The Con Man's Daughter (6 page)

"Matty, listen to me. Will that jam be worse than the one my daughter is in now?"

"All I'm saying is that if you push a little, they might give you immunity, too."

"Call them now, Matty. Tell them I'll be their dancing rodent. No bag over my head, no disguised voice. I'll testify against Lukin, the whole operation. I'll appear on
Oprah
if they want me to. Just get my daughter back."

Eddie's living room phone rang and he bolted from the kitchen. He let it ring three times, just like they told him to do, then he picked it up as the nervous cop pirouetted around the couch. Grace stared up at him. Eddie put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke directly to Grace. "It's Edie Porach from the hospital, honey," he said. Grace went back into Lucy Ricardo's world as Eddie thanked Kate's best friend. It was at least the tenth call for Kate that day. When he returned to the kitchen, Matty Boland was putting his cell phone into his pocket.

"We're on for tomorrow," he said.

"I'll get my brother to man the phones here."

"I know you don't care right now," Boland said, "but I hope you don't wind up getting screwed here."

"You hate the feds so much, why do you work for them?"

"Because our job changed, Eddie. More than you can imagine. I've got my twenty in. Something good pops up in the private sector, my papers are in immediately."

Grace stopped suddenly in the doorway; she'd forgotten Boland was there. Eddie had forgotten how Boland transformed around women. Six to sixty, the Boland charm kicked in. Pure reflex. His voice changed, suddenly deeper and softer. That smile and all his attention focused on Grace, as if he were trying to hypnotize her.

Eddie remembered Boland once saying that if he ever decided to pray, he'd pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary, because, as a woman, she'd see things his way. Grace stood there with a wacky smile on her face as he told her she was beautiful enough to be a princess. It was hard to tell who enjoyed the exchange more. Eddie chased Grace back to the living room.

"Think about what I said about immunity," Boland said. "The timing will never be better for you. They need you right now, especially after what happened today."

"What happened today?"

"Somebody firebombed Borodenko's Rolls-Royce. Our intelligence says he thinks it was Lukin's people retaliating for recent hits on some of his people."

Eddie wondered why Boland had held this bit of information to the end. Had he become more clever over the years? Some guys did that. Twenty years later, they became real cops.

"Any witnesses?" Eddie asked.

"One old lady. She says it was a big white guy wear; ing a Yankees hat. Big black car. Backed down the street like he was Dale Earnhardt in reverse."

People often mistook Eddie's dark blue Olds for black. He'd never thought before that it was a fortunate shade. Eddie went to refill Boland's glass, but the detective stopped him.

Boland lowered his voice conspiratorially. "You didn't hear this from me," he said, "but the Crime Scene Unit found traces of burned hair and human skin inside the Rolls-Royce."

Eddie unconsciously lifted Boland's glass to his lips. He could smell the gin. He'd always loved the smell of gin.

"Human skin?" Eddie said. "Somebody was inside the Rolls?"

"According to CSU."

"Whose skin?"

"Good question. Borodenko's wife-what a gorgeous broad, by the way-says she knows nothing about anybody getting burned. So we got a Russian mystery on our hands."

"Where did they find the skin?"

"Front seat. I should have been more clear about that. You looked worried all of a sudden. You were thinking the trunk, something like that, right? It wasn't Kate, Eddie. All indications are it was a male."

The sound of Grace's laughter came from the living room. Eddie wondered when he'd lost the ability to laugh that pure, uninhibited laugh of a child. He didn't know why he couldn't laugh anymore. Any one of the stupid things he'd done today would be plenty to keep him howling long into the night. He told Matty Boland he'd meet him early the next morning; right now, he had an angel foot cake to bake.

Chapter 7

Tuesday, April 7

4:45 A.M.

The phone didn't ring again for the rest of the night. Eddie lay in bed fully dressed, staring at the light shining under the door. Grace, all elbows and knees, slept fitfully next to him. He could hear the cops tiptoeing on the squeaky wooden floors, the toilet flushing, water running, cars coming and going in the driveway, and several times the voice of Babsie Panko. They tried to be quiet, but when, you've lived in a house as long as Eddie had, you could tell when its heartbeat became irregular. Not that anyone was keeping him awake. A little before 5:00 a.m., he called Kevin and asked if he and Martha could come over.

Two hours later, in the low-angled sunlight of the morning, Anatoly Lukin and his bodyguards emerged from a newly renovated Art Deco apartment building in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. Watching from a block away, Detective Matty Boland picked up his radio and relayed a brief description to the other members of the team. Lukin wore only a baggy wool suit and the sable hat. Cold weather didn't bother the old man. He'd spent the first forty-two years of his life in the Ukraine, where an average day in spring inflicts more misery than the coldest New York City winter.

"The big shot," Boland said. "Looks like he doesn't have two rubles to rub together."

"
Shkafy
," said Eddie Dunne, "is the Russian word for big shot."

Boland mouthed the word quietly as he watched from behind the steering wheel of the black Lincoln Town Car he'd borrowed from the federal motor pool. He'd parked to the east of Lukin's building, knowing the glare of the morning sun would camouflage their presence. Even if Lukin's bodyguards spotted the car, its occupants could not be seen. The windows were coated with the darkest tint available.

"The guy in the camel-hair coat is Lukin's nephew, Pavel," Eddie said, nodding at the three men walking. "He runs what's left of the operation, hires the bodyguards, gets the old man from place to place."

"You'd think he'd drive him, or grab a cab."

"He's never been in a cab."

Although the old man will make an exception Thursday. His first and last cab ride, straight to JFK. The hell with the rest of them, Eddie thought; it will be a pleasure to see them in a cell. The Russian trio moved slowly toward Brighton Beach Avenue. Lukin's breath fogged in the damp morning air as he shuffled past cars coated with a thin coat of frost-the price of living next to the Atlantic Ocean in April.

"What's Lukin's purpose here?" Boland said. "Does he actually think that by dressing this way and taking the subway we'll think he's on the balls of his ass?"

"He knows he isn't fooling anyone, Matty. He's just too smart to flaunt money like John Gotti, with his limos and handmade suits. Gotti rubbed it in our faces, and we made a point of getting him."

Eddie gave Boland a rundown on both bodyguards. Pavel ran insurance scams for his uncle. The other goon was strictly a bodyguard. Whatever moonlighting he did involved the breaking of bones. Eddie went back to reading the list of known Borodenko locations. As promised, Boland delivered an FBI list of eighty-seven addresses known to be connected with the Borodenko operation: homes, apartments, garages, warehouses, bars, stores, junkyards, et cetera. The list would lend some organization to Eddie's search.

"Why do they have this list numbered?" Eddie asked.

"Not numbered, prioritized. The computer spits it out like that. It lists locations by the number of observations of Borodenko. The more observations, the higher the priority."

"His home is listed first," Eddie said. "Does anyone think they'd hide her there?"

"Now you see what I'm up against."

The mass door kicking Matty had promised was not-going to happen. Not without warrants, and the U.S. attorney said he needed more than the hunches of the victim's father. But a dozen teams from the Russian task force had begun surveillance of known Borodenko locations. Teams had four to seven spots each, depending on proximity. Their instructions were to shuttle between addresses and watch each location for activity consistent with a kidnapping situation. Whatever the hell that meant. Boland apologized, saying he had been led to believe they intended to be more aggressive.

"Let me ask you this," Boland said, adjusting the volume on the police radio. "Lukin ever tap you for bodyguard duty?"

"Occasionally. I was mostly just a courier. I picked up and dropped off packages."

"And you have no idea what was inside those packages."

"I made it a point not to know. Put me on the lie detector."

"Just breaking your balls, Eddie. He ever talk business when you were around?"

"Probably. But he did it in Russian."

Almost twenty-four hours since they'd snatched Kate, and still no ransom call. A cold fear lingered in the back of Eddie's mind. Would this massive police presence force the kidnappers to make Borodenko's problem disappear? The Russians knew a thousand ways to make that happen. Eddie's stomach churned with the realization that he'd put his trust in people more worried about legal niceties than about his daughter. He began making notations, his own priorities. The identity of Borodenko's hatchet man Sergei Zhukov would stay with him for now.

Boland said, "Whatta you figure's Lukin's main source of income?"

"Pump-and-dump scams on Wall Street. Then Medicare, and other insurance scams, staged accidents. Crimes dealing with paper."

"I heard the score on the gasoline-tax scam alone was over a hundred million."

"That was before I worked for him," Eddie said.

He gave Boland a brief rundown on Lukin's rise to criminal power in Brooklyn. Shortly after his arrival in the seventies, Lukin began working for the brutal crime boss Evesi Volshin, who ran gambling, loan-sharking, and extortion rackets in Brighton Beach. Volshin's victims were almost exclusively his own people. When

Lukin arrived, he introduced Volshin to paper scams, including the lucrative gasoline-tax scam. As the money poured in, Volshin became more and more convinced he was invincible. Not a single Russian tear was shed when Volshin was shot to death in a crowded restaurant in 1984, the third time he'd been shot that year. Lukin took over and the focus shifted entirely to paper crimes.

"Tell me how he rips off Medicare," Boland said.

"Easiest way to become a millionaire, according to Lukin. All you need is a doctor's Medicare number and a post office box. He started with fake clinics, generating millions in phony claims. Toward the end, he didn't even bother with the clinic. He just shuffled paper."

"Nobody checks that shit?"

"By the time they get around to checking, he's a few million ahead. All the investigators find is an abandoned post office box."

"What happens if they get lucky and grab someone picking up the checks?"

"That person makes bail, then disappears to the mother country."

Boland picked at the warm loaf of caraway bread Eddie had bought from the bakery on Brighton Beach Avenue. In his left hand, he held a container of coffee, which he balanced on the dashboard. A circle of steam formed on the windshield.

"What do you figure Lukin did with all his money?" Boland said. "Guys like him squeeze a nickel until the buffalo squeals. My guess is he'd be happy just to dump it in a big pit and roll around in it like Scrooge McDuck."

"Yeah, that's probably what he does."

"The word on the street is that he's got a pile of cash hidden somewhere."

"He doesn't pile cash, Matty. His office shelves are lined with about a dozen black binders filled with the paperwork on dummy corporations. It's going to take the government accountants years to figure out where he's hidden it."

The surf pounded steadily behind them. It was just the two of them in the confiscated limo. Boland sipped his coffee as he waited for Lukin to reach the corner. His job was to follow Lukin from his home to the subway, then alert the next segment of the tail. Thanks to Eddie, they knew where he was going.

"Listen," Eddie said. "How about you get me the transcripts of the wiretaps and informant interviews. Maybe I can pick out something your analysts might gloss over."

"The feds frown on that shit, but I'll see what I can sneak out."

Eddie handed him a copy of
Novoye Russkoye Slovo
, the only Russian-language daily newspaper in the United States. It meant
New Russian Word
.

"Start reading this," he said.

"It's in Russian."

"I know, but unless you understand these people, you don't have a prayer. Look in today's obit section. They've got five paragraphs on this thirty-year-old guy. It says he 'tragically died.' That means murdered. You can lay money Borodenko was involved. Somebody should be looking into this one."

"How much Russian do you understand?" Matty said.

"Enough to follow the obits."

"But not enough to understand Lukin when he talked about business."

"I didn't want to understand," Eddie said. "You
want
to become the Russian OC expert. Make a point to learn the language."

"The feds got rooms full of interpreters downtown," Boland said.

Intelligence sources predicted Yuri Borodenko would blame Lukin for the firebombing of his Rolls-Royce. He'd retaliate very soon; Borodenko was the patron saint of revenge. With a little luck, the task force hoped to grab someone in the act of murder, then turn him into an informant. Murder one, even the attempt, was a heavy sword to dangle over the head of the average lowlife. But Eddie knew they could never coerce a Russian into cooperating. The only reason a Russian ever spoke to the police was to make fools of them.

"How about drugs?" Boland said. "Lukin invest in a supply route or poppy field somewhere in Afghanistan, or one of those other 'stans?"

"Absolutely not. I'd stake my life on it."

"Cut the shit, Eddie. You're making these guys sound like Damon Runyon characters. This ain't
Guys and Dolls
out here."