Ed Dee - The Con Man's Daughter

"All show, like the rest," Eddie said.

"Not all of them. Just between us, we got word on one of Borodenko's freighters. Flying a Syrian flag, but it has a Russian crew. It's coming up the Pacific, outside

Mexico right now. It looks like a major drug ship. Remember, you said they weren't into drugs?"

"I've been wrong about a lot of shit."

Boland wore a dark baseball cap, j. crew across the top. He took it off and ran his fingers through his gray-flecked hair. Eddie noticed a copy of a Russian-English dictionary on the seat next to him.

"You know what your name is in Russian?" Boland asked.

"Fucking Eddie Dunne," he said.

"You've heard that before. We heard it a lot tonight. What I came to tell you is that you can stop with the pictures. We just got the word Yuri Borodenko is pissed, really pissed. That's what you wanted, right?"

"Part of it."

"He'll be home tomorrow. He's in the air right now."

'That's the other part."

"Heard you were hoisting a few in the Samovar tonight. I expected you to be in a lot worse condition than this."

"I quit again," Eddie said. "But I've never been in worse condition."

Thursday

11:00 P.M.

Babsie came to him as he sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the nightgown over her head and rolled back the covers. He loved that she was proud of her body, the fullness and strength of it. No charge for extra curves. They made love quietly but with an emotion born of a grief carried too long. He needed to be touched, needed to feel something, needed her, and she knew it. Afterward, he held her, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder.

"I've loved you since high school," she said softly. "Is that lame or what?"

"I was way too dumb for you then," he said as he rubbed his fingers across her back.

Eddie thought of an old Irish saying: "Better wed over the mixins than the moor." According to Kevin Dunne, it meant your chances of being happy in life were greater the closer you stayed to home. Babsie made him understand that. Ten days together and already they were finishing each other's sentences, laughing about the same stupid stories. What made it possible was the lifetime before these ten days, the shared childhood, which provided the foundation. The different paths they'd traveled since added the mystery. Everything Eddie had ever wanted was right here, on the hill where he'd grown up. It had just taken him so damn long to realize it. If God would keep Kate safe, he'd never ask for anything again.

"I have something to tell you," he said.

"Not now."

Babsie knew he'd been drinking, and she feared the Irish melancholy. She'd spent too many nights in bars with micks who sang songs of marching off to war. Eddie wasn't like that, but something was pulling him down. Best to wait until morning. Morning makes everything seem less ominous, she thought.

"I don't want any secrets," he said. "I know I'm putting you on the spot. You're still an active cop."

"Wait six months, until I retire."

"Some things can't wait, Babsie."

Eddie Dunne's secrets frightened her. He'd lived recklessly for longer than anyone she'd ever known. Since her divorce fifteen years ago, she'd avoided emotional ties. Her big family and her job were enough. She hoped this feeling for him wasn't some repressed high school crush. The good girl finally snags the dangerous boy. But she was too old and too smart for that. She loved him, plain and simple. These ten days, being near him, had resurrected feelings she hadn't had in years. Still, the little warning buzzer in the back of her head kept saying that Eddie Dunne might be more of a problem than any woman could bear.

"You know that torn photograph you put together?" he said. "The three of us in front of Paulie's boat. Me,

Paulie, and Lana. I told you the woman in the center was named Lana, right? And she was Paulie's girlfriend."

"Why am I not surprised there's more to Lana?"

"Everything I told you was true, Babsie. But I left out that Lana was a nickname for Svetlana. Svetlana Rosenfeld. Lana was Marvin Rosenfeld's wife."

"Jesus… Rosenfeld's wife. Don't tell me any more."

They lay there quietly, listening to the sound of Kevin's old car whining on the climb up Roberts Avenue. The steep hill required a good car. A better car than most of the locals cared to spend money on. They could walk or grab the bus to anyplace important. Kevin Dunne refused to pay more than five hundred dollars for a hunk of metal on wheels. He said that it was better the car growl than his stomach.

"I haven't been in love in a long time," Eddie said. "I've forgotten how to handle it."

"It's okay. Telling me says good things; you trust me. I guess that's a good thing. Okay… go ahead, tell me about Lana. Was it a full-blown affair?"

"He named the boat after her. Svetlana means 'bright star.' Paulie Caruso had a lot of women in his life, but he was crazy over this one."

"How long did this go on?"

"Two years, maybe a little longer."

"While she was married?"

"She was thirty years younger than he was."

"That's no excuse."

"I didn't say it was."

Kevin's car doors thumped twice. They both listened to the keys jingling as he and Martha went in their house. All sounds in the night were important now.

"The robbery was a setup, wasn't it?" Babsie said.

"So was the big shoot-out in the park. It was all a setup."

She thought of getting dressed and leaving. Maybe if he had a night to mull it over, he'd decide his secrets should remain with him. But Babsie made up her mind right then. She'd gone this far. Whatever it was, so be it. They'd be her secrets, too.

"How much did you know?" she said.

"It took me a few weeks to catch on. Remember you said you thought it was strange we just happened to be driving by the Rosenfeld house at the exact time of the robbery?"

"The first thing that occurred to me."

"Most cops say the same thing: too much of a coincidence. But I wasn't surprised. We drove by that house all the time. Sometimes ten, twenty times a tour. Paulie was always trying to get a glimpse of Lana. Like he was sixteen years old."

"Vestri and Nunez were patsies," Babsie said. "Set up to be killed, weren't they?"

"Paulie's brother Angelo engineered the robbery. He arranged for Nunez and Vestri to do it. Paulie had all the inside information. He knew where the safe was. He knew there was a ton of money in it, although I don't think he ever imagined how much."

"Paulie knew the exact day and time Vestri and Nunez would be there," she said.

"Probably down to the minute. After the robbery, Nunez and Vestri went to a prearranged spot in Marine Park. They were probably thinking they'd meet one of Angelo's men, switch cars or something. When Paulie followed them, he hung so far back on the Belt Parkway, I thought he was going to lose them. But he knew exactly where they were going. He drove to a spot hidden in a grove of trees. There they were. The shoot-out happened fast. As soon as we got out of the car, Paulie fired the first shot, but they already had guns in their hands."

"When they saw Paulie, they knew it was a setup. They had to be stupid not to smell something strange about Angelo giving them this big a job."

"Stupid, sure, that's why they were picked. But they did better than I did, because I didn't smell anything. None of it seemed forced or manipulated. Paulie was patient. He waited until we came up in normal rotation for that divisionwide burglary assignment. I fully expected him to ride by the house that day. It's what he did every chance he got."

"How much did the Carusos get?"

"Millions."

"How did they get the money out of the park?"

"I'm not exactly sure. After we shot Vestri and Nunez, I left to look for a telephone to call for an ambulance and the bosses. We had no radio in the car. I know, I know… part of the setup. I had to drive out of the park to find a phone. When I got back, ten or fifteen minutes later, I noticed Paulie had grass and twigs clinging to his pant legs. I asked him what had happened. He said he went into the woods to take a piss. He either took the money out of the trunk and hid it or passed it off to someone waiting."