GETTIN’ IN THE WAY

On the wall in Cassidy Ronson’s office was a framed blowup of Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City, the famed literary critic’s memoir of growing up in Brownsville in the 1930s, a time when the area was a notorious Jewish ghetto. That, D assumed, was where the AK in AKBK came from. On the opposite wall hung a huge map of Brownsville and neighboring East New York with different pins representing, D guessed, real estate holdings and possible acquisitions.

Other than that the office was pretty bare. Some file cabinets. A cappuccino machine. Ronson sat behind an battered wooden desk with some papers scattered across it. Now as clear-eyed as he’d been buzzed at the charity event, Ronson wore a bow tie, black-framed glasses, and a white shirt with suspenders. He looked like a parody of a 1950s banker.

D sat there amazed at this turn of events. He’d almost been shot and/or stabbed on the pavement outside. He’d watched videos of Rivera selling guns he had stored somewhere in this space. Now he was sitting across from an Ivy League guy working out the details for a free concert in the same public park he’d spent countless hours in as a youth. It was sweet in a way, but D knew this conversation was probably not going to end smoothly.

They’d spoken for thirty minutes with Amos Pilgrim via Skype. Once he’d clicked off and they’d completed D’s checklist, Ronson went into a spiel that seemed a sober continuation of his Output rant.

“Before they built all this public housing, Brownsville’s tenements were filled with Jews from Eastern Europe,” Ronson explained. “Change happens. Our company will be here when it happens. We’ll help it happen. We’ll be stakeholders here. You are a stakeholder too. Which is why this concert should be the first of many projects we work on out here together.”

“Real estate is not my game,” D said bluntly.

“It’s about much more than real estate, D. We are talking with the city about building a large cultural center in Brownsville called the Brevoort, after the vaudeville house that was kind of Brooklyn’s Apollo. It was on Bedford off Fulton Street. We are giving it a classic old-school name but it’ll be a totally modern venue where Brownsville’s musical future can be developed. That sound good to you?”

“Sure,” D said, “if you can pull it off.”

“We need men of respect to represent us as we create our plan for Brownsville’s development. You are from the area, you’ve worked with many celebrities, and then you moved back to Brooklyn. It’s a great narrative—you’d just have to do some presentations initially. As our plan develops you’d be included in what we do. We won’t make the same mistakes that happened in the past.”

“That all sounds great, Cassidy. By the way, doesn’t a Detective Rivera work for you?”

“Detective Rivera has done security for us as we moved through the neighborhood. You see where our office is. We are right in the heart of it, so having Rivera around has been helpful. That shooting you might have read about happened right outside this door and Rivera was involved in that, keeping this office from being vandalized.”

“Did he really?” D worked hard to suppress his amusement.

“You see we’ve been threatened. People have e-mailed us saying they are going to shoot me and my employees if I don’t hire this person or that or don’t pay a ‘tax’ for working in Brownsville. So having someone as formidable as Rivera makes sense.”

“Cassidy, you’ve offered me a role of some kind in a business that seems to have some very vague goals and you currently employ one of the most corrupt policemen in this community. Now that suggests to me one of two things: you are either using him to strong-arm or intimidate people, or you are totally clueless about Rivera’s methods. Either one of those things disturbs me.”

“Do you have any proof about Rivera’s corruption?”

“You are the third organization to do work in Brownsville in recent years that has hired Rivera as a security consultant.”

“He comes highly recommended—”

“By the precinct captain.”

“Yes.”

“Those other ventures received similar threats when they moved into the area.” D reached inside his jacket and pulled out two folded sheets of paper. “I bet the language in these other e-mails is very similar to those you received.”

Ronson took the pages and looked them over. “These just sound like they were written by ignorant kids,” he said.

“Rivera is in business with lots of young knuckleheads.”

“This is hard for me to believe.”

“You see the forwarding e-mail address on those pages. FlyTy@gmail? That’s retired New York City detective Tyrone Williams, who spent fifteen or so years walking these streets. He can provide you with more details about Rivera’s stellar career.”

“Rivera has one of the highest conviction rates of any detective in Brooklyn,” Ronson said. “I’ve seen paperwork that proves this. Your friend may simply be jealous.”

D stood and headed toward the door. “Check your e-mail. There you’ll find a link to a Vimeo page which contains footage of Rivera moving around Brownsville. I think you’ll see him differently. And if not, it’ll be handled eventually.”

“It sounds like I may have come across as naïve to you.” Ronson stood up too. “I believe in what we’re doing. We don’t have a master plan. We are collecting real estate with an eye toward being adaptable and not imposing our will.”

“Get back to me after you’ve really checked on Rivera, and when I say checked, I don’t mean talking to his precinct captain again. Talk to some of those kids in the white T-shirts running around here with their pants off their ass. They’ll let you know who Rivera is. They might even tell you a few things about yourself. I’d check around this office for storage lockers or loose floorboards. I think you have some automatic weapons hidden in here.”

“You’re kidding me.” Ronson was starting to lose his composure.

“I wish I was,” D said. “We’ll talk soon, partner.”