Spark: A Novel (32 page)

The paint-splattered T-shirt and the political stickers in Emily Buchanan’s dresser suggested that she might have been a member of Housing for Us. The group had a basic Web site that didn’t provide a lot of information. Apparently, they were a squatter group that took over abandoned buildings in poor areas, fixed them up, and gave them to homeless families. Edward did a news article search and reported back with his butler’s voice. Eight months ago, a Brooklyn slumlord had sent four men with baseball bats to East New York to take back a house occupied by H4U. The squatters fought back with crowbars and sledgehammers and two of the thugs ended up in the hospital.

The flyer on the wall at Crawley’s said that Housing for Us was meeting tonight at the Christian Worker House. Once again, I returned to the Internet and learned that Christian Worker wasn’t a church or labor union, but a collection of autonomous communities where people lived together in the spirit of early Christianity. The New York City branch of the movement owned a building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and this was where H4U was going to hold its public meeting. The sort of people involved with Housing for Us and the Christian Worker would know how to obtain fake IDs and stay off the grid. It seemed logical that someone in either group might know where Emily was hiding.

That evening I took the subway to Fourth Street and walked east to the Christian Worker. The Lower East Side had been a slum area until the end of the twentieth century, but now the neighborhood was known for storefront art galleries and wine bars. It had rained earlier that evening and the mist in the air softened the edges and corners and made the old tenement buildings look like slabs of rock carved to show doors and windows.

Christian Worker House was a brownstone building with a marble portico—a small, square roof supported by four Greek columns decorated with grape vines. In the previous millennium the building had been occupied by the Brotherhood of Unified Mechanics and Engineers, and the name of their organization was still carved into the soot-stained marble.

Pushing open the door, I entered an anteroom, where a black man in a wheelchair was using a magnifying glass to peer at a newspaper crossword puzzle.

“Housing for Us?”

“Welcome, brother.” The old man grinned and waved me forward.

I passed through a second door and found myself in a large room with a twenty-foot ceiling that had been turned into an auditorium. Four women were sitting at one end of a table eating yellow rice and black beans out of cardboard bowls. A large Dominican woman wearing a bright red sweater and hoop earrings smiled at me and waved her spoon. “
Entra, mi amigo.
I am Eugenia. You here for the meeting?”

“Yes.”

“Then you come to the right place. No worries. You will see more people. Eat some food if you want. If you need the men’s room, it’s upstairs.”

The women continued their meal, gossiping about someone named Ana. When I walked upstairs to the bathroom, I found a long hallway painted with a blue-green color that reminded me of Marian Hospital. Eight residence rooms lined the hallway—each with a door latch and padlock. An elderly lady with a pink nightgown and fuzzy slippers shuffled out of the toilet, pushing an aluminum
walker. Perhaps this building had once been a crucible of revolution. Now it was an old-age home.

The meeting still hadn’t started when I returned to the main floor, so I wandered around the auditorium. Over the years, the Christian Workers had stolen dozens of plastic post office bins. Each of these sturdy little containers was filled with back issues of the
Workers’ Life,
a six-page newspaper that cost only twenty-five cents. I picked up a recent issue and read three obituaries about members of the Christian Worker community who had lived in this building or worked at a communal farm. Mold was growing on the pages and it gave the entire room a smudgy gray smell.

More people arrived for the meeting and they chatted with the women at the table. Staying at the edge of the room, I threaded a path around some folding chairs and climbed up onto the stage. More postal bins filled with yellowed newspapers were stacked against the wall along with plywood and papier-mâché street puppets: a rat, a spider, and an old man with a top hat clinging to money bags. There were signs and banners from past wars and forgotten strikes.

“We’re starting the meeting,” a man announced and I returned to the table. Eugenia and her friends remained, but now they were drinking tea and passing around a bag of chocolate-chip cookies.

The meeting was run by a sallow-faced man named Bennett, who wore a patched raincoat and trucker’s cap that proudly announced that he was an “Antisocial Element.” This was the main category of people who were sent to the Good Citizen Camps during the mass arrests that followed the Day of Rage.

Bennett explained that his organization—Renters’ Rights of New York City—had “unified” with Housing for You and this was a “significant moment” for everyone concerned about homeless people. I was expecting someone to start waving protest signs, but instead a woman named Selma read the minutes of the last meeting.

When she was done, Bennett started talking about a petition that was going to be presented to the mayor. “Has anyone called State Senator Mitchell?” he asked. Glances around the table. Silence. Bennett blew his nose, and then resumed his lecture. The
mosquito sound of his voice, the gray smell of mold and spilled milk and leaky plumbing, the haze of dust covering the lightbulbs, made my Spark feel frozen in my Shell. Were these people the antisocial elements that the authorities were so worried about? I was dead, but at least I knew it. Bennett was dead, but no one had told him.

I was getting ready to go when the door popped open and three growlers entered the room. A scruffy-looking teenage boy headed over to the beans and rice, followed by a muscular woman with blond pigtails and snake tattoos slithering down her arms. The leader of the trio was a tall young man with hair that touched the collar of his surplus army jacket. There was something about his Spark that changed the energy in the room. All the women smiled at him and the men sat up a little straighter.

“Buenos noches!”
the young man said. “Sorry I didn’t call you guys. We just got a new address from Sonya, so we’re driving to East New York for a cracking party.”

“That’s wonderful,” Bennett said. “But we’re talking about the
petition.
”

The teenager scooped up what remained of the beans and rice and dumped the food into three cardboard bowls. While that was going on, the blond woman grabbed a handful of chocolate-chip cookies and stuffed them into her bag.

The tall young man turned to Eugenia and smiled. “
Me alegro de verte!
You still talking to that mother with the two children?”

“Yeah. They’re living in their car.”

“This house tonight sounds like a good possibility. It’s bank owned, unoccupied for almost three years …”

By now, the teenager had scraped the last grain of rice out of the pot. He grabbed some plastic spoons and his share of cookies. “Fueled up,” he said.

“Anyone else want to help us crack a house? Billy Bones is sick with the flu, so it’s just me, Thrasher, and Ice.”

The women touched their hair and glanced at each other. Bennett held up a hand as if he was trying to hail a speeding taxicab. “Does this really have to happen tonight? You should stay for the meeting.”

“Next time. I promise.” The young man winked at Eugenia. “If the house checks out, I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

“Good luck, Sean. Don’t get hurt.…”

A few seconds later they were out the door. My Shell didn’t move, but my Spark was moving rapidly.
Sean.
The leader of the group had the same name as Emily Buchanan’s boyfriend. Maybe my target was waiting for him in the car.

I hurried out to the sidewalk and caught up with Sean and his friends. “Can I come along?”

Each person in the group was holding a bowl of beans and rice. They turned around and stared at me. “And who the hell are you?” asked the blond woman.

“Jacob Underwood.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Sean put his hand on my shoulder. “We don’t know you, Jacob. So of course we’re going to be suspicious. Do you mind if Thrasher searches you?”

“No problem.”

I was in trouble if they discovered the gun in my ankle holster or the handcuffs carried beneath my waistband, but Thrasher just focused on the contents of my pockets.

“Look at this … he’s carrying a full-frequency detector.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “I just want to know if someone’s using a G-MID to photograph me.”

Sean laughed and pulled a frequency detector out of his front pocket. “Relax, Jake. We all carry them.”

Thrasher found my Freedom ID and held it up so his two friends could see. “Underwood is his real name and his card is in a blocker shield.”

“And that’s where everyone should keep their ID,” Sean said. “So where do you live, Jake? Do you have a job?”

“Right now, I live in Manhattan. I used to work for a software company called InterFace. Then I got replaced by a nubot.”

“Join the club,” Ice said. “Last year I got fired from PetTopia, the pet supply company. They told everyone that our jobs weren’t covered by the Freedom to Work Act. Then a couple of months later we found out—”

Sean rolled his eyes as if he’d heard this story before. “Forget about the nubots. Let’s get going. We can talk in the car.”

Sean touched my Shell a second time and I made an effort not to pull away as he guided me across the street to a beat-up Toyota sedan. The dashboard was held together with duct tape and someone had ripped the plastic cover off the steering column. Sean slid behind the steering wheel and Thrasher sat beside him. Ice and I were in the back.

“Ever been to a cracking party, Jake?”

“Are we going to break into a house?”

“That’s right. We target buildings that have been abandoned by the banks.” Sean started the car and sat listening to the tapping sounds coming from the engine. “Ice is the head of our construction crew in Brooklyn. She’ll see if the building can be renovated.”

“I look for good bones,” Ice said. “The house has to be structurally sound.”

“The rest of us search for zombies,” Thrasher said.

Sean laughed. He shifted into first and the gears complained. “We got to find out if bonks or drug dealers are using the building.”

“So what if nobody’s living there?”

“It usually takes us two or three weeks to do a full cleanup. During that period, we turn on the water and splice the home onto the power grid.”

“We move in a homeless family when the house is safe for children,” Ice said. “And then we make sure they get mail.”

“Why is that so important?”

“Mail delivery is mentioned in a section of New York City’s landlord-tenant law,” Sean said. “If a person can prove that they’ve been receiving mail at their residence for at least thirty days, then they can’t be arrested for trespassing. Eventually, the bank discovers that we’ve taken over the building and files eviction papers, but then our pro bono lawyers call up the loan officer and try to negotiate
a deal. We’ve been able to work out a rent-purchase agreement on eighteen abandoned homes.”