Chapter 9

Tuesday

7:45 P.M.

Cops hate mysteries. Eddie heard the grumbling under his kitchen window as the night tour relieved the day tour. Standing by their cars in Eddie's driveway, cops and FBI agents whispered among themselves. No phone calls, no ransom note-what the hell kind of kidnapping was this? Welcome to the club, Eddie thought. If I had the slightest idea where to go, I'd be there now. But these spoiled bastards, they forget how to investigate. The overwhelming majority of criminal cases are solved for one simple reason: Someone tells the police who did it. A witness plus an informant equals a confession. Case closed. Well, it isn't the formula this time, boyos, so suck it up. Get off your dead asses and goose the case, work something, invent an angle, anything. You never know when you'll get lucky.

"I know winos sleeping in Larkin Plaza who look better than you," Detective Babsie Panko said.

"I'll bet you do," Eddie said.

"Yeah, that's what I get for growing up in an Irish neighborhood."

Early for her twelve-hour shift, Babsie hung her coat on the wall pegs next to the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table. The table was strewn with doll clothes from a pink Barbie doll suitcase Grace had emptied out. Grace sat on Eddie's lap, watching him struggle to squeeze the doll's long plastic legs into a pair of red panty hose. Babsie shoved doll clothes aside to make room for her case folder.

"I have the same trouble with my panty hose," the detective said, but it didn't get a smile out of Grace. Eyes down, she ran her fingers over her grandfather's smashed knuckles, gently tracing the consequence of too many fights with poorly taped hands.

"I'm on the phones this shift," Babsie said. "I'm ordering you to get some sleep."

"Tonight," he said, mostly for Grace's benefit. "Tonight I'm home."

After Lukin's murder, he'd spent the rest of the daylight hours in Brooklyn, first putting a face on paper, then driving around searching for its flesh.

"You want to talk about the case?" Babsie asked. She gestured toward Grace, questioning whether it was wise to talk in front of the victim's six-year-old. But Eddie didn't want to send her away; she'd clung to him since the moment he'd arrived. Grace had spent the afternoon with Aunt Martha. Enough to snuff out the brightest candle.

"Okay then, so…" Babsie said. "We're making good progress on the case; we're getting close." Then, when Grace wasn't looking, she shook her head no, an emphatic no. "We did come up with one guy who looks involved, but, unfortunately, he's in the wind. A twenty-two-year-old Latvian named Mikal Raisky.

Misha, they call him. He worked in that auto-storage place in Elmsford. We can't prove the BMW was snapped up on his shift, but I'd bet on it. This was the fourth auto larceny in the two months he's been working there. Before Misha, the average was less than one a year."

"You check his residence?"

"Gee, I wish I'd thought of that."

"Sorry, Babsie. Does he have an immigration status?"

"He's over here on a four-month student work visa."

"Then he should be easy to find. Those kids are brought over here by private agencies. They call them something like foreign student something agencies."

"Yeah, International Resources in Flushing. What a rip-off that is, by the way. The kids pay them three grand for the privilege of working their asses off for minimum wage. They need to work two and three jobs just to pay them back."

"That's why a few hundred bucks just to leave a gate open is so tempting."

"His listed residence is a Queens address," she said. "Nice old couple said he moved out weeks ago. We got some names of his friends, a couple of vague addresses. The agency gave us his height, weight, a copy of his passport photo, his parents' address in Riga, his university, and-let's see-his work sponsor, Coney Island Amusements."

"There's your Brooklyn connection. Ask Boland to check them out."

"Pretty Boy doesn't have to wrinkle his Armani. We already interviewed Coney Island Amusements. Misha hasn't shown up in two days."

"Phone records?"

"He gave all his employers the phone of his alleged

Queens address. The old couple said he called them every few days to pick up his messages. Apparently, he's got a cell phone, but we can't find any listing under his name."

"This kid knows who took the BMW."

"Yeah, and he's probably running scared," she said. "So we've been floating a sweetheart deal around Brooklyn. Letting his friends know the Westchester DA says she'll let him walk."

"He won't come in voluntarily."

"What the hell has he got to lose? We can protect him for a few months, until he goes back home."

"Home is his problem, Babsie. Borodenko knows where he's from, and the worst part is that, right now, Borodenko can reach his family back home. This kid knows they can assassinate his mother tomorrow morning if they want to."

Home is the thousand-ton hammer guys like Borodenko hold over every single former resident of any former Soviet bloc country. It's why no informant ever comes forward, no matter how courageous or desperate. They know that all it takes is the snap of a finger to wipe out your brothers, sisters, cousins, your children, whomever you love. And no one loses a second of sleep worrying about the law.

"So does the name Raisky ring a bell?" Babsie said. "Maybe you ran across his father or uncle during your Brooklyn days."

"Never heard the name before," he said. "You give this information to Boland?"

"I'm not the one who's afraid to share."

"We need to get his picture to the teams checking Borodenko's locations."

"Speaking of that list, I didn't even know it existed until a few minutes ago. I guess your pal Boland forgot to fax me a copy."

"Take a look now. See if anything corresponds to your stuff."

Most women hate guys who look like Boland, but he was surprised it bothered Babsie. Babsie was one of those women who did it their way, no matter what. The kind of woman who seemed to get more interesting after forty. She scanned the list quickly, using her finger to run the columns. Bright red nail polish. He wondered if she wore it while winging a softball eighty miles an hour.

"Nothing right on the nose," Babsie said. "Some of the Queens addresses might be close."

As soon as Eddie pulled the panty hose up over the doll's hips, Grace handed him a tiny plaid kilt. The Barbie doll and the clothes had belonged to Kate. The little pink suitcase contained dozens of handmade outfits. Kate had made most of the clothes herself when she was only nine or ten years old, working on a battery-operated toy sewing machine. It always amazed Eddie to see Kate sitting on the kitchen floor in total concentration, turning out tiny dresses and skirts, a few made from remnants of his police uniforms. Grace had never been interested in the doll clothes before, but today she'd dragged it all out of the attic.

"Do me a favor, Babsie: Fax Misha's picture to Boland."

Eddie fumbled as he tried to open the tiny snaps on the plaid doll kilt. He didn't want to pull the snaps out of the wool material by tugging too hard. He recognized the material as the tartan of Kate's old uniforms from Christ the King.

"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."