"You just happened to be there," French Cuffs said.

"It's called police work."

"You didn't call for backup?" he asked.

"No radio. Not all detective cars had radios in those days. We always signed out the cars that didn't."

"Why was that?"

"If you had a radio, they always called you back into the house for annoying errands: Pick up lunch, coffee, booze, drive the boss to a meeting. Things like that."

"The guys who did the robbery, Santo Vestri and Ray Nunez, who were they?"

"Two half-assed wanna-be gangsters," Eddie said. "Consignment guys, mostly. They'd get rid of hijacked loads for a percentage: TVs, fur coats, drugstore supplies, anything."

"Two small-time punks who died in a police shoot-out," French Cuffs said. "Who the hell cared, right?"

"Not even their mothers," Eddie said, turning to look at him. "These guys murdered both Marvin Rosenfeld and his wife, Svetlana, while their little girl sat right there. They shot the parents to death right in front of her."

"But you didn't know this at the time of your encounter in Marine Park."

"If we had, we wouldn't have gone so easy on them."

"Were you outraged enough to follow up on the shooting, Mr. Dunne? What happened to the child?"

"The wife's parents moved back to Russia, took the little girl. She drowned a year or two later. Fell into an icy lake."

"My report says hypothermia," Agent Powers said.

'The record indicates you recovered a lot of money from the trunk of that Dodge Charger."

"Front page of the Daily News said four point two million," Eddie said.

"Four point two million," French Cuffs said. "How did a small-time lawyer like Rosenfeld come to have so much cash?"

"I'm sure that's also in that file Agent Powers is holding."

"I read it," French Cuffs said. "It says that in the early 1980s, Marvin Rosenfeld was a money launderer who worked for the man you mentioned. Evesi Volshin was the major Russian crime boss in Brighton Beach up until that week. The four point two million was Volshin's money, believed to be from the lucrative gasoline-tax scam, waiting to be laundered. The money was coming in so fast, they had a hard time getting it all out. Hundreds of millions, if you believe the rumors."

"I'm sure all the rumors are in the FBI report," Eddie said.

"The report also mentions that Anatoly Lukin, your former employer, was the real mastermind of the gas-tax scam. Or was that only a rumor?"

"Evesi Volshin was an idiot; I'm sure someone else was the brains. Lukin would be my guess, too."

"Volshin himself was murdered a few days after Rosenfeld," French Cuffs said. "Anatoly Lukin then took over the Russian mob. Isn't that correct?"

"And your next question," Eddie said, "is about my relationship with Anatoly Lukin."

"No sense in me asking, then, is there?"

Eddie said, "First, let me tell you that Evesi Volshin was a vicious bastard who preyed on his own people. Russian people in Brooklyn started celebrating in the street the minute they heard he was dead. He was shot and beaten to death in a crowded restaurant. No witnesses. A hundred people have taken credit for his murder."

"So you agree that Anatoly Lukin took over his operation on that day?"

"Common knowledge," Eddie said. "But what you're leading up to is the fact that shortly after those murders, Anatoly Lukin hired me. And that makes you think I had something to do with the murders."

"It doesn't matter what I think," French Cuffs said. "It's an investigative dead end. You're the only witness left alive."

"Mr. Dunne," Agent Powers said. "Last Tuesday, you told Detective Boland about several black binders that Anatoly Lukin kept in his office. You said they contained dummy corporations. Where did they come from?"

"From Marvin Rosenfeld. The guy was an expert in dummy corporations before it was fashionable. He made them up in advance. Dozens of phony corporations at a time. He kept them in black binders and sold them to any interested party."

"How did the binders move from Rosenfeld's possession into Lukin's?" she asked. "The Brooklyn DA never took those binders into evidence on the day of the murders."

Eddie stood and nodded to the silent group around the table. For all he knew, they'd had their tongues clipped in Quantico.

"Mr. Dunne," Agent Powers said. "The binders are missing. Apparently, someone stole them from Lukin's apartment shortly after he was shoved under the train."

"I don't have them."

"You disappeared for almost an hour after Lukin's death," French Cuffs said.

Eddie glared across the table at Matty Boland. He'd chased Lukin's killer to a construction site and come back with the coat. But that didn't prove anything to them. Witnesses identified the coat as the killer's, but the feds always saw Machiavellian plots when city cops were involved.

Eddie stood up and walked to the door.

Agent Powers said, "We have a duty to protect the reputation of the United States government, Mr. Dunne. This doesn't mean we'll stop looking for your daughter. We want you to understand that."

"If I were you, I wouldn't do anything foolish," French Cuffs said.

"Actually," Eddie said, "this is the smartest thing I've done in a long time."

Chapter 20

Friday

11:00 a.m.

Eddie's pulse slowed in the cool darkness of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. The more he thought about it, the more he understood what had happened. He'd been around bosses like French Cuffs before. Public service was invented for them. One of the many ways they avoided taking action was by suggesting the possibility of some serpentine scheme that would undermine the plan's success. Take no chances. This ensured the longevity of the mediocre. Eddie couldn't prove he'd chased the woman in the wool coat, so French Cuffs hinted at his possible duplicity. God forbid they embarrass the Bureau. Careerwise, it was always safer to do nothing. Paulie the Priest had called it "empty-suit disease."

All Eddie had learned in 26 Federal Plaza was from Boland as he chased him across the plaza. Boland said that Sergei Zhukov lived in Rego Park. They had agents sitting on his house, as well as the Eurobar and a restaurant he frequented in Queens named the Registan. Other agents were interviewing friends of Misha. Boland told him he needed to calm down. Eddie said he'd calm down when someone besides Babsie Panko came up with a decent lead. He told him to concentrate on Sergei. Find him and all would be forgiven.

Out of the tunnel, in the sunlight again, Eddie squinted to find the sign for the Belt Parkway. He could think like French Cuffs, too. His own natural paranoia had already created a dozen scenarios, some involving the FBI in the kidnapping. But they were all too complicated. Answers are always simpler than that. Keep it simple, he reminded himself, or you'll wind up with your head up your ass, like Special Agent French Cuffs.

The Howard Beach Boccie Club sat on a quiet street of one- and two-family homes, surrounded and shaded by old trees. There were no signs outside. Those inside knew who they were and why they belonged. Behind the trees, the club was protected by an eight-foot chain-link fence and the reputation of its members.

Eddie pushed the gate open. A quartet of old men in flowered shirts and dark pants had congregated under a gazebo near the far corner. Eddie waited as they spoke softly in a lyrical Italian. Sotto voce. They spoke softly in English, as well. In fact, these men had spent their lives in hushed conversations. Eddie waited for Angelo Caruso to acknowledge him. It was Angelo's move. After a minute, three men stood up and walked away.

"How ya doin', champ?" one of them said as he bobbed and weaved in a fighter's stance, feinting short slow-motion jabs at Eddie. Eddie still got this every now and then, despite the fact that his fight career had ended over thirty years ago. Guys like Ali and Frazier must get it all the time, he thought. People dancing around them, throwing punches. He wondered if they were tempted to reach out and smack them down. He bet nobody tried this with Mike Tyson.