She arrived in May of 2001. Four months later, on September 11, America was attacked. The world changed quickly.
Milton Frazier, one of Valencia’s men, had also been an officer in the Agency. His path there had been more standard; he’d joined after being in the Special Forces. They had never met while they were overseas. He had heard of her, though, and he read her reports.
Milton joined Valencia’s firm four years ago. He’d been sleeping with her for the last six months. She had initiated it. It was a strange affair. She was almost ten years older than him. They barely talked about what they were doing—which was fine with Milton, since he was married and had two kids.
As he pulled up to Credit Suisse, he saw Valencia standing near the door. She had her phone to her ear and her lips were moving, but her eyes tracked his approach. Right when he stopped, she ended her call and hopped in the front seat.
“Some kid had his phone stolen,” said Valencia.
“What?”
“A lawyer at CDH.”
“What kinda shit was on this phone?”
“The kind they’d rather not have floating around the toilet,” said Valencia.
Milton watched her pull the visor down and check her lipstick. She cleaned her teeth with her tongue and then looked at him. The look told him to stop staring at her. His eyes went back to the road; he checked all his mirrors and noted the plate numbers behind him.
When they arrived at Elizabeth Carlyle’s office, a security guard accompanied them in the elevator to the eighteenth floor. Elizabeth’s assistant stood there waiting; after a quick greeting, he ushered them back toward a quiet conference room. Milton walked slightly behind the group so he could sanitize his hands without being observed.
When they entered the room, Milton saw Elizabeth Carlyle—who he’d met a dozen times—leaning on a table tapping at her phone. Elizabeth hired Valencia’s firm whenever she needed a sticky situation taken care of. These jobs, by their very nature, usually fell into ethically gray areas. Standing there, Milton thought about the last thing he’d done for them. He’d been tasked with explaining the downside of testifying to a witness in a securities fraud case.
Milton had laid out exactly what refusing to testify would look like. The witness would be held in contempt of court. He might end up sitting in jail for the duration of the trial. But that was extremely unlikely, and still, wouldn’t that be less bothersome than ending up on the wrong side of a lawsuit?
Milton delivered this message in a friendly way; he smiled and spoke like a buddy offering advice. It was, strictly speaking, witness tampering. And if any of it ever came back on them Milton knew he’d have to take the fall. Elizabeth Carlyle certainly never asked for him to do anything like that. Neither did Valencia Walker. He’d acted on his own. That’s why he got paid the big bucks.
Still, with all the jobs they’d done for the law firm, Milton had never exchanged more than vague pleasantries with Elizabeth. Valencia always dealt with her. The two women didn’t email. They’d meet for lunch, and Valencia would come back with the job.
Right then, when they stepped inside the conference room, Elizabeth looked up and shook her head as though trying to impart what a mess they were walking into. There seemed to be a shared bad mood in the room. It seemed worse than normal.
Seated at the table was an exhausted-looking young man Milton assumed was the lawyer who’d lost his phone. The third person was a white man in his fifties who stood up, walked over, and offered Valencia his hand.
Milton watched Valencia smile warmly and ask about his old boss in Newark, Donnegan. Always working the crowds, thought Milton. The woman was like a damn politician.
“Michael D’Angelo,” said Valencia, motioning toward Milton. “You’ve met Milton Frazier? He works for me.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” said Milton, shaking hands.
“Is this the kid?” asked Valencia.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and nodded. “Chris Cowley,” she said, barely able to hide her distaste.
Milton walked around the table and leaned against the far wall to watch. He knew that’s where Valencia would want him. It also allowed him to keep his eyes on the door, a remnant from his years abroad.
“Okay, sweetie, let’s sit face-to-face so we can talk,” said Valencia, smiling at the young man. “Pull your chair out.” Valencia then set a chair directly in front of his and sat on it. Their knees were a few inches apart. “That’s good.”
Milton watched her stare at the young man in silence for a long moment. It was a two-step process: first she wanted to raise his blood pressure and then she wanted to see how he’d react to direct attention. The performance wasn’t just for her interview subject, though; she was telling everyone in the room—particularly Elizabeth and her investigator—that she was in charge. This was her case now.
Milton’s gaze returned to the kid. He didn’t look particularly impressive. He was definitely young: a blonde lawyer, a little baby. A little white boy. Milton watched Valencia lean in and sniff the air between them.
“Have you been drinking?” she asked.
“Last night,” said the lawyer.
Valencia took hold of his wrists. While she did this, Milton stole a quick glance at Elizabeth and the investigator. They both watched with rapt attention. Elizabeth was blinking, as if she had allergies. D’Angelo crossed his arms, apparently aware that Milton was looking at him.
Holding the kid’s wrists in each of her hands, Valencia let an uncomfortable amount of time pass. She stayed still. Later she told Milton that the lawyer’s pulse was fast—somewhere around ninety-five beats per minute. But she didn’t say anything about it then.
Finally, she let his wrists go, and leaned back. The young man was nervous, Milton could see that from where he stood. But nervousness could be expected; at the very least, the kid was going to lose his job.
Valencia asked how he’d gotten to work that morning.
“I took the A train to Fulton, then the 4 to Grand Central.” The words had a rehearsed quality. Milton marked it in his mind and filed it away.
Valencia made Chris Cowley run through the whole trip: where he boarded, where in the car he rode, where he got off.
When Chris finished, D’Angelo handed Valencia a manila folder. “This is the subscriber information, if you want that,” he said. He then filled in a few more details: the location and the time of the incident. From the notes he’d taken, he read the description of the thief.
Valencia opened the file he’d given her, looked at it, and handed it to Milton. “I’m going to ask you all to stop doing anything more from here on out,” she said. She turned to D’Angelo. “Nothing. No Find My Phone app, no calls to the target phone. No police. No nothing.”
D’Angelo dropped his head.
Valencia turned back to Elizabeth. “Liz, sweetie, I want you to go on with your day. Go to the meetings you have to attend. If you have a lunch date, go to it. We’ll keep you posted. Hopefully we’ll have it all sorted out in a few hours.”
She turned back to Chris. “All right, you’re going to come with us,” she said. “Show us exactly what happened.” She stood, offered Elizabeth a small smile.
Milton nodded his goodbye to D’Angelo and shook Elizabeth’s hand. “We’ll get it back,” he told her.
“I was right here,” Chris Cowley said, pointing at the ground. He was showing Valencia Walker and Milton Frazier where the theft had occurred. They stood in one of the tiled hallways of Grand Central Station, where a seemingly endless crowd of pedestrians walked past without paying them any attention.
“I was walking this way, and the guy just bumped me. I said, ‘sorry,’ because I thought it was my fault, and kept moving.” He pointed in the direction they’d just come from.
“Don’t point,” said Valencia. “Just talk.”
“Right here, then.”
“And after that?”
“Then I exited—sorry—I exited, noticed what happened, h
opped that turnstile, and ran back over this way. First I went over there”—he pointed toward the 7 train platform—“’cause I thought I saw him down that way. But he wasn’t there, so I ran over that way to the 4-5-6, and missed a 6 train.” He pantomimed banging on the door.
“Downtown?” asked Milton.
“Downtown.”
“Did you see the man?”
“I think I saw him on the train when it passed, but I can’t say for sure.”
Chris then led them to where he’d missed the train.
“It was right around here.” He turned and surveyed the area for a moment. A few commuters watched them with a kind of grumpy midmorning nonchalance.
Chris wondered if anyone else was watching them. He pointed toward a movie poster. “After I missed him I looked at that poster, and then I walked toward that exit.”
Feeling suddenly hungover, Cowley stared that way before he glanced back at Valencia. He couldn’t place her exact age; she appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties. She watched him with a slightly amused expression on her face. She wore eyeliner and lipstick, but no other makeup. She seemed extremely capable, and Chris couldn’t help being impressed.
He then looked at her associate, Milton, who was listening with his hands behind his back. The dude dressed well, Chris gave him that—expensive suit, perfect shoes. He was black and had a shaved head. His face, to Chris, looked skeptical—a kind of professional skepticism. Even under the circumstances, Chris couldn’t help noticing how attractive he was. The man clearly worked out.
Their eyes met for a moment, and Chris tried to psychically convey his romantic feelings without being obvious. I’m here, he said to Milton in his mind, if you’re interested.
“Call Danny Boy,” said Valencia to Milton. “Tell him to contact Arty Jacobson at Metro Authority. Tell him to pull the tape from—where are we? Downtown 4-5-6, approximately sixty-something yards north of the south wall. Tell him this gentleman here”—she pointed at Chris—“ran for the train, missed it, and you said you hit the door?”
“Yeah,” said Chris.
“Hit the door. And were you in that suit?”
“No, I was wearing a black leather jacket and jeans,” said Chris, feeling slightly embarrassed as he said it.
“Black leather jacket. Track it all the way back to when he gets off the train here in Grand Central. Tell him we need the video right this moment,” said Valencia, dropping her chin to emphasize the point. “Money is not an object. I don’t care if he’s in a meeting with the governor, we need it now.”
“Got it,” said Milton.
Right then another man in a suit approached the group. Valencia introduced him: “Chris, this is Billy Sharrock, one of our other associates.”
They shook hands. Billy Sharrock, like Milton Frazier, appeared to be in his early forties: a white version, thought Chris. He looked more dangerous; he had rough skin and his brown hair was gelled straight back. His suit, like Milton’s, was well cut, but he seemed somehow uncomfortable in it.
“We’ll find your phone,” said Valencia. She punctuated this by smiling at the group. Chris wasn’t sure if anyone knew what that smile was supposed to mean. “Billy can find anything,” she added, looking at her watch like she was pointing out his tardiness.
Suddenly bashful, Billy stood there gazing at his feet.
* * *
A Chinese man named Ren Xiong stole the phone. Forty-four years old, he’d been in America for less than eighteen months. Just as Chris Cowley reported, he had jumped on a downtown-bound 6 train and ridden six stops from Grand Central to Bleecker Street. From there he exited on foot and headed west toward Washington Square Park. He’d already practiced this route, and was familiar with it, but today, after the theft, everything seemed to stand out with more clarity. He felt intoxicated, as if he were on amphetamines.
There was a camera on the corner of Broadway and Bleecker above the doorway of a shop. Xiong turned his head as he passed, but he didn’t fully avoid it. Up to a point, he was supposed to be seen; then he would vanish.
As he walked, the incident played through his mind. It had gone well. Nobody had seen him. He could still feel the inside of the pocket against the back of his hand. He could feel where their shoulders had touched, a kind of physical memory of the event.
He carried the stolen phone, powered off, in his front pants pocket, tapping it every few steps to make sure it was there. A white woman walked by, and he couldn’t help glancing at her. It was a beautiful day, the weather was still cool, but there was a hint of warmth in the air. Spring was coming. It would be his second American spring.
At that early hour, the park wasn’t crowded. Students walked to class with their eyes on their phones. A few homeless people slumped on benches. A maintenance man fussed with a trash can. Pigeons looked for scraps of food.
Xiong made his way to the west side of the park, where the first few games of chess had already started. He approached a table and watched a Nigerian man he knew—Malik Abdul Onweno—make quick work of an older Russian. Xiong watched Malik’s rook chase the Russian’s king. The Russian retreated hastily. After each move, the men slapped at a timer. Malik’s queen jumped to the back rank, and Xiong—unlike the Russian—could see the match would be finished in two moves.
“That’s it. Lights out. Checkmate,” said the Nigerian, standing up triumphantly. He noticed Xiong for the first time.
“Wassup with it, man?” he said, stepping toward him and laying a hand on his back. Xiong had told him to be here at this hour, and he was. He studied the man’s face and read a hint of nervousness.
The Nigerian turned to a friend of his, raised his hand to his mouth like he was whispering, and called out, “God Save, take my spot.” The younger man, God Save, jumped up and took his spot at the table.
“Wassup with you?” asked Malik. He escorted Xiong away from the chess players, one hand on his arm like a jail guard.
“I have the phone I spoke about.”
Malik guided him to a park bench where they sat. Xiong handed him the phone. The Nigerian made a show of rubbing his thumb across some scratches on the back and then made another show of picking at a scratch on the screen with his thumbnail. “It works?”
“Yes,” said Xiong.
Malik, as though he was breaking bad news, said, “I can give you sixty for this.”
Xiong frowned and nodded. He didn’t care about the money. His eyes shifted to the park in front of him, and he looked for cameras. Now was the time to start avoiding them. How long did he have until someone came looking for him?
The thought caused a small wave of apprehension to pass over him. He ignored it by staring at the ground. His mind drifted to a memory of being in the Hai River Park in Tianjin. The image of his father passing out ear-hole fried cake came to him for a moment. It vanished when Malik tapped his arm and held out three twenty-dollar bills between his index and middle finger. Xiong took the money, folded it, and put it in his coat pocket. For Malik’s benefit, he formed his mouth into a smile, and then leaned close to his ear so he could whisper: “You don’t want to hold this one. Tell your guy the same.”
Malik leaned forward and whistled to another young man. When the young man rode up on a bike, he held the phone out like a ticket. “Take this to the Jew,” he said. He then pulled a roll of Scotch Tape from his pocket, ripped off an inch, and put it on the back of the phone. He held it up so the young man could see the tape. “This one, don’t hold on to it,” he said. “Don’t sit with it, man. I’m not playing. Don’t eat your lunch—you got to move this one. Tell him the same.”
Youssouf Wolde, the young man who took the phone, was an eighteen-year-old Somali. After Malik handed him the phone and gave him his instructions, he put it in his backpack with the others. He glanced at the man sitting with Malik and wondered how his friend knew so many people. Then he put his earphones back on, fussed with his own phone, and pressed play. He was listening to Bobby Shmurda.
Youssouf rode his bike up Sixth Avenue all the way to West Forty-Seventh Street. When he got there, he turned against traffic and pedaled to the middle of the block. Before he’d finished locking his bike to a light pole, two large Israeli men approached him. One wore a tracksuit and looked like a Tel Aviv gangster; the other wore jeans and a sweater and a Bluetooth earpiece. Youssouf recognized their faces but didn’t know their names.
“Brother, you looking to sell?” said the man in the tracksuit.
“Nah, I’m good,” said Youssouf.
“Where’s Omar?” asked the other man.
Youssouf wasn’t sure which Omar he was referring to, so he just shrugged his shoulders and told him he didn’t know.
Centered between all the jewelry shops was an electronics store called Asia Model, filled with tall stacks of merchandise. Discordant beeps and bells rang out from the toy section. Youssouf made his way toward the back of the shop, stepping around an old man, who was squatting to see something at the bottom of a shelf.
A clerk at the counter, a man Youssouf was friendly with, saw him and called out, “Opa, where’s my lunch?” Youssouf didn’t know what he was talking about, either, so he just laughed him off and kept moving.
Before reaching the back of the store, Youssouf went through a doorway on his right that led to a quiet hallway. He passed through another doorway and then skipped up the stairs, two at a time, until he reached the third floor. As he walked, in his mind he repeated the rap lyrics he’d just been listening to: Making all this loot ’til it stacks. Boy call me real ’cause I’m racks.
At the end of the hall, he came to a door with a piece of paper taped to it that read American iPhone Repair. He walked in. True to the name, inside he found four men seated at their desks repairing iPhones. Three of the men glanced up at him, and one, Ohad, an Israeli, rose to his feet.
Clean Hands Page 2