Ice Cap (23 page)

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When I returned to the office I forced myself to read the e-mail piling up in my inbox and saw a recent delivery from [email protected]. There was an attachment, which I downloaded and opened right away, seeing the opening line of an article: “The first thing you notice about Attorney Jacqueline Swaitkowski is her restless energy. Even when sitting next to her in a Japanese restaurant, you feel like you're in the company of a perpetual-motion machine.”

And it went on from there for about five hundred words I couldn't bear to read.

“Crap,” I said out loud.

I read the e-mail.

“Just a rough first draft,” it said. “I don't usually do this—the
Times
would never allow pre-pub review—but I wanted to give you a feel for where I'm going with this.”

“Crap, crap.”

I read through the rest of my e-mail. There was nothing there relating to the Buczek case, which was good, since I could distract myself with work I owed all my other clients who deserved as much attention as Franco Raffini. This took me well into the evening to finish, and I was about to reward myself for the effort when a ping told me a new e-mail had arrived. It was from Randall Dodge.

“I connected with a source I used to have at Interpol,” he wrote. “He can run a check on Ms. Malonowski if you still want.”

“I definitely still want,” I wrote back. “Haven't heard from UB, but the more checkers the merrier.”

This was the point in the day when I normally went out to get something to eat, often on my own. I hated to be afraid of the dark, to have my freedom of movement compromised in any way. I decided I couldn't let it happen. That I couldn't let those sons of bitches ruin my life.

I was about to shut down the computer and head out when another ping sounded. Almost relieved that I had a reason to delay, I clicked on the e-mail.

It was from Joe Sullivan.

“I got something on your two boys,” it said. “Call when you can.”

I called him as fast as I could get out the cell phone and hit the speed dial.

“That took a long time,” he said.

“I really want to hear what you have to say, but I have a proposal to make.”

“I'm listening,” he said.

I mentioned a restaurant around the corner from the one on Main Street in Southampton Village, more of a locals' joint that he'd likely favor.

“Meet me there,” I said, “and I'll buy you dinner.”

“You don't have to do that.”

“I do. I'm afraid to go out at night and I owe you a favor. Then you can escort me home and I'll owe you another one.”

He relented and I left soon after, surviving the walk from the outside door to the car with only an elevated heart rate to the worse. When I got to the place, Joe was standing near the bar inside a pack of men, most wearing baseball caps and heavy work boots, and all drinking beer out of the bottle.

“Who's the date?” one of them asked when I broke into the circle and Sullivan said hello.

“Not a date,” I said. “Professional meeting. With burgers.”

None of them saw the distinction. I was single, he was by himself, we were having dinner together, so it was a date. Since they all seemed to like the idea, why not. No harm was done.

“They know about your situation?” I asked as we sat down at a table in the back of the restaurant.

He nodded. “One of them's my friend with the apartment. None of them are cops, so it'll be another week before word gets to HQ. No biggie.”

He reached into the inside pocket of the jacket he'd worn under his white parka and pulled out his casebook. So I pulled out my own notebook. Pages were flipped through and pens clicked and at the ready.

“Thought those guys were from Ivor Fleming?” he said. “Congratulations, you've now moved up to a higher grade of criminal.”

The waitress came over and we ordered drinks and dinner at the same time to minimize interruptions.

After the drinks came, Sullivan referred to his book, then said, “It's nice to be living near New York City. It's such a melting pot of lowlifes representing every corner of the earth. Every ethnic group has its own organization and its own special turf. So how surprising is it that the Polish would have their very own mob?”

“Not surprising at all. Depressingly,” I said.

“They operate sort of like an independent subsidiary of the Russians, who are a lot bigger but sometimes need to work through other groups with connections in different countries and ethnic neighborhoods in the city. Since, like everything else, the mob has embraced globalization, you need feet on the ground.”

He turned around his casebook and showed me where he'd checked two unpronounceable names spelled with all the diacritics that make the words look like centipedes.

“Can we just call them Yogi and Boo Boo?” I asked, writing the real names in my own book, squiggles and all.

“Fair enough. They been a team for a while. As I thought, basic muscle used to handle the day-to-day, leg-breaking, window-smashing, head-cracking requirements of your average organized crime operation. It's not that challenging a career intellectually, but you get plenty of exercise and the opportunity to meet new people.”

“So we don't know who sent them,” I said.

He shook his head. “Could be any one of several Polish or Russian bosses working out of Brighton Beach and other parts of Brooklyn. There're a lot of scams going on, and a pair of neighborhood guys born in America would probably have plenty of work.”

“So the Poles don't have a niche, a specialty like bank robbery or undocumented pierogis?”

“They're technically into everything our original Italian American–style organizations are into, but the international dimension tells me they'd like import-export. I'm just a humble country cop, but this is my guess.”

“So drug trafficking, money laundering, smuggling, anything involving transport.”

“Right. A lot of stuff goes in and out of there under the nose of the Port Authority,” he said. “You can't expect them to search every container, check every manifest. You'd have to talk to somebody who knows a lot more about that stuff than I do.”

“I have just the man. The bigger question is why muscle me over Franco's trial? Why would they want him put away so badly?”

Our food arrived, and he waited till the waitress left to answer.

“No idea, Counselor. Though we know just about everything in this case has to do with being Polish, with the exception of Ivor Fleming, who's the only Dutch-Filipino gangster I'm aware of. At least we don't have to waste our time with the Colombians or the Jamaicans, who scare everybody.”

“You say ‘we.' You and I can't do anything about a couple of jamokes in Brooklyn.”

“You're right,” he said. “We'll have to deal with them on our home turf. Which basically turns you into mobster bait. You should have protection.”

“No,” I said, so quickly I almost cut him off. “I need my freedom of movement. I appreciate it, but I can't be hamstrung like that.”

He didn't push it. We'd had this conversation before and he knew where it would end up.

“But you do want me to escort you home?” he said.

“I do. Just this once. So I can take a little vacation from the twitchy nerves.”

He toasted me with his beer bottle, noticed it was empty, and waved it at the passing waitress.

“You got it. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll try to jump you again.”

“Maybe we will,” I said without questioning his definition of luck.

 

17

Knowing a cop is going to follow you home after a night out really puts a governor on the booze intake. All for the better. So we got through dinner sticking to safe, non–emotionally threatening subjects, and after Sullivan walked me to the outside door, shook my hand, and waited for me to wave to him from the top of the stairs, I still had plenty of vital energy left for another go at the computer.

To my delight, there was an IM message waiting from UB45JK.

“Our public databases are not as good as yours, but as far as I can tell there is no such person as Katarzina Malonowski. At least no one with that name who is 32 years old, born in Kraków the child of Godek and Halina, with a degree in economics. My friends over there who have friends who would know better than me say the same thing. I will try searching more, but have no high hopes. I have the pic you sent, which we can post to Facebook and other ‘Do you know this person?' sites. That might work.”

I wrote back, “Thanks so much for doing all that. One other place to look are chat rooms. Zina said that's how she met Tad.”

“That's easy,” she wrote, a few minutes later. “Natrafi
ć
.czat.net.”

“That's easy?”

“It's nat.net for short. That's the only site they use over here to meet people in Poland. You can chat in English or Polish. There's a public forum for basic meet and greet, but as soon as things get going, you retire to a private room. Not my thing. No bunkers or cyborgs to blow up.”

I thanked her again. “I owe you,” I wrote.

“No worries. One thing you could do for me. Give Gyro a ham and cheese croissant. That's what he always orders in Dystopriot Land, but it's kinda hard to taste it virtually.”

I assured her this would be easily accomplished. Then I took a chance.

“I can tell him where you live, what you look like? What you do for a living?”

It took a little while for her to write back, so I had plenty of time to kick myself for being so uncool and butting in where I didn't belong.

“Tell him to friend me. It's all there,” she wrote, attaching the link.

I instantly clicked on the link and there she was, though it was hardly all there. Her avatar was the only photo and the only personal information was “Live in my grandmother's basement in New Britain, Connecticut.” And her name, Urszula Bednarczyk. Maybe that's what she meant. As long as he had her name, he could get everything else. And she was probably right.

When I logged off UB's IM site, I called Burton Lewis on his secret cell phone, as always feeling privileged to have that access.

“Hello, Jackie. How goes the war?”

“You mean the fog of war? I have a legal question.”

“I'll do my best.”

“How do I get into a private chat room?” I asked.

“You don't without a subpoena. Assuming the site has the standard privacy policy. The police could also obtain a search warrant. If they choose to use the information in court, you could see it during discovery.”

“I can't wait that long.”

“Give me the particulars and I'll see what our central office can do.”

I told him about nat.net, which a quick search had turned up in a town outside Chicago, one of the largest Polish American communities in the United States. I spelled out the administrator's unpronounceable name and told him I'd e-mail their privacy policy.

“Sounds like you're moving things along,” he said after I finished a broader briefing.

“I wish I felt that way. It's more like I have this tangle of stuff that I'm just poking with a stick.”

“Do you feel more certain about Franco?”

“Yeah. I'm certain he's lying. I just don't know what about.”

After hanging up, I wrote to Randall and gave him the news on Zina, preliminary though it was. I asked if his man in Interpol could focus on identifying the photograph, something they should be a lot better at than UB's social networks. I also told him I had UB's name and did he want it.

“Shit, yeah,” is the answer I got back about ten minutes later. So I sent it to him and suggested a trip on Facebook.

I spent the rest of the night Googling the names of the two Polish goons, yielding very little at first beyond a few arrests in and around Brooklyn for things you'd expect. Assault, threats of bodily harm, stalking, property damage, none making their way to successful prosecution, probably for lack of reliable witnesses.

Then I snuck in a back door of my own, unrelated to Randall's application—a document file I'd stumbled on once that cataloged a variety of things, including the histories and current circumstances of convicted felons. I dropped the names into the search box and waited.

Yogi's last name popped up. It was attached to a guy doing life at Pendlefield Penitentiary. I cross-referenced it with Yogi himself, and there it was. Brother to Yogi. Pendlefield was a big prison, divided into lots of discrete sections to reduce unwanted communications between inmates. That Yogi thought this would be a swell destination for Franco meant something. Probably the obvious. It would be his last.

After that, with my eyes burning with exhaustion, I went back to browsing travel and tourism sites, with an emphasis on anything displaying a coconut or attractive local people with open, welcoming arms.

The place where I now lived didn't look like it could be on the same planet as those other places. To reassure myself, I searched for summer scenes of the Hamptons and was rewarded by a flood of lush images of sun-burnt dunes, party tents, and greyhound-thin girls in bikinis, jewelry, and high heels. But even those seemed so fake. That wasn't even the Hamptons I knew. They were just the distorted clichés of out-of-town photographers. Or maybe it was all a hallucination. Maybe the searing cold and slog of snow-choked roads and sidewalks out there was all there ever was.

I checked the online weather report. Another big storm was on the way.

Maybe this was a good time to go to bed.

*   *   *

Sam woke me up the next day by leaning on the back-door buzzer and waving at the pinhole camera. I could barely see him on the monitor through his vaporous breath and my ravaged eyes. Eddie was there, too, looking up at the camera like he knew what it was.

I got out of bed and stumbled around the bedroom, finding whatever clothing was both in reach and suited to the purpose of modesty and warmth. The result was a T-shirt under a down vest, sweatpants, and fuzzy slippers. I cranked up the thermostat to help with the warmth part.