4

IT FELT WONDERFUL

Two nights later, Elizabeth Carlyle attended a party at the home of one of her husband’s colleagues. It was a Friday night, a few minutes after eight. Party guests stood around the living room in groups of two or three. They leaned in with their heads, and held their drinks in front of their chests as if they were cradling baby birds. They spoke civilly; occasionally a joke was told, and the sound of male laughter could be heard over the general murmur of conversation. The place teemed with fifty-year-old brokers and traders. It was, to put it plainly, Elizabeth’s idea of hell.

She didn’t want to be there; she planned on quietly drinking her way through the evening. “Fill it to the top this time, please,” she said, handing her glass to the rented bartender. He pulled his lips into a tight smile, nodded, and filled the glass three-quarters full. Drink in hand, she turned to face the party and wondered who was the least boring person she could talk to.

Her husband didn’t appear to be in the room. She took a sip of sauvignon blanc, cleaned her teeth with her tongue, and fantasized about climbing into the bed of her husband’s colleague. Not for sex, just for sleep. Her eyes went to the television on the far wall and she wondered what would happen if she turned it on and sat down to watch the news.

A man could do that, she thought. A man could watch sports as much as he wanted.

Right then, one of her husband’s coworker’s wives, a woman named Louisa, a corporate lawyer with a distinguished reputation, appeared at her side.

“There you are,” said Louisa, sounding nasal, like a dame from an old Hollywood movie. She looked drunk. “I’ve been searching everywhere for you. You’re the only person who I’m sure agrees how boring this party is.”

Elizabeth’s eyes went from the woman’s face to her chest. She couldn’t help wondering if the woman had gotten implants. “You’re looking marvelous,” said Elizabeth, keeping her eyes there.

“Don’t make fun of me,” said Louisa, studying Elizabeth’s face like she was appraising a fine piece of art. “And you? What’s your exercise routine?”

“Klonopin,” said Elizabeth.

“Darling, now you’re speaking my language,” said Louisa.

They locked eyes. “So? Work?”

“Please, my blood pressure,” said Elizabeth.

For a moment, the issue of the three-quarters of a million dollars she’d given away bobbed up into Elizabeth’s consciousness. Her armpits dampened. Valencia had promised to find a way to fold the money into her bill. Her mother’s voice popped into her head: Fold it into a bill? She gulped her wine, looked around the party, shifted her weight.

Louisa pivoted so they both faced the crowd. “Are you guys really going to trial?” she asked out of the side of her mouth.

“On what?” answered Elizabeth, pivoting back so she could face her.

“Calcott, Liz, what else?”

Any number of people could have sent her as a spy. There were probably half a dozen hedge fund managers at the party right then who would pay an obscene amount of money for that information.

“We’re preparing,” said Elizabeth. Then, lowering her voice, she added, “Honestly, between me and you, I hope we do. I’m starving for it. The board’s starving too. They want to go nuclear. Scorched earth. End this thing once and for all.” She dropped her voice lower still: “Can’t think of a better scenario, better even than a settlement.”

The truth—of course—was the exact opposite of everything she was saying. She wanted the case to disappear. Wanted nothing more. She was exhausted. But she could never admit that. After allowing her mouth to form into a lustful little smile, Elizabeth faced her friend full on. “And you?” she asked. “What are you up to?”

For the next few minutes, Louisa droned on about some trial her firm had just won. Elizabeth squinted, listened, smiled when it seemed appropriate, raised her eyebrows, nodded, and finished her wine.

Conversation still going, Elizabeth moved toward the bar, passed her glass to the barman, and had him fill it again. Louisa, meanwhile, had transitioned to blathering on about some charity or other whose board she’d recently joined.

My God, thought Elizabeth. It was all so boring.

Her mind shifted back to Valencia. She wouldn’t just stand there listening to this kind of inane conversation. She wouldn’t be caught dead at a party like this. Valencia and her fancy clothes—she was probably off having sex with someone.

Elizabeth checked the level of her drink against her companion’s. She then drank half her glass and looked around the room for her husband. Someone, not the host, had begun to make a toast, but it didn’t stop Louisa’s monologue; it only lowered its volume. Elizabeth had successfully tuned her out, until she heard her say something about “protected discovery.”

“Excuse me?” said Elizabeth.

“I said the stock fell.”

“When what?” asked Elizabeth.

“When Judge Shapiro unsealed the discovery.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” said Elizabeth, sobering up, and brushing her hair off her forehead. “My mind wandered. I was looking for my husband. What case are we talking about?”

“Long Weather,” said Louisa, squinting at Elizabeth like she was suddenly curious to know just how drunk she was. Long Weather was one of Louisa’s firm’s clients—it had nothing to do with any of Elizabeth’s cases. The crowd around them gave a polite round of applause to the man who made the toast.

A bad feeling gripped Elizabeth’s guts. It felt like one of her organs had finally failed and was currently spewing waste inside her abdomen. Her forehead became moist. Dizziness set in. She put her empty glass onto the bar. Louisa asked her if she was okay.

“Ate something,” whispered Elizabeth, squeezing Louisa’s arm and walking away. To get to the bathroom she had to cross the living room floor. As she began her journey, the party guests all seemed to turn and watch her as she went. She noticed a man with a square of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. She didn’t recognize anyone, and she moved through the crowd with her lips clamped together involuntarily, like a dried-up clam.

In the bathroom she vomited wine and shrimp violently. She hadn’t done that in years. Afterward, she rinsed her mouth at the sink, spit, fixed her hair, pinned it back, and took a moment to collect herself. The vomiting had relieved her discomfort, but she still felt weak.

The door handle rattled. Short of breath, Elizabeth called out, “Just a minute!” It occurred to her that she might actually be unwell. She turned her face from side to side in the mirror, then bent down and searched under the sink; she found some air freshener and sprayed a little cloud into the air.

Stepping out, she nearly ran into a short man with gray hair and glasses. She put a hand on his shoulder, apologized vaguely, and stepped past him. He smelled of curry. She moved away from the living room in search of her husband. The lights in the hallway were bright, and she walked with her left hand held up like she was telling someone to stay away from her. She’d been in this house quite a few times; still, she felt oddly disoriented.

Finally—around a corner and down the hall—she found the doorway to the backyard and the pool. Breathing through her mouth and grimacing, she stepped to the glass door and gripped its handle.

Outside, the first thing she saw, of course, was her husband. He was talking to a skinny, short-haired, short-skirted woman who couldn’t have been more than forty years old. With his eyebrows raised wisely, and his arms crossed in front of his chest, he seemed to be doing all the talking. As she moved toward him, Elizabeth felt her body temperature rise. She vowed not to seem angry.

“Darling, there you are,” said Tyler, sounding strangely like an Englishman. “I want you to meet Jeb’s daughter. She’s a lawyer.” Elizabeth stepped toward them, doing her best impression of a smile.

“Are you all right?” asked Tyler. “You look ill.”

“Ate something,” whispered Elizabeth, pulling her smile tighter. No hands were shaken. The daughter, whoever she was, angled her head, made a sympathetic face, and pulled her martini glass a bit closer to her chest, like she was scared Elizabeth was going to smack it out of her hands.

Just then, as if on cue, Elizabeth’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and read a text message from Jimmy Hipps, head in-house counsel for the Calcott Corporation. Elizabeth had never received a text message from the man before.

She squinted to read it: Tommy Sanzone WSJ just called and asked for comment on an anonymous source story. Says source has documents speaking to very allegations of fraud.

Elizabeth tried to make sense of the message and another one came in, this one a correction of the first: Speaking to very *serious* allegations of fraud.

Another message popped up: Can you get on a conference call with me, Mark, Ben, Paul, Zach, and your Scott in five minutes?

Suddenly sober, Elizabeth looked from her husband to the young lawyer. “I’m sorry, excuse me,” she said. “Work issue.”

She stepped toward the pool and started walking around its edge. It was lit up and perfect. Somewhere inside the party a man laughed like Santa Claus.

Nobody was standing on the far side of the pool, and there was a padded reclining seat. Elizabeth moved toward it and texted a one-word answer: Yes.

That same night, to avoid going home, Chris Cowley stayed late at the office and forced himself to do actual work. His apartment was making him a nervous wreck. The constant surveillance had taken a toll on his psyche. He felt unhinged. Less than three weeks ago his problems didn’t exist—now they were everywhere.

At a quarter to nine, he stood, put on his coat, and took a moment to stare at the iPhone sitting on his desk. How much trouble, he wondered, would leaving it right there bring? The question caused his internal temperature to rise, but the decision had already been made. He was leaving it. He wanted a night to himself. That would be step one. He reached out, turned it facedown, and walked out of his office.

In the lobby downstairs, two guards stood alone behind the front desk. Their eyes stayed on Chris as he made his way to the exit, but they didn’t say anything.

As soon as Chris stepped outside, he saw a forty-year-old man standing on the sidewalk about eight car lengths from the door. This man, like the others he’d spotted following him, wore a business casual outfit. He held a phone to his ear, and his lips moved as if he was in the middle of a conversation. Chris silently cursed him and began walking to the Bryant Park subway stop. It was cold outside. He wanted his night to begin.

Just as Chris got down to the subway platform, a downtown-bound F train came roaring into the station. He couldn’t help interpreting that as a good sign. On the train, he pushed his way to a seat and sat down aggressively between an old woman and a young kid in a puffy coat. They both scooted over to make room.

Chris looked around the car and wondered who else might be following him. It could be anyone, he thought. But none of the people in his vicinity seemed likely. He leaned back and dried his hands on his pants. The train bumped along and Chris counted the stops as they passed: 34th, 23rd, 14th.

At West Fourth Street, he counted how long the doors stayed open: nine seconds. He closed his eyes and reminded himself that it wasn’t a crime to get off the subway. The train started up again and made its slow turn east, heading toward the Broadway-Lafayette stop. A few passengers began drifting toward the door. Chris stayed seated.

The train jolted to a stop, and the doors opened. Chris counted back—nine, eight, seven, six; the exiting passengers by that point had disembarked. A few people boarded and settled into their seats or stood with their hands on the bars. Chris kept counting; it seemed impossible that the doors would remain open for another three seconds.

When he got to two, he stood up from his seat and rushed off the train, just as the doors closed.

He appeared to have been the last person off. Still, he spent a frenzied few seconds looking back and forth across the platform. Then he began moving toward the exit, along with everyone else.

The train left the station. Across the tracks, a black guy in a puffy coat stood staring at him. The man averted his gaze as soon as Chris looked in his direction. Farther down the platform, Chris noticed a white girl in a tight skirt and a short fur coat. A hipster, Chris thought. He stared at her, blinking. Wasn’t she a little old for that outfit?

He told himself he was being ridiculous, turned his back to the tracks, and pretended to examine a movie poster.

Exiting passengers gone, Chris took the stairs up to the mezzanine level. A crowd of about ten people passed him on their way down. They all shuffled by without so much as looking at him. He turned his collar up and took the last few stairs two at a time.

Outside, in the cool air, he headed east on Houston with no exact destination in mind. Eventually, on Elizabeth Street, he found a bar that looked quiet. He went in, sat at the bar, and—feeling giddy—ordered a gin martini.

Valencia Walker, meanwhile, was in her apartment watching a romantic comedy on her laptop. The movie was about two friends who had opened a bakery together and fallen in love. Valencia had eaten a bowl of ice cream. She was in her sweatpants, and, if asked, she would have placed her general mood somewhere around a 7.5 out of 10. Her phone rang, and she frowned when she saw it was Elizabeth calling; her mood dropped down to a 6.

When she answered, Elizabeth told her that a story about the Calcott Corporation would appear on the front page of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. She said the reporter had received copies of internal Calcott emails. “C-suite shit, absolutely radioactive,” said Elizabeth.

Valencia, phone to ear, closed her computer, swung her legs out of bed, picked up the bowl, walked to the kitchen, set the bowl in the sink and filled it with water. “Shit,” she said.

“It’s hard to state how bad this is,” said Elizabeth. “Those emails were part of the stolen discovery.”

Valencia noted the accusatory tone but chose to ignore it. “Who’s writing the story?”

“Tommy Sanzone,” said Elizabeth. “He’s a piece of shit.”

“Don’t know him,” said Valencia. “But listen, I’m very good friends with the editor of the business section. Would you like me to call him and see if we can kill the story?”

“It’s fucking printed,” said Elizabeth. She sounded like she’d been drinking.

Valencia closed her eyes and tried to pinpoint the best way to proceed. “Liz, I understand that this—”

“Don’t fucking patronize me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Valencia. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I want you to relax,” said Elizabeth, stressing the x sound. “I want you to relax and tell me why your Russian fucking friend would do this right now.”

“Did the reporter say anything about Russians?” asked Valencia, moving her wrist, to loosen it, as if she were playing Ping-Pong.

“He didn’t have to.”

“Liz, there are hundreds of people who could have leaked those emails.”

“You were supposed to recover them; you were supposed to get it all back,” said Elizabeth. “How much have you billed us for this job? Fifty thousand? Plus the seven hundred and fifty thousand. That’s almost a million dollars. What do we have to show for that? We’re being fucking blackmailed for that.”

For a moment, Valencia considered how her own mother used to get drunk and carry on with unfounded accusations. Arguing back never worked. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation on the phone,” said Valencia. She moved to the living room window and looked out at the park below her. “I can come to your house if you’d like?”

“I’m sorry,” said Elizabeth. “This isn’t …”

“I know,” said Valencia, keeping the softness in her voice but staying clear of any condescension. They were silent for nearly five seconds. “Do you want me to come to you?”

“I’m at a party,” said Elizabeth. “I just took a conference call with Scott and all of Calcott’s in-house people. I’m by a pool right now, if you can believe that. Sitting by a fucking pool.”

Valencia closed her eyes, relaxed her mind, and focused on Elizabeth’s tone.

“My husband’s talking to some short-haired intern, Louisa Eldrich’s probing me for gossip, I have food poisoning—shrimp—oh God, hold on, Michael D’Angelo’s calling.”

The line went silent while Elizabeth answered the call. Valencia walked to her office and plugged her headphones in. She felt nervous, and, rather than fight against that feeling, she tried to embrace it. She’d been trained that way. Draw the fear into your belly, accept it, appreciate it, own it.

“They lost him,” said Elizabeth, coming back on the line. “Tonight of all nights, they fucking lost him. My God, how hard can it be? These people are ridiculous.”

“Lost who?” Valencia asked, playing dumb.

“Chris Cowley—fucking Chris Cowley,” said Elizabeth. “The only reason, and I’m talking the only reason I haven’t fired him was so we could keep our eyes on him.”

“Now this,” said Valencia.

“Now this,” said Elizabeth. “At least we’ll have him out of our hair.”

Valencia took a moment thinking about what this would mean. “You have to do what you have to do,” she said, finally.

“I’ll tell you what I have to do,” said Elizabeth, sounding drunk again. “Fire him.”

After barely saying goodbye, Elizabeth ended the call.

The next morning at 8:42 a.m., Yuri Rabinowitz was woken by a loud pounding noise. It took a moment to realize someone was banging on the front door. It was hard to imagine a more unwelcome sound.

Yuri reached for his phone and saw four missed calls, all from his uncle’s man, Grigory Levchin. The night before, Yuri and his brother had been out partying with their friends. They’d taken Molly, drank an obscene amount of vodka, and danced at a club in Greenpoint until five in the morning. Yuri was, to put it mildly, in pain.

He pushed himself out of bed and pulled on the shirt he’d worn out. It was a bright, button-up thing that—upon catching a glimpse in the mirror—now seemed utterly ridiculous. He hurried to the stairs. As he passed his brother’s door, he called out “Isaac!” There was no response.

It occurred to him that it might be the FBI outside. He’d stay silent, of course. He wouldn’t say anything; he’d wait for his uncle to arrange an attorney. Had Grigory been calling to warn them of an impending raid? Yuri cursed himself for not listening to the voicemail and he felt a sharp pain in his head. His stomach, in answer to everything, threatened to empty itself.

I’m in hell, he thought.

Before he reached the door, he recognized the shape and general color of Grigory Levchin’s head on the other side of the frosted glass. Which wasn’t to say he felt more relaxed. Good news never followed that kind of knocking. He was still in hell.

Yuri unlocked the dead bolt and opened the door. He tried to seem calm, and asked “What’s up?”

“Why the fuck didn’t you answer your phone?” said Grigory. He was wearing jeans and a sweater, an unusual outfit for him. He leaned in after he spoke, as though anticipating that Yuri’s answer would be difficult to hear.

Yuri had never seen the man so upset. For a moment, he thought he was going to be told that Uncle Yakov had been killed. “I had it off,” he said. “I was sleeping.”

“Get your brother, your uncle wants to see both of you.”

Yuri gestured for Grigory to come in, but the large man just frowned, shook his head, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and lit one. The smell of tobacco reached Yuri’s nose instantly. Without closing the door, he turned and headed back upstairs.

His anger, as he went, became focused on Isaac. It was his brother who made them stay out all night. “One more drink,” he’d insisted. As he approached the door, Yuri told himself not to start a fight. It wasn’t what they needed right then. But when he opened the door, the first thing he saw was the shape of a sleeping woman. “Wake up, asshole,” he said to his brother. His anger had returned.

“Huh?” Isaac leaned his head up. He looked even worse than Yuri felt. “What?”

“Grigory’s downstairs. He says we need to go with him,” said Yuri. “For what?”

“What do you think?” said Yuri. “Get dressed. Two minutes.”

The woman in the bed groaned and pulled the covers over her head. Yuri couldn’t help looking at the hill that her hip created under the blanket. I need a hill like that, he thought—kids, a family, the quiet life.

He turned and walked back to his room; he needed to dress more professionally. He didn’t need this clown shirt. He pulled it off and exchanged it for a white oxford. When he stepped back into the hallway, he heard the shower running in the bathroom.

This fucking guy, he thought; an angry feeling sloshed around in his guts.

When he opened the door, he found his brother not in the shower, but instead sitting naked on the toilet. A horrible, fetid smell reached his nose. “You can’t—!” Yuri yelled. He meant to say, You can’t shower, but he couldn’t even get that out.

His brother leaned forward on the toilet, groaned, and forced out an explosion of diarrhea. “What am I going to do?” he answered, looking like he might cry, but then smiling.

Yuri stepped back into the hall and slammed the door closed. He stood there for a moment looking down the hallway, then opened the door and slammed it again. He repeated this a few times, and then walked downstairs.

My toothbrush is in there, he thought. My deodorant.

The front door was closed when he got back. He found Grigory washing his hands at the kitchen sink. “I can’t control him!” Yuri said. Grigory turned. “You need hand soap,” he said, nodding toward the sink.

Hand soap? Hand soap? These people are all insane, thought Yuri. He looked at Grigory and measured the man and wondered if he could be knocked out with a cast-iron pan. “What does Uncle want?” Yuri asked again.

“He said, ‘Call Yuri and have them come in,’” answered Grigory, pulling paper towels from a roll and drying his hands. “I tell him you’re not answering. He says, ‘Go get them.’ I don’t question him and say, ‘First, sir, please sir, tell me the exact agenda of why you want to talk to them, Yuri might need to know’—come on.”

Grigory went to the trash can and threw the paper towels away. “You look like real shit, you know that?” he said.

Yuri went to the same trash can, and with some difficulty, pulled out the white plastic bag. He spun it and tied it closed and carried it to the garage. Inside the garage, he turned the lights on and put the trash into a larger black bin. He then hit the opener and the garage door rumbled up. Yuri wheeled the bin to the curb with his eyes barely open against the sun.

When he was done, he turned and saw his Armenian neighbor Narek standing across the street. The man waved but put his head down and walked away before Yuri could wave back. Reminded of the man’s son, Yuri turned and looked down the street for his van but didn’t see any vans at all. He didn’t want to wait with Grigory, so he spent a few minutes picking up trash that had blown into their hedge.

When he finally got back to the kitchen, he found Isaac standing there, dressed and looking fresh, telling a story that had Grigory laughing quietly and shaking his head. “What?” said Isaac, seeing his brother’s face. “What was all that about?” he asked, pointing upstairs. “Why you gotta slam the doors?”

“We’re late,” said Yuri.

“Late for what?” said his little brother. “I’m ready to go.” He held his hand toward Grigory. “We’re waiting for you.”

Yuri turned, went back upstairs, and took his toothbrush and toothpaste to his bedroom and brushed in there. Own your choices, he told himself in Russian while he brushed. You made a choice to get into this.

He changed shirts again, putting on a blue shirt that would hopefully make his face appear less pink. Fucking pieces of shit, he thought. Bastards. He went back downstairs and the three of them walked silently to Grigory’s car.

When they got to Leo Katzir’s office, they found the lobby—save one old man slumped in his seat—free of clients. Yuri noticed that a plant in a stand near the window had died. The girl he liked did not appear to be working that day, and the new one, a girl he’d never seen before, did her best not to look at the three men when they walked in.

“May we go in?” Grigory asked her.

“Yes, please,” said the woman, standing up and opening the door for them.

Inside the lawyer’s office, Yuri’s uncle, dressed in one of his normal silk sweaters, sat in a chair facing Leo Katzir’s desk. He turned as they entered, smiled sadly. He looked tan, clean, and well rested. Leo Katzir, meanwhile, sat behind his desk, hands folded, looking pissed off.

Their uncle waved the boys in. Yuri and then Isaac kissed him on the cheek, a gesture that he seemed to endure more than enjoy. “Sit,” he said in English. “Grab a seat and sit.”

Both brothers sat on a couch near the desk. Their uncle yawned and stretched his arms above his head. Grigory, ominously, stayed standing near the door. A phone in the reception area rang. Because of ongoing construction outside, the whole place smelled like tar.

Yuri looked at the lawyer, Leo Katzir, who shook his head and pursed his lips. I get it, you’re mad, thought Yuri. But please, for your own good, tone it down a little bit.

“Boys,” said their uncle. “I’m going to ask you this only once, and I need you to be completely truthful with me.”

Yuri felt his brother shift in his seat and saw him wipe his nose. For his part, Yuri stayed perfectly still and adjusted his face to reflect an appropriate level of concern. He felt ready to confess to whatever he was being charged with.

“Did you have anything to do with this?” asked their uncle, holding up a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

Yuri leaned forward to read it, but he couldn’t make out the words from where he sat. “What is it?” he asked.

Their uncle lowered the paper, looked at the lawyer, and then looked back at Yuri. “It is a story about this Calcott case. The story references documents. Emails.”

“No,” said Yuri.

“No,” said Isaac.

“Did you share the documents with anybody?”

Yuri’s heart galloped in his chest. He felt himself begin to blush, and he breathed in deeply to try to hide it. He wasn’t guilty, he hadn’t shown the documents to a single person; but he felt guilty. He couldn’t stop blushing.

He shifted on the couch and faced his brother. “We didn’t do anything, right?”

“No, no, we didn’t show the documents to anybody,” said Isaac, sounding calmer and more composed.

“Then say it!” said Yuri.

“I did say it!” said Isaac.

Both brothers turned and faced their uncle. “We don’t know,” said Isaac.

The lawyer spoke next, “Where is the thumb drive?”

“It’s at the house,” said Yuri.

“Okay, then we are done here,” said the lawyer, clasping his hands together on the desk. “Give it to him.” He nodded at Grigory Levchin.

“I said they wouldn’t do this,” said Yakov Rabinowitz, speaking to the lawyer, and apparently defending his nephews. He then turned and faced the boys. “I said you wouldn’t do this. But we have a very serious problem now. The American woman has said, ‘If a story comes out …’” He stopped speaking for a moment, looked down at his cell phone. “Now here we are, a story is out. We must clean it up.”

“Kill her?” whispered Yuri.

Yakov Rabinowitz rubbed his eyes like a tired baby, shook his head, looked back at the lawyer. “They watch too many movies.”

Yuri leaned forward. “What do you want us to do?”

“Where is the money?” asked Yakov Rabinowitz.

“It’s at Ossip’s,” said Yuri.

“Bring it here,” said Yakov Rabinowitz. “The game is over. We’re done with all that.”

Yuri looked at the stretch of floor between them. He wasn’t sad to hear his uncle’s plan. He was relieved.

Chris Cowley sat hunched over his phone with the posture of a child. He was in his office, at his desk, scrolling through Instagram. His friends, each and every one of them, appeared to be living beautiful lives. A simultaneous vacation. They climbed mountains, lay on beaches, and gathered at fancy bars. They had babies, they accepted awards, made ironic jokes. Even their boring pictures—the lazy ones, selfies taken on couches in front of televisions—made him feel jealous. Boredom had never looked so appealing.

His hangover wasn’t helping matters. Instead of doing the sensible thing, and going home after a drink or two, he’d stayed at the bar until one in the morning. He had met a couple in town from Denver. He drank two pointless martinis with them, bringing his grand total to five.

At that moment, Elizabeth Carlyle’s assistant stepped into Chris’s office and interrupted his phone scrolling. “Sorry,” he said, looking at Chris. “Liz wants to see you.” The assistant’s face offered no clues. It didn’t matter; Chris knew what was coming.

He looked back at his phone, pressed the home button, and flicked Instagram closed. He turned to his computer, checked his email, refreshed it, stood, and adjusted his jacket.

“Are you okay?” asked Andy, looking at Chris.

“Hungover,” said Chris.

When he got to Elizabeth’s office, Andy stepped ahead of him, peeked his head in, and then turned and nodded to Chris. Inside, seated around the table, were Elizabeth, Pamela Ong from HR, and Scott Driscoll.

“How are you, Chris?” asked Scott.

“Chris, I’m sorry,” said Elizabeth, not waiting for his answer. Even under these circumstances, she seemed pressed for time. “The partners voted this morning to terminate your contract.”

Chris nodded. Tears came to his eyes, and he wiped them with the back of his hand.

“James from security is going to accompany you back to your office. You’ll gather your personal belongings. Leave your work cell on the desk. Do you have any office laptops at your apartment?” asked Elizabeth.

“No,” said Chris.

“Do you have any external hard drives, thumb drives, or any other devices carrying anything related to your work at CDH?”

“No,” said Chris.

“Do you have any paper files, or notes at your apartment?”

“No.”

“Sign this, then,” said Elizabeth, nodding toward the HR person who pushed a clipboard forward.

Chris stepped closer, leaned down, and read the paperwork. It was the same questions he’d just answered. He signed at the bottom.

“Your prior nondisclosures, of course, are still in effect.”

Chris nodded.

“I’m sorry this happened,” said Elizabeth. “We’re terminating you for cause, but we’re going to pay two additional months. Help you get back on your feet.”

“Okay,” said Chris. “I’m sorry.” He looked at Elizabeth; she was watching him closely. He thought about offering her a handshake but decided against it. Scott Driscoll sat there with his lips puckered. Pamela Ong didn’t do anything but sit with perfect posture and watch him.

Chris turned and stepped out of the office. Elizabeth’s assistant gave him a sad shake of the head, and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry, bud.”

James, wearing his blue security coat and holding a walkie-talkie, was already waiting. He nodded at Chris, and then gestured that Chris should lead the way.

It was humiliating.

There wasn’t much to gather in his office: a few suits, shirts, a fancy pen his father had given him. He had a plant he decided to leave. Let it die, he thought.

He went through his desk drawers, made sure he wasn’t forgetting anything. Then he took his phone, held it up for James to see, and set it down on his desk.

On the walk to the elevator he passed a few colleagues who saw him with his suits folded over his arm, saw the security guard walking behind him, and either made sympathetic faces, or pretended they didn’t see what was happening.

The elevator opened as soon as James pressed the button. Chris, followed by the security guard, stepped in. The guard pressed the M button and shook his head, acknowledging that this was indeed bad business.

As the elevator floated down, Chris looked at his blurry reflection in the brass walls. In his head, he sang a Madonna song: Your heart is not open, so I must go.

Walking across the floor of the lobby, he felt every single person in the room stare at him. He half expected paparazzi to jump out and start taking pictures. At the revolving doors, he stopped, looked behind one more time, then looked at James, who held his hand out for a final dry, limp shake. This is it, thought Chris.

Outside, Chris waved down a cab and was glad to see that it wasn’t the shaved-headed guy driving. He got in and told the driver his address. As the cab made its way south, Chris stared out the window and looked at all the people coming and going. It occurred to him that he didn’t feel particularly bad. He felt relieved. The last few weeks had been a kind of hell, and now he was finally going to be released.

Chris smiled. He could change his life. He could pack up and leave. Move out of the country, start a new chapter.

It felt like he was coming out of a strange fog. It wasn’t just the current shit show he was in; it had been the last few years. He’d been living a life totally devoid of meaning. Being a corporate lawyer sucked. It was the worst. He was leaving that world, and in his core, he felt something he hadn’t felt in years—happiness. Did he have his tormentors to thank for that? He shook his head at the irony of it.

My God, he thought. What a life.

When he got to his apartment, he paid the driver and gave him a seventeen-dollar tip. He didn’t stop and look over his shoulder to see if anybody was watching him. He didn’t scan the block for white vans. Those idiots had lost their power over him. They didn’t matter anymore. Their spell had been broken.

As he entered his building his mind began organizing a list of tasks. The first order of business would be to go online and book a flight out of the country. He’d go somewhere sunny, Mexico or Brazil. Maybe Thailand. He got in the elevator and pressed five. As he rode up, his eyes settled on a spot of discoloration on the floor. It looked as though someone had spit mucus in the elevator. He couldn’t stop looking at it. And just like that, his mood clicked back into pessimism.

In the hallway he heard the sound of a television coming from his neighbor’s apartment. The voice on the show was saying, “Do you want to know who it is?” and an enthusiastic crowd was yelling back, “Yes!”

Chris reached into his pocket for his key, unlocked the door, and stepped in.

After setting his keys on the hook near the door, he carried his suits to the living room. As soon as he rounded the corner, he saw the man with the pitted skin. It was barely surprising. He sat turned on the couch so he could face Chris. The expression on his face suggested he was in a bad mood. He shifted on the couch to make room.

“I got fired,” said Chris, shaking his head.

“So I heard,” said the man.

“I’m sorry,” said Chris, setting his suits down. “I did the best I could.”

The man cleared his throat. “Sit down.”

Chris walked to the couch and sat and looked at him. The man wore a fleece jacket over a buttoned-up plaid shirt. Chris looked at his feet—walking shoes, the kind worn by old men.

“Tell me your name again?” said Chris.

“Jonathan,” said the man.

Chris put his hands on his knees. “So what are we going to do?”

“I’ll tell you what,” said the man, scratching his chin and looking up. “I just need an apology.” He pointed at the coffee table in front of them and Chris saw a yellow legal pad.

“I’ll give it to my boss,” said the man. “Just write, ‘Sorry’”—he held his hands up like he was apologizing—“‘I did my best.’”

“I don’t want to do that,” said Chris. It occurred to him that he didn’t want to put anything in writing.

The man’s face darkened. “Just write, ‘I’m sorry, I did my best.’”

“I don’t want to.”

The man sat there staring down at his own thighs. It looked like he was trying to reason something out. Chris noticed that his knuckles were hairy, and that he wore a wedding ring.

“I’m sorry,” said Chris. He shook his head as though it was hardly worth negotiating.

The man leaned forward and grabbed Chris’s own pen, which sat on top of the pad. He clicked it with his thumb, clicked it again. “Just write it,” he said.

Chris realized the depth of trouble he was in, and his chest tightened. “I don’t want to,” he said. For the second time that morning, his eyes became wet, and he wiped at them with his hand. I don’t want to, he thought.

“You want me to leave?” asked the man.

“Yes, please,” said Chris.

“Then write the fucking note.” The man wasn’t angry; he seemed tired. But that provided little comfort. Chris’s mind, like a cornered animal, started darting around looking for a way out. He could get up and run. He could run for his door and take the stairs; he’d run as fast as he could. He could walk. He could just walk out. But he couldn’t.

“I did as much as I possibly could,” said Chris. “I was never part of this. I never asked to be part of it. I never did anything …”

“Then just write the note. It’s painless. Just write a note apologizing. Don’t be so macho. You’re all stiff.” Holding his shoulders in rigidly, he imitated Chris. “We’re all doing the best we can—get over yourself,” said the man. “I got a boss, you got a boss. It’s work. I have other shit I need to be doing.”

They sat in silence for a moment, and then Chris held his hand out and the man put the pen in it.

“What do you want me to write?” Chris asked.

“‘I’m sorry, I did my best.’”

“You’ll leave me alone?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Chris leaned forward and scrawled I’m sorry, I did my best on the paper.

“Now sign it,” said the man.

Chris added his signature.

“See?” said the man. He leaned forward and squinted at the yellow paper. Chris watched the man’s lips move while he read the short note. His hair was thin, and Chris looked at his scalp. He thought about trying to stab him in the neck with the pen.

The man looked straight at Chris. “Why are you so upset?” he asked.

“I got fired,” said Chris. “I lost my job. You’re here. I’m hungover. It’s all bullshit.”

The man closed his eyes and shook his head sympathetically. On the street, somebody honked their horn. Chris wiped his eyes again, took a deep breath. The honking stopped.

“Okay,” said Chris.

“No,” said the man. He pointed at a white paper cup that was sitting on the coffee table. Chris hadn’t noticed it. “I want you to drink that.”

Chris sat staring at the cup.

“It’s medicine, to make you feel better. It’s a painkiller. It will make all the pain go away.” He leaned forward, picked it up, and held it toward Chris.

“I don’t want to,” said Chris. He closed his eyes and began crying in earnest. In his mind, unaccountably, he saw green leafy trees. “I don’t want to,” he repeated.

“What would your mother want?”

“She would want you to leave me alone,” said Chris. “She would just—Please, can’t you see that I’m not doing anything. I’m not a threat to you. I’m not going to say anything to anyone ever. I’m not going to the cops. I’m going to pack up and move out of the country. I’m never coming back to New York. Do you get it? I’m done with it all.”

“It’s all good,” said the man. “That’ll all be taken into account. Now drink it.”

“I don’t want to,” said Chris.

“Just drink it,” said the man, moving the cup closer.

Chris wanted to slap it out of his hand. He wanted nothing more in the world than to just slap the cup out of the man’s hand. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t move. All he could do was cry and beg. “Please,” he said, through his tears.

“Drink it.”

“What is it?”

“It’ll help you,” said the man. “Help your family. Help your mom.”

Chris stopped crying and took the cup in his hand. He thought about dumping it—he could turn it over and dump it on the floor, he could throw it in the man’s face—but he knew that wouldn’t solve anything. He looked into the cup and saw a couple ounces of clear liquid. “What is it?”

“Just a little something to help you relax.”

“I don’t want to relax.” He tried to hand it back, but the man pushed it back toward him.

“Just drink it. Don’t be a pussy.”

The tiny cup, oddly, was beginning to feel heavy in Chris’s hand. He raised it to his nose and sniffed. Odorless. It dawned on him that this might all be part of some kind of sadistic joke. He put the cup to his lips, poured the liquid into his mouth, and swallowed. It tasted like water, with a hint of chemicals. A little bitter, like soapy water.

“There,” Chris said. “Now fuck off.”

The man smiled and took the cup out of Chris’s hand. He stood up from the couch, and when Chris tried to join him, the man gently pushed him back down.

“Stay there,” he said.

Chris watched him put the cup into the pocket of his fleece coat and zip the pocket closed. “Lie down,” the man said. “Get some rest.” He then bent down, gently lifted Chris’s feet off the ground, swung them over and set them down. Chris was stretched out on the length of the couch. The man untied Chris’s shoes and pulled them off. Then he sat down on the coffee table next to the note and looked at Chris. “Close your eyes,” he said.

Chris closed his eyes.

He saw the same green trees as before. Leafy green trees, with sun coming through them. He saw a river he used to swim in when he was young. He’d swim underwater and dive down and grab smooth rocks from the river floor. It was colder near the bottom. He thought about all the times he’d been surrounded by happy people. He saw his family laughing, his parents in their kitchen before they divorced. He saw his grandmother dancing in the same kitchen. His shoulder muscles relaxed. The muscles in his face relaxed. His other muscles relaxed. It felt wonderful.

After picking up the thumb drive from the house, Grigory Levchin drove the two brothers to Ossip’s Locksmith Shop. Construction on Neptune Avenue slowed their progress. Yuri stared out the window and watched two men carrying a mattress into one of the brick buildings on his right. He checked the side mirror for tails but didn’t see any.

When they arrived, Grigory pulled into an empty spot, put the car in park, and hit the hazards. All three of the men looked at the shop. It appeared to be closed; the metal gate hadn’t been pulled open yet.

They had called Ossip twice on the way over, but he hadn’t answered either call. It was 10:39 a.m. Ossip always had the shop open by 10:00.

“What the fuck?” asked Isaac from the back of the car.

“Go knock on the door,” said Grigory. “Wake that drunkard up.”

Yuri stepped out of the car, and a gust of wind greeted him. Isaac got out and joined him on the sidewalk. Both men approached the front of the shop. Yuri found that the padlock, while set in its place, hadn’t been locked.

He took the lock off and put it on the ground. Then he pushed the metal gate open, the sound of metal scraping on metal. Like a proprietor opening for business, he set it as best he could into its spot. Isaac moved toward the front door and began knocking on it.

Yuri joined him and looked over his shoulder. It was dark in the shop. “What the fuck?” whispered Yuri.

“Dude,” said Isaac. “This shit is bullshit.”

Isaac tried the door and found it unlocked. He walked in slowly, like he was afraid of interrupting something. Before entering, Yuri turned and looked at Grigory, who was watching everything from the car with a frown.

Standing near the door, Isaac was still in the front room when Yuri entered. “What are you doing?” whispered Yuri.

“I don’t know,” said Isaac.

Yuri stepped past him and hit the lights. The front room lit up. Hanging behind the counter on the wall was a collection of blank keys waiting to be carved. A seldom-used cash register sat on the counter. The shop was silent.

“Yo, Ossip!” yelled Yuri. He lifted the countertop and walked toward the back. When he got to the hallway he flicked on the light.

The workshop in back was dark, and Yuri had to feel along the wall like a blind man until he found the light switch. When he hit the lights, he saw Ossip’s body facedown on the ground. There was blood pooled and smeared on the floor. The room, Yuri realized, smelled like shit and blood. He stepped back and hit a bucket near the door and stumbled, but didn’t fall.

“What the fuck?” said Isaac, stepping to the body, but trying to avoid the blood. “What happened?” He turned the man over and they saw a dark gash on his throat where it had been cut.

Yuri, knowing full well what was waiting for him, walked over to the safe in the corner of the room. He found it open and empty. “Fuck,” he said. This can’t be happening, he thought.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Isaac.

“No, no—”

“What?”

“Idiot, people saw us come in,” said Yuri.

They both walked toward the front of the shop, and then stepped outside. Yuri stopped near the front door to make sure nobody else walked in. He watched Isaac walk over to the car and lean down to speak with Grigory.

Yuri looked down the street. There were people everywhere. A woman pushed a laundry cart right past him. Cars drove past in steady waves. Down the block, a child in a stroller cried.

“He doesn’t want to come in,” said Isaac, walking back to the storefront. Yuri bent his head and looked at Grigory, who was still in the car with his phone to his ear. “He’s calling,” said Isaac.

“The cops?” asked Yuri.

“Uncle,” said Isaac.

Yuri looked at his hands; he hadn’t touched anything but he wanted to make sure he didn’t have any blood on him. He looked down and saw some junk mail scattered on the ground. That mail was sent to Ossip, and it will never be opened. He closed his eyes and breathed like he was crying, but no tears came out. This is our fault, he thought. This is all our fault.

“You know who did this, right?” Yuri asked his brother.

“Who?”

“Your fucking friend, that psychopath that was here. What’s his name, fucking Dima?”

“Dima?” said Isaac. “Ossip’s his uncle. He’s not going to kill his uncle. For what?”

“For money,” hissed Yuri. He looked back toward the car and Grigory beckoned him with his fingers. When Yuri walked that way, a group of black guys at a bodega watched him but didn’t say anything.

He bent down by the window. “He said to call the police,” said Grigory.

“Fuck,” said Yuri. “Me?”

“Yes, you. I’m going to wait right here in the car.” He pointed toward the bodega. Yuri looked that way and saw a camera directed toward the front of the locksmith shop. Grigory then pointed at Ossip’s door. Yuri looked that way and saw a domed camera he’d never noticed before. “That one doesn’t work.”

“What do I say?” asked Yuri.

Isaac joined them at the car.

“Say that you came to get a copy of your house keys,” said Grigory, “that Ossip was a dear family friend, that you found the place as you found it, unlocked, dark, that you found him.”

“Throat cut?” asked Yuri.

“Throat cut,” said Grigory, covering his eyes with his hands. “Make the call.”

Yuri stepped back toward the front door and dialed 911. He told the operator that he’d found his friend murdered. Yuri answered all of the dispatcher’s questions with urgency, throwing in a curse word here, and a please hurry there.

As he spoke, he looked out at Neptune Avenue and marveled that people were running errands as though everything was normal. The sky was still blue, traffic kept moving, the world went on. He looked at Isaac and saw his little brother leaning against the back passengerside door, staring at him with a flat expression.

Grigory, meanwhile, still seated in the driver’s seat, was back on the phone, animatedly spreading word of what had happened.

When he finished the call, Yuri walked back to the car, and got in. “This is fucked,” he said in English. Grigory nodded. Isaac got in the back and they sat in silence for a moment until Yuri finally said, “Dima.”

Grigory looked at him. “Why Dima?”

“He was here when we made a withdrawal,” said Yuri. “Moishe had the money in a bag, but he saw it, he noticed.”

“What about Moishe?” asked Grigory.

“Never,” said Yuri. “He’s in Jamaica. He left two days ago. It’s not him.” After fussing with his phone, he held it up. “See”—on the phone was a picture of Moishe sitting on the beach, wearing sunglasses, and giving a peace sign—“he’s with Raya and Raya’s wife and her sister. They left two days ago,” he repeated.

Grigory’s eyes went from the phone to the street in front of him. “All days are bad days,” he said. “This day’s the worst.”

The first sirens could be heard coming from the 60th Precinct.

“Don’t mention the safe,” said Grigory, turning to Yuri.

“What do you think we are?”

Grigory then told them what to say to the cops. He told them to give the statements they discussed, to be cooperative, and not to ask for a lawyer. “Stick to the story: you came, you found, that’s it.”

After the police secured the scene, the men were separated and told to stand in different doorways along Neptune Avenue. More people had gathered now. Word had already spread in the neighborhood.

One by one, the three men gave statements to the same uniformed female officer. She took notes on a small pad and watched them like she was looking for a crack in their foundation, but there was none. From there, they were ferried to the precinct. They were placed in their own small interview rooms along the same hallway.

As Yuri was led to his room, he spotted Grigory. The man sat with straight posture, his large hands placed on the table as if he’d just finished a piano recital.

Yuri’s interview room was filthy; a balled-up Kleenex lay on the floor—maybe someone had been crying. The walls were smeared and dirty. Eventually, Yuri could hear the low tones of Grigory’s voice coming from the next room.

Finally, a homicide detective wearing a loose suit, a black guy named Robinson, entered the room. He didn’t treat Yuri like a suspect, but upon hearing his name he made a show of saying, “Rabinowitz,” while raising his eyebrows, pursing his lips, and nodding his head like he knew who Yuri’s uncle was.

The detective asked all the necessary questions, but he didn’t press any issues. When he finished the interview, he shook Yuri’s hand and seemed to take note of its clamminess. He gave Yuri a card and said to be in touch if he heard anything.

A different cop drove them back to Grigory’s car on Neptune Avenue. Grigory sat up front and the two brothers rode in back.

Isaac was the only one who spoke. He kept repeating, “I can’t believe they killed Ossip.”

“All right, gentleman,” said the cop when he pulled next to the car. “Stay safe.”

“Is he trying to be funny?” asked Isaac.

Grigory shushed him, and they got out. All three men watched the cruiser drive off, then together they turned and looked at Ossip’s shop. A ribbon of yellow police tape hung across the front doorway. No cops were visible, but two empty squad cars and a city van remained in front of the building.

Grigory looked at his phone and told the brothers their uncle wanted to see them.

“Dude, this day is whack,” said Isaac. “Start to finish.”

Yuri shook his head, thought about saying that it hadn’t even begun, but decided to stay silent. They all got into Grigory’s car.

To avoid being followed, Grigory took Ocean Parkway all the way out to Sheepshead Bay and then zigzagged his way back to Brighton Beach. Slumping in the front seat, Yuri stared out the window and thought about all the times he’d spent with Ossip. He’d known the man his entire life. He’d always been there, cutting keys, acting as a bank, drinking, carrying on. He was a good man. Blood or not, he was part of their family.

Yuri also thought about Isaac, who’d looked like a teenager back there at the locksmith shop. As they drove down Avenue U and passed by all the Chinese stores, he felt a genuine affection for him. Yuri told himself he had to start acting better. He had to stop being so hard on his brother. He had to learn to control his anger. He had to be a better brother. It was time to start taking responsibility. It was time to grow up.

Yuri turned in his seat and looked at his brother. Isaac’s eyes were red from crying. “I love you,” Yuri said, holding his hand out.

Isaac grabbed his brother’s hand and kissed it. “I love you too,” he said in Russian. They all rode in silence for a moment; then Isaac reached forward and grabbed Grigory’s massive shoulders. “We love you, too, Big Angel,” he said.

Grigory’s eyes became damp and he wiped them with his hand. All three of them bumped along, shaking their heads, looking at the trees in front of them.

When they got back to Leo Katzir’s office, they found it closed. The secretary had been sent home for the day, and the front door had been locked. They had to wait for the lawyer to open it. When he did, he shook his head at Yuri like an angry grandmother. “Did I tell you?” he asked.

“Yes, you did.”

In the back room they found their uncle on the phone, ending a call. “Sit down, boys,” he said, pointing at the couch. He turned to Grigory. “Close that door.”

Yuri and Isaac sat on the couch. As their uncle set a chair in front of them, Yuri tried to find some kind of self possession. He shifted in his seat, wiped at his jaw, and made a pained face. This is the bottom, thought Yuri. This is rock bottom.

Uncle Yakov, his eyes looking particularly blue, studied the two brothers. After a moment, he leaned forward, grabbed Isaac’s knee, and gave it a little shake.

“Boys, when we were young, back there”—he spoke quietly—“we had to do things because there was no other way to survive. We had to eat, and if you have to eat, and there is no job for Jews, then you make your own employment.”

He leaned back, crossed one leg over the other. “We’ve been talking,” he said, looking at the lawyer, who sat at his desk, hands folded in front of him, shaking his head. “It’s different now. Yes, the world needs things. Things need to be shipped from here to there. Goods need to be sold. Orders need fulfillment.”

He stopped speaking for a moment, looked first at Isaac and then shifted his gaze to Yuri. “Your father was a good man. He never joined me in what we do, and I never held it against him. As you know, we remained very close. I loved that man. He’s not here to watch over you.”

His eyes went back and forth between the two brothers. “Here is what I propose,” he finally said. “I’m going to pay the money back myself. We need to clean this up.”

He turned and looked at the lawyer, and the lawyer nodded. “And you boys are going to leave New York.”

“You can go wherever you want. Go to California. I tell you the world is whatever you want it to be. But you can’t be here right now. You don’t have to live this life.” He sat there like he was trying to figure out what else to say, then looked at Grigory. “It’s unhealthy.”

Yuri closed his eyes. He didn’t feel any great relief, but he wasn’t going to argue. “Yeah, I mean, I think we can do that.” He turned and looked at his brother. “Right?” he asked.

Isaac said, “California,” and nodded his head, like it was just one more fun thing they could do.

Yuri couldn’t help staring at him.

It was settled: the Rabinowitz brothers would move to California.

That same afternoon, Michael D’Angelo received a text message from Elizabeth Carlyle: Call your men off Chris C.

He typed his response: Really?? and hit send.

His phone lit up. Yes, really. Another message followed: We fired him.

D’Angelo was in a meeting at the time. He sat there for a moment, and then texted Paul Malone, whose team had been hired to watch Chris. He told him the job was over, to call off his men. He thanked Paul and told him to send his bill.

When the meeting ended, D’Angelo walked straight to his office, sat down at his desk, and opened the video of Chris Cowley’s pickpocketing. He watched it in real speed, then slowed it down and watched it again. By this point, it seemed unquestionable that the attorney and the pickpocket had acted in tandem. It was right there on video: they looked at each other before the bump. In D’Angelo’s mind it was a settled fact. He backed it up and watched again.

The pickpocket was skilled—he had to give him that. It didn’t matter anymore. He closed the video player, then opened up his email and began responding to a message about his son’s school.

D’Angelo finished work early and decided that instead of catching his normal cab, he’d walk to Penn Station. The walk didn’t bring any relief. Midtown felt ugly; his bad mood seemed to be shared by everyone around him. A contagious, citywide bad mood had descended. Florida, thought D’Angelo. The place for me is Florida.

As he made his way across Bryant Square Park, he thought of Valencia Walker. Perhaps she could offer some closure. He stopped walking, took out his cell phone, and scrolled through his contacts until he found her number. While the phone rang, he moved toward the tables and chairs on the west side of the park.

“Michael, I was just thinking about you,” Valencia said when she answered. Her voice was warm. Calling her had been the right decision, he knew it instantly. His mood was already improving.

After exchanging a few friendly greetings, D’Angelo came to the point. “You heard they fired Cowley?”

“I did,” said Valencia.

“So what do you think?”

“Termination is never good,” said Valencia, her voice still carrying that soothing tone. “It leaves a bad feeling.”

“I mean bigger picture.”

“Big picture,” said Valencia. “The case is a mess. I think your firm’s client is about to be in a lot of trouble. The thing needs to go away.”

“Calcott?” asked D’Angelo. He was confused.

“Calcott.”

“Yeah, well—”

“But don’t tell Liz that,” said Valencia, cutting him off. “You know she hates to hear bad news.”

“Yeah, well—”

“I’m saying that based on a vibe in the air, not anything concrete.”

D’Angelo’s eyebrows turned in on each other; his head moved back an inch. He felt at a loss for words. It sounded so abstract coming from her. She didn’t sound like an ex-intelligence officer, she sounded like a hippie. “Very New Age,” he finally managed to say.

“I’ve been meditating,” said Valencia. “Now tell me what you think.”

“I think Cowley was in on losing that phone.”

“Of course, he was,” said Valencia. “He lost it.”

“No, I mean, I think he lost it intentionally.”

“Liz told me that,” she said. “Seems plausible.”

“You know we had men on him since it went down?”

“She told me that too,” said Valencia. “Did they ever get anything?”

“Honestly, not really.”

“I heard he lost them last night,” she said.

“Yeah,” said D’Angelo. “A real Jason Bourne.”

“Last straw.”

“That’s it,” said D’Angelo. “Hey listen, there was one thing that still bugged me.”

“What’s that?”

“The pickpocket.”

“Oh God,” said Valencia. “You don’t know how long we worked on that. I called in a favor”—here her voice dropped down to a conspiratorial whisper—“from Fort Meade, mind you. Had them run the video through their facial recognition systems. Nada. For all we know, the dude might have been wearing one of those silicone masks.”

D’Angelo found himself nodding while he listened.

“Also—well shit—I won’t say his name ’cause you know him, too, but I had someone pull all the StingRay data from the Grand Central and the Bleecker Street stops. There were something like twenty-five numbers that seemed to hit the time frame right. I had my team track all—I’m saying all—those numbers back to their owners.

“Long story short, there were no good hits. We found four Asian fellas, but we looked into them and none was our target. I had my NYPD guy pull every sheet on every pickpocket in Grand Central and Penn Station for the last three years.” She paused for a moment, then said, “The guy did a very clean job.”

“You’d think Liz might have shared some of that information with me,” said D’Angelo.

“Come on, you know these lawyers. They share what they think needs sharing. If it was up to me, we would’ve been coordinating the whole time,” said Valencia. “I tried to let Liz loan you out to us when we first came on board, but she didn’t go for it.”

D’Angelo watched a college-aged couple walking hand-in-hand across the park. “Would’ve made more sense,” he said.

“You got a good nose for this shit,” said Valencia. “Ever since we worked on that Hammoud thing. I’m not saying this to be nice, either. There are some people who see it, and there are some people who don’t. You see it.”

“I appreciate that,” said D’Angelo. “It’s mutual,” he added, feeling oddly sentimental.

“So, do you think you’re going to continue looking for this Chinese dude?” she asked, sounding almost mirthful, like it would be a fun little escapade to get involved in.

“What am I, crazy?” said D’Angelo. “When Elizabeth Carlyle says you’re done, you better be done.”

“Well, if you ever do look into him, give me a call,” said Valencia. “I’d do it for free. These things have a way of grabbing my attention.”

“I’ll do that,” he said.

“We should have dinner sometime,” said Valencia. “Go somewhere nice, drink some good wine.”

“I’d like that,” said D’Angelo, smiling.

They said their goodbyes and hung up.

D’Angelo stayed seated for a moment. He watched the workers walking home. Looked at the trees and saw that the leaves were about to emerge. It did make him feel better to speak to her. At least somebody in this godforsaken city appreciated him.

Even after the call ended, Valencia kept the phone up near her face and considered her best course of action. She’d just jumped in the back of an SUV for a rolling meeting. The phone call had been completely unexpected. The vehicle she was in continued down East Forty-Sixth Street. The traffic in Midtown was barely moving.

After a moment, when she felt fully composed, she turned her head so she could look into Jonathan Redgrave’s eyes. “See?” she said. “He’s got no imagination.”

Redgrave’s face didn’t betray anything. “Has he ever called you before?”

“Not that I remember,” said Valencia. She tried to read Redgrave’s face to see what he was thinking, but the man had a facility for masking his thoughts.

“I’m not worried about him,” said Redgrave, shaking his head and bending down so he could look out the windshield of their SUV. “The guy is zero on my list of worries.”

Valencia had been instructed to leave CDH’s office on foot at 4:10 p.m., walk up Madison Avenue to East Forty-Sixth, make a right, and continue on the north side of the street. If she wasn’t picked up by the time she finished walking the length of that block at her normal pace, she was to understand that the meeting had been canceled and that she should wait for further instructions.

But they did pick her up. Before she’d made it halfway down the block, the SUV pulled to the curb and stopped fifteen feet in front of her. The back door popped open, and Valencia walked over. She looked in and saw Redgrave on the far side of the backseat.

Thirty seconds after getting in, her phone buzzed. Redgrave told her to put it on speaker. Now, with the call finished, Redgrave pointed out the windshield. “We gotta make a quick stop.”

Valencia leaned toward the middle of the seat, but she couldn’t see where he was pointing.

“He wants to find our guy?” said Redgrave.

“I guess so,” said Valencia, shaking her head like they were sharing a joke.

“Good luck with that one,” said Redgrave. He pointed to their left. “Here we are.”

Redgrave’s driver steered the SUV into a parking garage. Valencia had no idea where they were going. Her nervousness clicked up a level. The attendant, sitting in his booth, raised the boom barrier without checking any credentials. It appeared he was expecting them.

They drove to the very back of the garage, a darkened corner, and then—with wheels screeching quietly—made a few efficient turns before backing into a spot.

“Hop out,” said Redgrave. Valencia got out. The driver joined her and told her to lift her arms. Then, looking for wires, he swept and scanned her with two separate handheld devices, one at a time. He frisked her—not in a rough way, but thoroughly.

While he did this, Valencia casually set about memorizing his face. The man looked Latino, but it was hard to say what country he was from. He had scars on his face, high up on his right cheek, near his temple. She noted his eye ratio, the pattern of his scarring, his nose type, height, weight, hairline, smell, and movement profile. She memorized it all.

When he finished sweeping her, he gestured toward the back door, and then opened it for her like a gentleman. She got back into the vehicle and saw that Redgrave had an open briefcase on his lap.

“Put your phone in here,” he said. She placed the phone in the briefcase, and he shut the thing, snapped some snaps closed, and passed it forward to the driver, who put it on the floor in the front.

“So tell me,” said Valencia, as they made their way toward the garage’s exit, “who’s number one on your list of worries?”

Redgrave studied her face in a lecherous way. He seemed to love this kind of banter. “You are babe. You know that.”

Valencia couldn’t help noticing a tiny speck of yellow discharge in the inside corner of his eye. The man was foul. Still, she batted her eyelashes at him and smiled.

When they emerged from the garage, the driver began looping back toward Madison Avenue.

“What about Chris Cowley?” asked Valencia, probing for information. “What number is he?”

“Shit, he’s down there with D’Angelo,” said Redgrave, shaking his head, squeezing his lips together, and holding his hand low on his chest like he was illustrating the size of a short man. “Down in the zero range. Subzero. Not a worry anymore. Debriefed him earlier. He’s free and clear.”

“And Elizabeth?”

“Now you’re talking,” said Redgrave. When he touched her thigh with the back of his hand, Valencia noticed a ring on his finger. She tried to imagine the woman who would marry this man, and the only thing that came to mind was a mail-order bride. She’d asked Danny to run a full background on Jonathan Redgrave, but none of the individuals he found were a match. There was nothing; the man didn’t exist.

“Anyway, listen”—Redgrave adjusted his voice to signify that the joking and flirting were over—“the agenda for the coming week is simple. It’s gonna move fast. More stories will come out in the press. I’m talking every day.” He tapped his fingers on his palms. “The stories will make Calcott’s stock fall. Did you have somebody short them for you?”

“That would be insider trading,” said Valencia, aware that he might be recording this conversation.

Redgrave rolled his eyes, and continued. “Anyway, stock will fall, your girl Elizabeth will be blamed. And you—pretty lady—will nudge her all week long. You’ll nudge all of them—Carlyle, Driscoll, Hathaway—the whole gang, until they decide that the only path forward is to go to Calcott’s in-house and recommend withdrawing the case.”

He paused for a second and looked out the window at a man screaming into his phone. “Listen to me, everyone needs to just stand down. Case needs to be withdrawn. I’ll leave the approach to you. Handle it however you see fit. That’s why we hired you. You’re the best, right?”

“Best nudger in the business,” said Valencia, smiling, shaking her head, and pressing her thumbnail against her finger.

“You brought your shit?”

She reached into her breast pocket and handed a small envelope to Redgrave. Inside the envelope, scrawled in her neat handwriting on a greeting card, was her thirty-four-character address for Bitcoin deposit.

“What if they won’t drop the case?” asked Valencia.

“Then the stories will get worse and worse and their stock will continue to fall until they bottom out and get chopped up and sold for parts. It’s not a question of if they’ll drop it—it’s when.” He shrugged and shook his head like he didn’t care.

“And Emerson?” asked Valencia, glancing out the window and watching a masked delivery man on an electric bike riding next to them. “What if they don’t drop their side of the case?”

“Shit, we’re way further along with them, right?” Redgrave asked the driver.

The driver looked in the rearview mirror, shook his head by way of an answer, and looked back at the road.

Redgrave turned his attention back to Valencia. “Don’t worry about them. We’re all just little pieces, doing our little parts.” He sounded like he was imitating some singer. The reference was lost on Valencia.

Redgrave continued: “Elizabeth Carlyle—that’s all you have to worry about. Make her see the light. Preach to her. Tell her stories. Isn’t that your thing? Didn’t you say that somewhere?”

Valencia couldn’t recall if she’d ever said that.

“She respects you,” said Redgrave. “That’s why you’re here. That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

Valencia pretended to yawn. The vehicle came to a stop. They all stared at a taxi that had stopped and was blocking their way.

Valencia felt her blood pressure tick up a few bars as she prepared her next question. “And this is still authorized by the colonel?”

“You keep asking the same question, and the answer remains the same: yes,” said Redgrave. “Authorized, fully DS7’d all the way up. Straight from the colonel.”

Colonel Pollock was the U.S. Army full bird colonel in charge of N14—Redgrave’s group. N14, as far as Valencia was able to find out, was operating out of NORTHCOM. It was a Department of Defense group and had no crossover coordination with Langley. Her sources told her that N14 was set up for quote-unquote domestic operations. The “quote-unquote,” when she heard it, implied true, high-level black bag operations inside the United States. None of this was remotely public information; it was, as her source told her, “Stovepiped, DOD bullshit.”

When she asked her old boss about Colonel Pollock, she was told, “He’s Montana—not Colorado—that’s all you need to know.” She understood this to mean that N14 was fully off the books, completely unrecognized, unknown to Congress. Even the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wouldn’t have any idea who they were.

“Can you do me a favor, and I mean this seriously,” Valencia said, mirroring him and touching his thigh the same way he’d just touched hers. “Can you please tell Colonel Pollock that if he ever comes to New York I’d like to have a drink with him?”

“I’ll do that,” said Redgrave. “Or you can call him yourself. He’s listed in the phone book.”

Valencia smiled at that.

“Any problems, leave your bathroom blind open and Manny-boy will reach out.” He looked at the driver. “Right?”

“That’s right, sir,” said Manny, looking in the rearview mirror.

“If you need immediate attention,” said Redgrave, “call the messenger service. Ask for Raul. They’ll say wrong number, and you’ll hang up. That’s emergencies only. We’ll reach you within thirty minutes.”

“Sounds good,” said Valencia.

“One other thing,” said Redgrave. “No more asking about us. No more talking to Stockton or any of them. You did your due diligence, now you gotta shut the fuck up. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She smiled. The conversation she’d had with her old station chief, Bildad Stockton, had been face-to-face. She’d traveled, unannounced, to his house in Georgetown. She hadn’t sent any emails or made any calls. She was being warned that she was under surveillance. “Had to ask,” she said.

“But you’re done asking.”

“Message received,” she said.

“Good,” said Redgrave. “We’ll get rolling then.”

Redgrave spent the rest of the drive bragging about his sailboat and the brave solo trips he’d made. Valencia listened, smiled when it was called for, and asked questions to keep him talking. She felt—even as he carried on about his boat—that he was really trying to tell her something else, that he was playing some other kind of mind game.

Her attention would shift to Manny occasionally; she’d try to catch his eye and read his feelings, but he was too focused running surveillance-detection maneuvers, second-lane turns, and mid-block stops and starts.

By the time they got near her apartment, she was feeling claustrophobic and hot. She pointed at a wine store, two blocks from her front door. “Drop me right here, please. This is good.”

After getting her phone back and saying goodbye, she got out and watched the SUV drive away. She resisted the urge to look up and instead looked at the red mark she’d made on her finger. For good luck, she spit on the ground, something her grandmother used to do, and then she went into the wine store.

Two hours and forty minutes before that meeting, Valencia’s underling, Billy Sharrock, had left his cell phone on his office desk, grabbed a walkie-talkie, and set out for the Bronx. He took a circuitous route and ran surveillance detection the entire time. First, he hopped on a downtown A train and jumped out right before the doors closed at Fulton Street. He skipped up the stairs to the exit. From there, he walked south on Broadway for a few blocks, dodging slow-moving people as he went.

At a light, he hopped into a taxi without waving at it and passed sixty dollars forward to the driver. “Drive around for a little, I want to lose some asshole who’s following me,” he said.

“You want me to drive around?” asked the cabbie. He counted the money and then turned and looked through the dirty partition.

“Yeah, yeah, just go,” said Billy, waving him forward.

“You want me to go fast?”

“Yeah, yeah, but not so fast you’ll get a ticket, just loop around down here for a little bit. Keep the change.”

The driver pushed the gas and hit a hard right on Cedar Street. The little street was free of cars, and the driver raced down it. He rolled a stop sign and cranked a left. They sped past a construction site. With his hand on the ceiling, Billy had turned in his seat and was watching out the back window. He couldn’t see anyone following him. “Okay, okay, slow down.”

The driver didn’t seem to hear his passenger. He ran a red and made a left onto Rector and a quick left onto Trinity Place. After a bicyclist yelled at him, he finally slowed down and looped back toward the station. Before getting out, Billy pulled on a beanie and took off his coat, folded it up, and tucked it under his sweatshirt. He then sped down the stairs into the station, swiped his way back in, using a card previously purchased with cash, and caught an uptown 4 train.

In the train, he sat next to an old Indian woman who was eating a piece of corn on the cob. Billy, breathing slightly more heavily than normal, took his time examining every passenger. He felt un-followed.

During his ride uptown he thought about Valencia and wondered what the hell she was getting them into. Eight days earlier she’d told them that they were in “war mode.” She instructed them to be careful on any phone and to assume they were being monitored at all times. She said it wasn’t a big deal—they just had to keep their eyes open. Thinking about it now, Billy had to shake his head. He’d hate to see what counted as a big deal.

At Eighty-Sixth Street, he got out, exited the station, ran a four-block surveillance-detection route, and then went back into the station and got on an uptown 6 train. He got off in Mott Haven in the Bronx at 138th Street.

A few blocks from the station was a lube shop. A windowless Sprinter van was parked in front of the shop on 138th Street. Billy approached it slowly and knocked on the back door. A second later, the door slid open.

“You made it,” said Colter Jacobson. He looked over Billy’s shoulder, then stepped out. He pointed to the front of the van. “Let’s go,” he said. Billy walked to the passenger door and waited to be let in.

A kid rolled by on a BMX, rapping about how many guns he had. When Billy got in, Colter told him to buckle up.

They drove a few blocks over to a self-storage lot that sat right next to the Harlem River. The gate had a keypad and Colter got out, bent down, and punched in the code.

When he got back, he told Billy he was friends with the owner, and that one of the best signals in New York City could be found there. Billy took out his walkie-talkie, found the appointed band, and tested it: “Blue Dove, Blue Dove,” he said. A moment later, he heard Milton answer, “Blue Dove, Blue Cat.”

They parked near a clearing that faced the river, hopped out, and got in the back of the van. Billy looked at the floor and admired the rubber matting. He stepped to the shelves and looked at the welding. Every tool had its place. Billy could only shake his head with jealousy.

They had about forty-five minutes to kill before the operation started, and they spent it talking first about the Knicks, and then a little bit about Billy’s time in Afghanistan. Then they talked about the weather.

Colter’s pilot was back in White Plains. When the drone was up, Colter told Billy that they had to keep it at about 4,400 feet to avoid the NYPD. They watched on the monitor as the pilot flew it above Harlem. Colter took control of the camera from his computer, and he zoomed in on different practice targets.

“Good camera,” whispered Billy.

“This thing,” Colter answered modestly, like he was embarrassed by any kind of praise. He then tapped the back of his head, and they both stared at the monitor.

The pilot flew toward Midtown, and Colter set the camera on Carlyle, Driscoll, and Hathaway’s building. They had ten minutes before Valencia was supposed to walk out. In order to make herself easy to spot, she’d worn a bright yellow coat that day. They looked at everyone who emerged from the building. Twenty seconds after 4:10 p.m., Colter spotted Valencia. He zoomed in and pointed at the screen.

Billy took his walkie-talkie, and in prearranged code told Milton that Valencia was on the move and headed north: “Blue Dove, South, North, East, West.” He repeated it once.

The drone’s camera stayed on Valencia as she walked. Billy sat on the edge of his seat and watched her.

When Valencia turned right onto East Forty-Sixth, Billy called in an update to Milton, who was soft-following from a few blocks back.

They watched Redgrave’s vehicle stop in front of her. “Here we go,” said Billy. On the monitor they saw her stop at the door, and then get in.

Billy took a little notepad out of his jacket pocket and searched for the code for Escalade. When he found it, he raised his radio and spoke into it: “Blue Dove—Blue, Green, Black, Michigan.” He repeated that, and Milton copied.

Billy got nervous he’d mistaken the car model, and he asked Colter, “That’s a Suburban or an Escalade?”

“Escalade,” said Colter. “Looks like a 2016, but it could’ve been a ’14, ’15, or ’16.”

Then Colter spoke into his own headset and asked his drone pilot to angle on the plate. Fussing with the camera’s remote, Colter leaned forward and read from the screen, “‘New York HWY 4120.’”

Billy jotted the number down but held off on radioing it. They watched the vehicle drive two blocks east and then saw it enter a parking garage. This led to an extended period of nervousness because they had no idea what was happening. Billy consulted his paper map and took some time jotting down call signals into his notepad.

“Park-Lex, Park-Lex, Mad-Broad, Mad-Broad, 4-6, 4-7, 1-9, 2-9, 3-8, 3-3,” Billy said into his radio, reading from his notes. He then repeated the same message.

Milton copied.

The vehicle reemerged a few minutes later and continued on East Forty-Sixth before circling around and heading west. Nobody knew whether Valencia was still in the SUV. Billy jotted down the directions in his notepad and read the code to Milton.

Then Billy switched the band on his radio and called Danny Tsui, who was on his computer at a Starbucks in Midtown to avoid any potential listening devices in their office. In code he asked Danny whether Valencia’s phone appeared to be headed west on East Forty-Seventh.

A few moments later Danny’s voice came over the radio and said they’d lost her phone signal.

“They took it,” said Colter.

“Yep,” said Billy.

They watched the SUV make its way back to Madison Avenue. Colter pulled the camera back and they tried, unsuccessfully, to see if they could spot any other cars trailing their target. He tried to find Milton, but he couldn’t even see him.

After Valencia hopped out near her apartment, Colter zoomed in on her for a moment; Billy could almost make out the expression on her face. Then Colter moved the camera back to the target vehicle. This was the whole point. They wanted to track him. They needed to know who Jonathan Redgrave really was.

The SUV made its way to the West Side Highway, looped around and headed downtown. Billy sat poking his tooth with his tongue and wondered where the hell they were going. He spoke into the radio and told Milton to loop back to Columbus and soft-shadow south from there. The SUV made a few countersurveillance moves, but nothing fancy.

Billy looked at Colter and asked, “Where do you think they’ll go?”

The older man thought about it for a moment, then, referring to the NSA’s Manhattan spy hub, said, “probably Titanpointe.”

“That would be fucking hilarious,” said Billy, shaking his head.

They watched the Escalade travel down through the West Village into Tribeca. When it finally stopped, Colter zoomed his camera in, and they saw Redgrave hop out and walk straight into a building. The Escalade took off.

“Which building is that?” asked Billy.

“That would be”—Colter flipped a switch on his control and white HUD characters popped up on the monitor—“99 Hudson Street,” he said.

Billy rubbed his hands together like he was cold. “What the hell does he want in there?”

“That’s your job, not mine,” said the drone man.

Milton Frazier pulled his SUV over on Varick Street and put it in park. He’d been told their target had entered 99 Hudson Street, and that he should sit tight. He took the opportunity to peel and eat an orange. After the orange, he ate some raw cashews, one at a time. He drank water and stared at a passing woman. When he was finished, he put on lip balm, examined his face in the mirror, and checked his teeth for food. Then he leaned back in his seat, thought about Valencia, and told himself she was safe at home.

His walkie-talkie sounded, and Billy told him to take a look at the target building.

Milton pulled back into traffic and looped around to Franklin Street. He parked in a loading-only zone and set his NYPD placard on the dashboard. After changing bands on his radio, he called Danny Tsui, and asked him for a list of businesses in the building.

Inside the glove compartment Milton pulled out a paper envelope that held five thousand dollars. He separated eight hundred dollars from the rest and put that into his pants pocket. A minute later, Danny radioed back and listed some of the companies in the building: a law firm, a film company, an environmental organization, a real estate agent, and a PR firm.

Milton got out, grabbed his suit coat from the back, put it on, took the cash out of his pants pocket and transferred it to his inside jacket pocket. He took a moment to fix his tie in the reflection of his SUV’s window. He pulled at his shirtsleeves, flapped his coat, and then started walking toward the building. He felt a controlled kind of nervousness.

Milton studied the building from across the street. He stamped the impression on his mind: fifteen floors, nothing too fancy, a little gold trim, art deco. Valencia would ask for the details: Tell me more.

When he peered in through the glass door, he was happy to see that the doorman was black, that he had dreadlocks, and that he was the only person in the lobby.

Milton opened the door and walked toward the desk. “What’s up with you, sir?” said Milton, smiling when he got there.

The doorman squinted at him, let his head fall to the side, and said, “I’m good man, you?”

“I’m all right man, but”—he lowered his voice a little—“working all day.”

“I hear that,” said the doorman.

Milton looked down at the sign-in sheet, but the last signature was a woman thirty minutes earlier. “Summer’s coming,” Milton said.

“Gonna be the hottest in years,” said the doorman.

Milton looked up like an idea had just occurred to him; he tapped his knuckles on the desk. “Listen—I was supposed to give one of my pitches to that white brother that just came in a few minutes ago. You know the dude I’m talking about? He’s got little pimple scars on his face? Skinny guy? Brown hair a little thin up here?”

The doorman nodded, “Mmm-hmm.”

“He works here, though?” asked Milton.

“Yeah.”

“I feel stupid,” said Milton, like he was confessing something, “but I forgot the man’s first name. What’s his name? Jonathan?”

The doorman dropped his head and made a pained face. “I’m sorry, brother, I’m not supposed to give out that kind of info.”

“I hear you,” said Milton, dropping his voice a little to match his register. “We all gotta do our jobs.”

“I’m sorry about that,” said the doorman.

“It’s all good,” said Milton. He reached into his coat pocket and palmed the eight hundred, flashed it, and whispered, “I got eight hundred dollars if you tell me the dude’s name and where he went to.”

He put the money on the desk, his hand still covering it, and slid the cash forward. “It’s worth that much to me, and nothing more.”

The doorman smiled, reached for the money, didn’t count it, and slipped it into his own jacket pocket. “What’s that dude,” the doorman said. “That dude Jack Glasser, works on the eighth floor, solar place?”

“He just came in?” asked Milton.

“Yeah, but ten minutes ago.”

“He got them little pimples on his cheeks, hair pushed back like an Italian dude?”

“Skinny dude?” asked the doorman.

“Yeah, skinny dude with the pitted skin, about fifty.” They were both whispering now.

A white woman stepped out of the elevator and the doorman said, “Okay now,” to her. They waited for her to leave and when the front door closed, the doorman said, “Yeah, that’s him—Jack Glasser. He’s up there in the Solar Solutions.”

“Works here?”

“Yeah.”

“Dude just came in. He’s like six foot one?”

“I’m telling you. He just came in ten minutes ago. Only other person came in was two white ladies on the second floor.”

“I thought he was called Jonathan Redgrave?”

The doorman made a face like Milton was crazy. “I don’t know who that is. The dude’s Jack Glasser—he works here. Been here ever since I have.”

“All right then,” said Milton, taking a step back. He touched a finger to his lips, a Be quiet gesture, and then pointed at the doorman. “I appreciate you, sir.”

“Appreciate you too,” said the doorman.

The following morning, Michael D’Angelo woke from a nightmare. In the dream, he’d been visiting his mother’s house outside of Buffalo (she actually lived in a nursing home). There was a disturbance outside. When he looked out the window, he saw a dead deer. He went outside to look closer and saw that the yard was littered with dead deer. They’d run through the fence, leaving deer-sized holes where they entered. Some of the deer had tree limbs jammed through their heads.

It was disgusting, and he woke in a panic. His bedside clock read 5:11 a.m. He had an hour before his alarm was set to go off. Next to him, his wife slept soundly. He touched her back and then got up.

The Maplewood train station in New Jersey was a ten-minute drive from his house. He arrived there at seven thirty. Everyone waiting on the platform seemed to be in a bad mood; they frowned, they clenched their jaws. People coughed, a man spit. When the train pulled in, they all jockeyed for seats. D’Angelo found a spot near the window. The man who sat next to him looked like a banker. Overweight, he breathed through his nose like a bulldog. D’Angelo was just thinking of moving seats when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

He cringed when he saw it was Elizabeth. “Good morning,” he answered, staring out the window at a traffic-jammed freeway.

“Michael, shit, hold on—excuse me, no, thank you. Okay, sorry—Michael? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” said D’Angelo, pulling the phone from his ear and grimacing.

“I need you to go to Chris Cowley’s house and collect his laptop. He told us he’d returned all CDH-issued computers and phones, but now Lauren from IT says he checked out a laptop and we can’t—”

“Shit.”

“Yep. Can you go directly there?”

“Yeah, I’m on the train, I’ll jump in a car when I get out.”

“If he doesn’t open the door, see if you can get the super to give you access.”

D’Angelo made a face but said, “Okay.”

When he got to Chris’s building, he stared up at it and cursed the young man under his breath. Of course Cowley lived in a building like this, fancy, and all glass. He was about to press the buzzer, when he decided that this conversation shouldn’t be conducted over the intercom system. He stepped back to the sidewalk and looked up again.

After a few minutes, a young, wet-haired woman exited, and D’Angelo was able to catch the door before it closed. On the elevator ride up he realized he was feeling nervous. He worried that Chris might cause some kind of a fuss. No, you can’t have my fucking computer, he imagined Chris saying. This is harassment. I’m filing a claim against you.

When he got to Chris’s apartment, he knocked on the door and stood there waiting. His mouth was dry, and he wanted water. When he didn’t hear anything, he put his ear near the door and pressed the bell. A soft chime could be heard coming from inside. He straightened up from the door and pressed the bell five times in a row.

God damn it, Chris, he thought. He tried the knob and found it unlocked. After pushing the door open, he looked back down the hallway toward the elevator, then leaned his head into the apartment and called out.

“Hey, Chris, it’s Michael D’Angelo, I need to talk to you.” His voice sounded pinched.

After stepping into the apartment, he closed the door without latching it and called out again. “Hey, Chris, you here, buddy?” The walkway from the door to the living room was only about ten feet long. He sniffed at the air and smelled a cleaning product. “Chris?”

When he saw keys hanging on a hook by the door, D’Angelo stared for a moment and considered how he could use one of those in his own house. Then he realized that the hanging keys suggested Chris was there. He walked farther into the apartment toward what he assumed was the living room.

As soon as he rounded the corner, he saw Chris lying on the couch. He was fully dressed. D’Angelo said, “Oh, Chris …” but he let the sentence trail off. He stood there staring at him.

“Chris?” he repeated, and moved closer; but he already suspected that the young man was dead. There was a stillness in the room, and Chris’s skin looked pale.

D’Angelo stepped even closer and looked down. The young lawyer had an odd look on his face, and his eyes were closed. His arms lay flat next to his sides, both his hands squeezed into fists.

When D’Angelo touched his neck, he found it cold and without pulse. There was a fecal smell in the air, and D’Angelo stepped away from the couch and held his hand in front of his nose. He looked over the scene and saw a piece of paper on the coffee table. On it, he read: I’m sorry, I did my best, Chris Cowley.

D’Angelo took out his phone and snapped a picture of the note. He figured Liz would want to know exactly what happened, so he stepped to the other side of the room and took a picture of Chris’s body. After looking more closely at the picture on his phone, he saw an empty orange prescription bottle on the floor. He used a pen to lift it and set it on the bar near the kitchen. There was no label.

He sniffed it, but it only smelled like plastic. When he looked at it more closely, he could see a white residue inside. He took a picture of the bottle, then used the pen and set it back where he’d found it.

D’Angelo walked around the back of the couch and looked at Chris’s shoes on the floor. They were untied and laid out neatly in the direction they’d be pointing if he was still wearing them. It looked odd, and it made D’Angelo feel sad. “God damn it, Chris,” he said. He felt a wave of heavy grief, but then it faded, and he went back to feeling almost nothing. He took out his phone and was about to call 911, when he realized that Elizabeth would ask him why he didn’t grab the computer. Stepping away from the couch, he moved toward the kitchen to think about it.

He played out the scenario in his mind: Came by to get computer, did a wellness check, found him dead, took the property. It didn’t feel right. Fuck you Liz, he thought.

He dialed 911 and reported that he’d found an apparent victim of a suicide. While he spoke, he moved into Chris’s bedroom; staring out the window he answered all of the dispatcher’s questions.

After the call ended, the investigator found the computer sitting on top of a dresser. He checked the bottom and saw a Property of Carlyle, Driscoll, and Hathaway sticker.

When he called Elizabeth, he reached her voicemail. “Elizabeth, you need to call me right away, it’s urgent,” he said, sounding depressed.

When the option was given, he thought about rerecording it, but decided against it. His mind went to Valencia: What would she do? She’d take the computer before the cops even showed up. She’d tuck it into the front of her pants and walk it out to her car so the security cameras wouldn’t record her.

He moved a stool to the kitchen and sat there reading the New York Times on his cell phone. After a few minutes, a second wave of grief crashed over him. D’Angelo cried. He thought about Chris and sat there on the stool and cried. The kid had looked so lonely lately. He thought about the time he’d walked in and found him talking to his mother on the phone. Stupid kid, D’Angelo thought, wiping his eyes and trying to get a hold of himself. Stupid fucking kid. It’s just a job; there are plenty of jobs out there.

When the cops showed up, he told them why he’d stopped by. He explained that he entered the premises because the door was open, and he wanted to do a wellness check. He pointed out the pill bottle, and the note.

The cops were babies; they both seemed to be about twenty-five years old. They had slightly dazed looks on their faces. D’Angelo informed them he’d been an FBI agent for eighteen years. One of the cops, a female, raised her eyebrows and nodded when he said it, but she didn’t seem otherwise impressed.

When the time came, he showed them the computer, pointed to the “Property of” sticker, and told them that he was going to have to take it with him. He didn’t ask, he simply told them. The cops exchanged glances and shrugged.

Before he left, D’Angelo took one last look at Chris’s body. There was something almost religious about the way he was lying there. For a second, looking at him, D’Angelo felt a strange moment of peace. But it faded, and he became angry at the kid again. He gave the cops his business card and walked out. By the time the elevator had delivered him to the ground floor, his anger had transformed into a kind of dull despair.

Elizabeth Carlyle sat in a conference room on the nineteenth floor of their office building. Her mentee, Sujung Kim, was in the middle of explaining some new case law to a cadre of attorneys. Elizabeth only half listened; most of her mind occupied itself by plotting moves in the Calcott case: As soon as the judge ruled against their motion for summary judgment, they’d engage in settlement talks for a while; this would cause a string of delays that would—

Henry Blatt, who happened to be sitting next to her, tapped her on the thigh and interrupted her thoughts. It seemed inappropriate for him to touch her, and her eyes went down to the spot of the foul. When she looked up, Henry nodded toward the door. Standing there, with his head poking into the room, was Michael D’Angelo. It was only then that she looked at her phone and saw she’d missed three calls from him.

“What’s up?” she asked, joining him in the hall.

He led her away from the door. “Liz, I’m sorry,” he said, looking down at his feet. “Chris committed suicide.”

“What?” she asked.

“He took pills. There was a note. I took pictures.”

He seemed to be preparing to show her something on his iPhone, but Elizabeth took a step back from him. “My God,” she said, closing her eyes and putting her hands to her forehead. “When?” she asked.

“I just found him.”

“What did the note say?”

“It said, ‘I’m sorry, I did my best,’ and he signed it.”

“Okay,” she said. “Fuck.” She stepped back.

Another lawyer, walking by in the hallway, seemed to sense what was happening. She made a concerned face and drifted toward them. Elizabeth waved her away.

“I got the computer,” said D’Angelo.

Elizabeth wanted to say, Who the fuck cares. All she could manage was, “Okay.” She moved away from him and headed for the elevator. Over her shoulder she said, “Thank you.”

As she made her way down the hall, her heart raced so wildly in her chest that she worried she was suffering a heart attack. She put her hand above her breast and breathed deeply through her mouth.

Oh fuck, she thought. This is where I’m going to die.

By the time she reached the elevator, her heart rate had dropped back down to a safe level. She pressed the button and started compiling lists of tasks. They would need to call an office-wide meeting.

First, she’d have to call all the partners in. She’d have to contact Chris’s parents, which might present some legal issues. She’d have to talk to Ed Oasa, who represented the firm in these types of situations, to sort through that mess.

After the elevator dropped her one floor down, she walked straight to her office. Hearing her approach, her assistant Andy glanced up to see if she needed anything. “Hold my calls,” she told him.

She went straight to her desk and checked her email. She simply didn’t want to deal with what needed doing. Instead, she went online and raced through the headlines on different news websites, as if the answer to her problems might be embedded there.

I need a moment, she told herself. I just need a moment.

A memory from Chris’s initial interview passed through her mind. Someone had questioned his feelings regarding long hours. His answer had been something to the effect of, “I’m not exaggerating, I love working all the time. I know exactly what I’m getting into, and I’m choosing to do it.” He’d stopped for a beat, looked at each of his interrogators. “I’m choosing to do this work.”

The answer may have been out-and-out bullshit, but Elizabeth remembered being impressed by his composure. She remembered thinking at the time, Well, he’s a decent actor. Now, sitting at her desk, all she could do was shake her head.

Interrupting her reverie, Andy knocked softly on the door and poked his head in.

“I have Jimmy Hipps on the phone,” he said.

“I said, hold my calls.”

“He says, ‘Code red emergency.’”

“Jesus Christ,” she said. She touched her hairline on her forehead. “Thank you, Andy.”

She picked up the phone. “Code red?” she said. “What is code red?”

“New story coming out,” said Jimmy. “I just got a call from a reporter at Bloomberg. More emails.”

“What emails?” asked Elizabeth.

“Hold on, we’re trying to match the quote to the exact document, but I believe they come from discovery group D28, or D30, whatever batch, it’s about the”—here, absurdly, he dropped his voice, as though that might shield it from a wiretap—“it’s about the bond-fixing stuff.”

“Who’s writing it?”

“Becca Greenfield. She says the emails were sent to her anonymously. For what it’s worth, I know her and I trust her.”

“Meaning what?” asked Elizabeth.

“Meaning I believe her when she says it was an anonymous tip.”

“How long is she giving us to respond?”

“End of the day, but the story’s running tomorrow with or without comment.”

“And what’s Ted say?”

“Ted and Leo are in D.C. We’re trying to have a meeting in our office in half an hour. We’re going to phone them in. Can you possibly come here and join?”

Elizabeth closed her eyes, breathed in deeply. “Yes,” she said.

“Can you bring your Scott, Sarah, and Vishal?”

“Yes,” she said. “Jimmy, listen to me. When you talk to this reporter again, you have to try to make your voice sound like you’re not having a fucking nervous breakdown. Pretend you’re bored.”

“That’s what I did.”

“I can hear your heart in your throat. I can practically smell how scared you are. You have to calm down. Pretend it’s all boring.”

“I will,” he said.

When the call ended, Elizabeth sat at her desk for a moment and studied her nails. She felt a strange sense of calm. Her mind had become perfectly focused. Funny way to stop a panic attack, she thought.

She dialed her assistant and asked him to come in. When he did, she told him to summon Scott, Sarah, and Vishal. She said to tell them they had an urgent meeting at Calcott in half an hour, and that they’d go there together in fifteen minutes.

Then she looked at her clock and told Andy to gather all the partners for a meeting at 4:15 p.m. Andy nodded and jotted down her instructions. She thanked him, and he left.

She picked up her desk phone and dialed Valencia.

“Chris Cowley committed suicide,” she said when Valencia answered.

“What?” asked Valencia, sounding alarmed. “How?”

“We think pills. Michael went there this morning. He found him. He took pictures.”

“Tell him to send me the pictures.”

“For what?”

“I want to see them.”

“Okay,” said Elizabeth.

“You all right?” asked Valencia.

“Strangely, I am.”

“Do you want me to come over?” asked Valencia.

“You won’t believe this. That’s only part one,” said Elizabeth. “Part two is that another story is about to come out. A reporter at Bloomberg got some kind of anonymous tip email bullshit that apparently includes part of the material from Chris’s phone. This kid is everywhere. Who would have imagined—Chris Cowley.”

“Jesus,” said Valencia. “Why would he do that?”

“We’re headed to the Calcott office for an emergency meeting.”

“Case is turning into a real doozy,” said Valencia.

“It certainly is.”

“You’ll let me know what you need,” said Valencia.

“Of course,” said Elizabeth.

“What a nightmare,” said Valencia. “If I were you, I’d tell the in-house over there to find a way out. Fucking settle this thing, drop it, withdraw it, whatever. It’s messy, it’s a reputation destroyer, and it’s going to spread. Nobody is going to win.”

Elizabeth sat there for a moment with her mouth slightly open. Valencia’s speech seemed inappropriate, but at first she didn’t say anything; then she just agreed. “I know.”

After they ended their call, Elizabeth sat staring at her desk. The case did need to go away. They needed to find a way to stand down. It was rotten to the core. It needed to be put out of its misery. It needed to be withdrawn.

Right then Scott Driscoll came into her office. “What’s happening? Is Calcott going to fire us?”

“Something like that,” said Liz. “There is a new story coming out. Bloomberg, bond-rigging emails.” She stepped to her mirror and fixed her hair.

Then she put on a fresh coat of lipstick. “Where the hell are Vishal and Sarah?” she asked. “We gotta get this show on the road.”

“They’re coming,” said Scott.

When she finished putting on her lipstick, she told him that Chris Cowley had killed himself.

“What?” said Scott.

*  *  *

Later that night Valencia sat in her kitchen looking at the pictures that Michael D’Angelo had texted her. He only sent four images. One was of the note, one was the empty prescription bottle, and two showed the orientation of Chris’s body from about fifteen feet away.

None of it looked right.

The first thing she noticed was that the handwriting on the note looked too large. It took up almost 40 percent of the page. It wasn’t conclusive, it wasn’t evidence, it just looked off. She closed her eyes and tried to picture how a real note from Chris would be written. The handwriting would be measured. He would write carefully. He’d want to exhibit how in control he was. Look at the way he dressed. Look how he carried himself. The man was neat.

This note had been scrawled, as though penned by a serial killer or a lovelorn teen. Or, thought Valencia, like a man under duress.

The shoes caught her attention too. They were laid out at the end of the couch. It looked composed. It looked set up. Her gut told her it was wrong. She could picture Redgrave setting them there. Making a little art exhibit of his work.

She looked at the pictures of Chris’s body. He was still wearing his tie. Would he come home after being fired and not take off his tie? Would he choose to commit suicide in the uniform he’d been wearing when he’d been fired? She didn’t think so. He’d probably put on that leather jacket he wore in the video. Something that he’d want to be remembered in.

Hanging over all these speculations, shaping them, of course, was Redgrave. He’d just told Valencia that Chris was not a worry anymore. What did he say? Not a worry anymore? Debriefed him earlier? He’s free and clear? The message he was sending couldn’t have been more clear.

She put her hands over her eyes and thought about it. She could see the whole thing. The pickpocketing had been a smoke screen. The stolen documents, the park, the Chinese guy, the Africans, Avi Lessing, Chris Cowley, the Rabinowitz family—even she, herself—all of it had been arranged to provide cover for Colonel Pollock’s group.

Eventually someone—whether it was the FBI, the SEC, or Congress—would look into this. What they would find would be stolen documents, an untraceable Chinese man, Russian gangsters, bribery, and a payout of $750,000.

It wasn’t hard to imagine what Colonel Pollock wanted. He wanted the case to go away. He wanted, as Redgrave put it, “for everyone to just stand down.” Valencia almost had to smile. It was exactly what Elizabeth wanted too.

Right then, her phone rang. She felt sure it would be Elizabeth. Instead, the caller ID showed Utah Sandemose’s name. She hadn’t been expecting a call from him. She took a second to get into character and answered. “You calling to ask me out on that dinner date?”

“Not quite, although that does sound more tantalizing than what I’ve got planned,” said Utah. “How busy are you?”

Valencia looked at her wine, wondered what he was going to ask her. “That depends,” she said.

“Well, I tell you—you made quite the impression on our little Russian friend.”

“Is that right?”

“He liked you.”

“Well it always feels good to hear something like that,” said Valencia, intentionally mimicking Utah’s speech pattern. She closed her eyes and pretended to be him. She adjusted her body to stand like him. “I was impressed with him, too, he was a fine fella.” She had considered adding a bless his heart, at the end of the sentence, but that seemed like too much.

“He wants to see you.”

“Oh, my,” said Valencia, moving from her kitchen toward the living room. “I’ve already taken off my dinner dress and put on my house slippers,” she lied. “I was just settling in.”

“Says he wants to give something back to you. I have no idea what the hell you two are up to, and I don’t want to know, but he says all this is good news, whatever the hell that means. Same place—Uzbekistan,” said Utah. “You got the stuffed cabbage last time?”

“I did,” she lied. “It was, quite simply, the best I’ve ever had.”

“I told you.”

“You did, indeed,” said Valencia, stepping back to the kitchen. Pinning the phone to her ear with her shoulder, she carefully poured her glass of wine back into the bottle. “What time does he want to meet?”

“He’s already there,” said Utah. “Says whatever time works for you.”

She pictured Utah standing there with Mr. Rabinowitz right then. “You sure you don’t want to join us?”

“Shit, I’m gonna have to sit this one out, but I will take a rain check on our one-on-one.”

After hanging up, Valencia texted Milton Frazier: Our friend just asked for another meeting. I’m going back to that same place, just FYI. She was perfectly aware that Redgrave would have someone monitoring her phone calls and texts. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t doing anything out of line.

A moment later, Milton texted back: I’ll take you.

She responded: Sit tight, it’s a friendly call.

In the bathroom, she looked in the mirror, brushed her hair, and searched her face for any imperfections. After peeing, she changed into a different pantsuit, a black one, soft and velvety. Then she dotted a tiny bit of perfume on her finger, touched the finger to her wrist, rubbed her wrists together, smelled them, and then touched the wrists, one at a time, to the sides of her neck.

Riding down in the elevator, she thought about all the times she’d been called out for emergency night meetings. It made her feel strangely gleeful. On the street, she waited for a taxi. When it came, she got in, gave the driver the cross streets, closed her eyes, and started getting herself in the right headspace.

She pictured Yakov Rabinowitz. I want to help you, she thought. She’d found that approaching these meetings with a desire to help rather than a desire to win got better results. I really want to help you.

The driver made his way down the west side of the park. Valencia stared at the dark trees on her left. She looked at the joggers running by, and she brushed her eyebrows with her fingertips. When the driver turned toward Columbus Avenue, he put the radio on and hummed along to a pop song.

A few weeks earlier she’d received an odd phone call from an ex-colleague from the Agency, Spencer Newman. She thought about that call now.

Spencer, like Valencia, had left the CIA about eight years ago and joined a law practice in D.C. They remained friendly, and occasionally had turned to each other for advice. During the call, he asked if they could meet in two days. At the time, her brain and body had offered no misgivings. Simply put, her intuitions failed her. She said yes.

Spencer told her to meet him in Central Park at the Heckscher softball field. He told her to sit behind home plate at field number five, that he’d find her there.

At the time, Valencia wondered why—if he was taking all these precautions—would he even talk about it on the phone? But she didn’t say anything.

When the time came, she went to the field. It had been raining that day, which added to the sensationalism of it all. It felt like the good old days. She sat behind home plate, hiding under her umbrella, checking her email on her phone, and tried not to become grumpy at the rain.

When Spencer arrived, she knew almost immediately that something was off. He greeted her in a friendly way, but he seemed jittery. He scanned the area while he spoke, kept his shoulders tense, and avoided her eyes. It didn’t take him long to get to the point. “Remember Colonel Pollock?”

“From”—she wracked her memory—“Soft Music?”

“That’s right.”

Colonel Pollock had run a joint task force between the CIA and the Department of Defense that used Pentagon money to fund and arm Sunni Awakening Councils in Iraq. It was a highly sensitive operation. Valencia hadn’t been involved, but she remembered Colonel Pollock gaining a reputation at the time as something of a wild card. Since then, Valencia had heard rumors here and there. Her understanding was that Pollock was still deployed in the Arabian Peninsula.

“He’s in charge of a new group,” said Spencer.

“Pollock?”

“N14, officially DOD—totally off the books.”

Valencia studied Spencer’s face. He was nervous, but there was something vacant in his affect, like a man who hadn’t slept in days. “Never heard of it,” she said, confused where this could possibly be going.

“They want to meet,” said Spencer. “They have a job for you.”

“I don’t think they can afford me,” Valencia said in earnest.

Spencer’s eyes appeared to moisten. “They can afford you,” he said. “It’s a simple job, but they want you.”

“What is it?”

“They didn’t tell me. They asked for an introduction. I said, you know”—he sounded like he was reading from a script—“I wanted to check with you.”

Valencia watched his face while he spoke. She noticed a slight tic in the muscle above his eye. The man was definitely lying. She should have refused right then. In retrospect, it was a staggering lapse of judgment. Instead, she asked when they wanted to meet.

“Right now,” he said.

Curious about what they could want with her, and slightly flattered that the army would think of her, she agreed to meet. Spencer walked her deeper into the park.

After a few minutes, he pointed at a man, seated on a bench with his back to them. “That’s him,” he said. “He goes by Redgrave.”

“Redgrave?”

Spencer whispered, “The guy is weird.

You’ll see. Not typical Army.”

“You’re not going to come with me?”

“They want to talk to you alone.”

Valencia grabbed his arm, pulled him toward the bench. “Come on, this is ridiculous,” she said, trying to lighten the mood by smiling—as if he were being silly.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” said Spencer, twisting his arm free. “Call me next time you’re in D.C.” With that, he walked away.

Valencia turned her attention to the man on the bench. His back was to her, and she assumed she was unobserved. She began walking toward him. When she got within twenty feet, he stood and stepped to the side, so the bench wasn’t between them. He wore a navy blue ski jacket: a boring thing to be wearing, she thought. He dressed like an Upper West Side dad. His pants appeared to be soaked. He lowered his hood and waved shyly, like a man on a blind date.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” he said, smiling, walking toward her, and holding out his hand. “Redgrave, Jonathan Redgrave.”

He was an ugly man: pitted skin, thin hair, close-set eyes, but he moved with confidence. Valencia said, “Nice to meet you.”

They shook hands, and he moved her toward the bench. They sat facing a meadow and for a few minutes he carried on about work she’d done for the Clandestine Services. He mentioned specific assignments she’d been involved in, secret assignments, some that were never put on paper. She took this as a kind of credential-proving, and she stared out at the green grass while he spoke, nodded vaguely when he looked at her, and wondered just how big of a mistake she’d made in accepting this meeting.

It had stopped raining. They both sat in silence for a moment, and then, after shifting on the bench to face her more directly, he brought up what he wanted. “Carlyle, Driscoll, Hathaway,” he said.

Valencia didn’t say anything.

“They work for the Calcott Corporation,” he added. “Calcott is in the midst of a civil suit against Emerson Trust Bank.”

Valencia told him she was aware of the case, and that she read the newspapers. He smiled at that, dropped his head to the side. “National security,” he said. They sat in silence for a moment. “The case has been deemed a threat to the security of the United States. It needs to come to an end.”

“Deemed by who?”

“Colonel Pollock.”

Valencia explained that she didn’t work for Carlyle, Driscoll, Hathaway, that she certainly didn’t choose what cases they worked on, or how they were handled—and that she was only occasionally called by them to take care of thorny situations.

“Well, this is as thorny as it gets,” he said. “The case is getting into some uncomfortable—”

She interrupted him, “I’m sorry, with all due respect, I actually don’t want to hear any of this,” she said.

“Colonel Pollock needs a friend on the inside, someone close to Elizabeth—”

“I don’t work for Carlyle, Driscoll, Hathaway,” she said. “And I don’t work for Colonel Pollock. I don’t work for Langley.” She looked at him and wondered whether he might be mentally unstable. “I’m sorry.”

“Elizabeth Carlyle is going to call on you. You’ll do what she asks you.” He stopped her from protesting by raising a hand. “After that, you will politely suggest that Calcott withdraw their side of the case. That’s it. It’s simple. Two steps. Clean as a whistle.”

Valencia’s mind spun out a few quick calculations about the risk of simply refusing, thanking him for his time, and walking away. The risk wasn’t minimal.

Still, she said, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to help you on this one.”

She started to get up, but Redgrave put his hand above her waist—he didn’t make contact, but the gesture stopped her progress. “We’re already fully operational,” he said. “At this point, you gotta ask yourself if it’s safer inside or out.” He moved his hand away from her waist.

She turned her gaze back to the field in front of them. The man had just threatened her. It was absolutely breathtaking; it was unprecedented. She sat there blinking for a moment, searching her mind for the appropriate party to report this to.

He wasn’t done. “Think what Demet would do.”

Demet Harmanci was one of Valencia’s oldest friends. They’d been roommates in college. They’d just spoken on the phone that morning.

“Think what Amanda Bautista would do,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

Valencia had just returned an email to Amanda. She’d done it while she was waiting for Spencer to join her in the park.

You are fucking insane, she thought. Who the fuck do you think you are? She shifted on the bench so she could look directly into his face. You want to start a war with me, she thought. You want to start an unprovoked war with me? Do you have any idea who I am?

“Don’t worry, you’ll be paid,” he said. He rubbed his eyes and pretended to make some kind of mental calculation. “Three hundred and forty thousand. It’s already budgeted. Bill them whatever you want. We’ll pay you on top—Bitcoin.” He held his hand out. “Are we good?”

In the space of a single breath cycle she concluded that any push-back would have to come later. Refusing right there wouldn’t be the best move. First, she’d have to fully assess the situation. She wasn’t in a place to make a rash decision. Her heart was beating like she was in the middle of an actual physical fight.

She swallowed her anger, reached out, and took his clammy hand in her own. “Yeah we’re good,” she said. She smiled warmly and they shook. “If that’s the extent of it, we’re good.”

Her memory from the park was interrupted by the taxi driver asking if he should drop her on the corner. “You want?” he asked, looking in the mirror.

“Can you loop around, please? Pass by once.” She pointed toward Thirty-Sixth Street. “Loop back over to Eighth Avenue and pass it again.”

When they drove past the restaurant, she saw that butcher paper still covered the windows, and that they again weren’t open.

“Keep going,” she said, pointing down the block. Nothing else caught her attention; still, she questioned her judgment in not having Milton drive her. She told the driver to cross Ninth Avenue.

After paying and getting out, she took a moment and looked at the sky. There were no stars visible, but the moon was above her and it looked about three-quarters full. She took a deep breath and started walking toward her meeting.

Inside the restaurant, at the same table as before, Yakov Rabinowitz sat reflecting on the state of his own mental condition. What the hell was wrong with him? It boggled the mind to think he’d given the green light for this incredibly stupid plan. Was his brain softening? Was he becoming senile?

He frowned at the thought, and then checked the time on his cell phone. The lawyer had sworn the woman would come—where the hell was she? He glanced at Grigory Levchin, who sat across from him.

Newark—thought Yakov, squeezing his eyes closed—to put Newark at risk! And for what? For the boys to run some kind of prank? What would Vadim Vertov say if he found out about this? My God, am I losing my mind?

His thoughts jumped back to the locksmith. Ossip dead! Because of this! Because of me! A memory of Ossip back in Russia, drunkenly standing on a table, passed through his mind. It must have been forty years ago.

I’m sorry old friend, thought Yakov. It was not supposed to end like this.

Right then, the proprietor of the restaurant appeared in the doorway. “She’s here,” he said in Russian, rubbing his hands together in front of his chest. The silence of the place seemed to make him nervous.

“Bring her,” said Yakov, speaking to Grigory. The large man stood and walked toward the front. “Ask for her phone. Leave it in front.” Left alone in the back room, Yakov rubbed his nostrils, dug his finger into his ear, and brushed at his face with his hands.

A moment later, Valencia entered the room with Grigory. Yakov stood as she walked toward the table. She looked prettier than he’d remembered, more glamorous. She was perfect. Her black velvet triggered a wave of nostalgia. Yakov signaled to Grigory to leave them alone.

“I wasn’t expecting a call from you tonight,” said Valencia.

He felt himself squint at her English, ran a few test responses through his mind, and came out with, “Are you hungry?”

He didn’t know if he should offer to kiss her cheek or shake her hand. Finally—awkwardly—he decided to pull her chair out from the table. He felt like a teenager again. Even as an old man, he thought. Even still, to this day.

He smelled perfume in the air. “Vodka, whiskey, wine, vermouth?” he asked.

“Are we celebrating?”

Yakov sat down in the seat next to her. “Not celebrating …” He searched his mind for the right phrase. “My lawyer …”

He stopped speaking and tried to arrange what he wanted to say, but his thoughts were not easily corralled. “I want to tell you, before anything else: the Wall Street Journal story—not us. We have nothing to do with that.”

He molded his face into a look that he hoped conveyed concern. “I want to be clear.” He shook his head and put his hands on the table in front of him. He watched the woman’s eyes narrow.

“You could have called and told me that,” she said.

Yakov put his hand to his chest. “I want to apologize for everything that happened.”

“You’re so sweet,” she said, but her face remained impassive. “Apologies are good.”

“This should have never happened,” he said.

In his mind, Yakov saw his boss, Vadim Vertov, the man who truly ran the business in Newark. He looked away from the table for a moment, let his eyes settle on a painting of a beach. Then, quietly, like he was telling a secret, said, “We’re returning the money.”

With her raised eyebrows and dropped chin, she looked genuinely taken aback. “Well, Mr. Rabinowitz, I don’t know what to say to that,” she said. “I’m at a loss for words. I really am.”

Yakov considered telling her the money had been stolen and that he was paying it back from his own pocket. Instead, he asked, “But it makes you happy?”

“It will make my clients happy, which always makes me happy.”

A weight lifted; Yakov smiled. “People do such stupid things,” he said. His relief was such that he felt for a moment like standing up and dancing. “Cheers.” He lifted his glass. “People do crazy things.”

“Indeed, they do.”

“I always say the easiest path is the one you should take. Fix things if you can. Don’t be stubborn.” The vodka was making him feel poetic. He breathed in deeply, thought about saying something more, but stopped himself again.

“I think I like you,” she said. “I felt it the first time we met. I said to myself, ‘I like this man, he’s a man who thinks like me. He sees the world like I do.’”

There was something charming about the way she spoke, and Yakov found himself nodding along.

He poured another glass and they drank. “The money’s in the kitchen,” he said, waving his hand in that direction.

The woman seemed to study him for a moment. “Everything will be okay,” she said.

Yakov thought of his friend Ossip, and his eyes filled with tears. “So many problems,” he said, shaking his head. “The best we can hope for nowadays is friendship, family, and quiet times.” He worried he was babbling and frowned into his empty glass.

“I feel the same way,” she said. When he looked up he saw that her face had become serious. “Sometimes you meet someone, and it feels like you’ve known them for a long time.”

“Are you Jewish?” asked Yakov.

“No, but I feel like I am.”

“I feel like you are too.”

Valencia reached out, grabbed the bottle, and filled their glasses again. “May I propose a toast?”

“Please,” said Yakov.

“No matter what happens down the road, I want to propose that I will help you, and you will help me. We’ll be friends. Can we toast to that?”

“It would be my honor,” said Yakov, raising his glass.

The next morning Valencia woke with a hangover. Her mind went immediately to the night before. At some point, the owner of the restaurant had come out with a bottle of expensive scotch; soon, both he and Rabinowitz’s bodyguard had joined them at the table. They drank many rounds.

By the end of the night Grigory Levchin was reciting poetry from memory, and Rabinowitz was translating and dabbing his eyes with his napkin. After their final drink, Rabinowitz offered her a ride home.

When she refused, he insisted on personally hailing her taxi. Once she was settled in the cab, he put the bag of money on her lap. She remembered him leaning in and kissing her cheek. He tried to pay the cabbie, but she waved him off. It had been one of those nights.

As soon as the cab turned onto Tenth Avenue, Valencia—setting wheels in motion—sent a coded text message to Billy Sharrock: Good morning Billy, I have a meeting at Horowitz Barnes tomorrow at 9:00 am, so we’ll have to reschedule lunch.

He responded a moment later: Sounds good.

When she got home, drunk, and humming a tune, she deposited the $750,000 into the safe in her office.

In the morning, after taking four painkillers and putting coffee on, Valencia grabbed a garment bag out of the far left-hand side of her closet. The bag held a blue pantsuit, a white shirt, a khaki trench coat, and a paisley silk scarf. Underneath were a pair of black suede flats. She checked the pocket of the trench coat and confirmed her sunglasses were in it.

At 8:35 a.m., dressed in that outfit and carrying a small tote bag, she took the elevator down to the ground floor. She stopped and made small talk with the doorman for exactly one minute and twelve seconds. Then, she stepped outside and waved down the first taxi that appeared.

Sitting in the back of the cab, squeezed down on the floor like a stowaway, was Sonya Radovani—Billy Sharrock’s girlfriend. She was dressed in the exact same clothes as Valencia and wore a brown wig that had been specially made in Valencia’s image. She wasn’t wearing the sunglasses, but she had them in her hand. The driver of the taxi was Nawaz Khan, a real cabbie they paid for jobs like this. He’d make $2,500 for an hour’s work. Sonya was more expensive; she’d get $6,500.

After Valencia told the cabbie the address of Horowitz Barnes—a law firm she worked with—the cab started moving. Valencia put her hand on Sonya’s back and gave it a reassuring rub. Sonya turned her head, looked up, and made two silent kisses at her. Valencia then took her phone out and called Milton, and for the purposes of appearing normal to listening ears, she started a mundane conversation about some business matters.

The driver made his way through Central Park toward the east side. While they rode, Valencia kept talking to Milton. As they approached the first tunnel, Valencia patted Sonya three times on the back. When they passed under the tunnel, Valencia popped down to the floor, and Sonya popped up.

Valencia—finding Sonya’s hand and giving it a squeeze—kept the phone conversation going from the floor. After ending her call with Milton, she handed her phone to Sonya. The cab bumped along. Then she passed her wallet up.

Sonya meanwhile slipped Valencia a large manila envelope that Billy had given her. After that, Sonya, as she’d been instructed, opened the browser on Valencia’s iPhone and began reading a story from the New York Times. If anyone was monitoring the phone’s activity, all would appear normal.

Horowitz Barnes was on Lexington Avenue, not far from CDH’s offices. When they arrived there the cab stopped and Sonya used one of Valencia’s credit cards to pay. It wasn’t cold enough to justify wrapping the scarf over her head, but with sunglasses on, she got out and entered the building. At the front desk, she announced herself as Valencia Walker and said she had a 9 a.m. meeting with Lynn Duggins. She gave the security guard Valencia’s driver’s license and he swiped it on an ID scanner.

Lynn Duggins, a lawyer at Horowitz Barnes, had no idea what was going on. But she’d been prepped for this type of scenario. Billy had alerted her that same morning by calling to confirm Valencia’s meeting.

When Sonya arrived on the twenty-third floor, the lawyer was waiting for her. Playing her role, Lynn said, “Good morning Ms. Walker,” and accompanied Sonya to a reserved meeting room, usually used by interns, in the back of the office.

Before entering the room, she asked for Sonya’s coat, which held Valencia’s phone. There would be no listening in to this meeting.

Sonya accepted Lynn’s offer of coffee and then was left alone in the small conference room. She sat with her back to the door, pulled out her Anne McCaffrey novel, and began reading.

In the taxi, Nawaz Khan, ignoring a man waving at him, looped over to Third Avenue and made his way through traffic toward Forty-Second Street. On the floor of the cab, Valencia opened her tote, pulled out a black wig and a hooded black nylon jacket. She pulled her trench coat and suit jacket off, folded them together, and stuffed them into the tote. She left the tote on the floor, she’d collect it later from the driver. Then she put on the jacket. After that, she pulled on the wig and set it right. It was awkward changing down there, and she was slightly out of breath when she finished.

As the cab approached Grand Central, Nawaz Khan, in order to alert Valencia, began whistling a tune. As soon as they were under the Park Avenue Viaduct, he stopped the cab. Neither drone, nor satellite would see Valencia exit the taxi and enter Grand Central. Six months had passed since Valencia, Nawaz, and Sonya had practiced these maneuvers. Still, everything ran smoothly.

She swiped her way in with a card that had been purchased with cash. Then, blending in with the crowd, she walked straight to the downtown-bound 6 train platform. It occurred to her that it was the same train the pickpocket had taken. She only had to wait a minute.

During that time fourteen people joined her on the platform from the same direction she’d come. None of them looked like Redgrave’s men, but she couldn’t be certain. All she could do was take note of them. As the train rolled into the station, she felt her stomach cramp with nervousness.

Inside the train, advertisements for online dating services were plastered all over the car. Despairing-faced passengers sat in their seats with their eyes either closed or on their phones. Valencia checked her reflection in the window and pushed her wig back half an inch.

She got off at Fourteenth Street and spent the next hour getting on and off trains, leaving stations, and running countersurveillance moves. Finally, at Queensboro Plaza, convinced she wasn’t under human surveillance, she jumped on a downtown-bound N train and returned to the city.

The car was still crowded with late-morning commuters; she eased her way to the front of it so she could watch all the passengers. Two of the three that boarded in Queens were African American women: Valencia felt fairly confident they weren’t with Redgrave. The third was a bespectacled older white man; he looked eccentric, and he got off two stops later.

During the ride from Queens through Manhattan, she thought about what she was about to do. She’d never ordered a hit before. During her time abroad, she’d been involved in plenty of operations where people were killed, but she’d never given the order herself. She noticed that she wasn’t particularly bothered by the prospect, at least not overly so. It simply had to be done.

She rode all the way to the Kings Highway stop in South Brooklyn. After getting off the train, she took a moment to look at the blue sky, then fussed with her bag until she was sure she’d be the last person walking down the stairs. The MTA attendant in his glass booth was the only person who watched her leave.

Outside a black car sat waiting for fares. After approaching it and exchanging thumbs-up signs, she opened the door and got in. The car smelled, not unpleasantly, like cocoa butter. The driver, an older Jamaican man, asked her where she wanted to go.

“Can you please take me to 2783 East Sixty-Sixth Street—Mill Basin,” she said.

“Sixty-Sixth, out there in Mill Basin?” he asked, with his accent.

“Yes, sir.”

They made their way east on Kings Highway, passing beauty salons, hardware stores, Chinese barbecue places, perfumeries, jewelers, and pharmacies. As they went, Valencia turned in her seat and looked out the back window. All that she saw was a bus. Nobody appeared to be following her.

She then pulled out the manila envelope and checked it one more time. It was all the information that Danny Tsui had found regarding Jack Glasser. There was a bio pulled from the Prexius Solar Solutions website that showed a picture of Jack Glasser—unquestionably the same man as Jonathan Redgrave. The photo showed him smiling; he wore on oxford shirt. His bio stated that he had received his master’s degree from Stanford and earned his PhD from the University of Texas.

It said he’d worked for eight years at a firm in Boston and six years in China. It didn’t mention anything about the army or the Department of Defense. The rest of the paperwork was database material for the half dozen John and Jack Glassers in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. That’s all Danny could find. Valencia put the papers back in the envelope and placed the envelope back in the bag.

After a few minutes of riding in silence, the driver—apropos of nothing—said, “It’s my birthday today.”

“How old are you?” asked Valencia, leaning forward.

“Seventy-one years old.”

“You don’t look a day over fifty,” she said.

He squinted in the rearview. “I drink my water and eat my greens.”

They rode in silence for the rest of the way. When the driver stopped in front of the address, she asked how much.

“Ten dollars,” he said, looking like he was ashamed to ask for anything.

Valencia dug money out of her pants pocket, pulled off two twenties and passed them forward. “Keep the change,” she said. “Happy birthday.”

She let the car drive away and then turned and walked eight doors down to the actual address. During the walk, she pulled off the wig, brushed her hair with her hand, and then stuffed the wig into the pocket of her jacket. The house was larger than she imagined, almost a mansion. The metal gate surrounding the driveway had been left open, and Valencia couldn’t help interpreting that as a good sign.

There was a black Mercedes SUV parked in the driveway. The blinds in all of the first-floor windows had been drawn. Valencia walked up the driveway and headed toward the door. When she pressed the doorbell, a series of low gongs sounded. She took a final deep breath.

After a few seconds she heard the sounds of locks being turned, and then she watched as the door opened. An older, Filipina-looking woman stood at the threshold with a questioning look on her face.

Valencia smiled. “Is Mr. Rabinowitz in?”

The woman’s eyes went up and down Valencia, like she was wearing something scandalous. She made a face like she was upset, and then called out behind her, “Maestro, a woman here to see you.”

Valencia leaned forward so she could peer into the doorway, just as Yakov Rabinowitz came walking toward her. He was drying his hands on a towel and squinting at the light. He had a suspicious look on his face. When he saw it was Valencia calling, he smiled widely.

After exchanging greetings, and still standing at the door, Yakov asked her what she was doing.

“I’m sorry to drop by unannounced,” said Valencia. “But I have to return what you gave me. I’ll have one of my assistants bring it to you.”

Yakov Rabinowitz looked over her shoulder at the street behind her, confirming she was alone. “Come in,” he said.

She stepped past him.

As they walked down the hallway, Valencia reached into her tote bag and pulled out the manila envelope with the Jack Glasser bio. “There is something I need to talk to you about, though” she said.

That same afternoon, Elizabeth Carlyle was in the middle of reviewing a colleague’s motion to enforce judgment when Scott Driscoll marched into her office. “Look at this,” he said, holding his iPhone out to her.

She pushed herself back from her desk, took the phone out of his hand, held it at a readable distance, and saw a story on CNN’s website. The headline read “Emerson Trust Bank’s Unseemly Swaps.” She skimmed through to the second paragraph: Recently leaked discovery from the civil suit shows that Emerson Trust Bank has been engaging in a practice of sham defaults, bringing back memories of the 2008 financial crisis.

“Are we in this?” she asked.

“Only in relation to the lawsuit,” said Scott.

“Jesus,” said Elizabeth.

“Yeah,” said Scott. “Mutual and total destruction.”

Elizabeth’s intercom sounded. “I have Jimmy Hipps on line one,” said her assistant.

Elizabeth picked up her phone, pressed the button for line one, and turned her eyes to Scott. “Hi, Jimmy,” she said.

“There is an article on CNN’s—”

“I’m reading it right now,” said Elizabeth.

“It’s worse than ours. Sandoval’s gonna have a stroke,” he said, referring to the judge.

“Jimmy, I have Scott in my office,” she said. “I’m going to put you on speaker.”

“Scotty, how are you?” asked Jimmy Hipps.

“I’m fine, but this is not good.”

“What hurts my enemies—”

“No, Jimmy, please, listen,” said Elizabeth, interrupting him, and motioning for Scott to shut his mouth. “Jimmy, all roads lead back to the same place, and none of it is good. You guys were doing the same shit. This is an industry-wide problem. Tell Nathan and all of them to be expecting calls. Listen to me. This is the script: ‘We are in the middle of a lawsuit and we’ve been instructed by the judge not to comment.’ That’s it.”

“Is this from your kid’s phone?” asked Jimmy Hipps. She’d told Jimmy about Chris’s suicide during a call the previous night.

“Hold on a second,” said Elizabeth. She jabbed the mute button, looked at Scott. “This Emerson stuff wasn’t on Chris’s phone, was it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Scott.

“Call Sujung, ask her, and tell her to join us.” She unmuted the phone. “Sorry Jimmy—we are checking on that, but we don’t initially think so.”

“We got a ship that’s leaking from top to bottom,” said Jimmy Hipps.

Elizabeth looked at Scott, who was speaking to Sujung on the phone. Scott covered his phone and said, “She says, no.”

“None of this was on Chris’s phone,” said Elizabeth.

“Judge is gonna say this is retaliation for the Bloomberg story,” said Jimmy Hipps.

“Yeah, well, it isn’t, so he can say whatever the fuck he wants,” said Elizabeth.

“I’m sorry?” said Jimmy Hipps.

“I said, it isn’t, so he can say whatever he wants.”

Right then Sujung Kim came into the room. She was out of breath and looked frightened.

Elizabeth’s cell phone buzzed. She picked it up and saw Ben Alden—another in-house counsel from Calcott—was calling. She texted him: Talking to Jimmy, call you right back, and hit send.

Elizabeth couldn’t help but smile. “Ben’s calling on my other line,” she said into the phone.

“Jesus, I’ll get him in here,” said Jimmy Hipps. They listened while he yelled at his secretary to get Ben Alden into his office.

“Chris Cowley only had D1 through D44, E, M, MM, and part of Q on his phone,” said Sujung, reading from a notepad. Elizabeth noticed a dark area around the woman’s armpits. She made a mental note to tell her to get them botoxed.

“Jimmy, why don’t you call us back when Ben joins you?”

“Okay, two minutes,” said Jimmy Hipps.

Elizabeth hung up, looked at Scott, shook her head, and said, “I’d like to see how they’re taking this over at Emerson.”

“Welcome to the jungle,” said Scott.

“Tell me about it,” said Elizabeth.

Later that same evening, Valencia joined Elizabeth at a French restaurant in Midtown.

“Madame is waiting for you,” said the maître d’.

Valencia followed him into the place and saw Elizabeth seated near a window, texting on her phone. The restaurant was only half full, the lights were dim, and it smelled like butter.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Valencia, touching Elizabeth’s shoulder and gliding toward her seat.

“I ordered wine,” said Elizabeth.

Valencia sat down and studied Elizabeth’s face. “Look at you,” she said. “Unflappable.”

“When things are at their worst,” said Elizabeth. She poured Valencia some Bordeaux and then refilled her own glass. “Cheers.”

They touched glasses and Valencia made a show of smelling the wine and tasting it carefully. She puckered her lips, shook out her napkin, and placed it on her lap. She looked outside the window, noticed a white van parked across the street, and memorized the plate.

“You saw the CNN thing?” asked Elizabeth.

“I did,” said Valencia.

“You know,” said Elizabeth, dropping her head to one side, “I never asked you if anybody ever approached you about this case.”

Valencia felt her autonomic nervous system kick on, a small army of nerves being summoned to battle. “Anybody like …?” She squinted.

“Anybody like anyone from the press, or you know, how do I say this?” Elizabeth pretended to think. “Interested parties.”

“You know I’d tell you if anybody did that.”

Elizabeth, who had seemed buzzed, now appeared suddenly sober. “I know you would, but I never asked,” she said.

“Well, in that case, the answer is still, no.”

“Enemies on all sides,” said Elizabeth. “Within and without.”

“So, what’re you going to do?”

“With what?”

“With the case,” said Valencia.

“Prepare for war.” She made a face and peered over Valencia’s shoulder, searching for a waiter.

Valencia looked at her glassy-eyed friend and smiled. “Don’t you wish it would just go away?” she asked.

“No,” said Elizabeth. “I’m just getting warmed up.” She shifted in her seat. “They can smell desperation.”

“Who?” asked Valencia.

“Everyone. So, no, I don’t want this case to go away—not ever. I want it to go on and on, and I want it to go to trial, and I want to take it to a jury, and I want the jury to say that we won, that we are the best, and then I want to get a very large bonus at the end of the year.”

Valencia leaned forward, looked her dead in the eyes, and whispered, “It just seems like this might be one where it would be better if everybody would just stand down. Just walk away. It feels like this might be bigger than Calcott”—she paused for a moment, searched her mind—“and Emerson.”

Elizabeth squinted like an act of treason had occurred. Someone in the kitchen dropped a platter.

Someone outside honked. “You’re a naughty girl, aren’t you?” Elizabeth said.

Valencia smiled, leaned back. “What are you going to order?”

“The rib-eye, rare.”

“Me too,” said Valencia.

Elizabeth filled their glasses. “To Chris Cowley,” she said. They clinked glasses. Elizabeth kept hers raised, so Valencia did too. “He was—rest his soul—an obnoxious kid. But he was a kid. He should never have died over any of this.”

It almost seemed that Elizabeth was accusing her of something. They drank, and Valencia shook her head and looked outside the window and saw an older man, dressed normally, carrying on and talking to himself like a schizophrenic.

She looked back at Elizabeth. “It’s horrible,” she said. For a moment Redgrave came into her mind; she saw his face, and in her mind all the veins in his face became blue and visible and she could see a road map running across his cheeks and forehead and chin. “Horrible,” she said, again, shaking her head.

The waiter came, and they ordered their steaks.

Six days later, on a Tuesday, Elizabeth Carlyle and her team appeared with their opposing counsel in court. Both sides submitted motions whereby the Calcott Corporation and Emerson Trust Bank withdrew their lawsuits against each other. There would be no trial. Judge Sandoval seemed satisfied.

The story was picked up immediately. “Toxic Case Comes to an End,” read the Times’s headline.

Inside his office at Prexius Solar Solutions on Hudson Street, Jack Glasser, feeling something like a narcotic high, was reading the stories as fast as he could find them. He finished the first, then jumped to the next. “Mega Suit Ends, Wall Street Sighs in Relief.”

When he was finished reading all the articles, he stood up from his desk and walked toward the door. The secretary, a woman named Luz, pretended not to see him and began typing on her computer. He knew she didn’t like him; it didn’t bother him in the slightest.

You have no idea who I am, he said in his mind. I’m the most powerful man in New York.

He went to the bathroom and peed a yellow stream into the urinal. In his mind, he practiced what he would say when the colonel called: “Yes sir, very good sir, thank you.”

Everything had worked out fine. They had their money in Oman; they could arm their friends in Yemen. They could be a self-sufficient machine. No more begging Congress and the Pentagon for every tiny penny. Everything was good. The colonel would be happy.

When he finished peeing, he went to the sink and looked at his face in the mirror. You are fifty-one years old, he told himself. You need to wear sunscreen. Then his mind shifted, and he remembered a chore that needed doing.

He had to pick up Charlie’s new hockey skates. Fuck, he thought. Fucking Helen, it’s called Amazon, you can order things online now. He left the bathroom and headed for the elevator. He’d celebrate today’s victory with a cappuccino and a chocolate chip cookie.

When the elevator came, it smelled like cigarettes. On his way out of the lobby, he raised his hand in a peace sign to the doorman. Getting coffee, I’ll be back, he said to himself.

The doorman, a black guy with dreadlocks, said, “All right then.”

It was cooler outside than he expected, and he regretted not bringing his coat. The traffic, headed for New Jersey, had already started; and a flurry of honking began a block away and spread toward him. Glasser jammed his hands into his pants pockets, walked north, and rehearsed how he’d order from the coffee girl: Gimme a single cappuccino. A single cap. Single cap. Hey, just a single cappuccino, please.

Because of the honking, he didn’t hear the footsteps coming up behind him until the very last second. In the reflection of the building’s window, he saw a skinny man in a motorcycle helmet limping toward him.

He didn’t have time to turn. His mind sensed what was coming, though, and it screamed accordingly. He didn’t hear a gunshot, but he felt the air around him change. He saw the ground—gray and dirty—and a flash of light. His head snapped forward like he’d been punched and his feet felt yanked back. The ground came rushing up to meet him and knocked the air out of his chest and hurt his chin and jaw.

Then there seemed to be a long moment where he was lying on the ground and trying to run but nothing was happening. He could see people’s feet and the sky, and the clouds above him were gray and white, and his chin hurt and his head felt cracked open and the screaming in his head became a low kind of humming.

There had been some kind of great mistake.