“Alex?” asked Yuri.
“Yeah, yeah, he told me his whole toolbox was taken out of the back of his van,” said Dap, stepping closer to Yuri and putting an oversized hand on his shoulder as he peered out toward his van with a concerned look on his face. Yuri smelled marijuana on him. “They had the motion lights and everything. What’s good with you though, man?”
“I’m good,” said Yuri, stepping back from Lil Dap.
“What was you gonna do, fuck this dude up with your golf club?” asked Lil Dap, laughing and looking at his father.
The older man crossed his arms, shook his head. “The whole neighborhood’s gone to shit,” said Narek. “It used to be neighbors watched out for each other.”
“They still do, Pop, look at him,” said Lil Dap, nodding at Yuri.
“Okay,” said Yuri. He felt sweat on his forehead. He stepped back again, finally freeing himself of Dap’s hand.
“Hey, tell your bro to get his ass over here for some Call of Duty,” said Lil Dap.
“I will, I will,” said Yuri, backing away and returning to his house.
What the fuck has come over me, wondered Yuri. Why am I so nervous?
Right then he heard the revving sound of a motorcycle and he knew it was Moishe Groysman.
His friend rolled up to him in the middle of the street, put the bike in neutral, pulled up his visor. “Grigory came this morning,” he said. “He asked when Uncle can expect to hear from you.”
“Fuck,” said Yuri. “Park over there, we’ll take a car.”
“Do I look okay?” asked Valencia, batting her eyelids. She was in the passenger seat of Milton Frazier’s SUV; they were parked in a no-parking zone on Lafayette Street, just off Foley Square, across the street from the U.S. District Courthouse. Valencia watched Milton’s eyes go from her face to her shirt, and back up.
He nodded his head, looked out the front. “Yeah, you do.”
She held up ten freshly painted fingernails and wiggled them at him. “Hair? Makeup?”
“It’s all good,” said Milton. “You look perfect.”
Valencia checked her teeth in the visor mirror and then bent her head and looked across the square at the courthouse. “Have you ever met this guy, Sandemose?” she asked.
Milton shook his head.
“He’s a pervert.” She opened the door, stepped out, and then leaned back in the window. “Stay close, this shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”
After passing through the security line, she made her way toward Judge Palmetto’s courtroom. Utah Sandemose’s secretary had said the lawyer would be there all morning. Valencia needed a face-to-face for this; a phone call wouldn’t do.
Before entering the courtroom, she paused and imagined herself being bathed in a shower of white light, a warm beautiful bath that would make her posture perfect and her skin shine. Cleansed. When she finished, she took a deep breath, felt her chest expand, and pulled the door open.
The attorneys, the judge, and the two marshals ignored Valencia when she entered. The judge’s clerk—who tracked her with her eyes—was the only person who seemed to notice her.
Valencia sat in the back row, folded her hands in her lap, and listened as the assistant U.S. attorney—a man she’d never seen before—argued against a reduction of bail. While the man droned on and on about the defendant’s prior history, Valencia watched Utah Sandemose, who sat with another attorney at the defendant’s table. The defendant himself, for some reason, didn’t appear to be in the courtroom.
After ten minutes of argument, the judge made her ruling—bail reduction denied—and the lawyers, making small talk, gathered their papers and began moving toward the door. Sandemose didn’t notice Valencia until she stood. When he saw her, he flinched in mock surprise.
“Ms. Valencia Walker, to what do we owe the honor of your appearance?” He looked like a bigheaded cowboy dressed in a suit.
Valencia looked at the other man and noticed that he didn’t have any ears. It looked as though they’d been cut off.
“My paralegal, Vic,” said Utah, smiling.
Valencia shook hands with the paralegal. She wondered whether Utah was drunk. There was something about the volume of his voice that suggested inebriation. “I need to speak to you about something,” she whispered.
“Hear that?” He put his face in front of the paralegal and, moving his lips to allow for lip reading, loudly said, “I’ll meet you out front.”
“I’ll be there,” said the paralegal. He smiled at Valencia and left the two of them standing there inside the courtroom.
“Genius of a mind,” whispered Utah, nodding after the man. “Served six years in Allenwood, knows the law better than you and me. So, what the hell can I do for you?” he asked, stepping back and shamelessly looking at her chest.
“Yakov Rabinowitz,” said Valencia.
Utah exhaled audibly, looked away, licked his lips. “What about him?”
“We need to meet.”
“Oh, boy,” said Utah, lifting a hand to wave goodbye to the marshals. Then he ushered Valencia out into the hallway. “Now what the hell do you want to meet an old coot like him for?”
Valencia stopped walking and squared up to the lawyer. She let her head drop to the left a few degrees and softened her expression. “I need help from him,” she said in her smoothest voice.
“With what?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I probably don’t—you are right about that. So let me ask: is this for someone else?”
“The less you know the better,” said Valencia.
Utah’s eyes went over her shoulders. He watched some lawyers from another courtroom disappear down the hallway. “You know I don’t represent him anymore?”
“But I’m sure you’re still friendly with him.”
“Hell yeah, I am,” said Utah. “I kept him out, didn’t I?”
“I need to meet him,” she repeated.
They began moving toward the elevator.
“Tell me this: is your showing up going to make his day worse?” asked Utah. “He’s a nice fella, don’t look mean or anything, but he’s not the kind of guy you want to make mad. You understand what I’m talking about?
“I think so,” said Valencia.
“He gonna be unhappy to meet you?” asked Utah.
“Is anyone ever unhappy to meet me?”
The lawyer smiled, raised his eyebrows. “And you’ll agree to have dinner with me?”
“Of course I will. You know that.”
“And you’re not going to bring any of your old friends from over there”—he nodded east, toward Foley Square, toward the FBI offices—“into our little friend’s orbit.”
“I don’t have friends over there,” said Valencia, forcing herself to smile.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” said Utah. “I’ll give him a call, tell him you want to meet. I’ll tell him I have no idea what the hell you want to meet about. I’ll advise against it. Cover my ass that way. I’ll say, ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t even take this meeting.’ I’ll have to tell him who you are.” Here he leaned in and whispered: “Langley, all of it.” Utah straightened up, spoke in a normal volume: “He’s gonna find out anyway. Don’t worry, I know that old boy, probably make him want to meet you even more.”
“You should come work with me,” said Valencia. She grabbed his wrist and gave it a squeeze. “We would make a hell of a team, wouldn’t we?”
“First a non-sexualized dinner,” said Utah. He pointed a big cowboy finger at her. “And you’re buying.”
* * *
“Take out a hundred, plus twenty,” said Yuri.
“A hundred?” asked Moishe. “I thought we said seventy-five?”
“The idea is to get more work, a calling card, not just the minimum.”
“Right here?” asked the Uber driver.
“Right there,” said Yuri, leaning forward and pointing at Ossip’s Locksmith Shop. “Right here, right here.”
<
br /> Moishe took a moment folding the paper sack he’d brought with him and then got out of the car, leaving Yuri, Isaac, and the driver waiting.
When he got to Ossip’s door, he found it locked. He knocked and then cursed when he saw that Ossip wasn’t alone in the shop. A man stood near the counter with him. It was early in the day, but both men looked drunk. Ossip, smiling, came to the door and unlocked it.
“You have someone here?” whispered Moishe.
Ossip’s face reacted like he’d heard something obscene. “Him? He’s my cousin, you know Dimitri!”
Moishe leaned his head to look into the shop. Dimitri, the cousin, stood with both hands on the counter, like he was at a bar. He was skinny, had greasy hair, and wore a loose gray suit. He had a drug-weathered face and for the time being kept his eyes on the floor. Moishe didn’t recognize him.
Moishe turned back to the locksmith. “Wait right here, don’t fucking close that door.”
When he got back to the Uber, Moishe stepped to the front passenger window, leaned down, and spoke into it. “He has someone else.”
“What?” said Yuri, leaning forward to see. “I thought you told him we were coming?”
“I did.”
“Who is it?”
“He says it’s his cousin, Dimitri.”
From the back of the car, Isaac said, “Dima? Nah, he’s hella cool. He just got out. Hold on.” Isaac started to open the door, but Yuri turned and told him to stay where he was. He told Moishe to hold on, then pulled out his phone and sent a text message.
Moishe felt uneasy. He glanced at the driver, who was fussing with his own iPhone and pretending not to pay any attention to them. Moishe leaned away from the car and looked at the block around him. Everything was normal. An old woman carrying sagging bags walked past them on the sidewalk. A car honked at another car and pigeons flew into the air.
“I’ll come with you,” said Yuri, putting his phone in his pocket and getting out of the car. “We don’t hang out, we don’t drink, we just get what we came for.”
When they got to the door, it was closed but unlocked. Inside the shop, Ossip, seeming more sober now, introduced Dimitri. “He just got out,” said Ossip, speaking quietly to Yuri. “Sing Sing. A friend of your uncle.”
“Dima,” said the man, bowing his head formally and holding his hand out to Yuri. They shook. “Dima,” he said to Moishe, limping over to him and bowing his head again. He held his left hand on his chest like he was apologizing and shook hands with his right. The hand that Moishe grasped was both clammy and rough. There was something repulsive about it. Moishe himself had rough hands from lifting weights, but they weren’t anything close to this.
He pictured the man obsessively scraping his hands on rock walls until they bled and then cauterizing them over a candle. Moishe rubbed his own hands on his shirt and tried to catch Yuri’s eye, but his friend was staring blankly toward the front door. Moishe stepped to Ossip, grabbed his arm, and led him toward the back.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Ossip. Moishe followed, leaving Yuri and Dima in the front of the store. The hallway to the back was dark. Ossip said something about a bulb needing to be replaced.
“Why do you have someone here?” whispered Moishe.
“He stopped by,” said Ossip. “What am I going to do? He’s my aunt’s son. He’s a good boy.” Ossip went to the safe, bent over, and began spinning the dial. The windowless room was bright with fluorescent light. In addition to the safe, it contained a few file cabinets and a table covered with random tools and trash. Papers, receipt books, binders. A pornographic picture of a woman was taped to the far wall. The room smelled of cigarettes and dust.
Moishe could hear the low tones of Dimitri’s voice coming from down the hallway, but he couldn’t make out the words. He turned back just as Ossip was lifting the bag of money out of the safe and setting it on the worktable.
After unzipping the bag, Moishe counted out twelve ten-thousand-dollar stacks. Besides the hundred thousand for Yuri’s uncle, they were going to split another twenty for spending money.
When he finished, he turned toward Ossip and noticed that the man appeared to be nervous. “What’s a matter with you?” whispered Moishe. He then went back to the bag and silently counted the rest of the stacks. It was all there.
“Nothing,” said Ossip. “My heart hurts,” he added, tapping his chest. “I tell you, my friend—every day in this place,” he said, briefly switching to English. “How many did you take?”
“Twelve,” said Moishe. He put the money into the paper sack and rolled it shut. “Twelve,” he repeated.
The older man then moved the rest of the money over to the safe, put it in, and locked it. “Seventy-one minus twelve: fifty-nine,” said Ossip.
“Don’t say anything,” said Moishe, nodding toward the front of the shop.
“Don’t treat me like a fucking idiot,” said Ossip. “I wasn’t born yesterday.” He shook his head and led the way to the front of the store.
Moishe found Yuri—arms crossed, eyes cast down—listening to the end of some kind of war story. The only part that Moishe caught was something like “and that’s why Russian, white, black, Latin, it doesn’t matter.”
When Dima finished the story, his eyes went straight to the sack in Moishe’s hands. It was only a split second, and then his eyes ticked away, but Moishe felt the glance in his nervous system like he’d seen a snake on the ground. It jolted him.
Right then, Ossip—pulling Moishe by his free arm—said, “And now we have a drink.” He grabbed four small glasses and filled them with vodka. “For our cousin coming home.” He raised his glass. “A good boy.”
They toasted and drank. “One more,” he said, pouring another.
Yuri tried to protest but was ignored. A car’s horn blared outside.
“To Ossip,” said Dima, lifting his glass. “The best locksmith in Brooklyn.” The men lifted their drinks and drank.
The bell on the front door chimed just as they were finishing their drinks. All four men swung their heads and saw Isaac walk in.
“I told you to wait,” said Yuri.
“You should keep the door locked,” said Isaac, speaking to Ossip.
“We should go,” said Moishe, rolling the top of the paper sack tighter.
“Gotta pay my respects to the big homey,” said Isaac, stepping to Dima. “What’s good with you, man?” he asked.
Moishe watched in disbelief as Dimitri wrapped Isaac up in a bear hug and lifted the younger man off the ground. He then watched as the two of them had a back-and-forth, each complimenting how good the other man looked, squeezing each other’s arms and making promises to go out and party soon.
After another round of drinks, they finally headed for the door, but before they got there, Dima called out one more thing to Yuri: “Make sure you give my regards to your uncle.”
* * *
Earlier that morning, on the subway ride to work, Chris Cowley was approached by another man he’d never seen before. Chris had been standing near the door of the car holding on to the handrail when the stranger appeared in his peripheral vision. The train was three-quarters full; standing so close felt intentional. Chris didn’t turn and look, but he could tell the man was white and that he had brown hair.
For a moment, Chris experienced the unmistakable lifting feeling of attraction; his insides pulled up. His go-to phrase, Wanna fuck, passed through his mind. He became nervous. His problems momentarily disappeared, and as the train began to move, he was swept along, feeling the energizing sense of romantic possibility.
The fantasy was short lived. Moments after the train cleared the station, the man turned his head slightly and spoke into Chris’s ear. “Listen to me,” he said. “They want me to tell you to stop acting so depressed.”
Chris turned and looked. The attraction vanished. The man was ugly. His eyes were set close together, he had a large Adam’s apple, and he’d missed a spot shaving that morning, which gave the side of h
is chin a gross pubic quality.
“Excuse me?” said Chris.
“Don’t be so”—the man pantomimed a depressed person—“all the time.”
Chris looked at him and then dropped his eyes to the floor of the subway.
“Try to act normal,” said the man. “You’re pissing off the wrong people.”
The man then stepped to a nearby seat, sat, and stared at Chris. Chris turned back to the window and watched the dark tunnel speed past. What the fuck? A sick feeling moved in his guts.
His mother had taught him to name these feelings but all he could come up with was—a glacier, a gross, dirty glacier. He turned back to the man and tried to glare at him, but the man’s face looked angry, as if he wanted to fight; and just like that Chris got scared and looked away.
Pathetic, Chris thought. I am truly pathetic. He licked his lips. Had there been any witnesses to this interaction? A glassy-eyed old woman stared at him, but in a vacant way. Nobody else seemed to be paying any attention.
The train pulled into the East Broadway stop and Chris patted his pocket to make sure his phone was there. He found it inside his jacket. Then he closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply. Calm down, you piece of shit.
Thankfully, the man didn’t follow him off the train. In fact, he even appeared to keep his eyes closed while Chris made his exit. That didn’t stop Chris from looking over his shoulder three times on his way out of the station. As he walked, he repeated Act normal to himself, like some kind of mantra.
Chris spent the morning seated at his desk, taking shallow breaths and trying to will the toxicity out of his guts. He couldn’t help wondering whether that man was even part of the other group—but of course he was.
After lunch he attended a meeting and did his best to appear alert and eager. He played his role, sat straight, and didn’t say anything except hello and goodbye. As soon as he left the meeting the conversations in his head picked back up: All I did was look at pornography, you fucking sickos. You backward-ass mother-fucking thugs.
His problems continued. Shortly after the meeting, walking to the bathroom, he crossed paths with Elizabeth Carlyle. He couldn’t avoid her this time. There was nothing he could do. The sight of her caused his blood pressure to shoot up; his bowels tightened.
Clean Hands Page 16
