Clean Hands

by Patrick Hoffman

  It was only partly an act; he was fucked, but he wanted the investigator to have a certain impression of him. He wanted to seem naive and scared. “I’m so fucked,” he whispered, again.

  D’Angelo stared at him with a flat expression. “Anyway,” said the investigator, shrugging with his face. He then turned and left.

  The door closed. Chris Cowley was alone.

  * * *

  During his unexpected visit the day before, the deliveryman, Juahar, had laid out what they should expect. “You’ll get an email,” he told them. “They’ll tell you what to do.” He recited that part from memory. Then he turned the piece of paper around.

  “See,” he said. An email address had been scrawled in the center of the page: newyork186241@yahoo.com. Below the address, Password: abracadabra321.

  He shook his head as though everything he relayed caused him as much pain as it did the others in the room. “They’ll tell you what to do,” he said. “They’ll email you. They say, ‘Write it down’—I write it down. That’s all I did.”

  So it wasn’t a surprise when at 3:21 p.m., Elizabeth received a text message from Valencia: Message, it said. That was all. Elizabeth excused herself from a meeting and walked down the hallway to her office. Standing outside the door, typing something on her phone, was Valencia.

  “Danny got it,” said Valencia, referring to her own assistant, Danny, who had been monitoring the account.

  “Did he read it?”

  “Just the subject,” said Valencia. “It says: ‘Welcome.’”

  Elizabeth walked past her, opened the door to her office, headed straight to her computer, and sat down. The Yahoo tab was already open on her screen. “‘Welcome,’” she said, reading the subject line. “What is this? It’s sent from the same account?”

  “Slightly different,” said Valencia, bending down and pointing at the screen. “186242, off by a digit.”

  “Well,” said Elizabeth, clicking on the message. She read it for Valencia: “Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. No dye. No GPS.” She leaned back from her desk, looked up at Valencia. “That’s it?”

  “For now,” said Valencia.

  Elizabeth suddenly felt a bit more confident. The whole thing seemed like total bullshit. It seemed amateurish, the work of somebody who had been watching too many Hollywood movies. No dye! “What is this?”

  “We’ll find out,” said Valencia.

  Elizabeth looked at Valencia’s face even closer. There seemed to be a bad mood brewing behind the woman’s eyes. “I mean, they’re amateurs, right?” Elizabeth asked.

  Eyes still on the monitor, Valencia didn’t answer; she just shook her head.

  Elizabeth leaned closer to the screen. “What is this 186242 business?”

  “Danny ran the original address through his databases. He broke it up into parts, ran just the numbers to see if they’d been associated with any other email accounts,” said Valencia, looking down at her phone, apparently reading a message from her assistant. “He’ll run the new one, too, same thing, break it down …”

  While Valencia was speaking, Elizabeth’s mind drifted. She indulged a short fantasy about being kicked off the case, pushed out of the firm, and publicly humiliated. She saw herself getting divorced, moving to France, to the Loire Valley, learning to cook, taking long bicycle rides. In the winter she could make fires and read books—a more civilized life.

  Meanwhile, Valencia had moved on to a different subject: “My guy at Yahoo says the account was created yesterday at 20:16 UTC—that’s 4:16 our time. The IP address tracks to Kazakhstan. It’s a network known for anonymizing proxy service.”

  “So what’s that mean?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Nothing special. Anyone could do it.”

  As Elizabeth looked at the screen, a new email came in. Both women bent down to read it. Elizabeth could smell Valencia’s shampoo. It smelled like gardenias.

  Elizabeth read it out loud: “‘You have two hours to get money.’” She looked at her watch, looked back at the screen. “‘Then we send further instructions.’”

  Even before she got the okay from the partners, Elizabeth had sent an associate to get the money from their bank. The money was bagged up and locked away in one of Michael D’Angelo’s evidence lockers.

  Elizabeth leaned back, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and closed her eyes. “You don’t think we should go to the FBI?” she asked.

  “I thought we already charted that out.” said Valencia. She used a soothing kind of voice, which annoyed Elizabeth.

  “We did. I’m second-guessing our conclusion.”

  “A few years ago, I handled a kidnapping negotiation in Mexico,” Valencia explained. “A movie producer down there, a Mexican guy, his son was kidnapped in the middle of Mexico City. I don’t even speak Spanish, but they called me down; I analyzed the situation—as best I could—and advised the guy to pay the money. Just pay it. Different circumstances, but—just like here—it made sense. In the end he didn’t pay, he went to the police.”

  “And?” asked Elizabeth.

  “The kid got beheaded.”

  You are one of the most arrogant women I’ve ever met, thought Elizabeth. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, centered herself, and then looked at Valencia. “You know what I like most about you?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Your decisiveness.”

  “I’m a Taurus,” Valencia said. “We’re decisive.”

  That evening, at the appointed time Valencia pulled her car into a spot across the street from Dyker Beach Golf Course in Brooklyn, not far from the Verrazzano Bridge. She was out of practice: it had been months since she’d last driven, and the drive from Manhattan had left her tense.

  She backed up, pulled forward, turned the wheel, and put the car in park; it would have to do. With the car off, she took a deep breath, exhaled, looked in the mirror, fixed her hair behind her ears, and told herself to calm down. Then she popped the trunk and got out.

  The money had been placed in a large gym bag borrowed from a young attorney at the firm. The instructions had specifically demanded that Elizabeth Carlyle make the delivery, but Valencia had insisted on taking her place. “They’ll have no idea,” she said. “A woman’s a woman. I’ll wear a hat.”

  When she lifted the bag, it felt heavier than when she had put it in. She closed the trunk and began carrying the bag—leaning with the weight of it—toward the corner of Twelfth Avenue. The neighborhood had a slightly rundown suburban feel. “Do you see me?” she whispered into her earpiece.

  “Affirmative, I have you westbound, north side Eighty-Sixth,” answered her drone man, Colter Jacobson, through the earpiece in her right ear. Two drones watched from above. Valencia resisted the urge to look up. She listened for it, but—apart from the sound of nearby traffic, city noises in general, and a distant barking dog—she didn’t hear anything.

  “Milton? Are you set?” she whispered, barely moving her lips.

  Milton’s voice came through her earpiece: “Yes, ma’am.” He and Billy were parked on Twelfth Avenue, between Eighty-Fourth and Eighty-Fifth Streets.

  “Danny?”

  “Yes, ma’am, same—moving … west on eight six,” said Danny Tsui. He was at their office in Manhattan tracking the GPS device that had been placed in the bag.

  “Knock it off with all this ma’am shit,” whispered Valencia.

  Danny said, “Yes—” and then cut himself off.

  Cars passed in clusters on Eighty-Sixth Street, and Valencia flinched when a truck’s horn blared. For a moment, her mind went back to her CIA training at The Farm. Her team leader had been an old hand named Roland Faraon. During her first week there, she’d been told she had to do a solo night trek, humping a fifty-pound bag in the woods of Northern Virginia. Roland pulled her aside, told her not to worry, that it was perfectly reasonable to feel fear. He reminded her that they weren’t training her to be an assassin. “We just wan
t you to be able to walk your ass out of a hostile country.”

  After filling her in on the details—fourteen miles, no trail, no moon, rainy night—he pointed at a few of her male classmates who were standing near a fence. “Those guys think you’re going to be too scared to do this,” he said. “Are you?” She told him she wasn’t, and it was true.

  Right then, an old man walking toward her on the sidewalk interrupted her memory of the hike. He wore blue pants and a long-sleeved navy blue polo shirt. He walked with a slight swing of the hips, like he’d been injured in the past. He had wide cheekbones and looked Russian. The idea that this man might just ask for the bag brought with it the feeling that everything was speeding up.

  “Man approaching,” she whispered.

  “I have him,” said her drone man.

  As they got close to each other, the man kept his eyes firmly on Valencia; he offered a small smile as their paths crossed. Valencia turned and watched him walk away. Then on her right, she noticed an old woman staring at her from a porch. Valencia stared back, and waited for the old woman to look away; but she held steady, and it was Valencia who finally gave in.

  She continued walking west. At the corner she set the bag down on the ground, and opened and closed her hand to get her circulation going. She waited for the light to change. When it did, she picked up the bag and crossed the street. Every person in every car seemed to be watching her. On the other side of the street, she looped back in the direction she’d just come. The fenced-off golf course was now directly next to her.

  There were other people walking on this side of the street. An old woman walking a tiny white dog with brown smears around its eyes sauntered past. Next, two teenage Chinese boys, wearing glasses. The sound of passing cars rose and fell with the flow of traffic.

  On her right, the chain-link fence separated the sidewalk from the wooded area that bordered the golf course. The instructions had said to enter at the middle of the block, and then walk through the woods to the edge of the course. She would receive further instructions there.

  Valencia’s team had scouted the area beforehand. They told her there was an entrance in the middle, a simple cut in the chain-link fence. Coming upon it now, Valencia found it even more primitive than she had imagined. A cut ran from five feet straight down to foot level, where it split in both directions. Beyond the fence was a dark wooded area. She wondered whether the drones would be able to see through the trees.

  For a moment she thought again about her training at The Farm. They’d spent a week simulating customs and immigration stops in a fake airport. The place came complete with the right carpet, fluorescent lights, and intercom system making announcements. She remembered one occasion where the person playing the immigration official yelled at her and called her a liar. They brought out a dog, a German shepherd, who sat within biting distance, barking.

  Valencia repeated her cover story. Afterward Roland Faraon told her she’d rushed it. “You’re jumping the gun,” he said. “Just sit back and let the game come to you. Don’t rush it. React to what’s happening, not what you think needs to happen.”

  Valencia looked at the cut fence and thought about that. The situation she now found herself in was way more complicated than simple blackmail. She needed to sit back and practice a little bit of patience. It was all about making the right choice in the right moment.

  “I’m at the cut,” she whispered.

  “There is nobody near you,” said the drone man. “Closest body inside the fence is four hundred yards east.”

  “Copy,” she whispered. Her mouth was dry now. She pushed the fence apart, leaned her leg against it, and then pushed the bag through. After that, she looked left, then right, and then, awkwardly, struggled through herself.

  On the other side of the fence she noticed that she was breathing loudly; she reached up and covered the mic on her earpiece. She breathed in and out through her nose and tried to put herself into the mind of whoever was making her do this—but she couldn’t.

  The woods, in a canopy, stretched farther in front of her than she’d imagined. Trash lay scattered on the ground in all directions. It disgusted her. She took her hand off the mic, and whispered, “Okay.”

  “You good?” came Milton’s voice.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Bag in hand, she entered the wooded area, stepping carefully and trying to avoid any hidden holes. She cursed herself for not having brought a weapon. In the office, that choice had felt wise; here in the woods, it felt foolish.

  “Talk to us,” said Milton.

  “It’s clear,” said Valencia. She turned and looked back toward the street. “It’s fine.”

  Thirty paces farther, she saw an opening that indicated the end of the woods. When she reached the golf course proper, she set the bag down, exhaled, and looked around. The sky was still not quite dark. The grass field opened wide in front of her. It was a beautiful sight. Her eyes tacked from left to right, and she felt herself become calm.

  “Do you see any movement?” she whispered into her earpiece. The instructions had said to walk straight to the golf course, but they hadn’t said what to do after that. She presumed they were going to ask her to leave the money, but she didn’t know how they planned on conveying that message.

  “All clear,” the drone man said. “Nothing moving.”

  Valencia was calculating how long until dark when her thoughts were interrupted by a cell phone ringing. Moving her head around like a dog, she tried to locate the sound. She stepped out farther into the grass. The ringing stopped.

  After a moment it started back up. Glancing back at the bag of money behind her, she kept walking toward the sound. Finally she found a black Nokia flip phone. It stopped ringing.

  “They left a phone,” she whispered into her earpiece. She picked it up and then looked around to see if anyone was watching her, before walking back toward the bag.

  The phone rang again. She answered it. “Hello?”

  A beeping sound, something like a fax noise. Valencia took the phone away from her ear for a moment, looked at it. “Hello?” she repeated.

  “Very good,” said someone at the other end. The voice sounded like it had been electronically pitch-shifted. Valencia squinted and tried to place the accent. “You win,” they said. “Bring bag to Batchelder Street, B-as-in-boy-A-T-C-H-E-L-D-like-dog-E-R, Batchelder Street, between Avenue Y and Avenue Z. Still Brooklyn. Batchelder, got it?”

  Valencia put her free hand to her head. “Batchelder,” she said.

  “Come alone.”

  “I want to talk face-to-face,” said Valencia, but the phone went dead.

  Yuri Rabinowitz’s phone vibrated in his hand. He answered it.

  “I told her,” said his brother Isaac.

  “Okay, go back,” said Yuri. “Smash the phone.”

  He waited for his brother to affirm that he’d heard his instructions, but Isaac stayed silent. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Isaac, switching to English. “I hear you.”

  “Smash the phone, dump it, and meet at the spot,” said Yuri. “Don’t speed. Don’t run any lights. Hey! Wait!”

  “What?” asked Isaac.

  “Did you see anything?” asked Yuri.

  “Nothing.”

  Yuri’s little brother had been parked down Eighty-Sixth Street. It had been his job to watch the area around Thirteenth Avenue, and make sure there was no activity from that end. Yuri had told him to dress in gym clothes and to keep his gym bag on the passenger seat.

  Yuri, for his part, was tucked away in a friend’s mother’s apartment on Eighty-Sixth Street, at the corner of Twelfth Avenue. The friend was in Miami, but his friend’s mother had let him in. “I need to watch something,” he’d said, pointing at her window.

  “You boys never stop with this monkey business,” the mother had said, speaking with the same accent as Yuri’s own mother. “Why always sneaking here, sneaking there? Go to law school. Become a lawyer
if you want to sneak around.”

  “I know,” he had told her. “I will, I want to, but first …”

  Yuri had watched the woman park, and now he saw her walk right underneath the window. He’d seen her carrying the bag and then turn and look at the old man when they passed each other. Everything was going as planned, but he still felt very uneasy.

  The other window in the living room looked up Twelfth Avenue. Yuri paced between the two windows, looking first this way, then that way. There were no signs of activity coming from either direction. No cars circling, no plumber’s vans; no men walking dogs; no FBI women pretending to push strollers.

  Yuri had placed one of his associates, a young man called Felix, one block to the north on Twelfth Avenue. Felix had parked his car and now—accompanied by a teenage girl he’d brought to help him blend in—sat on the front stoop of a vacant house that was for sale. Yuri had told him exactly what to do. It would feel more natural. He told him to sit and watch the block. Watch every person—look for anybody trying to blend in.

  So they had all three sides under surveillance. The fourth side was the golf course itself, which didn’t need to be watched.

  “So we can see what we are dealing with,” Yuri had said. There had been no signs of trouble, no cops, no tails, no FBI. Still, he wasn’t at ease. His guts felt pulled. He took out his phone and called Felix.

  “Yes?” said Felix.

  “What do you have?” asked Yuri.

  “There was a van, it stopped, nobody got out. Then someone got out of it and went into an apartment. That’s it.”

  “Nothing else? No other people?”

  “Nothing.”

  Yuri told him to wait for fifteen minutes before leaving and to remember to make noise when he did. He ended the call.

  “I don’t like this,” said their friend’s mother. She was sitting on the couch in the same room, dressed in a long white nightgown, something a grandmother might wear. Her glasses reflected the television screen, which played the local news without sound. Yuri saw sirens on the television screen and watched for a moment.

  “It’s a game, auntie,” he said.

  “Do I look stupid?” she asked.