The sewer—from the point where the money was dropped—passed directly below the Coney Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, continued east, and finally let out onto the muddy beach of the Shell Bank Creek. The Russians hadn’t dug the hole, or placed the trash can over it; it had been there for years. In fact, many of the teenage residents of the Kings Bay Houses knew about it.
Moishe Groysman had been waiting in the sewer underneath the trash can. As soon as he took possession of the bag, he began removing the money straps, fanning through each stack, and searching for GPS devices and dye packs. One by one, he searched, re-banded, and placed each stack into the bag he’d brought with him. Since there were seventy-five stacks, it took him a little more than twenty minutes to finish the job. Yuri had assured him he’d have time to do this, and indeed he did.
From the drop point Moishe carried the money a third of a mile to where the sewer let out at the creek. The round door at the end of the tunnel was barred and locked, but the bars on top had been cut, leaving a space of about three feet by two feet. When he got there, Moishe took a moment and watched from behind the bars. Then he pushed the money over the top, placed a piece of cardboard over the bars, and climbed through the hole.
He had a cell phone signal now; he stayed in the shadows and checked the text messages on his prepaid. Yuri hadn’t sent any updates. Apparently their victims still had no idea what had happened. It almost made him want to laugh, but he was too nervous for that. He took the cardboard down and set it on the ground and watched the area around him. There were fishing boats in the creek, but no other signs of movement. He looked at his watch: thirty-two minutes had passed since the drop.
A stolen delivery scooter sat waiting in a parking lot adjacent to the tunnel. He walked to it now and began securing the bag to the scooter’s back rack with two bungee cords. He was amped up and everything he did stood out with unusual clarity. At one point, while he was working, he heard the distant sounds of sirens—which made him pause until he realized they were coming from a different neighborhood.
Instead of exiting directly onto Knapp Street, he got on the bike and headed deeper into the dirt parking lot, which eventually became a dirt alley that skirted past the tunnel in the direction of the fishing boats. He had to hop off at one point and push the scooter through some sand, but he finally emerged onto Knapp Street just south of Avenue Z. From there, he turned his headlight on and headed south at a reasonable speed.
He took Emmons until it turned into Neptune Avenue in Brighton Beach. There were people on the streets here, which helped Moishe relax. He parked the bike a few blocks from Ossip’s Locksmith Shop, untied his load, and walked the rest of the way carrying the bag of money over his shoulder.
When he arrived at the locksmith shop, he reached through the metal gate and knocked on the glass door behind it. Ten seconds later the door opened, and Ossip—a Rabinowitz family friend—opened the gate and ushered him into the shop. It was dark inside and smelled like cigarettes.
“I had tea for dinner—you know what that means?” asked Ossip. Moishe didn’t know, and he didn’t say anything, he just followed the older man—who was flipping lights on as they went—to the back of the shop. Ossip must’ve been seventy years old. He was squat, sturdy, and had a big belly. The flesh under his eyes sagged, and the eyes themselves seemed red.
He pointed toward a safe in the corner, which sat open and ready. “He said he’d pay tonight,” said Ossip. “That’s between him and me, I know, but I think we would both prefer to get it out of the way.”
“Don’t worry about it, uncle,” said Moishe, making a face as though he sympathized, but motioning with both hands that he was not to talk about such things.
Ossip poured two glasses of vodka, told Moishe he needed to calm down, and then took the bag from him and set it on a small card table. The older man then counted each stack out loud, setting the stacks down in neat rows as he went. “What kind of shit is this?” he asked, turning toward Moishe when he finished. “You know what this is? More money, more problems. That’s not bullshit! I get it, we have to live, we have to eat, but this is too much money for one night’s work.”
His eyes shifted over Moishe’s face like a man with some kind of brain condition.
Moishe stepped to the table, pulled four of the stacks from the pile. “For the bank,” he said, tossing one of the stacks to Ossip. He then tucked the other three into the front of his waistband, pulled the ties of his sweatpants tight, and tied them. “Gangster paradise,” he said in English. The two men regarded each other for a few seconds.
“Pour us another,” said Moishe. After they drank, they put the rest of the money back into the bag and set it in Ossip’s safe.
“Seventy-five minus four,” said Ossip, holding up four fingers. “Seventy-one.” He pointed at Moishe, as if to say, You’re my witness, and then walked him back to the front door.
From there Moishe took a black car to the Roxy Club, a few blocks away under the train tracks. The doorman, a huge Russian called Cyprus—a name he’d earned in Chechnya—greeted Moishe with a handshake, pulled him in for a half hug, and whispered in his ear, “Two new girls, one of them is a redhead.”
He then motioned for Moishe to go in. Two other bouncers waited inside. They both shook his hand. A cashier sitting near the next door blew him a kiss when he walked past.
The club itself wasn’t crowded. Moishe felt the girl onstage notice him when he walked in. The whole energy of the room shifted. Keeping his left hand on the money at his waist, he walked to their normal table, shaking hands with an associate on his way. Then he sat down and began waiting for the Rabinowitz brothers to show up. They were going to get extremely drunk tonight.
Sitting in her home office, finishing a bottle of Chablis, Elizabeth Carlyle’s patience was wearing thin. In an effort to stop thinking about what was happening in Brooklyn, she’d reviewed over a thousand pages of discovery for one of her other cases, done a week’s worth of online shopping, and eaten her dinner at her desk. Her eyes went from the clock on her computer back to her phone. She checked the little button on the side: the ringer was still on.
A guilty feeling began loosening in her stomach; she felt like she’d done something horribly wrong. Her eyes went back to the computer, and she clicked on a Valentino dress, zoomed in on it, and became convinced it would make her look ridiculous, an old lady trying to look young. She hit the back button on her browser and continued scrolling through all the dresses. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Finally, at 11:46 p.m., Valencia called.
“What happened?” Elizabeth asked.
“They’re better than we imagined.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” asked Elizabeth, aware of the slight drunken slur in her voice.
“They managed to collect without showing themselves.”
Elizabeth closed her computer. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“It’s too complicated for the phone,” said Valencia.
Elizabeth tried to understand what she was hearing.
Valencia continued, “We’ll identify them by the end of the day tomorrow. It’s easy from here. You have my personal guarantee on that.”
Elizabeth rubbed her eyes. What is this? she thought. A mix between a yawn and a silent cry stretched her mouth. She forced her mouth shut, then said, “I swear to God.”
“I’ll update you first thing in the morning,” said Valencia.
Elizabeth found herself saying goodbye, hanging up, and ending the call. A rush of unasked questions flowed through her mind: First and foremost, what happened? What the hell had happened? What was she possibly going to tell the partners tomorrow? She’d given away three-quarters of a million dollars, with nothing to show for it. She would have to resign.
She looked at her cell phone; no point in calling back. She’d only get deflections. Nothing was going to happen tonight. She left her office and walked downstairs to the kitchen. The place looked sterile, lifeless. The refrigerator hummed, and she pulled it open.
Inside, she pushed things around drunkenly until she found a rotisserie chicken. She pulled that out and began tearing meat off the breast and putting it into her mouth. She tore a wing off, chewed it, crunched the end of the bones. She ate more meat from the other breast. Then she put the plastic lid back on, put the chicken back in the refrigerator, and moved a bottle of mayonnaise to hide the mess she’d made.
In the freezer she found her husband’s unopened ice cream; she put it in the microwave and heated it for thirty seconds. She ate the entire thing standing and staring into the dark dining room. When she finished, she put the empty container and the spoon into the sink and washed her hands and rinsed her mouth and spit into the drain.
From the kitchen, she walked back up the stairs, touching the wall at one point and leaving a wet handprint. She headed down the hallway to her bedroom. She pulled off her clothes, dropped them on the floor, then flopped onto the bed. Her husband sighed and shifted away. She lay there for a moment, feeling the bed spin.
Her mind shuffled through a series of trifling thoughts: she had to call her tax man. Bob, a partner at the firm, was growing increasingly arrogant. She got up on her elbow and looked at her husband. His back was to her. Then clumsily, she shifted over to him and hugged him from behind and propped herself up on her elbow and began rubbing her groin against his hip. He turned, scooted still farther away, and leaned up like he’d been startled awake.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.
Danny Tsui’s head was on his pillow, his eyes were closed, and his mind was just beginning to shift from nagging thoughts to a wordless dream, when his phone buzzed and chimed. He picked it up off his nightstand. Valencia Walker, 1:12 a.m.
“Are you sleeping?” she asked, when he answered.
“No, boss.”
“Do you have your computer open?”
He pushed himself up. “Yeah,” he said, opening it.
“I need you to find the owner’s name,” Valencia said, sounding strangely calm. “You have all the information on the place, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Danny. He clicked on an email draft where he was keeping notes on this project. He read aloud to her: “‘American iPhone Repair at 29 West Forty-Seventh Street, third floor, office eighteen.’”
“Did he give you a description of the guy?”
Danny scrolled down, read from his notes: “‘Boss—thirty-five- to forty-five-year-old. Jewish, pale skinned, five feet ten inches, one hundred ninety pounds, bald-headed, brown on sides, wears a yarmulke, glasses. American, New York accent, no scar on face, no tattoos visible, soft lip’—I don’t know what he means by that—’walk normal, no limp, no wedding ring.’
“He said, ‘If he looks like a celebrity that would be the actor who plays the, um, plays the lawyer on The Wire, bald guy, lawyer for Barksdale, but less handsome.’ I have to look that one up, boss.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Valencia finally asked, “So what do we have so far?”
“No UCC filings on American iPhone in Manhattan at that address. New York Department of State doesn’t have anything, either. Names on all American iPhone variations in the city record sound more Chinese or Indian. I don’t think he registered the business under that name, maybe a different name, but the address doesn’t pop up, either. I checked the civil court records in Manhattan, no hits for that business name. There are some for American Phone Repair, but a different address.
“Building manager called me back last night and said he’s not on site, but the rent is paid by wire transfer every month. Wouldn’t tell me the name on the account, he’s nice, but he said they need a subpoena for that. Says they have a super named, Javier, who I’ve left two messages for.”
“Can you find the guy’s name by the morning?” asked Valencia.
Danny stared at his computer screen for a moment, licked his lip. “Yeah, boss, if data exists online, I’ll find it for you.”
“Do it by nine a.m., and I’ll give you a ten-thousand-dollar bonus,” said Valencia.
“Boss, you don’t need to do that—this is my normal job,” said Danny, pushing the blanket off, and swinging his legs off the bed.
“It will be my pleasure,” said Valencia.
They ended the call.
Danny lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. His parents, who lived in Queens, were proud of the money he made. He told them he did data management for a law firm. He hadn’t gone to college. He was introduced to Valencia by another lawyer he had worked for. He’d been with her for two years.
In the bathroom he urinated. He then washed his hands and splashed water on his face. From there, he went to his kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out two energy drinks. He went back to his bed, picked up his laptop, carried it to his couch, turned on the television, changed the station to ESPN, and began searching. He was a talented hacker, but this job wouldn’t involve any hacking.
It was a manual labor job that would involve searching every corner of the web until he found a trail that led back to his man. He had access to Valencia’s private investigator databases, and he began there. He opened two of those and ran simple business searches. He’d already done this, but he did it more thoroughly now.
He ran searches on 29 West Forty-Seventh and scrolled through all the records looking for anything that caught his eye. Meanwhile, other tabs popped open on his browser, and he began running down various rabbit holes. He skimmed message boards about iPhone repairs; searched articles that mentioned 29 West Forty-Seventh; looked at other businesses in the building. He searched Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
On LinkedIn he searched for anyone who had worked at American iPhone. There were no hits. He then searched for all cell phone technicians in New York. There were 816 hits. He began clicking through those, and eventually came across someone named David Weiner, who had listed “American Phone” on his resume. It wasn’t quite right, but it was something. He went back to Facebook and searched through all the David Weiners in New York until he found the same person.
From there, he went through all of David’s friends, looking for anyone who matched his target’s physical description: thirty-five to forty-five, bald, white. David Weiner had eighteen friends who matched that description. About half of those eighteen friends’ accounts were set to private. He created a table and put each of the names in their own box.
He began searching the databases and social media for all of those individual friends, going through each one until he could find some way to rule them out. He’d jump back to the database and run basic searches on family members, then he’d skip back to Facebook and look through the family members’ photos for any hints.
Eventually, after a few hours of pinging around the web this way, he came across an Instagram account of a guy who was friends with David Weiner, someone named Michael Moskowitz—Instagram handle: PsychoboyMosko212. Among his photos was one that caught Danny’s eye: A bald man in a club, holding up five cell phones like a hand of cards. The caption read Cell phone KingsNYC Nizzzzzz.
Danny cracked open his third Red Bull and then looked through the twelve people who had liked that picture; one of them appeared to be the same bald man who was in the picture. That person had an Instagram account called QueenzGodF. The account was set to private.
Danny googled: “QueenzGodF” and found a message board where QueenzGodF had weighed in on a debate about whether Nas was the best rapper from New York. Danny then jumped back to the databases and ran an email search for QueenzGodF@gmail.com. There were no hits. He tried QueenzGodF@hotmail.com and found a hit. The email address had been associated with an individual named Avram Lessing, date of birth 12/3/74.
Danny considered sending a phishing attack to the Hotmail account from a spoofed Instagram; he’d try to get him to log into the fake site and capture his password. But he didn’t think Avi would fall for that, and he didn’t want to wait to find out.
He sat there for a moment and then something clicked in his mind. He went back to David Weiner’s Facebook page and searched through his friends for people named Avram. There was a hit for an Avi Doncic. The profile picture showed the basketball player Luka Dončić.
Danny tapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. He tried to look at Avi’s photos, but they were set to private. He went back to the database and ran a basic person locator search for “Avi Lessing,” with the DOB, and got a hit for an Avram Lessing. There were six addresses listed. The first was in Queens. The second was 29 West Forty-Seventh Street.
Danny was sure this was the guy, but he needed a photo and he wasn’t going to get it from his Facebook page. He ran a quick image search, spent about thirty seconds going through the photos, and then decided he needed it faster than that. He thumbed through his contacts and found the number of a sergeant at the 18th Precinct—someone Wally Philpott had set them up with. The contact read Edgar.Rodriguez.NYPD.NIGHT.WP. Danny had never spoken with him, but he called him now.
“Rodriguez,” said Edgar Rodriguez, picking up after the third ring.
“Hi, sergeant, my name is Danny. Wally Philpott told us to call you if we ever needed anything during the night shift.”
“Who?”
“Wally Philpott.”
“Oh, yeah, right. What can I do for you, kid?” he sounded tired and unimpressed.
“I need a DMV photo for someone named Avram Lessing, DOB 12/3/74.”
“Fax it?”
“Can you email it?” asked Danny.
Sixteen minutes later the photo arrived on Danny’s computer. He looked at it. He then googled, “Lawyer for Barksdale in The Wire.” He looked at the picture that popped up for the actor Michael Kostroff. The two men looked similar.
Danny emailed the DMV photo to Valencia. The subject line read: IS THIS HIM???
It was 5:41 a.m.
Twenty seconds later, Valencia responded: $10,000.
* * *
Chris Cowley was standing in court arguing a motion in front of a sour-faced judge he’d never met before. A few of Chris’s high school classmates were spread out in the gallery behind him. They weren’t his friends: the truth was he couldn’t remember their names, and he had no idea why they were there. He looked at the jury box and saw that individual houseplants—the same kind that were in his mother’s house—had been placed in each seat. Suddenly, it all made sense: he was taking part in a mock trial, but he hadn’t prepared at all for it. He looked down at his notes and saw that they’d gotten wet and were now smeared and illegible. The ink had gotten all over his hands and he was just wiping them on his jacket when he woke up and understood he’d been dreaming.
The clock on his bedside table said it was 5:41 a.m.
After pulling the blankets over his head, so he could hide from any cameras, he masturbated. When he was done, he went straight to the shower, scrubbed his body, and washed his hair. He shaved at the sink, doing the job slowly, with focus.
In the kitchen, he made a smoothie using pretrimmed kale, yogurt, frozen blueberries, oats, orange juice, a banana, and a heaped scoop of protein powder. While he assembled and dumped the ingredients, he stayed partly aware of the camera in his kitchen. It was in the fan duct; he had crawled up and seen it. He wasn’t sure if there were other cameras in the apartment, but he assumed there were. It made him feel depressed; but he’d somehow grown used to the feeling.
He took his smoothie to the couch and began ruminating on the idea of revenge. He’d shoot the men that had made him do this. The skinny one that invaded his house—he would literally shoot him if he could. Yeah, what’s that bitch? How’s that? What? You don’t like guns in your mouth? Chris could see it all so clearly.
But that kind of thinking wouldn’t do. It served no purpose. He had to reframe the problem. This is an opportunity, he told himself, while he changed into his work clothes. You’re happy to spy for them. You’ll do whatever it takes. You will work for them, and you’ll do it in a cheerful manner.
He buttoned up his shirt, pulled on his sweater, and then closed his eyes and tried to convince himself that what he was saying was true.
Before leaving his apartment, he snuck up to the living room window and peered down at the street below. There was a white van parked on the corner in a no-parking zone. Its hazards were blinking. It seemed too obvious. Still, he stared at it.
After stepping out of his building, he went in the opposite direction from his normal route. He’d take the F train today. Fuck them, he thought. It was a small change, but it made him feel rebellious. I mean, who do they think they are?
He’d only gotten two blocks when he heard footsteps coming from behind. The speed of the steps caught his attention, and he turned his head to look over his shoulder. The man coming toward him appeared to be in his fifties. He was white and dressed like he was headed to a low-paying office job. Chris had never seen him before.
As he got closer, Chris noticed that there was something unsettling about his face; his expression was flat, but his eyes looked angry. He was waving his hand down, a gesture that to Chris, looked like, Keep going.
Chris was confused; still, he let the man catch up to him.
“Which way is the A train?” asked the man. He was over six feet tall, somewhere around two hundred and twenty pounds.
“Excuse me?” asked Chris, reflexively taking a step backward.
“The A train?” asked the man. He looked Chris up and down in a way that felt accusatory.
Chris pointed vaguely toward Cadman Plaza. “Up that way a few blocks.”
The man leaned in close. “And which way is the F train?” he asked, making it sound like a threat. Chris could smell cigarettes on his breath.
“This way,” said Chris. “That’s where I’m going.”
“Then I guess we’ll go together,” said the man.
A wave of nausea passed through Chris. What the fuck is this guy’s problem? He turned and began walking again.
The man caught up to him. “My routine is to take the A train,” said the man. “But what the hell. Live a little, right?” The man was clearly one of his tormentors.
Chris ducked his chin, lowered his voice. “The A is running with delays,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” said the man, shaking his head and clenching his jaw.
For the first time, Chris noticed that the rims around the man’s eyes were red, like he had bad allergies. They both stopped walking again, and Chris suddenly worried that the man might try to fight him: there was that kind of tension in the air. Chris felt his own eyes fill with tears.
“Fucking bullshit morning,” said the man, turning and looking at all the buildings around him with a grimace on his face. “Thanks, pal,” he said, and then he continued toward the York Street station.
Chris stood there and watched the man walk away. Then he changed his mind about how he was going to get to work. He had no desire to see that guy again, so he turned around and headed for the A Train.
“You need to tell her,” said Valencia, looking at the receptionist, “that I can come and go as I want. I can’t stop and wait for you every time I get off the elevator.”
Andy, Elizabeth Carlyle’s assistant, nodded and stepped to the woman; he leaned down and whispered the message in her ear. She then stood, turned, and looked at Valencia. “I’m sorry Mrs. Walker, they trained me to stop everyone, but it won’t happen again.”
“Sweetheart, it’s not your fault, but I bill by the hour,” said Valencia, turning and walking toward Elizabeth’s office.
Andy caught up with her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be,” said Valencia.
When they got to Elizabeth’s office, Andy bowed his head, opened the door for her, and then closed it behind her.
Elizabeth was sitting at her desk. Her bad mood lingered in the air like a foul smell. “What the hell happened?” she asked, leaning back in her chair.
“They’re good,” said Valencia. “Better than—”
“So you said last night,” said Elizabeth, interrupting her. “I need to know exactly what happened so I can tell the other partners.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, as if the room were cold.
Valencia sat down on the chair facing Elizabeth’s desk. She took a moment to look at her own red fingernails. Breathing into her diaphragm, she loosened her shoulders, and made sure her posture was straight. She gathered herself up fully and, in a soft voice, sketched out the events as they’d happened: Dyker Heights, the golf course, the phone, Sheepshead Bay, the towers, the trash can, and the sewer.
When she finished the story, she shook her head, gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders, and then settled back into herself.
“So what is your plan?” asked Elizabeth.
Valencia opened the file in her hands, took out a piece of paper, and slid it across the desk. “Avi Lessing,” she said. “He’s the man who had the phone. There is a nine-in-ten chance that he’s involved in the blackmailing.”
“Nine in ten?” asked Elizabeth, sounding incredulous.
“Liz, this is what we have. I’m not working for them. This is crisis management; it doesn’t always go exactly how we plan.”
Elizabeth raised her hand to stop the lecture, then set her hand back down on the desk. “I thought that’s why we brought you in? I thought that was your thing—to know exactly what is going to happen and plan accordingly.”
For a moment, Valencia’s mind went to a couple of the tasks she’d taken care of the previous week. On Monday, she’d paid hush money to a pregnant hairdresser in Staten Island. On Tuesday, she helped kill a negative story about the CEO of a bank that was set to run in the Times. She’d had to get creative for that one.
She had Danny work up a background on the editor of the story. It turned out the man’s daughter had recently been rejected by Yale. Valencia knew the editor well. She’d been feeding him stories for years. She pressed him for a same-day lunch. Before the food arrived, Valencia managed to name-drop the dean of Yale College.
Over coffee, Valencia finally brought up the story about the banker. She said he was a friend and he’d asked her for advice. “It’s a very weak story,” she said. Right then her cell phone rang. She picked it up, looked at it, and laughed when she saw the New Haven number.
“Will you look at that,” she said, showing the editor the phone. “Dean Schraeger,” she said, answering right there at the table. “I was just talking about you. Listen, let me call you back, I’m having lunch with a friend.” She hung up.
“Anyway,” she said, “Dean Schraeger and I are very close. I call her my soul mate.” She looked the editor in the eye. “She would do anything for me. But that story does seem weak, doesn’t it?”
The man sat there blinking at his decaf cappuccino. “You know,” he said finally. “It is kind of weak, isn’t it?”
On Thursday, Valencia flew to Jackson, Wyoming, sat down with the COO of a large oil company, and convinced him it was time to retire. She hadn’t even needed to blackmail him. She just talked it through. That was just last week. So yes, taking care of these little problems was her thing.
Valencia looked at the woman sitting across from her. “Elizabeth.”
“What?”
“We’ll take care of this. We’ll clean it up. It might take a few moves, it might take more than a few moves, but we’ll have them soon. These problems are temporary.” She made her voice as soothing as she could. “Sweetie, this is what I do. Honestly, this hasn’t even gotten complicated yet.”
They sat in silence, Elizabeth staring at a spot on the ground to her right, Valencia staring at her.
“So this is where we are,” said Valencia. “Avi Lessing, forty-three years old. Lives with his parents in Queens. No criminal background. The guy is a nobody, but he has friends.”
“And?”
“And we believe he’s involved. He passed the files on to someone he knows. He’ll tell us.”
“How do we know it was him?”
“His shop’s abandoned. He literally moved out after we visited. Packed up and disappeared. I said ‘nine in ten’ cautiously. It’s higher than that. He’s involved.”
Elizabeth made a show of brushing her hair behind her ears. “I’m not—” She stopped and thought for a second. “Why didn’t you take care of this when you were face-to-face with him?”
“Because we were trying to keep our footprints small. We got the phone and—”
“And they blackmailed us.”
“And now it’s time to hit back.”
“How?”
“We’re going to apply pressure.”
“This is turning into such a royal pain in my ass.”
Valencia watched the woman’s chest rise and fall with each breath.
“I am so over this place,” whispered Elizabeth, looking around her office.
They sat in silence for a bit.
“It’s a beautiful place,” Valencia finally said.
* * *
Billy Sharrock spent the morning parked down the block from Avi Lessing’s parents’ house on 122nd Street, in Kew Gardens, Queens. The neighborhood had a suburban feel, more like Long Island than New York. The houses were stand-alone; they had pitched roofs and aluminum siding.
Billy had parked himself thirty yards north of the target house with the back of his van facing the door. His windows were blacked out with silvered polycarbonate; you could see out, but not in. He had a folding chair with a cushion on it. He sat on it now and watched the front door of the house.
His notes had three entries: at 6:49 a.m. he started his watch; at 9:14 a.m., an older man—Avi Lessing’s father—had exited the house and walked south toward the JZ stop on Jamaica Avenue; the third entry—GEL 5861—was the license plate number of a silver SUV parked in the driveway. Billy had sent the tag to Danny Tsui and it came back as registered to their target.
He’d been instructed to sit in that spot until he had visual confirmation that Avi Lessing was inside the house. He’d packed enough white bread, peanut butter and jelly, apples, corn chips, bottled ice coffee, and water. He kept the food in a large red camping cooler pushed up against a wall of the van. He also had a Hassock Portable Toilet, which he kept inside a second large plastic box. He could stay in the van without leaving for days.
When he’d arrived at the site that morning, he’d taken two 10 mg pills of Adderall to help him stay up. He took another one midmorning. They worked just like the old orange Dexedrines they used to pop in Afghanistan, and now his mind was humming right along. He chewed tobacco, and spit into a Gatorade bottle.
It didn’t take long to confirm that Avi Lessing was there. At 1:14 p.m., the man walked out of the house, wearing a brown sweater. He walked right past the van—within ten feet of Billy himself—and didn’t even glance at it. From the expression on his face it looked like he was trying to solve a complicated problem. Billy’s heart raced like a beagle’s on seeing a pheasant.
Yep, we got this son of a bitch, he thought. Right after the man passed, he texted Valencia: He’s here.
He then popped up out of his chair and moved to the front of the cargo area so he could peek out the front of the van. Ten seconds later he returned to the back window and watched the street that way long enough to confirm he was alone. In his mind, he repeated the meaningless phrase, shit-ma, just like he used to do in combat. He took the chewing tobacco out of his mouth and pushed it into the Gatorade bottle and rinsed his mouth with water.
Valencia texted back: We’re on our way.
Billy opened the door and popped out of the back of the van. Before he closed the doors, he fussed with a box and pulled out a big pair of headphones so he would look like everyone else. He stood there and plugged them into his phone, then quietly closed the van’s back door and began walking in the opposite direction from Avi. He passed the target house but didn’t even glance at it.
He walked another twenty yards down to Hillside Avenue, then crossed to the opposite side of 122nd Street and doubled back so he was walking in the same direction as his man. He couldn’t see the dude from where he was, but he knew he’d catch up to him. When he passed the house for the second time, he stole a look at it. All was quiet: the blinds were drawn, and there were AC units in the windows upstairs and down. By the time he passed his van again he could see Avi ahead of him about a hundred and fifty yards away.
Billy nodded along to some imaginary hip-hop, but the headphones were silent, and he was just thinking about how he’d like to choke this dude out. He’d put his head in his arm, wrap up his neck, and just squeeze. But not yet—just tag along and watch right now.
“Good boy,” Billy muttered to himself. “Good boy.”
By the next corner he’d closed the gap and he had to work to stay back. The sky was blue, and Billy was high from the pills. He pulled out his phone to make sure he hadn’t missed any calls, and when he looked back up, he saw a young woman walking a pit bull right toward him. She looked Puerto Rican or something, and she had hoop earrings, and she smiled when they passed each other.
Avi Lessing made a dogleg right onto Breevort Street, and Billy followed him. An old dude raking leaves from his lawn stared at Billy as he passed, and Billy threw up a two-fingered peace sign like someone bidding at an auction. The man looked down and kept raking.
Billy watched Avi Lessing enter a little bodega on the corner of Metropolitan Avenue. Without breaking stride, Billy walked right past it and sat on a bench near a bus stop with his shoulders slumped like a man who’d been waiting all day. He checked his phone, breathed in deeply from the pills he’d taken, leaned to look for the bus, tapped a little drum solo on his knees, and then glanced back at the bodega. Nothing. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and cursed.
His phone vibrated; it was Valencia, and after glancing again at the bodega, he answered.
“Where are you?”
“He went to the store,” said Billy, speaking into the microphone on the wire of his headphones.
“Okay, stay back, don’t get made.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Billy.
“You ready to pull him?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Billy.
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Billy looked over his shoulder just in time to see the man come out of the store. “Gotta go, call you back,” he whispered.
Avi Lessing was carrying a plastic bag and seemed to be walking faster now. Billy let him disappear around the corner and then sat there looking down Metropolitan like he was deciding on whether to take the bus or walk. In his mind he counted back—five, four, three, two, one, zero—then stood up and followed him.
The guy raking the lawn was gone this time. Up ahead, Billy could see the brown of Avi’s sweater swinging back and forth with his walk, like the backside of a horse. Billy crossed to the other side of 122nd Street, so he wouldn’t be directly behind him if he turned. He stayed about fifty yards back, and in an effort to look less suspicious, pretended to be texting on his phone.
After watching Avi enter his house, Billy got back in his van. He went to the large toolbox at the front of the hold, spun the combo lock, and opened it. He pulled out a black duffle bag and started filling it with tools. He put in some heavy-duty bolt cutters, a Maglite, a fifty-thousand-volt stun gun, duct tape, a spool of Kevlar wire, a pack of plastic double flex restraints, a ski mask, a pair of plastic gloves, a cinching hood, a Leatherman, and a crowbar.
Next, he pulled out a pair of black polyester pants, shook them out, and changed into them. He took the belt off his jeans and put it on the new pants and cinched them tight. He pulled his shoes back on, and then put on a shoulder holster and tightened the strap at his underarm. He checked the clip on his handgun and put it in the holster. He then pulled out a black jacket and put that on over everything.
To keep his face off any cameras, he put on a black baseball cap. Finally, just in case, he hooked his fake FBI badge onto his belt and covered it with his shirt.
When he was done with all that, he sat back down on his folding chair and watched out the back window, taking deep breaths to try to calm down. He was so amped up, he noticed he was sweating around his hairline and on his back. Shit-ma, he said in his mind—shit-ma.
Fifteen minutes later Valencia called back and said they were five minutes away. “Did you check the yard?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. House to the south—to the left if you’re facing the front door from the street—has four windows that face our dude’s house. The windows have blinds drawn, Danny said that house is occupied by a Mexican family. The house to the north doesn’t have any windows facing the lawn. There’s a large apartment building directly behind the target, but the trees block that pretty good.”
“And you can get in?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Get set up. We’ll text you when we’re moving. It will be a thirty-second count from text to knock.”
“Got it,” said Billy.
The call ended. Billy stood up near the back window and watched for a minute. The butterflies in his stomach felt like small birds. All was quiet. He then hopped out the back doors, pulled the duffle bag out, and got in the front of the van. He started it up, checked his side mirror, pulled away from the curb, and then made a quick U-turn. He cursed Avi’s house when he passed it, and drove toward Hillside Avenue.
At the red light, he stopped and put on his right turn signal and watched three separate people walking in different directions. When the light changed, he made his turn and drove one block down to 121st Street, and then turned right. He parked just past the apartment complex.
After hopping out, he turned and pulled his bag out, set the strap on his shoulder, and walked toward the side of the apartment building. An older man standing and smoking near the door of the apartment didn’t pay any attention to him.
Billy kept to the side of the apartment, down below the windows, and moved toward the back. There was trash on the ground and the trees were thick with green leaves, putting everything into shadow. He came out on a little alley that cut between the streets and found the fenced-in backyard of the Lessing house. He turned his back to the fence—which was chain-linked and ribboned with privacy tape—and stood there for a minute looking and listening to the area around him. Down the block, some reggaeton played on a sound system, but otherwise it was quiet.
Earlier that morning, he’d hopped the fence and scouted the location, but now he took out his bolt cutters, clipped the padlock on the gate, and then put the cutters back into the bag. He stayed there for a minute, making sure nobody had seen what he’d done. Then he took the cut lock, set it on the ground, and slowly pushed the gate open against some tall weeds on the other side.
The center of the yard was concrete with two little paths of overgrown grass running down its middle. There was a rusted-out barbecue grill, a few flat-tired bicycles, a barrel filled with trash, and two sagging clotheslines with nothing on them except clothes pins. Empty buckets, tangled hoses, and stacks of bricks filled the rest of the yard.
Watching the windows of the house, Billy walked next to the fence on his left. When he got about ten feet away from the nearest wall, he set his bag down and pulled out the spool of Kevlar wire. Then he crossed the yard, walking tall, like a man who had every right to be there.
On the other side, he bent down and tied a quick clove hitch, attaching the wire to the fence. When he was done, he walked back to the north side, clipped the wire, and, leaning into it, pulled it tight. He then hitched it to that fence about twelve inches off the ground. When he was done he plucked it like a guitar string.
Billy picked up the bag, walked right up next to the Lessing house, set the bag on the ground and pulled out his stun gun. Then he leaned with his back against the wall of the house and tried to listen for noise coming from inside.
All he could hear was his heart racing and the reggaeton playing down the block and a plane coming in to land at LaGuardia. Billy kept telling himself that nobody was going to come out that back door. They aren’t coming out. His phone vibrated and he looked at it and saw a text from Valencia: Set. He texted back: Set.
Then he closed his eyes and began counting back from thirty to zero. When he was at twelve, the back door of the house flew open and Avi Lessing came barreling out and hit the wire and went crashing down hard like he’d been shot. The impact knocked the air from the man’s chest.
Billy picked up his bag, walked over to the fallen man, looked all around for spying eyes, but didn’t see any. Avi was just starting to push himself up when Billy touched his shoulder with the stun gun and delivered fifty thousand volts, sending his body shaking like a hooked fish. When Billy was done, he looked back at the house and didn’t see any people or movement.
He looked at both houses around him and didn’t see anyone watching. Billy took out the flex-cuff and tied the unconscious man’s hands behind his back. Then he took the black hood and pulled it over the bald man’s head, cinching it tight. He grabbed Avi Lessing—hooded now—by the sweater and pulled him back toward his house and out of sight of the neighbors.
Billy kneeled down, put a hand on the man’s shoulder, watched the backyard and the surrounding area, and listened. Everything was quiet.
A sailboat somewhere on Long Island Sound.
The water was as still as a lake, not a single ripple, and Avi Lessing, squinting at the water, was trying to make sense of that. Why wasn’t it moving? How could it possibly be this still? There was a saying that addressed that kind of question, but he couldn’t remember it.
Anyway, it was a bright sunny day, and he turned and looked toward the bow of the ship and saw his mother and father standing there with paper plates in their hands. A small circle of strangers, also holding paper plates and talking quietly, stood around them. Avi was just starting to step toward the group when everything in his vicinity—the boat, the water, his parents, the strangers, the blue sky—got sucked up like a napkin and pulled through a tiny hole below his feet until all that remained was blackness.
When Avi opened his eyes, he found himself looking at the parquet floor in his living room. His ears were ringing. He could see dust motes and individual hairs on the floor. His mind was fogged, and his chin and knees hurt. There was a mineral taste in his mouth—blood; he moved his tongue around to check his teeth. He tried to raise his hand to his mouth, but it was stuck. He realized his hands were bound behind him.
What the hell was he doing on the floor? He turned on his side, looked up and saw a woman seated about five feet away. She had dark hair and she was dressed like a businesswoman, wearing a black pantsuit with a white shirt. She wore bright red lipstick. She was staring down at him with a flat expression on her face, and Avi, for a moment, had the distinct impression that she was a doctor.
A car honked outside, and everything clicked into place. He recognized her as the woman who’d come by the phone shop. Oh shit, he thought. He rocked back and forth and tried to pull his hands free, but they were strapped tight. “I gave you the phone!” he finally said.
The woman’s legs were crossed; she had on high heels. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her head moved about an inch and her eyes narrowed. She leaned toward him like she hadn’t heard what he’d said.
“I gave you the phone,” he repeated. In his mind, he ran through a list of people to blame, landing eventually on Yuri Rabinowitz.
He was just beginning to shift the blame to the Africans when a fresh wave of pain in his chin distracted him. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “They brought it to me. What? I’ll tell you who it was. The guys that sold me the phone, I’ll show you them. I’ll take you to them.”
Right then two things occurred to Avi Lessing: First, he noticed that he was missing his glasses. The second thought came on the heels of the first—Mommy is going to fucking kill me for this one.
He looked around the room. “Where is my mother?” he asked. He rocked on the ground, struggled against the binds until his wrists hurt. “Where is my mother?”
Then he yelled out “Mommy!”
The woman sitting across from him raised a finger to her mouth and shushed him.
“What did you fucking do with her?” he asked. “Where are my nieces? This is not—you can’t—you can’t just come into someone’s home. For what? For a phone? What is this? Where is she?”
“She’s downstairs with my men,” said the woman.
Avi’s eyes began blinking uncontrollably. Downstairs? Downstairs is an unfinished basement, he thought. It’s filled with cobwebs, it’s dirty—even I don’t go down there. He felt himself begin to sob. He couldn’t stop.
“What do you want? What the fuck do you want?” he asked. He craned his head up at her, aware that his face was now covered with snot. “What do you want?”
The woman leaned forward, squinted again, and scratched her neck. The house itself was silent. Beyond the house, Avi could hear the Dominicans down the block blasting their music. He pulled on his wrists again, but they pinched like they were being cut with a knife.
“Did you take something from that phone?” the woman asked.
“No!”
She stared at him in silence. “Did you take anything from that phone?”
“No!” he said, again. “Mommy?” he called out to the quiet house. Another shorter wave of crying passed through him.
“Those men who are with me, the ones who tied you up,” said the woman, standing up and walking to look out the window, “are downstairs with your mother and nieces.”
Avi watched her take out her cell phone and look at it.
“I’ve convinced them to give me five minutes. I wanted to see if talking worked. It seemed like the best way. I want you to think carefully about the next question I ask you,” she said. “Did you take anything off of that phone?”
“I copy all of the phones that pass through my business,” said Avi. “I back them all up, it’s normal, everyone does it. It’s called being careful. What the fuck?” He banged the side of his head against the floor in frustration.
“And after you copied it. Let me ask you this: did you give someone a copy of anything from that phone?” The woman sat down on the chair again.
“You’ll let us go?”
“I’ll let you all go.”
“My mother’s okay?”
“I think so,” said the woman.
“I sold it to an associate, a guy I know named Yuri.”
“Yuri what?”
“Yuri Rabinowitz,” he said. “It’s fucking Yuri Rabinowitz.”
The next morning, Yuri Rabinowitz stood at his living room window, holding the curtain back, staring out at the block outside his house. He took special interest in a white van parked forty yards to the north. “What’s with that van?” he asked his brother.
Slumped down with both hands in his underwear, Isaac turned from the MMA men fighting on the television, looked blankly at his brother, and asked him what he was talking about.
“Come here, asshole,” said Yuri.
The television blared: “Martinez going for the rear naked, he just needs to get that leg hooked around.”
“What?” asked Isaac.
“Turn that shit off—come here.”
Isaac cursed under his breath, muted the television, and pushed himself up off the couch. He looked even more hungover than Yuri felt.
“That one,” Yuri said, pointing when his brother joined him at the window.
“That’s Narek’s,” said Isaac, nodding at the house across the street from them. “Narek’s son, you know dude—what’s his name—Lil Dap, the weight lifter.”
Yuri was confused, because he’d understood that Lil Dap had moved to Florida.
“He’s a plumber,” Isaac continued.
“You’re sure it’s the same?” asked Yuri.
“It’s always there.”
Yuri watched his younger brother’s eyes go from Narek’s house to the van; there was something in his face that suggested he wasn’t sure.
“Do you know, or don’t you?” Yuri asked.
“What the fuck’s your problem?” said Isaac.
Yuri put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, but Isaac shrugged it off. For a moment it felt like they were screaming at each other without speaking. It felt like they might get into a physical fight, but Isaac turned and walked away.
On the television a man lifted a naked underarm and sprayed it with deodorant. Yuri’s gaze went back out the window and his mind sped through two memories. The first occurred over twenty years ago: he’d shot his brother in the face with a rubber band. His father was still alive then, and Isaac ran to him and tattled. As punishment his father tried to make Yuri sit still while Isaac shot him in the face with a rubber band, but both brothers had cried hysterically and the whole episode fell apart with spankings for both of them.
The second memory, from just a few weeks ago, involved an episode in an Uber. Isaac was drinking 7Up with cough syrup, and he’d spilled it in the back of the car. Something had snapped in Yuri, and he’d pummeled his brother in the head and neck and shoulders until their African driver screamed at them to get out.
Yuri turned toward the kitchen. “Do you know, or don’t you?” he yelled out, again.
The only answer was the sound of the refrigerator slamming shut.
At the front door, raging, Yuri stepped into his running shoes, opened the closet, pushed aside some coats, found his golf bag, and pulled out a five iron. He cleaned dirt from the head of the club with his sweatshirt. Motherfucker, he thought to himself. Motherfucker. He stepped outside into the morning sun, holding the club in his hand and keeping his eyes on the van.
He approached the van holding the club in both hands, loosening his wrists with little half circles like a batter. The van was a Chevy, over ten years old, rusted on the top near the windshield. Yuri felt sure he’d never seen it before.
His pulse thumped in his right temple and an angry feeling throbbed in his chest. When he got to the van, he peered in through the passenger window. A crumpled McDonald’s bag lay on the floor, along with two paper soda cups and a free magazine. The passenger seatbelt, oddly, was buckled.
Because of a partition behind the seat, Yuri couldn’t see into the back cargo area. He walked around the van, but there were no windows, not even in the back. No writing, no phone numbers. He put his ear to the back door and tried to listen. Then he tapped on the back door with his club, three times, politely, like he was afraid of waking a possible resident. The rear bumper had been dented at some point and cobwebs ran along its near edge.
Yuri’s stomach filled with dread. He felt like he wanted to cry. When he looked back at his house, he saw Isaac’s head disappear behind a curtain in the living room window.
Yuri turned and crossed the street to Narek’s house. When he pressed the doorbell it buzzed sharply, and a moment later the door swung open. Narek, an Armenian, stood there in sweatpants and a Knicks jersey, a gold chain hanging from his neck. Gray chest and back hair curled out from the shirt. Yuri watched the expression on the man’s face morph from concern to a kind of fake friendliness.
“Hey, wassup Mr. Yuri?” said Narek, drying his hands on his jersey. “Come in, come in.”
“It’s okay,” said Yuri. “I’m just wondering: is that your son’s van?” He pointed at the van with the handle of his golf club.
“Yeah, why? You don’t want it there?”
“No, it’s fine, I saw someone looking into it.”
“Oh shit”—Narek turned toward the interior of his house and yelled—“Yo Dap!”
“The guy left—just to make sure, you know.”
“Dap!” yelled Narek. “I told him not to park on the street,” he said to Yuri.
A moment later Lil Dap came down the stairs dressed like he’d just rolled out of bed. He was a large man, over two hundred and thirty pounds. He looked tired and slightly confused to see Yuri standing there. “What’s good, homey?” he asked, walking to the door and bumping fists with Yuri.
“Mr. Yuri saw a man looking in your van,” said Narek.
“A black dude?” asked Dap.
“I didn’t see his face,” said Yuri.
“You know, what’s-his-name?” asked Dap. “What’s-his-face, over there on Beaumont, your homey the fat dude?”
“Alex?” asked Yuri.
“Yeah, yeah, he told me his whole toolbox was taken out of the back of his van,” said Dap, stepping closer to Yuri and putting an oversized hand on his shoulder as he peered out toward his van with a concerned look on his face. Yuri smelled marijuana on him. “They had the motion lights and everything. What’s good with you though, man?”
“I’m good,” said Yuri, stepping back from Lil Dap.
“What was you gonna do, fuck this dude up with your golf club?” asked Lil Dap, laughing and looking at his father.
The older man crossed his arms, shook his head. “The whole neighborhood’s gone to shit,” said Narek. “It used to be neighbors watched out for each other.”
“They still do, Pop, look at him,” said Lil Dap, nodding at Yuri.
“Okay,” said Yuri. He felt sweat on his forehead. He stepped back again, finally freeing himself of Dap’s hand.
“Hey, tell your bro to get his ass over here for some Call of Duty,” said Lil Dap.
“I will, I will,” said Yuri, backing away and returning to his house.
What the fuck has come over me, wondered Yuri. Why am I so nervous?
Right then he heard the revving sound of a motorcycle and he knew it was Moishe Groysman.
His friend rolled up to him in the middle of the street, put the bike in neutral, pulled up his visor. “Grigory came this morning,” he said. “He asked when Uncle can expect to hear from you.”
“Fuck,” said Yuri. “Park over there, we’ll take a car.”
“Do I look okay?” asked Valencia, batting her eyelids. She was in the passenger seat of Milton Frazier’s SUV; they were parked in a no-parking zone on Lafayette Street, just off Foley Square, across the street from the U.S. District Courthouse. Valencia watched Milton’s eyes go from her face to her shirt, and back up.
He nodded his head, looked out the front. “Yeah, you do.”
She held up ten freshly painted fingernails and wiggled them at him. “Hair? Makeup?”
“It’s all good,” said Milton. “You look perfect.”
Valencia checked her teeth in the visor mirror and then bent her head and looked across the square at the courthouse. “Have you ever met this guy, Sandemose?” she asked.
“He’s a pervert.” She opened the door, stepped out, and then leaned back in the window. “Stay close, this shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”
After passing through the security line, she made her way toward Judge Palmetto’s courtroom. Utah Sandemose’s secretary had said the lawyer would be there all morning. Valencia needed a face-to-face for this; a phone call wouldn’t do.
Before entering the courtroom, she paused and imagined herself being bathed in a shower of white light, a warm beautiful bath that would make her posture perfect and her skin shine. Cleansed. When she finished, she took a deep breath, felt her chest expand, and pulled the door open.
The attorneys, the judge, and the two marshals ignored Valencia when she entered. The judge’s clerk—who tracked her with her eyes—was the only person who seemed to notice her.
Valencia sat in the back row, folded her hands in her lap, and listened as the assistant U.S. attorney—a man she’d never seen before—argued against a reduction of bail. While the man droned on and on about the defendant’s prior history, Valencia watched Utah Sandemose, who sat with another attorney at the defendant’s table. The defendant himself, for some reason, didn’t appear to be in the courtroom.
After ten minutes of argument, the judge made her ruling—bail reduction denied—and the lawyers, making small talk, gathered their papers and began moving toward the door. Sandemose didn’t notice Valencia until she stood. When he saw her, he flinched in mock surprise.
“Ms. Valencia Walker, to what do we owe the honor of your appearance?” He looked like a bigheaded cowboy dressed in a suit.
Valencia looked at the other man and noticed that he didn’t have any ears. It looked as though they’d been cut off.
“My paralegal, Vic,” said Utah, smiling.
Valencia shook hands with the paralegal. She wondered whether Utah was drunk. There was something about the volume of his voice that suggested inebriation. “I need to speak to you about something,” she whispered.
“Hear that?” He put his face in front of the paralegal and, moving his lips to allow for lip reading, loudly said, “I’ll meet you out front.”
“I’ll be there,” said the paralegal. He smiled at Valencia and left the two of them standing there inside the courtroom.
“Genius of a mind,” whispered Utah, nodding after the man. “Served six years in Allenwood, knows the law better than you and me. So, what the hell can I do for you?” he asked, stepping back and shamelessly looking at her chest.
“Yakov Rabinowitz,” said Valencia.
Utah exhaled audibly, looked away, licked his lips. “What about him?”
“We need to meet.”
“Oh, boy,” said Utah, lifting a hand to wave goodbye to the marshals. Then he ushered Valencia out into the hallway. “Now what the hell do you want to meet an old coot like him for?”
Valencia stopped walking and squared up to the lawyer. She let her head drop to the left a few degrees and softened her expression. “I need help from him,” she said in her smoothest voice.
“With what?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I probably don’t—you are right about that. So let me ask: is this for someone else?”
“The less you know the better,” said Valencia.
Utah’s eyes went over her shoulders. He watched some lawyers from another courtroom disappear down the hallway. “You know I don’t represent him anymore?”
“But I’m sure you’re still friendly with him.”
“Hell yeah, I am,” said Utah. “I kept him out, didn’t I?”
“I need to meet him,” she repeated.
They began moving toward the elevator.
“Tell me this: is your showing up going to make his day worse?” asked Utah. “He’s a nice fella, don’t look mean or anything, but he’s not the kind of guy you want to make mad. You understand what I’m talking about?
“I think so,” said Valencia.
“He gonna be unhappy to meet you?” asked Utah.
“Is anyone ever unhappy to meet me?”
The lawyer smiled, raised his eyebrows. “And you’ll agree to have dinner with me?”
“Of course I will. You know that.”
“And you’re not going to bring any of your old friends from over there”—he nodded east, toward Foley Square, toward the FBI offices—“into our little friend’s orbit.”
“I don’t have friends over there,” said Valencia, forcing herself to smile.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” said Utah. “I’ll give him a call, tell him you want to meet. I’ll tell him I have no idea what the hell you want to meet about. I’ll advise against it. Cover my ass that way. I’ll say, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t even take this meeting.’ I’ll have to tell him who you are.” Here he leaned in and whispered: “Langley, all of it.” Utah straightened up, spoke in a normal volume: “He’s gonna find out anyway. Don’t worry, I know that old boy, probably make him want to meet you even more.”
“You should come work with me,” said Valencia. She grabbed his wrist and gave it a squeeze. “We would make a hell of a team, wouldn’t we?”
“First a non-sexualized dinner,” said Utah. He pointed a big cowboy finger at her. “And you’re buying.”
* * *
“Take out a hundred, plus twenty,” said Yuri.
“A hundred?” asked Moishe. “I thought we said seventy-five?”
“The idea is to get more work, a calling card, not just the minimum.”
“Right here?” asked the Uber driver.
“Right there,” said Yuri, leaning forward and pointing at Ossip’s Locksmith Shop. “Right here, right here.”
Moishe took a moment folding the paper sack he’d brought with him and then got out of the car, leaving Yuri, Isaac, and the driver waiting.
When he got to Ossip’s door, he found it locked. He knocked and then cursed when he saw that Ossip wasn’t alone in the shop. A man stood near the counter with him. It was early in the day, but both men looked drunk. Ossip, smiling, came to the door and unlocked it.
“You have someone here?” whispered Moishe.
Ossip’s face reacted like he’d heard something obscene. “Him? He’s my cousin, you know Dimitri!”
Moishe leaned his head to look into the shop. Dimitri, the cousin, stood with both hands on the counter, like he was at a bar. He was skinny, had greasy hair, and wore a loose gray suit. He had a drug-weathered face and for the time being kept his eyes on the floor. Moishe didn’t recognize him.
Moishe turned back to the locksmith. “Wait right here, don’t fucking close that door.”
When he got back to the Uber, Moishe stepped to the front passenger window, leaned down, and spoke into it. “He has someone else.”
“What?” said Yuri, leaning forward to see. “I thought you told him we were coming?”
“I did.”
“Who is it?”
“He says it’s his cousin, Dimitri.”
From the back of the car, Isaac said, “Dima? Nah, he’s hella cool. He just got out. Hold on.” Isaac started to open the door, but Yuri turned and told him to stay where he was. He told Moishe to hold on, then pulled out his phone and sent a text message.
Moishe felt uneasy. He glanced at the driver, who was fussing with his own iPhone and pretending not to pay any attention to them. Moishe leaned away from the car and looked at the block around him. Everything was normal. An old woman carrying sagging bags walked past them on the sidewalk. A car honked at another car and pigeons flew into the air.
“I’ll come with you,” said Yuri, putting his phone in his pocket and getting out of the car. “We don’t hang out, we don’t drink, we just get what we came for.”
When they got to the door, it was closed but unlocked. Inside the shop, Ossip, seeming more sober now, introduced Dimitri. “He just got out,” said Ossip, speaking quietly to Yuri. “Sing Sing. A friend of your uncle.”
“Dima,” said the man, bowing his head formally and holding his hand out to Yuri. They shook. “Dima,” he said to Moishe, limping over to him and bowing his head again. He held his left hand on his chest like he was apologizing and shook hands with his right. The hand that Moishe grasped was both clammy and rough. There was something repulsive about it. Moishe himself had rough hands from lifting weights, but they weren’t anything close to this.
He pictured the man obsessively scraping his hands on rock walls until they bled and then cauterizing them over a candle. Moishe rubbed his own hands on his shirt and tried to catch Yuri’s eye, but his friend was staring blankly toward the front door. Moishe stepped to Ossip, grabbed his arm, and led him toward the back.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Ossip. Moishe followed, leaving Yuri and Dima in the front of the store. The hallway to the back was dark. Ossip said something about a bulb needing to be replaced.
“Why do you have someone here?” whispered Moishe.
“He stopped by,” said Ossip. “What am I going to do? He’s my aunt’s son. He’s a good boy.” Ossip went to the safe, bent over, and began spinning the dial. The windowless room was bright with fluorescent light. In addition to the safe, it contained a few file cabinets and a table covered with random tools and trash. Papers, receipt books, binders. A pornographic picture of a woman was taped to the far wall. The room smelled of cigarettes and dust.
Moishe could hear the low tones of Dimitri’s voice coming from down the hallway, but he couldn’t make out the words. He turned back just as Ossip was lifting the bag of money out of the safe and setting it on the worktable.
After unzipping the bag, Moishe counted out twelve ten-thousand-dollar stacks. Besides the hundred thousand for Yuri’s uncle, they were going to split another twenty for spending money.
When he finished, he turned toward Ossip and noticed that the man appeared to be nervous. “What’s a matter with you?” whispered Moishe. He then went back to the bag and silently counted the rest of the stacks. It was all there.
“Nothing,” said Ossip. “My heart hurts,” he added, tapping his chest. “I tell you, my friend—every day in this place,” he said, briefly switching to English. “How many did you take?”
“Twelve,” said Moishe. He put the money into the paper sack and rolled it shut. “Twelve,” he repeated.
The older man then moved the rest of the money over to the safe, put it in, and locked it. “Seventy-one minus twelve: fifty-nine,” said Ossip.
“Don’t say anything,” said Moishe, nodding toward the front of the shop.
“Don’t treat me like a fucking idiot,” said Ossip. “I wasn’t born yesterday.” He shook his head and led the way to the front of the store.
Moishe found Yuri—arms crossed, eyes cast down—listening to the end of some kind of war story. The only part that Moishe caught was something like “and that’s why Russian, white, black, Latin, it doesn’t matter.”
When Dima finished the story, his eyes went straight to the sack in Moishe’s hands. It was only a split second, and then his eyes ticked away, but Moishe felt the glance in his nervous system like he’d seen a snake on the ground. It jolted him.
Right then, Ossip—pulling Moishe by his free arm—said, “And now we have a drink.” He grabbed four small glasses and filled them with vodka. “For our cousin coming home.” He raised his glass. “A good boy.”
They toasted and drank. “One more,” he said, pouring another.
Yuri tried to protest but was ignored. A car’s horn blared outside.
“To Ossip,” said Dima, lifting his glass. “The best locksmith in Brooklyn.” The men lifted their drinks and drank.
The bell on the front door chimed just as they were finishing their drinks. All four men swung their heads and saw Isaac walk in.
“I told you to wait,” said Yuri.
“You should keep the door locked,” said Isaac, speaking to Ossip.
“We should go,” said Moishe, rolling the top of the paper sack tighter.
“Gotta pay my respects to the big homey,” said Isaac, stepping to Dima. “What’s good with you, man?” he asked.
Moishe watched in disbelief as Dimitri wrapped Isaac up in a bear hug and lifted the younger man off the ground. He then watched as the two of them had a back-and-forth, each complimenting how good the other man looked, squeezing each other’s arms and making promises to go out and party soon.
After another round of drinks, they finally headed for the door, but before they got there, Dima called out one more thing to Yuri: “Make sure you give my regards to your uncle.”
* * *
Earlier that morning, on the subway ride to work, Chris Cowley was approached by another man he’d never seen before. Chris had been standing near the door of the car holding on to the handrail when the stranger appeared in his peripheral vision. The train was three-quarters full; standing so close felt intentional. Chris didn’t turn and look, but he could tell the man was white and that he had brown hair.
For a moment, Chris experienced the unmistakable lifting feeling of attraction; his insides pulled up. His go-to phrase, Wanna fuck, passed through his mind. He became nervous. His problems momentarily disappeared, and as the train began to move, he was swept along, feeling the energizing sense of romantic possibility.
The fantasy was short lived. Moments after the train cleared the station, the man turned his head slightly and spoke into Chris’s ear. “Listen to me,” he said. “They want me to tell you to stop acting so depressed.”
Chris turned and looked. The attraction vanished. The man was ugly. His eyes were set close together, he had a large Adam’s apple, and he’d missed a spot shaving that morning, which gave the side of his chin a gross pubic quality.
“Excuse me?” said Chris.
“Don’t be so”—the man pantomimed a depressed person—“all the time.”
Chris looked at him and then dropped his eyes to the floor of the subway.
“Try to act normal,” said the man. “You’re pissing off the wrong people.”
The man then stepped to a nearby seat, sat, and stared at Chris. Chris turned back to the window and watched the dark tunnel speed past. What the fuck? A sick feeling moved in his guts.
His mother had taught him to name these feelings but all he could come up with was—a glacier, a gross, dirty glacier. He turned back to the man and tried to glare at him, but the man’s face looked angry, as if he wanted to fight; and just like that Chris got scared and looked away.
Pathetic, Chris thought. I am truly pathetic. He licked his lips. Had there been any witnesses to this interaction? A glassy-eyed old woman stared at him, but in a vacant way. Nobody else seemed to be paying any attention.
The train pulled into the East Broadway stop and Chris patted his pocket to make sure his phone was there. He found it inside his jacket. Then he closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply. Calm down, you piece of shit.
Thankfully, the man didn’t follow him off the train. In fact, he even appeared to keep his eyes closed while Chris made his exit. That didn’t stop Chris from looking over his shoulder three times on his way out of the station. As he walked, he repeated Act normal to himself, like some kind of mantra.
Chris spent the morning seated at his desk, taking shallow breaths and trying to will the toxicity out of his guts. He couldn’t help wondering whether that man was even part of the other group—but of course he was.
After lunch he attended a meeting and did his best to appear alert and eager. He played his role, sat straight, and didn’t say anything except hello and goodbye. As soon as he left the meeting the conversations in his head picked back up: All I did was look at pornography, you fucking sickos. You backward-ass mother-fucking thugs.
His problems continued. Shortly after the meeting, walking to the bathroom, he crossed paths with Elizabeth Carlyle. He couldn’t avoid her this time. There was nothing he could do. The sight of her caused his blood pressure to shoot up; his bowels tightened.
Still, he maintained his stride, kept his eyes on her, and even managed to nod. They were alone in the hallway. They didn’t speak, they just passed each other, and the look on Elizabeth’s face left Chris feeling bothered for the rest of the afternoon. He played the scene over and over in his mind and tried to analyze exactly what had been so disturbing about her expression. It wasn’t the displeasure; beneath that he sensed something worse: sadness. Anger was one thing, sadness another. She was sad for him. She pitied him. Fuck, Chris thought. I really am fucked.
At 3:47 p.m. he checked his cell phone and saw that he’d missed a call from his mother. Standing by the window in his office he called her back. They had just gotten through their normal routine of insipid greetings when she said something truly disturbing: “So remind me who that friend was that stopped by last night?”
“What friend?” asked Chris. He tried to make his voice sound calm and not betray any of the fear he was feeling.
“Didn’t you listen to my message?”
“No, Mom—I just called you back,” he said, chopping at the air with his hand. “What friend are you talking about?”
“Hold on.”
Chris looked out the window and imagined throwing himself from it. He’d feel the rush of air and see the ground racing to meet him; the traffic noise would grow louder as he flew down, and the gray pavement would turn black.
“Where is it?” said his mother. “Oh, here, yes, I wrote it down: John. He said to tell you he happened to be passing through town and he thought you’d be here. What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” said Chris.
“Honey, I told him—wait, I had something else I needed to tell you. What did I—”
“Mom, what did he say? Who was he?”
“He said he was your friend.”
“What did he look like?”
“Honey, he looked like your friend Drew, but older. I thought he was one of Drew’s brothers for a minute but—”
“What exactly did he say?” asked Chris, taking the phone away from his ear and speaking into it like a handheld radio.
“He said, ‘Hi, Ms. Cowley.’ I said, ‘Ms. Peterson now,’ and he said, ‘Is Chris around?’ He said you told him you’d be here.”
“You’re in New York. You’re not coming home, are you?”
Chris rubbed his eyes and thought about how much he should tell her. “No, Mom, unfortunately, I’m not. I think we just got our signals crossed.”
“Our what?”
“We got our signals crossed. Mom, listen, let me call you back a little bit later, okay?”
“Okay, honey, Bill and I will be at Murphy’s with Linda and Tim, but after that—”
After ending the call, Chris stood there staring out the window. How bad, he wondered. How bad is this? It was clearly a threat. The man on the train came back to him: “Stop acting so depressed.”
Chris turned from the window and was startled to see Michael D’Angelo, the investigator, standing in his doorway. “Jesus,” Chris said. “Don’t you knock?” He couldn’t hide his anger.
“Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt you,” said D’Angelo, stepping into the office, holding his hands in front of his crotch. “It sounded …”
“It’s my mother,” said Chris. “She’s having a really hard time.”
“It sounded urgent.”
“No,” said Chris. The two men stood there staring at each other for a moment until Chris asked what he could do for him.
“Just checking in. You seemed kind of shaken up the other day. Again, I just …”
Chris stood there blinking. How the hell was he going to get rid of this imbecile? He tried to smile, but it only made him feel sadder. He turned toward the window, then back to D’Angelo, and said, “I’m having a really hard time with my boyfriend. He just, like, doesn’t get me.”
D’Angelo nodded, pursed his lips, and said, “Well, like I said, any time you need to talk, just let me know.” He took a step back toward the door.
Chris saw his advantage and pressed on. “It’s just, like, relationships aren’t easy, you know?”
“I do,” said D’Angelo, but instead of retreating the way Chris had hoped he would, he stopped and stood there, looking at the ground and shaking his head.
“Anyway,” said Chris.
“Yeah,” said D’Angelo, looking up. “I’ll let you get back to it.”
At his desk, Chris put his head in his hands and hummed a song to himself. Then he straightened up and checked the time; it was 3:51 p.m.
The expression on Elizabeth Carlyle’s face wasn’t the kind of pitying look that Chris had presumed. It was simply depression; an etched-on, deep depression. Which isn’t to say she’d forgotten about Chris, just that she was done thinking about him. Her energy was not well spent on such a small character. Her problems were much larger than Chris Cowley. Her problems were legion.
At four p.m., Edwin Kerins, one of the Calcott Corporation’s in-house counsel was calling for his regular weekly update. Elizabeth had already told him Chris Cowley’s phone had been stolen, and that it had documents from the case on it. She hadn’t yet told him they were being blackmailed, and she didn’t intend to.
“Edwin in five,” said Andy, when she passed his desk.
“I know,” she said, entering her office and closing the door behind her. She went to her mirror and applied a new coat of lipstick. She checked her skin and brushed off a little bit of visible powder on her jawline. She checked her roots for gray. Stand straight, she told herself, pulling her shoulders back, and adjusting her bra. She went to her desk and sat down.
For the hundredth time that day, she reviewed the state of the case as she waited for the call to come in. After the failed merger, Emerson Trust Bank sued the Calcott Corporation for breach of contract and other claims. Calcott, in turn—under Elizabeth’s guidance—counter-sued with forty-six claims of their own.
Embedded inside one of these claims was an allegation that Emerson Trust had colluded in bond-price manipulation. The fact of the matter was both banks had colluded in this way. They’d been fixing the price of unsecured bonds for years. Elizabeth was essentially playing a billion-dollar game of chicken. She was daring Emerson to go through with their suit, telling them she would expose both of their bond-rigging practices if they went forward. It was the nuclear option, and she was playing it in the opening hand.
All of it—because of the money to the shell company in Oman. Elizabeth thought about the conversation she’d had with the fund manager who made that transaction. He told her it had been vetted by someone named Maurice Denny, another in-house attorney for the Calcott Corporation. When Elizabeth tried to talk to Denny, she was told that he had retired eight months earlier.
When she called him on his home phone, Denny apologized. He told her he wouldn’t be able to speak with her, and that she should call his attorney. She’d brought this information to Charles Bloom, the CEO of Calcott.
He’d stood up from his desk, stepped to the door and closed it. He motioned for her to sit at the table near the window. He then told her that the money had been sent to encourage a licensing deal on an oil field in Saudi Arabia.
“It was a sloppy move. I shut it down,” he said. “Maurice Denny is a good man. He’s a family man. He worked for me for sixteen years. I asked him to retire when this came to my attention.”
It had taken Elizabeth great effort not to show any sign of incredulity. “I asked him to retire,” repeated Charles Bloom. “And he did. As far as I’m concerned that little chapter is closed.”
Chiming over her intercom, Elizabeth’s assistant interrupted her thinking: Edwin Kerins was on line three.
“Edwin, how are you?” said Elizabeth, leaning back in her chair as she answered the phone.
“I’ve had better days,” he said. “You saw the judge’s ruling on our motion to preclude?”
“Yes,” she lied, opening her email and scanning it to see if she’d missed anything. There was nothing about a ruling. “Unbelievable. But predictable.”
“Exactly,” said Edwin. “Bloom’s gonna have a real shit fit over this.” The man was famous for his shit fits. “But what is he going to do? Fire us all?”
“Tell him bad rulings are good for the record, and Judge Sandoval is leaving a—”
“Honestly, Liz, I think in this situation it would make more sense if you could inform him. I mean it was your gang that argued it, and it seems like you might have a better handle on the—”
“Okay, let me talk to Sujung. I’ll schedule a call for tomorrow,” said Elizabeth, tapping her hand impatiently on her desk.
“Perfect,” he said. “And just so we’re on the same page, narrative-wise, Jimmy Hipps says the best approach, press-wise, is absolute silence. No stories. I know you know that, but Jimmy, well—you know.”
“Of course,” said Elizabeth. She checked her cell phone for any missed messages from Valencia. There were none.
“So, from our end we’ll have Eric, Miles, Ken, and Doug J. work on the discovery requests, and on your end, you and Sujung and her team will continue with document review and evidence prep.”
Edwin Kerins droned on for another thirty-five minutes. Elizabeth pictured him sitting back in his chair with his feet crossed on his desk. That’s what kind of lawyer he was. He was twelve years her junior, with extremely limited trial experience. Nevertheless, when he paused, or, even better, asked if she agreed with what he was saying, she told him she did. The man wasn’t worth arguing with. He was a non-player, but she couldn’t just ignore him; she had to humor him.
When the call finally ended, she dialed Valencia on her mobile. She needed good news, but the call went straight to voicemail.
Fourteen miles to the south, in Brighton Beach, Yuri, Isaac, and Moishe were just arriving at Agniya’s Laundry Service. After entering and seeing that there were no customers, Yuri thought about turning the dead bolt and flipping the sign to Closed. Instead, he made a little show of looking out the front window like he was afraid of being followed. In the middle of this he realized how tense his face was.
He tried to make it relax by opening his mouth, then decided this might look even more strange, so he turned back into the room and made a fuss of brushing at some lint on his pants.
Agniya, a doughy woman in her seventies, was a distant cousin of the brothers and had grown up with the older Rabinowitz family outside Moscow. Now, standing behind the counter, with her hands in her sweatshirt pockets, she greeted the boys by shaking her head like they were late.
Yuri watched Isaac step to the counter. He leaned over it and kissed the old woman on both cheeks in a way that made her smile. As this was happening, Moishe placed the bag of money on the counter, dusted his hands off, and patted his pockets.
“Boys,” said Agniya, “it’s been over a year since you’ve come to my house. We’re old now, how much longer do you think we have?” She looked at each one of them, pleading. “The only pictures we’ve taken were at Leonid’s wedding. You were children then. I have beautiful picture frames at home that are hanging on the walls empty.” She stopped talking long enough to take a breath. “Nothing inside. Empty frames. Do you know how horrible that is?”
Just then a fire truck raced past the store, sirens blaring. Yuri pulled at his jacket sleeves. Agniya had a special talent for making him feel guilty.
The woman moved to the bag of money, put both hands on the paper sack, as if she were estimating its girth, and then called out, “Yulia!”
A moment later a young laundress wearing a head scarf appeared from the back of the store and without looking at the visitors, picked up the bag of money and disappeared behind the garment conveyor.
Yuri watched her go, then looked back at Agniya.
“I’m telling you this not for my own benefit,” said the old woman. “I’m saying it for your well-being. You never know how much you miss your relatives”—here she tapped her bosom, frowned—“until they are gone.” She knitted her meaty fingers together in front of her chest. “Think of your father.”
“Auntie, please,” said Yuri. “We’ll visit. We promise. We’ll even bring Moishe.” He put his hand on his friend’s back.
“Please?” said Agniya.
Yuri nodded. “We will,” he said, switching to English.
“You’re going to see your uncle now?” she asked.
When they said yes, she went to the conveyor and pulled out four plastic-covered dress shirts. “Drop these to him,” she said. The men kissed her goodbye, opened the door, and left.
“Fuck,” said Isaac, when they got outside. “She’s worse than Mom.”
From there, they walked under the Q tracks toward Yakov’s office. Isaac carried the clean shirts slung over his shoulder. While not all the shopkeepers in the area knew specifically who these young men were, they had a sense of what they were, and they watched them without making a fuss.
The office was on the third floor of a corner brick building on Brighton Beach Avenue. The ground floor of the building housed a discount clothing store. The men walked past the store—flirting with a young saleswoman on their way—and rounded the corner to a side door that led up to the office. Yuri pressed a small black doorbell and all three men stood straight for the camera until the metal door buzzed open.
Yuri led the way up the stairs. The second floor of the building housed a real estate firm Uncle Yakov had helped set up. Yuri glanced in the window but didn’t see anyone and kept climbing the stairs. When they got to the third floor, they rang a second doorbell, and again stood with their faces toward a small camera.
Yuri looked at the floor and saw a tangle of light brown hair. A moment later, their uncle’s bodyguard, Grigory Levchin, opened the door. The big man greeted each of them, shaking their hands, giving Yuri a half hug, and then leaned and looked down the stairs to make sure nobody had followed them into the building. He put his arm around Isaac, squeezed his biceps, and led the group toward their uncle’s office.
While he walked, he spoke in Russian about an associate of theirs who had been arrested in Germany.
The hallway was carpeted, and there were posters of vacation destinations on the wall, making it look like they’d walked into a travel agency. Jamaica, Puerto Vallarta, Costa Rica, Málaga.
Yuri could hear the sound of a baby crying somewhere on the other side of the office, and, from the other direction, the pounding noise of a jackhammer. He could smell Grigory’s cologne. It smelled like sandalwood.
Their uncle’s door was closed. Grigory took his arm off Yuri’s shoulder, turned toward the three of them, and held his hands up like he was trying to calm an impatient crowd. “He’s just finishing something,” said Grigory.
“We saw Dimitri,” said Isaac.
Grigory made a pained face, as though this news bothered him. “Six years, but he kept it”—Grigory made a zipped-mouth gesture—“the man is a crazy son of a bitch, you have to respect him. What did he say about us?”
“He said to say hello,” said Isaac.
“To pay our respects,” said Yuri.
“Whatever,” said Isaac, switching to English. “Dima’s the man. I love that guy.”
Grigory shook his head, pointed at Isaac. “Dimitri is not the man. He can be a good person for keeping his mouth shut, but you say hello, you greet him, you shake his hand, you pay your respects, and you move on. You don’t go drinking with him. You don’t go to your clubs with him. The man is tainted, you know what I mean?”
Yuri turned toward his younger brother. “I told you,” he said. He grabbed the laundry out of his brother’s hand. “You’ll wrinkle it, stupid.”
Isaac made a face; Yuri’s behavior was embarrassing him. Yuri’s cheeks got warm and he pretended to attend to the shirts. Fucking little shit, he thought. Arrogant prick.
After a moment the door opened and they heard the sound of goodbyes being exchanged. Three men Yuri had never seen before stepped out of the room. They looked Russian, but there was something different about them. For a moment, Yuri wondered if they’d come from over there.
“Mr. Rabinowitz’s nephews,” said Grigory, lowering his chin and holding his hand toward Yuri.
The man closest to Yuri was tanned and had deep wrinkles on his forehead; the comb-marked sides of his white hair were slicked back behind his ears. All three of the strangers wore neatly ironed pants, silky sweaters, and expensive shoes. One of them had a gold chain visible underneath his sweater. One carried a soft briefcase. The wrinkle-faced one shook Yuri’s hand, lifted his eyebrows to the laundry and said, “Good boy.”
Grigory shook hands with all three of the men, and then they were led out. “Los Angeles,” said Grigory, under his breath when they were gone.
“Hollywood,” said Isaac. “MTV, fucking Vanderpump, all of it. Send me to work for them. I’ll be their protection.”
Grigory shushed him, and they entered their uncle’s office. The place was large and had high ceilings, but it wasn’t fancy. The lights were fluorescent. About a dozen cardboard boxes, stacked three high, leaned against the far wall. A never-ending supply of merchandise seemed to accumulate in this building.
Yuri’s eyes passed from the cardboard boxes to a pile of new purses in the far corner. A tall, dust-covered fan stood near the purses and blew a soft breeze back over the room. Yakov Rabinowitz—wearing a light tan sweater and looking wealthy—sat behind his desk and smiled when he saw the group. He seemed well rested and pleased with the meeting he’d just had.
Grigory took the laundry out of Yuri’s hands and hung it in a closet. The place smelled of cigarettes even though a window had been cracked.
Uncle Yakov got up from his seat and crossed the room. He grabbed Yuri’s hands, pulled him in, and kissed him on both cheeks. He then repeated this greeting with Isaac and Moishe. “Good boys,” said their uncle, gesturing toward the closet. “You visited your sweet aunt.”
He tapped his chest: “Agniya—poor light from the sun—you wouldn’t know it now, but she used to be the most beautiful girl.”
“She’s still beautiful,” said Isaac.
Uncle Yakov stepped to him and rubbed his cheek. “That’s right,” he said. He raised his hand toward a couch, and the boys sat down.
“So?” asked their uncle, sitting across from them.
“We dropped something for you at Auntie’s,” said Yuri.
“You dropped laundry,” said Grigory, looking up from his phone.
“Dropped your laundry,” said Yuri.
Uncle Yakov made a troubled face and waved his hand up and down as if saying, Be quiet, there is no need to speak of such things. “Now,” he said, leaning toward the boys. “They used to say, ‘If you don’t have a river to jump in, then don’t pick a fight with a wasp.’ Have you ever heard this?”
Yuri shifted in his seat and shook his head.
The older man lowered his voice: “It means if you pick a fight with a law firm, don’t mail them letters first saying exactly what your plan is.”
Yuri didn’t know what his uncle was trying to say. When he glanced at his brother, he saw him nodding along like he understood exactly what the old man meant.
Uncle Yakov decided to get to the point. “Does anybody know what you did?” His face became serious, almost sad-looking. Nobody answered.
“I had a call from a friend. He says a woman has been asking about me and wants to meet. You know what I said? I said this seems very unusual.” He turned toward Grigory and said, “Right?”
Grigory clenched his jaw, nodded his head.
“My friend says this woman is a very high-class kind of person; she works for important people. Rich people. Americans. She wants to meet with me. I think to myself, I have no business with this woman. Why would she want to meet with me? I’m thinking, lawyers, lawyers, lawyers—you know—law firms, Manhattan lawyers, law firms, lawyers, it hits me: You boys. Your little plan,” said Yakov, rubbing his forehead like he had a headache.
“Uncle,” said Yuri.
“No,” said Yakov, holding up his hand and silencing his audience. “I wouldn’t have said okay to you boys if I didn’t want you to do it. That’s my fault. Still, here we are.” He looked at each of the younger men in turn. “Listen to me: we are businessmen; we take chances.” He turned toward Grigory. “Right?”
Grigory frowned and shook his head: he didn’t know if the statement was right or wrong.
“I need to know something, though,” said Yakov. “I need to know exactly how many other people know about it. No”—he raised his hand and again shushed the men on the couch—“I need the facts so I can be well informed when I speak with this woman. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
Yuri pictured Avi Lessing’s face—soft and smiling—and it occurred to him that he’d made a great mistake. “The only person who knows is the man who brought us into it.”
“And who is this?” asked Yakov.
“He’s a friend, he’s a, um, he’s—”
“A Russian?”
“He’s an American Jew.” Yuri glanced at his brother next to him to see if he was planning on joining the conversation at any point, but Isaac sat there silently. The expression on his face seemed to suggest he’d been against the plan the entire time. “He’s harmless.”
“Well, harmless or not, I would consider talking to him, reasoning with him. Just make sure he never speaks to anyone,” said their uncle.
Yuri looked down at the floor and tried to understand exactly what his uncle was suggesting. “Talk to him?”
“Talk to him,” said the older man.
Yuri looked at Grigory for help, but the large man just sat there shaking his head.
Billy Sharrock sat in the back of his white van. Parked just down the block from Yakov Rabinowitz’s office, he had a good angle on the boys when they emerged from their meeting. He used his remote control and snapped a burst of pictures. After looking at the images on his computer monitor, he went over to his blacked-out back window so he could observe them with his own eyes.
Billy hadn’t been following them that morning; he’d been watching their uncle. He started the day at 4:09 a.m., parked a block away from the old man’s house. Nothing happened until 9:22 a.m., when a black SUV pulled into the driveway. The driver got out and entered the house. Billy texted the plate number to Danny Tsui, who told him the car was registered to a limousine service in Queens.
At 10:48 a.m., Billy watched the driver come back out of the house. This time he was accompanied by Yakov Rabinowitz. Billy snapped away with his camera and got pumped up on adrenaline just from the sight of the man. He trailed them to Park Slope, where Yakov Rabinowitz appeared to visit a doctor’s office. At one point, his driver stepped out and entered a café—presumably to use the restroom—and Billy was able to attach a small GPS device to the SUV’s chassis.
It was 1:48 p.m. when the boys came out from meeting with their uncle. Billy had already identified Yuri Rabinowitz and his little brother Isaac when they entered the building. He’d been given a packet of information that included their pictures. A third unidentified man had accompanied them in and out.
Billy had already told Valencia that the younger Rabinowitz boys were in the building. She had told him to call her when they came out.
“I’m looking at them right now,” he told her.
“How are they acting?” asked Valencia.
“Well,” said Billy, “they aren’t hiding their faces, let’s say that. No hoodies, no hats.”
“Little shits,” said Valencia.
“I put a rat on the old man’s vehicle. You want me to stay with the boys, see what they’re up to?”
“You read my mind,” said Valencia. “But don’t—I repeat—don’t let them see you. I don’t care if they lose you. Stay way the hell back.”
Something about the way she was speaking annoyed Billy, but he didn’t say anything.
“Got it?” she asked.
“Yeah, I got it,” said Billy. They ended their call.
The boys stood on the corner talking. The older one seemed to be speaking heatedly to the younger one. He tapped his brother on the chest and shook his head. The unidentified man stayed out of it and just stared down the street with his arms crossed. A woman walking past gave them a wide berth.
Then a car pulled up, and the men walked toward it. Billy watched Yuri Rabinowitz walk around to the front passenger door. Right before he got in, Yuri took a moment and stared across and down the block, directly at Billy’s van.
Reflexively, Billy held his breath and leaned back from the window.
He didn’t follow them when they left.
Instead, he called Valencia and told her he thought they took a look at his van when they drove past.
“Go home,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Billy. He cursed himself up and down. An ugly and foul mood came over him that seemed like it would last the rest of the day.
Later, Valencia’s phone buzzed again. This time, it was Yakov Rabinowitz’s old lawyer.
“Just got off with our friend,” said Utah Sandemose.
“And what did he say?” asked Valencia. She was sitting in her living room, wearing a bathrobe. Her hair was wet.
“You’re gonna owe me more than dinner,” said Utah.
“Ooh la la,” said Valencia.
“He said he’d meet with you tonight. You’re free, right?”
Valencia felt a tightening around her shoulders and chest. She looked out her window at the storm clouds that had moved in over the city; but it hadn’t started raining yet. She pulled her robe closed. “Will you be there?”
“Hell, no, I’m staying out of this shit,” said Utah. “I made it very clear that I didn’t think he should sit down with you, although I did tell him you possess your own charms.”
“Well, then I definitely owe you more than dinner,” said Valencia. She leaned over and peered through her bedroom door just in time to see Milton Frazier—wearing nothing but a white towel—walk past.
“First things first, though,” said Utah. “There’s a spot he likes to go to—don’t ask me why—it’s in the Garment District, a little kosher spot, Uzbek. It’s nothing fancy. It’s at 358 West Thirty-Seventh Street. You got it?”
Valencia repeated the address.
“Eight p.m. Get the stuffed cabbage. It’s actually pretty damn good.”
“And when are we going to have our own date?” asked Valencia.
“Shit,” said Utah. “I’m about to be in trial, but don’t think I’m not gonna be thinking about you every single night.”
“I’m sure you’ll call me when you’re ready,” said Valencia.
“Guilty as charged,” said Utah.
After ending the call, Valencia sat there for a moment, biting her thumbnail. Her mind jumped to the question of why Rabinowitz had chosen a location within walking distance of the law firm. I’m not afraid, he seemed to be saying. This man is a little son of a bitch, she thought. A cheeky little bastard.
Right then, Milton walked into the living room, tying his tie.
“Have you ever had stuffed cabbage?” asked Valencia.
“We used to eat that over there sometimes,” said Milton, referring to his time overseas.
Valencia stood up from the couch, tightened her robe around herself. “Mr. Rabinowitz has agreed to meet me tonight,” she said, trying to make it sound like bragging. But she felt her spirits plunge as she spoke.
“So I heard,” said Milton.
“What do you think I should wear?”
“He’d probably like to see you in that little white suit that you wore to that one thing.”
“No,” said Valencia, walking to her bedroom. “This is an evening date, I’ll wear my navy blue suit, the tight one, and put on lipstick and wear gold.”
“We call that your bad-boy suit.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” asked Valencia, turning from the doorway.
“Me and Billy.”
“You guys sit around and talk about my clothes?”
“Only like, ‘Watch out—she’s got her bad-boy suit on—don’t say nothing out of turn.’”
Valencia walked to her closet, pulled the suit out, and laid it on her unmade bed. In her dresser she found her favorite underpants. She took her robe off and pulled those on, and then fit herself into a matching bra. Something about Milton’s tone had annoyed her. He was being overly familiar. Even if they had just shared a bed, she was still his boss. “I’m going to need you to drive me there and wait for me,” she called out over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” he said. “No problem.”
She stepped to the mirror in the bathroom and wiped fog from it. Then she examined her face in the reflection and gently patted in toner. In her mind, she played with ideas of hurtful things she could say to Milton, but all her options seemed too obvious.
“Billy’s a naughty boy, and he needs to be spanked,” she whispered to herself. Then, practicing what she might say to Milton, she whispered, “Get out.”
She rubbed some cream into her face and puckered her lips at her reflection. Her mother had given her porcelain skin; she was thankful for that. She’d look perfect for the meeting, glowing. Yakov Rabinowitz wouldn’t be able to resist her charms. Thank you, Mother, she thought.
After getting dressed, she came into the living room, where Milton was sitting up straight on the couch, as if waiting for a job interview. It was too much. She looked at the clock; it was only a quarter past six. She didn’t have to leave for another hour and fifteen minutes.
“You know what,” she said flatly. “Why don’t you go and get some fresh air. I need to make some calls. Just text me at seven thirty, when you’re downstairs.”
After she said them, the words hung in the air for a moment. Milton’s lower lip pushed out and covered his upper one. He lifted himself up off the couch and pulled on his coat. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, unable to hide his annoyance.
When the door closed, Valencia flopped herself down on the couch in the spot he’d just left, checked her cell phone, and then put her fingers on her wrist and felt her pulse. “Call your fucking wife,” she whispered, speaking to an imaginary Milton. She closed her eyes, and in her mind she saw the clouds outside her window covering the sky completely. Then she saw her mother, who had passed away many years ago.
Chris Cowley stood in the lobby of his office building waiting for his Uber. He held his phone in his left hand and used his right finger to race through the headlines. The news did nothing to calm his nerves. The world was falling apart. The president was a joke—a racist laughingstock; there seemed to be a new climate disaster every day. There were mass shootings and terrorist attacks. And his Uber driver—as he tracked him on the app—was moving like he had four flat tires. Fuck me, thought Chris.
Across the lobby someone barked out a demonic laugh. Chris squinted that way but all he saw was a group of security guards, and none of them were laughing. He looked back down at his phone: his Uber was two minutes away.
“Don’t be so depressed”—he couldn’t stop thinking about that. Don’t be so depressed? Who were these people? Literally who were they? Nothing about the situation he found himself in made sense, but there was something particularly maddening about being told not to be depressed.
When his ride arrived, Chris walked out to it and spent a second comparing the plate number to the number on his phone. “For Chris?” he asked, opening the back door. The driver was white, which made Chris pause, until the man spoke with a Slavic accent of some kind and confirmed that Chris was at the right car.
They looped around and headed downtown on Park Avenue, where they hit a red light. Outside Chris’s window, an old white-haired woman bent down and looked in at him. She was only a few feet from the window. She didn’t appear to be homeless, but there was something off about her. She squinted and gestured with her hands like she was asking, What?
Chris had no idea what the woman wanted; to avoid looking at her, he pulled out his phone. A moment later, she banged on the window right next to his head; she tried to open the door, but it was locked.
It made Chris flinch; he scooted to the other side of the car.
The driver rolled down his own window to talk to her, but then the light changed and he took off.
“What was that?” asked Chris. He turned in his seat to look for the old woman, but he couldn’t see her.
“I think she thought I was her ride,” said the driver.
Chris busied himself buckling his seatbelt, hoping to cover up how scared he’d gotten when she tried to open the door. He thought about saying something but stayed silent.
“People are crazy here,” said the driver, gesturing out at the street in front of him. “Everyone is crazy, you know that?” He reached out and grabbed the rearview mirror and adjusted it at an odd angle so he could look right at Chris.
Chris shook his head. He didn’t want to be stared at.
“They’re all depressed,” said the man.
Chris’s mouth dried up. “Excuse me?”
“Everyone so depressed. My country poor, but not so many people crazy.”
Chris leaned and looked at the little identification placard on the dashboard. The name read Abdulmalik Juraev, which didn’t seem to match the accent. “Where are you from?” asked Chris.
“Florida,” said the man, smiling at the lie. “I was born and raised in Florida.”
Chris looked at his Uber app to make sure he was in the right car. He felt nauseous. There was no end to his problems. “Where are you really from?”
“I’m from Tajikistan,” he said.
“Nobody’s depressed there?” asked Chris.
“Depressed? I tell you what, people there are depressed because they’re poor. People here—what do they—people get depressed if they’re not being followed.”
Chris leaned forward in his seat. He couldn’t tell if the man was trying to deliver some kind of message. “What are you trying to say to me?”
“What?” Right then a truck veered into their lane and the driver jerked the steering wheel and hit the horn. The driver’s eyes went back to the mirror.
“I’m sorry—please,” said Chris, gesturing at the road.
“I’m saying here people are depressed when they’re not being followed by the paparazzi—when they’re not on camera all the time.”
“Seriously, if you have something you want to tell me, just—”
The man—suddenly seeming angry—interrupted him. “I’m telling you it’s not all about money—you don’t just take, take, take. Try helping someone.”
“Me?”
“America,” said the man.
Chris bit his thumbnail and looked out at the street. People were leaving work to meet their friends. They were going out to have drinks. He used to be one of those people. He used to go out to clubs and hook up with random dudes, make out with them. He used to send text messages to his friends and go out for brunch. He used to listen to podcasts and watch movies and cook food and go out to dinner. What happened to all that? What happened to exercising, yoga classes, bicycle riding, farmers’ markets? Was that life completely over?
The driver adjusted his mirror; moved it back to its normal place. Chris watched him shake his head, like he couldn’t believe how stupid his passenger was. The stupidest passenger he’d ever had.
They rode the rest of the way in silence.
Valencia arrived at the restaurant at two minutes before eight p.m. The windows of the place had butcher paper taped to the insides, making it impossible for her to see in. She took a moment to quiet her mind and then pulled open the door.
Standing there waiting for her was an old man with a mustache. He wore a navy suit, no tie, and he looked startled to see her. Apparently expecting someone else, he raised a hand and spoke, “No, I’m sorry, ma’am, we—”
Before he could finish, another man interrupted him in a language that sounded, to Valencia’s ear, more like Turkmen than Uzbek. The man came from the back. There were ladders leaning against the near wall, and the room smelled like paint. Valencia shifted on the balls of her feet so her back was to the wall on her right instead of to the door. The second man had joined them by now, and he was making a fuss of looking her up and down.
He was large, and rough-looking. He wore a suit coat over a turtle-neck, and Valencia assumed there was a gun under his coat on the left side of his torso. He reminded her of a few of the Russian agents she’d run into in Turkey.
“Ms. Walker?” he asked, with a thick accent.
“Yes,” said Valencia, lifting her hand to shake his, and taking a step forward. “Valencia Walker, pleased to meet you.” Her heart thumped away in her chest. She looked him in the eyes and could sense, from the tension in his face, that he was nervous too.
“Please.” He held his hand out for her, indicating that she should walk in front of him. “Painting, construction—sorry.”
They walked past eight tables, all with plastic sheets thrown over them. As they crossed the room, the large man spoke harshly over his shoulder to the suited man. Valencia didn’t understand the words, but the tone suggested something like, Lock the door, you idiot, and don’t bother us.
They pushed through some swinging doors and then stepped into a dark, fake-wood-paneled hallway. Framed portraits of unsmiling men wearing suits and sitting around tables hung on both sides of the hall.
After passing through another set of doors, they entered a second dining room. This room was plain, with cheap black-and-white tiled linoleum floors. Spotlights on the ceiling cast an odd glow. Four empty tables occupied the near side. Farther back in the corner were two round tables. Three men sat around the furthest one.
Valencia ignored the man next to her and the other two men at the table. She locked her full attention onto Yakov Rabinowitz and walked directly toward him. Her training kicked in, and immediately she started thinking of him as an old friend. She wanted to set him at ease; the fastest route to that goal was to set herself at ease.
“Valencia Walker,” she said, smiling and extending her hand across the table. Yakov Rabinowitz took hold of it. Valencia felt something like a wave of energy travel up her arm.
My God, she thought, you are a powerful little man. She’d seen pictures of him, but none of them captured the strength of his presence. He was bald on top, but the hair on the sides of his head was pure white and cropped short. The most striking thing was how smooth his skin was, like a baby’s—but tan. His eyes were milky blue, and they stayed glued on her.
“How do you do?” he asked, with his Russian accent. He squeezed her hand one more time, and then seemed to raise his eyebrows to her as if he were acknowledging a kind of kinship. It occurred to Valencia that he was trying to make her relax too.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. With their hands still touching, she thought, I’m here to help.
He smiled again, and their hands came apart.
Rabinowitz turned to the man on his right and spoke quietly in Russian. He then turned to the other one and repeated the message. The man on his right raised his palm to Valencia and said, “Excuse me.” He was an old man, and he wore a beautifully tailored suit. She smiled and nodded.
The other man seemed annoyed at being asked to leave. Rabinowitz said something else to the two of them, and they walked away. Rabinowitz then spoke to the large man who had walked her in.
When he had finished, he raised his hand toward the man and said, “You met Grigory? He’s my closest partner. He looks mean, but he’s a gentle soul. Look at him; he writes love poems. Beautiful poems. He’s a published poet. Admired.”
Valencia looked at him.
“No, no,” said Grigory lowering his eyes bashfully and shaking his head.
“Please,” said her host, turning back to Valencia, “take a seat. Make yourself at home.”
Valencia pulled back her shoulders, breathed in deeply, and flipped her hair as they both sat. The large man, Grigory, sat at a table behind them.
“You speak Russian?”
“Not well,” she said. “I speak Turkish.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “You’re hungry?”
“Oh, no,” she crinkled her nose for him. “Thank you.”
“Fine, we’ll have a drink, and we’ll have a little bit of dessert.” He raised himself up in his seat and spoke in Russian to the waiter. “They aren’t normally open today. For you, for us …” A glass appeared in front of her and vodka was poured into it.
“Mr. Sandemose suggested I get the stuffed cabbage,” said Valencia. “But I had an early dinner.”
“Ah yes, Utah Sandemose,” answered Rabinowitz, speaking each word with precision. He laid both his hands flat on the table. “A good actor in the courtroom.” He closed his eyes. “His voice—He has a deep voice that carries. I am told judges, particularly female ones, respond to it.”
Rabinowitz touched his chest, opened his eyes, and looked at Valencia. “I don’t know about the jury, because I’ve never seen him in front of one.” He looked at her as if checking whether she’d challenge him. “I’m not sure if he has a brilliant legal mind. He never showed it to me. Sometimes though, you want your lawyer to be an actor, not a genius. And you? You are a lawyer too?”
“I spent five years at The Bronx Defenders. I haven’t practiced law in quite some time. I’m more in communications now.”
He smiled. “I see, and I’m told that you also work in intelligence.”
Valencia returned his smile. “Used to.”
“In Russia, there is no ‘used to.’ Maybe it is the same here.” Then, peering over Valencia’s shoulder, he spoke in Russian, and waved his hand as if discouraging a nuisance. Valencia turned and saw the back of the retreating waiter.
When she faced Rabinowitz again, she noticed that his face had become rather serious. “You know, I have many good friends who work at your organization,” he said, leaning forward. “Chris Meisner, Berlin station chief.”
“I had dinner with him about two months ago,” said Valencia. She smiled and sat up straighter.
“A charming man,” said Rabinowitz.
“Wonderful,” said Valencia. She hated Meisner and hadn’t seen him for years, but for the moment, she wanted to agree with everything Rabinowitz said. This stage of the negotiation was a dance, so stepping on toes was bad form. She wanted to find some kind of flow.
Right then, the waiter reappeared and placed a plate of baklava on the table.
“Za vashe zdorovie,” said Valencia, ignoring the dessert, and raising her glass.
“To your health,” said Rabinowitz, looking into her eyes in a way that, for a moment, seemed to suggest a kind of displeasure.
They drank. Valencia felt her stomach and chest warm up. As soon as she placed her glass on the table, it was filled again.
“Tell me: how long were you an official member of the CIA?”
“Ten years,” said Valencia. “But they used me just like this, just meeting people, talking.”
“That’s not what I hear,” said Rabinowitz, leaning forward. “Why did you leave?”
Valencia’s mind went to a black site in Bosnia—a place where detainees were tortured with electricity. “Between you and me, I wanted to make more money.”
“I see,” said Rabinowitz. “And for whom do you make your money these days?”
“It’s funny you should ask.” She watched Rabinowitz’s eyebrows squeeze together. “I work for the Calcott Corporation. Have you ever heard of them?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Rabinowitz.
Valencia breathed in deeply. “I think it would probably make the most sense if we could be honest,” she said, offering a sympathetic smile. “I’m not going to beat around the bush. I know you’re a busy man, and I want to be respectful of your time.”
“Please,” said Rabinowitz, turning his hand for her to continue.
“We’re having a problem with your nephews.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Which nephews? I have”—he looked up at the ceiling—“sixteen, excuse me, seventeen nieces and nephews. Some here”—he counted off on his fingers—“some in Russia of course, two in Israel, one in Kazakhstan, one in Syria, and one in China.”
He knew exactly who she was talking about, and playing dumb was diminishing his charm. “Your nephews here in Brooklyn, Yuri and Isaac.”
She watched his mouth open, and his chest deflate as he exhaled.
“Not them,” he said, shaking his head. He raised his fingers from the table, as if telling her to slow down. “You must be confused; these are very good boys. They are young. I’m afraid you’ve been given false information.”
Valencia lowered her chin and looked right into the old man’s eyes. “Your nephews”—she paused for a moment, made sure she had his attention—“came across some files that belong to the Calcott Corporation. Sensitive files from an active court case, a federal case. They used those files and blackmailed the law firm that represents Calcott. The law firm paid your nephews. I advised them to do that. It was a one-time act of generosity. It won’t be repeated.”
Rabinowitz tented his fingers on the table. A dark expression settled on his face. “I’m going to say it again. My nephews had nothing to do with whatever it is you’re talking about. To be polite, I will ask you a hypothetical question. If the boys did do that—these boys would never do anything like that—but if they did do something, what is it you would have me do?”
Valencia mirrored the man’s hands and posture. She then turned her wrist toward her nose and sniffed her perfume. She leaned forward, picked up a piece of baklava and took a bite of it. She sat there chewing for a moment, enjoying its taste, then took a sip of vodka.
“We made the payment. Now we need the problem to go away. I’m going to be clear with you, so please don’t think I’m trying to threaten you. If it doesn’t go away, if for some reason we hear something else about these files, I will be forced to call Albert Dunning. Do you know who that is?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Rabinowitz.
“He’s the special agent in charge of the Newark FBI. He is a very dear friend of mine. We worked together for two years. I’ve been to his house. I’ve swam in his swimming pool. If I called him and told him to have customs agents take a look at containers coming from Shenzhen, if I told him specifically to examine all shipments from the Piang Won Company, what would he find?”
“I don’t know,” said Rabinowitz, shaking his head. “What would you find if you looked in there?”
“If I looked?” asked Valencia, glancing at the ceiling, smiling. “I would probably find shipments of different chemical substances. Maybe methylone. Depending on what time of month, pentedrone, maybe crystal meth. All kinds of things.”
She held up her left hand while she spoke and showed him her perfect red fingernails. “But I don’t look in shipping containers. I’m not a customs agent.”
“You are in communications.”
“Exactly.”
He closed his eyes and appeared to give her words some thought. He stayed silent for almost ten seconds. Valencia kept her eyes on him the whole time.
“It is impossible that my nephews would engage in such behavior,” said Yakov Rabinowitz, his voice softer now. “They are good boys, but since you have come here, and because we have mutual friends, I will suggest to them that they should never even think about anything like that in the future.”
She raised her glass, locked eyes with him. “Can we drink to that?”