The Nightworkers

by Brian Selfon

  Henry starts the van. “Don’t let her hear you say that.”

  At long last, the Moses Houses. Henry circles two times before finding a parking spot. He texts the roofer, puts two twenties in the glove compartment, and helps Lipz out of her seat.

  “Where’s the money?” she asks, talking through a yawn.

  “On its way.” He checks his phone, pockets it. “All I need is unsecured Wi-Fi.”

  “So come on up with me.” There’s a dare in her smile. “We can do it in my bedroom.”

  * * *

  Lipz lives with her aunt, a charter school administrator who likes to explain why poverty is a lifestyle choice. To Henry, Aunt Mercedes is the ultimate fake-respectable don’t-give-a-fucker. Also, her apartment always reeks of patchouli.

  “This is Henry,” Lipz says to her aunt, as she leads Henry through the kitchen. “We’re going to my room. We’re going to fuck.”

  Lipz’s announcement is, of course, performance: Henry and Aunt Mercedes have known and hated each other for years. This morning Aunt Mercedes is in her usual seat at the kitchen table, painting her nails, a phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. Her scowl is nasty, but Lipz just blows her a kiss. Leads Henry to her bedroom, pushes open the door and disappears inside. Henry stops in her doorway. “I need ten minutes.”

  “You’re not even a little turned on?”

  “By myself. I’m getting your name back.”

  She pulls off her socks and comes to him barefoot. “Henry, Henry, Henry. You really are the sweetest.” She takes his hand. Tender touch, quiet voice: “Fuck this up and I burn your house down.” Then she’s pulling him down to her, and her close, close whisper is almost a kiss. “You’ve got to get out of this.” Even closer: “You’re still good.”

  * * *

  It all starts with a text: Tammy in?

  Henry’s first message is to a morning teller at a Western Union in downtown Brooklyn. For months he’s paid this teller fifty dollars per response, whether or not the response helps him. This morning it does.

  Tammy in, is the response. There’s no Tammy, of course, but the teller is available. Hallelujah, Henry writes back. He switches phones and dispatches his Thursday guy. The briefcase is on its way. Just a half hour later, Henry gets Thursday’s confirmation: Touchdown. The money has been delivered. An anxious minute passes, two, then Henry receives the sister text from Not-Tammy. A string of letters and numbers, which Henry decodes by hand. He double-checks the number, then takes a deep breath—not one dirty dollar is missing.

  From Western Union the money speeds to Apple Bank. From there to Mexico, from Mexico to Lagos to the Moon, the money scatters across the dark, but soon enough it will converge on Red Dog’s account in Sint Maarten. Henry cracks his knuckles. Feels a familiar ease spreading across his universe. He’s hearing now, for the first time since Emil’s death, the steady whirr of the family money machine.

  Can you hear it too, Uncle Shecky? We’re up and running again.

  But now the easy feeling takes a gray turn. Henry thinks about how things have been for him and Uncle Shecky. He sees them in their upstairs office, where the ledger came down hard. He sees them in the storage unit, where the cash spilled out of the briefcase, and that scared look on his uncle’s face.

  “This is a loan from a friend,” Uncle Shecky said then. “I was in no position to ask where the money came from, and neither are you.”

  Another beep, Henry checks his phone. A message on WhatsApp, a happy dog emoji. This is from the burner account Henry just set up for his uncle, and it means, simply, that everything is done. The coffee shop magic worked, and the money is already on its way to Sint Maarten. It’s almost official: Lipz has her name back.

  Henry holds the moment. Lifts the bedside lamp and, minding the cord, walks the small room. On the wall opposite Lipz’s bed is a window facing an air shaft. On the sill are loose coins, a box of tissues, the books Flash Boys and The Best Bad Things (Lipz has always been a reader), a stack of DVDs (and an unapologetic porn hound), a box cutter, and—

  No.

  Tiger’s wallet. Henry recognizes it by the silver chain, the fake claw marks burned into the leather.

  How could she have kept this? Tiger was murdered. Red Dog was behind it, of course, but the actual killer, as far as Henry knows, hasn’t been ID’d. If the cops walk in right now—and fuck knows they could have a thousand reasons to toss Lipz’s room—they will have questions. Like how did this end up on her windowsill? Like what does she know about the murder?

  And what does she know?

  Henry goes through the wallet. He puts the cash under Lipz’s pillow, but down the air shaft: receipts, money order tickets, business cards. He stops at a tiny photograph of a baby. Jesus, could Tiger have had a daughter? Answer: of course he could have a daughter. Henry shakes it off and keeps going. More down the air shaft: a half-dozen battered credit cards, all obviously recoded—the embossed numbers nearly flat, the names scraped off. Henry is about to toss the wallet itself when he sees something poking out. He reopens the wallet. Pulls out a driver’s license.

  The picture is of Tiger, but the name … Henry searches his memory for Tiger’s government name—what was it, Daquan something—but Daquan something isn’t the point. The point is that while the name on this license is bullshit, the style of it is sickeningly familiar. The point is that this bullshit license bears the seal of the state of Pennsylvania, and it looks a hell of a lot like the license that belonged to a nonperson called Charlie Gladney.

  And then there’s the little card just behind the license. Side A: blank. Side B: a handwritten phone number.

  646-555-0144.

  Henry takes out his own wallet, checks the number on the card Kerasha found on the top of Emil’s door. The same. Henry’s stomach turns, and there’s a tremor in his hand as he takes out his phone and dials.

  “Who this?”

  This voice—a man’s, cold and very low—Henry still can’t place it. But if he can get the motherfucker talking, whoever he is, if Henry can just keep him on the line—

  “I have your money,” Henry says, to bait the man. “Where can we meet?”

  Immediately he hears the click. Damn. Reckless with anger, he shoots a text at the mystery number: I know what you did.

  No response.

  Henry’s follow-up text: I’ll find you.

  Nothing.

  Henry is motionless for a long time, except his fingers, which still tremble. Two dead men, one phone number in common—so whose is it? But now his own phone is buzzing.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Starr says. “Remember that other murder? The one the detective was talking about?”

  “Oh fuck. Wait a sec.” Henry lowers the phone. Doesn’t want Lipz to hear any part of this conversation, and doesn’t trust her not to be listening in. He goes to the door, opens it, and hears Lipz and her aunt cursing each other out in Spanish. Henry closes the door, plants his foot behind it, and says “Okay, go ahead. What about the second murder?”

  “It was actually the first. I got the incident report. She died like three years ago.” She stops, and Henry hears background voices, but quickly muffled, as if Starr covered the phone with her hand. A moment later he hears her draw in her breath. “Okay, I’m back.”

  Henry cracks the door again. In the kitchen, Lipz’s hand is raised—no, it’s coming down—no, it came down. Her aunt’s mug flies off the table.

  Henry recloses the door. “Let me guess,” he says to Starr. “They never caught the guy.”

  “Worse than that,” Starr says. “Blunt instrument, back of the head. The full case file boxed off and shipped off to deep storage.”

  Henry ends the call feeling more than a little heartsick. Emil’s case will never be solved—not by police. And Henry feels a different kind of sickness wondering how many other “blunt instrument, back of the head” murder files might be collecting dust in that storage site.

  He slips out of Lipz�
��s bedroom and past the kitchen, where Lipz and her aunt are now breaking plates. The noise gives him cover. He makes it out unnoticed. On the walk home, he thinks about what Lipz said—that he could still get out of this. That he was good. He’s surprised to realize that he believes the same about her. The evidence in Lipz’s favor may be scant, but fuck it. The heart knows what it knows.

  Lipz is on his mind as he ascends the steps to the little house on Hart Street, and later that night, her murder will close out the summer.

  chapter 40

  Three years earlier, Zera is called in late at night to identify a corpse. Another uniformed officer and a detective are waiting for her at the dumpster. The detective is unusually tall, and his badge hangs from a chain around his thick neck. He coughs into his arm as she approaches. Turns his head to spit. “Officer Montenegro?”

  “Yes, sir.” Standing at attention before him, she recognizes this detective as Daniel Bilardello, who is well known and must be filling in for someone tonight. Jane Doe IDs are not prime assignments.

  The detective pulls on gloves and kneels before the long black bag. He unzips it far enough to reveal a head. “Give me some light.”

  The uniformed officer takes a flashlight off his belt. Clicks it on, shines it on the face of the Jane Doe.

  A mild nausea catches Zera by surprise. Months can go by without anything like this coming up in her.

  Bilardello asks, “That your informant?”

  “Yes, sir.” There’s no doubt it’s Sveta Lvov, the woman with the Paradise Club tattoo. For about a year Sveta has served as an occasional informant for the department, but she’s never testified, never given information on her own masters. Always been afraid. Technically, Sveta isn’t Zera’s informant: Zera is still just a uniformed officer, but she gets pulled into meetings to serve as translator. Zera knows this face well. “What happened?”

  “Officially, presumed a mugging.” Detective Bilardello removes his gloves. “Unofficially, of course it’s a mugging. No purse, no wallet, no phone. Also, the back of her head is crushed.”

  Zera puts on her own gloves. “Mind if I…?” She squats, the flashlight cuts the dark, and a moment later she’s shuddering. The light shows a casserole of hair, skull, and brain.

  Rising back up, she sees the detective’s narrowed eyes. “You’re new to this.”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “This is pretty common, okay? Prostitutes are easy targets. Half of them are high, they work in the dark. And it’s not unusual for a prostitute—I’m assuming she’s a prostitute—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s not unusual for a prostitute to end a night with a purse full of cash.”

  Zera nods, but she remembers how the man at the Paradise House never let any of his girls handle money. Payments at the front door, no tips allowed. She asks, “Did you find the weapon?”

  Bilardello’s smile is not friendly. “Are you the detective here?”

  Zera waits. He’ll talk, he’s a man, he can’t not explain himself. And he’s right to suspect her—she’s suspecting him right back. He’s blowing off this case.

  “This is pretty common,” the detective repeats. Zera had been counting in her head. The detective’s capacity for his own silence: less than ten seconds. “Some fucking homeless psycho, right? A junkie. He sees a girl, he sees her purse. He picks up his wrench. And these guys all have something—a wrench, a bat, a pipe. It’s survival, right? And he comes up on the girl, and he bashes her head. Takes the purse, keeps the wrench. Now your turn. Why does he keep the wrench?”

  Zera pretends to think. Still knows how to pump the male ego, when it serves her. One, two, three—“He doesn’t want to leave prints.”

  “He doesn’t want to lose the wrench.” A cruel smile. “You’re overthinking this. You have to understand, with junkies and whores, it’s a different life. Almost a different species, you understand me?”

  Zera crosses her arms over her chest and tucks her hands underneath.

  * * *

  She knocks on the office door. The answer is a cough. She opens the door and steps inside. Three days after the death of Emil Scott, Zera approaches Detective Bilardello. This isn’t his regular office, he’s here on some assignment, but he’s already created a smell here: cigarette ashes left wet. Meat put out in sunlight. Bilardello, almost skeletal now, is bent awkwardly over his keyboard, and when he turns to her, the snarl on the left side of his face looks permanent. Zera has heard about the lung cancer, but he must’ve caught a stroke as well. Yet here he is, working through his dying. Zera, who herself has nothing to stay home for, feels bolstered. He may be a man, but he’s her kind of worker, and he’ll help her if he can.

  She raises her badge, which now, like his, hangs around her neck from a chain lanyard. “Zera Montenegro, field intelligence officer. I’m also with the Human Trafficking Task Force, working on assignment with Detective Fung.”

  “Good luck with that assignment.” A wolf’s smile, but only half his mouth. “How’s he enjoying the rubber room?” Zera doesn’t smile back. The rubber room is where cop careers go to die. Kurt’s been on an “administrative assignment” since he reported the disappearance of his badge and service weapon. Zera doesn’t miss him personally, but his reassignment has been an operational setback. As a detective, and as the lead case officer, he had access to records she can’t get at anymore. The live-feed from the camera covering Shecky Keenan’s house, for example. This is precisely the time she should be watching it.

  “Detective Bilardello,” she says, “I am requesting your assistance.”

  The wolf’s smile gets uglier now. “Of course you are.” He fixes his right eye on her. She feels his half gaze moving across her body, slipping over her twisted hands, her chest, then back to her hands. “That dead prostitute,” he says. “You ID’d her down on Sixty-Third. Name was…” Uneven blink. “Sveta Lvov.”

  “Yes, sir.” She holds up two case files. “She’s half of why I’m here.”

  She’s bolstered by his remembering her—his brain is still working—but when she tries to give him the files, he won’t touch them. Just stares at her with the one working eye. “I heard about your informant. It’s a tough break, but you need to talk to the case officer.”

  “He won’t return my calls.”

  They stare at each other, then their words overlap.

  “Both blunt-object homicides,” Zera says.

  “We get one a week.”

  “Back of the head—”

  “And that’s just in Brooklyn.”

  “No murder weapon recovered.”

  “This kind of death is fairly common for a prostitute.”

  “He wasn’t a prostitute,” Zera says sharply. “He was working for me.”

  Bilardello puts out a smile that’s also a fuck-you. “You’re not the cause of everything.”

  Zera, surprised by her own emotion, composes herself. “The Paradise Club is a human-trafficking network that brings in and sells girls. Sveta Lvov was one of those girls. Emil Scott…” She hesitates, then rushes: “Both victims were connected to the Paradise Club, they were both informants, and they both died the same way.”

  “And they probably both liked french fries,” the detective says. “Did they die because of the french fries?”

  “French fries are not a criminal enterprise,” Zera says. “The Paradise Club is.”

  The detective’s smile changes shape. “Fair point. But here’s the problem.” Less contempt now. “And you already know this—I heard your hesitation.” He coughs into a tissue. “Scott and the Paradise Club. Can you prove the connection?”

  She keeps her eyes on him. Doesn’t move.

  “You’re overthinking this.” He tosses his tissue, gets another. “We all want explanations. Everyone wants a story about what causes what. We want to think things are understood and under control. Let me tell you. Things are not understood. Things are not under control.” A new cough. “Take a step back. L
ook at the cases like an outsider. A prostitute is killed. A guy with a bag of cash is killed. Both are informants. What else could you expect for them? Think about the kind of person who becomes an informant. Or an artist. Or a whore. And here’s another thing I want you to think about.”

  He turns back to his desk. Picks up a file. “This is Alan Nguyen. Breadwinner for his family. Gunned down for the eighty bucks in his pocket.” He puts down this file, picks up another. “This is Margery Omahen. Schoolteacher, killed for no fucking reason anyone can think of. And look at this. And this. And this.” He indicates a stack of files. “How much time do you think I’ve got for a couple of people who—I’ll say it—weren’t even people?”

  That evening Zera calls the precinct and, by a phone trick she figured out by accident one day, she skips to her supervisor’s voicemail without actually ringing his line. “This is Officer Montenegro,” she says. “I am reporting from the field for the duration of my tour in connection with the Human Trafficking Task Force.” In truth, her tour ended hours ago. Also long since ended: her faith in the Human Trafficking Task Force. But she keeps moving, remembering Katja. Not that Katja can be saved—it was over for her the moment she came into the Paradise House. But there’s another Katja out there, and another Sveta, too.

  And maybe another me.

  She remembers the smell in Bilardello’s office. She’ll prove him wrong.

  * * *

  Badge against her chest, gun against her hip, she interviews an MTA station agent at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway stop. She’s been retracing Emil Scott’s last movements. This was where he went dark.

  “Are there any blind spots,” she asks the station agent, “any places not covered by the security cameras?”

  The man smiles without humor. “How much time do you have?”

  There are cameras at the turnstiles and cameras pointing into and out from the station agent’s booth. There are cameras near the storage and utilities closets. There are cameras looking down each side of the platform, and more by the elevators and emergency exits.