlaugh. She was hard to place as the girl in the alley. Her hair looked thicker, her cheeks rounder. She seemed unfazed by her rare fortune. What she stood to gain from her marriage was unimaginable. Perhaps she had come in with her own wealth—or perhaps she had gone looking for someone else’s and was braced for the shock of its acquisition. But if it was an accident, what pressures did that create? Did she feel liberated or trapped? He remembered their conversation, her ambiguity—was she struggling to stay composed? Would that be enough to make her run?

  Buckley, beside her, had the look of a man attached to a luminous mystery. What did a man in his position want from a woman—what could she offer? Loyalty? Discretion? At the very least not to throw herself at a stranger in an alley. Perhaps Sunday night wasn’t the first time—perhaps he had started digging and uncovered desires he couldn’t tolerate. Could he have been so entitled that he hurt her?

  There was no reason to suspect him over anyone else, not yet. She had been vulnerable, an easy victim. It could be anyone in the building.

  Reddick grabbed a small Moleskine notebook and a pencil from his studio. He walked to the back of the building, called the elevator and rode it to the top. The sixth floor hallway was identical to his own, faded tile and rust-colored doors, windowsills and corners dusted gray from neglect. There was something institutional in the hollow silence, in the intrusion of his clacking footsteps. He went to the first door, held his breath and knocked.

  Nothing happened. He waited and knocked again. Finally he scribbled a note, asking if the tenants had thrown or attended a party in this building on Sunday night, explaining that he wasn’t an upset neighbor complaining about the noise but just trying to find someone, and could they email if they knew anything. He walked to the next apartment. This time a man answered. Reddick asked about the party—the man blinked sleepily and said he didn’t remember hearing one. He thanked him and moved on. It was becoming easier, he had begun to adapt to his new role. The last two apartments on that floor were empty and he rewrote his note.

  He took the stairs down one floor and repeated the process. He got odd looks and unhelpful answers from the three tenants who answered, and left a note on the final door. He hadn’t thought the party was this high up so he wasn’t discouraged yet—he hoped for better luck on the fourth but it was the same, mostly empty apartments. It was the wrong time of day for this, he should have waited until evening. A woman in 4C remembered the noise and said she was pretty sure it was below her somewhere, possibly directly below her. No one answered at 3C or at the other apartments on that floor. He scribbled out four more notes. On the second and first the tenants he spoke with remembered the party but hadn’t paid particular attention, the footsteps and the laughter dissolving into the ambient sounds of a weekend night.

  “Sundays were quiet in this building once,” a man complained.

  Reddick went back to his own apartment. He hadn’t even gotten to show Hannah’s photo—he had struck out completely, with no plans for the evening other than to follow the leads this search generated. He bundled into his winter coat and boots, grabbed his sneakers and left for the Y.

  * * *

  It was around five, too early for a pickup game, the court quiet in the dead space between the adjacent high school’s daytime programs and the evening rec classes. He took shots alone, let his mind go. Between the bounding echoes of his dribble he could hear the breath of a man jogging the indoor track above him. After twenty, twenty-five minutes people began to drift in, gathering for the next class. He tuned them
out. When the teacher arrived he picked up his coat and boots and went downstairs. Derek was in the lobby.

  “Leaving already?” his friend asked.

  “There’s a class upstairs. I was just trying to kill some time.”

  “Come lift with me.”

  Reddick wrinkled his nose.

  “You’re such a coward,” Derek said.

  “Weights are heavy.”

  “Yeah. That’s the whole point.”

  “It feels like work.”

  “Work is good for you. Speaking of—you didn’t work today?”

  “I left early.” He told him about being sent home, and about the notes he left throughout his apartment building.

  “Your neighbors are going to think you’re crazy.”

  “If I can help. A little, even.”

  “You need to get the police involved.”

  “I already told you. It will get me fired.”

  “Maybe if you kept it unofficial. You know the cop that works out here?” Reddick shook his head. “I’ll introduce you. You can ask him.”

  “Is he here now?”

  “He should be. He lifts with Sensei. They’re here every night, basically.”

  Sensei was in his early sixties, about Reddick’s height but fifty or sixty pounds heavier, lean and thick as a bull. He had acquired his name from the earnestness of his followers, five or six muscular twentysomethings who followed his lifting regimen with cult-like devotion. Reddick knew him only by reputation until they met at an anti–Restoration Heights rally in the fall. Reddick had gone with Dean, who didn’t share his interest in the neighborhood, who just wanted a cheap place to live while he made art. The crowd was 80 percent black. Dean’s discomfort had been palpable. Sensei had been standing outside the College of New Rochelle that day, in a pressed button-down and white kufi; they recognized each other’s faces from the Y, and introduced themselves. Sensei had helped organize the event.

  Dean had spoken favorably of the rally afterward—he always worked to be on the right side of history—but it didn’t mean anything to him, it was just one more position to calibrate. He had no emotional stake in the outcome.