CHAPTER 172: Gloria

POV: Avalon Pierce

Kevin Walsh answered at seven thirty.

“I need to ask Gloria Reyes’s mother something,” Avalon said. “Through you.”

“Tell me,” Kevin said.

Avalon told him about Edward Pierce.

Kevin was quiet for a long moment.

“Her name is Esperanza,” Kevin said. “Esperanza Reyes. She’s seventy nine years old and she’s been waiting forty five years for someone to say it was wrong.”

“Will she hear it from him?” Avalon asked.

“Let me call her,” Kevin said. “Give me twenty minutes.”

He called back in fifteen.

“She said yes,” Kevin said. “She said  ‘tell him I’ve been waiting’. Tell him I have things to say too.”

“That’s fair,” Avalon said.

“She wants Gloria there,” Kevin said. “And she wants it to be somewhere she chooses. Not his house or a federal building. ”

“Where?” Avalon asked.

“The community center where the program operates,” Kevin said. “In the Mission.” A pause. “She said if he wants to say something real he can say it in the neighborhood he helped destroy.”

Avalon looked at the window.

“We do Friday,” he said. “Right after the land trust transaction closes.”

“I’ll tell her,” Kevin said.

They got to Kim’s office at ten.

Selene beside him.

“Edward Pierce’s cooperation is valuable,” Kim said. “He’s provided documentation going back to 1976. Two years before the bonds. Planning documents, meeting minutes and names.”

“How many names?” Avalon asked.

“Four total,” Kim said. “Two deceased. One we’ve been unable to locate. And Edward.”

“Who’s the one you can’t locate?” Selene asked.

“A man named Gerald Hart,” Kim said. “Former city planning official. He seems to have disappeared from public record in 1984.”

“Disappeared how?” Avalon asked .

“He probably changed his name,” Kim said. “We believe. The trail goes cold in 1984 in Sacramento.”

Selene looked at Avalon.

“Hart,” she said slowly. “Avalon. Hart.”

He looked at her.

“What?” he asked.

“Patricia Ruiz,” she said. “The retired city councilwoman on the oversight committee. Her maiden name.”

Kim looked at both of them.

“What was her maiden name?” Kim asked.

“Hart,” Selene said. “Patricia Hart Ruiz. She mentioned it once at the first committee meeting. She said her father was in city planning.”

The room was very quiet.

“Her father,” Kim said.

“Yes,” Selene said.

Kim picked up his phone.

They waited in the corridor while Kim made calls.

“Patricia Ruiz,” he said quietly. “So her father helped design the displacement bonds,” he said.

“Possibly,” she said. “We don’t know yet.”

“Selene.”

“I know,” she said. 

Kim came out of his office twelve minutes later.

“Patricia Hart Ruiz’s father was Gerald Hart,” he said. “He died in 2019 under his assumed name. Patricia was aware of his original identity.”

“Does she know what he did?” Avalon asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Kim said. “But we need to talk to her.”

“She’s on our oversight committee,” Selene said. “She’s been inside the foundation’s accountability structure from the beginning.”

“Yes,” Kim said.

“Did she know what the committee was for when she joined?” Selene asked. “Did she know it was specifically about the displacement bonds her father helped design?”

“That’s what we need to find out,” Kim said.

Selene looked at Avalon.

“Call Amara,” she said quietly.

He was already dialing.

Amara answered on the first ring.

“Patricia Ruiz,” Avalon said. “How did she come to be on the oversight committee?”

A pause.

“Kevin Walsh recommended her,” Amara said slowly. “He said she had city government experience and community trust.” Another pause. “Avalon, why are you asking me this.”

He told her.

The silence that followed was the longest Amara had ever been silent in his experience.

“She’s been in every oversight meeting,” Amara said finally. “Every transparency report. Every remediation discussion.” Her voice was very controlled. “She knows everything we’ve done and everything we’re planning.”

“Yes,” he said.

“If her father was involved in the original scheme and she knew—”

“We don’t know what she knew,” Selene said from beside him. “Yet.”

 “But Avalon, by Friday the land trust transaction and Edward Pierce will be meeting Esperanza Reyes. Patricia Ruiz was planning to attend as committee representative.”

He closed his eyes briefly.

“Don’t tell her it’s happening,” he said. 

“Understood,” Amara said.

He hung up.

His phone rang.

Margaret.

“Patricia Ruiz just called me,” Margaret said. “She said she needs to speak with Selene and Avalon urgently. She said she knows why Kim’s office contacted her today.” A pause. “She said she’s been waiting for this conversation for twenty years.”