Cold Service

36

LOCKOBERS WAS shiny and good under new ownership after some years of decline. Now it was once again the place for power lunches, which I must have been having, because I was there, eating with the Special Agent in Charge of the Boston FBI office.

His name was Nathan Epstein. He was thin and balding, with round, dark-rimmed glasses and pale skin. He didn't look like an FBI agent. In fact, he didn't look like much of anything. But he was smart, and I had heard that he knew how to shoot.

"Why are you interested in Boots Podolak," he said.

"You don't need to know," I said.

Epstein nodded.

" 'Course I don't," he said. "I don't need to know anything you know. And you don't need to know anything I know."

Epstein took a forkful of limestone lettuce and stuffed it in his mouth and chewed vigorously. I looked at my lobster stew for a moment.

"Do I hear a quid pro quo being asserted?" I said.

Epstein chewed his lettuce and swallowed it.

"You do," he said.

I nodded.

"We want to take him down," I said.

"We?"

"Me and a friend of mine."

"Friend who was almost shot to death last year?"

"Yes."

"Blames Boots?"

"We know Boots had something to do with it," I said. "You been keeping tabs on us?"

Epstein grinned at me.

"We don't like Boots, either," he said.

"You've been keeping tabs on Boots," I said.

Epstein pointed at me in affirmation.

"And up we popped," I said.

"You and Hawk," Epstein said.

"So what can you tell me?"

"You first," he said.

"Off the record," I said.

"You expect to engage in criminal activity in this venture?" Epstein said.

"Just being careful," I said. "It is possible that Hawk might, unknowingly, violate a federal statute."

"I work for the federal government," Epstein said. "I am not unfamiliar with criminal activity."

"Good point," I said. "So, off the record?"

Epstein nodded, and chewed some more lettuce. I told him the part about Hawk and the Ukrainians, and Hawk getting shot, and us dismantling Boots's operation to even things up. I trusted Epstein. I'd worked with him before. I told him about Tony Marcus and Brock Rimbaud, and the adventures we'd had in Marshport. Epstein listened silently while he ate his salad.

"I heard there was a Ukrainian guy got himself popped over on Blue Hill Ave a while ago."

"People are often popped on Blue Hill Ave," I said.

"Most of them aren't Ukrainian."

"Well," I said. "Not all of them, certainly."

"You and Hawk in on that?"

I smiled.

"I'll take that as a yes," Epstein said.

The waiter brought him some broiled scallops. Epstein started on them at once. I continued with my lobster stew.

"You talk to Ives at all?" Epstein said.

"Ives?"

"Yeah. You talk with him?"

"Why would I talk with Ives?" I said.

Epstein shrugged.

"I know you know him," Epstein said. "Got the Ukrainian connection. Ives is on the foreign side of things."

"You been in touch with Ives," I said.

"Yes."

"So you know I talked with him, because he told you."

Epstein stabbed a scallop with his fork and disposed of it.

"Well, since you put it that way," he said. "Yes."

"We needed a tough guy that spoke Ukrainian," I said. "I figured Ives would be a better source than Berlitz."

"He gave you the Gray Man," Epstein said between scallops.

I sat back and put my spoon down.

"Rugar," I said.

"His name changes more often than his appearance," Epstein said. "I always call him the Gray Man."

"He speaks Ukrainian," I said.

"He speaks a lot of things," Epstein said.

I nodded. Epstein finished his scallops.

"They still got Indian pudding here?" he said.

"I think so."

"Love Indian pudding," he said.

"Isn't that nice," I said.

The waiter cleared the table. Epstein ordered Indian pudding with ice cream. I had coffee. Men in suits and women in skirts came in and went out. The huge polished urns behind the service counter gleamed. The window next to us looked out on Winter Place, which was far too small an alley to live up to its name. Cold spring rain made all the surfaces in Winter Place gleam pleasantly. The waiter came back with coffee and Indian pudding. A scoop of vanilla ice cream sat on top of the pudding. Epstein looked at it happily.

"You don't like Indian pudding?" he said to me.

"I do. But not right now."

"Guy your size," Epstein said. "You don't eat enough."

I nodded. Epstein poked the ice cream with a spoon.

"Too hard," he said, and put the spoon down. "Give it a little time."

Epstein sat back a little and sipped some coffee. He was in no hurry. He was never in any hurry. He had all the time he needed. He'd get to where he was going when he needed to. I was getting tired of waiting for him. Which I knew was also a tactic. What would I say to get him talking? When in doubt, go with what you do best. I shut up. Epstein tested his Indian pudding again, nodded to himself, and took a bite.

"Boots Podolak took over the business of running Marshport," he said, "from his father, whose name was Holovka Podolak, who came to Marshport after a long time in the Russian mob and scratched out a living in the Ukrainian neighborhood, known as Strashnyy, which is, by the way, Ukrainian for 'horrible.' Holovka scratched so good and so often that eventually, in the late seventies, he took the city away from the Micks, who had taken it away from the Yankees."

"It's mostly black Hispanic now," I said.

"It's been black Hispanic for forty years," Epstein said. "But not at the top."

"Gee," I said.

"Holovka was mean and smart and had a lot of, ah, Eurasian connections," Epstein said.

He shoveled in some more pudding.

"And when he passed it on to Boots, the whole thing should have fallen apart, because Boots is a poster child for gene-pool dilution, but Holovka had made an alliance with an Afghani warlord."

"In Afghanistan?" I said.

"You think there are Afghani warlords hanging around pool halls in Marshport?" Epstein said. "Yes, an Afghanistan-based Afghani warlord."

He grinned and went back to his Indian pudding. I waited, drinking my coffee, watching him finish it off. I wondered if the name was politically correct. Shouldn't it be Native American pudding?

"Opium," I said.

Epstein nodded his head in a congratulatory way.

"Doesn't take you long," he said. "Podolak is the exclusive East Coast, U.S.A. distributorship for an Afghani warlord named Haji Haroon."

"Where'd the connection with Holovka come from?" I said.

"We don't know. We're guessing his father established it before he came to Marshport. We think he spent time there, maybe in his Russian mob days. The Soviets were there for a long time."

"And didn't it work out good for them," I said.

Epstein smiled.

"Opium's kind of bulky," I said.

"Too bulky for distant export like this," Epstein said.

"So Haji ships heroin."

"Exactly right," Epstein said. "And nicely alliterative."

"Does Haji supply, ah, management expertise?"

"He does."

"Afghani?"

Epstein shrugged.

"We don't know," he said.

"But you know there is somebody keeping an eye on Boots."

"We are convinced. Boots couldn't do this alone. And the Afghans don't trust members of another tribe, let alone some American of Ukrainian descent ten thousand miles away."

"So there's somebody."

"There has to be."

"So the Ukrainians are muscle."

"Yes."

"And there's an Afghani supervisor."

"Has to be," Epstein said.

"But we don't know who or where."

"Exactly," Epstein said.

I was quiet for a minute, watching Epstein enjoy his lunch.

"With that kind of setup," I said, "why is Boots trying to move into other turf?"

"We wondered about that, too," Epstein said. "Now that I know about the Marcus family involvement, I'd say there are two probable reasons. One is: The opportunity presented itself when Tony wanted to help his son-in-law."

"And number two," I said. "Boots is stupider than a ballpeen hammer."

"Indeed," Epstein said.

"So what about the supervisor?"

"Maybe he's not so smart, either?" Epstein said.

"Or maybe," I said, "since the fix was in with Tony, they figured it was free money."

"Everyone likes free money," Epstein said.

"So," I said. "I see your interest. What's up with Ives?"

"We talk to one another more since nine-eleven."

"Wise," I said. "But I was asking what Ives's interest is."

"You'll probably need to ask him," Epstein said.

"I probably will."

Epstein drank the last of his coffee, looked sadly at the empty pudding dish, and pushed his chair back.

"Thanks for lunch," he said.

"I gather I'm paying?"

"How nice of you to offer," he said.

"I'm very patriotic," I said.