Clean Hands

by Patrick Hoffman

  She remembered one Yale graduate, a young woman, who had seemed smart. Why hadn’t they gone with her? Her mind jumped back to Chris Cowley—he’d been born, grown up, gone to college, gone to law school, looked at all the jobs in the world and settled on her firm. How many chances to deviate from that path had there been? He could have done a million things that would have kept him out of her life. Instead, he had applied to her law firm, been selected, done his background research, showered, shaved, gotten dressed, and come in for an interview.

  She’d interviewed him—that was the worst part. It hurt to think about. She’d had a chance to stop him, and she’d missed it.

  Right then, a taxi driver leaned on his horn, and a chorus of other cars joined in. Elizabeth looked toward the next intersection. She told herself that she would keep pitying herself until she reached the near corner—after that she’d have to start pulling herself together.

  At the restaurant, the waiter, a Frenchman, recognized her and made a show of leading her to a table near the window. After she’d taken her seat, a look of concern appeared on his face.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “Working,” she said.

  “Maybe a glass of wine?”

  A glass wouldn’t be enough. She wanted a bottle. She wanted more than that. She wanted the waiter to pull her by the hand, lead her back into the kitchen, and kiss her. “Just a salade niçoise,” she said. “And an espresso. Bring the espresso first, please.”

  “Of course, madam,” said the waiter.

  Left alone, sitting near the window, watching the pedestrians on Lexington Avenue, Elizabeth took a deep breath. You’ll be fine, she told herself. She noticed a strap of muscle around her belly gripping and she consciously tried to let it unwind. You’ll be fine.

  Her thoughts shifted to Valencia—specifically to the first time they met. It had been at a gala for a breast cancer charity about eight years ago. Elizabeth had noticed Valencia standing near the bar. There was something about her that drew the eye—the way she carried herself, a kind of confidence. She was laughing loudly and telling two men some kind of raucous story. Elizabeth looked her up and down and ran through the first of what would become a regular series of comparisons. Elizabeth was white, the kind of white that didn’t age well.

  Valencia, on the other hand, once described herself to Elizabeth as “ethnically vague.” She could have been Arab, Jewish, Italian, Turkish.

  They were roughly the same age, at least the same generation. Elizabeth kept herself in good shape, but she’d always been a slim woman. Boney shoulders. She had dull skin, too, even back then. On the other hand, Valencia had beautiful skin and shiny hair; she wasn’t skinny. She was filled out in the right way. The only flaw that Elizabeth could find in Valencia was her crooked teeth, but even that added to her charm.

  Whenever they met, Elizabeth always ran through the same comparisons, and she always came to the same conclusion: she was simply genetically inferior. She was less attractive. There was nothing she could do about it.

  Her mind stayed on that first night: A friend of Elizabeth’s husband pulled both women together and drunkenly insisted they meet. Standing there—holding Valencia’s hand in her own—Elizabeth turned to the man and asked, “Why must we meet?”

  “Two strong women,” said the man.

  They squeezed hands.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” said Valencia.

  The man then took great pleasure in leaning his big head between them. “C-I-A,” he whispered, nodding at Valencia.

  “Is that so?” said Elizabeth.

  “Ex,” said Valencia. “I’ve been—”

  “Biggest lawyer in town,” said the man, interrupting, and now nodding in Elizabeth’s direction.

  “I know who she is,” said Valencia.

  And Elizabeth, at the time, had accepted that. She’d allowed herself to be charmed by it. Thinking about it now, eight years later, it seemed absurd. Elizabeth wasn’t yet known outside her legal circles. Not like that. Nevertheless, she allowed herself to be charmed. Two weeks later she invited Valencia for coffee. Four months after that, she hired Valencia for the first time.

  That first job involved an antitrust suit brought by the DOJ against a Silicon Valley software company represented by Elizabeth’s firm. At the center of the government’s lawsuit was an engineer who had left the company under unhappy circumstances. Elizabeth brought Valencia on board to look into him. A few weeks later, Valencia told Elizabeth that she thought the man was emotionally unstable. Elizabeth asked what she based this on. Valencia smiled, and said, “a feeling.”

  At the time, Elizabeth suspected Valencia was trying to tell her, without saying it, that she’d read his emails, or listened to his phone calls. The truth was, Elizabeth didn’t want to know. She told her to keep going.

  Two months later, the government dropped its lawsuit. The engineer had stopped cooperating. Over dinner and drinks that night, Valencia explained that she’d just leaned on him a little. She’d had him followed in a way that would be discovered. She wanted to make him uncomfortable.

  Then she sent one of her guys to dig in his trash. “It’s legal in California,” she said. They didn’t care what was in the trash; they just wanted to get caught doing it. That was all it took to make the witness change his mind.

  Was it legal thuggery? Perhaps, but it worked.

  A friendship formed between the two women. They’d see each other every few months for lunch, or the occasional after-work cocktail. She’d hire Valencia to do something, and Valencia always got it done.

  Sitting there in the restaurant, Elizabeth again considered what she found so intriguing about Valencia. It wasn’t work related. It was something more personal than that. It was the way she kept herself from being bothered. The world never seemed to touch her. The waiter placed the cup of espresso on a saucer in front of her and interrupted her thoughts. Elizabeth stared at the drink and told herself she needed to cultivate that kind of equanimity herself.

  “You know what,” she said, looking up at the waiter. “I will have that glass of wine.”

  * * *

  Valencia Walker stopped under the awning of a pizza place on Bleecker and looked at a camera perched above the doorway. These cameras were often just for show, but this one had a wire tacked and running along the wall for a few feet until it disappeared into a drilled hole. Valencia’s eyes shifted to the window of the place and she read the words Dante’s Pizza Pie Zone, written in white cursive. After taking a deep breath, she pulled the door open and stepped in.

  Inside, a slump-shouldered college kid stood shaking Parmesan onto his slice. Rock music played from a small radio. Behind the counter two Latino cooks shuffled pies from here to there. Beyond them stood the manager, a man Valencia guessed was Palestinian. He wore a white T-shirt and white apron and seemed to know something was up. “Can I help you?” he asked, suspiciously.

  Valencia stepped to the counter, locked eyes with him, stood perfectly straight, and said, “I need to see the video from that camera.” She turned and pointed toward the camera.

  The manager’s eyes went from the camera back to Valencia. “What happened?”

  Valencia put her left hand on her heart, leaned closer. “Something important was stolen,” she said. “I’m trying to find it.”

  “When?”

  “Earlier today.”

  The manager didn’t push back, but the muscles in his face told her that he suddenly felt nervous. In response, Valencia offered a small smile and blinked in a way that allowed her eyelashes to be admired. The manager had a rag in his hand, and he placed it over his shoulder, shuffled to the counter, and lifted it for her. When she got behind the counter, they had to perform a quick dance to let him get in front of her so he could lead the way.

  Beyond the front room was a hallway that smelled like bleach. The manager led her to a back room, opened the door, and turned on a light. Valencia leaned her head in and saw u
nfolded pizza boxes and large white plastic vats of tomato sauce stacked on a metal shelf. Toward the back of the room was a desk with a computer on it. The manager moved toward the desk and pulled the chair out, set it at the side, and offered it to her.

  “What time?” he asked.

  “If you could start at 8:25 this morning, please,” she said.

  The manager bent over the desk, fussed with the mouse, and then, keeping his eyes on the screen, stood back up. They both waited while the computer dredged up the video file. Valencia listened to the computer humming and an air shaft blowing air.

  Four separate camera views popped onto the screen. Valencia saw that there were two cameras outside.

  “There we go,” said Valencia. “Thank you.”

  The manager bent down, clicked the mouse, and the images began moving. Valencia leaned forward in her chair and pointed at the view from one of the outside cameras. “Is that Bleecker Street?”

  “Bleecker, yeah.”

  “Can you enlarge that one, please?”

  The manager clicked on it and the view from the camera above the door filled the screen. They watched for about fifteen seconds until someone entered the frame.

  “Stop,” said Valencia. The man paused the tape. “Is that pointed east?”

  “East? Toward Lafayette? Yeah, yeah, east,” said the manager.

  “Okay, play it.”

  They continued watching.

  A person entered walking west. “Stop,” said Valencia.

  He pressed a button on the mouse and the video froze. Valencia leaned forward and examined it. It was a woman. “Okay,” she said. The video rolled.

  “Stop,” she said. Another person walking west. Valencia leaned in and looked at the image. The footage was blurry, but she saw that the man was dark-haired; he wore the same dark suit. She pulled out her phone and looked at the image Danny had sent her. She looked back at the screen. “Play it, please.”

  The manager pressed play and they watched the man exit the frame.

  “Can we see the other view?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said the manager, clicking over to the other outside camera.

  “Is that LaGuardia?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Right on LaGuardia? Toward the park?”

  “Yeah, over toward Washington Square.”

  That’s him, she thought; a warm feeling filled her chest. She breathed in deeply through her nose, felt her stomach expand, and exhaled. “Thank you, that’s all I need,” she said.

  Valencia dialed Milton before she’d even made it to the front of the place; he answered just as she stepped back onto the street. “He went to Washington Square Park,” she said, looking in that direction, when he picked up. “Meet me at the little NYPD shack on the south side of the park.”

  Just then, two German-looking tourists on Citi Bikes rolled by. Valencia watched them and made sure they weren’t looking at her. Surely, somebody was watching her, she thought. Somebody had eyes on her, she was sure of that. She called Wally Philpott, her NYPD detective, and told him to meet her at the same place.

  For a moment, as she made her way to the park, she felt a kind of rage build in her chest. She saw the man’s ugly face in her mind. You’re going to tell me what to do? He was insane.

  Milton and Billy were already standing near the NYPD trailer when she got there. They had similar expressions on their faces—they looked like they were expecting bad news. When she joined them, Milton nodded to the west. She turned and saw Wally Philpott walking toward them with a coffee in his hand.

  “What? You wanted one?” Wally Philpott asked.

  “Our target came to the park between 8:25 and 8:30 this morning,” she said, turning and looking at the trailer.

  “All right.” The detective pulled up his pants and stepped to the trailer. When he got there, he knocked loudly on the door. A moment later the door swung open and a young uniformed officer poked his head out. Wally nodded, shook hands with the cop, and said, “Let me in, kid.” The cop glanced at Valencia and her two associates, then opened the door.

  Valencia crossed her arms, reminded herself to be patient, and resisted the urge to tap her foot.

  Since returning from Grand Central, Chris Cowley had been in his office with the door closed. His tie was loosened, and his coat hung in the closet. Elizabeth Carlyle had already removed him from the Calcott case, but so far she hadn’t fired him.

  He’d moved a large binder of discovery for one of his other cases to his desk. It sat there unopened.

  His palms were sweaty and every few minutes he wiped them on his pants.

  He’d spent the past half hour clicking through various news sites, not looking for anything more than a way to distract his mind. Now he was shopping. He was looking at expensive coats. He knew his Internet activity would be monitored, but he didn’t care. If he hadn’t been fired yet, surely they wouldn’t fire him for doing a little shopping. It might even make him look more normal.

  Right then somebody knocked on his door. Before he could say anything, the door opened and Stewart Hillier, another junior associate who’d been hired in the same class as him, peeked his head in.

  “Dude, do you have those Plymouth briefs?” asked Stewart.

  Chris didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. He didn’t know what Plymouth was. He frowned and said, “No.”

  “What’s up?” asked Stewart, stepping into the room, closing the door almost all the way, crossing his arms, and leaning against the wall in one awkward movement. Stewart was tall, brown-haired, big-boned and soft-bodied. As dumb as he was, he could still sense something was wrong, and a look of concern—whether genuine or not—appeared on his face.

  “Nothing, I’m just burnt,” said Chris. His eyes became teary and he used all his mental energy to stiffen up and make that stop. Stop, you fucking piece of shit, he told himself in his father’s voice. “Need a vacation,” he said. Then, he put his hand on his forehead, pretended to yawn, and wiped at his eyes.

  “You see that new paralegal?” asked Stewart, dropping his voice lasciviously.

  “Dude, I’m gay,” said Chris.

  “You can still see, though, right?”

  “She’s not into guys like you.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because she carries herself with pride,” said Chris. His hands—for a moment—went to his pockets again and patted for his phone. “Besides, aren’t you engaged?”

  “A player gotta play, though—am I right?” said Stewart.

  Chris leaned back in his chair and turned his eyes to his computer monitor. He wanted this encounter to end. He closed the window he was on and turned his eyes back to his intruding guest.

  “How’s Calcott coming?” asked Stewart.

  So, this was it? His long introduction, the Plymouth brief, the new paralegal, it had all been a lead-up to this. Rumors were circulating. Someone had probably seen Elizabeth walking him down the hallway. Her face would have been noticeably mad. That would have been enough to get people talking.

  Chris looked at Stewart. “It’s going,” he said.

  He took another big breath and nodded toward his computer, but his guest had taken out his cell phone. Using both thumbs, he was frantically typing a message. The droning white noise in the office seemed to have gained in volume. “Anyway,” said Chris.

  “Ying’s motion had like five typos in it,” said Stewart.

  “That’s crazy,” said Chris. He opened up his email and began pretending to respond to a message. Please go away, he thought.

  “Do you think Ying uses Adderall?”

  Chris ignored the question and continued to act as though he was emailing. Stewart, finally receiving the message, muttered, “All right,” and drifted back out of the room.

  When he was gone, Chris went to the door and quietly closed it. The effort he’d spent trying to control his emotions had made his head hurt. He rubbed his temples, but that did him no good. Everything
is temporary, he told himself. All these problems will end.

  He walked to his closet, opened it, reached into his jacket pocket, and made sure he still had the thumb drive. Would that be enough? Would the thumb drive be enough? This thing was never going to end. He was fucked.

  Showing no signs of hurry, Wally Philpott made his way toward Valencia. He’d been in the NYPD trailer for fifteen minutes. He carried a few sheets of paper in his hands and read from them while he walked. The uniformed cop who’d helped him also stepped out and now gazed across the park as if he were looking for someone. Valencia, arms crossed, watched both men. In an effort to appear friendlier she smiled.

  “Ask and ye shall receive,” said Wally. He handed her the first page. On it Valencia saw a printed screen grab from the surveillance system that monitored the park; it showed their target, the Asian man, in high definition. The shot had come from above, as if the camera had been positioned on some far-off balcony. It wasn’t a great angle on his face, but she could see clearly that it was their man. A time stamp on the page read, 08:36:42. Below that, printed on the paper, was the NYPD insignia.

  Valencia felt Milton approach her and look down at the picture in her hand. Something about him being so close made her feel slightly uncomfortable, and she noticed she had stopped breathing. She handed the page to Milton and shifted a half foot to her left.

  “All right,” said Wally, “our guy goes up and sits with a dude they know on the west end over there.” He nodded toward the west end of the park and handed Valencia another piece of paper, this one showing the mug shot of a black man. The name, Malik Abdul Onweno, was printed on the top-left of the page. Below his name were various statistics about his size, his coloring, his DOB, and other identifying information.

  “Dabbles in stolen goods now and again,” said Wally, lifting his eyebrows and scratching his scalp. “But they say he’s a good kid, some kind of chess master. They say dimes to dozens he’s over there right now.” Wally looked at the younger cop, who nodded his head. “You want a uniform with you?”

  Valencia looked at the cop too. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “But keep back.”