"Will this court order cover Kate's kidnapping?"

"Eddie, we need your commitment, no matter what."

"You didn't answer my question. Will the court order cover the kidnapping?"

"I'll do all I can to get it added. If not, I'll get the word out informally. The more bugs we get in, the better the chances we hear something about Kate or Sergei. As soon as anything is said that even hints of the kidnapping, we'll amend the warrant immediately. If one word about her is uttered, we'll be all over it."

"We're talking about right now. Not six weeks from now."

"Soon as I can get the affidavit typed up."

"Drive me back to my car," Eddie said.

On the way back to Brooklyn, Eddie again gave them Lexy Petrov, his old friend and bartender. He told Boland he had a tape recording of a drunken Lexy confessing to the murder of Evesi Volshin. Volshin was still alive on the floor of the Samovar when Lexy walked over and beat his skull with a lead pipe. Some nights, in a vodka haze, Lexy liked to brag about killing Volshin. He'd reach under the bar and pull out a lead pipe, then show the bits of Evesi's blood and hair embedded in the black electrical tape that wrapped around the pipe. This pipe was now in Eddie's trunk.

"Lexy knows everything," Eddie said. "And he'll roll over."

"We'll pick him up tonight," Boland said as his cell phone rang.

Screw Lexy, Eddie thought. He'd given him the chance to show his friendship yesterday. Maybe he didn't know about Kate, but Eddie had no doubt he knew something about Sergei. Eddie heard Boland say, "You're shit-tin' me!" He put the phone down, grinning and shaking his head.

"They identified the head they threw on your lawn," Boland said.

"Fast work."

"Extensive dental work made it easy," he said, still grinning in amazement. "The guy had top-notch recon-structive work by some famous dentist to the stars in Manhattan. Just a few years ago. Luckily, it stayed pretty much intact, considering all the trauma to his face. This guy took a hell of a beating before they sliced his head off."

"Anybody I should know?"

"Actually, yeah,",Boland said. "It's Paul Caruso, Eddie. Your ex-partner, Paulie the Priest."

Chapter 18

Thursday

8:00 P.M.

Dust rose from the dirt floor of the basement of the North End Tavern. The floor had been a dirt one since Kieran Dunne first bought the place in the 1950s. Kevin talked about pouring concrete but never got around to it. It didn't matter to Eddie, who spent more time down there than anyone else. He liked the dank, beery smell; it seemed to fit the raw sport he loved. The sweet science, although not sweet tonight. Viciously, he pounded away on the duct-taped heavy bag that hung from the ceiling's center beam, trying to exorcise all that haunted him. He punished the seventy-pound canvas bag, manhandling it as if it were a feather pillow.

"I remember the first time I saw you hit somebody," Babsie Panko said. She was sitting on an empty beer keg.

"Who did I hit?"

"My brother Gus. At my niece's christening. You were both drunk. Gus got mad and threw a punch. You hit him back. He fell and knocked over the pot of kielbasa. Daddy threw you both out."

Eddie barely remembered. He'd gotten drunk at a dozen

Panko christenings, weddings, or wakes. He'd usually gotten an early start because he helped Babsie's older brothers carry chairs they'd borrowed from the Brelesky Brothers funeral home. They'd carried two dozen folding chairs ten blocks, from the funeral parlor through the streets of Yonkers to their apartment above the butcher shop.

"That was the first time you danced with me," she said.

"Probably why Gus punched me."

"You were a senior, eighteen, I think. I was a freshman, just turned fourteen."

"No wonder he hit me," Eddie said.

Eddie shuffled, working with the bag's movement, throwing hooks when it swung side to side, straight punches when it swung toward him. He remembered Richie Costa breaking his wrist the first time he worked out on the heavy bag. The trick was to hit it with the front of your fist, no angles. Hit in the middle of its horizontal axis and it wouldn't spin.

"We have to talk about your old partner, Eddie. Even you have to agree now that all this has something to do with an old case, or something you guys did together. Throwing his head on your lawn is a message even Irish guys should be able to understand."

Grace, skipping rope inside the ring, was far enough away that they could talk. The ring was only a foot off the ground. Kieran had bought the canvas and ring ropes at a CYO auction. The Dunnes drove spikes in the dirt and hammered out a wooden frame made from sections of two-by-fours Kieran had salvaged from the old P. Ballantine and Sons Brewery. The basement, like much of the bar, was salvage. Kieran liked to brag he'd never bought a new piece of wood in his life.

"They have a cause of death?" Eddie asked.

"The ME might not be able to determine an exact cause of death as it is now, but timewise, she thinks five to ten days, minimum. She says he was brutally beaten before he died; that much is sure."

"I didn't even know he was in New York."

"He wasn't," Babsie said. "At least customs can't find how or where he entered the country."

Babsie asked Eddie to tell her about Paulie Caruso. Talking in short bursts of air, punctuated by grunts and the thump of his fists against canvas, he started with his nickname. Paulie first started being known as "the Priest" when he was working undercover on prostitution. The undercover cop's job was to allow a street hooker to make an offer of sex for money, then signal the wagon to pick her up. Eventually, the street girls would begin to recognize the same undercover cops and run. Disguises were called for. Paul Caruso had one brother in the priesthood and one in the mob. The good died young, and Paulie inherited a clos-etful of black suits and white collars, plus a collection of vestments in colors to match the many moods of the Catholic church. Paulie began wearing the black suit and backward collar on Eighth Avenue. It was a surefire act. Girls propositioned him every step of the way. The van would drive along behind him and scoop up the hot-pants crowd nice they were lost souls at a tent revival. The archdiocese finally heard about it and stopped it. But Paulie still became a man of the cloth whenever the spirit hit him. It was the least of his sins. Paulie the Priest was instant insanity… just add alcohol and stir. He danced the tarantella… straddling the fragile line between heaven and hell.

"Any truth to the rumor he was working for the Gambino family?" Babsie said.

"He probably told his brother some things. But he didn't work at it."

Eddie's friendship with Paulie the Priest was one of many bad choices he had made in those days. The Priest had been in the Coney Island squad for five years when Eddie arrived. At that time, the precinct was a dumping ground for detectives on the verge of losing the gold shield. The new police commissioner failed to see the wisdom of throwing all those fallen angels into the same pit. He set out to change the practice, infusing the old dumping-grounds precincts with top-notch detectives. The Priest welcomed Eddie to Coney Island with an extended tour of local watering holes. Eddie's career went downhill from there.

"So, any case stand out in your mind?" she said. "Any one thing you and Caruso did together that might be coming back to haunt you?"

"How long have you been a cop?" Eddie said, breathing hard. He stopped throwing punches and held the heavy bag from swaying.

"Almost twenty," she said.

"Then you know this could be from one small confrontation that happened years ago. A traffic ticket, or a domestic dispute where the husband blames you for humiliating him in front of his wife. You forget about it ten minutes after you leave the apartment, but for the next ten years, he plots to kill you."