The Con Man's Daughter

by Ed Dee

  "So what happens now, Eddie?" Babsie said, glancing again at Grace. "You know… with you and the feebs, since Lukin… went away?"

  "They still want Borodenko."

  "Common goals with the feds, that a good thing?" Babsie said, raising her eyebrows. "Who knows, it may work, for the first time in history. But then, you can always count on your old pal Boland, right?"

  "He's not that bad."

  "Oh no, the guy's the salt of the earth."

  "Not someone you'd want dating your daughter, but a good cop."

  "What is it with guys sticking up for each other? I'd rather see a three-hundred-pound Hell's Angel at my front door."

  That made Grace laugh. She'd put her head against Eddie's chest and closed her eyes, but when Eddie set the kilt aside, she sat right up and handed him another piece of clothing, a denim jacket with two more snaps sewn in as buttons.

  "Let me see the picture of Misha," Eddie said.

  "It's not the guy your brother saw going into the house," Babsie said, handing him a photocopy of a Polaroid. 'This kid's blond, not bad-looking. Kevin said the guy in the jumpsuit was dark-skinned."

  "Kevin saw this picture?"

  "I stopped by the bar on the way over here," Babsie said. "I wanted to show Kev the finished sketch. We're sending it all over Westchester and the city, most of them going to Brooklyn. And yes, I sent a stack to Boland."

  "I'll make sure Boland shares with you," Eddie said.

  "Just work product," Babsie said. "Nothing else I want to share with that guy."

  Eddie asked to see the sketch Kevin had done. Babsie pulled a flyer from the case folder. She put it flat on the table and turned it around so Eddie could see it. "That's the wrong one," Eddie said. "Don't give me that; I just checked with your brother."

  "Can't be," he said. "It's the same one I did." Eddie tried to put Grace on the floor, but she clutched his shirt. He carried her over to the counter and grabbed the sketch he'd worked on earlier that day in the precinct on Snyder Avenue in Brooklyn. He put it on the table next to the Yonkers PD sketch, then turned them both toward Babsie.

  "It's not that close," she said.

  "The hell it's not. It's the same face I saw in Brooklyn." Eddie pushed the two sketches side by side under the bright light that hung over the table. What he could see, which Babsie couldn't, were the things other than ink. Kevin's sketch was more frontal, more defined. Eddie's mind added an olive skin tone, eyes wider in excitement, a mouth slightly more full, and open, breathing hard.

  "I can't remember names," Eddie said. "Five minutes after I'm introduced, I'm struggling to remember the name I just heard. But I know faces. This is him."

  Chapter 10

  Wednesday, April 8

  12:45 A.M.

  Eddie fell asleep next to Grace, listening to the murmur of sounds coming from the TV in the living room. He jolted awake less than an hour later, his hair drenched in sweat. He'd heard Kate's voice, a hoarse whisper. Her "allergy voice," they called it. She was saying something he couldn't quite understand. Whispering it. He lay there, listening hard, knowing it was a dream but needing to hear her again, trying desperately to understand what she was saying.

  He was still awake when something rang. The sound confused him at first. He fumbled around on the floor, under the bed, looking for the source of the strange music. Then he remembered: It was in his jacket pocket. Kevin's cell phone, ringing to the tune of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."

  The caller had a French accent; the Parrot could do them all. "In front of Nedick's in an hour, and bring five large," the faux Frenchman said. Within ten minutes, Eddie had dressed, asked Babsie to stay with Grace, and dug ten thousand dollars out of a metal box hidden in the tiles of his bedroom ceiling. The voice of Sinatra filled the Olds as he backed down the long driveway. He was going like hell down the Saw Mill River Parkway before Frank finished "Nancy with the Laughing Face."

  It always amazed Eddie how quickly you could get around the city of New York in the wee small hours. The West Side Highway was wide-open, but the Third World surface played hell with the Oldsmobile's shocks. Twenty-two minutes: Yonkers to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the Belt Parkway. He slowed only for the tolls, where he paid cash. His built-in paranoia would never allow him to have his movements electronically recorded by the E-ZPass system.

  The roads were empty; the only danger was getting caught speeding. In his pocket, just in case, he had an NYPD detective shield. It was a copy of his old shield, an imperceptible sixteenth of an inch smaller. The sixteenth of an inch made it a souvenir, not criminal impersonation. Eddie owned two; the other was pinned to an old uniform, stuck in the back of his closet. Most cops used the fake shield in order to avoid the ten-day fine for losing the real one. The real one sat in a safety-deposit box until the day they retired. It was the first lesson of police work: that nothing is what it appears to be.

  Nedick's really meant Nathan's. Nedick's, once a ubiquitous New York chain, specialized in the odd combination of hot dogs and orange drink. It served as shorthand for Parrot's old meeting spot. The Parrot always screwed up the two hot dog stands, and it became a joke, then a code. Eddie knew Parrot would wait up in the subway station across from Nathan's, checking to see if they'd been followed. For a guy whose clothes screamed "Look at me," Parrot knew how to hide.

  Eddie knew that nobody hides like a Gypsy. They exist without birth certificates, school records, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, credit cards, and bank accounts. Certain males get a driver's license, but no more than necessary. They have no insurance-hospital or life-no Medicare. Most have no records on paper. They intentionally avoid any assimilation into the culture for fear of "pollution." No one has a clue as to how many Gypsies move through the world.

  A heavy mist off the ocean dampened the streets of Coney Island. Eddie cruised the corner, past Nathan's, down to the boardwalk. He made a U-turn and parked next to a cotton-candy stand. Not long ago, hookers and junkies had ruled the streets at this hour, but then Comstat changed the way the NYPD attacked recurring street crimes. In April, it was now quiet enough to hear the surf. Eddie waited until traffic ceased, then walked to the corner to let Parrot see him. He stepped back behind a ten-foot pile of black trash bags and checked his Sig Sauer. A rat startled him as it scurried from under the black bags and disappeared into an alley.

  Across the street, under the el, a boarded-up social club had once been a summer hangout for members of the Gambino crime family. Eddie's old partner, Paulie "the Priest" Caruso, had told him that in Coney Island's heyday they called it the "goombahs' beach embassy." Years later, it became a Puerto Rican after-hours spot. The sign above the door read no guns, no knives, no sneakers.

  A commercial van went by, tires hissing on the wet pavement. It was a Ford, painted with just a coat of primer, its windows blackened. The name sammy sosa was spray-painted on the side, above the flag of the

  Dominican Republic. Eddie didn't think a Gypsy would drive anything with a flag, but it probably rendered the van theft-proof. It turned down the dead-end street and stopped behind Eddie's car. The left bunker flashed, then the right. Eddie stuffed the Sig Sauer in his jacket pocket and walked back toward the van. He opened the door on the passenger's side and got in.

  "Eddie Dunne, come back to life," the Parrot said.

  "You thought I was dead?"

  "Caranina saw it."

  A heavy canvas curtain hung behind the front seat, blocking any view behind them. Eddie yanked it aside. The back of the van was carpeted ceiling to floor. Heavily taped cardboard boxes littered the floor. They were marked, and labeled with a variety of shipping labels: UPS, FedEx, USPS.

  "You've been down South," Eddie said.

  "Land of Dixie." The Parrot wore a white satin waiter's jacket over a yellow Hawaiian shirt, which seemed to glow in the glare of street light. His hair, dyed a bright orange, was dulled by the grease needed to lacquer it back.

  "Miscellaneous jewelry and electronic d
evices," Eddie said, gesturing toward the packages in the back.

  "From my cousins, for when they return to New York."

  They were all cousins. These particular cousins were mobile con men who spent the winter driving through the South, preying on the ignorant and elderly. They posed as housepainters, home repairmen, or driveway blacktop-pers. None of the work was ever done right: a watery coat of paint on a house, or oil sprayed on a driveway to make the old blacktop shine. The point was to grab the money and run: on to the next county, the next state. Eddie knew the boxes in the back of the Parrot's van contained items stolen from the "clients' " homes. Gypsy women were always fainting, needing a glass of water. In the confusion, someone slipped into the bedroom. They mailed the swag north to avoid getting caught holding stolen property.

  "You gotta help me," Eddie said. "I don't care what it costs."

  "For my friend, I bleed to death, right here," the Parrot said. He grabbed a box cutter from a console tray and held it to his wrist. A thin red line appeared before Eddie could stop him.

  "Whatever we say between us," Eddie said, "will never be spoken of again. I haven't seen or heard from you in years."

  The Parrot blotted his wrist with a napkin and put his feet up on the dashboard. His shoes were black patent leather. He lit a cigarillo, then dabbed at his wrist.

  "Who took your daughter?" Parrot said. "This is our question."

  "Borodenko is our answer," Eddie said.

  "I thought he was in Russia."

  "He is. Who runs the show when he isn't here?"

  "Nobody," Parrot said, shrugging.

  "Ever hear of a guy named Sergei Zhukov?"

  "Crazy Sergei. Breaks heads for Borodenko."

  "Tell me what he looks like."

  "Shorter than me, but wide, like a truck. Tattoos all over-both hands, on his neck, and on his brain, I think. Also, I hear his girlfriend's name is tattooed on his dick."

  "How romantic."

  Parrot said the tattoo on Sergei's neck was a spiderweb that appeared to be growing up out of his collar. Eddie knew that was a common Russian prison tattoo for junkies.

  Eddie handed him two sketches, his and Kevin's version of the same face.

  "You know this guy?" Eddie said.

  Parrot bent over, holding the sketch at an angle to catch the beam of a streetlight coming through the windshield. A gust of wind rocked the van. From across the street came the sound of the B, D, or F train screeching to the last stop on the Sixth Avenue line.

  "The face looks like it's Arab, or something Mideastern," Parrot said. "You sure it's Russian?"

  Eddie knew this wouldn't be easy. The Parrot was a businessman first; he was not going to make this seem easy. "I have the five grand."

  "Money is not important here. Important is you get your daughter back. You know my love for all children. Nothing else is more important to me. You know that."

  'Ten grand," Eddie said.

  "I would like to take your ten grand, but I don't know this guy. The face doesn't look right. I don't think this is a Russian. A Palestinian, a Syrian maybe. Something very different, my friend."

  "I can go higher," Eddie said.

  "Not higher, please, between old friends. This one kidnapped your daughter. I will work without sleep, without food until I find him."

  "He also stole a BMW from a storage garage in Elmsford."

  "I don't know Elmsford."

  "In Westchester County, near White Plains. It's a hike from Brooklyn. That's why I think not too many people qualify here."

  "In the days when I stole cars," Parrot said, "I would never use a closed storage spot."

  "You quit stealing cars?"

  "Special occasion only," he said.

  "This car was a black BMW. Supposed to be delivered to a pier in New Jersey on Monday. That shipment was canceled."

  "Postponed one week," Parrot said.

  "Was it a special occasion?"

  "Mercedes-Benz occasion," Parrot said. Then, changing the subject, he added, "You see, the trouble with closed storage, especially outside the city, is that you risk the added charge of burglary. Besides, it's too much trouble, unless you have someone inside."

  "This is the someone inside," Eddie said as he showed him the picture of Misha.

  "Here I can help you, my friend. I know this one. Young Latvian boy. Blond hair, six foot, well built. Works for Coney Island Amusements."

  "How do I find him?" Eddie said.

  "Follow the junkies."

  "He's a junkie?"

  "Club drugs," Parrot said. "Ecstasy, and like that. When he first got here, no drugs. Then he tried to work more jobs. Four months is short, and they see the money. Money, money, money with the Russian kids. This one started a job in Borodenko's club, as a busboy or dishwasher. Now he rocks around the clock."

  "Which club?"

  "Not the Brighton Beach clubs," Parrot said. "The Eurobar. Big-money club in Manhattan. Fancy women, ten-dollar drinks."

  Eddie took the stack of bills from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to the Parrot. The Gypsy flipped through it and took about half. He returned the other half to Eddie.

  "I will take the rest when I find tüis one in the picture," he said. "When I find your daughter, I will take your ten grand."

  "Find my daughter and we'll make it twenty," Eddie said.

  Chapter 11

  Wednesday

  2:50 A.M.

  Car horns blared in the standstill traffic as Eddie Dunne crossed the street in front of the hottest club in Manhattan. The line outside the Eurobar stretched around the corner-club freaks, hustlers, and wanna-bes, all shivering in the damp night air. At the front of the line, a bottle blonde in a red rubber skirt sex-talked a bouncer, scheming to get past the velvet rope, while security boss Richie Costa stood in the doorway, looking for the money people, the ones he whisked right in. Costa was trying to ignore a drunken Yuppie, when he spotted a face he recognized. He yelled to Eddie Dunne and waved him over.

  "That's bullshit," the drunken Yuppie yelled. "You let him in. What the hell am I, some putz from Jersey?"

  Eddie had been prepared to flash his phony detective shield in the doorman's face, growl "Squad," and walk in like he owned the joint. But he had history with Costa; his presence at the door made that impossible. Eddie stepped over the rope and heard somebody in the crowd whisper the name of an aging movie star.

  "That's not Eastwood," the drunken Yuppie said. "I know Eastwood. This guy's nobody."

  "Someone is asking for a beating," Eddie said.

  "Tell me about it. I want to hit him so bad, my arm is twitching."

  "Want me to do it?"

  "I don't want him dead right here, Eddie. I've been hit by you, remember?"

  "Important thing is you remember," Eddie said.

  Costa's father was a bookmaker who used his connections to get Richie under the tutelage of Eddie's former trainer. The kid came into the gym looking like he'd spent his youth in some East Cupcake Jack La Lanne, working on his pecs and lats. But Irish Eddie Dunne's ring years had taught him that rippled muscle had nothing to do with fighting. In fact, most bodybuilders were slow, laboring, one-punch wonders. If they didn't take you out with the first shot, they became human punching bags. All Richie Costa needed was a chain to hang him from the ceiling.

  "I'm surprised to find you here," Eddie said. "I thought Russians owned this place."

  "Nah, this Jewish guy, Kleinman from Hoboken, owns it."

  "Kleinman's a front," Eddie said. "He fronted places for Lukin."

  It came back to Eddie, the key to fighting Richie Costa. He always remembered what worked against certain boxers. He could recall knockout punches the way baseball players remembered home runs: the date, time, the pitcher who threw a low slider on a three-and-one count, even the temperature that day. Start this guy off with a short left hook, Eddie thought, snap it into that sixpack midsection. Richie always kept his forearms up, protecting his face. Hit him up high and all
you wound up with were sore hands. But one to the gut and his elbows dropped.

  Eddie said, "You're not on the outs with the Bronx crew, are you?"

  "No, no, I still work for the same people. The Eurobar is a joint venture we have with this Russian businessman."

  "A joint venture? With Yuri Borodenko?"

  Eddie considered how much he should tell Richie. But if he could get inside, he wouldn't need him. He could find Misha on his own.

  "What can I tell you," Costa said, "the guy knows how to make money. We never been prejudiced against making money."

  "Keep an eye on the cash flow."

  "We ain't stupid, either, Eddie. We got a guy checks the books every night. I go in every so often, count the house, have a pop, then drift back out. I actually like it better out here. You'd be amazed how much these bobos will slip you just to get in this shithole."

  "Not to mention the women," Eddie said.

  "You wouldn't fucking believe it. Pussy gets thrown in your face out here like it's falling from the sky. Broads, they practically offer to go down on you right here if you'll let them in."

  "Sleep all day, score all night. My kinda job."

  "Yeah, that would be sweet, but I got a day job now, too. Stock market stuff. Going around with a suit and an attache" case, talking to stockbrokers, persuading them in regards to the merits of certain stocks. My wife thinks I'm Bill Fucking Gates."

  Eddie wondered what Richie carried in the attache case. Either a prosciutto and provolone hero or brass knuckles, but he didn't need documents for his end of the investment business. Yuri Borodenko had taken over Lukin's old partnership with the Italians in pump-and-dump schemes on Wall Street. The Russians handled the business end. They touted a certain stock until it became overvalued, then sold their shares, and the bottom fell out. The role of Richie Costa's crew was to "persuade" stockbrokers not to sell a stock the mob wanted only to be bought. Persuasion in one recent case had included a vicious beating right on the floor of the Stock Exchange.

  "What brings you out at this hour anyway?" Richie asked. "These broads in here are way, way too young for you. Your fucking heart will explode if you get one of these young broads in the sack."