The Con Man's Daughter (28 page)

Boland dropped Eddie at his back door and left. The house was empty except for a cop looking for a book on Eddie's shelves. The Yonkers Police Department had stationed a uniformed cop at the house after the incident with the head on the lawn. Maybe the grenade incident would keep them around awhile longer.

Less than an hour after the explosion, Eddie had called Kevin from Brooklyn. He didn't want them hearing it on the news. Yelling into the phone, Eddie told him that he never got touched. That was the same line he'd used when he called his father after every fight. By the time the family saw the bruises, the swelling, and his sewn-up eyelids, the anxiety level would have diminished. They never knew how often he pissed blood, or bit off chunks of his tongue.

More than ever before, Eddie wanted his family to go about their business. Act normal, so Grace wouldn't sense the fear. That's why the house was quiet. Grace was in school, Kevin and Martha in the bar. Business as usual. Except for Kate. And Babsie, who was down at One Police Plaza, poring over Eddie's personnel file, searching for a fourteen-year-old smoking gun.

Eddie slid leftover pizza into the microwave, box and all. He knew the crust would be tough and chewy, but speed was all that mattered. Two minutes later, he sat there listening to his kitchen clock and washing a slice down with a diet cola. Diet belonged to Babsie. Eddie didn't drink diet and Kate didn't drink cola. He couldn't taste it, but it soothed his parched throat. He had another one, refilling the cup with ice. No way he could handle more coffee. He'd had three cups before Matty Boland arrived at the Six-oh with a Starbucks Grande for the trip home. The only negative thing Boland said was that he didn't feel sorry for him; he'd warned him not to go to Alice B's. Now he was going to have to live with the label of being the first known victim of a lesbian hand grenade.

In the shower, pieces of stone and glass washed down from his hair and ears. He easily located the head abrasions the EMT had told him were there. The technician figured the SUV he'd hidden under bounced from the grenade's concussion and hammered his head into the pavement. Hot water stung his skin. The good news was that his ears were improving. The ringing burglar alarm seemed to be less audible as the hours passed. Hopefully, the distance to his daughter was now shorter. He'd struck a nerve today. Apparently, the mere mention of the name Zina Rabinovich brought fireworks.

After he got out of the shower, Eddie hunted down the keys to Kate's Toyota Camry. Martha had picked it up from the shop; he knew she would have stuck the keys in some odd place, not on the rack in the kitchen, where everyone else left them. He found them in Kate's top dresser drawer. It was the first time he'd been in her room since she'd disappeared, a full week ago.

On the wall above Kate's dresser was a small crucifix. On the dresser were pictures of Grace, him, and Eileen, and a small silver statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary she'd bought with her lunch money in second grade at Christ the King. Kate had a love-hate relationship with the

Catholic church. More and more, she'd been speaking out, always shocking her aunt Martha. Kate believed that if the church would let women be priests, or allow the male priests to marry, it could solve the priest shortage tomorrow. "A bunch of old fogies hold us back," she claimed, "out of touch with reality, and driving the church straight to hell."

To Eddie, religion was a private matter. He couldn't care less what the robed politicos did; he'd find his own spirituality. He'd never been happy with the new Catholic church anyway, all the handshakes and Protestant singing. Kate's old fogies even screwed up the Mass itself. They took away the Latin and destroyed the mystery. Mystery demands faith, and religion is about nothing except faith, Eddie thought. The words are a drone anyway, so what's the difference? Bring back the Latin; turn the priests around.

His head buzzed with coffee and worry as he tried to fall asleep. He'd reached a point in his life where he wanted desperately to believe in God, and especially that big reunion in the sweet hereafter. Only that belief made growing old bearable. Eddie wanted a chance to apologize to those he'd hurt for no reason, and to connect with those he'd ignored because he was too stupid to see their goodness. He wanted to inhale the incense and believe it all, but so much evidence pointed at a random, uncaring deity. If that's a wrong idea, then why does a child suffer while so many scumbags, as many as you can possibly imagine, walk free? Don't even try to explain it to me. Not now.

Eddie had been drifting in and out of sleep when he heard Babsie's voice in the living room. She was talking to Kevin about the hand grenade. Kevin told her about

Eddie yelling into the phone, then an old story about their dad. Whenever the smoke alarm had gone off in the restaurant, Kieran, going deaf at the time, paid no attention to it. When one of the customers at the bar mentioned that maybe Kieran should look into it, he would say he assumed it was just the battery on his hearing aid going bad. Listening to Kevin and Babsie talk, Eddie felt removed, outside of himself. They both seemed to be amazed that someone would throw a hand grenade. He wasn't. Maybe that was Eddie's problem: Nothing ever surprised him. Nobody was ever more evil than he expected them to be.

Babsie came by his room as he was starting to pull on his pants, but a back spasm flopped him back on the bed.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Getting up."

"Looked more like a twisting half gainer."

"What time is it?"

"Early. You've got time. Grab another hour or so."

Babsie had dressed for the trip to NYPD headquarters. Her grayish blond hair was back in a ponytail, all business. She wore a black pantsuit that had a short waist-length jacket. She even wore lipstick.

"Thomas Edison used to doze in a chair, holding a pencil," Eddie said, struggling with his pants. "When the pencil fell out of his hand, he'd get up and go back to work."

"Nobody was throwing grenades at Edison," she said.

"Is Grace here?" Eddie asked, squinting at the clock. He knew he'd slept too long.

Babsie said she'd picked Grace up from school, and now she was over at Kevin's house, jumping on the pogo stick.

"She's coming over for dinner in a few minutes. If you're getting up, fix your pants. I don't want Martha coming in and seeing this. She'll be calling me a Polack whore."

With Babsie's help, Eddie got to his feet. The repercussions of rolling around Stillwell Avenue had set in. A pain shot from his hip down his right leg. Babsie said it was probably sciatica. Her brother had it from jumping off the bleachers after a softball game. Eddie managed to get his pants up, but then reaching for his shoes was a challenge.

"I need to talk to you before they come over," she said. "I saw your personnel folder today."

"And you weren't struck blind?"

"What the hell happened? You had a great career going. Came on the job in 1966, made detective in only three years. That's damn fast for the NYPD. Couple of years in the best detective squads in Manhattan. Rated number one in the thirteenth precinct squad. I read all those glowing evaluations. I could see all the commendations in your file. Then comes 1974 and you get transferred to Brooklyn. It's like you fell off the face of the earth."

"Coney Island," Eddie said. "The Irish always get burned at the beach."

"You got scorched. Mostly petty IAB bullshit, at first. Then you got serious. Three serious rips for drinking on duty. You still made some good collars, but in between was party time. Despite that, you somehow hung in there and survived for ten years. Then you went down in flames in 1984. Right after the Rosenfeld case. I can't help it, Eddie, everything circles back around to that case."

Eddie knew he couldn't avoid rehashing the Rosenfeld homicide. He told her again how the couple were murdered in their home by Ray Nunez and Santo Vestri, who stole over four million dollars in cash from them. He was getting sick of repeating this story; he should have cards printed. He told her again that Rosenfeld was a lawyer whose expertise was in setting up phony corporations and moving money through them. He moved millions for Evesi Volshin, a Russian criminal. The cash was dirty, mostly from the gasoline-tax scheme. Nunez and Vestri entered the Rosenfeld house in Manhattan Beach, killed the couple in front of their little girl, and took off with the cash. Eddie and the Priest spotted them leaving, followed them to a nearby park, where a gun battle broke out. Nunez and Vestri were both killed.

"I called around," Babsie said. "They have old rosters stored in Queens. I got a few names of old Brooklyn squad detectives. Some of them are working big jobs in private security. I got pointed to this former squad boss, Jack Ferguson."

"I know 'Tomato Juice' Jack."

"He lives in Palm Beach, Florida now. He tells me that Nunez and Vestri were shitbird junkies."

"I told you that."

"Not exactly. But forget that. Did you know that six weeks before the Rosenfeld murders, Nunez and Vestri were suspected of ripping off the wedding of one of Angelo Caruso's nieces? They grabbed the cash bag right out of the bride's hands as she was leaving the reception. Four radio cars responded and the Six-oh is pretty specific. They estimated that over twenty grand was taken. Ferguson said they knew it was Nunez and Vestri, but they were never arrested. The complainant, one Angelo Caruso, later denied the robbery'd ever happened, said it was all a big misunderstanding."

"How much did you take in at
your
wedding?"

"Not enough to pay for the booze. I had to go and marry into the only cheap Italian family in New York. But that's not the point."

"I get the point. Somebody dropped the complaint, most likely because they made some other deal with Nunez and Vestri. Maybe Angelo Caruso takes these guys aside and tells them if they want to live, they had to do a job for him. The Rosenfelds were that job."

"Sounds like you've thought about this before, Eddie."

"It's easier than thinking about my own problems."

"I figure Nunez and Vestri weren't supposed to kill the Rosenfelds, but it got out of hand."

"Why think that?" Eddie said. "Maybe the murder was intentional. Part of the plan. Marvin Rosenfeld was a smart guy. He could link Nunez and Vestri back to Angelo. Makes sense they had to kill him."

"So you agree with me that Nunez and Vestri were hired by Angelo Caruso?"

"Walking dead men. And the Priest and I executed them, leaving no witnesses."

"You're being a jerk now. If you knew it was set up, you wouldn't have turned all that money in. You would have known the Rosenfelds were already dead, and there'd be no one to say how much money was stolen. Guys like Paulie the Priest don't let four million dollars slip through their fingers that easily."

He could see Grace and Martha walking across the lawn. They both were laughing. No one else but Grace could get a laugh out of Martha.

Babsie's phone rang as Grace came through the bedroom door. She'd tiptoed down the hall and peeked into the room. When she saw him sitting on the bed, she ran and jumped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist. The first thing she said was that someone named Roberto had to go to the principal's office for using bad words.

"You want to know which ones?" she said.

My God, he thought holding her close, has anyone ever missed out on more of his life than I have? He looked over at Babsie, who'd put her phone away and was standing there staring at him, eyes moist.

"Bad?" he asked.

"The lab compared the hair samples," she said. "It's a match."

Chapter 32

Monday

6:40 P.M.

jdie Dunne felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as he pulled into the parking lot of the El Greco diner. For the first time in a week, he had a real shot at finding his daughter. Fredek Dolgev had been released from custody earlier that afternoon. His lawyer posted bail before the NYPD lab identified the red hair found in Dolgev's boardwalk apartment as belonging to Kate. Eddie was betting the attorney still didn't know. In fact, he was counting on it. The minute that knowledge reached Borodenko, the maintenance man would become a liability.

The El Greco was a large sixties-style Brooklyn diner. Square and flat-roofed, it was wrapped in enough shiny metal to replate both the
Monitor
and the
Merrimac
. The street-side chrome was pocked with hundreds of dings and dents from car bumpers. Eddie parked against the rear fence, facing front, so he could watch both the street and the entrance to the diner. One last check of the other cars in the parking lot, then he climbed the four steps up to the diner.

He had no doubt that as soon as Dolgev was released, he'd immediately returned to the comfort of routine. Anyone who ate in the same restaurant three times a day, every day, could be considered a sure thing. This guy was like clockwork. The clock said he should have entered the diner ten minutes ago. He'd be sitting alone in a booth, looking out at Sheepshead Bay.

Neither Boland nor Babsie knew of Dolgev's methodical eating habits. Eddie had kept it to himself. He didn't want any civil servant using phrases like "diminished mental capacity" in the middle of the beating Eddie was prepared to inflict. Kidnappers got no special disability exemption. Dolgev was not the innocent here. He'd tell what he knew, period. Nothing more, nothing less. A week's worth of Eddie's pent-up rage would open the Russian's mouth-no matter how long it took. Brutality, like beauty, was in the eye of the beholder.

Inside the diner, all seating revolved around the kitchen. A counter and chrome stools faced the kitchen. Behind that, loose tables for four, which could be pulled together for larger groups. Red vinyl booths lined the windows. The floor was carpeted in a dark burgundy. Eddie told the hostess he was meeting a friend. He said he'd scout around first, see if he'd arrived.

At 6:50, the El Greco was a madhouse. Conversations shouted over clattering plates and silverware boosted the noise to prison-riot levels. At a table near the door, a little girl colored on the restaurant's place mat-an outdated outline of the nations of Europe. She carefully kept between the borders as her mother made secret arrangements for a cake with candles. The mother spoke in English with a common Russian accent, but her clothes were upscale. "Hold the cake until after dinner," she told the hostess, "or she'll never eat her vegetables."