The Con Man's Daughter (13 page)

"Does that surprise you, with the Russians?"

A caretaker named Toby Davis had found the shirtless body shortly before 8:00 a.m. He insisted it wasn't there when he'd arrived for work two hours earlier.

"What time you last see him?" Boland asked Eddie.

"Four a.m. Give or take a few minutes. I didn't see him or my gun again after the scuffle in the stairway."

Eddie had filled Boland in on the happenings in the Eurobar, including a recap of the fight in the stairway.

"Sergei left with your gun and the kid?"

"According to Richie Costa. I wasn't sure who took my gun. But I stopped by the Bronx Knights on the way over. Richie Costa told me the last time he saw the Sig Sauer, it was in Sergei's hands."

"How the hell did you manage to get that out of him?"

"You don't want to know."

"I assume that's Costa's blood on your shirt?" Boland said. "Am I going to find him in a body bag somewhere?"

"Not by my hand, although I was tempted."

Without being asked, Eddie took his bloody shirt off and handed it to the detective.

"Jesus, your hands are cold," Boland said, pushing the shirt back to him. "I believe you didn't kill Costa, Eddie. And nobody thinks you killed this kid. Howie Danton caught the case. He knows it's nothing but a piss-poor setup. We have to go through the motions. You know that."

"So go through the motions."

"Okay. It's a safe bet ballistics will confirm your gun is the murder weapon. The squad is going to ask you where you were between six and eight this morning."

"In the Eurobar, being quizzed by the manager. I left a little before seven. Drove home up the West Side Highway."

"You stop by somewhere for breakfast, or make an impression on anyone?"

"I was in my granddaughter's school around eight-fifteen. Nobody can get from Sheepshead Bay to Yonkers that fast in the morning without a helicopter. I can get five nuns to swear I was there."

"Four nuns, I would have a problem, but five, I'm sold."

Eddie filled in more parts of the Eurobar story. He told Boland what the kid had said about a "she." Boland checked his list of known Borodenko cronies and found no mention of a woman. Eddie said that Babsie was checking the staff and management at the Elmsford auto-storage garage for female possibilities.

"Danton wants me to get the owners of the boats in this section," Boland said. "See if any names cross-check with our list."

"See Toby. He's been here forever."

"You're on a first-name basis with the caretaker?" Boland said.

"I worked in the squad here, remember?" Eddie replied. "Paulie Caruso kept a boat here for years."

"I remember the boat. Thirty-five-foot Grand Banks. Nice."

"'Sleeps four, fucks eight,' Paulie used to say. I'd sleep in it when I had an early court appearance or was too shit-faced to drive home."

"I always wondered where you crashed. I figured you had to have someplace to stay. From here to Yonkers every day is a pain in the ass of a commute."

"Paulie said I spent enough nights on that boat to qualify for a merchant seaman's license."

"Where was it tied up?" Boland asked.

"Slip ninety-one," Eddie said, pointing west. "Way down past the trees, near that pulley setup. He didn't want a place you could see easily from the street. You know, for those rare occasions when we partied on duty."

"Yeah. I heard all about you guys and your wild boat parties. Never invited me."

"You were into your career then."

The wind changed direction and came off the ocean. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees in a matter of seconds. "An onshore breeze," Paulie had called it. Onshore because it was coming from off the water. Eddie always argued it should be called an offshore breeze, since it was coming from the ocean. It was a stupid argument, one best played out when they were bombed. One of many. Old friends replayed stupid arguments all then-lives. Only quarrels over women were fatal. Eddie felt the chill coming off the Atlantic, which was still bitterly cold from the long winter.

Chapter 14

Wednesday

4:45 P.M.

Eddie left his car at the marina and drove with Matty Boland to Brighton Beach. They parked on Coney Island Avenue, near the entrance to the construction site where, thirty-four hours earlier, Eddie had lost Lukin's killer. The only thing he knew to do at this point was find Sergei Zhukov, and he needed help. He needed the feds fully in the mix. But finding Sergei would be the easy part. Eddie understood the futility of trying to get a hardened Russian criminal to confess. The word
hardened
didn't do these guys justice. Decades of frigid weather, deprivation, and sanctioned cruelty had forced them to develop a level of toughness and cunning beyond anyone's ability to understand.

"The biggest mistake you can make," Eddie said as they walked down Brighton Beach Avenue, "is to underestimate how smart Russians are. You've never gone up against people this slick. If you don't understand that, they'll play you like a mandolin."

Eddie set the pace on the crowded street, eating up sidewalk like a man on a mission. He realized Boland claimed he was trying to find Kate, but his eyes were on a different prize. Boland wanted to talk about the big picture: cartels, wiretaps, and worldwide crime. He needed to concentrate on finding a single redhead in a twenty-block haystack.

"Where the hell are we going in such a hurry?" Boland said.

"Part of our bargain. We're going to school."

"This must be gym class," Boland said. "But seriously, I don't need any more education."

"You want an informant? Then keep up with me."

The clock was coming up on sixty hours since Kate had disappeared. Eddie had no idea if the FBI task force had held up their part of the bargain. They said that every known home, business, and vodka joint connected with Borodenko had been checked out. Checked out how? Eddie wanted to know. A drive-by with the window rolled up? Eddie needed to do something to keep their hearts and heads in the game. He knew that if they lost direction, they'd drift back to working whatever case they'd abandoned sixty hours ago. If he got them someone on the inside, they'd owe him those hearts and heads.

"Say you were a car thief in Moscow," Eddie said. "You steal a brand-new car. How do you make money on it?"

"My first day in class, a quiz already. Okay, probably can't ship it out of the country. I'll say you cut it up and sell the parts. Weather that bad, parts business has to be good."

"Forget parts."

"So I'll find a buyer. Some guy's yak dies and he needs dependable transportation. I sell him the stolen car."

"Wrong again. In a country where people wait for years for a car, you'd never get it by the apparat. The government will know it's stolen."

"I give up. What's the answer?"

"You ransom it back to the owner," Eddie said.

"Ransom the car back. Like a kidnapping."

"Exactly. Kidnapping of cars and people is far more commonplace in Russia than it is over here. My point is this: You need to think differently. These people find angles and ways to make money you can't even imagine."

They pushed their way through the crowds bargaining with street merchants under the peeling brown paint of the el tracks' supports. Past the Payless shoe store, the Primorski Restaurant, and the KFC.

"I'll give you the key to understanding all this," Eddie said. "The one thing you definitely need to know: The Russians are all about money. Stop the money, you stop them."

"Sounds like the American way."

"I'm not talking about the honest buck.
Vorovskoi mir
means it's a thieves' world. Many of these people understand no other concept of earning. Maybe in another two generations, but not yet. They don't trust anyone but themselves. Not our government, our legal system, or our business practices."

'They trust it enough to steal from it," Boland said.

'That's right. They understand that: not invest in it, but steal from it. Okay, I already told you the answer to this one. What's the easiest way to become a millionaire in this country today?"

"Marry a Republican fund-raiser."

"The answer is to rip off Medicare or the insurance companies. See that Laundromat over there? They have hundreds of mailboxes for rent. Brighton Beach has more rental mailboxes than any neighborhood in the city. You'll find rental mailboxes in restaurants, grocery stores, and gas stations. Anonymous mailboxes are the lifeblood of the scam artist."

"I don't have to open a clinic?" Boland said.

"You don't even have to buy an aspirin. It's simple. All you need to acquire is the Medicare ID number of a doctor who's going into research, or abroad for an extended period. Not a big problem-all you need is an administrative contact in any hospital. Next, you write Medicare, requesting a change of address for that doctor. You change it to one of these post office boxes that you've rented. After that, it's easy to get the Medicare numbers of a few hundred senior citizens. Offer a free chest X ray, or free blood pressure screenings. Free anything. Once you have those numbers, then you can proceed with the bogus billing. You never see another patient, and the millions start to flow. It will take them six months to a year to send an investigator around. By then, you're back in Russia, set for life."

"Look for me out in the Hamptons."

"And we haven't begun to scratch the surface yet," Eddie said. "Ever hear the word
hidtrost?

Boland repeated the word and asked if it was Russian street slang. Eddie didn't know if it was slang or not.

"The Russians refer to
hidtrost
as a secondary intelligence. It's the con man's intelligence. It's not common sense, or education. It's the way the scam artist's mind works. The ability to read between the lines. It's more respected than traditional intelligence among the Russian criminal element. In the old country, ripping off the government is a badge of honor. The only way to make a buck. They grow up seeing con men and hustlers making big money."

"Plus, it fits neatly into your contention that the Russian criminals are harmless schemers."

"Not harmless," Eddie said. "I never said harmless. My complaint with your approach-excuse me, the FBI's approach-is that you want to emphasize the Russian
mafiya
, the
organizatsiya
. You want a hierarchy you can put on a chart on the wall. That's wasting everyone's time; it doesn't exist. These people don't trust any big organization. They're not going to form one."

"You're wrong there, Eddie. They're a hell of a lot more organized than you think."

They walked past the crowds swarming the fruit stands, and the people selling pastries and sweaters.

"See that woman in the doorway?" Eddie said. "Old woman, with the backpack. She's selling prescription drugs."

"Prescription drugs?" Boland said.

As they passed the woman, she could be heard whispering to passersby, in a raspy voice, "
Lekarstvo, komu, lekarstvo
?"

"She's saying, 'Medicine, who wants medicine?' " Eddie said. "The supply varies. They usually have some antibiotics, Valium, kidney medicines; OxyContin is big now. Dilaudid. Viagra is always a seller. Twenty-five codeine-laced aspirin will cost you around five bucks."

"Stolen prescription drugs."

"Not stolen. Mostly smuggled in from Russia, Bulgaria, Switzerland, wherever they can get it in bulk. That old woman works for a guy I'll point out to you. He usually hangs around the travel agency, recruiting people, or he's in the Samovar sucking up the vodka."

"How about heroin or coke?"

"I don't know that firsthand. What I do know is that they've been bringing ecstasy in by the trunkful. This same guy who hangs out in the Samovar also recruits Hasidic Jews to smuggle ecstasy. He tells them they're carrying diamonds."

Eddie looked in the window of the travel agency. It was covered with handwritten posters, mostly in the Cyrillic alphabet. English signs listed fares to London and Berlin. Out of place was a poster of a tanned couple on the beach in Jamaica.

"He's not here," Eddie said. "He's in the Samovar. One thing before we go in. The legitimate businessmen are not going to go against Borodenko. You're going to have to hold their feet to a big fire. Borodenko is their
krysha. Krysha
means 'roof,' their protection. Like the old mob protection rackets. Same thing, only in Russian."

Eddie led Boland into a bar where a gaudy chandelier dominated the center of a room it was way too big for. The decor was a dingy glitz, the woodwork trimmed in peeling gold paint. The place was more than half-filled in the late afternoon. The heavy-lidded bartender took his time getting down to them. He was too busy admiring his unshaven profile in the mirror behind the bar, a cigarette with the filter torn off dangling from his lips. Only death deters tough guys from smoking, Eddie thought.

"Lexy," Eddie said to the bartender. "Meet my friend Desmond Shanahan from the FBI." Lexy grunted and gave a minimum nod. "From this day forward, Lexy Petrov will say that happy hour doesn't start until Eddie Dunne and Desmond Shanahan come through the door."

Eddie ordered a diet cola for himself and a Stoli on the rocks for Boland. Boland raised his eyebrows at Eddie, wondering why the hell he was talking so loudly and who Desmond Shanahan was. Eddie called Lexy over and whispered to him. Lexy whispered back, then turned away.

"What did you ask him?" Boland said.

"I gave him a chance to help me find my daughter. He told me to go fuck myself. Now the prick is fair game."

Lexy set their drinks down. Small bowls of caraway and sunflower seeds were spread around the bar.

"Lexy Petrov and I used to be friends," Eddie said, speaking a little louder. A few heads at the bar turned his way. "Lexy once told me he has ten occupations. Isn't that interesting, Desmond? Busy, busy man, our Lexy. He told me many things in the days when we drank together as friends."

The tables were half-filled. Eddie recognized most of the customers' faces. He knew the waitress Ludmilla very well.