by Brian Selfon
“Hey.” Henry catches her by the elbow. “Hey. Look at me. You just tossed Tiger on his ass. You got things right with your business.” He lowers his voice. “I’m proud of you.” Then with a shiver he hurries away, uncomfortable with the moment he’s created.
Lipz catches up. “Thanks.” She touches his hand and—
He steps on a bottle. Tripping, he bumbles against Lipz and then catches them both against the handrail. They’re body-to-body, in the near dark, and he’s pressed against her side. He begins to pull back just as she says, “I’ll never forgive you.”
He doesn’t move. Can hear her breathing. “If we do or if we don’t?”
He can’t see her smile, but he can hear it: “Either way.”
A door opens somewhere, and they pull back. Footsteps approach, fade. A haunted feeling. Neither moves back in again.
“Did you hear about the little kid they found?” she asks. “He was stuck in the D Tower stairwell. Couldn’t reach the doorknobs, couldn’t get out, and no one heard shit, and when they found him…”
Or they heard and didn’t give a fuck, Henry thinks. For every down-and-outer doing something stupid, there are a hundred middle-income don’t-give-a-fuckers, looking away from what’s right in front of them.
Henry tells the story of the drooling man they caught in the A Tower’s basement. He’d been living down there for years, and whisper was that his family had just offloaded him one day. Threw him down the stairs, slammed the door, and moved the fuck out of town.
“But imagine that little kid,” Lipz says. “What if they didn’t find him? He’d just walk around crying. And then he’d dry up. And then he’d drop and just lie there till someone gets around to changing these fucking lights.”
They arrive at the ground floor. She has led them by touch. Good old Lipz, bashing boyfriends, swimming in vodka. Guiding him through the dark, and then getting him out. The hall lights blind them, and in the hot white Henry thinks about Emil. He could have dried up and dropped, he could be in some stairwell. Could be in this stairwell, even, and we’d never know it. The towers of the Moses Houses are vertical labyrinths: easy to get lost in, a good place to disappear.
A memory stirs. A good place to disappear … He’s heard this before.
No, idiot, you said it. To Emil.
Henry stops. He stands before the door to the Moses Houses Tower B HVAC room. He is afraid to move.
Last month Henry and Emil were in the Moses Houses, stepping out from a rent party. Henry handed his one-hitter to Emil, and as he blazed, Henry noticed the HVAC room.
“This could be a decent fallback,” Henry said.
“How’s that?”
“Easy to get to, hidden in plain sight.”
Henry is always on the lookout for fallbacks—every runner needs their own. On that night Henry made a mental note to come back sober and inspect this site. Look at the lock, he told himself. Don’t forget. But then the one-hitter was back in his hands and …
He forgot.
And now Emil is missing, and Henry stands before the HVAC door. Wonders if it’s possible that Emil’s assignment went to shit. That maybe he tried each of his assigned fallbacks and burned every one of them. He must’ve been desperate, lugging that stash, nowhere to put it. And he lost his phone, or maybe it got ganked. And panic took over, but then—Emil saw the Moses towers. Remembered this room, remembered what Henry said about it and hurried over. Found his way inside.
I told him he’d be safe here. He listened. He always did.
The lock is already broken. Henry opens the door.
A blast of cold air. A thing on the floor, a twisted figure, red-white mush where the back of the head should be.
It’s a mannequin, Henry thinks. He backs out of the room, his entire body shaking.
Lipz is asking him something.
“But it’s not him,” he says, as if Lipz were arguing with him. “It’s not him, it’s not.” At last he turns and looks her in the eye, a choke on every word: “That thing is not my friend.”
part four
the well-placed friend
chapter 16
“Officer Montenegro?”
Zera turns to find a small, muscular man in a Nets hat and a fitted polo shirt. His badge on a neck chain. Lighting everything up with a beautiful smile. He extends a hand. “Detective Fung. Kurt.”
She crosses her arms. “Why am I here?”
Kurt lowers his hand, his smile not breaking, just changing its shape. So it’s going to be like that.
It’s two months before the murder, and the officers are in Maria Hernandez Park. It’s dusk, and they are in relative seclusion: a patch of trees, the back wall of a public bathroom. A dumpster.
“I got the money memo last week,” Kurt says. “Your phone must be ringing off the hook.”
She looks over his shoulder at the picnic benches behind him. She sees a figure seated alone, and a second figure standing behind the first. This second figure stands like a cop, and she can almost make out a badge and chain. Zera focuses on the seated figure. She can’t tell, from this distance, from her angle, whether he’s handcuffed.
“Why am I here?” she says again.
“Because of your memo,” Kurt says playfully. “This guy checked all the boxes.” Zera and Kurt begin a slow walk toward the picnic benches, Kurt lowering his voice: “Red-code neighborhood, check. Subject with a bag, check. Subject’s movements and demeanor consistent with countersurveillance, check.” A pause. “Not very good at it, obviously.”
Closer now, Zera can make out a bag not far from the man’s feet. She still can’t see, from her angle, because of how he’s slumped, whether he’s sitting on his hands, or whether they’re locked behind him.
“The suspect’s not in custody,” she says. This is somewhere between a question and an accusation. Her money memo, as the detective called it, has been widely distributed but imperfectly read. More than once she’s had to arrange for a suspect’s release. What this means: a pound of paperwork. What this also means: lost time. This more than infuriates her. It feeds a fear that has her up and working—reviewing bank records, compiling telecommunications data, creating link charts—through many nights. And all for nothing, so far. Her prime targets—Elijah Arep, Shecky Keenan, and Moshe Lefkowitz, names culled from field intelligence reports—have no reason to lose sleep. Her fruitless initiative is a pilot project running on empty. The grant is limited, the funds already low, and she knows the precise date she will have to file her closing memo. Knows, even, the opening words for this memo: Regretfully, at this time we are not able to provide evidence sufficient to justify, for any of our key targets, the continuance of …
“He’s not in custody,” Kurt says. “I don’t know if he understands that, but officially, we’re just having a chat. Beautiful night, how are you, what’s in your bag … Friendly.”
She stops while still some distance from the picnic table. Examines the suspect. White male. Mid- to late twenties. Button-down short-sleeved shirt, checkered, cargo pants. On the ground: messenger bag, or maybe a softshell briefcase.
“Get in there,” Kurt tells her, nodding toward the bag. “Open that bad boy. It’ll get you all tingly.”
“You don’t have a search warrant,” Zera says. Another question/accusation, but she can already feel Kurt’s big smile.
“I said pretty please.” A laugh of self-love. “Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
Back to the suspect. He’s watching her now, taking out a pocket notebook, a pencil. Then he’s writing something, pausing to look up at Zera, his hands moving in a peculiar way—across the page, up and down, rather than left to right.
Not writing, Zera realizes. Drawing. Me.
She goes to him, takes in his long nose, his nervous eyes. His sensuous mouth.
“I’m going to look in your bag,” she says, pulling on rubber gloves. “I have your consent, yes?”
A tremor in his voice: “It’s not my bag.”
Rookie, she thinks. Could be his first job.
Having carried the bag a few yards back from the bench, she takes a mini flashlight off her service belt. Shines it into the bag—leather—and illuminates a fist-size roll of cash held together by rubber bands. She removes the bands and flips through the bills, mostly twenties. Just shy of a thousand.
Okay, so not his first job, but definitely still a rookie.
A change in the air, cinnamon, and Kurt, popping gum, is close. “So…” His confidence is against her like a dance-floor erection. “So how’d you get to be the queen of money laundering?”
She puts her back to the detective before recounting the bills. She rolls and bands them. Shit. She returns the money roll to the bag. Shit-shit. Zera works with her guard up, but somehow the detective’s question got through.
How.
The memories are never far from the surface.
A man at the Paradise House unbuckling his belt. In Russian: “You’re going to like how this hurts.”
The round-bodied alcoholic in a blue uniform: “Why do you want to join NYPD?”
Years later, a windowless interview room. A haggard girl named Sveta Lvov, all makeup and bruises. “They said if I talk to you,” the girl told Zera in Polish, “they’ll go to my village, they’ll take my sister…” Zera caught the girl by the wrist. At first the girl was scared, but then she saw Zera’s hand, the shape of it. The two shared a look, and the girl extended her arm so Zera could read the tattoo. PROPERTY OF THE PARADISE CLUB. Zera released the girl, withdrew as if from a hot touch. Not the same, Zera told herself. Crossing her arms, tucking in her hands. Club, not House. America, not Montenegro. Sveta, not Katja. Different girls, different men. And this girl isn’t Katja—she’s not me—but …
Another memory, a training room. Uniformed and plainclothes police officers in student seats, the woman at the whiteboard wearing a different kind of badge. A lieutenant, the first woman of this rank Zera had ever seen.
“This is not your grandfather’s police initiative,” the lieutenant said. “This is a unique partnership between the Financial Crimes Unit and the department’s Human Trafficking Task Force. Everyone in this room is a volunteer. So now you get to learn what you signed up for.” Muted laughter around the room, but not a peep from Zera. A mask of skepticism and, beneath it, a flickering hope.
“The men who buy girls,” the woman said, “make for terrible witnesses. You’ve seen it, you know the reasons. The johns are ashamed, they’d rather eat a misdemeanor than take the stand. And the girls—think about why they’re doing what they do. Trauma, intimidation. Addiction. Immigration issues. Threats to family members—sound familiar?”
The crowd: nods, knowing grins.
Zera: leaning in now. Her mouth open, as if she would drink in the words.
“The old approach has a long history of failure,” the lieutenant said. “We’re here for something else.”
Two months later—the winter before the murder—and it was Zera at a whiteboard. Talking to a different room full of uniformed police officers. “We’re here for something else,” she said, doing her best to deliver the lieutenant’s speech. “We’re going after the moneymen.”
Zera is not a natural public speaker. Odd pronunciations, awkward pauses. Some unnatural cadences, her discomfort obvious, but she forced herself through it. This matters, she reminded herself. This is what she signed up for.
“Moneymen are essential to the trafficking business,” she told the officers. “Every trafficker above a street pimp has one.” She went to an officer sleeping in his chair. Fat. Open-mouthed. For a moment she just stood before him, then she kicked a leg of his desk, jerking him awake. Some low laughs but she cut them off: “Some of these moneymen are tax preparers,” she continued, beginning a slow walk around the room. “Some are paralegals, some are real lawyers and accountants.” She went to two whispering officers and stood directly before them. Resumed after their silence filled the room.
“The moneymen are the bridge between the streets and the banks.” She continued her walk. “Many of them have no criminal record. Many have houses, many have families. And what does this mean?” Her walk brought her back to the whiteboard, where she pivoted and faced the room again. “They have something to lose. A reason they’ll want to help us, if we can get something on them.” Another pivot, back to the whiteboard. She uncapped a dry-erase marker and started writing. Three names: Elijah Arep, Shecky Keenan, Moshe Lefkowitz.
“You may be thinking,” she said over her shoulder, aware that at least a third of her audience was lost in their phones, “that prostitution is a victimless crime. The girl gets the money, the guy has his fun, so what’s the problem.” She kept her back to her audience. Lowered her voice, almost as though speaking to herself. “I’m going to tell you the problem.” She drew in her breath, thought of Katja, and now Sveta, and then turned to face the group. “There is no consensual sex between master and slave.” All eyes were on her now, and her low voice had power. “Every instance—every sale—is an act of rape.”
A moment later she was writing again, the audience uncomfortable, Zera all business. “Indicia of money laundering. One. Multiple money orders, each less than three thousand dollars. Two. Multiple cash deposits, each less than ten thousand dollars. Three…”
And now she’s at Maria Hernandez Park. Zera has the bag with the cash roll, and Detective Kurt Fung, with his bright, cinnamon-fresh smile, has his question.
She turns away from him. Walks with the bag to the picnic bench, where the young man hurriedly closes his sketchbook. She looks him over. His body, a rounding belly on a slender build. His sideways glances, lazy head tilt, his loose-shouldered slouch. And the fear he breathes out, so obvious, even in this semidarkness.
A child, she thinks.
I can use him.
chapter 17
A noiseless patient spider. Uncle Walt whispers to her night and day. Launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself. If poetry is music, then this is her theme song. Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. On the night of the murder, Kerasha wonders if anyone else in the underworld feels poetry the way she does. If anyone else hears lines in their heads, and feels that a lost and frightened part of themselves has been thrust into the light. Made beautiful with words. Made strong.
The spider spins its web, one thread at a time, connecting this to that, never stopping, never doubting. On real jobs, when she is on the high wire, this is Kerasha.
And now she sits atop a three-story apartment complex, looking down at the entrance of the office building across the street. Waiting. A spider with fangs, Kerasha never feels more alive than the moment she sights her prey.
The door at the main entrance of the office building opens. A redhead exits and holds the door. A small man with a ponytail steps out. He says something to the redhead. She throws her head back and shows her teeth. Motherfucker, Kerasha thinks, is he flirting? It’s painful to imagine Dr. Xu even contemplating romance. And this laughing redhead, is she charmed? If so, she must be a patient. Must be in crisis, and have left reality far behind, to be enjoying this company.
The redhead turns left, Dr. Xu walks in the opposite direction. The woman walks only half a block. At a bus stop, waiting, she takes something out of her purse and stares at it. A phone, an e-reader—for a crazy person, she’s holding up remarkably well. She’s passing, the way one of Kerasha’s father’s great-aunts supposedly did, a light-skinned black woman who one day just disappeared into the white world. Or maybe, and Kerasha is loath to admit this possibility, the redhead isn’t a lunatic after all. She’s a working, functional anybody, and Dr. Xu just interacted with her, no court order required. He can be a person when he chooses to. Why not with me? The spider is out of patience. She will have her revenge.
A few buildings down from his office, Dr. Xu stops at a fence. Unchains a bike. Bad news for the spider. In Brooklyn, bikes are almost unhuntable.
The spi
der is a blur down the fire escape: hang, drop. Hang, drop. She lands in a blacktop lot and rounds the building, emerging through an alleyway. Across the street Dr. Xu straddles his bike. Snaps on a helmet.
That’s right, Dr. Xu, take care of that priceless brain.
First the helmet, now the pant leg—he’s rolling it up. This buys her a few more seconds. She goes to the Nissan sedan she spotted when she scoped out the site earlier today. The model is maybe ten years old: she knows the type, has the right tool for the lock. Another for the alarm. Dr. Xu is just blocks away when she catches up with him. He is—and this amazes her—waiting at a red light. You’re on a bike, she thinks. Are you trying to be hunted? What a good citizen you are, Dr. Xu, what an example for your patients.
She lets a Toyota SUV pull out of a driveway so that there will be an extra car between them. She still feels too close. She can see his ankle. It means nothing, she knows, bikers do it everywhere: protecting the pant leg from the chain, the gears; protecting the chain and gears from the pants. But at this moment it seems lurid. She feels uncomfortable, seeing his ankle like this. And then a voice in her head, soft, infuriating—a voice that sounds remarkably like Dr. Xu’s—asks her why.
This is the danger of hunting a psychiatrist, she supposes: he hunts you right back. She’s followed gunmen and looked out for guns. Followed street girls and looked out for street daddies, followed armored cars and looked out for armored men. With a psychiatrist, she’s realizing, the one you look out for is yourself.
A half mile, three-quarters, a mile, another tenth. Dr. Xu dismounts just outside a bike shop. Kerasha ditches the car, leaves it behind a parked city bus with blinking hazards, then doubles back to catch up with her prey. The bike shop has big windows, an open front door. A black guy with a skully, a white guy with a faux-hawk, an Asian girl between them, all of them laughing—a poster-perfect image. New Bushwick. Come Gentrify.