The Con Man's Daughter

Chapter 37

Wednesday

6:00 P.M.

"Is it an Irish thing, or what?" Babsie said. "You only look contented when someone kicks the shit out of you." A cracked molar made it uncomfortable for Eddie to talk. His tongue rubbed raw every time he swallowed or spoke. In the hours since colliding with Zina Rabinovich's bat, his left elbow had worsened, the forearm and wrist more swollen, stiffness extending down to his fingers. The fact that he knew Kate was alive numbed all the pain.

"Legally," she said, "Zina could have killed you."

"Or had me arrested. But she didn't do either." He was starving despite the bad tooth and the fact it was Wednesday night at the North End Tavern. Wednesday night meant franks and beans. It was the slowest night for customers, because, according to Kevin, people wouldn't pay for food that reminded them of bad times. "Depression food," he called it. Stubborn Martha always countered that if that were true, all-night diners and dirty-water hot dog carts would have gone out of business years ago.

"I'm bringing Zina in," Babsie said. "Maybe Kevin can pick her out of a lineup."

"She'll just lawyer up and disappear on us. Hold off for now."

"So you get another chance at her? You've had beau-coup chances, Eddie. Time for bravado is long gone. Time to look out for little you know who."

"She's not after Grace."

After taking the beating from Zina, Eddie walked it off on the Coney Island boards. He sought out the old-timers, people whose entire lives revolved around cotton candy, french fries, and now the gold mine of video games. The boardwalk held no secrets. In short order, Eddie heard all about the deaths of the old couple who had owned and run Coney Custards for decades. They'd passed away within weeks of each other and left the business and the building to their pompous ass of a son. And that was a crying shame. The son, too good for the Coney life, preferred to sip martinis in the upscale bar and marina in Great Kills Harbor that his parents had worked themselves to death to buy for him. He'd hired Zina to run the ice-cream business. The consensus on Zina was that she was an unstable lesbian, a woman anyone with good sense avoided. He already knew that much.

"Whoever Zina wants," Babsie said, "she'll come after you, and Grace will get caught in the cross fire. With any luck, it'll be just you and Zina, mono a memo. The way it was destined to be."

"A little melodramatic."

"I'm just trying to fit in," she said. "I've doubled the guard on Grace starting tomorrow morning. In case you can't leap this tall building in a single bound."

Working off Probation Department sentencing reports,

Babsie had constructed a background on Zina Rabinovich. Zina was the third daughter of a Russian shoemaker and a seamstress, and their first child born in America. Zina's mother died a year later in Coney Island Hospital during the birth of their fourth child, a boy. The father, who refused to speak English, worked hard but never made enough. Her oldest sister committed suicide at sixteen. The second girl vanished. Social Services said they'd all been physically and emotionally abused. After she left school, the only records of Zina were criminal: five times grand larceny auto and a variety of assaults.

"You're sure you never met Zina before?" Babsie said.

"Before Parrot identified her last week, I'd never even heard the name."

"Never ran across her? Not even as part of an investigation?"

"She's in her twenties, Babsie. She would have been in diapers when I was a cop in Brooklyn."

"Then why does she hate you so much?"

"I have no idea."

Eddie looked over at Grace, who was busy placing a chair at each end of the shuffleboard table. Ever since Kate disappeared, Kevin had worked tirelessly to keep Grace busy. Every time he saw her eyes start to glaze over in a thousand-mile stare, he concocted a game of something. Wednesday was easy, shuffleboard night. Kevin had bought an old-fashioned shuffleboard table that ran the length of the back room, taking up the space of three booths. Franks and beans night was always slow, so their new tradition, a shuffleboard challenge, had become a marathon. Kevin would string the game out as long as she wanted to play. Anything for Gracie. If she asked him to turn cartwheels, he'd say, "No problemo." It wouldn't be pretty, though, two-hundred-pound Irish cartwheels.

"I want to get a look at Zina," Babsie said. "And I mean now. I'll hold off on the lineup, but I want to eyeball her myself."

"Staten Island, tomorrow," Eddie said. "It's on her calendar. Last Thursday, I tailed Mrs. Borodenko's Mercedes there. I didn't know it was her at the time, but Zina was the woman driving. They had lunch in Jimmy's Bistro on Hylan Boulevard. Might be a regular thing."

"Long way to go for lunch," Babsie said. "You sure there's not a little secret something going on between these two? A little candlelight and wine hanky-panky?"

"Definitely the wine. Boland says that Yuri hired Zina to keep his wife away from booze. She can't get a drink in Brighton Beach anymore. Bars aren't allowed to serve her when Yuri's not there. Going to Staten Island, far away from anyone who knows them… maybe they're thinking a drink that no one sees never really happened."

"If that were true, my ex-husband would have worn a hood."

Babsie asked to see the notes he took in Zina's apartment. He took another opportunity to change position, shift some weight off his right hip. Between the alleged sciatica and the baseball bat injuries, Eddie had all he could do to walk around looking like he was less than eighty years old.

"How did the nuns let you get away with this handwriting?" she said.

"They didn't. That's why my knuckles look like this. I tell everyone it was from fighting, but it was Sister Mary Elizabeth's metal ruler."

Babsie copied down the information from Zina's calendar and bills. Eddie arranged himself in the booth, trying to find a comfortable position. He'd never realized how hard the wooden benches were.

"What kind of company is Celltech?" she said.

"I would think something scientific: biology, computer? Your guess is as good as mine."

The one thing he wasn't guessing about was that Zina was the only known link to his daughter. If Yuri Borodenko were here, he'd go to him and make a deal. Yuri was a businessman. Without him, Eddie needed a way to get to Zina without igniting a psychotic reaction. He knew that a single spark was enough, and she could blast off to the moon.

"Okay, say Zina was too young," Babsie said. "Is it possible you screwed her older sisters or her mother, in any sense of the word?"

"I wasn't quite the wild man you think. Besides, I would have recognized something about her. I'm good with faces, Babsie. People I haven't seen in forty years, I recognize immediately. I'd know who Zina was. Some family resemblance."

"What about your ex-partner?" Babsie said. "He was quite the swordsman."

"Paulie was in that precinct for a long time. He probably screwed half the female population, in every sense of the word."

"Exactly what I've been saying. Since the day they identified his head, I've been saying the same thing, Eddie. This is all about Paul Caruso."

"Then why isn't it over? If Zina already killed Paulie, it should be over."

"Zina didn't kill Paulie," Babsie said, flipping through her notes. "Zina never left the country. She doesn't even have a passport. Sergei Zhukov killed Paulie."

Babsie told him that one of Boland's feds had reached out for Sergei's travel activity for the past two years. He'd racked up some major mileage, mostly Moscow to New York. But on April first, he had flown from JFK to Rome. He returned to New York five days later, on the afternoon of April sixth, traveling alone.

"If Sergei returned on the afternoon of the sixth," Eddie said, "he had nothing to do with Kate's kidnapping."

"The guy already had enough on his plate that day."

According to Babsie's notes, Sergei returned to New York on Monday, April sixth, on Delta flight 149. The flight left Rome for JFK at 9:55 a.m. Sergei, however, had arrived in Rome only two hours before that on a connecting flight: Alitalia 7708 from Palermo, Sicily.

"Lukin told me that Borodenko called on the morning of the sixth, looking for Sergei. He asked Lexy Petrov to find him."

"Sergei was busy whacking Paulie," Babsie said. "In the late hours of April fifth, a guy answering his description was seen coming out of Paulie's villa. Sicilian authorities said the place looked like someone had taken a serious beating inside. Paulie's car was later found at the airport in Palermo. My guess is that Sergei wasn't supposed to kill him, but it got out of hand."

"Paulie was an old man," Eddie said. 'Twenty years ago, Sergei would have had his hands full."

Grace yelled for Eddie's help. Some type of infraction of shuffleboard rules by Uncle Kev-o. Behind the bar, B. J. Harrington told her to quiet down. He was reciting "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" for the regulars. Eddie told her to handle it herself.

Eddie said, "I've been assuming they brought Paulie's head over on one of Borodenko's freighters, with or without the body."

"Time frame doesn't work. Witnesses saw Paulie in Capo San Vito on the fifth. The head shows up on your lawn on the eighth. Not enough time for a sea voyage. Sergei beat him to death, dumped the torso in the Mediterranean, and carried the skull on the plane like a painted coconut."

"Why?" Eddie asked.

"The head? To prove he did it."

"No, why beat him in the first place?"

"Money," she said. "If it's not revenge, it's money. The Caruso brothers screwed Borodenko out of money. You're in the mix because Paulie gave you up to save his own ass. Sergei was beating the shit out of him, so he told him you were involved. That's why Sergei brought that picture of you in front of the boat. To identify you."

"You're working your way back around to the Rosenfeld shooting, aren't you?"

"If the shoe fits…" she said. "Didn't Anatoly Lukin tell you that Borodenko was collecting old debts?"

"But Zina was maybe ten years old at the time of the Rosenfeld murders, and Borodenko was still in the Russian army."

"People don't forget that kind of money," she said.

"Forget what money? It's an urban legend."

"Whether it exists or not, Eddie, it's like pirate treasure to these people. Maybe Zina thinks she found the map."

"It doesn't matter."

"What doesn't matter?" she asked, her eyes widening.

"None of it; nothing that happened fourteen years ago, or last week. None of it matters. Not as long as we get Kate back."

At least Babsie was right about Paulie Caruso. If his life was at stake, no telling what story he'd have told to save himself. Paulie the Priest knew how to survive. "Always have a story ready" was his mantra.

"All I'm trying to do," Babsie said, "is figure out how Paulie fits in. Whenever you're dealing with cops like Paulie, it always comes down to the same root causes: women, booze, or money."

"Sometimes all three."

Her eyes darted around in herky-jerky, unfocused movements. It was a trait Eddie recognized from her older brothers. Another Panko thinking hard. "What about the blonde in the picture?" she said. "The one with you and Paulie in front of the boat?"

"You mean Lana," he said. "What about her?"

"Was she local talent?"

"If you consider the Ukraine local."

"Let's go to that boatyard tomorrow, before we go to Staten Island. See where Paulie kept the Bright Star."

"Boland already thought of it. All the boats in the marina were searched when Misha's body was found there."

"I want to see it for myself."

"Sheepshead Bay, Babsie. You're talking a good hour out of our way. I don't want to get stuck in traffic somewhere on the Belt Parkway and wind up missing Zina. I can't risk that."

"We'll leave here early. I want to get a picture of that place in my mind."

"You need to picture everything?"

"Everything," she said. "Right now, I'm picturing you, and you're starting to look like a grandfather."

The shuffleboard game came to a stop as Grace began sobbing. Deep, racking, uncontrollable sobs. "The last few days," Babsie said, "the slightest thing has set her off." Kevin picked her up and walked toward the kitchen. Eddie started to go to her, but Babsie stopped him.

"Let your brother do it," she said. "Give him a couple of minutes to calm her down."

Babsie was paying attention, thinking for him again. God knows, he needed somebody to do it. Eddie knew that Grace had been sleeping with Babsie the last few nights. This woman, he thought, saving my ass, time after time. Right under my nose since high school.

"I've got a big, big favor to ask," Eddie said.

"Big, big," she said, frowning. "Two bigs. So okay, I'm worried, but curious."

"Tomorrow," he said, "if we find Zina, I'm going to make a deal with her. I'm going to offer her money. She mentioned three million dollars."

"Where the hell you getting that kind of money?"

"I've got some cash socked away, almost fifty grand."

"That's impressive, but a long way from three million."

"It'll be a fake boodle; it'll look like three million. Real bills outside. In the center you use bill-size colored paper; the edges are perfect. We did it on narcotics buys all the time. You wrap the stacks very tightly. The trick is in binding them as tightly as you can."

"What if she sees it's a fake boodle?"

"She won't."

"You're guaranteeing that? She's gonna ask to count it."

"The top stacks will be real. I won't let her go any farther until I have Kate."

Behind them, the click of the shuffleboard disks resumed. Babsie said Kevin would have made a great father. Eddie thought, Isn't that the way it always is? Who the hell is responsible for deciding who should be parents? She reached over and put her hand over his.

"Eddie, listen to me for a second. Let's let Matty Boland know about this. God knows I hate the prick, but we need a backup here."

"That's why I'm asking you."

"But think about the consequences. Say, for whatever reason, Zina goes totally ballistic and it's just me and you."

"That's the way I want it," he said. "That's the big, big favor."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then I kill her," he said.

"Jesus," she said, looking up at the original tin ceiling of an Irish bar that had seen better days. "And you have the balls to call me melodramatic."