Ed Dee - The Con Man's Daughter

Then another ring, the wail of sirens. On Stillwell Avenue, people in bathrobes came from apartments he didn't know existed. They were out pointing at him. Cops were on the way. Eddie knew they'd be uniformed precinct cops finishing up a midnight tour. Looking to get home and crawl in the sack with mama still warm from the night. He knew the cops had just finished checking the business glass in their sectors, ready for morning coffee and a hard roll. They were thinking, Can't this bullshit wait for the day tour? It never did. He also knew what the Coney Island cops would say after the mop-up and the paperwork were done. They'd say what Paulie the Priest always said: "Just another day at the beach."

Monday

8:30 A.M.

The Bomb Squad dug small chunks of metal out of car fenders and wood-framed buildings and identified the weapon as a Russian RGO fragmentation grenade. RGOs sold for five bucks apiece on the worldwide stolen-weapons network. The fuses often varied in length by as much as seven seconds. Eddie'd been lucky to get a slow burner.

His ears weren't as lucky-he could still hear the ringing. His skin felt tight and drawn, as if freshly sunburned, and he'd inhaled and swallowed a pound of grit. Otherwise, he was fine.

No stitches, no broken bones. The biggest victim was the Olds. After the CSU went over it, they towed it to the precinct, but it was history. "Junk it," Matty Boland told him. "Your insurance won't cover acts of God or hand grenades."

Although he was hurting, Eddie felt surprisingly at peace. It was the same feeling he'd always had in the days after a tough fight. Pain and exhaustion were strangely comforting. Boland drove him home the long way. A quiet ride up the Major Deegan past the white stone facade of Yankee Stadium, the home of the Bronx Bombers, a name that had taken on a new significance. The Baltimore Orioles were due to get blasted at 8:10 p.m. He closed his eyes in the morning sun as they drove past Yonkers Raceway, where the suckers arrived at 7:30.

Boland dropped Eddie at his back door and left. The house was empty except for a cop looking for a book on Eddie's shelves. The Yonkers Police Department had stationed a uniformed cop at the house after the incident with the head on the lawn. Maybe the grenade incident would keep them around awhile longer.

Less than an hour after the explosion, Eddie had called Kevin from Brooklyn. He didn't want them hearing it on the news. Yelling into the phone, Eddie told him that he never got touched. That was the same line he'd used when he called his father after every fight. By the time the family saw the bruises, the swelling, and his sewn-up eyelids, the anxiety level would have diminished. They never knew how often he pissed blood, or bit off chunks of his tongue.

More than ever before, Eddie wanted his family to go about their business. Act normal, so Grace wouldn't sense the fear. That's why the house was quiet. Grace was in school, Kevin and Martha in the bar. Business as usual. Except for Kate. And Babsie, who was down at One Police Plaza, poring over Eddie's personnel file, searching for a fourteen-year-old smoking gun.

Eddie slid leftover pizza into the microwave, box and all. He knew the crust would be tough and chewy, but speed was all that mattered. Two minutes later, he sat there listening to his kitchen clock and washing a slice down with a diet cola. Diet belonged to Babsie. Eddie didn't drink diet and Kate didn't drink cola. He couldn't taste it, but it soothed his parched throat. He had another one, refilling the cup with ice. No way he could handle more coffee. He'd had three cups before Matty Boland arrived at the Six-oh with a Starbucks Grande for the trip home. The only negative thing Boland said was that he didn't feel sorry for him; he'd warned him not to go to Alice B's. Now he was going to have to live with the label of being the first known victim of a lesbian hand grenade.

In the shower, pieces of stone and glass washed down from his hair and ears. He easily located the head abrasions the EMT had told him were there. The technician figured the SUV he'd hidden under bounced from the grenade's concussion and hammered his head into the pavement. Hot water stung his skin. The good news was that his ears were improving. The ringing burglar alarm seemed to be less audible as the hours passed. Hopefully, the distance to his daughter was now shorter. He'd struck a nerve today. Apparently, the mere mention of the name Zina Rabinovich brought fireworks.

After he got out of the shower, Eddie hunted down the keys to Kate's Toyota Camry. Martha had picked it up from the shop; he knew she would have stuck the keys in some odd place, not on the rack in the kitchen, where everyone else left them. He found them in Kate's top dresser drawer. It was the first time he'd been in her room since she'd disappeared, a full week ago.

On the wall above Kate's dresser was a small crucifix. On the dresser were pictures of Grace, him, and Eileen, and a small silver statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary she'd bought with her lunch money in second grade at Christ the King. Kate had a love-hate relationship with the

Catholic church. More and more, she'd been speaking out, always shocking her aunt Martha. Kate believed that if the church would let women be priests, or allow the male priests to marry, it could solve the priest shortage tomorrow. "A bunch of old fogies hold us back," she claimed, "out of touch with reality, and driving the church straight to hell."

To Eddie, religion was a private matter. He couldn't care less what the robed politicos did; he'd find his own spirituality. He'd never been happy with the new Catholic church anyway, all the handshakes and Protestant singing. Kate's old fogies even screwed up the Mass itself. They took away the Latin and destroyed the mystery. Mystery demands faith, and religion is about nothing except faith, Eddie thought. The words are a drone anyway, so what's the difference? Bring back the Latin; turn the priests around.

His head buzzed with coffee and worry as he tried to fall asleep. He'd reached a point in his life where he wanted desperately to believe in God, and especially that big reunion in the sweet hereafter. Only that belief made growing old bearable. Eddie wanted a chance to apologize to those he'd hurt for no reason, and to connect with those he'd ignored because he was too stupid to see their goodness. He wanted to inhale the incense and believe it all, but so much evidence pointed at a random, uncaring deity. If that's a wrong idea, then why does a child suffer while so many scumbags, as many as you can possibly imagine, walk free? Don't even try to explain it to me. Not now.

Eddie had been drifting in and out of sleep when he heard Babsie's voice in the living room. She was talking to Kevin about the hand grenade. Kevin told her about

Eddie yelling into the phone, then an old story about their dad. Whenever the smoke alarm had gone off in the restaurant, Kieran, going deaf at the time, paid no attention to it. When one of the customers at the bar mentioned that maybe Kieran should look into it, he would say he assumed it was just the battery on his hearing aid going bad. Listening to Kevin and Babsie talk, Eddie felt removed, outside of himself. They both seemed to be amazed that someone would throw a hand grenade. He wasn't. Maybe that was Eddie's problem: Nothing ever surprised him. Nobody was ever more evil than he expected them to be.

Babsie came by his room as he was starting to pull on his pants, but a back spasm flopped him back on the bed.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Getting up."

"Looked more like a twisting half gainer."

"What time is it?"

"Early. You've got time. Grab another hour or so."

Babsie had dressed for the trip to NYPD headquarters. Her grayish blond hair was back in a ponytail, all business. She wore a black pantsuit that had a short waist-length jacket. She even wore lipstick.