Tuesday, June 10, 2014 — Nasir
The woman across Nasir's desk had brought every letter she had received, including the one nobody at the housing office seemed able to find.
She unfolded it from a shopping bag, flattened the creases, and pointed to the date.
"They tell me come back Thursday. Thursday, the person ain't there. Friday, they say I missed the appointment."
Nasir moved his coffee so the paper could lie flat. The letter offered a telephone number beneath a paragraph that managed to say very little in several lines.
"You mind if I make a copy?"
"I mind if you lose it."
"Then you hold the original."
That earned him the smallest smile. He wrote down the dates she gave him, read them back, and asked permission to have someone follow up. She watched the pen rather than his face. He understood. People had smiled at her before.
Before she left, the woman asked who would call her back, and when. Nasir wrote the contact window on his copy and gave her the worker's name.
"I don't want a picture," she added.
"A picture?"
"You helping me. For the campaign. Last man had me stand by him. Still didn't get the thing fixed."
Nasir leaned back. "Nobody's taking one."
She folded the original and put it in her bag. After she left, he placed the copy on top of the campaign work.
Now he called the worker handling casework and gave the dates, the contact window, and the first question. When the man asked whether it could wait until after the event preparations, Nasir looked at the calendar.
"She's already waited. Start today."
The worker marked the contact window and promised to copy him on the reply.
He was still thinking about the letter when he looked back at the program information. Different paper, different promise. His son had sent a statement to people whose names Nasir had not yet bothered to learn. He knew the company name at the bottom; he did not know whether the person Jermaine would meet had ever spoken to anyone who had stood beneath its billboard.
He read Maine's statement again. No promise to change Brooklyn overnight. The boy wanted to learn the work and earn money he understood. Nasir found the program director's name beneath the sponsor list.
His phone rang before he could finish writing the program director's name on a separate sheet.
"I have something you should see," Bishop said.
"Something you think, or something you know?"
"An access record. The rest is what I'm checking."
He set the pen down.
*
At the Brooklyn safehouse, Melo had opened the blinds far enough to see the street. Darius was making room on the table for Bishop's laptop, moving a folder away from a damp ring left by somebody's glass.
"You eat?" Melo asked.
"Not yet."
"That wasn't a request for your schedule."
Nasir took the chair opposite Bishop. "Show me."
She turned the screen, then laid a printed page beside it. One line had been marked: the reconciliation report for the businesses they had discussed in May. It showed where the reported receipts failed to match the deposits. Nasir read the time beside the access entry.
"Yesterday?"
"Yes. Outside the reporting workflow I set up."
"Somebody took it?" Melo asked.
"Somebody accessed it," she said. "I can't tell you from this whether they copied it, printed it, or looked and closed it."
Darius leaned forward, keeping his hands off the paper. "And the credentials don't give us a person."
"I'm checking who was still authorized to use that login."
Nasir looked between the screen and the printout. The financial pattern she had brought him before graduation had required patience. This demanded the same patience while making him want to move faster.
"What should have happened?" he asked.
"The review copy goes to this group," Bishop said, pointing to the recipients. "This login opened the working report before I sent it. That version includes the gaps we're still checking."
"Whoever saw it knows where you're looking," Melo said.
"If they read it," she answered. "I can establish the access. I'm checking the rest."
"Keep the record," Nasir said. "Then find out whether that person was supposed to open it."
"Already keeping a separate record."
Melo touched the blinds with one finger. "And the photograph?"
"The Harlem entrance is the one in the picture," Bishop said. "The paint was there when we checked. Nobody reliable can tell us when it went up."
Bishop wrote date unconfirmed beside the photograph. Nasir left it there.
"The men watching Jermaine?"
"Adjusted," Melo said. "He still gets to be outside. They don't need to sit on his shoulder to do their job."
"Good."
"You can say that like you believe it."
Nasir pulled the Alpha Scholars sheet from his jacket and placed it beside the report. "Find out who actually runs this. People, partners, who makes the decisions. I'm not asking you to decide it's dirty because Atlas paid for it."
Bishop glanced at the page. "Maine applied?"
"He sent a statement."
Melo's mouth lifted. "Good for him."
"Yes," Nasir said. "It is."
"What do you want back first?" Bishop asked.
"Who's teaching, who's supervising, who signs off. If all we get is a page of sponsors, keep looking."
Darius read the small print. "Partnership doesn't always mean control. We should separate funding from administration."
"That's what I'm asking you to do."
"And Maine doesn't need to know we're checking?"
Nasir considered that. Fathers asked around without it becoming a betrayal. He could also make the opportunity feel like a test Maine had failed before being admitted.
"He knows I'm interested. We don't need to make him afraid of something because we haven't understood it yet."
Melo drummed two fingers against the window frame. "You're capable of saying that to everybody but him."
Nasir looked up.
"What?" Melo said. "You want the boy asking questions. Let him ask you one."
"I'm here asking about the program he chose."
"I know. That's good. Keep going."
There was no argument in the last part. That made Nasir sit with it longer than the jab. Darius passed the sheet back and returned them to the access record.
"We need to decide who requires this report to do their work. Otherwise tightening it up creates another place somebody has to go around us."
Bishop pulled a second sheet from the folder. "I have the normal recipients. I want to check the exceptions against the people who issued them."
"Do that first," Nasir said. "If we change access, tell the people whose work it changes. Quiet doesn't have to mean confusing."
Melo came away from the window and set a wrapped sandwich beside him.
Nasir looked at it. "Where'd that come from?"
"The future. Where you remember to eat before you start talking crazy."
Darius laughed. Bishop continued writing, but the corner of her mouth moved.
"What about the people at the Harlem site?"
Melo explained who had been spoken to, who remembered the entrance, who was guessing about a day because it had rained. One man insisted the marking was recent, then admitted he had not passed that door in weeks.
"Don't use him to date it."
"Wasn't going to."
"Anybody see somebody taking the photograph?"
"Nobody who can give us more than somebody outside with a phone. Which describes half of Harlem."
Nasir asked Melo to stop revisiting the man who had not passed the entrance in weeks. Somebody still needed to speak to the people working across the street.
Bishop kept the access record. Melo took the names of the people near the Harlem entrance. Darius asked her to send him the authorization history before anybody changed it. Nasir left each of them with work he expected back.
On his way out, he opened Carmen's contact. Lia's graduation photograph had returned to him more than once since Saturday. Four younger faces; Lia holding them toward him and waiting. He had given her too much reaction and too little answer.
He could not start that conversation in a hallway and end it because another call arrived. Later, he decided. When he could listen as well as ask.
He disliked how crowded the place for later had become.
*
The event worker caught him back at the campaign office with a clipboard tucked against her chest.
"Before you disappear again. Somebody needs the speaker times."
Nasir reached for the public program. "These?"
"I gave them those. They meant when people get there."
His hand stopped on the stack.
"Who asked?"
"The question came to me through one of the volunteers. I thought it was transportation."
"It might be." He softened his voice when he saw her grip tighten. "I'm asking what they said."
She found a folded note beneath the clipboard. There was no accusation in it, nothing anybody would have called a threat. A request to confirm the speakers' arrival order, including his. Not when the celebration began. Not when the microphone would be handed to him.
"Did you send a list?"
"No. I didn't have one."
"Keep it that way for now. Public program is fine. Anything about private arrivals, bring it to me."
"Should we cancel something?"
"No. We should find out who's coordinating what."
He copied the wording exactly and called Melo after she returned to the volunteer room.
"This is the first request I can put my hands on," he said. "Get the person who passed it along. Start there."
He remained at the office to speak to two organizers. One needed another table. The other wanted a speaker moved because a family group would arrive together. He listened without turning every mention of timing into a threat.
"Is there an updated list?" the second organizer asked. "I got three versions."
Nasir asked her to leave them. Two differed only in spelling. The third included a note about when a speaker would reach the site. Not his own time, but a private detail somebody had added to help.
"Who gave you this?"
She named a worker he knew.
"I'll check with her," he said. "Use this one for now."
He supplied the public version. After she left he clipped the others together and wrote their sources on notes. Information did not have to be stolen dramatically to travel farther than intended.
The casework worker came back with news. They had reached the housing office, found the appointment entry, and asked why it did not match the notice. Nasir called the woman himself. She asked whether she needed to return.
"Not today."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure I don't have an answer worth making you travel for yet."
He put the phone down with the satisfaction of one promise moving an inch forward, then looked at the three programs. How easy it would be to miss one private detail while moving every other promise along.
*
At home, Maine had spread a notebook and his laptop across the kitchen table. He moved a water bottle off the paper when Nasir came in.
"You doing homework after graduation?"
"Don't say it like that. I'm making a list."
"Of?"
"Things I don't know."
Nasir hung his jacket over the chair. "You got enough paper?"
Maine looked up. "You funny today."
"Today?"
His son smiled and turned the notebook a little. Questions about the program sat above questions about work, saving money, and how people decided what a business could afford. Nothing on the page pretended he already knew.
Nasir pulled out the other chair.
"That's a good list."
"You haven't read it."
"I read the part where you're asking."
Maine tapped the pen against his thumb. "Rome said I got the whole summer to get stressed."
"Rome also thinks being hungry is an emergency."
"Depends how hungry."
"You think I should go back to Leo's?" Maine asked.
"You want to?"
"I want to work. I know what I'm doing there. I also don't want to pick it just because I know what I'm doing."
"You don't have to make one choice do everything."
Maine turned the pen between his fingers. "That's easy to say when you know what you're doing."
"Who told you that?"
"You."
Nasir laughed, then stopped when he saw his son was only partly joking.
"I know some things. Other things, I ask people."
"You make it look like your idea after."
"That's a serious accusation."
"It's an observation."
Nasir asked what he would check. Maine began with memory, crossed out a line, and added asking Leo whether he could keep a short list of requests the store couldn't fill. No orders, no promise to bring anything back. Just something they could look at together.
"Ask him before you start making work for him," Nasir said.
"I put that first."
"That's the part."
"What part?"
"Letting an answer change when you find something else."
Maine watched him. "You been doing that all day?"
"Trying."
His son nodded as if that were an answer adults were allowed to give.
Nasir washed two cups while Maine gathered the papers. The window reflected his son's movement: laptop shut, water bottle collected, a pause to check that nothing remained beneath something else. Elizabeth used to complain neither of them saw an object once they put it down.
"You want the graduation pictures sent to you?"
"The ones where you're crushing me?"
"You looked happy."
"I was trying to breathe."
Nasir flicked water at him. Maine moved the notebook and laughed, protesting that he had just organized it.
For a moment the kitchen held their argument about which pictures were usable and whether Rome could be trusted to select them. Then Maine asked whether Lia had found him after the ceremony.
Nasir dried his hands slowly. "She did. Brought me a picture of her father."
"From back then?"
"People in it I hadn't seen like that in years."
His son waited, then nodded. The answer was true. Nasir knew how often he had relied on an answer being true without being enough.
"Your mother took pictures of everything," he said. "You complained about those too."
"I'd let her take them now."
Maine said it without asking the room to become sad. Nasir did not make him regret it by filling the silence.
"Me too."
His son's thumb moved over the pendant. Then he picked up the notebook and said he would ask Leo about the shelves tomorrow.
Before Maine went upstairs, Nasir told him to keep his phone on when he went out.
"I do."
"And answer it."
"That's a different request."
Nasir laughed despite himself. His own phone vibrated against the table. He glanced at Melo's name and waited until Maine had gone upstairs before answering.
"It wasn't transportation," Melo said. "Not as far as the volunteer knows. Somebody specifically asked for the order you all were coming in."
Nasir looked at the public program he had carried home. Nothing on it supplied that information.
"Find out who asked for that."
* * *