"Watch the road, Romeo," she said.
Forty minutes later, they made the Cropsey Avenue exit off the Belt Parkway. They parked on West Twentieth, on the ocean block, a block west of the two-story building that housed Coney Custards. Coney Custards faced the boardwalk. On the second floor were two small apartments. The entrance faced the side street.
"I don't know how the hell you made that commute every day," Babsie said. "All that traffic every night would make me nuts."
"I didn't come home every night."
"That explains a lot."
Eddie and Babsie had a direct sight line across an open lot and a blacktopped parking area to the apartment entrance. The building's outside walls were covered with mismatched strips of aluminum siding, some painted with a redbrick-colored primer. The entire place looked ripe for flattening by the winds of the next nor'easter or the big bad wolf.
"Trash bag at the curb," Eddie said. "Somebody is living there. Is this entrance the only way in or out?"
"Gotta be a fire escape on the back side."
"I'm going to check it out."
"Don't do anything stupid, Eddie. We need a warrant."
"First I'll get my daughter; then I'll worry about the Supreme Court."
"I'll call Boland," she said. "Have him meet us here with a warrant. If someone comes out before then, we'll move on him."
"We don't have enough for a warrant," he said, then added, "Okay, tell him I said Parrot told me he'd seen a woman who looked like my daughter being dragged into this building."
"What's his real name? We can't call him Parrot."
Eddie made up a name; then, while Babsie was on the phone, he put on his Yankees hat and sunglasses and took a stroll down the boardwalk. The interior floor of Coney Custards was raised so the counter crew in their orange-and-blue golf shirts looked down on the customers. Huge silver cylinders behind them spun out soft ice cream. Two old ladies sat on a bench, licking a peach-colored concoction from sugar cones. Eddie walked fifty yards past to see the opposite side. Fire escape-Babsie was right.
On the way back, Eddie turned down the side street. The first door on the right opened into a very narrow hallway. One flight up was as far as you could go. Apartment A to the left, apartment B to the right Neither of the two mailboxes had names on them. He could hear the hum of a motor, probably coming from inside Coney Custards. Otherwise, quiet. He went back to the car.
"Kick the door in yet?" Babsie asked.
"Not yet, but it's too quiet in there."
"Boland is on his way to Queens. He says he'll get someone working on the warrant, although he's not optimistic."
"Call him back," Eddie said. "Tell him to make it for both apartments, A and B."
"That's not gonna help our cause; we don't even know which apartment."
"This isn't going to happen, is it, Babsie? The warrant, I mean."
"The feds always find a sweetheart judge."
"Not on Sunday," he said. "Okay. Make a note that you ordered me to wait for the warrant. If I'm not back in five minutes, come in and arrest me."
"Yeah, right," she said.
Babsie went around to the boardwalk side. She stood on an angle so she could watch both the fire escape and the front window of Coney Custards. They didn't know if there was an entrance from the apartments into the back room of Coney Custards. Eddie entered the claustrophobic hallway. The stairs were so narrow, two bulimics couldn't have squeezed past each other. He knocked on both doors. Nobody home in either place. So he went to the picks.
Apartment A had a new French-made lock. Big bucks. He didn't even try. He could hear voices, but he couldn't tell if they were coming from Coney Custards. Apartment B had an older lock, the tumblers worn from use. They turned easily, one by one. In less than thirty seconds, he was inside.
The apartment faced the ocean and boardwalk. It smelled musty, everything damp to the touch. The carpet was gritty with sand, but fresh tracks from a vacuum cleaner crisscrossed the floor. An attempt at cleaning had been made. The living room was sparsely furnished, but what was there seemed out of place. Too good for the venue. Dark-wood antiques and overstuffed chairs didn't fit the grimy apartment. In a corner was a straight-backed chair with a cane seat that belonged in the room about as much as a Steinway. Not a single picture of any kind hung on the wood-paneled walls.
"I smell Lysol," Babsie said.
"You shouldn't be in here."
"Oh, like they invited you."
The only windows looked out over the beach and the
Atlantic. Yellowing water stains lined the window ledge. He went to the window and lifted the thin curtain. It felt moldy, as if rotted from the dampness. Only the antiques raised it above a flophouse rating. No frames, no flowers, no frills. Spartan, to say the least. He checked the closet-men's work clothes, two pairs of boots, no dress shoes or sneakers. The smell of mothballs.
"At least it has location," Babsie said.
"Try sleeping here in the summer. Ice-cream machine going day and night. All you hear is people yelling and fighting on the boardwalk."
"Sounds like you've been here before."
"Rooms like it," Eddie said.
Babsie began looking through drawers in the kitchen. The old refrigerator smelled of leaking gas. The freezer was completely empty. The fridge held an open quart of whole milk and nine bottles of Guinness stout. She noted a phone number near the spot on the kitchen wall where the telephone should have been.
"Someone did a half-assed cleaning job," Babsie said.
"Nobody knew about this except us. Parrot," Eddie said. "Parrot might have sold me out."
They could feel the floor vibrating beneath them when the custard machine ran. Babsie crawled on her hands and knees across the living room floor, looking under everything. Eddie went into the bedroom. A queen-size mattress sat directly on the floor. Eddie picked up the pillow and put it to his face.
"Smell this pillow," he said.
"Sour milk," she said. "From downstairs-all those ice-cream workers smell like sour milk at the end of the night. One of them slept here."
"You don't smell perfume?"
"What do you want me to say, Eddie? I don't smell perfume, but check this out." She showed him a quarter-size piece of a torn photograph. "I found this under the convertible sofa. The vacuum must have missed it. It seems strange… not one picture in the entire apartment and someone rips up a photograph."
"I can't believe you don't smell perfume."
"My point is, why rip it up?" she said. "I'm going outside to check the trash. I'll give you five more minutes. Then lock the door."
After she left, Eddie dropped to his hands and knees on the bedroom floor. He ran his fingers through the carpet, looking for anything, an earring or a fingernail painted dark red. He tore the bed apart, reached inside the pillowcase, then under the sheets. He picked up the mattress and checked under it. When he had the mattress raised, he saw something green. It was a piece of green cloth that had been shoved down under one corner. Eddie pulled it out and his heart began to pound.
He stared at it, knowing exactly what it was, a circular piece of green cloth covering an elastic band. A "scrunchy," the kids called it. Both Kate and Grace used them in their hair. Kate wore them around her wrist until she was ready to put her hair up in a ponytail. It couldn't have fallen there by itself. Someone had stuffed it down there. Eddie held it up to the window. In the glare of light off the ocean, he could see strands of red hair.
Chapter 27
Sunday
1:00 P.M.
Babsie Panko snatched two black trash bags off the Coney Island sidewalk and carried them to Eddie's car. She'd found other pieces of a torn photograph in one of the bags. She didn't know whether or not they were all pieces of the same picture, but it bugged her that there was not a single photograph in the apartment. It had to mean something. She needed time to find whatever else was in those bags. At this point, it was garbage, not evidence, so screw jurisdiction. She wasn't even going to ask. The kidnapping was her case; she'd take any damned garbage she felt like. She slammed the trunk of the Olds just as Matty Boland, followed by the sector car from the Sixtieth Precinct, pulled into the block.
"I thought you were going to Queens," Eddie said.
"I am," Boland said. "As soon as I figure out what the hell you two are doing to me."
"Doing to you?" Babsie said. "Is everything about you?"
"You have our warrant?" Eddie said.
"On what basis, Eddie, a hunch?" Boland said. Then in a lower voice, he added, "I'm not getting roped into some bullshit illegal search. It's my case; I'll say when we apply for a search warrant."
"This is
not
your case," Babsie said.
"Borodenko is my case, and we're making serious progress right now. Let's not screw it up with some cowboy move."
"Will this serious progress get Kate back?" Babsie said.
"Possibly, very possibly."
"Kate was in that apartment," Eddie said. "That's definite, very definite. Either you get a warrant or I go in without it."
The uniformed cop had come alone in a white Crown Victoria with courtesy, professionalism, respect written on the side. His partner was in the station house with the paperwork from a four-car accident on the Belt Parkway. He'd been sent to meet a female Yonkers detective but was reluctant to approach them when they were still arguing. He figured he'd let the suits work the problem out between themselves. They'd call him when they were ready. As long as the discussion remained heated, he figured he'd sit in the car and get his memo book caught up.
"You don't know she was in there," Boland said.
"Parrot told me he saw a redhead being dragged in here last Monday."
"Saw it where, in a crystal ball? Let's get his ass out here. I want to hear this story from his lips."
Boland strode over to the radio car and asked the uniformed cop to go to Brighton Beach and bring Parrot back. Every cop knew the Parrot. Sensing the urgency, the cop made a squealing U-turn.
"Who lives here anyway?" Boland asked Eddie.
Eddie's quick lie to Boland made him realize he didn't fully trust him. Boland seemed to have adopted the feds' tough-love approach. He'll come around, Eddie thought; he's a cop. But this was too important for loyalty tests. With the clock running and one lie under his belt, Eddie told Boland a true story and a fantasy. He explained how Parrot had identified the sketch of the person who kidnapped Kate as a woman named Zina. Babsie had traced a burn victim named Fredek Dolgev and a Zina Rabinovich to this address. Both worked for Borodenko. The odds were that it was Dolgev who had been burned in the Rolls-Royce explosion. When Babsie came to interview them, she found the door to apartment B open. Eddie said they didn't go in but that he could smell Kate's perfume.
"Who are you bullshitting?" Boland said. "You were in the apartment already."
"What is it with you, Boland?" Babsie said. "You're more interested in covering your ass than in finding Kate. Here's a cop you worked with, tells you he knows his daughter was in there. He gives you a perfectly logical explanation, and you want to pick him apart."
"If that's logic, I'm fucking Einstein."
"Shut up for a second, will you, you selfish bastard," she said. "Listen to him. Eddie isn't telling you he was in there. But he knows his daughter was. Read between the lines and let it go at that. Do the right thing for once in your self-centered life."
"I'm the one who has to sign the affidavit, not you, Babsie."
It struck Eddie that if Kate had been here and was now gone, she might be dead. They might have panicked when he was getting close. He could feel the weakness in his legs. But then he realized they didn't want her dead. It was about torturing him. As long as he writhed in the shackles, they'd let her live. Her death would be the endgame. The radio car screeched around the corner. The driver was still alone. Boland went over to him; he didn't even let the driver get out.
"Parrot's flown the coop," the uniformed cop said. "Just a few pieces of shitty furniture left. All Caranina's hocus-pocus shit is gone. People in the bakery said they split Friday night."
"So how do we get the warrant now?" Boland said. "The victim's father ID's a whiff of perfume?"
"Which apartment we talking about?" the uniformed cop asked. "I know these people."
He introduced himself as Carlos. Babsie explained she was working on the kidnapping of Eddie's daughter. Looking for an edge, she told Carlos that Eddie was a former NYPD detective. Carlos knew about the kidnapping.
"Sorry about your daughter, man," Carlos said. "We've been doing some serious looking. Especially since, you know, you being on the job and all."
"We need your help, Carlos," Babsie said. "We came here to interview someone in connection with this case and found the door wide-open. No sign of violence we can see, but we thought the precinct should check it out."
Carlos picked up the radio and told the dispatcher that Six-oh Charlie would need no further assistance at this location. It was the first radio car Eddie had looked closely at in years. The dashboard and front-center console contained more technology than he'd ever seen. The picture of Kate that Babsie had submitted to all Brooklyn precincts was stuck in the visor on the passenger side.
"The apartment on the right belongs to Freddie," Carlos said. "Freddie probably forgot to lock the door. It's not the first time."
"Fredek Dolgev," Babsie said.
"Freddie's all I know him as."
Carlos described Freddie as a large, broad-backed man with thinning white hair. Probably in his early fifties. A Russian with very little English at his command.
"Burned skin on his face and arms?" Eddie said.
"Is that what it is, burned skin? I just noticed it this week."
"It happened Monday," Babsie said. "He told the hospital it was an accident with a barbecue grill. He squirted the fluid and it flared up in his face."
"No shit? He had his face bandaged, but I never asked. He's not one of our talkers. A lot of the Russians will come up and talk to me rather than to the Anglo cops. Because I'm Hispanic. I guess they figure I'm non-American, too, but I was born in Brooklyn."