The Con Man's Daughter (33 page)

Eddie turned his face to look. The floor creaked again.

A guttural shriek pierced the room; then a metal bat glanced off his face and slammed against the floor. He yanked his arm out from under the bed and tried to push away. The second swing caught him square on the left elbow, the next across his legs as he rolled to get away. Another blow on his sciatic right hip. On his back, he rolled to his left and brought his knees to his chest. As she stepped forward and cocked to swing again, he kicked forward, springing out with both feet, using his full length. His right foot caught her on the thigh and drove her into the wall. She bounced off, keeping her balance, but Eddie was already up, reaching for the aluminum softball bat. He snatched it out of her hands. Cat-quick, she squatted to the floor and came up with a black revolver.

"Bastard," she said, pushing the gun at his chest with both hands. "Drop the bat."

She kept the familiar black gun pointed at him as she backed away. He felt his empty holster. The gun must have fallen out during batting practice.

"Zina," he said. "All I want-"

"Is your precious daughter, you fuck. Your precious fucking daughter. I am so sick of it. Don't say another word."

Zina wore black jeans and a white T-shirt with a Key West logo. Her black hair hung straight to her shoulder blades. Bangs covered her forehead down to her eyebrows. She was olive-skinned and large-nosed, with a complexion more heavily pockmarked than was evident in the booking photo. But her body could stop a regiment-muscled, lithe, and shapely. Eddie knew hers was the face in the sketches.

"Is Kate okay?" he asked. "Just tell me that."

"Put the fucking bat down."

"We can work this out, Zina," he said, putting the bat on the bed, hands up. Mr. Full Cooperation. "Just tell me how she is."

"Don't waste your breath, Dunne. Just take your fucking shirt off."

"It doesn't have to be this way."

"Just take your fucking shirt off. Let me see that flabby old body."

Eddie unbuttoned his shirt. He knew she was looking to see if he was wired. He threw the shirt on the bed in front of her to see if she'd flinch. She didn't. Too focused, or too crazy.

"We can both win here, Zina."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. You got some line of shit. I know all about it."

"What do you know?"

"The pants, too. Take the pants off."

"Where's my daughter, Zina?"

"You don't even know how funny that is, you manipulating fuck. Scumbags like you don't deserve children."

"Tell me what you want from me," he said.

"All of it."

"Money? You're talking money?"

"You think this is about money?"

"Money can solve it," he said.

"Pants off. Didn't you hear me, you stupid fuck?"

"You can have everything I own," he said, hopping on one leg while he pulled his pants off, but turning as he did so, trying to shift gradually to her right side.

"Got a fast million, fast Eddie?"

"A million? I can do a million."

"How about three million?"

"I can get three."

"Stop moving," she said, pointing the gun at his crotch. "You move any closer and I blow that off."

"Let's go get the money," he said.

"When I'm ready, asshole."

Eddie held his pants by the cuffs, the belt end down. She stepped back quickly, not sure what he was getting ready to do.

"You're not stupid, Zina. We can have a business arrangement. You take the money; I take Kate. All cash, nothing marked. You go your way; I go mine. Not another word about it. Pure business."

"Just cops all over it."

"No cops. I won't go to the cops. I want her back, Zina. I'm not stupid enough to bring those Keystone Kops with me."

"Give me a break."

"No cops, I swear. Anywhere you want to meet. Name the spot. Just me and the money."

"I'm getting outta here, now. Don't try to follow me. I see you follow me, we'll fuck her up."

'Talk to me," he said. "Make me understand it."

"You can't understand," she said. "Guys like you are incapable. You think it's all so easy. Women are so fucking easy."

"Right. I've been an asshole about women all my life. You can start getting even with me now, Zina."

"You think women can't outsmart you or hurt you. I can do both."

"I believe you."

"Believe this. You keep fucking with me… somebody's getting hurt. I know how to hurt you."

"I deserve to be hurt, not my daughter."

"You deserve to suffer."

"I should be suffering," he said. "Make me suffer more. Go ahead. Beat me, humiliate me. Punish me. I deserve it. You've got the gun."

"If it was up to me…"

"Who is it up to?"

"One more word," she said, walking backward now. Eddie knew she wasn't going to shoot him. Borodenko wanted him alive.

"Call whoever it's up to. The phone's in the kitchen. Call him."

A gunshot inside a house booms like an M80 firecracker in a metal trash barrel. The muzzle flash happens so quickly, you think you imagined it. But the echo of the boom lingers. Only now, as the acrid smell of cordite burned his nostrils, did he understand the slight motion she'd made just before the boom, when she'd pointed the barrel to his right, over his shoulder. The bullet went into the back wall, above the window that looked out at the Cyclone.

"That's for telling me the phone's in the kitchen," she said. "In my own house. The balls on you."

"You're right-I'm an obnoxious bastard. But call the boss. Tell him I'm ready to get the money. He'll be proud of you."

"You think any fucking man gives me orders?"

"No, I'm sorry. You're in charge."

"Fucking A," she said, dipping the barrel of the gun down to point at his crotch. She opened the door behind her. "You follow me, your daughter dies. If I see anyone else, any cop tailing me, she dies."

"Let me get some money for you right now. Good-faith money. No strings attached. I owe you big-time for keeping her alive."

"You're even stupider than I imagined," she said, halfway out the door. "You don't even know who's keeping
you
alive."

Chapter 37

Wednesday

6:00 P.M.

"Is it an Irish thing, or what?" Babsie said. "You only look contented when someone kicks the shit out of you." A cracked molar made it uncomfortable for Eddie to talk. His tongue rubbed raw every time he swallowed or spoke. In the hours since colliding with Zina Rabinovich's bat, his left elbow had worsened, the forearm and wrist more swollen, stiffness extending down to his fingers. The fact that he knew Kate was alive numbed all the pain.

"Legally," she said, "Zina could have killed you."

"Or had me arrested. But she didn't do either." He was starving despite the bad tooth and the fact it was Wednesday night at the North End Tavern. Wednesday night meant franks and beans. It was the slowest night for customers, because, according to Kevin, people wouldn't pay for food that reminded them of bad times. "Depression food," he called it. Stubborn Martha always countered that if that were true, all-night diners and dirty-water hot dog carts would have gone out of business years ago.

"I'm bringing Zina in," Babsie said. "Maybe Kevin can pick her out of a lineup."

"She'll just lawyer up and disappear on us. Hold off for now."

"So you get another chance at her? You've had beau-coup chances, Eddie. Time for bravado is long gone. Time to look out for little you know who."

"She's not after Grace."

After taking the beating from Zina, Eddie walked it off on the Coney Island boards. He sought out the old-timers, people whose entire lives revolved around cotton candy, french fries, and now the gold mine of video games. The boardwalk held no secrets. In short order, Eddie heard all about the deaths of the old couple who had owned and run Coney Custards for decades. They'd passed away within weeks of each other and left the business and the building to their pompous ass of a son. And that was a crying shame. The son, too good for the Coney life, preferred to sip martinis in the upscale bar and marina in Great Kills Harbor that his parents had worked themselves to death to buy for him. He'd hired Zina to run the ice-cream business. The consensus on Zina was that she was an unstable lesbian, a woman anyone with good sense avoided. He already knew that much.

"Whoever Zina wants," Babsie said, "she'll come after you, and Grace will get caught in the cross fire. With any luck, it'll be just you and Zina,
mono a memo
. The way it was destined to be."

"A little melodramatic."

"I'm just trying to fit in," she said. "I've doubled the guard on Grace starting tomorrow morning. In case you can't leap this tall building in a single bound."

Working off Probation Department sentencing reports,

Babsie had constructed a background on Zina Rabinovich. Zina was the third daughter of a Russian shoemaker and a seamstress, and their first child born in America. Zina's mother died a year later in Coney Island Hospital during the birth of their fourth child, a boy. The father, who refused to speak English, worked hard but never made enough. Her oldest sister committed suicide at sixteen. The second girl vanished. Social Services said they'd all been physically and emotionally abused. After she left school, the only records of Zina were criminal: five times grand larceny auto and a variety of assaults.

"You're sure you never met Zina before?" Babsie said.

"Before Parrot identified her last week, I'd never even heard the name."

"Never ran across her? Not even as part of an investigation?"

"She's in her twenties, Babsie. She would have been in diapers when I was a cop in Brooklyn."

"Then why does she hate you so much?"

"I have no idea."

Eddie looked over at Grace, who was busy placing a chair at each end of the shuffleboard table. Ever since Kate disappeared, Kevin had worked tirelessly to keep Grace busy. Every time he saw her eyes start to glaze over in a thousand-mile stare, he concocted a game of something. Wednesday was easy, shuffleboard night. Kevin had bought an old-fashioned shuffleboard table that ran the length of the back room, taking up the space of three booths. Franks and beans night was always slow, so their new tradition, a shuffleboard challenge, had become a marathon. Kevin would string the game out as long as she wanted to play. Anything for Gracie. If she asked him to turn cartwheels, he'd say, "No problemo." It wouldn't be pretty, though, two-hundred-pound Irish cartwheels.

"I want to get a look at Zina," Babsie said. "And I mean now. I'll hold off on the lineup, but I want to eyeball her myself."

"Staten Island, tomorrow," Eddie said. "It's on her calendar. Last Thursday, I tailed Mrs. Borodenko's Mercedes there. I didn't know it was her at the time, but Zina was the woman driving. They had lunch in Jimmy's Bistro on Hylan Boulevard. Might be a regular thing."

"Long way to go for lunch," Babsie said. "You sure there's not a little secret something going on between these two? A little candlelight and wine hanky-panky?"

"Definitely the wine. Boland says that Yuri hired Zina to keep his wife away from booze. She can't get a drink in Brighton Beach anymore. Bars aren't allowed to serve her when Yuri's not there. Going to Staten Island, far away from anyone who knows them… maybe they're thinking a drink that no one sees never really happened."

"If that were true, my ex-husband would have worn a hood."

Babsie asked to see the notes he took in Zina's apartment. He took another opportunity to change position, shift some weight off his right hip. Between the alleged sciatica and the baseball bat injuries, Eddie had all he could do to walk around looking like he was less than eighty years old.

"How did the nuns let you get away with this handwriting?" she said.

"They didn't. That's why my knuckles look like this. I tell everyone it was from fighting, but it was Sister Mary Elizabeth's metal ruler."

Babsie copied down the information from Zina's calendar and bills. Eddie arranged himself in the booth, trying to find a comfortable position. He'd never realized how hard the wooden benches were.

"What kind of company is Celltech?" she said.

"I would think something scientific: biology, computer? Your guess is as good as mine."

The one thing he wasn't guessing about was that Zina was the only known link to his daughter. If Yuri Borodenko were here, he'd go to him and make a deal. Yuri was a businessman. Without him, Eddie needed a way to get to Zina without igniting a psychotic reaction. He knew that a single spark was enough, and she could blast off to the moon.

"Okay, say Zina was too young," Babsie said. "Is it possible you screwed her older sisters or her mother, in any sense of the word?"

"I wasn't quite the wild man you think. Besides, I would have recognized something about her. I'm good with faces, Babsie. People I haven't seen in forty years, I recognize immediately. I'd know who Zina was. Some family resemblance."

"What about your ex-partner?" Babsie said. "He was quite the swordsman."

"Paulie was in that precinct for a long time. He probably screwed half the female population, in every sense of the word."

"Exactly what I've been saying. Since the day they identified his head, I've been saying the same thing, Eddie. This is all about Paul Caruso."

"Then why isn't it over? If Zina already killed Paulie, it should be over."

"Zina didn't kill Paulie," Babsie said, flipping through her notes. "Zina never left the country. She doesn't even have a passport. Sergei Zhukov killed Paulie."

Babsie told him that one of Boland's feds had reached out for Sergei's travel activity for the past two years. He'd racked up some major mileage, mostly Moscow to New York. But on April first, he had flown from JFK to Rome. He returned to New York five days later, on the afternoon of April sixth, traveling alone.

"If Sergei returned on the afternoon of the sixth," Eddie said, "he had nothing to do with Kate's kidnapping."

"The guy already had enough on his plate that day."

According to Babsie's notes, Sergei returned to New York on Monday, April sixth, on Delta flight 149. The flight left Rome for JFK at 9:55 a.m. Sergei, however, had arrived in Rome only two hours before that on a connecting flight: Alitalia 7708 from Palermo, Sicily.