Saturday, May 24, 2014
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
At 5:52 in the morning, Nasir's phone lit the kitchen counter blue.
He had been sitting there long enough for the coffee to lose its steam. Beyond the window over the sink, the back of the neighboring building was still gray, its fire escapes empty, a towel hanging stiff over the rail of the second-floor landing. The refrigerator hummed behind him. Beside his elbow sat a box of campaign cards with his own face printed above a promise about Brooklyn, every copy showing the same rested man in the same clean shirt.
The message came from a contact saved under one letter.
W: All quiet overnight. Down at the corner now.
Nasir read it, then looked toward the front of the house. From here he couldn't see the street, which was fine. He knew what the car looked like. He knew how noticeable two men became when they sat beneath a man's campaign sign long enough for his son to start watching them.
Last night he had sent them away from the sign. Apparently they had understood him this time.
He typed Stay there, waited for the message to send, and deleted the conversation. Upstairs, the house remained quiet. Maine had come in late enough to make Nasir listen for the lock, then moved around his room for a while before the floorboards stopped answering him. Nineteen years old, graduating in two weeks, still leaving a light on somewhere whenever he went to bed.
Nasir turned the phone facedown. A few weeks ago there had been a call with nothing on the other end but breathing. Then another. He might have dismissed both if somebody hadn't left a photograph of his front steps beneath his windshield wiper outside the campaign office. The picture had been taken close enough to show the loose mortar he kept meaning to repair.
He hadn't brought it home.
Melo had found the men in the car. Nasir had agreed to them because there were hours when neither of them could be here, and Maine had a life that shouldn't have to shrink around the things his father couldn't tell him.
He got up, rinsed his cup, and left it beside the sink. At the foot of the stairs he paused with his hand on the rail. There was no sound from above. He stayed another moment anyway, then took his keys from the bowl and eased the front door closed.
*
Carlos was wrestling a stack of newspapers onto the counter when Nasir came through the door. The bell shook overhead, and somewhere in the back a deliveryman was arguing with a hand truck that had caught on the threshold.
"Look who remembers where I work."
"I was here Thursday."
"You say that like Thursday was yesterday." Carlos glanced at the clock above the refrigerator. "You want the usual?"
"Please."
The store smelled of coffee and mop water, with something sweet warming near the grill. Nasir stepped aside to let a woman in hospital scrubs reach the register. Carlos rang her up, asked after her mother, and added a banana to the bag without putting it on the receipt. She protested until he waved her toward the door.
When Nasir reached for his wallet, Carlos made the same motion at him.
"Don't start."
"One day you're going to let me pay for a cup of coffee."
"One day you're going to stop asking." He pressed a lid onto the cup. "You helped my nephew. I remember."
"That was years ago."
"My memory works."
"How's Maine?"
"Good. Getting ready."
"Sovereign, right?"
Nasir nodded.
"That boy came in here dressed for a job interview last month. Had the hair tied up and everything. Shook my hand like I was somebody he needed to impress."
"He had a meeting."
"I could tell. Asked me how business was doing. Waited for the answer, too." Carlos leaned against the register. "Most kids ask that while they're looking at their phone."
Nasir smiled into the lid of his coffee. He could picture Maine doing it: the careful handshake, the effort to sound comfortable in clothes he was still learning how to wear. The boy had begun asking different questions lately. What a lease actually covered. Why one business stayed open when another on the same block couldn't. Nasir liked answering until he found himself deciding which parts of the answer belonged to him.
"He's trying to learn."
"That's the part you're supposed to enjoy."
"I am."
Carlos held his eyes a moment, then reached for the newspapers again.
"All right, Nas."
Nasir left before the man could ask him anything else. Through the glass, Carlos was already serving the next customer. Nasir stood a moment with the coffee in his hand, then crossed to his car.
*
Three blocks later, a red light stopped him beside the construction fence.
The grocery had occupied that corner for years. Narrow aisles, cardboard taped beneath the leaking refrigerator, a cat that slept where it pleased. The owner's wife used to set aside bruised fruit for people she knew would take it without asking questions. Nasir remembered the bell on that door, too.
Now a rendering stretched across the plywood: glass balconies above a landscaped entrance, a woman in white trousers walking a small dog, two people drinking coffee beneath a tree that hadn't been planted yet. LUXURY RESIDENCES COMING SOON ran across the top. Atlas's name sat in the lower corner.
He looked past the fence to the exposed earth. The building beside the lot still had a child's bicycle chained to its stoop. He thought of the rent questions already reaching his campaign office. The tree in the picture wasn't going to answer them.
His phone rang through the car speakers.
"Morning," Melo said.
"You already there?"
"Waiting on you."
"Then you got there early."
"You got coffee?"
Nasir glanced at the cup in the holder. "For me."
"Selfish."
"There's a pot upstairs."
"That ain't coffee. That's punishment."
The light changed. Nasir let the car ahead pull clear, then followed it through the intersection.
"I'll be there."
Melo hung up. In the rearview mirror, the woman and her dog slid behind a parked truck and disappeared.
*
The Brooklyn safehouse stood above a tire shop in Bed-Stuy, its downstairs gate shut, its upstairs windows filmed against the street. A faded sign remained over the storefront, promising services nobody had seen performed there in years. Nasir parked across from it with the nose of the car pointed toward the intersection.
Melo was beneath the awning, smoking in a gray hoodie. He lowered the cigarette when Nasir got out.
"You quit."
"I remember."
"You need help remembering the rest?"
"You need help minding your business?"
They clasped hands and pulled each other close, shoulders meeting. Melo smelled of smoke and the laundry detergent he always used. When they separated, his eyes moved past Nasir to the intersection, then returned to him.
"You sleep?"
"Some."
Melo gave him a look that said he knew what some meant. He dropped the cigarette, ground it beneath his boot, and unlocked the door.
Inside, rubber and old dust lingered in the stairwell. Nasir climbed ahead of him, coffee in one hand, the other brushing the rail. He had walked into enough rooms with Melo behind him to stop thinking about the sound of the man's steps. Army and Marines had given them different ways of doing things; the years since had taught them where those ways met.
He had built the Crown out of businesses, favors, information, and protection. He could still name the buildings where they had restored heat after the complaints went nowhere, and the families who had needed somebody beside them. Now its storefronts washed money, its favors became obligations, and the political doors it opened were harder to close. There were people alive because the Crown existed, and people who weren't. He knew names on both lists.
At the top landing, Melo reached around him to open the second door.
"After you, Your Highness."
"You finished?"
"Just getting started."
Nasir entered with the man's laugh behind him.
*
Bishop had arranged three folders beside her laptop, each aligned with the edge of the long table. Her hair was pulled back, her sleeves rolled above her wrists. The room's overhead light made the legal pad beside her look almost white, though the pages were yellow and crowded with handwriting.
Darius Knox rose from the far end as Nasir came in.
"Nas."
"Counselor."
They shook hands. Darius wore a charcoal jacket without a tie, his phone tucked away before he sat again. Nasir took the chair across from Bishop; Melo settled into the one facing the door.
"Tell me we have something," Nasir said.
"We have a pattern." Bishop slid the first folder toward him. "What it means is still being worked out."
Inside were bank records and copied statements, a few lines marked in blue. Nasir pulled the pages clear of the folder so Darius could see them.
"Three restaurants," Bishop said. "Two property companies. One construction firm. They're operating businesses. Payroll, customers, revenue. The problem isn't that they don't exist."
"It's what they're reporting," Darius said, tracing a column with one finger.
"What they're reporting against what moves through them. And when." She laid a second page beside the first. "These gaps fall ahead of the review windows. Too regularly."
Melo leaned forward. "Somebody knows when to clean up."
"Somebody knows when people look."
Darius drew the page closer. "Which of these can you substantiate without the other records?"
"Those two."
"Keep them separate, then. If we need to act on it, I want a trail we can use."
Nasir watched Bishop mark her pad. Darius had always been good at bringing a room back to what it could actually prove. At Knox, Chancellor & Reyes, that made him an attorney clients asked for by name. Here it made him the Architect, the man who understood where a structure would hold and where pressure would bring it down.
"So we're looking inside," Melo said.
"We're looking at access," Bishop answered. "That isn't always the same thing. Somebody employed there. Somebody close to somebody employed there. I don't know yet."
"Then we don't narrow it yet," Nasir said.
Bishop nodded and collected the first set of pages. "The summit stays at the shuttered church in Harlem. Neutral ground."
"Prophets actually coming?" Melo asked.
"They've agreed to."
He sat back. "We'll see."
Nasir tapped the table once. "Keep it quiet until everybody's in the room."
She made another note, then opened the last folder. An Atlas brochure lay inside it, printed on heavy paper, the kind that resisted staying flat. Nasir held down one corner while Bishop turned to a page of students standing outside a university building.
"Their development work isn't the only expansion," she said. "Community programs. Education. This is the Alpha Scholars Initiative."
Melo looked over Nasir's shoulder. "What they offering?"
"Scholarships. Mentorships. Paid internships. A leadership pipeline."
He turned to the university partners. Three names down, he stopped.
Sovereign State University.
Melo saw where his finger rested.
"That's Maine's school."
"I know."
Nasir read the paragraph beside it twice. The partnership was expanding for the fall. New placements, new funding, access to professionals who could help students find their way into careers. He thought of Maine shaking Carlos's hand in a blazer. Of the questions at the kitchen table and the way the boy listened when an answer interested him.
"Does this connect to the money?" he asked.
"I haven't established that," Bishop said.
"Then establish what you can." He released the corner of the brochure. It lifted a little. "I want to understand who's running it."
Darius checked his watch. "I have to get back to the office. Send me the two clean trails first, then whatever else you can support."
"You'll have them," Bishop said.
He stood and rested a hand briefly on Nasir's shoulder.
"Tell Maine congratulations. Sovereign's lucky to have him."
"I will."
Darius left, closing the door without disturbing the room. Bishop gathered the bank records and took her laptop into the adjoining office. Nasir remained with the brochure open beneath his hand.
"You think the school is a problem?" Melo asked.
"I think I need to know more."
"About the school or about Atlas?"
Nasir looked up.
"About where my son is going."
*
For a while, they listened to Bishop moving papers in the other room. A truck passed below the window, making the glass tremble in its frame. Nasir closed the folder and set his coffee farther from it.
"You should've let me tell him about the car," Melo said.
Nasir knew which car he meant.
"He doesn't need to know about the car."
"He saw it."
"He saw a car."
"He saw you go outside in your slippers to talk to the people in it." Melo leaned forward, his forearms on the table. "You think he don't put things together?"
"I think he has enough to worry about."
"He ain't twelve."
"He's nineteen. I know how old my son is."
"Then give him something he can use when he's trying to understand what he saw."
Nasir moved the folder a few inches, squaring it with the table. He hadn't meant to do that. Bishop's habits were catching.
"I told you to prepare him."
"And I have."
"Keep it light. Books. Discipline. How to pay attention when he walks into a room. Things he can use without wondering why he needs them."
Melo rubbed his jaw. "At some point he's going to wonder."
"Let him wonder about something else for a while."
"Nas."
"He's graduating. He got himself into school. He's taking meetings I didn't arrange for him." Nasir met his eyes. "I'm not putting this on his back because somebody decided to take a picture of my house."
Melo looked toward the closed door, then back. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.
"Those people in the car were there for him. You told me that."
"That's different."
"To you."
Nasir sat back. Beyond the filmed window, three boys were arguing over a basketball, their voices rising above the truck's fading engine. One kept insisting he hadn't touched the other boy. Nasir could only make out their shapes, but the tone was familiar enough to supply the rest.
"I made a promise," he said.
Melo's face settled. He knew which promise. Nasir didn't have to give it a name.
"I know."
"I'm still keeping it."
"I'm not asking you to stop." Melo waited until Nasir looked at him again. "But keeping a promise don't mean keeping him small."
Across from him, Melo stayed where he was. For once, neither of them tried to win the silence.
*
Bishop opened the door with her phone in her hand.
"This just came in."
She set it between them. The photograph showed a brick wall and a steel side entrance, part of a security light cut off at the top. Across the brick beside the door, somebody had painted three words in broad letters.
CHANGE IS COMING.
Nasir drew the phone closer. He knew the door. The photograph had been taken from an angle that left very little of the street in view, but he recognized the uneven step beneath it and the patch of brick above the frame.
Melo was already standing.
"Harlem."
"Sent from a burner," Bishop said. "No message with it."
Nasir enlarged the image. The paint looked fresh. That might mean it was, or it might mean somebody knew how to take a photograph. He couldn't tell when it had been shot.
"Who else has seen this?"
"You two."
"Keep it that way for now. Tell our people to stay clear of that entrance until we've checked it."
Melo braced one hand on the table. "We need somebody over there."
"We need to know what we're walking into first."
"They know where it is, Nas."
"I can see that."
Bishop took the phone back when he offered it. "I'll check what I can."
"Quietly," Nasir said. "Find out when it went up. Don't give whoever sent it a show."
Melo stared at the screen another moment before taking his hand off the table. Nasir understood the impatience. He felt it himself, along with a less useful urge to go home and count the windows, check the back gate, call Maine before the boy had any reason to be awake.
He stood and collected his keys.
Outside, the morning had grown warm. Someone was frying onions in a nearby apartment, and the boys with the basketball had moved down the block. Melo walked him across the street, stopping at the driver's door.
"You going home?"
"In a bit."
"You got a kid graduating. Don't forget to show up for the good part."
"I know."
"Lia, too." Melo glanced down the street. "Ty would've been a problem in that audience."
Nasir smiled before he could help it. He remembered Tylil standing at a game with both hands around his mouth, shouting advice nobody on the court had asked for. Then he remembered the seat beside him at the championship, Carmen sitting on the other side of it, her hands folded over her bag.
"He would've," Nasir said.
Melo touched the roof of the car once, a small goodbye. Nasir got in and shut the door. Before he pulled away, he watched his friend cross back toward the safehouse, checking the street as he went.
*
He drove to Brooklyn Bridge Park instead.
Near the water, the air moved more freely. A runner passed with a shirt tucked into his waistband; farther along, a woman bent to untangle a dog's leash from the leg of a bench. Across the river, the buildings caught the light in separate flashes, windows brightening as Nasir walked past them.
He found an empty bench and sat with his phone in his hand. Bishop had forwarded the photograph. He opened it again, looked at the entrance, then turned the screen off.
Maine would be waking soon. He might call Rome before he came downstairs. There would be something in the refrigerator he would eat standing up, and something Nasir had asked him to do that he would remember only when he saw his father's name on the phone.
Nasir could call him now and ask about his plans. He could keep the conversation ordinary. He pictured himself trying, then slipping a warning into it, listening too closely to every answer until Maine asked what was wrong.
He rested the phone on his knee. The river struck the pilings below with a steady, hollow sound.
The phone vibrated.
An unknown number. One message.
You're looking in the wrong place.
* * *