The Double

And I realized that my invisibility was good for something. I was so quiet, so unobtrusive, I could get closer to animals than anyone else.

I started to head out into the city, slipping unnoticed through abandoned buildings, finding bats and stray cats and mice to watch. Being around those little bits of wildlife was just enough to keep me sane.

One day, exploring a derelict factory, I found I wasn’t alone. An old African-American guy, his hair gunmetal gray, was photographing the birds I was watching. I was cautious at first. I was amazed someone had even noticed me. But he was friendly and, over weeks and months, we became close. His name was Rufus and, back in the day, he’d been a war reporter. His apartment was covered in yellow, faded photographs of Iraq, Kuwait, and Sarajevo. He gave me one of his old cameras and, from the first moment I tried it, I was hooked. My invisibility meant I could get close to the animals I loved, and the camera meant I could share what I saw with the world. A few weeks in, Rufus looked at a photo I’d taken of a nest of newborn mice, cuddled up together for warmth. One had opened his eyes and peeked up at me and, reflected in those big, black orbs, you could see the New York skyline, the big bad city they were about to go out into. “You’re a natural,” Rufus told me. “You have an eye for detail.”

I’d finally found my thing.

For two years, my life was protecting my mother at home, working at the grocery store to earn money for rent, and a few precious hours each day learning from Rufus. He asked about the bruises and I knew he was mad that someone was hurting me. But I also knew Tanner would kill him if they fought, and Rufus was becoming like a father to me, so I kept quiet.

Then, when I was twenty, Tanner died, stabbed in a bar fight. I knew I should be sad, but all I felt was relief, which made me wonder if I was a terrible person. I thought my life would change, but my mom and I were still stuck in New York: we didn’t have the money to risk shutting down my mom’s store and re-opening it back in Wisconsin. So I kept working, learning, looking after my mom, hoping one day I could get somewhere green again. I dreamed of becoming a wildlife photographer.

One night when I was at Rufus’s apartment, there was a yell from outside. One of the local dealers was beating up a woman, right outside the door. When Rufus went to help, I grabbed his arm. He was almost seventy, for god’s sake!

But he turned to me, one hand on the doorknob, and said, “Someone has to do something.”

And before I could stop him, he ran outside and pulled the dealer off the woman. They rolled on the ground together, then the dealer got on top, raising his fists….

By the time the cops arrived, the dealer had run and so had the woman. And my friend and mentor was lying dead on the ground. The cops knew the dealer: everyone in the neighborhood did. But they claimed there wasn’t enough evidence to bring him in. The truth was, they’d been taking bribes from him for years.

At Rufus’s funeral, I was the only mourner. I stood there with rain mixing with my tears, the hot, bitter injustice of it filling me from the inside out until I thought I’d explode.

I wasn’t brave. I was no one.

But someone had to do something.

So I took my camera and packed a bag with food and water. And for three days straight, I followed that dealer like a ghost, hiding in alleys and on rooftops, documenting his every move. My eye for detail let me get the little things that would make a difference: the scratches on his car that proved it was his, as he pulled away from picking up a package of drugs. The tattoo on his hand, as he handed over bribe money to the cops.

I sent the photos to the head of the Vice Unit, going over the heads of the bribed cops. A few days later, the dealer was arrested. But another dealer moved into his territory. People were getting hurt. Kids were being recruited to sell on street corners. And no one else in the neighborhood could do anything.

I began to take them down, one by one, hiding in the shadows and getting the photographic evidence the police couldn’t and sending it anonymously to the Vice Unit. In six months, I helped bring down four dealers. I bought a burner phone that couldn’t be traced back to me and gave the number to the police in case they needed to ask for more pictures of someone. But when it rang, it wasn’t the police. It was a woman called Carrie Blake, and she worked for the FBI. She persuaded me to meet and, over coffee, she asked me if I’d like to come and work for them. “You have an amazing eye for detail,” she told me. “And you get shots no one else can. How would you like to bring down some really bad guys?”