He spelled Lukin's full name, then told her what she would hear from the FBI.

"You think Lukin is behind this?" she said.

"No. He's just an old man, very sick."

"Then who?"

"Enemies," he said, the idea of it squeezing at the pit of his stomach. "We made a lot of enemies."

"Names, Eddie, names."

"Yuri Borodenko," he said. "Start with that one."

Babsie wrote furiously; it was a name she'd heard. Then she excused herself. Her back to Eddie, she walked into the living room again, talking quietly into her cell phone. He could have told her more, but what good would it do? He took a deep breath and composed himself. He couldn't let emotions interfere now.

Babsie had almost gotten to him with her question about sounds. The last sound he'd heard was Kate's voice. He knew that the sound of her voice at that moment would play in his mind for all the nights of his life. The flickering picture would fade, but her voice, hoarse and desperate, would always be there. She'd screamed one word, and all the failures of his life came out in that word. It was a word he hadn't heard her use since she was a child. He'd been "Dad" since her early teens. But this morning, his tough-minded thirty-four-year-old daughter had called for him. "Daddy," she'd screamed. Just "Daddy."

Chapter 3

Monday

3:45 P.M.

It was late afternoon when Eddie Dunne's Olds swerved around the corner of West Tenth Street in Coney Island. The trip down from Yonkers was a blur in his mind. Eddie couldn't bear sitting in that house any longer. He'd annoyed everyone with his muttering and pacing. He'd kept raising his arms, fists cocked, dying to hit something. Over the objections of Babsie Panko and the FBI, he'd left his brother Kevin to wait by the phone. He needed to get moving. He'd borrowed Kevin's cell phone and, on the way to Brooklyn, called his ex-boss. Not a direct call-Anatoly Lukin never spoke on the phone.

Eddie parked in the shadow of the rickety old roller coaster, the Cyclone. He turned the engine off and waited, studying the cars moving behind him on Surf Avenue. Waves pounded against the shore as he stared at the rearview mirror. After three full minutes, he slammed the car door and walked toward the boardwalk. He was still wearing the frayed sweatshirt and nylon running pants he'd put on that morning.

Anatoly Lukin, like many of his fellow Russian émigrés, loved to spend his afternoons by the ocean. Even on the most frigid days, the boardwalk was packed with beefy men and women in fur hats, reminiscing about Odessa and the icy wind off the Black Sea. Lukin claimed that the Black Sea was much darker than the Atlantic; during severe storms, it churned as black as ink, because there was no animal life, no oxygen below two hundred feet. Eddie turned left on the boardwalk and walked toward Brighton Beach, a half mile to the east. A seagull swooped down to snatch a pizza crust off the splintery planks.

Eddie spotted Lukin's entourage near the Aquarium, walking slowly back toward Brighton. The old man dragged his right leg, the result of a stroke. A pair of bodyguards strolled a few steps behind him. Down on the beach, a white-haired gent in an air force parka scanned the sand with a metal detector. Too old for undercover, Eddie thought, but you never know. The Gotti-fueled decline of the Italian mob in New York had freed investigative resources to work on the nouveau Mafias.

Anatoly Lukin didn't qualify as a member of the new breed. He'd landed in Brooklyn in the mid-1970s, part of the huge influx of Russian Jews allowed to leave the Soviet Union during detente. Many of the new émigrés settled in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, then turned it into a miniature replica of the motherland with Russian-language movie houses, restaurants, and bathhouses. Most were decent, hardworking people, but Premier Leonid Brezhnev, like Castro with the Mariel boat lift, had opened the prison doors. Anatoly Lukin, forty-two years old at the time, was considered a vor by Russian police. The full title was vory zakone, which meant thief-in-law, a title bestowed by fellow thieves on the most feared and respected of outlaws. According to the FBI, Lukin was one of only four vors living in the United States.

The wind blew salty spray as Eddie came up behind the bodyguards. He knew they'd spotted him coming, then looked away quickly. He hoped they weren't in the mood for showing off. Today was the wrong day for macho games. But when he was a step behind Lukin, a meaty hand grabbed the collar of his sweatshirt and yanked him back. Eddie spun and slammed a left hook into the bodyguard's ribs. The hook was Eddie's best punch. He kept his balance and rotated his body, bringing the force of his rage behind the blow, like a heavy gate swinging around a hinged post, the whole barn pivoting behind it. The burly Russian coughed out a blast of air and staggered back. Eddie stepped in and snapped a straight right, which landed on the guy's cheekbone. The second punch was half-strength-he didn't want to break his hand-but the guy went down hard, flat on his ass, his leather heels clattering on the wood. The other bodyguard went straight to the hardware. A Beretta M9 pointed at Eddie's face.

Lukin moved between them, murmuring, "No, no, don't let them see this." Lukin assumed he was always being watched. He ordered the bodyguard to put the gun away but kept his huge hand on Eddie's chest until the gun was holstered. A smudge of ink, a Russian prison mark, stained the web of his hand.

"Why you do that bullshit, Eddie?" the standing bodyguard said. "Pavel's just doing his job."

"No, he wasn't," Eddie said. "I know what he was doing."

Pavel's face was ashen. His left eye had already begun to puff up. He pointed up at Eddie and growled something that was clearly a threat in any language. Lukin ordered him to shut his mouth. Still sucking air, Pavel grabbed the wooden rail and pulled himself to his feet.

The goons who surrounded Lukin had always made it clear they didn't like the non-Russian in the organization. But Lukin knew that Russian criminals changed alliances more often than their underwear. It was one of the reasons he'd hired Eddie. He knew that it was loyalty, no matter how misguided, that had forced Eddie out of the NYPD.

Lukin motioned for Eddie to walk with him. They turned around quickly, heading back toward Coney Island. Lukin liked to stay in between Coney and Brighton to cut down on surveillance possibilities. Eddie flexed his right hand, examining the small, brittle bones. He could smell Pavel's cheap cologne on his knuckles.

"No word on your daughter?" the old man asked.

"Nothing," Eddie said.

"And now you've come to find out who you should kill."

Eddie didn't know what to expect from his former boss. The old man didn't owe him anything. Lukin had hired him after his forced resignation from the NYPD and Eileen's cancer diagnosis. These events, and other sins, had become nightmares Eddie could no longer drink away. Becoming Lukin's overpaid courier had given him a solid place to stand.

"First, I'll get my daughter back," Eddie said.

The bodyguards were behind them now, talking angrily in Russian. Eddie checked the back of his neck for blood. Pavel's fingernails had dug into his skin.

"I have no one left to help you fight this animal," said the old man. "These two idiots behind us, maybe six others. He's taken everything else."

"Then it is Borodenko," Eddie said.

"Borodenko is in Moscow, but that means nothing. My sources tell me certain things today. He runs this show one hundred percent."

"You still have sources inside his operation?"

"For what I pay, they should kiss my feet."

Yuri Borodenko was a flashy thug who loved to cruise the Brighton Beach nightclubs, showing off his stunning young wife, a former Russian model. Although in the United States only five years, he'd amassed a fortune through extortion and brutality. He was known to walk into local businesses wielding a cattle prod, announcing he was the new partner. An ethnic Russian, Borodenko got rich by terrorizing his own people.