Ed Dee - The Con Man's Daughter

"I believe you."

"Believe this. You keep fucking with me… somebody's getting hurt. I know how to hurt you."

"I deserve to be hurt, not my daughter."

"You deserve to suffer."

"I should be suffering," he said. "Make me suffer more. Go ahead. Beat me, humiliate me. Punish me. I deserve it. You've got the gun."

"If it was up to me…"

"Who is it up to?"

"One more word," she said, walking backward now. Eddie knew she wasn't going to shoot him. Borodenko wanted him alive.

"Call whoever it's up to. The phone's in the kitchen. Call him."

A gunshot inside a house booms like an M80 firecracker in a metal trash barrel. The muzzle flash happens so quickly, you think you imagined it. But the echo of the boom lingers. Only now, as the acrid smell of cordite burned his nostrils, did he understand the slight motion she'd made just before the boom, when she'd pointed the barrel to his right, over his shoulder. The bullet went into the back wall, above the window that looked out at the Cyclone.

"That's for telling me the phone's in the kitchen," she said. "In my own house. The balls on you."

"You're right-I'm an obnoxious bastard. But call the boss. Tell him I'm ready to get the money. He'll be proud of you."

"You think any fucking man gives me orders?"

"No, I'm sorry. You're in charge."

"Fucking A," she said, dipping the barrel of the gun down to point at his crotch. She opened the door behind her. "You follow me, your daughter dies. If I see anyone else, any cop tailing me, she dies."

"Let me get some money for you right now. Good-faith money. No strings attached. I owe you big-time for keeping her alive."

"You're even stupider than I imagined," she said, halfway out the door. "You don't even know who's keeping you alive."

Wednesday

6:00 P.M.

"Is it an Irish thing, or what?" Babsie said. "You only look contented when someone kicks the shit out of you." A cracked molar made it uncomfortable for Eddie to talk. His tongue rubbed raw every time he swallowed or spoke. In the hours since colliding with Zina Rabinovich's bat, his left elbow had worsened, the forearm and wrist more swollen, stiffness extending down to his fingers. The fact that he knew Kate was alive numbed all the pain.

"Legally," she said, "Zina could have killed you."

"Or had me arrested. But she didn't do either." He was starving despite the bad tooth and the fact it was Wednesday night at the North End Tavern. Wednesday night meant franks and beans. It was the slowest night for customers, because, according to Kevin, people wouldn't pay for food that reminded them of bad times. "Depression food," he called it. Stubborn Martha always countered that if that were true, all-night diners and dirty-water hot dog carts would have gone out of business years ago.

"I'm bringing Zina in," Babsie said. "Maybe Kevin can pick her out of a lineup."

"She'll just lawyer up and disappear on us. Hold off for now."

"So you get another chance at her? You've had beau-coup chances, Eddie. Time for bravado is long gone. Time to look out for little you know who."

"She's not after Grace."

After taking the beating from Zina, Eddie walked it off on the Coney Island boards. He sought out the old-timers, people whose entire lives revolved around cotton candy, french fries, and now the gold mine of video games. The boardwalk held no secrets. In short order, Eddie heard all about the deaths of the old couple who had owned and run Coney Custards for decades. They'd passed away within weeks of each other and left the business and the building to their pompous ass of a son. And that was a crying shame. The son, too good for the Coney life, preferred to sip martinis in the upscale bar and marina in Great Kills Harbor that his parents had worked themselves to death to buy for him. He'd hired Zina to run the ice-cream business. The consensus on Zina was that she was an unstable lesbian, a woman anyone with good sense avoided. He already knew that much.

"Whoever Zina wants," Babsie said, "she'll come after you, and Grace will get caught in the cross fire. With any luck, it'll be just you and Zina, mono a memo . The way it was destined to be."

"A little melodramatic."

"I'm just trying to fit in," she said. "I've doubled the guard on Grace starting tomorrow morning. In case you can't leap this tall building in a single bound."

Working off Probation Department sentencing reports,

Babsie had constructed a background on Zina Rabinovich. Zina was the third daughter of a Russian shoemaker and a seamstress, and their first child born in America. Zina's mother died a year later in Coney Island Hospital during the birth of their fourth child, a boy. The father, who refused to speak English, worked hard but never made enough. Her oldest sister committed suicide at sixteen. The second girl vanished. Social Services said they'd all been physically and emotionally abused. After she left school, the only records of Zina were criminal: five times grand larceny auto and a variety of assaults.

"You're sure you never met Zina before?" Babsie said.

"Before Parrot identified her last week, I'd never even heard the name."

"Never ran across her? Not even as part of an investigation?"

"She's in her twenties, Babsie. She would have been in diapers when I was a cop in Brooklyn."

"Then why does she hate you so much?"

"I have no idea."

Eddie looked over at Grace, who was busy placing a chair at each end of the shuffleboard table. Ever since Kate disappeared, Kevin had worked tirelessly to keep Grace busy. Every time he saw her eyes start to glaze over in a thousand-mile stare, he concocted a game of something. Wednesday was easy, shuffleboard night. Kevin had bought an old-fashioned shuffleboard table that ran the length of the back room, taking up the space of three booths. Franks and beans night was always slow, so their new tradition, a shuffleboard challenge, had become a marathon. Kevin would string the game out as long as she wanted to play. Anything for Gracie. If she asked him to turn cartwheels, he'd say, "No problemo." It wouldn't be pretty, though, two-hundred-pound Irish cartwheels.

"I want to get a look at Zina," Babsie said. "And I mean now. I'll hold off on the lineup, but I want to eyeball her myself."

"Staten Island, tomorrow," Eddie said. "It's on her calendar. Last Thursday, I tailed Mrs. Borodenko's Mercedes there. I didn't know it was her at the time, but Zina was the woman driving. They had lunch in Jimmy's Bistro on Hylan Boulevard. Might be a regular thing."

"Long way to go for lunch," Babsie said. "You sure there's not a little secret something going on between these two? A little candlelight and wine hanky-panky?"

"Definitely the wine. Boland says that Yuri hired Zina to keep his wife away from booze. She can't get a drink in Brighton Beach anymore. Bars aren't allowed to serve her when Yuri's not there. Going to Staten Island, far away from anyone who knows them… maybe they're thinking a drink that no one sees never really happened."

"If that were true, my ex-husband would have worn a hood."

Babsie asked to see the notes he took in Zina's apartment. He took another opportunity to change position, shift some weight off his right hip. Between the alleged sciatica and the baseball bat injuries, Eddie had all he could do to walk around looking like he was less than eighty years old.

"How did the nuns let you get away with this handwriting?" she said.

"They didn't. That's why my knuckles look like this. I tell everyone it was from fighting, but it was Sister Mary Elizabeth's metal ruler."

Babsie copied down the information from Zina's calendar and bills. Eddie arranged himself in the booth, trying to find a comfortable position. He'd never realized how hard the wooden benches were.