"No, it's not. These are very smart people. Don't try to compare them to anyone you ever worked on before. They understand money and documents, they're bilingual, international, and they don't fear our court system. Our jails are like Club Med to them. They're the best white-collar criminals in the world, by far. But I don't see drug dealing and I don't see the violence you're talking about. At least not when I was working for Lukin."
"Well then, I have to bring you up to speed," Boland said. "Guys like Yuri Borodenko are the new, improved Russian
mafiya
. Russian crime exploded worldwide after the breakup of the Soviet Union. These guys are ethnic Russians with serious connections back home. They're using that old country like their personal warehouse. You want a tank, you want a box of grenades, just put your order in. They also control the shipping industry. See, this is why the hell the FBI is jumping in with both feet. They're afraid one of these guys like Borodenko is going to sell the bomb to Saddam, or some other psycho. And for the right price, don't tell me they won't do it."
"Wasn't that a Tom Clancy novel?" Eddie said, now realizing he'd underestimated Matty Boland. It wouldn't happen again.
"I got a lot more stories for Clancy," Boland said. "Two years ago in Florida, we arrested one of Borodenko's people for selling Russian helicopters to the Colombians, the Cali cartel. He even offered them a submarine for drug smuggling. Complete with Russian crew. That's just the tip of the iceberg."
Lukin and his bodyguards turned right on Brighton Beach Avenue. Boland drove slowly to the corner. Like all thoroughfares shaded by elevated train tracks, Brighton Beach Avenue offered both tracker and prey more places to hide. The avenue was almost deserted at this hour. Too early for the crowds of daily shoppers. Too early for the street vendors selling their pastries and
ma-trioshka
dolls.
"That's why I don't get this mob war," Boland said. "I mean, why? Borodenko has a huge operation with worldwide connections. He doesn't need Lukin's penny-ante scams. So why is he going after this washed-up old sock salesman? The only thing I can figure is that Borodenko knows that Lukin has a humongous pot-o'-cash stashed somewhere."
Boland pulled the car to the curb under the el tracks on Brighton Beach Avenue as Lukin made his usual morning stop, the Stolichny Deli, for tea and blintzes. Boland checked his watch and scrawled notes on times and locations. Slender beams of sunlight in geometric shapes slanted down through the tracks.
"You have anyone up on the platform?" Eddie asked.
"I suggested that," Boland said. "The assistant special agent in charge thought that was overkill. But we have a cop who'll be riding the train. He'll take them to Avenue J. Another team picks them up there and puts them in the doctor's office."
The two bodyguards emerged from the restaurant, followed by Anatoly Lukin, who carried a small brown paper bag. Boland relayed the information over the radio static. Lukin began to climb the stairs to the elevated subway station. A steady file of locals climbed the steps with him. Young women in tight skirts made their way to Manhattan office jobs. An old woman in a brown woolen overcoat pulled herself up the stairs with the help of the railing. Her other hand held tight to the floral babushka knotted under her chin. Unshaven construction workers carried coffee and lunch bags. Looking at these daily subway people, Eddie could see his own immigrant parents seventy years ago, chasing the dream by the sweat of their brow.
"Did they find out who was burned inside the Rolls?" Eddie asked.
"Not that I heard."
In the dappled sunlight under the el, the train roared into the station with a shriek of brakes grinding on steel rails. Out-of-towners wince and cover their ears at the discordant high-pitched sound, but New Yorkers keep right on talking, Eddie thought. Boland spoke of documented deliveries of Russian antiaircraft missiles, submachine guns, assault carbines, plutonium-enriched uranium, and anthrax disappearing into the Muslim pipeline. The train slowed to a stop in the metal-on-metal cacophony they'd heard all their lives. But Eddie thought he caught a faint
pop-pop-pop
right before the train stopped. Maybe he was listening too hard. Boland didn't seem to notice. The train stopped. They both heard the screams.
Boland yanked the gearshift into drive and floored it for the hundred yards to the foot of the station steps. He ordered Eddie to stay in the car, then took the keys with him. Boland scaled the steps quickly, but with a street cop's measure. Never race wildly up the steps. It's too dangerous. You hit the top out of breath, an easy mark.
Eddie sat forward in the car, studying those coming down the stairs. He memorized the wardrobes, trying to separate taste from disguise. He scanned faces. When innocent people run from crime scenes it's usually because they're hiding old sins: deadbeat dads, illegal aliens, bail-jumpers, America's Most Wanted, and lifelong cowards. Eddie watched the eyes for the bright gleam of new sin-eyes too wide open and unblinking, pupils dilated. The eyes are guilt's flashing neon. Or, better yet, examine the people you didn't figure to run. Like the old woman in the babushka who'd gone up behind Lukin. She came down the steps very quickly. Eddie got out of the car.
The woman clutched the babushka tightly over her face as she shoved her way through the stunned crowd. Eddie followed her for a block, trying to get a decent look. She definitely wasn't old. She motored down the sidewalk at a pace far too quick for a grandma. The gray hair had to be a wig. Eddie cut into the street to get a better angle on her face. The woman picked up speed, then turned the corner onto Brighton Eighth.
By the time Eddie reached the corner of Brighton Eighth, the woman was halfway down the block, sprinting like an Olympian. She'd shrugged off her heavy woolen coat. Underneath, she wore rolled-up jeans and a black turtleneck. Eddie scooped the woolen coat off the sidewalk without breaking stride, yet he lost ground. She ran recklessly, like a man, pumping with her arms and shoulders. At the next corner, she made a sharp left-but just before she made the turn, she glanced back over her left shoulder. A split-second look. He saw a dark complexion, big nose, and that was it.
She was almost a full block ahead, crossing Coney Island Avenue. He watched her slice between parked cars and disappear through the entrance to an immense construction site. No chance to catch her in a straight run, but his heart beat faster, because he knew she had to slow down on the rutted moonscape of the lot. She'd hide there, figuring the cops would give up easily. But not him. He had her exactly where he wanted. Far from the eyes of the civil servants.
Chapter 8
Tuesday
7:35 A.M.
For almost thirty minutes, Eddie tore through the working chaos of the huge construction site. Material and equipment were strewn helter-skelter, as if scattered by a twister. He climbed in Dumpsters, over huge mounds of bricks, and inside bulldozers, trailers, and portable toilets. He looked behind the skeletal walls of the first ten floors of a high-rise billed as "luxury by the sea." He did the same with its twin sister, only six stories complete. The more he searched, the more he realized that escape was almost too easy; exit holes riddled the fence surrounding the block-long complex. Whoever it was he'd chased had picked the perfect maze in which to disappear. He noted the exact time, then thought through the specifics of the chase, getting ready for Boland's questions. With the discarded woolen overcoat over his shoulder, he headed back toward the avenue.
Tuesday morning had arrived on Brighton Beach Avenue with an uncommon hush. The street directly under the elevated subway station, usually bustling by this time, was silent. Precinct cops had shut down the station, then closed the street immediately below. Only pedestrians with business in the area were allowed past police lines. Apparently, someone had gone under the train. Auto traffic had been detoured so they could search the street for chunks of human body that might have fallen through the tracks. Uniformed cops wearing latex gloves examined the roadway. They carried plastic bags as they scavenged for bits of flesh and bone. One cop sang about the thighbone connecting to the hipbone. Before climbing the el stairs, Eddie glanced up at Madame Caranina's window, wondering if the Parrot had returned from his alleged trip with the
baro
. Dark eyes peered out for an instant before the thick drapery closed.
Up on the subway platform, a balding Transit Authority supervisor in a shapeless burgundy blazer marched back and forth between the lead detective and the uniformed sergeant, trying to get a definite time when his line would be back in service. Technicians from the NYPD Crime Scene Unit and Emergency Services Division had retrieved most of the body of Anatoly Lukin. But a pair of neatniks in blue jumpsuits lingered on the tracks, scraping stubborn pieces of tissue from crevices of wood and steel.
"I'll voucher this and send it to the lab," Detective Howie Danton of Brooklyn South Homicide said as he examined the overcoat Eddie had given him. Several witnesses identified it as the coat the killer had been wearing.
Eddie said, "I think it would be a good idea if I hooked up with a sketch artist as soon as possible. While the face is fresh in my mind."
"Just let me get your part straight," Danton said "What made you chase her in the first place?"
"She looked wrong," he said. "Then she took off."
Precinct detectives interviewed over two dozen witnesses, but the best was a thirteen-year-old Puerto Rican kid who'd been standing in the window of the train's first car as it pulled into the station. He said he clearly saw an old woman in a floral scarf fire a gun into the heads of the two men just as the train was pulling into the station. He saw the muzzle flash twice. She did it quickly:
bang… bang
. Then she went after the old man as he tried to stumble away. She pushed him backward. One quick step, then a hard shove. He slammed down onto the tracks seconds before the train. The motorman didn't have a chance to stop. Three other witnesses backed up this basic version, although with much less confidence.
"I don't think it was a woman," Eddie said.
"And that's because…"
"She ran like a man."
A few steps farther down the platform, Matty Boland stood against the wall, flirting with a strange-looking blonde leaning from the window of a third-floor apartment. The window was almost eye level with the elevated tracks, but neither she nor the other occupants of the building could have seen the crime, which had occurred beneath the overhang, near the center of the platform. Boland flirted for no reason other than the fact he loved to doit.
"Maybe you're exaggerating the pace," Danton said. "That's a long run for a guy your age."
"How about I race you back to the precinct?" Eddie said. "Then you can make judgments about my age."
Although Eddie had met Howie Danton during his days on the job, Danton, at first, pretended not to remember. Since his departure from police work, Eddie had come to expect a mixture of deference and disdain from the NYPD. It all depended on which version of events they believed.
"Too bad you didn't catch her," Danton said. "Perp grabbed fleeing the scene cuts down on the bullshit alibis. Saves the system time and money. Good try, though."
Please don't patronize me now, Eddie thought. The truth was, he hadn't chased Lukin's killer in the interest of justice. He chased her in the interest of love. If he had caught her in some hidden corner of that construction site, he would have bled her until she pointed him toward Kate. Justice could take its piece after that.
"Whatever happened to your old partner?" Danton said.
"Paul Caruso?" Eddie asked, although he knew exactly whom Danton was talking about.
"Paulie 'the Priest' Caruso. What a crazy bastard."
"Living in Italy, last I heard," Eddie said.
"The job hung you guys out to dry, man," Danton said. "I'm thinking it was over some trumped-up shit about a mob get-together in Howard Beach. Am I right about that?"
"We were at a barbecue at his brother Angelo's house," Eddie said. "They said we were consorting with known members of organized crime."
"Yeah, Paulie's own brother," Danton said. "How the fuck do you keep away from your own brother? But that's the rat squad for you."
Angelo Caruso, Paulie's older brother, was listed as a capo in the Gambino crime family. The NYPD had tried for years to prove that Paulie was aiding the crime family with inside information. On a warm Saturday afternoon in June, Eddie and Paulie had attended a graduation party for Angelo's daughter, Paulie's niece. A handful of made men were in attendance. The story was the vino flowed and time slipped away. Shortly afterward, the FBI turned over surveillance pictures of the party to the NYPD. Internal Affairs filed departmental charges, accusing them of "Conduct Unbecoming: Consorting with Known Members of Organized Crime." Eddie accepted their offer to resign. An offer made only because the city didn't want the embarrassment of having to fire its new Medal of Honor winner.
"The rat squad was gonna get that crazy bastard one way or the other," Danton said. "Every guy who worked in a Brooklyn squad in the seventies got Paulie the Priest stories."
Eddie said, "Listen, Howie, do you have to notify the sketch artist, or do I have to drive downtown, or what? I want to get going."
"They do it by computer now," Danton said. "In the borough, the Six-seven. I'll call, tell them you're on your way. But if we need you later, how do we get in touch?"
"Just call me," Eddie said, pointing to the detective's notebook. "You have my number."
"No protocol involved?" Danton said, glancing at Boland. "Anybody I should check with first? I don't want to step on any FBI toes here."
"You can talk directly to me," Eddie said. "I'm not FBI property."
"Whatever," Danton said with a smirk.
"Is that funny to you?" Eddie said.
"No, no, whatever you say."
"Eddie's daughter was kidnapped," Boland said. "We're looking at Russian involvement."