The Con Man's Daughter

Chapter 13

Wednesday

1:30 P.M.

Eddie's old partner, Paulie "the Priest" Caruso, said his brother Angelo, a capo in the Gambino crime family, once told him this story about being in a restaurant on Mulberry Street one midweek afternoon with a bunch of young goodfellas from the neighborhood. They'd been sitting there for several hours sipping vino, picking at the an-tipasto, and arguing about why bartenders always put exactly three coffee beans in the sambuca. Joking around, they asked the waitress for her opinion. The waitress was an attractive young girl from the Midwest, working her way through NYU. She didn't have a clue, but she was enjoying herself. Everything was flirty and fun, and both the girl and the wise guys were enjoying the banter. The girl finally worked up the courage to ask if they were in the mob. "The mob?" said Angelo, shocked. "Why do you say that?" The girl said, "Well, I just figured: a group of young guys sitting around all afternoon on a Tuesday, with nothing to do, nowhere to be. What kind of job would let you do that?" Angelo looked at her and said, "We could be cops."

None of the wise guys were laughing when ex-cop Eddie Dunne parked in the bus stop outside the Bronx Knights Social Club. Eight or nine of the locals were hanging around out front, some of them on folding chairs they'd dragged out of the club to check out the spring parade of women young enough to be their granddaughters. Eddie reached under the seat and pulled a purple velveteen bag from the springs. The logo of Seagram's Crown Royal dressed up the front of the bag; inside was a Smith & Wesson.38 Special, Eddie's old NYPD service revolver. In the NYPD, you bought your own gun; he'd kept his and gotten a gun license when he resigned. Eddie shoved the gun in his waistband, slammed the car door, and walked toward the club. A pair of older thugs who recognized him wandered off, as if a lime gelato had suddenly beckoned them from the corner bistro. A young guy in a Yankees jacket stood up and put his hand on Eddie's chest.

"Whoa, where you going, pal?"

For his trouble, the baseball fan wound up on his ass, taking two folding chairs down with him. Across the street, old women in housedresses stopped hanging wet clothes on the squeaky pulley lines that crisscrossed between buildings. Arms folded, they leaned on the window ledges of third-and fourth-floor apartments. The neighborhood, accustomed to violent men in the social club, tuned in.

Quick and graceful, Eddie weaved his way through the mismatched tables and chairs in the front bar area. None of the club members had a chance to warn Richie Costa, who was stretched out in the barber chair in the back room, getting his Wednesday facial and trim. Eddie flashed the S &W, then grabbed Richie by the hair and yanked him out of the chair, back through the bar, and out into the street, his white barber's cape flying like the flag of surrender. Eddie wanted the stadium audience outside: the old ladies across the street, the schoolgirls walking home, the packed city bus going by. If he decided not to kill him, at least he wanted to humiliate him on his home turf.

From a window across the street, Sinatra sang "Fly Me to the Moon." Eddie stuck the gun back in his pocket. He stood still on the sidewalk and let Richie throw the first punch. A roundhouse right, the stupid bastard. Eddie blocked it two feet away from his head, then threw a pair of low combinations. Bim, bam, bim, bam. Then high, a right hook. Blood shot out of Richie's mouth. Bad gums, Eddie remembered. Richie had always had bad gums. He rested a beat, then allowed Richie another free punch. A piss-poor off-balance right hook. Hadn't he learned anything? Eddie went low, low, low, high, low, high. Still fast and rhythmic. The last one a brutal overhand right flush on the left temple. Down went Richie. He rolled on his side, pretending he wanted to drag his fat ass up and fight, but then he decided to work on just keeping his eyes open. Eddie turned to the goombah chorus behind him. The guys lounging against the wall stopped jingling their change.

"You want to know why I'm pissed?" Eddie said. "Anyone want to know?" In the yard next to the club, a German shepherd chained to a picnic table began to whine and claw at the hard-packed dirt. "Yuri Borodenko kidnapped my daughter," he said. "My only daughter… and this guy here… this scumbag… is helping him. I thought you people didn't hurt families. Where the hell is the 'honor' you're always bragging about? Snatching kids now. You should be ashamed of yourselves, acting like low-life bastards. Richie, this low-life bastard here, should tell me everything, right? He should tell me where my daughter is. Anyone disagree with that?"

Eddie leaned over Richie.

"They want you to tell me," he said.

"I only got business with those people, Eddie. I didn't even know about your daughter. That's the truth. I swear on my mother."

"Your mother would spit in your face, Richie. Last night, you stopped me from grabbing the kid who knew where she was. You helped him get away."

"How the fuck was I supposed to know that?" he said, spraying blood on the sidewalk.

With a fistful of hair and a fistful of shirt collar, Eddie pulled Richie to his feet. Blood dribbled down his chin. Richie leaned back against a car. Eddie moved around him, shuffling playfully, his fist raised, measuring Richie. He knew no one would call the police.

"How about the 'she' the kid mentioned?" Eddie said. "Who is the 'she' that steals cars?"

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, man."

The smell of garlic wafted from an open kitchen window.

"Left jab, right hook," Eddie said, then hit him twice. Richie's knees buckled. Eddie propped him up against a parked car. "I'm calling my shots, Richie. Making it easy for you."

"I didn't know about your daughter, I swear."

"Where's my gun?" Eddie said. "The Sig Sauer. I know you took it."

"Sergei has it. That crazy fuck Sergei. Last I saw him, he had your gun and the kid."

"Left jab," Eddie said, but he threw a sharp right cross to Richie's face. The sound of cartilage snapping. "Oops, I lied," Eddie said. "I guess it's catching." Richie's nose would need work; that much was true.

But not as true as the next straight left jab. Richie went down face-first. He caught himself with his hands, but his arms buckled like rubber bands. He fell forward, cracking his chin on the sidewalk.

"Get me some answers or we do this again tomorrow," Eddie said. He grabbed Richie's barber cape and rubbed most of the blood off his hands.

As soon as Eddie went to his car, the guys on the folding chairs jumped up, flew into action, dancing around like they were in the rumble scene in West Side Story. On his knees, Richie Costa held his face, blood oozing through his fingers. His friends helped him to his feet. Step by baby step, they pulled him toward the club. Eddie started the car, then took one last look. The part of Richie's face not covered with blood was whiter than the sheets on the third-floor clothesline, snapping in the afternoon breeze.

Eddie stopped at a Burger King across from the southern border of Fordham University, washed up, and bought two large cups of ice. He rummaged through the trunk of his Olds until he found two old running T-shirts. He wrapped the ice in the shirts and tied them around his knuckles. Old scar tissue caused his hands to swell up quickly. Every year, he could feel his hands stiffening more, aching in particular when he had to do something small and delicate, like putting panty hose on a Barbie doll.

The cell phone rang just before the toll on the Whitestone Bridge. "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." With swollen hands, he managed to hit the wrong button. He lost the call. The toll collector was a woman. Her hair was in cornrows and she was wearing gold hoop earrings bigger than her head. He handed her a fifty, the first bill he managed to pull off the roll. No way he was digging around for exact change. The radio in her booth was playing the same song he'd recognized last night in the Eurobar.

"Dave Matthews," he said.

"Who are you, Dick muthafuckin' Clark?" she said. She slapped the change into his ice-wrapped hand, acting as if it were something she saw all the time. Coins hit the pavement, but Eddie took off. He was halfway over the bridge when the phone rang again; this time, he punched the right button. It was Boland. They'd found his gun. Next to the body of Misha Raisky.

The Sheepshead Bay Marina was a mile east of Brighton Beach and directly north of Manhattan Beach. The number of sailboats that called Brooklyn home always amazed Eddie. The row of masts ran forever alongside busy Emmons Avenue. He parked behind Boland's car in the marina parking lot and took the ice off his hands.

"I thought the pros knew how to duck," Boland said. "That eye looks like it hurts like hell."

"I've had worse," he said. "You sure it's Misha?"

"He had a picture ID from a foreign student immigration service. Name: Mikal Raisky. They called some old man from Queens, guy he used to live with. He's the ID at this point."

The Crime Scene Unit had finished and departed. Both the body and Eddie's gun were gone, as well. All that remained was yellow tape and a series of bloodstains shaped like a chain of islands. Misha's head had come to rest on the big island, near slip number 17, which was stenciled in white paint. They'd found Eddie's Sig Sauer next to his hand, as if the killer'd had a last-minute brainstorm and decided to concoct a suicide scenario. Five entrance wounds, three in the back, isn't even covered in Suicide for Dummies. Boland said he identified Eddie's Sig Sauer by the serial number he'd given him earlier.

"Was it a dump job?" Eddie asked.

"Just barely. We figure the shooting went down over there in the parking lot. Although it baffles me why they didn't leave him there, rather then take the time to drag him across the grass to this spot. I mean, what's the point?"

"Does this shit ever have a point?"

Boland said they'd picked up shell casings in the parking lot off Emmons Avenue. The CSU had found blood splatter on the blacktop and on the side of a broken-down pickup truck. The killer or killers had apparently dragged Misha about seventy feet from the parking lot to the wooden walkway that bordered the boat slips. It was evident from the scattered blood spots that he'd tried to crawl away across the walkway. The killer fired one more shot for good luck as Misha lay facedown on the boards. The CSU dug the bullet out of the wood, but the shell casing had probably bounced into the water.

"Broad daylight, busy street, apartment building across the street," Eddie said. "Pretty ballsy."

"Does that surprise you, with the Russians?"

A caretaker named Toby Davis had found the shirtless body shortly before 8:00 a.m. He insisted it wasn't there when he'd arrived for work two hours earlier.

"What time you last see him?" Boland asked Eddie.

"Four a.m. Give or take a few minutes. I didn't see him or my gun again after the scuffle in the stairway."

Eddie had filled Boland in on the happenings in the Eurobar, including a recap of the fight in the stairway.

"Sergei left with your gun and the kid?"

"According to Richie Costa. I wasn't sure who took my gun. But I stopped by the Bronx Knights on the way over. Richie Costa told me the last time he saw the Sig Sauer, it was in Sergei's hands."

"How the hell did you manage to get that out of him?"

"You don't want to know."

"I assume that's Costa's blood on your shirt?" Boland said. "Am I going to find him in a body bag somewhere?"

"Not by my hand, although I was tempted."

Without being asked, Eddie took his bloody shirt off and handed it to the detective.

"Jesus, your hands are cold," Boland said, pushing the shirt back to him. "I believe you didn't kill Costa, Eddie. And nobody thinks you killed this kid. Howie Danton caught the case. He knows it's nothing but a piss-poor setup. We have to go through the motions. You know that."

"So go through the motions."

"Okay. It's a safe bet ballistics will confirm your gun is the murder weapon. The squad is going to ask you where you were between six and eight this morning."

"In the Eurobar, being quizzed by the manager. I left a little before seven. Drove home up the West Side Highway."

"You stop by somewhere for breakfast, or make an impression on anyone?"

"I was in my granddaughter's school around eight-fifteen. Nobody can get from Sheepshead Bay to Yonkers that fast in the morning without a helicopter. I can get five nuns to swear I was there."

"Four nuns, I would have a problem, but five, I'm sold."

Eddie filled in more parts of the Eurobar story. He told Boland what the kid had said about a "she." Boland checked his list of known Borodenko cronies and found no mention of a woman. Eddie said that Babsie was checking the staff and management at the Elmsford auto-storage garage for female possibilities.

"Danton wants me to get the owners of the boats in this section," Boland said. "See if any names cross-check with our list."

"See Toby. He's been here forever."

"You're on a first-name basis with the caretaker?" Boland said.

"I worked in the squad here, remember?" Eddie replied. "Paulie Caruso kept a boat here for years."

"I remember the boat. Thirty-five-foot Grand Banks. Nice."

"'Sleeps four, fucks eight,' Paulie used to say. I'd sleep in it when I had an early court appearance or was too shit-faced to drive home."

"I always wondered where you crashed. I figured you had to have someplace to stay. From here to Yonkers every day is a pain in the ass of a commute."

"Paulie said I spent enough nights on that boat to qualify for a merchant seaman's license."

"Where was it tied up?" Boland asked.

"Slip ninety-one," Eddie said, pointing west. "Way down past the trees, near that pulley setup. He didn't want a place you could see easily from the street. You know, for those rare occasions when we partied on duty."

"Yeah. I heard all about you guys and your wild boat parties. Never invited me."

"You were into your career then."

The wind changed direction and came off the ocean. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees in a matter of seconds. "An onshore breeze," Paulie had called it. Onshore because it was coming from off the water. Eddie always argued it should be called an offshore breeze, since it was coming from the ocean. It was a stupid argument, one best played out when they were bombed. One of many. Old friends replayed stupid arguments all then-lives. Only quarrels over women were fatal. Eddie felt the chill coming off the Atlantic, which was still bitterly cold from the long winter.