When No One Is Watching(69)

“I’m worried about Kavaughn, too. Len said he went down south, but it’s not like him to just dip like that.”

Kavaughn, the guy I replaced as her researcher, the reason I inserted myself into this mess to begin with.

She grabs her phone again and makes a call, putting it on speaker this time. We both stare at the picture of the thick-necked man on the screen.

“Jesus Christ.” I pick up the phone as an automated message announces that the number is no longer in service.

Sydney looks up at me. “What is it?”

I wave the phone from side to side as his picture fades away. “This is the guy that came at me in front of the medical center that I tried to tell you about. He was on something. I assumed he was just your average methhead—”

“Meth isn’t the drug of choice here, Theo. And especially not for Kavaughn.”

“Okay, whatever. He was high. But at the meeting, Len said Kavaughn went to visit his grandmother, right? And if he was high and roaming around grabbing people, wouldn’t someone in the neighborhood know he was back? I can’t have been the only person to have seen him.”

“Kavaughn doesn’t mess with drugs,” she says, shaking her head. “He is absolutely a ‘drugs are a tool of the oppressor’ type dude. He doesn’t even drink coffee. Are you sure it was him?”

I close my eyes and bang my fist lightly against my forehead as I remember when he bumped into me. I’d assumed he was trying to attack me, but in retrospect . . . I saw that fear in his eyes.

“Please. Money.”

Was that really what he’d been saying?

“Mommy is in the garden. Mommy.” That’s what Sydney said. I’m not used to adults calling their mothers that, but . . .

My stomach lurches.

“Did he live with his mother?” I ask.

“With his grandmother, but she raised him, so she was basically his mom.”

His garbled words repeat in my head, but this time I don’t imagine he’s begging for money for his next fix. I imagine he’s asking for what most disoriented people ask for when they’re terrified. The sounds are so similar.

“Mommy? Bring Mommy. Help. Please! Please!”

I’d reacted to what I was taught to think when a large Black man ran up to me acting strangely.

Drugs.

Crime.

Danger.

And when the cops asked me where he’d gone, I ratted him out. A couple days later, I’d glibly pulled on a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and got pissy when I was called on it.

“Was it him?” she asks again.

I want to lie to her, to ignore my disgust with myself and the fear growing into a palpable presence in my torso.

“It was him. For sure.” I look at her. “I’d stopped because I thought I saw something moving through the window in the old hospital. And when he attacked me . . . it was right after I asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital.”

She stares at me, that distance in her gaze again, and I don’t volunteer that I snitched on him to the cops.

“Okay, let’s just . . . process for a minute,” she says.

I pull out my own phone and sit beside her. At my last job, I learned that most companies have their fingers in many pies, no matter what their business. Hell, even before that, working with my dad in low-level shit had taught me how a front operates. How dirty money gets clean.

“Most of this stuff happened after the VerenTech announcement,” I say.

She nods.

I hear William’s kaboosh again.

I Google “VerenTech + Brooklyn + Real Estate.” The first few pages are a mix of articles from this week celebrating the borough’s winning the VerenTech contracts and older ones warning of the harm the company might bring. Nothing stands out, but I scroll until something snags my eye:

VerenTech, which is primarily known for its pharmaceutical endeavors but is also the primary shareholder in Bevruch Ten Properties (BVT Realty) . . .

That’s the agency Kim and I used. I flash Sydney my screen.

“They’re the ones putting up all those condos,” she says, her voice surprisingly subdued.

As Sydney gazes over my shoulder, I Google “VerenTech + Bevruch Ten Properties.”

This time only a handful of results show up. One is a link to an r/shadybusiness forum page about the VerenTech campus search.

Brooklyn can have them. Everyone forgets about the town they bought in Connecticut in the early 00s. Promised tons of wealth, but they used eminent domain to kick people out of their houses and then never built their location there. Local businesses all closed down because they had no customers. Politicians and investors all lost big. It turned into a ghost town.

There’s a link in response that I hesitate to click on but do.

A diagram of all the businesses connected to VerenTech pops up in a new tab. Smaller or larger circles reflect how much money each subsidiary produces for the company overall. VerenTech (pharmaceuticals) is large, but only slightly smaller is the circle representing Civil Communities Inc. (private prison company).

“These motherfuckers,” Sydney growls.

Several smaller circles cluster around that, offshoots of that company. The third-largest circle is BVT Realty, and the fourth is . . .

“Veritas Bank. Isn’t that the one you told me about?” Sydney asks. “The one the former slaveowner started?”