David Duffy - Last to Fold

Eva wanted cash, not credit—she bought accounts with bank information and PINs included. If she knew someone who made cards, she could hit a dozen ATMs on the way to her dealer.

I plugged the names and account numbers into the Basilisk. It took a few minutes to troll the financial world before it confirmed my suspicion. Eva had checked into room 604 at the W Hotel on Union Square last night at seven forty-two under the name Elizabeth Long. So far this morning, she’d withdrawn nearly $7,700 from ten accounts at ten different ATMs, eight of which were clustered along lower Second and Third avenues, between Fourth and Fourteenth streets. Lots of young people gravitate toward the East Village, but Second Avenue in the single digits is also the longtime center of Ukrainian New York. I put Eva’s computer aside and opened Ratko’s. The home page for the Slavic Center for Personal Development came up again, as it had yesterday. Its mission was to “further the growth of Slavic communities worldwide” by “facilitating the social, cultural, and financial development of individuals of Slavic descent.” To this end, the center sponsored a wide array of “theoretical and practical programs on all aspects of Slavic life.” The center had offices in the major Slavic capitals, as well as Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich, London, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, and a half-dozen Asian cities. Slavs get around. Or Slav money. Laundered Slav money. New York’s “Slav House” was on Second Avenue between Eighth and Ninth. Multiple reasons for a visit.

Foos called as I passed his office. “That cell phone. Not many incoming calls. Mostly outgoing, to a number in Moscow.”

“And?”

“Basilisk has more trouble overseas. Europeans, including Russians, guard their data. So I used some old-fashioned technology and put the number into Google. Belongs to the Criminal Prosecution Service of the Russian Federation.”

First stop was the W. I dialed room 604 on the house phone and listened to the electronic ring until it clicked over to voice mail. I took the elevator to six, found her door, and knocked. No answer. She could be asleep. I knocked again—louder. She could be stoned. The Basilisk said she hadn’t checked out, but it wouldn’t know if she had simply split.

Next stop, Slav House.

The heat was having no apparent impact on lower Second Avenue. The sun-soaked late-morning sidewalks were crowded with people of all types and ages—tattooed students (no nontattooed students that I could see), moms driving baby carriages as if competing in a demolition derby, middle-aged men with guts stretching their wife-beaters, grandmothers carrying more shopping bags than age and physics said they should be able to lift. There had to be a score of ethnicities on the street—Slavs, Latinos, West Indians, African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis, Southeast Asians, Europeans of all origins, American white guys. Polyglot—one big reason I moved to New York. Lots of neighborhoods in this city have forfeited their personalities over the years to chain stores, outsized condo developments, and gentrification led by aptly named yuppies and dinks. Character still spilled out onto the street here from every crack and crevice of the brickwork. Except for the heat and the task at hand, I gladly would have found a sidewalk table, opened a beer, and spent a pleasant hour taking it all in.

The facade of Slav House, on the east side of the avenue one door off the corner of Eighth Street, was as run-down as the Slavic Center’s Web site was glossy. Dull green paint peeled off a cheap metal shell pasted to the brick of a four-story tenement sandwiched between an Indian restaurant and a cell phone store. The rest of the block was taken up with a deli, a newsstand, another restaurant (this was also one of New York’s Indian culinary centers), a dry cleaner, a pharmacy, two nail salons, and a hairdresser. Similar mix of businesses on the west side, also with apartments above, including one of the bank branches where Eva Mulholland had withdrawn somebody else’s money.

I held the door to Slav House for two young women on their way in. They flashed some kind of ID at the muscled guard in the shallow lobby, passed through a turnstile, and disappeared behind a curtained doorway beyond. Only one other door, in the wall behind the guard. Steel, with a big, reinforced lock. Beside the door, high up, was a window fitted with one-way glass.

The guard got off his stool as I approached. “You got ID?”

He spoke English with a heavy accent. I replied in Russian. “I just moved here. Friend told me you got lots of programs that can help.”

He switched languages. “What friend?”

“Nedelenko. Ilarion Nedelenko.” I wondered if he was still alive.

“Never heard of him.”

“I’m from Belarus, Minsk. Nedelenko said you can help people get started here. Jobs, contacts, networking…”

“I told you. Don’t know no Nedelenko. You want to come here, you have to apply. On the Web site.”

“Web site?”

“That’s right.”

“Nedelenko didn’t say…”

Three men in their thirties came in. Like the women, they flashed IDs to the guard and proceeded through the turnstile.

“Maybe I could talk to someone else. I was told—”

He shook his head. “No one here to talk to. I told you—”

“Yeah, I heard—Web site.”

“That’s right.”

“But you do run programs, right? Programs to help Slavic people.”

“Check out the Web site, pal. Everything we do is there. We don’t take in every Ivan off the street.”

“Okay.”

I returned to the hot sidewalk. No point pushing it—this time.

I went up the block showing the photo of Eva, asking if anyone had seen her. It was slow going. People were busy and not necessarily open to helping. Fair enough. They didn’t know who I was or what I was about. At one time, I could terrify anyone into talking just by flashing my KGB card. I don’t have that ability anymore (except with the occasional Nedelenko)—and I’m not sorry.

I canvassed the block between Ninth and Tenth, then crossed the street and worked the west side back down. Most of the people I talked to were immigrants with varying knowledge of English, but some also hid behind the pretense of not understanding. As much as I wanted their help, I couldn’t fault their reticence.

A salesman stood outside a mattress store across from Slav House smoking a cigarette, a white guy with a bad hairpiece about my age. He looked at the photo, furrowed his brow, looked at me, and said, “What’d she do?”

“Ran away, maybe. Drugs, maybe. Parents are worried.”

“They should be, maybe. See that over there?” He nodded at Slav House. “Opened a year and a half ago, maybe two. Folks go in and out all day. Funny thing, though. Lot of those folks ain’t Slavs, unless they got black Slavs, Puerto Rican Slavs, Asian Slavs I ain’t heard about. Lot of ’em are kids.”

“So?”

“They got those kids doin’ somethin’.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t know. I do know they come and go in teams—three or four at a time. I live in Hoboken. Quiet neighborhood, working class, not a lot of strangers. Four times now, on my day off, I’ve seen these kids. I know ’cause I recognize them. They’re going through my neighborhood, doin’ somethin’, I just don’t know what.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Not a lot to do here all day when business is slow ’cept watch the street. I know most of them kids by sight.”

“You know this girl?”

“Yeah. Been seein’ her a couple months now.”

He spoke with a quiet certainty, not like a man with anything to prove.