"If you were me," Eddie said, "what would you be doing now?"

Lukin spit sunflower seeds, which he claimed were the only luxury of his Odessa youth. "You know why they call this Coney Island?"

"Because of ice-cream cones," Eddie said, although he knew the real answer. Lukin had told him this story many times.

The old man kicked feebly at a seagull who swooped down to pick the seeds that had just landed on the boardwalk. "Coney Island used to be a real island," he said, "until a storm joined it to the rest of Brooklyn. Nineteenth century this happened. Sand filled in the channels. Before that, the Dutch took boats out to the island to hunt rabbits. The island was full of rabbits. The Dutch word for rabbit is konijn. 'Konijn Island,' they called it. 'Coney' it became in the American tongue. Coney Island is Rabbit Island."

"You have a moral here?"

"Simple lesson, Eddie. You are smart like Russian. This is time to think like Russian. The Russian survived because he put his faith in himself, not the police, not the government. My lesson is this: Be the hunter, Eddie, not the rabbit. The rabbit never wins."

Chapter 4

Monday

5:00 P.M.

After leaving Lukin, Eddie Dunne drove the five minutes to Brighton Beach Avenue. The street was a carbon copy of the Moscow of his imagination. The darkness under the el gave the shopping district a drab, dreary quality. All the signs were written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Women in heavy coats prowled the outdoor markets, speaking in Russian and slinging net shopping bags. Shoving and jostling, these women hunted for each evening's meal as if it were all-out war. Old habits ruled the Brooklyn sidewalks. Hip-to-hip, they fought for position around the fruit and vegetable stands, forcing passersby into the street.

Eddie parked in front of the Sea Lanes of Odessa Bakery. Above the bakery, on the second floor, was the home and business location of Madame Caranina, the Gypsy fortune-teller. Eddie first met her during an investigation of a case where a woman had come to Caranina complaining of stomachaches. The fortune-teller said she had a tumor in her stomach. Caranina told the woman to rub seven thousand dollars in cash over her stomach to draw out the evil, then bring the cash back to her so she could bury it in a grave.

The D train clattered overhead as Eddie called home. Kevin answered on the first ring. Eddie could hear the tension in his brother's voice when he said they had not yet been contacted.

Eddie said, "If they call-I mean, as soon as they call, notify me immediately. If they want to talk to me, give them the number for the cell phone."

"Babsie's shaking her head no," Kevin said.

"Yeah, well. You know what to do, Kev."

Eddie slammed the door as he got out of the Olds, angry at himself for saying "if." He knew that word would be on tape, and what the feds would read into it. He glanced up at the second-floor window. It looked like Madame Caranina was still in business.

Eddie didn't need psychic services. He was looking for Caranina's husband, Parrot. Parrot was a tiny man who wore Hawaiian shirts both winter and summer. He had a huge mane of dyed red hair, swept back in a tidal wave of a greasy pompadour. Eddie didn't remember Parrot's real name. He used so many different names, not even he could keep them straight. The cops in Auto Crime had named him Parrot so there would be no doubt they were referring to the best car thief in New York. His first arrest was for the theft of Reggie Jackson's Bentley from the well-guarded New York Yankees lot. The engineers in Detroit couldn't even imagine a device to stop him. Eddie opened the door and a bell tinkled.

Since fortune-telling was illegal in New York, Caranina described herself as dealing in everything but. Painted on the glass window of her street-level door was a list of services, in descending order: astrology, horoscope, tarot cards, esp, crystal, tarot stones, runes, palmistry, tea leaves, past life, readings.

The narrow, creaking stairway to the second floor smelled of a combination of rotting wood, spoiled food, and dank carpet. Caranina's door was open. Eddie stepped into the front room of the ofisa, the Romany word for a fortune-telling parlor. A vinyl-covered card table and three folding chairs took up the center of the floor. The large windows that overlooked Brighton Beach Avenue and stared directly into the passing el trains were hidden by thick gold drapery lifted from a defunct catering hall. Against the longest wall, an old woman in a flowered babushka sat on a greasy sofa, watching The Montel Williams Show. A pair of jumper cables was coiled under the sofa. Eddie asked for Parrot. Without looking up, the old woman rattled something in Romany, that strange Gypsy language that sounds like Greek only because it sounds like nothing else.

The beaded curtain to the back room parted. A dark-eyed young girl in a long velvety skirt and ski sweater appeared. Eddie remembered that her name was Tropicalia, one of the seven daughters of Caranina and Parrot. Tropicalia was twelve, or twenty. Her only education had been in her mother's craft, but lying ran through her blood. She denied knowing anyone named Parrot.

"Your father and I are old friends," Eddie said.

"My father has no gadje friends," she said.

Fifty dollars jogged her memory. Tropicalia reached under her sweater, shoved the bill inside the waistband of her skirt, then remembered that her father was away on business with the baro, the gypsy patriarch. Eddie remembered an old Russian saying that "Gypsy truth is worse than an Orthodox lie." He told her he needed to see him, that he had a huge business opportunity. He waited a beat, thinking that if Parrot was listening in the back room he'd appear at the hint of big money. Eddie gave Tropicalia a slip of paper with the number of Kevin's cell phone.

"Tell him not to call my home number," he said, then handed her another fifty. For the right price, the Parrot would deliver. Again, he told her how profitable it would be; then he let two more fifties drop to the floor. The bills barely hit the carpet. With the others, they disappeared under the ski sweater and inside the waistband of the long velvety skirt. He wished he'd brought more money.

Back down on the street, Eddie realized he hadn't eaten all day. He stopped at Mrs. Stahl's and bought a potato knish that felt like it weighed five pounds. He took a bottle of springwater from the cooler, then walked back to his car. Sparks from the clackety train above drifted through the permanent half-light under the el. A note was stuck on his windshield. At first, he thought it might be from Parrot, but it was a flyer from a cut-rate travel agency. Budapest-round-trip, eight hundred dollars.

The wise choice would be to go home. Just get in the car and drive to Yonkers. No doubt he should go back and relieve the pressure he'd dumped on his older brother. He should take Grace to Christ the King to light a candle, and on to McDonald's for a Happy Meal. It would be the wise choice. But the wise choice was rarely an option for Eddie Dunne.

Here he was in Brooklyn, eating a knish, while his daughter suffered. There was no reason for her to suffer.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. People around him were laughing, enjoying themselves, while he suffocated within. Why should these people be happy? The thought of Yuri Borodenko being comfortable, on vacation, gnawed at him, sent his pulse racing.

People like Borodenko lived the good life because they hired people to inflict pain for them. They paid ordinary thugs for acts of cruelty at their direction. Then it was those thugs who took the weight of revenge. The hirelings bled, while the power brokers, like minstrel-show darkies, flashed immaculate white-gloved hands. But the responsibility was theirs. No matter who had actually been driving the car that stole his daughter from him, Yuri Borodenko's white gloves were on the wheel.