Eddie wondered why Boland had held this bit of information to the end. Had he become more clever over the years? Some guys did that. Twenty years later, they became real cops.

"Any witnesses?" Eddie asked.

"One old lady. She says it was a big white guy wear; ing a Yankees hat. Big black car. Backed down the street like he was Dale Earnhardt in reverse."

People often mistook Eddie's dark blue Olds for black. He'd never thought before that it was a fortunate shade. Eddie went to refill Boland's glass, but the detective stopped him.

Boland lowered his voice conspiratorially. "You didn't hear this from me," he said, "but the Crime Scene Unit found traces of burned hair and human skin inside the Rolls-Royce."

Eddie unconsciously lifted Boland's glass to his lips. He could smell the gin. He'd always loved the smell of gin.

"Human skin?" Eddie said. "Somebody was inside the Rolls?"

"According to CSU."

"Whose skin?"

"Good question. Borodenko's wife-what a gorgeous broad, by the way-says she knows nothing about anybody getting burned. So we got a Russian mystery on our hands."

"Where did they find the skin?"

"Front seat. I should have been more clear about that. You looked worried all of a sudden. You were thinking the trunk, something like that, right? It wasn't Kate, Eddie. All indications are it was a male."

The sound of Grace's laughter came from the living room. Eddie wondered when he'd lost the ability to laugh that pure, uninhibited laugh of a child. He didn't know why he couldn't laugh anymore. Any one of the stupid things he'd done today would be plenty to keep him howling long into the night. He told Matty Boland he'd meet him early the next morning; right now, he had an angel foot cake to bake.

Chapter 7

Tuesday, April 7

4:45 A.M.

The phone didn't ring again for the rest of the night. Eddie lay in bed fully dressed, staring at the light shining under the door. Grace, all elbows and knees, slept fitfully next to him. He could hear the cops tiptoeing on the squeaky wooden floors, the toilet flushing, water running, cars coming and going in the driveway, and several times the voice of Babsie Panko. They tried to be quiet, but when, you've lived in a house as long as Eddie had, you could tell when its heartbeat became irregular. Not that anyone was keeping him awake. A little before 5:00 a.m., he called Kevin and asked if he and Martha could come over.

Two hours later, in the low-angled sunlight of the morning, Anatoly Lukin and his bodyguards emerged from a newly renovated Art Deco apartment building in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. Watching from a block away, Detective Matty Boland picked up his radio and relayed a brief description to the other members of the team. Lukin wore only a baggy wool suit and the sable hat. Cold weather didn't bother the old man. He'd spent the first forty-two years of his life in the Ukraine, where an average day in spring inflicts more misery than the coldest New York City winter.

"The big shot," Boland said. "Looks like he doesn't have two rubles to rub together."

"Shkafy," said Eddie Dunne, "is the Russian word for big shot."

Boland mouthed the word quietly as he watched from behind the steering wheel of the black Lincoln Town Car he'd borrowed from the federal motor pool. He'd parked to the east of Lukin's building, knowing the glare of the morning sun would camouflage their presence. Even if Lukin's bodyguards spotted the car, its occupants could not be seen. The windows were coated with the darkest tint available.

"The guy in the camel-hair coat is Lukin's nephew, Pavel," Eddie said, nodding at the three men walking. "He runs what's left of the operation, hires the bodyguards, gets the old man from place to place."

"You'd think he'd drive him, or grab a cab."

"He's never been in a cab."

Although the old man will make an exception Thursday. His first and last cab ride, straight to JFK. The hell with the rest of them, Eddie thought; it will be a pleasure to see them in a cell. The Russian trio moved slowly toward Brighton Beach Avenue. Lukin's breath fogged in the damp morning air as he shuffled past cars coated with a thin coat of frost-the price of living next to the Atlantic Ocean in April.

"What's Lukin's purpose here?" Boland said. "Does he actually think that by dressing this way and taking the subway we'll think he's on the balls of his ass?"

"He knows he isn't fooling anyone, Matty. He's just too smart to flaunt money like John Gotti, with his limos and handmade suits. Gotti rubbed it in our faces, and we made a point of getting him."

Eddie gave Boland a rundown on both bodyguards. Pavel ran insurance scams for his uncle. The other goon was strictly a bodyguard. Whatever moonlighting he did involved the breaking of bones. Eddie went back to reading the list of known Borodenko locations. As promised, Boland delivered an FBI list of eighty-seven addresses known to be connected with the Borodenko operation: homes, apartments, garages, warehouses, bars, stores, junkyards, et cetera. The list would lend some organization to Eddie's search.

"Why do they have this list numbered?" Eddie asked.

"Not numbered, prioritized. The computer spits it out like that. It lists locations by the number of observations of Borodenko. The more observations, the higher the priority."

"His home is listed first," Eddie said. "Does anyone think they'd hide her there?"

"Now you see what I'm up against."

The mass door kicking Matty had promised was not-going to happen. Not without warrants, and the U.S. attorney said he needed more than the hunches of the victim's father. But a dozen teams from the Russian task force had begun surveillance of known Borodenko locations. Teams had four to seven spots each, depending on proximity. Their instructions were to shuttle between addresses and watch each location for activity consistent with a kidnapping situation. Whatever the hell that meant. Boland apologized, saying he had been led to believe they intended to be more aggressive.

"Let me ask you this," Boland said, adjusting the volume on the police radio. "Lukin ever tap you for bodyguard duty?"

"Occasionally. I was mostly just a courier. I picked up and dropped off packages."

"And you have no idea what was inside those packages."

"I made it a point not to know. Put me on the lie detector."

"Just breaking your balls, Eddie. He ever talk business when you were around?"

"Probably. But he did it in Russian."

Almost twenty-four hours since they'd snatched Kate, and still no ransom call. A cold fear lingered in the back of Eddie's mind. Would this massive police presence force the kidnappers to make Borodenko's problem disappear? The Russians knew a thousand ways to make that happen. Eddie's stomach churned with the realization that he'd put his trust in people more worried about legal niceties than about his daughter. He began making notations, his own priorities. The identity of Borodenko's hatchet man Sergei Zhukov would stay with him for now.

Boland said, "Whatta you figure's Lukin's main source of income?"

"Pump-and-dump scams on Wall Street. Then Medicare, and other insurance scams, staged accidents. Crimes dealing with paper."

"I heard the score on the gasoline-tax scam alone was over a hundred million."

"That was before I worked for him," Eddie said.

He gave Boland a brief rundown on Lukin's rise to criminal power in Brooklyn. Shortly after his arrival in the seventies, Lukin began working for the brutal crime boss Evesi Volshin, who ran gambling, loan-sharking, and extortion rackets in Brighton Beach. Volshin's victims were almost exclusively his own people. When