In This Rain (3 page)

“I don’t think what Walter Glybenhall’s thinking is the problem.” Don pocketed his lighter and picked up the ashtray.

“Then he’s not thinking. Walter wants to prove Three Star’s a community-friendly developer, this is a hell of a way to go about it.”

“Unless it’s not his fault. Unless someone’s doing these things to Three Star on purpose.”

“Oh, Christ, Don, you too? Walter tried to sell me that. Buildings doesn’t see it and DOI doesn’t see it. Now NYPD’s on it and they don’t see it either.” Charlie took off his jacket. “And you know I’ve got a meeting with Ford Corrington tomorrow that he set up two weeks ago? Christ, what timing. I think you’d better be here.”

“I was planning on it.”

“But no one else. You, me, them. Not Real Property, not Planning. We’ll say it’s too early for that. We’ll say I wanted a chance to hear them out without political distractions.”

“You that sure it’s about Block A?”

“I don’t know what it’s about. I can’t turn those people down, so what the hell’s the difference what it’s about?”

“You didn’t ask?”

“They’d think I was deciding to see them or not based on the agenda.”

“Because maybe Serita should be there.”

Charlie smoothed his tie. “No. It’s just a meeting. Might not be a race issue.”

“It always is with Corrington.”

“Well, yeah. But two deputy mayors, suddenly it’s a big deal. And if I get Serita here without a specific agenda, it looks like I think I need a translator just to talk to them.”

“Whatever it is, especially if it’s Block A, they’ll bring up Mott Haven and Three Star. White developers in minority neighborhoods. The city not doing enough to protect families. Promises made after Dolan Construction three years ago, now this.”

“Stop, I get it.”

“They might hold a press conference after the meeting, too. Edgar Westermann didn’t let Corrington speak at his, yesterday.”

“I was surprised Edgar let Ford in the room. You think they have a truce?”

“Maybe just temporary, for the cameras, for a united front on Mott Haven.”

“To make up for Dolan Construction?”

“When Westermann was with you and Corrington couldn’t stand it?”

“You blame him? I was suspicious of myself when I found out Edgar agreed with me. Do we get points for bringing them together now? ‘Incompetence in City Administration Helps Black Leaders Bury the Hatchet’?”

Don blew out smoke, said nothing.

“I didn’t think so,” said Charlie. “Well, a press conference is Corrington’s constitutional right. But he won’t do it if we don’t give him anything to say.”

“How are you going to arrange that?”

“I’m going to pray to God for a miracle.”

“That works for you?”

“God helps those who help themselves. I’m praying that whatever Ford Corrington wants, I can give him. Shit, Don, if they’re coming to demand a piece of the Block A pie, what’s the big deal? We’ll make sure they get space, they’ll do God’s work in it, everyone’ll be happy.”

“Except Walter Glybenhall.”

“Sounds like poetic justice to me, for Walter to have Corrington under his nose. Anyway, it’s a small enough price for him to pay.” The mayor looked at his watch. “But that’s tomorrow. Right now, it’s showtime. Go on in, give me a minute.”

“Want me to go from the hall, so you can make an entrance from here?”

“Good idea. Don?”

“What?”

The mayor pointed to Don’s cigarette. Don looked sadly at the half-unsmoked butt, took a long pull, and mashed it out.

Charlie rolled up his sleeves, gave Don time to make it to the conference room, greet the others, mix up his coffee, and sit. He timed another two minutes for small talk. Then he took a breath and yanked open his private connecting door.

Harlem: Frederick Douglass Boulevard

A siren started far off, swelled, and then cut out before Ford Corrington rounded the corner. But that didn’t mean silence. Along this boulevard, street noises never stopped: airbrakes on the buses, thump of car stereos, rumbling subway. Kids shouting, laughing. And always the sirens: ambulance, police. Today, also, church bells collecting the flocks.

Ford was on his way to Tree of Life A.M.E., first time this month. He didn’t always make it to church on Sunday. Sometimes he was needed at a retreat; in a conference; or on a park bench with some kid. Or else at a benefit breakfast, nibbling on croissants with silk-suited funders. Ford saw all that as the Lord’s business. If it was important to Him for Ford to be in church, He’d arrange for it.

The wind blew hard this bright morning, snapping awnings and kicking up grit. It carried the hot-griddle smell of pork patties from Junior K’s, on this block thirty years— long before Ford came to Harlem— and the scent of lattes from C’AFrica, open six weeks ago with its scrollwork sidewalk tables. Next to the coffeehouse, graceful hats of straw, silk, and feathers perched in the window of Morris John’s shop. The store was closed but Ford would be seeing Morris— and some of his creations— in church.

Through the sharp sunlight the five-year-old Bowen twins ran toward him giggling, Avery chasing Averne. “You stop at the corner!” Ford called as they dashed past. The twins turned at the boom of his voice, laughed, and waved. Gloria Bowen, their grandmother, followed after them.

“Morning, Mr. Corrington.”

“Miz Bowen. How’s the hip today?”

She smiled ruefully. “Getting old quicker than the rest of me.”

“Then it must still be younger than springtime.”

“Mr. Corrington! You need to be ashamed, lying on the Lord’s day.”

“I never lie. Avery! Take hold of Averne’s hand and wait for your grandma.”

The boy recoiled as though his sister’s hand were covered in slime, but then he grabbed it and the two of them started swinging their arms to the skies.

“Look how he listen to you!” Gloria Bowen said. “That boy don’t never mind me.”

“You don’t scare him enough.”

She gave him a sharp sideways look. “You ain’t never scared a child in your life.”

“That’s the truth.” Ford sighed, as though acknowledging a failing. “But I keep trying.” He grinned, pressed her hand, and walked on.

At 134th he turned off the avenue and felt his grin fade. An ambulance— must be the siren he’d heard— was pulled half on the sidewalk. A double-parked police car squeezed traffic into a single inching lane. Behind yellow tape strung from light pole to tree to front stoop railing, a crowd milled uneasily. On the sidewalk a blanket covered an unmistakable form.

“Asher,” Ford said to a man he knew. “What happened here?”

Asher Owen turned, his dreadlocks swaying. “Ford, mon.” He shook Ford’s hand. “Sad business surely.” He gestured to the blanket. “This Thaddeus Tilden.”

“T.D.?” A knot tensed in Ford’s stomach.

“He fall from th’ roof, or out window. Jump, some say.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“He a Garden Project kid?”

“Art classes, when he was little,” Ford nodded. “And woodshop. He liked to build things.” Ford remembered a foot-high, crooked skyscraper, blue squares for windows painted on the sides. “But he stopped coming around years ago. Had trouble in school, finally dropped out. His mother’s been real worried for him.”

“Knew him, too,” Asher said. “Don’t seem like jumpin’ his style. Hard face and fearsomeness be more like.”

Asher, who as far as Ford knew feared no one and so had no reason to act fearsome, spoke sadly.

“T.D. wanted to be a player,” Ford said. “That’s how he saw himself. A superstar of the street.”

“He was that?”

“No, and never would have been. Not cold enough.”

A police photographer ducked under the tape, spoke to the detective in charge, then pulled back the blanket. T. D. Tilden finally got his close-ups.

In the sunshine, lying motionless, the boy looked young and small. He’d never been handsome, T.D., but he’d had a light in his face. Ford remembered him at seven, at eight, waving his hands around to explain things. Even with his reading problem, they’d thought, for a while, they’d be able to reach him. But he’d slipped away. That was so many of them. So many slipped away. Ford closed his eyes and prayed: Lord, here’s another child you’ve called. Show him more love when he gets home than we were able to do while we had him with us here.

He opened his eyes when he heard a stuttering: running footsteps in shoes not meant for speed. A thin form in springtime green pushed into the crowd, struggled to get past a policeman’s navy blue. Ford slipped around Asher. “She’s the mother. Let her through,” he told the cop, though he had no authority here. The cop looked to the lead detective, a stocky black man, who saw Ford and nodded. His arm protectively around Sarah Andersen’s shoulder, Ford lifted the tape and brought the boy’s mother to where T.D.’s body lay. Sarah whimpered and sank to her knees, reaching for T.D.’s hand. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the photographer said. “I have to ask you not to touch anything.”

“It’s my baby.” Sarah spoke in a tiny voice, looking up at the man as though an explanation would change his mind.

“Tom. A minute?” Ford, crouching beside Sarah, spoke to the detective, who motioned the photographer away. Sarah folded her son’s hand in her own thin fingers. Ford kept his arm around her, feeling the tightening, waiting. Finally, as though a string were cut, she slumped against him and started to sob. He gave her a few minutes, then pulled her gently to her feet. She didn’t resist. To the detective, he whispered, “Thanks.”

The crowd rearranged itself to let them pass. A neighbor wordlessly held out Sarah’s straw hat, lost in her frantic dash from church to home, found and returned by someone who could give her nothing else. Ford started with Sarah up her building’s stoop. They’d reached the top when he was stopped by the slap of more hurrying footsteps, whose urgency rang with a different purpose. He looked over his shoulder, to see a portly Sunday-suited man quick-walking up the block.

To the neighbor with Sarah’s hat, Ford said, “See her upstairs, will you?” The woman nodded quickly, glad of a task to do, and steered Sarah inside. Ford took the stoop steps fast, reached the sidewalk as Edgar Westermann came to a halt at the crime-scene tape.

Heart’s Content

Joe had first seen this place in early March, three weeks and three days after he’d gotten out (counting the days still a habit with him then). The Realtor, praising expansively and stepping gingerly, led him along the overgrown path, past the mailbox where an amateurishly carved plank reading “Heart’s Content” dangled from a single nail, to the warped front door. “Furnished, ready to go, coat of paint and it’s a gem

” The front yard was a narrow, exhausted jangle; and in the musty interior everything sagged. But once on the back porch, Joe had blocked out the Realtor’s babbling (a valuable skill to an investigator, an invaluable one to a convict). His eyes wandered the wide, hidden yard, encircled by a rocky wooded ridge on two sides, sloping on the third to a creek he could hear but not see. He’d paid attention to the angle of the sun, smelled the damp earth, felt the direction of the breeze. He’d signed the lease that afternoon.

The relieved Realtor asked nothing beyond a deposit and the first month’s rent; not demanding, as he might have, character references or previous address. Joe was handed the keys five days later, after his check cleared. There was no problem with that. Ellie had been more than fair, splitting their joint bank account, giving him what was left from the sale of the house after she’d bought the condo: a new home in a different town in a different state, where as long as Janet’s answer to “Where’s your dad?” was a shrug and “They’re divorced,” no child would know enough to shriek, “He’s in jail!” and no adult would smile with superior sympathy.

After his conviction, their bank accounts had been frozen as New York State, in its outrage, tried to seize his ill-gotten gains. But their audit found none. The charges against him had been manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and criminal facilitation, with corruption suggested by the prosecution as an explanation but never proved.

And never true. Though sometimes Joe found himself wishing it had been. If venality and greed had led him to disaster, he would have understood. The path he’d followed was much more bewildering.

Waiting for the check to clear, he’d driven each day to the cabin in his rattling pickup. With a thermos of coffee he sat on the back porch in the thin light of waning winter. Trespassing; but who would notice him? The owner lived many states away, and the Realtor was clearly embarrassed to be connected with this disregarded place. The neighbors were kept from sight of the rear yard by the height of the ridge and the slope to the stream.

Sitting, he’d studied how the sun slid over the encircling trees, how the trees’ black shadows traveled across the yard, how the broad, uncared-for yard swelled in some places and fell in others. He’d noted where rocks broke the earth, where water ponded, where soil looked good.

On the fifth day, after the Realtor’s enthusiastic call (“Green light!”), he’d driven into town. He’d loaded the truck bed with shrubs and perennials— lilac, peony, privet, and calendula— and bulbs you could count on: allium, iris. In the usual course of things— a course that ran through his former life, though not through this one— he’d have waited out the first round of seasons, to understand the shape and substance of the land, of whatever garden was already in it. Watching as branches leafed and blossoms inched forth, he’d have incorporated the surprises, delights, and disappointments he’d inherited into the work he was planning. That’s how he’d done it with the house he and Ellie bought when Janet was born, and he’d been rewarded with ragged masses of tulips in April, and a fragrant white wisteria that perfumed the air by the kitchen window all summer.

But he couldn’t wait now. For two and a half years, he’d done nothing but wait.

It occurred to him as he sweated in the chill wind, digging and covering, staking and tamping, that he’d chosen plants that needed time. Some wouldn’t bloom this year; it was too late. Some would, but tentatively, for practice. It would be next year, even the year after, before most of what he’d put in would feel comfortable enough to settle and unfurl. And some time after that until the colors, shapes, and scents would prove, or change, the pictures he’d woven in his mind of what this place could be.