The Con Man's Daughter (29 page)

Fredek Dolgev sat in his booth, oblivious. Head down, fist wrapped around a fork, he shoveled food into his mouth. Eddie stayed on the opposite side. His plan was not to approach him here, but to follow him home. He didn't think he'd lead him to his daughter, but he might lead him to Zina. Eddie thought he'd tail Freddie until he saw him reaching for his keys, about to enter a building. Then he'd snatch this Russian off the street, as he had another Russian, Sergei. Among the trees of Marine Park, Freddie Dolgev would tell him where to find Kate.

Eddie checked faces hidden behind partitions and fake plants, looking for detectives, off-duty cops, old girlfriends, anyone who could complicate the scenario. Mirrored walls were the tailman's friend. He checked all sides of the restaurant perimeter, looking to see if any of Borodenko's hired guns lurked nearby. Not that the Russians needed to worry about Freddie. He had enough IQ to understand that American cops weren't going to yank out his fingernails. He wouldn't utter a word to them. But Freddie's loyalty didn't matter. If he weren't Borodenko's cousin, he'd be dead already.

After he was satisfied, Eddie returned to Kate's Camry in the parking lot and tried to get comfortable. He didn't really like the Camry. It had a tight, responsive quickness to it, but it seemed hard-riding and tiring to drive. And there was something miniature about it he didn't like. The cloth seat covers, made of a suedelike material, acted like Velcro, preventing any sliding across the bucket seats. The rough cloth of the headrest felt like sandpaper against the skin abrasions from the lesbian grenade. Eddie preferred bench seats. He preferred the cushy Olds, every bit as quick, and yet as comfortable as your living room sofa. The Camry's reclining seats were a plus, however. He angled the seat back so he could watch the diner's front steps and back kitchen door at the same time. He stayed in the passenger seat, as if waiting for the driver.

Eddie called the North End Tavern and asked for Kevin. B. J. Harrington told him he was missing out on the roast chicken, which was as grand as it was every Monday. Then he told him that Kevin was in the back, and he asked if Eddie wanted to speak to his lovely sister-in-law instead. Eddie was about to relent, when he noticed a black Lincoln Town Car pull into the parking lot and make a quick U-turn. The U-turn piqued his interest. The driver pulled the Lincoln right up to the door of the diner and waited at the front steps with the engine running, forcing other cars to go around him. Eddie clicked the phone off.

The Lincoln parked at the foot of the diner steps, facing the street, motor running, poised for the getaway. This wasn't about a cheeseburger takeout. It reeked of muscle. Either a stickup or vig collection. The passenger door swung open and a guy wearing a black leather car coat got out. About five ten, wide-bodied, he was a refrigerator of a man. Eddie sat up straight as the man limped around the front of the Lincoln. He knew that head. A big gangster dome with sparse, close-cropped stubble, sitting neckless on a stocky body. Eddie knew exactly who it was. Somehow Sergei Zhukov was not in a car trunk on his way to Russia, but entering the El Greco diner. Sergei grabbed the rail and pulled himself up the four steps and into the diner.

By the time Eddie ran up the diner steps, Sergei had managed to evaporate. Eddie stood near the front table, trying to spot the black leather car coat. The chat level in the restaurant had decreased several notches as people studied their salads. It was as if a thick blanket had muffled the restaurant noise, smothering all the tables as it rolled from front to back. He could see Dolgev at his window booth, squeezing a white mug in his big hands, the world forever tuned out.

Afraid to blink, Eddie scanned all sides. Still no Sergei. A sharp intake of breath came from the birthday girl as the cake arrived from the kitchen, its candles burning. The waitress and the mom and dad began to sing as Sergei suddenly appeared in the aisle. He came straight up behind Dolgev and put the gun against his ear. The blast from the first shot sucked the air out of the room.

"Sergei," Eddie screamed as he pulled his old service revolver and circled around to the left, but there was no way to get an angle. It was a reflex action, a mistake on Eddie's part; he had no way to keep a single breathing soul out of the line of fire. Sergei saw him coming and knew he had the advantage. They pivoted around each other, guns drawn, face-to-face. People dived to the floor, holding their heads. Sergei backed toward the door, smiling, moving slowly, his halting gait that of a man with fewer toes. Eddie edged toward him.

Then, for no reason Eddie understood, Sergei stopped by the birthday girl, reached down, and grabbed the mother by the hair. He yanked her to her feet.

"Sergei," Eddie said. "She has nothing to do with this."

"
Mussor
," Sergei said. Garbage, a Russian punk's word for cop. "She dies for you."

"Go, just go," Eddie said. "No one will follow you."

Eddie put his gun away and waved his empty hands. Sergei didn't release the woman. He kept her in front of him as he hobbled backward out the door.

"Come on," Eddie yelled. "Let her go. I'm not following you!"

The Lincoln turned left on Emmons and accelerated out of sight. Eddie didn't get a good look at the driver. On the way out, he took charge of the restaurant, ordering the hostess to call 911 and say shots had been fired, people injured. He told her to ask for two ambulances. Dolgev was dead; Eddie didn't bother with him. The mother of the birthday girl lay on the blacktop parking lot, two bullets in her face. A total of three shots had been fired, the police said later, as if it were important to count such things.

When the first radio car arrived, Eddie left the mother to the uniformed cops. He shoved his way back through the crowd leaving the diner. The birthday girl sat in the arms of a waitress. Alone in his booth, Fredek Dolgev slumped facedown on the table, still holding tightly to his coffee cup. Blood and bits of brain and bone stuck to the window that looked out onto the sailboats on Sheepshead Bay. Eddie reached around the body and unhooked the keys from Freddie's belt.

It was after eleven when Eddie looked into Grace's bedroom. She'd kicked off the covers and now lay at an angle, facing the foot of the bed. Like Kate as a child, Grace always seemed red-faced and overheated. She ran around barefoot, dressed in only shorts and a T-shirt on days when it was definitely not warm enough to do so.

Kate never told her to put more clothes on. She said she was raising her to make her own decisions; that when she got cold, she'd put something on. Eileen wouldn't have approved of this liberal parenting, but Eddie liked the results. Grace made a puffing noise and laughed in her sleep, having a good dream. He prayed to God to always keep her dreams happy, and asked Him to do whatever He could for the dreams of the birthday girl.

"Matty Boland called," Babsie said. "He wants you to call him."

Babsie sat at the kitchen table, wearing a flannel robe and pink furry slippers. On the table was an empty wooden chessboard angled against the Yonkers phone book. Loose scraps of a torn photograph were pinned to the board like the start of a jigsaw puzzle.

"Bad scene?" she said.

"Thanks to me. I jump in… people die because of it."

"You didn't kill anybody, Eddie. There's a bastard out there who did, but you didn't kill anybody."

"Maybe a hundred years from now, I'll think that, too. Right now, the lesson is: Everyone who comes near me dies."

"I thought this guy Sergei was in the wind."

Eddie told her the truth about what had happened to Sergei. He needed to start telling someone the truth or suffocate in a maze of half-truths and omissions. He realized he was putting her in a tough spot, but he had to open up to this woman. He told her how he blew off Sergei's toes and stuck him in the trunk of a Mercedes bound for Russia. All the Parrot had to do was drive the car a couple hundred yards down a dock and whisper bon voyage. Gypsies should be good at that, he figured.

"Remind me not to piss you off," Babsie said.

"You would have done the same thing if you'd heard the way he talked about Kate."

"He said he saw Kate?"

"He said it, but it was bullshit."

"Well, at least you didn't kill him," she said. "You don't have that to worry about."

The only remorse Eddie felt was that he'd failed to kill the Russian. It made him sick that he'd gotten too cute with it. Fining and deporting him was playing the same glib, facile game that had gotten him in trouble as a cop. The fact that he'd shot Sergei in the foot rather than the head wound up destroying the lives of a family.

"I guess your Gypsy friend really did sell you out," she said.

"Looks that way."

It surprised him that the Parrot had sold him out. Not because he expected the Gypsy's loyalty. If the price was right, he'd understand it. Expect it. But this was going to be a hard payoff to collect. Borodenko would sooner kill him than pay a Gypsy. Maybe Madame Caranina talked him into it. Caranina liked money. Men always make their best and worst decisions on the advice of women.

On the floor next to Babsie was a plastic trash can filled with scraps of paper.

"What is that stuff?" Eddie asked.

"In the trash can? Those're the bits of photograph I found in that black garbage bag outside West Nineteenth Street."

"Is that all one picture?"

"I don't know; I just started. Bigger than I first thought. Looks like a nine-by-twelve, something like that. So far, I got a couple of legs done. But there're at least two people. Guy in white shorts, then a woman's legs. Long legs."

"Good luck," he said.

"Listen, Eddie, if you want to talk about what happened today… I'm comfortable sitting here in my fuzzy slippers."

Eddie had already told her about shooting Sergei and she hadn't flinched. He wondered what else he could release from his nightmare vault. Oddly, what he remembered most about the El Greco diner was the smell of the cologne from the father of the birthday girl. After the Lincoln took off, he pushed Eddie out of the way and lay down on his wife, as if the mere pressing of his body against hers could stop the life from leaking out of her. Eddie understood this. He loved her, and he was desperate. She was still breathing at that time. Her eyes were open but gazing blankly. Eddie could see one exit wound behind her ear. It was then he noticed the strong cologne, that overpowering chemical smell that seemed common to so many men who, because of their jobs or personalities, had a need to impress. His old partner had worn cologne like that. Every once in a while when Eddie caught a whiff of overripe cologne, he'd turn around and look for Paulie the Priest.

Eddie said, "This guy shoots an innocent woman in the face for no reason. He watches her drop to the ground. Then he puts his gun away, buttons his coat, and gets in the car. In front of a hundred witnesses."

"People are evil, Eddie. One thing about being a cop is that we don't have any ambiguous feelings about that fact."

"I was surprised he didn't grab the little girl. But she was probably too small for him to hide behind. I kept thinking about Kate, how these guys have no regard for human life."

"That's why we have to put an end to it. We're going to get Kate back and stop these bastards."

Eddie couldn't believe he'd come to care so deeply for Babsie in such a short time. Eileen had always said that Eddie's parents had taught him how to fight but not how to love. If that were true, why did this seem such an easy fit?

"Now, I've got some bad news for you," Babsie said. "Scott filed a petition for custody with Westchester County Family Court. He's going to ask for temporary custody of Grace, to remove her from a possibly dangerous situation."

"What danger? She's the most protected kid in the country."

"A lot about you in the petition, Eddie. Not good stuff."

"How much time do I have?"

"I don't know. I heard this from my brother's wife, who works at Con Ed with Scott's sister. You better get your ass in gear on this."

"I'm calling B.J.'s friend tomorrow. We'll fight it, slow the process up. By the time it goes to court, Kate will be back."

"Yeah," she said.

"She
will
be back, Babsie."

"I'm agreeing with you. We'll find her."

"If she was dead, they wouldn't have killed Freddie. The only thing Freddie could have told us is where she is."

Babsie nodded. Eddie knew she had the decency not to point out the flaw in his logic: that Freddie's knowledge of Kate's kidnapping, or where she was now, didn't mean she was alive.

"Now we have to find Zina," Babsie said.

This was what cops did every day. It was what most people only learned in the midst of the worst moments of their lives. You simply grasp at the next straw. Zina was the next straw. She would surely know something about Kate. This time, the magic door would open. Zina would show him the way.

"Why did Matty Boland call?" Eddie said.

"He wants Freddie Dolgev's keys," she replied.

Chapter 33

Monday

11:30 P.M.

Eddie tried to call Matty Boland at home, then on his cell phone. Boland answered, but static cut out most of what he said, except something about a fucking tunnel. Eddie stayed on the line until he cleared whatever tunnel he was in. First thing Boland brought up was Dolgev's keys.

"What keys?" Eddie said.

He played that game until Boland stopped playing his game and admitted the reason he needed them. The FBI task force had obtained a warrant for installing an electronic eavesdropping device in a garish nightclub on the edge of Brighton Beach, a place called Mazurka. A new informant had revealed that Yuri Borodenko held high-level meetings to discuss his criminal enterprise in an office in the rear of the Mazurka nightclub.

"If I had such a set of keys…" Eddie said.

"Let's not string this out. What do you want?"

Although telephone wiretaps could be set up from outside, a bug was essentially an open microphone, and thus the installer somehow had to get inside the place.