Sunday, June 15, 2014
Lia had stopped trying to force the journal to give her answers.
That was the problem with questions. Once you had enough of them, every new piece of information looked like it belonged somewhere.
She sat at her desk with the notebook open beside her laptop, one hand resting against her cheek.
Tylil's handwriting filled the page.
Questions before conclusions.
She read it again.
Then again.
Her eyes drifted down to the notes she'd copied into her phone.
311 DeKalb Avenue.
The address still bothered her, but not because there was anything obviously wrong with the building. From what she could find, it was residential. Old Brooklyn architecture, apartments, a neighborhood that had changed around it.
That was what caught her attention.
The change.
Lia opened another tab and pulled up photographs of DeKalb from different years.
Old storefronts.
Brownstones.
Construction scaffolding.
New facades.
Luxury listings.
Same streets. Different money.
She leaned back.
Her father had spent years asking questions about paperwork, properties and people who seemed to keep appearing in places they shouldn't have.
Maybe he wasn't chasing criminals.
Maybe he'd been chasing systems.
Her phone buzzed.
Deion.
you awake?
Lia smiled despite herself.
obviously
Three dots appeared.
breakfast?
depends
on?
whether you're paying
damn 😂
She laughed quietly.
A minute later, she called him.
"What's good?" Deion answered.
"You."
"That's a dangerous answer."
"Don't get excited."
"Too late."
She smiled and looked back at the laptop.
They talked for a few minutes about nothing important. Breakfast. The weather. What they were doing later. Deion complained about his father's construction schedule changing again.
Then Lia let the conversation drift where she wanted it.
"Hey."
"What's up?"
"You remember yesterday when we were talking about DeKalb?"
"Yeah."
"You said your dad worked around there before, right?"
"Around there. Probably."
"Probably?"
"Lia, my pops has worked all over Brooklyn."
"What kind of work?"
"Whatever the contract calls for. Renovations. Demolition. Rehab. Depends."
"Does he work directly for property owners?"
"Sometimes. Developers. Contractors. Companies."
She looked at the journal.
"Like Atlas?"
The silence lasted barely a second.
But Lia noticed it.
"Yeah," Deion said. "Atlas too."
"I've seen that name before."
Another pause.
"Where?"
She turned her chair slightly toward the window.
"Somewhere."
Deion didn't push.
That almost made her more uncomfortable.
"You know anything about the company?" she asked.
"My father does."
"That wasn't my question."
He laughed.
"Then no."
Lia smiled.
"Fair."
They moved on.
But something about the conversation stayed with Deion after they hung up.
Curtis Thompkins was sitting at the kitchen table when Deion came downstairs.
A cup of black coffee sat beside a stack of paperwork.
Curtis didn't look up.
"What she ask?"
Deion stopped.
"You heard that?"
"You weren't exactly whispering."
Deion pulled out a chair.
"Just about DeKalb."
Curtis finally looked at him.
"What about it?"
"She asked if you ever worked around there."
"And?"
"And I told her you work all over Brooklyn."
Curtis nodded.
"Good."
Deion studied him.
"You know something about the place?"
Curtis took a sip of coffee.
"It's a building."
"That all?"
"That's all you need to know."
Deion leaned back.
"She asked about Atlas too."
That got Curtis's attention.
Not much.
Just enough.
"What did you tell her?"
"That you've done work for them."
"That's true."
"She knows the name."
"Did she say why?"
"No."
Curtis nodded slowly.
He wasn't worried.
Not yet.
He had spent too many years around people who confused curiosity with knowledge.
"Your girl asks a lot of questions," he said.
Deion smiled.
"That's Lia."
Curtis looked back down at the paperwork.
"If she asks again, answer what you know."
"And if I don't know?"
Curtis turned a page.
"Then find out."
Deion frowned.
"Why?"
Curtis finally looked at him.
"Because if somebody's asking you a question twice, there's usually a reason they didn't like the first answer."
Deion sat quietly.
Curtis returned to his paperwork as though the conversation had ended.
For him, it had.
Lia spent another hour researching Atlas.
Nothing immediately stood out.
That was almost the problem.
Atlas looked legitimate.
Development.
Construction.
Housing.
Community projects.
Investment.
The kind of company people complained about when a neighborhood changed and praised when a new building brought jobs.
She found photographs of executives standing beside politicians, ribbon cuttings, new developments and renovated properties.
Nothing screamed corruption.
Nothing screamed danger.
She opened Tylil's journal again.
Then she noticed it.
A name.
Not Atlas itself.
A smaller company listed beneath one of her father's notes.
She searched it.
The company had once been connected to a property project.
That project had an Atlas connection.
Lia sat still.
She wrote the name down.
Then under it:
311 DeKalb.
She stared at the two lines.
It wasn't proof.
Not even close.
But it was a pattern.
And her father had told her exactly what to do with patterns.
Don't assume.
Follow them.
Across Brooklyn, Nasir stood inside the community center reviewing the final Juneteenth schedule.
Melo stood beside him.
Bishop was seated nearby with her laptop open.
Darius leaned against a folding table, listening.
"You're still trying to hit all these events?" Darius asked.
Nasir looked over the schedule.
"As many as I can."
"You can't be everywhere."
"I know."
Melo gave Darius a look.
"Let him be outside."
"I didn't say he shouldn't."
Darius shrugged.
"I'm saying he's got people watching every move he makes right now. If something happens, nobody's gonna care how many events he made it to."
Nasir studied him.
"You got a better plan?"
"Stay longer at the main event. Keep the schedule tighter. Fewer transitions."
Bishop looked up.
"That would make security easier."
Nasir nodded.
"Fine. I'll stay longer at the main event."
Darius gave a small nod.
"Probably smart."
Nasir's phone vibrated.
He glanced down.
Unknown number.
You can't be everywhere.
A second message followed.
Choose carefully.
Nasir's expression didn't change.
Melo noticed anyway.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Darius looked toward him.
"You change your mind?"
Nasir slipped the phone into his pocket.
"About the schedule."
He looked at the three of them.
"I'll stay longer at the main event."
Darius nodded.
"Probably smart."
The same words.
Nasir noticed.
He said nothing.
That evening, Deion picked Lia up.
They drove with the windows cracked, warm air moving through the car as Brooklyn settled into Sunday night.
Lia watched the buildings pass.
"What?" Deion asked.
"What?"
"You've been quiet."
"I'm thinking."
"That's usually dangerous."
She smiled.
"You ever wonder what Brooklyn looked like before all this?"
"All what?"
She gestured toward the window.
"Everything changing."
Deion glanced at her.
"My pops says that's where the money is."
Lia looked over.
"Changing neighborhoods?"
"Building them back up."
"And who decides what gets built?"
Deion shrugged.
"People with money."
She looked back outside.
"That sounds simple."
"It probably is."
Maybe.
But Lia wasn't sure anymore.
Later that night, she sat alone at her desk.
The journal was open.
The old photograph sat beside it.
Her father's face stared back at her from a time before she was born.
She looked at the names she'd written.
311 DeKalb.
Atlas.
Construction.
Property.
She circled Atlas.
Then stopped.
Her pen hovered over the page.
She wrote one more question.
Who benefits?
Lia stared at it.
For the first time, she wondered whether her father had been trying to understand individual people at all.
Maybe he'd been trying to understand the machine they were standing inside.
Outside her window, another old building stood beneath a newer one.
Brooklyn kept rebuilding itself.
Lia closed the journal.
She wasn't ready to tell Deion what she'd found.
Not yet.
And somewhere across the city, Curtis Thompkins had already realized she was looking.