by Ed Dee
He dropped Babsie off at home. She went right to her car and backed down the driveway, on her way to Christ the King. Grace would never be out of her sight until Zina was in custody. Eddie opened a stack of bills from the very top layer of the boodle in his trunk. He folded them and stuck them into his pocket.
On the way back to the photo shop, he thought about the face of Mrs. Borodenko. Before today, he'd seen her only from a distance. Though pale and drawn, she was stunning. As she stood next to him asking forgiveness, her face had flushed pink from the wine and the turmoil around her. Thick blond hair, cut short and blunt, and white-blond eyebrows framed those sad blue eyes. Once-in-a-lifetime blue eyes.
Eddie paid the photo bill with two musty hundred-dollar bills. He stacked the photos on the seat next to him as he drove to Brooklyn, but he kept picking them up and looking, bothered by this face. He thought he was past the age where you believe that one woman is more beautiful than a million others. That was Hollywood hype. After all, he'd spent his life in a city where you saw dozens of beautiful women every day, on every block, all incredibly attractive in their own way. By the time you got home, you couldn't remember any of them. But beauty excuses nothing.
Borodenko had been so proud of his new wife, showing her off at their wedding at the Mazurka. That night, Anatoly Lukin had told him the Russians were all about show; that was their weakness. He told him about the Potemkin villages of the eighteenth century, where Prince Potemkin created an illusion of prosperity in the Crimea to please Catherine the Great. As the czarina rode through the poor villages, Potemkin lined the streets with scrubbed-up children wearing expensive formal clothes. The fronts of the houses had been painted and fixed up. Immediately behind the facades were decay, poverty, and despair. After the czarina passed through, the clothes were retrieved from the children and delivered to the next village. "Nothing has changed," Lukin had said. "It's still all about show." Eddie Dunne would shine a spotlight on the dark corners of Borodenko's house.
Thursday night was the big bar night in Manhattan, the night all the workers hit happy hour with the office gang, figuring they could sleepwalk through Friday. In Brooklyn, however, Thursday night was for the regulars, just the audience Eddie was looking for.
Eddie started with the place he knew would cause the most controversy. He went right to the Mazurka, then straight to the lounge. The bartender was a thick-necked Russkie with a crew cut. Eddie showed him the picture of Zina and her boss's wife in full lip lock. The kid looked at it, then back at Eddie. Eddie dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. The bartender said something in Russian to a waiter picking up a drink order. The bartender tried to return the picture, but Eddie backed away.
In the Mazurka's men's room, Eddie posted pictures above each urinal. The ladies' room received twenty copies on the sink. In the kitchen, he stuck pictures on the wall near the spot where waiters posted their orders. The manager caught up to him as he was coming out of the kitchen.
"I'm leaving," Eddie said as the manager took a quick look at the picture, then called a guy sitting near the door. The bouncer looked like he might be an off-duty cop. "Pass these around, Officer," Eddie said. "Take some back to the station house."
For the next two hours, he put pictures in every bakery, grocery, shoe store, and bar. By the time he got to the Samovar, he was down to just two dozen pictures. Lexy Petrov was behind the bar, pouring a drink, and didn't see Eddie sit down. Eddie handed a picture to the young man sitting next to him. Lexy turned to see him and snatched the picture out of the kid's hands. He ripped it up and threw it in the trash.
"Not your property, Lexy," Eddie said.
"We have enough pictures," Lexy said. "A trash can full."
Eddie reached over the counter and grabbed Lexy by the shirt collar. He pulled him forward and whispered in his ear.
"Stukatch," Eddie said in Russian. A most shameful word. "Should I tell them, Lexy? Tell them you're the FBI snitch?"
It was more than an educated guess on Eddie's part. He'd given Boland Lexy's taped confession and the pipe he'd used to bash in the skull of Evesi Volshin. As he poured a club soda, Lexy laughed as if Eddie had whispered a dirty joke. Eddie saw there were other pictures torn up in the trash can. He figured people had brought them in from other restaurants or a telephone pole. He sipped his club soda and wondered if this would work. Would it cause enough of a problem to make holding his daughter no longer worth it? He had to convince them he was determined to make their lives miserable. That he was still crazy enough to hurt them.
"How about some of that good vodka, Lexy?" Eddie said. "Those bottles you keep below the bar."
"Drink yourself dead," Lexy said, slamming a bottle of Stolichnaya in front of Eddie.
Eddie sniffed it. He loved the smell of vodka. Don't let anyone tell you it has no smell. He emptied his glass, tossing the club soda, ice and all, on the floor behind the bar. The first drink in four years spilled hot over his tongue. The burn. He loved the burn. He loved the taste. Eddie was a guy who truly loved the taste of booze. And the life. He loved the drinking life.
On the TV above Lexy's head, the evening news blinked silently; closed captioning flashed underneath. Eddie figured that more closed-captioned programs were watched by drunks on bar stools than were ever viewed by those hard of hearing. In bad lighting, a street reporter stood on a dock, the wind blowing her hair. Although he could not hear any sound, it was obvious she was yelling. Shouting over the wind and the sound of a tow truck behind her. No doubt the motor whined as the cable of the truck tightened and shivered in the glare of the setting sun. At the end of the cable, a set of wheels appeared, then the vehicle being pulled out of the soupy black waters of the Arthur Kill. As soon as it began to emerge, Eddie knew Parrot was dead. Madame Caranina should have foreseen it: No one who touched Eddie Dunne got out alive.
As the rear end of a van rose, grayer than the water, he knew it was heavily coated with primer. Painted on the side would be sammy sosa and the flag of the Dominican Republic. The caption on the TV screen read "Seven unknown dead inside van pulled from water in Elizabeth, New Jersey." They'd like that, Eddie thought, to be labeled "unknown."
He poured another Stoli. Around the bar, the faces of old drinking buddies all turned toward him. There is no truer love than the love shared by drunken friends. He'd read that on a cocktail napkin. Funny line. All his old Russian drinking buddies, staring silently, waiting for him to self-destruct.
Not that he blamed them for not talking to him. If he had a few more drinks, he'd challenge them. They'd expect that. Booze made him talkative, aggressive, crazy. Crazy was the goal tonight. Before the night was over, he'd hit someone. Maybe take on the whole bar. Why not? "No fools, no fun," his partner, Paulie the Priest, had always said. God, he loved the taste of booze.
Ludmilla, waiting for Lexy to fill a drink order for one of her tables, moved close to him.
"Go home," she said, sliding the bottle away from him.
"The fun is just starting, Ludmilla."
"You're finished. Go home, protect your family." She stepped even closer to him and lowered her voice. "That woman in the picture, Zina, is very sad person, but dangerous," she said. "You know what subotnik is? Gang rape. Russian gangsters gang-rape her when she was just a girl, acting tough. They laugh about it. They say what the lesbian needs is good Russian dick. Now who knows what she thinks in her mind."
"I don't care what happened to her, Ludmilla."
"Zina's troubles come worse because of Sophie. Sophie, she has her problems, too. Drinking and such. Not all to blame, Sophie. The way he keeps her locked up in that house."
"Sophie is Borodenko's wife?"
"Yes. Sophie Ross, the model. Very famous in my country. She sent Zina asking questions."
"She sent Zina where?"
"In here, all around the streets. Asking questions about her family, and what happened. Questions about you and your partner."
"Me and my partner?"
"Ab
out the robbery. Her mother and father were killed in that robbery. You caught the men. The father was that mafiya lawyer, Rosenfeld. I know you remember her mother, Svetlana. Svetlana Rosenfeld."
"Lana," he said.
"Sophie looks just like her mother."
Back out on the sidewalk, Eddie saw a black Lincoln parked across the street. He waited for Matty Boland to call him over. Boland was all smiles.
"You got the Brighton Beach phone lines buzzing," he said. "We could have tracked you every step of the way tonight."
"I figured you were here to see this asshole Lexy."
"That useless piece of shit? He gave us enough to get started, not much more. He's not the wheeler and dealer he pretends to be."
"All show, like the rest," Eddie said.
"Not all of them. Just between us, we got word on one of Borodenko's freighters. Flying a Syrian flag, but it has a Russian crew. It's coming up the Pacific, outside
Mexico right now. It looks like a major drug ship. Remember, you said they weren't into drugs?"
"I've been wrong about a lot of shit."
Boland wore a dark baseball cap, j. crew across the top. He took it off and ran his fingers through his gray-flecked hair. Eddie noticed a copy of a Russian-English dictionary on the seat next to him.
"You know what your name is in Russian?" Boland asked.
"Fucking Eddie Dunne," he said.
"You've heard that before. We heard it a lot tonight. What I came to tell you is that you can stop with the pictures. We just got the word Yuri Borodenko is pissed, really pissed. That's what you wanted, right?"
"Part of it."
"He'll be home tomorrow. He's in the air right now."
'That's the other part."
"Heard you were hoisting a few in the Samovar tonight. I expected you to be in a lot worse condition than this."
"I quit again," Eddie said. "But I've never been in worse condition."
Chapter 40
Thursday
11:00 P.M.
Babsie came to him as he sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the nightgown over her head and rolled back the covers. He loved that she was proud of her body, the fullness and strength of it. No charge for extra curves. They made love quietly but with an emotion born of a grief carried too long. He needed to be touched, needed to feel something, needed her, and she knew it. Afterward, he held her, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder.
"I've loved you since high school," she said softly. "Is that lame or what?"
"I was way too dumb for you then," he said as he rubbed his fingers across her back.
Eddie thought of an old Irish saying: "Better wed over the mixins than the moor." According to Kevin Dunne, it meant your chances of being happy in life were greater the closer you stayed to home. Babsie made him understand that. Ten days together and already they were finishing each other's sentences, laughing about the same stupid stories. What made it possible was the lifetime before these ten days, the shared childhood, which provided the foundation. The different paths they'd traveled since added the mystery. Everything Eddie had ever wanted was right here, on the hill where he'd grown up. It had just taken him so damn long to realize it. If God would keep Kate safe, he'd never ask for anything again.
"I have something to tell you," he said.
"Not now."
Babsie knew he'd been drinking, and she feared the Irish melancholy. She'd spent too many nights in bars with micks who sang songs of marching off to war. Eddie wasn't like that, but something was pulling him down. Best to wait until morning. Morning makes everything seem less ominous, she thought.
"I don't want any secrets," he said. "I know I'm putting you on the spot. You're still an active cop."
"Wait six months, until I retire."
"Some things can't wait, Babsie."
Eddie Dunne's secrets frightened her. He'd lived recklessly for longer than anyone she'd ever known. Since her divorce fifteen years ago, she'd avoided emotional ties. Her big family and her job were enough. She hoped this feeling for him wasn't some repressed high school crush. The good girl finally snags the dangerous boy. But she was too old and too smart for that. She loved him, plain and simple. These ten days, being near him, had resurrected feelings she hadn't had in years. Still, the little warning buzzer in the back of her head kept saying that Eddie Dunne might be more of a problem than any woman could bear.
"You know that torn photograph you put together?" he said. "The three of us in front of Paulie's boat. Me,
Paulie, and Lana. I told you the woman in the center was named Lana, right? And she was Paulie's girlfriend."
"Why am I not surprised there's more to Lana?"
"Everything I told you was true, Babsie. But I left out that Lana was a nickname for Svetlana. Svetlana Rosenfeld. Lana was Marvin Rosenfeld's wife."
"Jesus… Rosenfeld's wife. Don't tell me any more."
They lay there quietly, listening to the sound of Kevin's old car whining on the climb up Roberts Avenue. The steep hill required a good car. A better car than most of the locals cared to spend money on. They could walk or grab the bus to anyplace important. Kevin Dunne refused to pay more than five hundred dollars for a hunk of metal on wheels. He said that it was better the car growl than his stomach.
"I haven't been in love in a long time," Eddie said. "I've forgotten how to handle it."
"It's okay. Telling me says good things; you trust me. I guess that's a good thing. Okay… go ahead, tell me about Lana. Was it a full-blown affair?"
"He named the boat after her. Svetlana means 'bright star.' Paulie Caruso had a lot of women in his life, but he was crazy over this one."
"How long did this go on?"
"Two years, maybe a little longer."
"While she was married?"
"She was thirty years younger than he was."
"That's no excuse."
"I didn't say it was."
Kevin's car doors thumped twice. They both listened to the keys jingling as he and Martha went in their house. All sounds in the night were important now.
"The robbery was a setup, wasn't it?" Babsie said.
"So was the big shoot-out in the park. It was all a setup."
She thought of getting dressed and leaving. Maybe if he had a night to mull it over, he'd decide his secrets should remain with him. But Babsie made up her mind right then. She'd gone this far. Whatever it was, so be it. They'd be her secrets, too.
"How much did you know?" she said.
"It took me a few weeks to catch on. Remember you said you thought it was strange we just happened to be driving by the Rosenfeld house at the exact time of the robbery?"
"The first thing that occurred to me."
"Most cops say the same thing: too much of a coincidence. But I wasn't surprised. We drove by that house all the time. Sometimes ten, twenty times a tour. Paulie was always trying to get a glimpse of Lana. Like he was sixteen years old."
"Vestri and Nunez were patsies," Babsie said. "Set up to be killed, weren't they?"
"Paulie's brother Angelo engineered the robbery. He arranged for Nunez and Vestri to do it. Paulie had all the inside information. He knew where the safe was. He knew there was a ton of money in it, although I don't think he ever imagined how much."
"Paulie knew the exact day and time Vestri and Nunez would be there," she said.
"Probably down to the minute. After the robbery, Nunez and Vestri went to a prearranged spot in Marine Park. They were probably thinking they'd meet one of Angelo's men, switch cars or something. When Paulie followed them, he hung so far back on the Belt Parkway, I thought he was going to lose them. But he knew exactly where they were going. He drove to a spot hidden in a grove of trees. There they were. The shoot-out happened fast. As soon as we got out of the car, Paulie fired the first shot, but they already had guns in their hands."
"When they saw Paulie, they knew it was a setup. They had to be stupid not to smell something strange about Angelo giving them this big a
job."
"Stupid, sure, that's why they were picked. But they did better than I did, because I didn't smell anything. None of it seemed forced or manipulated. Paulie was patient. He waited until we came up in normal rotation for that divisionwide burglary assignment. I fully expected him to ride by the house that day. It's what he did every chance he got."
"How much did the Carusos get?"
"Millions."
"How did they get the money out of the park?"
"I'm not exactly sure. After we shot Vestri and Nunez, I left to look for a telephone to call for an ambulance and the bosses. We had no radio in the car. I know, I know… part of the setup. I had to drive out of the park to find a phone. When I got back, ten or fifteen minutes later, I noticed Paulie had grass and twigs clinging to his pant legs. I asked him what had happened. He said he went into the woods to take a piss. He either took the money out of the trunk and hid it or passed it off to someone waiting."
"When did you figure it out?"
"It took me longer than I like to admit," Eddie said. "Maybe I didn't want to believe it. That night, we were heroes, our pictures in all the papers."
"I can't believe you didn't tell somebody about it. It's murder we're talking about here, Eddie. Why didn't you just leak it to IAB?"
"You're not going to like this."
"Oh no."
"Tell me if you don't want to hear it, Babsie. I'm serious. It implicates me."
He could feel her body tensing. Gone was the soft, warm drowsiness. He understood that it was natural for her to start thinking like a cop.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," she said. "I already know more than I want to. If you don't tell me, I'm always going to wonder how bad you really are."
Eddie said, "After the big press conference the next day, we're leaving police headquarters in Manhattan. We get in Paulie's car to go back to the precinct. Cops and brass are walking past us as we're parked there. Uniforms all over the place. Paulie tosses me a stack of bills, mostly fifties and hundreds. I say something like "Oh shit," and I shove it under my coat so no one will see it. I don't look until we're back over the bridge. Total of ten grand. He says he grabbed two stacks off the top, one for me, one for him. No big deal. He says no one has any idea how much money was there. The money was just going to Uncle Sam, and he'd never miss it."