Neptune Avenue (26 page)

He ran along the boardwalk, shoes thumping on the wood, watching to see which way the guy would go. To his right the Wonder Wheel, Astroland tower, and Parachute Jump rose up like giant children’s toys. The shooter ran toward the water’s edge, where the sand was hard-packed. Jack found a stairway down to the beach and hightailed it after him. The Russian veered toward the east. Lines of low clouds ranged above him to the horizon. Out across the water, on a spit of land called Breezy Point, a row of beach houses glowed bone white in the late afternoon sun.

A patrol car zoomed out onto the beach about a hundred yards ahead. The suspect spun around, almost falling in his haste, and ran west. A group of seagulls stood on the sand, all facing into the wind—as he plowed through them, they sprayed up into the air. The man limped on, a lone figure silhouetted against the blue-gray water, making his way toward the sun. And two more uniforms. By this time, Jack thought, he must be cursing his instinct to take off toward the ocean; it left nowhere to hide. Except, of course, the water itself. In one last hopeless move he floundered out into the waves.

Zhenya’s lover splashed around—he was a terrible swimmer. Jack jogged up to the uniforms at the edge of the beach, where they were cracking wise and making bets on how long the guy could keep his head up. Jack looked on; some fierce, angry part of him was tempted to let the man drown.

He spit on the sand. There was no way he could let a murder suspect just sink beneath the waves. He kicked off his shoes, waded out into the chilly water, and hauled the punk’s sodden ass back to shore.

W
HILE ALEC SHVIDKOY SAT
shivering in the interview room at the Sixty-first Precinct house with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, a thoughtful group stood watching him through a two-way mirror next door. Jack’s bosses had traveled from their Coney Island headquarters for this, and they were joined by Linda Vargas and Scott DeHaven, the local detective assigned to the Lelo case. And Jack, who had borrowed a towel and some dry gym clothes from another local detective.

At first, their suspect had refused to talk—he was playing the tough guy, the junior gangster—but a driver’s license in his soggy backpack had given away his name. Linda Vargas looked it over, then handed it to Jack and pointed to the category. It was a Class M license. For
motorcycles
.

Shvidkoy, it turned out, was only twenty-eight. Evidently, Jack thought with a shiver of repugnance, Zhenya Lelo liked lovers of different ages.

He wondered if Shvidkoy knew he was being watched, but their suspect seemed oblivious; every few seconds, he tilted his head and smacked it with his hand, trying to drain it of ocean water. Or he lifted his foot to examine the bandage there, where the beach glass had cut him. Jack hated to admit it, but the guy was strikingly handsome, with a lean, chiseled face.

“Look at that punk,” muttered Sergeant Tanney. “I think we should drop heavy on him, let him know we can nail him for the McDonald’s shooting.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “If we push too hard he might lawyer up, and then we’ll have to run the risk of a bad I.D.” Lineups were notoriously unreliable. If Tyrese Vincent and the other McDonald’s witnesses failed to identify him, the detectives would be screwed. Better to try for a confession first.

“Let Vargas do her thing,” Lieutenant Cardulli said calmly. “We’re not in any rush.”

Jack and his colleague went into the interview room and sat down; they were joined by a Russian interpreter from the Six-oh, a brisk white-haired woman with the anonymous professionalism of a court stenographer. Jack leaned back in his chair; he had to struggle to keep his distaste for Zhenya’s lover from showing.

“Where are you from?” Vargas asked.

The interpreter translated.

Shvidkoy just crossed his arms.

Vargas shrugged. “Okay, Alec. You can remain silent and get a lawyer in here, and then we’ll have to officially charge you, and then you can take your chances with the courts. Or you can cooperate a bit. This way, we’re just having a little informal talk.”

Shvidkoy considered his options. “I’m from Ukraine,” he finally said, in Russian, grudgingly.

The translator did her thing.

Vargas nodded. “Okay. That’s good. You work with us, we’ll make this easier for you. Now tell me, why did you run this afternoon?”

Through his translator, Shvidkoy replied, “I thought you had mistaken me for someone else. Some bad person.”

Jack rolled his eyes.

“
Right
,” Vargas said. “Now tell me how you met Eugenia Lelo.”

The man tried to play it cool, but instinctively he drew his arms in close to his sides. “I do not know this name.”

“You never met her?”

“I don’t know anything about this.”

“You’re sure?”

Shvidkoy nodded, wary.

Jack pictured him kissing Zhenya in front of the hotel, holding her close, and he wanted to ask for five minutes alone with the suspect in the little interview room. Someone would have to clean the place up with a mop after. …

Vargas changed gears. “How well do you know Andrei Goguniv?”

Shvidkoy looked completely blank. “I never heard this name.”

The answer seemed convincing, but by this point Jack was not too big on trusting his own intuition.

“Let me ask you this,” Linda Vargas continued. “Were you in Coney Island in August of 2001?”

Shvidkoy shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

Vargas eyed him coolly. She asked a number of other questions, but the young man had little of significance to say.

Despite his anger and distaste, Jack regarded their captive thoughtfully. He knew that they were going to have to take this slow. Interrogations were like fly-fishing: you had to play your suspect carefully. First, you let him run out some line. Every now and then you gave a gentle tug, sank the hook a little deeper.

Yank too hard?
Snap.

AFTER HALF AN HOUR
, Vargas had pulled out every trick she knew, but their suspect remained uncommunicative. The detectives regrouped outside the interview room.

“Let me have a go,” said Scott DeHaven. “Maybe I can play the pal.”

The detective was compact and well muscled. Young, but with rough, chapped-looking skin; he looked as if he might spend a lot of time in sports bars.

Cardulli thought it over, then shrugged.

DeHaven and the interpreter went into the interview room. “How ya doin?” he said. He extended his hand. “My name’s Scott. The other detective’s gonna be right back. I’m just here to fill in for a minute.” He took out a toothpick, set it in the corner of his mouth, and sat back as if he had all the time in the world.

Shvidkoy didn’t know what to make of this new presence.

DeHaven gave his outfit the once-over. “You like rap music? Hip-hop?”

Shvidkoy made a sour face.

“No?” DeHaven rested an arm on the table’s edge and leaned forward. “Whaddaya like? Techno? Rock?”

“Techno,” the suspect said, relaxing just a tad. No one could arrest him for his taste in music.

“You like Basement Jaxx? How about DJ Keoki?”

Shvidkoy looked shocked. “How do you know these names?”

DeHaven shrugged. “I like to go out after work. You know, places in Manhattan: the Roxy, the Sound Factory … You ever been there?”

Shvidkoy nodded. “I’m going to be a DJ.”

“Is that right? Well, good luck to you.” DeHaven leaned back again.

In the dark room next door, Jack loosened his collar. He was accustomed to long interrogations, but the small talk was suffocating him. He wanted to reach through the two-way mirror with both hands and force Shvidkoy to finally tell the fucking truth.

Scott DeHaven looked considerably more patient. “You been cooperating with the detective that was in here?”

Shvidkoy crossed his arms.

“You know what? I don’t know if you know about cops over here in the United States, but things’ll go better if you just tell the truth. I mean, it sounds like they already have a lot of information about you. They know you’ve been hanging around this woman Eugenia Lelo. And they know you were involved in that shooting at the McDonald’s.”

At this first mention of that crime, the young man looked stunned, but he didn’t respond.

DeHaven leaned closer, in a friendly way. “If you want, I can help you, make sure they take it easy on you. …”

Shvidkoy scowled, but he seemed far less cocky. “I have nothing else to say,” he told the interpreter.

DeHaven tried to resume the friendly music talk, but at the mention of the McDonald’s shooting, the suspect had totally withdrawn, like a turtle into his shell.

Jack, watching, said, “I think we oughta give him some time to worry how much we’ve really got on him.”

Tanney nodded and stepped out to retrieve Scott DeHaven.

“Good job,” Cardulli told the young detective when he rejoined the group.

Tanney nodded, impressed. “You’re really into this new music, huh?”

DeHaven scoffed. “I did some undercover in a tag-team thing with Narcotics—somebody out here was running Ecstasy into a club in Chelsea. Personally, I think this techno shit is about as exciting as a StairMaster.”

THE DETECTIVES WATCHED SHVIDKOY
fidget in his chair. They decided to keep him waiting, let him get good and nervous.

“You guys wanna order in some dinner?” Scott DeHaven said. “How about Chinese food?”

Tanney shook his head. “I had Chinese for lunch.”

“How about Indian?”

Lieutenant Cardulli shook his head. “I don’t like spicy food.”

“You can get Indian that’s not spicy. There’s this creamy sauce called korma. …”

Jack couldn’t focus on the conversation. He remembered what he had told Kyle Driscoll about not taking the job personally. That wasn’t strictly true, of course: any detective worth his or her salt had cases—a child murder or a particularly brutal attack—that became an obsession. For the other detectives in the room, though, this wasn’t one of them. Some Russian guy had gotten popped on Neptune Avenue; catching his killer would improve the yearly crime stats. That was about it.

But the case was twisting Jack’s guts. He kept trying to think a step ahead. If Shvidkoy finally talked, the next move would be to arrest Eugenia Lelo. It was only a matter of time … and then what?

“I been eating a lot of Indian,” Scott DeHaven continued. “There’s this great cheap place on Church Street where all the cabbies go.” He explained to his colleagues: “I was on assignment near Ground Zero for a couple of weeks.”

So much for banal conversation. For the next few minutes everybody started trading 9/11 where-were-you-when-you-first-heard-about-the-attack? Stories. Even two years later, New Yorkers still felt a compulsion to position themselves in exact relation to the event. Jack didn’t join in; on 9/11 he had been lying in a hospital bed next to a living, breathing Daniel Lelo.

Lieutenant Cardulli glanced at his watch. “We’ve given this creep enough time to consider his sins. Linda, you wanna talk to him again? Let’s see what happens if you offer him the Out.”

The Out was an opportunity to confess while claiming some sort of special justification for the crime.
It was self-defense. I was just obeying orders. It wasn’t my idea. …
Many perps welcomed it.

Vargas went back into the interview room. “All right, Alec. Let’s talk about that night over on Neptune Avenue. You know, when Daniel Lelo got shot.”

Shvidkoy listened wide-eyed to the translation.

“So tell me,” Vargas continued, “was Eugenia Lelo there? Did she tell you what to do?”

Their suspect shrank down into his chair.

“If this was her idea,” Vargas continued, “there’s no reason why you should have to take the blame. If you were just doing what she told you …”

Shvidkoy’s gaze darted to the interpreter, to the door, down at the floor. Anywhere but Vargas.

“Come on, Alec. You can spare yourself a lot of trouble here.”

Shvidkoy muttered something, but the interpreter looked reluctant to pass it on.

“What’d he say?” Vargas asked.

The interpreter shrugged. “Something not very nice about your mother.”

Vargas leaned in. “We want to help you, Alec. If you lie, you’ll end up in prison. And you know what? You might have heard that American prisons are soft, but it’s not true. There are a lot of really bad people in there. And they don’t like foreigners.”

Watching from the other side of the mirror, Jack frowned: his colleague might be pressing too hard.

Sure enough, Shvidkoy’s next words were “I want a lawyer.”

And that was it.

“Well, gang,” Cardulli said when they all got together next door, “that was a good effort, but it looks like we’re gonna have to take our chances with some lineups.”

“Don’t worry,” Scott DeHaven said to Linda Vargas. “We’re gonna nail this bastard. By the time he gets out of prison, techno’s gonna sound as old as doo-wop.”

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING,
Alec Shvidkoy had his lawyer. He had also been charged with attempted homicide. Now he stood in front of some very bright lights along with four other young men.

Behind another two-way mirror, Jack and his colleagues stood in the dark with Shawnique Emory, a young McDonald’s employee who had been busing tables outside on the afternoon of the shooting. She was a thin girl with lustrous ebony skin, a solemn face, and—luckily—perfect vision.

“I want you to take your time,” said the A.D.A. who’d been called in to run the lineup. “Don’t point to anyone unless you’re absolutely sure.”

Shawnique nodded gravely, the light from the window glinting on her gold hoop earrings.

Jack stood in the corner, chewing his lip. The criminal justice system often came down to this: the quite fallible perception of one inexpert human being.

The girl clutched her purse to her chest. “Can I see them step forward again?”

“Sure,” the A.D.A. said. He got on the intercom.

Jack frowned as each young white male in the lineup stepped toward the mirror.

“That’s him,” the girl said. She pointed a finger in the dim light. “Number three. The one with the red and black shirt.”