Ed Dee - The Con Man's Daughter

"I think AI Pacino gave me up," Babsie said.

"Who?"

"The maitre d'. He's over at their booth now, and Zina is looking my way. Pissed-off. Here she comes."

Eddie heard rustling sounds. He could hear Babsie clear her throat. Then he heard another voice: Zina's.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Babsie said.

"Give me the fucking camera." It was Zina. No doubt about it. That voice was etched in his mind.

Eddie sprinted stiffly across the parking lot. His right hip ached as he bounded up the steps. When he found Babsie's table, she was sitting back, smiling up at Zina. The way her hands were in her lap, he knew she had her gun under the table and was pointing it at Zina's stomach.

"Eddie Dunne, shit," Zina said. "I knew you didn't have the balls to handle it on your own."

"I need to talk to you for a second," Eddie said.

"Get your fucking hands off me," Zina said.

Babsie identified herself to the maitre d', who was running in circles around them. She dropped the camera down in her purse with a big satisfied smile. Zina told the maitre d' she wanted the film before they left. Two burly guys in tight suits converged on them from the bar. Eddie whispered he had the money in the trunk.

"Three million," he whispered.

"You ain't got shit with you," Zina said. "Except this old whore with a badge."

"Okay, last words before the fight," Babsie said.

She was already up, swinging her leather bag over her shoulder. One burly guy maneuvered his body between the two women. The maitre d' asked Babsie to leave, then explained to Zina he couldn't take the camera. Babsie was a police officer on an official investigation.

"Not so fast, bitch," Zina said, reaching around. "I told you I want that film."

Zina grabbed Babsie by the hair and yanked her toward her. Burly guy number one tried to pry Zina's fingers loose. Babsie ducked and spun, swinging the purse low, as if it were a fifty-pound sandbag. She caught Zina behind the knees. Zina buckled backward, then went down flat. Babsie followed with all her weight as her knee slammed into Zina's midsection. Zina gasped, trying to catch her breath, fists flailing at Babsie's face. Both burly guys reached for whatever they could grab-arms, legs, shirts. Eddie planted his foot on Zina's sternum, grabbed Babsie under the arms, and pulled her up.

The bigger burly guy wrapped Eddie in a bear hug, squeezing his sore left elbow against his ribs. The maitre d' Babsie called AI Pacino helped the wheezing Zina to her feet. A clump of Babsie's grayish blond hair clung to the fingers of her right hand. Quick eye contact with Eddie-Babsie saying she was okay. Zina bent over, trying to catch her breath, pointed a finger at Eddie, then made a gesture. She held her palm flat, indicating about three feet high, then ran a finger across her throat. "Grade," she rasped.

"You come near that little girl," Babsie said, "and I'll blow that ugly head off."

Eddie struggled to get out of the bear hug. He looked around for Mrs. Borodenko, but the pale blonde was standing only a few feet to his right in her Joan Crawford dress. Her eyes were puffy and red, as if she'd been caught in the middle of a drunken crying jag, and she was looking right at him. Staring at him.

"Forgive," she said in a breathy Russian accent. That sad, pretty face. A face from another time. She touched his arm as Zina pulled her toward the door. "Forgive."

Thursday

2:00 P.M.

"Sorry," Babsie said.

Sorry was a word he didn't want to hear again. It never changed anything; time never rolled backward to accommodate your regret. If it did, Kate would be home, Eileen still singing doo-wop. He was sorry for all the pain he'd caused, all the mistakes he'd made. What good did it do? He wanted to put a blinking purple neon billboard in the heart of Times Square, announcing that no one ever had to apologize to him again. Babsie certainly didn't have to.

"It wasn't your fault," Eddie said. "It was a stupid plan. Never had a chance. The woman is a psycho. You can't pin your hopes on the reaction of a psycho."

'The camera was a mistake," she said.

"Babsie, forget what happened."

"I just keep thinking…"

"I love you," he said for the first time. "From the first moment of this, you've been my heart, my head, everything I could have ever wanted. In my eyes, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, you could ever do wrong."

Little else was said on the way back to Yonkers. The thing about apology is that no amount of it eases anyone's pain, thought Eddie. And no amount of money was ever going to get Kate home. He'd fooled himself into thinking this was about money. He wanted to believe it, because it was a tangible way to fix everything. But if it had been about ransom, Kate would have been home long ago. Cash and carry. This was something else. Some Zina Rabinovich-conjured vendetta. Zina was using Mrs. Borodenko to carry it out, and nobody in Borodenko's organization had the guts to tell Yuri his beautiful wife was hollow. Everyone knows what happens to the messenger. Eddie Dunne was not afraid to be the messenger.

"Let me have the camera," he said.

"Let's go home," Babsie said. "Ten days you've been at this. Not sleeping, not letting up. You're emotionally exhausted."

It was too late for exhaustion. It was the last round: Go for the head. He'd decided to peel the veneer off the beautiful Mrs. Borodenko. He intended to broadcast throughout the Russian community the relationship between her and a homicidal lesbian. He had no doubt it would plunge a dagger through Borodenko's macho self-image and bring him rushing home to repair the damage. It could also backfire, but he was down to last chances. Ten days had gone by. Ten days.

Babsie's cell phone rang. He heard only her part of the short hi-and-bye conversation. She answered no questions, gave no advice. She just listened to the dictates of a legal system in full gear. The ball was rolling with or without her.

"Celltech called back," she said. "The DNA sample sent to them by Zina matches ours. They're both Paul Caruso."

"Let me know when you're ready to pick her up."

"Don't worry," she said. "The thing of it is, Paulie's DNA didn't match Zina's. She's still looking for her father."

They stopped at a one-hour photo on Central Avenue. Eddie picked two pictures from the sample sheet. The photo shop was glad to see Eddie. He ordered a hundred blowups each of two pictures in which you could clearly see the faces of both women as they leaned across the table for an eyes-closed, mouths-open, tongues-engaged kiss. No mistaking it for platonic.

He dropped Babsie off at home. She went right to her car and backed down the driveway, on her way to Christ the King. Grace would never be out of her sight until Zina was in custody. Eddie opened a stack of bills from the very top layer of the boodle in his trunk. He folded them and stuck them into his pocket.

On the way back to the photo shop, he thought about the face of Mrs. Borodenko. Before today, he'd seen her only from a distance. Though pale and drawn, she was stunning. As she stood next to him asking forgiveness, her face had flushed pink from the wine and the turmoil around her. Thick blond hair, cut short and blunt, and white-blond eyebrows framed those sad blue eyes. Once-in-a-lifetime blue eyes.

Eddie paid the photo bill with two musty hundred-dollar bills. He stacked the photos on the seat next to him as he drove to Brooklyn, but he kept picking them up and looking, bothered by this face. He thought he was past the age where you believe that one woman is more beautiful than a million others. That was Hollywood hype. After all, he'd spent his life in a city where you saw dozens of beautiful women every day, on every block, all incredibly attractive in their own way. By the time you got home, you couldn't remember any of them. But beauty excuses nothing.