The Con Man's Daughter

Chapter 34

Tuesday, April 14

11:00 A.M.

Eddie stumbled into the kitchen, limping almost as much as the psycho Sergei Zhukov. That shooting pain that Babsie called sciatica came and went for no reason he could understand. Every day, more of his life seemed to be breaking down. He felt old for the first time, his breath sour, skin dry and itchy. Just another unshaven old man scuffing through the corridors of some rest home. Babsie sat at the kitchen table, a magnifying glass up to her face.

"I put this photograph together," she said. Detective Barbara Panko never wasted any time with "Good morning" or "What's with the limp?" She went straight to the heart of the matter.

The house was quiet, the weather too warm for the clank of steam in the pipes. Grace was at school, no TV, no radio. Eileen had always had to have the TV on; silence made her antsy. Just the two of them now. Babsie had worked out a schedule with the Yonkers PD wherein they only watched the house when she wasn't there. But every single school day, a uniformed cop sat outside Christ the King.

"What photograph?" Eddie said.

"The one from the trash at Freddie Dolgev's house."

It had been after 5:00 a.m. when he'd gotten home from Brooklyn. The fluorescent light over the stove had led him to a note written in big block letters. It was signed by Babsie and Grace, but one signer had written her name too large and too near the end of the page. She'd had to slide the "ce" under the "Gra." It said that a piece of "angel foot cake" was waiting for him under the cake tin. It was signed "Love." He hadn't been hungry, but he'd poured a glass of milk and finished the cake. Then he'd collapsed into bed, hoping not to dream.

"Grab some coffee and come over here and look at this picture, will you?" Babsie said.

"Soon as I get my eyes open."

He'd slept miserably. The first time he woke up, the morning sun was angled low in his bedroom window. Loud voices and the rumble of heavy equipment shattered the usual early-morning peace-a city road crew getting an early jump on resurfacing the street. First time in twenty years, and they chose now to do it.

"How did you make out last night?" Babsie asked.

"The Mazurka is wired."

"Another feather in Boland's cap, thanks to you."

"Can't hurt. They might pick up a mention of Kate's name."

"They won't say anything to you; it might jeopardize their almighty case."

"They'll tell us, Babsie. Good bunch of guys on the task force."

"A few maybe, and that's only because Louie Freeh dumped that stupid lawyer or accountant requirement and brought some cops and street kids aboard."

The second time he woke up that morning, he'd heard Babsie sliding the glass pot back into the Mr. Coffee. A kitchen chair squeaking against the tile floor; a cup set down on the table. Grace's voice complaining about school. He'd thought about Kate, how loud she was in the morning, banging pots and pans. Over a week had gone by, but Eddie had no doubts that his daughter was alive. Not that he believed in ESP or any of that occult crap, but a parent and child must be able to tune in on the same wavelength. So much is genetic, he thought, why not a common wavelength?

"Come over here," Babsie said. "This picture is really interesting."

In his mind, Eddie saw Kate tied up and blindfolded. He tried to imagine the room. Sense it as she was doing. They'd have to tie and blindfold her because she'd be fighting and cursing like the tough pain in the ass he'd raised her to be. No one doubted that. She could be a pain in the ass. God bless her. Amid all this going on, it made no sense that these people outside woke up today, showered, went out to blacktop some curvy, hilly little side street, thinking only of their own lives: dinner, sex, golf, the weekend, whatever. It wasn't right.

"Hey, Dunne," Babsie said. "Get your ass over here and look at this picture."

"All right, all right," he said, carefully lowering himself into the chair. He'd decided that sciatica made sitting worse than standing.

Working on an old wooden chessboard, Babsie had connected the pieces of the torn photograph she'd found outside the apartment in Coney Island. Last time Eddie saw it, she'd had pins in the pieces. Now they were glued down with a white gooey stuff she insisted wouldn't stick permanently. With more patience than Eddie could imagine, she'd turned and twisted dozens of small pieces of a black-and-white photograph until they made sense. She turned it around so Eddie could see.

"A regular puzzle whiz," he said. "I can't believe you did this."

"Recognize anyone?"

Although it was obvious the picture had been ripped to shreds, you could make out what the photographer first saw staring up at him through the developing fluid. Three people: two men and a woman, standing on a dock in front of a powerboat. The woman was in the middle. They had their arms around one another and were smiling broadly. Eddie was squinting into the sun.

"You look so young here," Babsie said, pointing to the man on the right. She'd pointed to a slender man in jeans and T-shirt, taller than the others. His hair appeared darker than it did in real life, as it did in all his old pictures. His eyebrows looked bushier than they did now.

"I hardly remember this," he said.

"I'm guessing the other guy is your partner."

"The one and only Paul Caruso," he said.

Eddie couldn't remember the picture being taken or who took it. Another woman probably. Some Brooklyn divorcee Paulie'd brought along for him. Paulie'd had an endless supply of gum-popping Donnas and Dianes he knew from the days before he fell madly in love.

"You remember where this was taken?" Babsie asked.

"Sheepshead Bay Marina."

"How about the year?"

"Early eighties. That's Paulie's boat behind us. Two big staterooms. He loved to brag about those staterooms."

"Was this a special occasion?"

"I have no idea. But, yeah, that's his boat. The Bright Star."

"He name it himself? Seems a little… I don't know… gay… from what I know of Paul Caruso."

"He took a lot of shit over that name. Guys figured he'd give it some obscene name. Goombah Mama, one cop suggested. Pussy Galore-you know, from James Bond. We had a lot of good times on that boat."

"You guys don't exactly look like sailors to me."

"Not me, but Paulie knew what he was doing. A little anyway. He really loved the big inboard diesel engines. He talked more about horsepower than he did about anything to do with the sea. It was all about speed for him. Faster the better."

"Who is the woman?"

"Paulie's girlfriend, Lana."

"Good-looking lady."

Eddie fixed cereal for himself while Babsie sipped coffee and stared at the photo. He sliced a banana, poured the milk, and sat down across from her. He'd have breakfast, then get back to Brighton Beach. Eddie had asked Boland to steer him in the right direction as far as finding Zina. Zina had not returned to her apartment on West Nineteenth. She had to be sleeping somewhere. He realized Boland couldn't officially reveal the contents of any transcript from the Mazurka bug. But he could find a back door, a wink, or a nudge. Maybe accidentally leave a coffee stain next to a specific location on the list of Borodenko's locations. Just point him in the right direction.

"Are you going to make me ask the obvious question?" Babsie said.

"What question?"

"How the hell did this picture find its way into the apartment of Fredek Dolgev?"

"They probably got it from Paulie somehow. Angelo said they tore his house apart in Sicily."

"But why take this picture from Sicily in the first place? Then rip it up on West Nineteenth Street in Coney Island?"

"I wish I knew that myself."

"But you see what I'm trying to say. You have to admit this all comes down to your connection with the Caruso brothers. You yourself said you always wondered about the Rosenfeld shooting. It sounds like a setup, right?"

"No doubt about it."

"Maybe I should talk to this Lana," Babsie said.

"Good idea, but she's dead."

"The bottom line here, Eddie, is that somebody thinks you have the missing money from the gas-tax scam. Maybe Paulie told them. I don't know."

"It was fourteen years ago. Why did it take them so long to come after it?"

"I can't answer that, but think about who's dead: Lukin and both Caruso brothers. You're the only possible conspirator left."

"Oh, now I'm a possible conspirator."

"It's the only thing that makes sense. The reason they haven't come back here is because cops have been all over this place."

"They already searched my house."

"What about Paulie's boat?"

"He sold it before he went to Sicily," Eddie said. "But boats have VIN numbers, like cars. It's traceable. The marina might have old records."

"Didn't they find Misha's body dumped in this same marina?"

"Yeah, but quite a distance from where ours was kept."

"Ours?"

"Well, it wasn't mine, but I probably spent more time on it than Paulie did. I told you that I slept on it many nights when I was too tired or too drunk to drive home."

Babsie made notes on the boat. The picture didn't show the registration number. It did show the slip number.

"Is that a ninety-one or a sixteen?" Babsie asked.

"It's a ninety-one. The slip numbers were stenciled on the dock, facing the boat."

"Where did they dump Misha's body?"

"On seventeen."

"But he crawled there from sixteen. The bloodstains started on sixteen. They thought it was ninety-one."

"You've been watching too much Columbo."

Eddie remembered the boat far better than anything else that had occurred during those years. Sitting on a dock, twenty yards from traffic on Emmons Avenue, it seemed like another world-a world too good to last.

"I'll stop by and check the marina tonight," he said.

"You're going back to Brighton Beach already?"

"I never finished all the lesbian bars. Sooner or later, I'll find Zina in one of them."

"Yeah, well, you won't have that much time to chat with the girls tonight. Matty Boland called again. They have another big operation going. They want us at One Police Plaza. Two a.m."

"Both of us?"

"Don't worry, I'll drive my own car. You go do your dyke-trolling thing. Just meet me at police headquarters."

'TWO A.M.?"

'Two a.m.," she said. "I'll bet it's another operation generated off information from you. Boland is using you like a trust fund. You'd think the guy would spend at least one day working on Kate. He pretends he's Mr. Concerned, but he's nothing but a self-absorbed prick."

Eddie turned the picture around. He looked closely at Caruso, and for the first time he saw a heavy-lidded, brooding face. When he'd first met Paulie, Eddie envied him as a person capable of living in the moment. The change came later; the anger followed. Time and circumstance changed you in ways you could never imagine. Or maybe they brought out the real you. Shafts of light filtering through the oak trees streaked the kitchen floor.