The Con Man's Daughter

Chapter 25

Saturday

7:30 A.M.

The trucker diner was half-empty, the long-haul guys long gone. Eddie called five cab companies before he got one that would take him from the track stop in Elizabeth, New Jersey, back to Brooklyn. While he waited, he had a fried egg sandwich, heavy on the catsup. He saw Parrot's van go past the window, heading toward the dock. The women had already loaded up their lives. They'd been in Brooklyn too long anyway. Gypsies are supposed to be on the move.

He called Babsie and asked her to check the FBI list for any Borodenko real estate holdings on the ocean block in Coney Island. He gave her the names Zina and Freddie and told her everything he knew, which consisted only of what Parrot had said. Babsie said she was cooking breakfast and then they were going to sign Grace up for the soccer league in Lennon Park. Grace yelled that Babsie had been teaching her how to handle the ball. Sitting at a table near the clatter of a truck stop kitchen, he realized how much he cared for Babsie. He told her he might have to beat up her brother again, because he definitely owed her a slow dance.

"Just get your sorry ass home," she said.

Back in Brooklyn, Eddie counted what he had left. Breakfast at the Elizabeth truck stop had cost him five bucks, including tip. The ride back to Brooklyn went for ninety-six, but at least he'd gotten a chance to close his eyes. Counting tolls and the parking ticket he found on his Olds, the night had been costly. He'd also been way too generous with Sergei's money. The hundreds he gave Parrot's kids had been stupid. He could use that money now, a little spread-around cash to get his foot through the doors of Borodenko's businesses.

Worst of all, he'd lost time, wasting too much of it on Sergei Zhukov. Maybe finding the burned guy named Freddie wouldn't be too difficult. Find Freddie, you find Zina. He wondered if Zina could be the "she" the late Misha Raisky had talked about.

On Brighton Eighth, Sergei Zhukov's car yielded nothing more than half a box of condoms, an unopened pint of Popov vodka, and a copy of Hustler. The Cadillac was brand-new but filthy. It reeked of an eye-watering cologne and spoiled food. Eddie donned Sergei's calfskin gloves for the search. The floor of the backseat served as a repository for fast-food bags, chocolate wrappers, assorted drug paraphernalia, and a pair of red thong panties. No day planner, no Palm Pilot, no address books. Eddie checked every scrap of paper for a name or an address. Most of the writing was in Russian and the pieces of paper appeared to be betting slips.

Babsie called while Eddie was still in Sergei's car. No doubt it was the first time "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" had been heard in the Russian's Caddy. Babsie said Yuri Borodenko legally owned or quietly had his hands on nine properties near the ocean in Coney Island. Seven were commercial. Among them, a small arcade specializing in video games, and a T-shirt store. He also owned two co-op apartments. She said there was no mention of any women on the associates list, and only one Freddie, but he died three years ago.

Armed with Babsie's list, Eddie posed as Detective Desmond Shanahan from the INS task force. He began with the business owners, hoping they hadn't heard of his performance in the Samovar. After flashing his bogus shield, Eddie said this location had been identified by a confidential informant as a hideout for a very tall Chinese female involved in smuggling aliens from Asia. "Look anywhere you want, Officer." Cooperation all around. Eddie inspected every nook and cranny, every cabinet and cardboard box. Most were far too small, even for a midsize Chinese smuggler. He thanked the managers, faked a notation on an index card. Then he said, "One more question, please," and asked about Zina and Freddie, who'd been burned. Several people knew the two he was talking about, but no one admitted to knowing any more than Parrot.

It was late afternoon when he got to the two co-op apartments owned by Borodenko. Fatigue and melancholy had already set in when a middle-aged woman in a paisley housedress opened the door to the first apartment. Eddie felt his eyes well up as he tried to play the game and couldn't.

"My daughter was kidnapped," he blurted out. He told her the Gypsy's story about the lesbian and the burned man. Before he finished, she pulled him inside. She poured a glass of tea and handed it to him while he apologized.

"Shush, shush," she said. "This is your baby. Of course you must look everywhere."

Eddie tried to leave, but she wouldn't hear of it. She took him by the hand and showed him through her home. In closets, under the beds, behind the shower curtain. She promised she would call all of her friends and tell them of Kate's plight. When he left, she shoved a handful of gingerbread cookies wrapped in a cloth napkin into his pocket. Then she kissed his hand.

The second apartment seemed vaguely familiar. He knew he'd been in the building before, working a case or doing something for Lukin. When he arrived at the door, the tenant, a waitress, was just leaving for work.

"I forgot you lived here," Eddie said.

"Oh, you forgot," Ludmilla said. "I thought you came here to apologize. I thought it was sweet you should do that. But you forgot I lived here."

"I've got a lot on my mind right now."

"Where is your friend the FBI agent? When will he arrest me?"

"No one is going to arrest you, Ludmilla. Listen, why don't we get out of the hallway?"

"You worry because I'm talking, but you talked too loud in the Samovar. Everyone I work with thinks that I'm a thief. My manager, the customers, they all know. The bait-and-switch queen. Where does that leave me now?"

"I overdid it, Ludmilla."

"Tell me why am I working in the Samovar if I'm making so much money selling fake jewels? For fun? You think I do this for fun?"

"No, I don't."

"You always remembered where I lived when you were too drunk to go home to your wife. Ludmilla was special to you then."

"That was a long time ago."

"I'm not even a memory to you. I'm a thief to you now."

"That's not true."

"What kind of man are you? You forget making love in this apartment, but you remember fake jewelry, when I was just a young girl."

"I'm a man who's looking for his daughter, Ludmilla."

"So now you think I kidnap your daughter. Okay, okay," she said. Her hands shaking, she fumbled with her keys and opened the door. She flung it wide-open. "Go ahead, look," she said. "Look, look, look."

Eddie went in and looked-carefully.

Eddie barely remembered the ride home. He kept the windows down, the radio volume up. One minute he was singing to the joggers along the FDR in Manhattan, the next he was in the Bronx and he could smell anise from cookies baking in the Stella D'Oro plant. When he got out of the car, his legs ached from the stiffness. His right hand was badly swollen.

Grace filled him in on their day while he ate leftover macaroni and cheese casserole Babsie had fixed. They'd signed up for soccer, gone food shopping, picked up a movie, and still had had time to make five o'clock Mass at Sacred Heart.

"Granpop, I taught Babsie how to play chicken foot."

"I wasn't very good," Babsie said.

"Yes you were," Grace said. "For your first time playing dominoes."

The second hand on the electric clock above the sink swept past the three white chickens near the rusted plow.

Eddie tried to calculate the hours since his daughter's disappearance.

"Babsie wants to know why Mommy has that pogo stick in her room," Grace said. "I told her you gave it to her."

"It was hers when she was a kid," Eddie said. "I found it in the garage and gave it to her for her birthday… as a joke."

"Tell her the funny part, Granpop."

Eddie told her the story about Kate. When she was about Grace's age, he'd bought her a spring-driven pogo stick. Kate jumped endlessly in their driveway. Ka-ching, ka-ching for hours and hours. Eddie said he was working late tours and he heard that noise in his sleep all summer. All the neighborhood boys came over and tried to outdo her. They didn't have a prayer. The first week, Kate set her first goal at one hundred jumps without falling, then two hundred, then a thousand. She wore out the pogo stick's rubber tips by the dozen. "Call the Guinness Book" she'd yell up to the house. Ka-ching, ka-ching all day long.

"See, she never gives up," Babsie said.

"My mom never gives up," Grace said.

Later, Eddie fell asleep in the chair as Grace read The Polar Express to him. She laughed because Eddie called her Kate. At nine o'clock, he went to bed while Babsie and Grace watched a movie.

When you've been awake far too long, the first moment of falling asleep is like dropping off a cliff. It's a fall so sudden, so quick and violent, it jolts you awake, your body shivering while drops of sweat bead on your forehead. Eddie didn't know the scientific explanation, but he knew the rest of the night never got much better, as your sleep-deprived brain spliced your fears and dreams and ran them endlessly like a cheap rock video. All you could do was grab on and try to save yourself.

"Eddie, Eddie," he heard Babsie whisper. "You're setting the world's record for nightmares."

She knelt down next to the bed. He knew time had passed, for Babsie was in her nightgown and the house was dark and quiet.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"A little after three."

"I wake everyone up?"

"She's still sleeping, but you were getting loud."

"Sorry."

"Jesus, you're freezing," she said. "Scooch over."

Babsie slid in bed next to him. She rolled on her left side and put her arm across his chest. He could feel her against him, her warmth.

"You have to stop thinking, Eddie. Just for a few minutes."

Babsie buried her head in his shoulder. Her hair smelled clean, but not one of those fruity shampoos. He was sure that Babsie's experiment with red hair in high school was the last time she'd ever colored her hair. Gray, shoulder-length, it suited her. Everything was real about Babsie. She didn't know any other way.

"You want me to leave, just say so," she said.

"No… please."

"I don't know if I should, you know. You stood me up once. After graduation, you called me. You said we'd go to a movie, then to Frank and Joe's to grab a pizza, but you never showed up."

"I stopped in the North End for a beer," he said. "I never got out of the place."

"I'm surprised you remember."

"Kevin said it was the biggest mistake of my life."

She leaned over and kissed him.

"I always wanted to do that," she said.

Her breasts felt plump and firm. He rolled over and faced her. She held him with a strength he'd never known in a woman. Her lips were plush, fuller than Eileen's. She reached down and felt him.

"Don't think about anything," she said as she rose to her knees and pulled the nightgown over her head. Her nipples were erect, her stomach not flat, but firm. She straddled his legs and guided him into her. In the yellowish haze of light filtering through the blinds, he watched her outline, the curves, the square shoulders. Babsie was not a fragile girl. He held her hips as she moved, her body wanting to gallop. "Slowly," he whispered. "Slowly." He wanted to savor each second, each subtle movement of her body. Holding herself up with her hands, she leaned down until her mouth was on his, her breasts grazing his chest. And they moved in rhythm, together, as if they'd been there before.