Clean Hands Page 12

  “Stupid?” he said. “You look like a professor.”

  She had, in fact, been a professor of economics in Moscow, but the comment only made her shake her head and smirk. She took her remote control and changed the channel; then she smacked her lips and shook her head again. She seemed genuinely annoyed at Yuri.

  He went back to the window and stared at the area where the woman had entered the park. When she finally came out, he stepped a foot back from the window and raised his binoculars to look at her. He couldn’t see her face, but her body language suggested she was scared, and he took some measure of comfort in that.

  “You boys will end up in an American prison,” his friend’s mother said. “Think about that for a minute.”

  Valencia parked next to a fire hydrant on Batchelder Street, shut the car off, and studied the area in front of her. It was a residential block. The kind of unadorned, large brick buildings that dominated New York City stood on each side of the street. She counted eight stories on her left, and six on her right. The buildings on her right had paths cutting through them. The one on her left had a large courtyard in the middle, so the front door was set back almost two hundred feet from the street. Ideal landscape for a sniper, she thought.

  A few people hunched against the evening chill seemed to be making their way home for the night. Valencia watched a delivery driver on an electric bike speed past. From there, her attention shifted to a man fussing with his dog’s leash. She watched him until he turned and walked away. Then she looked back at the building across the street from her. Brooklyn—she thought, attempting to ground herself—New York, America, Earth.

  Then, trying to put herself in the right mood, she repeated the phrase, Let me help these people, three times in her mind. She breathed deeply, exhaled, opened her eyes, and spoke. “I’m parked.”

  “We have you,” said the drone man. “Still, do me a favor and tap your brake once.”

  She tapped it.

  “We have you,” he repeated.

  “Milton?” asked Valencia.

  “Parked one block south,” said Milton. “Billy’s out. You should see him behind you.”

  Valencia looked in her rearview and then side mirrors, but didn’t see him. “Danny, where are we on the Emporis floor plans?” she asked. She wanted a three-dimensional image of the buildings on either side of her.

  “Working on it, boss,” said Danny.

  Thinking that one of her men could lift a fingerprint or DNA, she refrained from touching the phone as much as she could. While she waited for it to ring, she opened the glove compartment, found two pens, and—using them like sewing needles—flipped the phone open. She then pressed the talk button and looked at the call history. Besides the calls that had come in at the golf course, there had been another series of blocked calls earlier, at 4:45 p.m. It occurred to her that they’d been practicing. There was something pathetic about that.

  Using the pen, she punched in her own number, and hit the green talk button. Her iPhone lit up with a 718 number.

  She spoke into her earpiece: “Danny, run this number—718-936-5156, tell me what you see.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “After you’re done, give Dale Burkhart a call and have him do the same thing. Tell him this is real. Danny, you gotta say it like that: ‘Real.’” Dale Burkhart was an FBI agent in Newark. He’d have more access and could possibly tell her where the phone had been sold.

  The drone man’s voice came into her earpiece: “Okay, Valencia, the building across the street from your location, the tall one, we have five warm bodies in windows, one on the second floor, one on the third floor, one on the seventh, and two on the eighth, at the same window.”

  “Copy,” said Valencia. She bent down in her seat and craned her neck to look up at the tower, but she couldn’t see any signs of warm bodies. She looked at the phone, and breathed deeply through her nose.

  “Do you want the other buildings?”

  “Not now,” said Valencia. “Just the street.”

  “You have two warm bodies near the front door of that same building, and a group of three bodies, moving in your direction, from one block north on Avenue Y.”

  “Copy,” she said. Her eyes went back and forth between the people at the door and the area where the three people would be coming from. They still hadn’t come into her view.

  “You should see Billy,” said Milton. His voice sounded like an AM radioman.

  She lowered her head and looked in the side mirror. She still couldn’t see Billy. He’d be dressed like a homeless man, complete with a long-haired wig and an authentic smell. Out collecting cans, he’d be strapped with a gun, handcuffs, and his fake badge. Wally Philpott, Valencia’s NYPD detective, was standing by at a bar on Nostrand Avenue, just in case they needed him.

  She pulled down the visor and checked in the mirror for food or lipstick on her teeth. Then she shut the mirror, leaned back in her seat, touched two fingers to her wrist and felt her pulse; slowly breathing in and out, she tried to get it to settle. Snug as a bug in a rug, she told herself.

  “The three inbound just turned back on Batchelder and are now headed away from you—northbound,” said the drone man. “A cluster of six new bodies inbound from the south.”

  “Hold the updates, for a minute,” said Valencia.

  “Copy,” said the drone man.

  Valencia’s earpiece went silent.

  She closed her eyes for a few seconds and waited for her mind to steady. When she opened her eyes, she looked again in her side mirror. This time she spotted Billy on the other side of the street. He was drinking a beer and examining a large pile of trash bags. He looked the part. He’d speak Polish if anybody questioned him.

  Right then the phone rang on the seat next to her. It sounded louder than it had in the field, and its ringtone, a vintage jangle, took her back ten years. Touching the phone as little as she could, she answered it.

  “Welcome, friend,” said the same pitch-shifted voice.

  “Thank you,” said Valencia, scanning the street in front of her.

  “You are parked?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are parked across from 2520?”

  He was referring to the tower with the courtyard. “Yes,” she said, looking over at the front door.

  “Hold, please,” said the voice.

  Valencia sat there blinking. Hold, please? She looked at the area in front of her, but didn’t see any movement. She glanced in the side-view mirror and saw Billy walking away from her.

  Her iPhone lit up with a text from Danny. It was the floor plans. She clicked on the 2520 building and gave the layout a quick look, making note of all the stairways. Then she looked back at the street. A car had pulled up in front of the building, and an older woman was slowly pushing herself out of the backseat. The man on the phone was presumably waiting for the area to clear.

  Before making her way to the door, the old woman had to speak to the driver for a bit. Valencia almost smiled; all eyes—including two drones—were on this old woman. The world had stopped for her.

  “Exit the car, bring the money in the bag, and walk to the doorway of 2520,” said the voice on the phone. “There are benches there. Sit down on one of them. Keep the phone on you. We’ll call back.”

  “Okay,” said Valencia. The call ended.

  She reached for the trunk release lever. “Showtime,” she said.

  “Copy,” said the drone man.

  “Copy,” said Milton.

  She opened the door and set her feet on the ground. As she exited the car, she became dizzy and momentarily experienced something like stage fright; she felt watched.

  The feeling passed. She pulled the trunk open, lifted the bag out, put the strap over her right shoulder, and began lugging the bag across the street. She walked at a measured pace, not too fast or slow. If anyone out there doesn’t want me to do this, now is the time to speak up, she thought.

  Right then, a black Monte Carlo pu
lled up behind her. It was blaring hip-hop, and the bass vibrated through her body. She turned and looked at it, but she couldn’t see anything through the blackened windows. Still, she could sense men leering at her from inside. She took a moment and mentally prepared herself to fight. Go for the knees, she told herself. Knees, throats, balls, and noses. But the car roared off, its muffler adding to the noise. Valencia was left alone on the block again.

  She walked into the courtyard and toward the door of 2520 Batchelder.

  “Two men standing at the door,” said the drone man. “You still have the same warm bodies in windows on floors two, three, seven, and eight.”

  She didn’t answer. The two men in the doorway were thirty yards from her; they wore puffy coats and smoked. She couldn’t see their faces because they were lit from behind. She kept moving toward the bench, and then sat on it, slipping her hands under her butt to warm them.

  The phone in her pocket rang. “Okay, Elizabeth”—they still thought she was Elizabeth, which was somehow comforting—“cross back over Batchelder,” said the voice. It sounded to Valencia like he was reading from a script. “Walk between the two buildings directly across the street from where you are. Before you get to the side door of the building on your left, you will see a trash can. It is the only one there. It’s fifty meters from the sidewalk. Put the bag in the trash can and then return to your car and leave the area.”

  “Put the bag in a trash can across the street from me?” she asked, so her men could hear what she was being instructed to do.

  “Yes,” said the voice. The pitch-shifting couldn’t disguise his nervousness.

  “Do we have your word that you won’t come back to us again?” asked Valencia, saying what she thought Elizabeth Carlyle might say.

  “Yes,” said the voice. “Put the money in the trash can and leave. Thank you.”

  The line went dead.

  She crossed Batchelder Street again and looked for Billy, but couldn’t see him. The space between the buildings was lined with park benches. There was a little plot of grass on her right. The streetlights cast the area in pinkish orange and hummed unnaturally. There was nobody else in her line of vision. Put the bag in the trash, she thought. This is ridiculous.

  She found the trash can. It looked like any New York City trash can. There was a lid on top, the kind meant to discourage people from dumping their own bags of trash. It wasn’t locked, and she pulled it open. She looked in and saw a black plastic garbage bag and no trash. She placed the gym bag in the trash can and then put the lid back down. She turned and raised her hands to signal that it was done.

  Feeling like men in every window were watching her, she straightened her shoulders and began her walk back to the car. Now we wait, she thought.

  As soon as she was in the car, she asked her drone man what he had. “Nothing yet.”

  Valencia, pumped up on adrenaline, pulled her seatbelt on, pushed her hair back, started the car, turned her lights on, checked her mirrors, and drove away.

  Billy watched Valencia’s car disappear down the road. He’d found a carton of halal chicken and rice in the trash, and, fully committed to his role, ate from it like a man who’d skipped a few meals. It wasn’t bad. Still chewing, Billy stepped into the doorway of an abandoned building. He set his food and drink down and then lowered himself to a seated position. From there, he could watch the trash can. He sipped his beer, adjusted his earpiece, and leaned back against the door.

  While he watched, he switched to autopilot; fragments of sentences passed through his mind: Wait and watch … walk the block … filled up … tossed out … he said duck….

  A little over two hours later, Valencia came on his radio and told him to take a walk. “Billy, time for your lunch break.”

  He was happy to go for a walk; his back and knees had stiffened up, and he was getting cold too. He might have to buy another beer to keep up his cover.

  He walked three blocks west—didn’t turn to look behind himself once—and found a bodega on Nostrand Avenue. Colter, meanwhile, sent regular updates through his earpiece: “Holiday,” he’d say, meaning the field was clear. Then ninety seconds later he’d repeat it, “Holiday.”

  “Wassup, player?” Billy said to the store clerk when he walked in.

  The clerk, a young Arab, raised his eyebrows, shrugged, shook his head.

  Billy walked to the back, scanned the beer, grabbed a can of Olde English, and stepped to the register. “Let me get two loosies,” he said. The clerk looked at him for a moment, like he was wondering if Billy was a cop; but then he reached under the counter, grabbed a pack of Newports, and shook out two cigarettes.

  “Three fifty,” said the clerk.

  Billy gave him five, took the change, picked up a lighter that was tied to a string, and lit one of the cigarettes.

  “Billy, we’re gonna need you to take a look in the box,” said Valencia in his earpiece.

  Billy stepped back outside. “Take a look? Or grab?” he said into his earpiece.

  “Take a look,” she said. “Confirm it’s there.”

  “Copy,” said Billy.

  He walked back down Batchelder across from the tower. He first went to the trash can on the far side of the street, looked into it, dug around, pulled some paper bags out, pretended to look through them.

  “Holiday,” said Colter.

  If Allah wills it, it will be done, thought Billy, trying to talk himself calm. Truth was, he was feeling nervous. He couldn’t help it.

  He walked toward the target, following a drunken line from the sidewalk onto the dead lawn and back. Twenty feet from the can, he stopped walking and made a show of finishing his beer. He tossed his head back and guzzled with his elbow out like a college kid. Then he dropped the can to the ground, crushed it under his boot, and belched loudly. He took a second, turned, and scanned the entire area. He didn’t see anyone.

  “Stay there for a minute,” said Valencia. Billy became aware that she was watching him from Colter’s van.

  Today is not my day to go, thought Billy. He leaned up and turned a circle, scanning all the windows for scope shines. A white SUV drove down the block and Billy watched it. After that the street became silent again. Billy tried to relax his shoulders; then he stomped on the beer can twice more, and picked it up.

  “Okay, Billy,” said Valencia.

  He turned and walked toward the trash can. For the first time that night, he noticed the sky above him, with the clouds lit by the moon, and beyond the clouds, two stars. After tossing the can into the trash, he took a step away, then pretended to have second thoughts, and turned back to it.

  He stepped up and tried to peer in, but he couldn’t see anything. He grabbed the top of the receptacle and pulled it open. When he looked in, it took a moment to understand what he was seeing. There was a black plastic trash bag, but it had been cut. Underneath that, at the bottom of the receptacle, was the can he’d just thrown in.

  He looked in deeper. “Bag’s gone,” he said.

  Colter Jacobson’s van was outfitted with boxes of computer hardware stacked and belted against the walls; neatly bundled cables extended from those stacks to a larger black trunk behind the driver’s seat; above the trunk, attached to a wall behind the driver and passenger’s seat, were eight small monitors. Sitting on a bench facing that wall was Valencia. She could see the white glow of Billy’s body on the screen, the dusted landscape of the lawn, the concrete street that played gray on the monitor. For a moment, the idea that Billy was at the wrong trash can passed through her mind.

  She turned toward Colter, who was seated next to her. “That’s the right can?” she asked, knowing full well it was.

  Colter pushed his glasses up, frowned, and nodded.

  “Fuck.” She spoke into her earpiece: “Milton, come pick me up.”

  Colter busied himself talking to his pilots, who were flying the drones from his office in White Plains. At that moment he was reading an indecipherable list of coordinates fr
om a notepad.

  Valencia dropped her head and closed her eyes for a second. She touched her ear and spoke: “Billy, drop back, cross the street, and wait for us. We’re coming.”

  She turned back to Colter and asked, “You have a quarter-mile view on the field?”

  He nodded, pointed toward one of the monitors.

  “And you’ve grabbed every license plate that has come and gone since we’ve been here?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Okay, sit tight,” she said.

  She hopped out of the van and watched Milton’s SUV speed down the block to get her.

  “Shit’s bad,” she said, when she got in. “Real bad.”

  Milton, silent, whipped a U-turn.

  Less than half a minute later they saw Billy walking toward them on Batchelder. They stopped and he got in the back.

  “You fucking stink,” said Valencia. Billy knew better than to respond. The car bumped over a pothole; sirens could be heard responding to some other incident in the vicinity. An older African American woman stopped and stared at them as they sped past.

  Milton stopped on the street, near the sidewalk that led to the trash can. The three of them sat there looking toward the drop spot.

  Valencia was the first to speak. “Fucking shit,” she said. “Back in and drive down that way.”

  Milton was already moving. He pulled forward and lurched the car in reverse. Bumping over the curb, he drove backward toward the trash can.

  “Hold on,” said Valencia. He stopped. She touched her earpiece. “Colter, is the area clear of police cars?”

  “No cars in the area. You have one body, a block over on Voorhies, but he’s moving away from you.”

  “Hit it,” said Valencia.

  “Hard?” asked Milton.

  “Yes.”

  When Milton stepped on the gas the three of them turned in their seats and watched out the back window as they headed for the can. The noise, when he rammed it, was quieter than Valencia expected.

  “Pull up,” she said.

  He pulled forward.

  “Let’s go.”

  They got out and walked to where the trash can had been. In its place was a two-foot-wide hole. “Son of a bitch,” said Valencia. She shined the light into the hole. It appeared that the trash can had been placed over some kind of sewage tunnel.