Last to Fold (24 page)

The heat was having no apparent impact on lower Second Avenue. The sun-soaked late-morning sidewalks were crowded with people of all types and ages—tattooed students (no nontattooed students that I could see), moms driving baby carriages as if competing in a demolition derby, middle-aged men with guts stretching their wife-beaters, grandmothers carrying more shopping bags than age and physics said they should be able to lift. There had to be a score of ethnicities on the street—Slavs, Latinos, West Indians, African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis, Southeast Asians, Europeans of all origins, American white guys. Polyglot—one big reason I moved to New York. Lots of neighborhoods in this city have forfeited their personalities over the years to chain stores, outsized condo developments, and gentrification led by aptly named yuppies and dinks. Character still spilled out onto the street here from every crack and crevice of the brickwork. Except for the heat and the task at hand, I gladly would have found a sidewalk table, opened a beer, and spent a pleasant hour taking it all in.

The facade of Slav House, on the east side of the avenue one door off the corner of Eighth Street, was as run-down as the Slavic Center’s Web site was glossy. Dull green paint peeled off a cheap metal shell pasted to the brick of a four-story tenement sandwiched between an Indian restaurant and a cell phone store. The rest of the block was taken up with a deli, a newsstand, another restaurant (this was also one of New York’s Indian culinary centers), a dry cleaner, a pharmacy, two nail salons, and a hairdresser. Similar mix of businesses on the west side, also with apartments above, including one of the bank branches where Eva Mulholland had withdrawn somebody else’s money.

I held the door to Slav House for two young women on their way in. They flashed some kind of ID at the muscled guard in the shallow lobby, passed through a turnstile, and disappeared behind a curtained doorway beyond. Only one other door, in the wall behind the guard. Steel, with a big, reinforced lock. Beside the door, high up, was a window fitted with one-way glass.

The guard got off his stool as I approached. “You got ID?”

He spoke English with a heavy accent. I replied in Russian. “I just moved here. Friend told me you got lots of programs that can help.”

He switched languages. “What friend?”

“Nedelenko. Ilarion Nedelenko.” I wondered if he was still alive.

“Never heard of him.”

“I’m from Belarus, Minsk. Nedelenko said you can help people get started here. Jobs, contacts, networking…”

“I told you. Don’t know no Nedelenko. You want to come here, you have to apply. On the Web site.”

“Web site?”

“That’s right.”

“Nedelenko didn’t say…”

Three men in their thirties came in. Like the women, they flashed IDs to the guard and proceeded through the turnstile.

“Maybe I could talk to someone else. I was told—”

He shook his head. “No one here to talk to. I told you—”

“Yeah, I heard—Web site.”

“That’s right.”

“But you do run programs, right? Programs to help Slavic people.”

“Check out the Web site, pal. Everything we do is there. We don’t take in every Ivan off the street.”

“Okay.”

I returned to the hot sidewalk. No point pushing it—this time.

I went up the block showing the photo of Eva, asking if anyone had seen her. It was slow going. People were busy and not necessarily open to helping. Fair enough. They didn’t know who I was or what I was about. At one time, I could terrify anyone into talking just by flashing my KGB card. I don’t have that ability anymore (except with the occasional Nedelenko)—and I’m not sorry.

I canvassed the block between Ninth and Tenth, then crossed the street and worked the west side back down. Most of the people I talked to were immigrants with varying knowledge of English, but some also hid behind the pretense of not understanding. As much as I wanted their help, I couldn’t fault their reticence.

A salesman stood outside a mattress store across from Slav House smoking a cigarette, a white guy with a bad hairpiece about my age. He looked at the photo, furrowed his brow, looked at me, and said, “What’d she do?”

“Ran away, maybe. Drugs, maybe. Parents are worried.”

“They should be,
maybe.
See that over there?” He nodded at Slav House. “Opened a year and a half ago, maybe two. Folks go in and out all day. Funny thing, though. Lot of those folks ain’t Slavs, unless they got black Slavs, Puerto Rican Slavs, Asian Slavs I ain’t heard about. Lot of ’em are kids.”

“So?”

“They got those kids doin’ somethin’.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t know. I do know they come and go in teams—three or four at a time. I live in Hoboken. Quiet neighborhood, working class, not a lot of strangers. Four times now, on my day off, I’ve seen these kids. I know ’cause I recognize them. They’re going through my neighborhood, doin’ somethin’, I just don’t know what.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Not a lot to do here all day when business is slow ’cept watch the street. I know most of them kids by sight.”

“You know this girl?”

“Yeah. Been seein’ her a couple months now.”

He spoke with a quiet certainty, not like a man with anything to prove.

“Remember when you last saw her?”

He started to reply but stopped all of a sudden and looked beyond me. His face changed, his voice, too. “Who’d you say you are again?”

“Just a guy looking for that girl.”

“Who’s that?”

I followed his line of sight to a man a few doors down, fumbling in his pockets like he was looking for something—or he’d just been caught looking. His white shirt and dark suit could not have stood out more against the street of T-shirts and tank tops.

I turned back to the salesman. “Probably FBI. They’re looking for the girl, too. She’s dating a Russian. Maybe a mobster. They think he might be with her.”

“You got lots of stories, pal. Selling mattresses sucks, but it’s got benefits, and my wife’s sick. I don’t need trouble.”

“There won’t be,” I said, pressing a couple of twenties into his hand. “You were just telling me the best Indian place around. That one, three doors down.”

The first voice came back. “You got that right. Enjoy your lunch. By the way, the girl came ’bout four o’clock yesterday and again this morning. I remember ’cause she’s one of the prettier ones. Saw her go into Slav House, but then I had a customer. Don’t know if she came out.”

He pocketed the money, crushed the cigarette under his heel, and went inside. I walked down the block toward the FBI man. He saw me coming and looked left and right, nowhere to run.

“I’m Turbo,” I said, extending my hand. He pretended to ignore me, studying the display of vacuum cleaners in the window of a housewares store.

“They say you shouldn’t buy anything but Electrolux. Just so you know, I’m going to grab some lunch in that Indian joint down the block. Then I’m meeting a friend, young woman I’m tutoring in Russian history, at the coffee shop. Then, depending on the time, I’ll either go back to the office or head uptown. Tell your boss I’m looking forward to seeing her again.”

He was still trying to ignore me as I walked away.

I got a table in the window and ordered lunch and punched Gina’s number on my cell phone. She answered right away.

“How’d you like another job?”

“Sure. I’m still broke.”

I gave her the address of the coffee shop. “Meet me there in half an hour.”

People came and went in groups of threes and fours from the Slavic Center as I ate. I mopped up the last of the sauce from a pretty good chicken tikka masala with an excellent nan, paid the check, and moved next door. Gina arrived five minutes later and, predictably, turned up her nose as soon as she walked in the door.

“Jesus, Turbo, what’s with this dump? There’s a Starbucks a block away.”

Gina’s a bright kid, smarter than most, but like much of her generation she’s been brainwashed by the Brand. Having grown up in a society where uniformity was imposed from on high—and any manifestation of individuality, no matter how minor, systematically crushed—I’ve never understood why Americans seek out, not to mention happily pay a premium for, sameness. I do my best to avoid chains of any kind. Scowling, she gave me a peck on the cheek and sat down.

“Coffee?”

“Don’t suppose they have cappuccino?”

I signaled the waitress and ordered a black coffee and a cappuccino. She wrote on her pad and left. I smiled at Gina. She didn’t look any happier.

I said, “Remember the girl on Greene Street?”

“Sure.”

“Her name’s Eva. Her boyfriend’s Ratko. Go over to the place across the street, Slav House. There’s a big guard just inside the door. Ask for Eva. Tell him she was supposed to meet you there.”

“Okay. What gives?”

“I’m looking for the girl. She was seen going in there.”

The waitress brought the coffee. Mine was hot and freshly brewed. Hers had a big mound of foamed milk on top. She sipped it carefully.

“Hey, not bad!” She smiled for the first time since she arrived. But she’d be back at Starbucks tomorrow. “Think it’s a drug den?”

“Possible, but more likely a front for something else. They threw me out, but I could’ve used the wrong name. I mean this—don’t go beyond the lobby. See what he says about Eva and beat it. If you’re not back on the street in ten, I’m coming in after you.”

“Got it. Let me finish this first.” I checked the street for the FBI while she sipped her coffee, using a spoon to make sure she got all the foamed milk, but he’d given up.

“Okay, I’m off,” she said.

“Walk around the block, so no one sees you come straight from here. Same thing on the way back.”

“Turbo, you’re paranoid.”

“Humor me.” Where I grew up, paranoia was one way you stayed alive.

She gave me a look that said paranoia was only one of my problems and headed for the door. She turned right and disappeared toward Eighth Street. Almost five minutes passed before I saw her again, on the far sidewalk, approaching Slav House from the north.

When she’d come to the coffee shop, Gina was simply but neatly dressed in a T-shirt and skirt, with her hair tied at the back of her head. Now the T-shirt was askew and hung loosely over her hips, and her hair was a mess. She walked slowly up the block, looking this way and that, unsure of herself and her surroundings. Before I started using college students, I’d hired out-of-work actors, but casting calls kept getting in the way of my assignments. Gina could have taught them a thing or two about conveying vulnerability. She stopped outside Slav House’s door, hesitant. She’d decided to improvise. I cursed silently.

She gathered herself up and went inside.

She took the full ten minutes. While I waited, I entertained myself with thoughts of all the bad things that could happen to her, how they were all my fault, and what I would tell her parents in Toledo. I was checking my watch for the fourth time when she reappeared. She held the door for a moment, then walked toward Eighth Street, tucking her shirt in as she went. I left money on the table and went up the block and across to meet her at the corner. She followed me to a Starbucks at Thirteenth Street.

“And what was wrong with the other place?” she said as I held the door. Sometimes you can’t win.

She had another cappuccino, I had another black coffee, and we sat at a table in the corner. She said, “I’m not sure what they’re up to, but that place is pretty creepy. The girl’s not there, or so they say, but they know her. Don’t like her, either.”

“They?”

“Two guys. The big guard and another guy, short, oily, black hair, mustache, accent from Eastern Europe somewhere. The guard got him when I asked about Eva. He’s in the room with the steel door.”

“What’d they say?”

“I told the guard I was supposed to meet Eva, like you said. He asked, ‘Eva who?’ I said, ‘Eva, friend of Ratko.’ That’s when he got the other guy, who wanted to know how I knew Eva, and I said we were friends. Then he said, ‘You tell that pretty girl she wants to come around here, bring her boyfriend. Otherwise, fuck off and don’t come back. Same goes for you.’ Then he went back to his room and I split.”

“Huh.” Word of Ratko’s demise hadn’t made it to Slav House.

Four young women came into Starbucks and went to the counter. I’d held the Slav House door for two of them. They’d been empty-handed then, I was almost certain, but now all four carried big shoulder bags, and one consulted a BlackBerry while she waited for her coffee. They spoke quietly among themselves. I couldn’t make out what they said.

I took a roll of bills from my pocket and gave Gina five twenties.

“Don’t turn around, but four women are about to walk out of here. I saw two at Slav House. Follow them and call me when you get a fix on what they’re up to. Don’t get too close. They might be looking for tails.”

“What if they split up?”

“Stick with the striped T-shirt or the white skirt. Here they come.”

Gina and I studied our cups. As soon as the door closed behind them, Gina gave me a quick peck on the cheek and followed. I finished my coffee and went to check the W once more.

CHAPTER 23

Gina called as I entered the hotel.

“I’m at Grand Central. They’re taking a train. What do you want me to do?”

“Stay with them. Buy a ticket on board. Keep in touch.”

I skipped the house phone and went straight to room 604 and knocked. I wasn’t prepared when a tentative, female voice said, “Y … y … yes?”

I could’ve bluffed my way in—“Maintenance, miss, here to check a leak”—but that wasn’t going to encourage her to talk.

“My name’s Turbo, Eva. I found you at Ratko’s on Wednesday. Got you to the hospital.”

A long pause, then the scratch of the security chain being engaged. The door opened a crack, and two blue eyes peered out. A shade lighter than her mother’s and as bright, clear, and questioning today as they had been blank and fearful Wednesday night. Blue-black circles underneath, but that easily could have been from lack of sleep.

“I d … don’t know you. Who’s R … Ratko?”