by Andrew Case
Bruder took out the knife. As he jammed it into the locked glove box, his cell phone went off. He stopped, wriggled out of the car, and answered.
“Yeah? Where? Okay.” His eyes widened. He hung up and turned back toward the car. “Let’s go.”
“We’re gonna leave the car unlocked?”
“We can call patrol along the way.”
“Along the way to where?”
“Brookdale Hospital. That was TARU. They just picked up a ping from this guy’s phone.”
CHAPTER TEN
“From the book of Matthew, the parable of the tenants.”
Eleanor Hill looked up as her father plied his trade from the pulpit. His voice was low, no louder than a man saying grace at his family dinner table. McArthur Hill had no need to shout. He would woo the arena-sized room unamplified. His authority was so secure, his audience so enraptured, that the eight hundred congregants would lean in close to hear even a whisper. Eleanor remembered the voice lessons he had sent her to as a child. Breathe with your gut. Relax your throat. So the voice carries even if it isn’t loud.
So many careers to choose from when you give up on acting: lawyer, salesman, pastor. Projecting your voice is a learned skill. Volume has nothing to do with it. In his trim, gray pinstripe suit, a royal blue stole tucked around his once-athletic shoulders, McArthur Hill would own nearly any room he was in. But this room, more than any other, was his to own. He went on, quietly captivating the packed church.
“Chapter twenty-one. Verse thirty-three. ‘There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, and put a wall around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey.’”
He paused and surveyed the crowd. To Eleanor, tucked quietly ten or twelve rows back, it seemed that he was looking just over her head, making eye contact with someone just a few rows behind. But this she knew was another actor’s skill. Look between faces, make it seem as though you are meeting sets of eyes. It is alarming to be actually met with the gaze of the man behind the podium, and comforting to think he is looking at your neighbor. So you look just between them. Her father’s soft, controlled voice went on.
“We rarely look to the beginning of the parable of the tenants. We always speak about the end. But I want us to think for a moment of the landlord. He builds the vineyard. He builds the hedges. And then he leaves on a journey. He makes demands of his tenants. But he makes no peace with them. He does not know them.” She had heard her father on this parable a dozen times. But this part was new. This blaming of the landlord, with its implicit undertone: What did he think was going to happen?
“Verse thirty-four. ‘When the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce. The vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them. But afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’ They took him, and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.’”
Hill stopped again and looked over the rapt crowd. Slaves. Beatings. Murder. Eleanor knew they had heard this all before. That too often their own weekly lives had been intruded upon by violence. Maybe not like twenty years ago. Maybe not even like ten years ago. But everyone in the congregation would know at least someone whose cousin, or whose cousin’s friend, had been beaten. Had been knifed. Or knew someone who had. You put your trust in people, and that’s when they come after you with the clubs.
“Imagine for a moment this landlord. He owns slaves. His tenants are his slaves in another way. They are not free to use the land on which they live as they see fit. He cannot even show his face to his own tenants, to collect his rents in person. And we ask, what sort of landlord will not enter his own vineyard?”
Eleanor’s mind began to drift. Her father the magician. The man who could command the stage at any rally, who could draw praise from electricians, cab drivers, and brakemen, who could win favors from mayors, commissioners, and even the governor once. The first thing anyone had asked her, her whole life, was whether she was this man’s daughter. And it was always asked with a sense of awe. A man who had always done so much good for so many. Others always seemed to envy her.
But those others who envied her never had been judged by her father, never had been held to his standards. She had lived with decades of it. The questions that carried a hint of accusation. Why did she feel she needed to see her friends on a day she had a piano lesson? Why was she too sick to go to church but not too sick to go to the park? Had she considered where the tenants in that building she was buying were going to live now? But this was new. He would not give an entire sermon about evil landlords just to point her out. Instead she thought about their call two nights before. When she had pulled into her home just after the community board meeting and returned his frantic messages.
“Something terrible has happened. Something truly terrible.”
“Dad, what is it?”
“The police are here. At the door of my church. Your doings have brought them here.”
She had sped to the church as fast as she could, knowing it would be another late night. Her father told her only that the detectives had knocked, and that he had politely but firmly told them they had no business in a holy house.
But Eleanor knew he wouldn’t have stopped there. He would have no doubt lectured them on Mapp and Terry and a host of Supreme Court cases that they probably don’t teach to patrol officers. He would have reminded them that he didn’t intend to end up like Tamir Rice or Freddy Gray or Michael Brown or Sean Bell or Ousmane Zongo or Timothy Stansbury or Khiel Coppin or Patrick Dorismond or Amadou Diallo or Anthony Baez or Eleanor Bumpurs or a hundred others who had been killed before either of these two had been born. They were just a couple of lugheads following leads, and someone had told them that McArthur Hill had something to do with Hill and Associates. But no one had told them what. And then he would have shut the door and called Eleanor to demand that she sort the whole thing out. And here she was.
When Eleanor got out of the car, the two cops were standing on the sidewalk in front of the church. One of them was a typical white Staten Island cop, the kind of guy who couldn’t get a job anywhere except on the NYPD or behind the bar at McSorley’s. The other was Hispanic, but didn’t sound quite like she was from the city, with the kind of trumped-up toughness that people who grew up soft tend to have. Maybe from California or something. Maybe they had been thinking about getting a warrant. Maybe they were waiting for a supervisor. Or maybe they had been killing time until their shift ended.
“What can I do for you, Detectives?” Eleanor had never had her father’s fear or anger toward the police. Toward any authority figures, really. She had always been able to bend people to her will. She could talk her way out of a traffic ticket and make the cop feel bad he had ever pulled her over. She had learned just enough about how to seduce people from her father’s sermons. She had learned enough about the tough, mean world of the streets around her to know that cops are just another bunch of civil servants to manipulate.
The white one spoke. He probably thought he was in charge. Eleanor could tell that neither one of them was in charge. There would be a lieutenant pulling the strings. But the white guy always would think he was in charge of something. “You’re Eleanor Hill?”
“That’s right.”
“Man died on your worksite today.”
“I’m well aware of it. I think my foreman spoke to one of you on the scene. Or both of you.”
The Hispanic one now took out a memo book and a pen. Well trained, this one—get everything down on paper. She paged through her notes from the day of interviews. “Your foreman. That’s Rex Harper?”
“Sure.”
“He didn’t have much to say.”
“
He was there, at least. I’m going to have even less to say than him. And I can’t imagine what you think my father would have to say.”
The detective flipped through a few pages. “We’re looking for the guy who may have been in the cab. Manuel Reeves.”
“I met him once. I’m sure Mr. Harper had his address. His phone number. All the paperwork he gave us when he signed on.”
The white detective was growing defensive now. It’s what happens. As soon as they realize you aren’t going to cower and defer to them, they get weak. They keep trying to justify themselves. It looked so much like a gun. He was moving his arms in a furtive manner. “We were just looking to follow up on everything we could. Every lead we had.”
“Well, no lead should have led you to my father’s church.”
The Hispanic one wasn’t done. “But Mr. Hill, he is an owner in your business, right? He has a stake of”—she turned another page to look this up—“20 percent.”
Eleanor walked up to the detective, close. Over the detective’s shoulder, the light inside the church had been shut off. Her father would be downstairs, writing, rehearsing for Sunday. Eleanor put a hand on the detective’s shoulder. When you carry yourself a certain way, when you wear the right suit and stand just so, the cops will forget, for a moment, that you are a black woman in Brooklyn and will instead realize that you hold all the power, maintain all the influence, and have all the friends. The detective didn’t try to take her hand off and didn’t try to step away. The girl was really afraid of her. Good.
“Detective, I’m not sure how much you know about corporate governance. My father gave me some money when I started my business. He invested in it. And now that business has done well and his investment has paid off. But he doesn’t look at payroll. He doesn’t know the names of our employees. He works for his congregation, and his congregation does not have a happy history with the NYPD. He may have told you that.”
“He did.”
“So why don’t you go back and type up all the interviews you did tonight? Tomorrow you can ask your supervisor to call me. Or you can have his supervisor call me. Because while you may have thought you were doing the right thing by coming out here tonight, I can assure you that you were not.”
With that, her hand came gently off the detective’s shoulder. The two of them slunk back into their cruiser and slithered away. Her father was still downstairs writing. She knew better than to disturb him while he was working, even to tell him that she had sent the detectives away. She was going to have to wait until Sunday to hear what he had to say to her in public.
The parable had continued while she thought of the visit. “Verse forty-five: ‘And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them.’”
He nodded, silent. Light from a follow-spot in the rafters shone off his nearly bald head. Eleanor could see a bit of sweat on his forehead. After almost an hour, only a single drop. He stood to his full height, his arms out to his sides, thumbs touching his index fingers, and went on.
“Of course, Jesus was telling the Pharisees that they had been poor tenants of the church. But the parable is not merely a story of evil tenants. For we are all owners as well as tenants—owners of this church, of our neighborhood, of our village. And if we are poor landlords, then evil may befall us. Otherwise, we too may be subject to vengeance.”
By now, he was looking right at Eleanor. He was making eye contact, giving her that sinister feeling that you have been singled out in the crowd. She understood that he was speaking about her, and she had to break away.
Ten minutes later the crowd filtered out of the church to an uplifting hymn, and Eleanor quickly escaped. There were friends, family, well-wishers to be avoided. She didn’t feel like talking much to anyone right now. Which is why she was so upset when a heavyset white man in a sport coat that didn’t match his pants looked up at her just as she started to open her car door.
“Eleanor Hill?”
This was not a cop you could talk your way around. Eleanor knew that in some circumstances, the less you said the better. The man gestured to a blue sunburst badge on his waist.
“I’m Detective Ralph Mulino. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like you to come with me.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Leonard stood in front of the house, keys jingling in his pocket and brochures tucked under his arm. The place must have been nice once. Brick. Four stories. It was the third of four adjoining townhouses, all of them now sagging from age and wear. Next door stood a twelve-story tower, sleek balconies speckling its glass hide with cement. Down toward the Underhill side, there was another one. Behind Leonard, toward the arena, the developments had metastasized to twenty, thirty, forty stories.
Leonard opened the gate and walked toward the ground floor door. Some enterprising architect would surely build a stoop and keep the lower entrance for an apartment. Leonard cranked open the heavy steel gate and the double-bolted door underneath. Those would go too. They were signals of an earlier, more fearful time. Some new owner would have much more to steal than whoever lived there now, but would take away the protection, convinced that Brooklyn had been tamed.
Inside, it was worse. Stained and peeling carpet in the hallway. A door to the right, halfway off its hinges. The same thick green carpet, speckled dark along the whole front wall. Water had leaked through the window cracks and festered into mold in the carpet. In the back, the plastic tiles slipped out from under Leonard’s feet in the kitchen. The stove had been yanked out from the wall, the copper piping salvaged for scrap.
None of it mattered. With these houses, being uninhabitable was almost a selling point. If there was nothing worth saving, it spurred buyers into full renovation. They would polish a grand staircase, install integrated lighting, plaster over any remnants of historic details, and make the interior feel as much as possible like the condos next door.
Leonard set down the glossy pamphlets that Eleanor had given him on the busted stove. There wasn’t a table. He marveled at the price atop them: two-point-three million. And that’s before the demolition, the renovation, the permits, the time sitting on the mortgage. Leonard turned and walked up the stairs to inspect the other three apartments.
The next two units were pretty much as he expected. Torn carpet, busted doors, kitchen cabinets that looked as though they would fall off if you tried to open them. He turned up the stairs toward the top-floor apartment. Whoever bought the place would still have a hike to get up to the fourth floor, no matter how the renovation went. Putting in an elevator was out of the question even for the newest Brooklyn gentry.
The crumbling stairs topped out at a cheap plywood door. It was locked. The key would be somewhere in the collection that Eleanor had given him. He was fumbling with the key chain when he heard a voice behind the door.
“What is it?” A woman’s voice. Afraid.
Eleanor had said there was a tenant in place. But she didn’t say anyone would be there during the showing.
“Uh. I’m Leonard Mitchell. I’m from Hill and Associates.”
“We don’t want anything. Go away.”
Leonard had found the key. Better to try to talk your way in.
“Ma’am, I’m not selling anything. We own the building. We are having people by today to look at it.”
“Go away.”
Leonard slipped the key into the door. “Ma’am, I’m going to come in to talk to you.”
“I’m calling the landlord. I’m calling the police. You can’t come breaking into people’s homes.”
The lock turned and the door opened. Leonard stepped in. “Ma’am. I am with the landlord. We are selling the building. People are coming to look at the building. They are coming right now.”
He had been speaking as he opened the door and hadn’t had a moment to look around. When he finished, he saw the woman. Younger than he was, but not by as much as he would have thought. Black, pretty, a narrow face and distrustful eyes. She was dr
essed in a long skirt and a short-sleeve shirt. Glasses. The door had opened directly to the kitchen. She was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee. If someone had burst into Leonard’s apartment while he was shouting at them, he would have looked much more surprised than this woman. There was an envelope on the table in front of her.
“Well.” She took a sip of her coffee.
The apartment looked nothing like the ones below. The kitchen tiles were in place. The shelves were neat. Leonard looked through the doorway on his right to see the living room. The carpet was clean, and a sofa and coffee table sat nestled in place. A stack of magazines fanned out along the coffee table. He turned back to the woman, at the kitchen table that was squeezed between the refrigerator and the door. On the refrigerator, bright magnet letters were jumbled and crisscrossed, never quite making a word.
“I’m Leonard Mitchell.”
“And I’m you-don’t-even-know-my-name.” She pulled a letter out of the envelope. “This came one week ago. The last apartment cleared out eight months ago. We are the only tenants left. And one week ago I get a letter saying that the place is going to be sold so can I please be out of my apartment from one until three on Sunday.”
She took a sip of coffee. She crumpled up the letter. She threw it at Leonard and it fell at his feet.
“Ma’am. I’m just here to show the building.”
“Of course you are. Because the people who are in charge would never actually show their faces to me. They will send you and throw up their arms and say that there is nothing to be done. Well, there is something to be done.”
She sighed and called, sweetly, to the living room. “Sammy!” Leonard stood still, watching her gaze and waiting. A boy, maybe nine, maybe ten, hair cut nearly to his scalp and wearing a Lionel Messi jersey, skipped into the kitchen. He sat gleefully on his mother’s lap, a wide toothy smile.
