9. Where Is TWO going?

‘Where is TWO going for a couple hours every day with his little red gym bag? I’ve assumed he’s a workout freak—but lately, I’m wondering if the bag is just a cover, like his middle-of-the-night cigarette. Is he really spending all that time on exercise? Maybe he’s got surveillance equipment in the bag that he’s changing out someplace near the Tech Park.’

Now and then I tell myself that TWO is none of my business. I could just hand my notes over to one of the FBI agents I met while I was working for my grandfather. But the Bureau gets complaints from every lunatic in the Tri-Cities area, reporting the arrival of extraterrestrials or zombies poisoning the Diet Coke in select refrigerators. I need something more solid on TWO before the FBI’s own protocols would let them take me seriously.

And so I decide to start following TWO when he leaves the apartment in the middle of the day. They tell you in PI school, same as the academy, that you can’t really tail a guy by yourself. Either you stay too close and get made or you lay back and lose the subject. But I’m getting nowhere with only my 4-D imagination.

If TWO is actually working out, I’ve figured from the start where he is heading, since the only gym within walking distance is True Fitness on Hamilton Street downtown. During the dark months, November to February, I buy a monthly membership there and usually stop in on my way home from work. Once the weather is good enough, I quit and run outside a few times a week and switch to exercise bands and calisthenics at home instead of the free weights. My place smells a little like a sock afterwards, but I live on a pretty tight budget.

When I trail TWO for the first time, the day after Cornish began his testimony, my attitude is that losing him is way better than him noticing me. If he disappears, I can try again tomorrow, but I have no idea how I could explain why I’m on his heels without putting him on DEFCON 1. He’d get a restraining order, or punch me out, or worst of all, move.

I let him get a couple minutes ahead so that he’s a speck a block away. He follows the route I take downtown to True Fitness, but laying back, I don’t actually see him go in. Still, I’m pretty sure my hunch is good, although I’m also a little disappointed, since it means that he’s not hovering in the bushes outside Northern Direct.

Instead, I do something I should have thought of a while ago and open a search engine on my phone. TWO leaves the building Monday to Friday within a couple minutes of noon. (On the weekends he cuts himself a break and doesn’t leave until about one p.m.) Given the rigid schedule on weekdays, my bet is that he’s taking a class at True. And when I go to that tab on their website, I see that he’s either enrolled in Yoga for Seniors or a five-day-a-week class called Extreme Boot Camp. The instructor is some kind of CrossFit champion, and from the description, it sounds like the goal of the class is to bring you just short of cardiac arrest while you’re on your lunch break.

True Fitness lies in those three or four blocks of downtown that make Highland Isle look stylish, with reconstructed facades on the storefronts and smart-looking signs over the doors or in the windows. The mayor used some of the federal pandemic money to make loans to keep merchants in business. Many of the shops have a Latin bent, since that community still prefers neighborhood stores where they can handle the merchandise and talk to the owner and maybe even bargain a little bit. There are also a couple fancy restaurants here that draw patrons from the entire metro area, including one, Miiciwa, which I can’t really afford, that serves food inspired by Native recipes. (‘Miiciwa’ means ‘Eat’ in the language of the Miami tribes whose land this was before the white settlers drove so many out.) The Ritz, who I guess wants the downtown to thrive as much as the mayor does, expanded his management office a couple blocks away. I go in there now and then to pay my rent in person when I happen to be around.

I am standing half a block away from True Fitness, trying to figure out my next move, when a line of six people in running clothes emerges from the alley next to the gym. The instructor, a blonde woman who looks to be over forty and ridiculously defined, runs in place for a second, then turns and sprints down the block with the other five in the class in quick pursuit. I recognize TWO at the head of the pack, with a smooth stride that looks like he’s not stressing.

I know, from the class description, exactly where they must be heading, which is over to the junior college, two blocks away. They’ll do several sets of timed dashes up and down the stairs on the steel bleachers around the athletic fields, with a round of jumping jacks or butt kicks or spider steps in between. Then they’ll sprint back to True for several rounds of punishing drills involving lifts and squats and push-ups with sandbags and kettlebells. I figure they’ll be gone for maybe twenty minutes. As I walk home, I am coming up with a plan.

The following day—the Wednesday when the Chief’s hearing is scheduled to resume that evening—I approach True Fitness around 12:15 from the other direction, knowing that the Boot Camp class will run straight past me. From behind a tree, I see TWO on the instructor’s heels again. I watch until they are approaching the grounds of Greenwood JC.

When they reach the junior college, they continue straight ahead, rather than turning right toward the entrance. Instead, the whole group attacks the chain-link fence that marks the perimeter. It’s your standard eight feet, but TWO goes over as if he were on springs. He’s moving at full speed and finds a toehold in one of the diamond-shaped openings. As his momentum propels him upward, he grabs the top rail with both hands and vaults over in a single motion, sticking the landing on the lawn with plenty of flex in his knees. He runs in place to await the rest of them. Even the instructor is a few seconds behind him, and she and everybody else push the heel of their shoe into the fence on the other side to slow their descent.

With them gone, I head down the block to True with the backpack I bring to my workouts. My monthly membership here lapsed March 1, but I get a day pass at least once a week with their junk-mail flyer begging me to return. The girl with a big gold hoop nose ring who’s at the counter watches as I fill the form in. She then looks back over her shoulder and calls out, “Amal!” That is the manager, but who is in real terms the closer. They sell gym memberships like used cars here, every deal a stupid negotiation where you know they’re trying to screw you.

Amal is a South Indian dude who kind of amuses me because he’s one of those people who knows that I know he’s playing me and goes for it anyway. He’s slightly hunchbacked, but in his slick clothes and glossy hair, he comes on like he’s Chris Pine. I can see him through the open door to his office, jiving with Rita, a tiny Black girl with a killer body who works as a trainer and who I, at one time, had my eye on. They are standing a little too close for it to be all business.

He starts out of the office with his game face on, primed to sell me a membership that will last for several generations after me, but he stops dead when he recognizes me.

“Clarice,” he says. I’ve noticed before that he’s really good with names.

“Amal.”

Maybe Amal grew up with parents who told him that nobody really matters but your family, or maybe he just wants to prove that he’s the coolest kid in school, hunched back and all. I figure fifty cents out of every extra dollar he can get me to cough up goes in his pocket and is, as far as he’s concerned, a tribute to how smooth he is.

“Great to see you back, Clarice. What’s up?”

“I was thinking about a class maybe. What do you have around now? I can get away from work for an hour.”

“Now,” he says. “Well, Allison does her boot camp, but that might send you back to the office limping. She was a drill instructor at Parris Island. No shit.” I imagine there must be female DIs at Parris Island today, but I’m younger than Allison, and there sure weren’t any there when I graduated from high school and considered becoming a Marine. At that point, except for nurses, women got nowhere near those kinds of roles. Knowing Amal, I’d take even money Allison wouldn’t even turn around if I yelled ‘Semper Fi.’

“I’m a little out of shape,” I tell him, “but I bet I can handle it. Any chance I can observe for a few minutes?”

“No problem, but she just ran them out of the building. They’ll be back in fifteen minutes if you want to hang around. Tell you what? Why don’t you sign up, and if it’s not your thing, we can do a refund?”

I can’t help myself and roll my eyes.

“I think I’ll take a look first, Amal. I’ll go lift for a few minutes until they’re back. I signed the day pass.”

He shrugs.

“You know the drill,” he says. I drop my driver’s license in the plastic index-card box, complete with alphabetized file dividers, that sits on the front counter. Rita, Amal’s little buddy, started on the counter, and I once handed her my concealed carry card as a photo ID, thinking it might spark her interest. Instead, she freaked and I had to turn my bag inside out to show her that I wasn’t packing at the moment. Today’s receptionist, the woman with the nose ring, hands me a towel as I go through the turnstile. I’m still not sure what the point is of holding on to my ID. It seems like a lot of work just to make sure they get their crummy towel back. Maybe they want to be sure they can identify the body if you collapse while working out.

True Fitness itself is pretty basic, with supergraphics on the painted concrete block walls and colorful tape wrapped around the exposed heating ducts. But the place is clean, with mad-intense lighting, and the equipment is pretty new. When I’m here I’m always secretly comparing myself to everybody else. As long as I keep my back supported, I can press more weight than any woman I see in here.

There’s a guy about my age but beefy who just finished doing bench presses with 140 pounds. I have always been able to press my body weight, but the instructor who was working out the lifter shouts at me when I slide onto the bench. I know I should warm up, but I can’t resist showing off, and am straining for a third rep when the instructor-dude reaches me and eases the bar out of my hand. As I stand up, I pat him on the back and return to the counter.

“Just got a fucking call from work,” I tell the receptionist. “Any chance I can score another day pass? I like barely used that one.”

I know the system here. Anything that translates to money is going to be under Amal’s control, and as I expected, she trots back to the office, where he and Rita are still flirting. I’ll bet they’ve practiced some unusual yoga on the mats after closing time. While the receptionist is back there, I look into the plastic file to retrieve my ID, standard practice when the front counter attendant has stepped away. I palm my driver’s license and then flip through the dividers like I can’t find it. I only have to go from G to K to see what I came in for.

There’s TWO. His ID is an Arizona Driver License that says his name is Joe Kwok, address 68 Bluebird Lane in Mesa.

At Mike’s I’ve heard cop friends complain all the time about how good the phony IDs are now. The Chinese print them up by the thousands, blank stock that looks perfect, right down to the halftone background logo each state selects—for Arizona, it’s the shape of mountains and trees with a green cactus outlined in front. The gold star of the Real ID program appears in the upper right corner, with a grayed-out thumbnail of his main photo just below. I run my finger on the edge. It doesn’t feel quite right, like there’s an added layer of lamination.

I concentrate hard to memorize what’s here, and I’m still staring when I see Amal headed toward me. I flash my license to show him I’ve gotten what I was looking for, but he continues in my direction, worrying me for a second until he hands me a crisp new day pass.

“Hey,” he says, “you know I can help you on the extra charge for the boot camp, if you renew your membership for a year.”

What a pal he is.

“Cool,” I answer. “I’ll definitely think about it.”

I head out and notice only then that I’ve still got their white towel around my neck, but I keep going. I have a dozen at home.

  

As soon as I am back, I light up my computer. As part of the PIBOT, Rik pays for the best of the background-check sites. If TWO is who I think he is, then even if this identity is phony, it will still be fail-safed so it doesn’t blow up after a routine traffic stop or a few minutes’ research on the net by somebody who wants to check him out. And that proves to be the case.

The background sites list a Joe Kwok at that address in Mesa. Joe is a consultant with a spotty prior employment history. He has no criminal record, no warrants outstanding. Like a normal person, he’s got pages on Facebook and LinkedIn, where he lists himself as an alum of Arizona State.

I have a TracFone that I bought with an alias, refilling the minutes with phone cards I buy for cash. Even so, I mask the caller ID and dial the number that’s turned up for Joe Kwok. It goes to voice mail, where I get a chirpy greeting. “Hey, this is Joe, leave a number.” I don’t. Instead, I call back again to listen more carefully. The guy talking doesn’t sound like TWO.

As I keep poking around various sites, I get some odd results. When I look for Joseph Kwok, not Joe, he has the same address on Bluebird in Mesa. This guy, however, is seventy-eight. It could be a father and son living together, I guess, but to double-check, I navigate to my fake Facebook account in the name of Clara Stern—my dead grandmother—and spray out messages to everyone named Kwok, saying, ‘Looking for Joe of Mesa.’ Then I go to Zillow. Turns out that 68 Bluebird Lane was listed for sale until February and now has been leased. And when I go to the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office, I see that the assessment notice in February was mailed to “Joseph Kwok, Estate Of.” Then things get even stranger. The Arizona Office of Vital Records doesn’t show a death certificate for Mr. Kwok, which makes no sense unless it was removed somehow. When I search Legacy.com for Joseph Kwok, I get ‘No Results Found,’ and the same thing on Ancestry. Even Google.

I’m about to head down to the Municipal Building for the resumption of the Chief’s hearing when I receive an answer on Messenger from a woman, Dr. Marjorie Kwok in Vermilion, Ohio, who says her dad, Joseph Q., passed in January of COVID in Mesa, and how did I know him. She attaches a sweet photo of the old guy. No mention of her brother of the same name, which she’d have to do if he existed, to be sure which ‘Joe’ I was asking about.

‘TWO—or the government that runs him—seems to have bought up the identity of poor dead Joseph Kwok, rented his house, taken over his phone number and killed every obvious link to old Joe on the net, which requires some high-key hacking skills, like you’d find in military intelligence.’

I creep close to the wall I share with TWO and whisper, “Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.”