Read Online In This Rain by S. J. Rozan - Free Book Online Page B

you down and drove three hours to East Jesus on a Sunday to, what, save you from yourself?”
    He didn’t speak. The breeze shifted and he could smell her perfume. Hanae Mori, a fresh, green scent, the only perfume she ever wore. He didn’t turn to her.
    “For God’s sake, Joe. Someone died.”

CHAPTER
14
    Harlem: Frederick Douglass Boulevard
    Ford brewed more tea and brought it back to the armchair as Ray flipped through a spiral-bound booklet.
    “Looks good,” Ray told him. “Lot of work here already. Lot of time.”
    “Sixteen years,” said Ford. “One way or another.”
    Pages dense with print alternated with tables, pie charts, and sheet after sheet of architect’s renderings: gleaming glass and steel buildings, high and low, from a distance and in close-up detail, inside and out. Sunlight streamed. Store windows beckoned. A basketball player lifted off for a dunk. Dogs sniffed, cats stretched. People shopped, strolled, sat. Plants and kids were everywhere.
    “All right, then,” said Ray. “Take me through it.”
    “Start with the rendering on the fourth page.”
    Ray flicked the pages. His forehead creased. “Doesn’t look like the same place, does it?”
    “That’s what was in the paper eight, nine months ago, remember? It’s what got me going. It’s what the city’s proposing.”
    The page faced Ray; from where Ford sat the image was upside down but he knew it too well for that to matter. Reproduced from an architect’s drawing in the real estate section of the Sunday Times, this bird’s eye view pictured the same site as the other renderings: a city-owned half-block in the center of Harlem. Ford walked by that site every day now; he’d deliberately changed his route from home to pass it. Most of it was a rubble-strewn empty lot, littered with rusting bedsprings, leaking batteries, ripe bags of garbage. Four buildings still stood, two half-full of squatters, two concrete-blocked and empty. The city had put up a chain-link fence well over a year ago; the neighborhood had torn holes in it within a week.
    It was known as Block A, this neglected plot of land. It was the last large city-owned site in Harlem. The city had plans for it and Ray was looking at them now.
    No sparkling glass, no shining steel. No streaming sunlight. No: nighttime brownstones with bow fronts, and back alleys for service and parking. Jazz clubs with neon signs. Not many kids, no jumbled foliage. Carefully trimmed, well-spaced trees alternated with cast-iron streetlights in a promenade up the avenue. A hip, multiethnic crowd with a subtle Roaring Twenties air lounged in sidewalk cafés, emerged from yellow taxis, and passed energetically in and out of the bars and restaurants.
    “Remember seeing it?” Ford asked Ray again.
    “Sure do.”
    “Harlemland.”
    Ray looked up. “That’s what they’re calling it?”
    “No, of course not. The Times used fifty-cent phrases like ‘contextual design’ and ‘harmonizing with the surrounding architectural fabric.’ It said, ‘The city’s proposal recalls the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance.’ ”
    “Did it make mention that those particular glory days were eighty years ago?”
    “Look at it! Single-family townhouses. Private parking. Nightclubs, speakeasies— ”
    “Speakeasies?”
    “You know what it is? It’s a theme park!” Ford jumped up, calling like a carnival barker. “C’mon up to Harlem, see them black folks swing! Get your collard greens and hooch, your hams, your yams! Go to church on Sunday, hear that ole time gospel sound. Then turn and leave while the sermon’s being preached.”
    At that, Ray laughed.
    “Like it uptown?” Ford plowed on. “You can live here too! Like Disney World? You can live in Celebration. Like South Street Seaport? Battery Park City. And if you like slumming, here’s: Harlemland!”
    Ray smiled and nodded. “Tell it.”
    “Step right up! Meet a gangbanger! See a junkie nodding out! View the exotic colored folk from the safety of your Beemer. Drive right to the door of your own