The Con Man's Daughter (2 page)

Eddie's mind clicked through all the possibilities. It wasn't a burglar; burglars wouldn't go to all this trouble. Maybe the tech man was planting a bug in his house. They'd need to break in for that. Most likely, they'd put it in the kitchen, the room with the most conversations. No reason even to look in the bedroom. Kate would sleep through it all. He dug deeper, his lungs burning. He knew damn well she wouldn't sleep through it. A deep, racking wheeze escaped his chest.

Let it be cops, he prayed. Even feds; feds would be fine. They played by the rules. They weren't the worst. He knew the worst. Knew them all too well. The men who populated the dark side of his past were the night- mare scenario. They didn't acknowledge anyone's rules, and they didn't like surprises. Finding his daughter would be a huge surprise.

His pulse thumped in the back of his neck as he reached the crest of the hill. The old neighborhood was rilled with huge trees and overgrown hedges. Eddie wouldn't be able to see his own house until he was standing directly in front of it. As he ran toward his house, he heard tires squealing. He pulled his gun from the belly-band holster as the black BMW flew out of his driveway and bounced over the curb. The driver started left, then swerved wide right, away from Eddie. This time, he was close enough to read the plate number. He said it aloud, his voice a hoarse rattle. The car fishtailed on the sharp curve and slid around the corner.

Eddie kept running, no longer aware of pain. His voice became a singsong chant as he repeated the number on the license plate over and over, memorizing a set of digits he knew were the most important numbers of his life. He ran until the car was out of sight and he could no longer see the struggle in the backseat. Until all he could think about was the green flannel shirt his only daughter was wearing, and how it set off her wild red hair, as once did the green of her grammar school tartan.

Chapter 2

Monday

9:20 A.M.

An hour and a half had passed since Eddie Dunne heard his daughter scream his name from the backseat of the BMW. Not a hint of her since then. Eddie paced the faded tiles of his kitchen floor in the same clothes he'd worn all morning. Detective Barbara Panko of the Yonkers Police Department sat at the table. She'd traced the BMW's registration to an upscale address in Scarsdale. A team of YPD detectives was en route.

"Why don't you jump in the shower," Detective Panko said. "Get some fresh clothes on. I'll hold down the fort."

"Soon as we hear from Scarsdale," Eddie said.

Detective Panko, whom Eddie had called Babsie all her life, flipped through a box filled with Dunne family pictures, looking for a current photo of Kate. It was for the case file. Babsie, from one of the old families of the tight blue-collar community, already knew what Kate looked like.

"When I was a kid," she said, "I wanted red hair in the worst way. Even dyed it once. Remember that disaster? Drove my poor parents crazy."

"You were one hell of an Irish step dancer even without it."

"Yeah, and the only Polack in Mrs. McCrudden's class. God, I hated those short pleated skirts. They made my legs look like tree trunks."

Eddie had grown up with the Pankos. He'd been in their cramped childhood apartment above Panko's Butcher Shop hundreds of times. He'd fought two of her older brothers when the Yonkers CYO still held Wednesday-night smokers. They both were now retired from the Yonkers PD. Babsie, every bit a tough Panko offspring, had spent ten seasons as the star pitcher for the Yonkers PD in the city's fast-pitch softball league. Six months away from retirement, she now watched from the bleachers.

"Your mom doing okay?" Babsie asked, trying to make small talk to keep Eddie calm. She'd given up asking him to sit down. "She's glad she went back to Ireland and all?"

"I guess. Never hear any different."

Uniformed officers from the YPD had scoured the area of Palisade and Roberts, unable to find the coffee cup thrown from the window of the BMW. In Eddie's living room, a tech man installed a tape recorder; the phone trap was already set. Except for Kate's nurse buddies, the phone had been silent. Eddie glanced up at the kitchen clock, which seemed to be standing as still as the world around him. The clock had a farm-scene background-three white chickens in front of a rusted plow. His late wife, Eileen, had collected farm scenes that reminded her of her birthplace in County Kerry. If she were alive, Eileen would be blaming him for this, cursing him, as only the deeply religious can. He looked again at the clock. It occurred to him that little gets accomplished in the time it takes a clock's hands to sweep across three white chickens.

"It takes ten minutes to get to Scarsdale," he said, slamming his hand down on the kitchen counter. "They stop for coffee or what?"

"These guys wouldn't screw around with this, Eddie. They'll call any minute. Come on, let's go through the time line once more. Maybe we missed something."

The detective flipped through the pages of her notebook, then began reading aloud. Earlier that morning, at 0715, Eddie had left home to walk Grace to school. Approximately ten minutes later, Eddie's older brother Kevin, who lived next door, spotted a man in a dark blue jumpsuit and watch cap walking up Eddie's driveway. Eddie's house sat well back off the road, built into the hill. Every house in the old neighborhood sat at its own angle, at the pleasure of the hills. A long driveway wrapped around to the rear of the house. From his kitchen window, Kevin Dunne could see the trunk of his brother's beat-up 1990 Oldsmobile, which was parked behind the house, under the basketball hoop.

"We're talking about only two perps here," Babsie said. "The driver and the guy who broke in. You said you didn't get a decent look at either of them."

"A glance at the driver, only for a split second. Mostly profile. Not good enough to go on record. Male, white, thin… I think. He definitely wasn't big. Wearing a watch cap pulled down, dark glasses. Young… twenties maybe. Don't put that down; he might turn out to be fifty. The other guy, all I saw was his back. And I saw Kate… fighting."

"The guy in the jumpsuit is the guy who broke into the house," Babsie said. "That's the guy in the backseat, the one holding Kate. Kevin gave me a fair description. I'm hoping he does better with the sketch artist."

The man Kevin saw carried a long black toolbox. Given the jumpsuit and toolbox, Kevin figured the guy was a mechanic coming to work on Eddie's Olds. Normally, Eddie left the Olds out on the street because it bled oil. But Kevin'd had no way of knowing that Kate had used the Olds yesterday because her Toyota was in the shop. She'd parked it behind the house. From his window, Kevin could see part of the Olds, but not Eddie's back door. He couldn't see the guy in the watch cap using a sharp-edged tool to separate the dead bolt from the wooden door frame.

"Tell me again about the BMW," Babsie said. "Anything unusual to identify it-dents, dings, bumper stickers?"

"It looked like a police or government car."

"You're kidding me, Eddie. A BMW cop car? What the hell makes you think
that!
Antennas, emergency lights, what?"

"It was filthy. Looked like it hadn't been washed in months."

"I have a Crown Vic like that outside, but you can't be serious. That's not a reason to assume it's government."

"It looked like the kind of car they seize from drug dealers. You know, the ones that sit in some impound lot while the paperwork is going through. They get this film on them. A grimy film."

"Okay, so going along with that leap in logic, why would law enforcement want you bad enough to break into your house and snatch your daughter?"

"I don't know," he said. "But don't kid yourself, Babsie. People get caught wrong, they panic. Cops or not, they panic. Cops make bad decisions."

That much he knew for sure. He was the king of bad decisions. Including this morning, when he'd spent too much time trying to catch the BMW that contained his daughter. Then instead of calling the police immediately, he'd spent another ten minutes running back to Christ the King to get Grace. Only after he'd had his granddaughter in his arms did he call the Yonkers PD and give them the plate number. A smart man would have stopped, called the police immediately, then called the school. Instead, Eddie gave his daughter's kidnappers a fifteen-minute head start. This would not have surprised Eileen. She always said he tried to solve all his problems physically, and used his head only for butting against a tavern wall.

"Let's talk about what you heard," Babsie said.

"Heard?" he said, feeling the blood drain from his face. He hadn't mentioned hearing anything.

"Like sounds. Anything unusual from the car? Loose muffler, loud music? Country, rap, or some odd ethnic music?"

"No music. Kate yelled something, but I couldn't understand it," Eddie said, lying. He knew exactly what his daughter had said.

"Tell me again what she was wearing," Babsie said.

"A green-plaid flannel shirt, and she had her hair pulled back. You know, held back by an elastic thing, in like a ponytail, but thicker, wilder."

"What are the chances Kate was the intended target?"

"This wasn't a planned kidnapping, Babsie. No one knew she'd be here. She only decided to stay home from work a few hours ago."

"What about the ex-husband?"

"Asshole."

"That's what I heard. I think he took lessons from my ex. You have a name and address?"

"Scott D'Arcy. Half-assed chef of some kind. Lives in Seattle now, and he could give a shit less about Kate. His address is probably in her book, if you want it."

"No recent contact, no custody battle?"

"He hasn't even sent Grace a birthday card in three years."

"Okay, then, whatta we got?" Babsie said, slapping her notebook on the table. "It's not a custody case, or a jealous husband. It's not a law-enforcement screwup; I'm not buying that. We're left with the obvious, Eddie: These were bad guys looking for something in here. Only possibility. You gotta give us some direction, pal. What's going on here?"

The house had been thoroughly searched. They'd tossed all the closets, emptied dresser drawers. Shelves had been cleared off, pictures taken down, the Dunne family possessions strewn across the floors. Even the basement had been searched with the same focus. Not vandalism-nothing was destroyed. But a manic hunt for something.

"They were looking for something," he said.

"Ya think? Eddie, come on. We're wasting time here. What were they looking for?"

"If I knew that, I'd give it to them. Take every goddamn thing."

Babsie's cell phone rang. She stood and answered it as she walked into the living room. Eddie checked the clock. White chickens stared back. What the hell's the sense? he thought. Just when I get my life together, all hell breaks loose. Guys like me never get off the hook. I was a jerk for thinking I could. At least Grace is safe, next door with Aunt Martha, baking cookies for the cops.

"Scarsdale," Babsie said, slipping the phone back into her pocket. "They say the BMW was stolen. Owners don't even know it's gone."

"How could they not know it's gone?"

"It was taken from a storage facility in Elmsford. The owners have been in Europe for three weeks. Their phone messages were being call-forwarded to the husband's law office in White Plains."

"I'll lay odds the storage place has no idea how long the car's been missing."

"Probably not," she said. "But three weeks of sitting in an auto-storage facility accounts for the car being so grimy."

"Who're the owners?"

"Didn't get their names."

Eddie knew she did, but that she wasn't about to tell him.

"It's time for some deep thinking on your part," Babsie said. "What's your gut telling you? I know your gut is telling you something."

Eddie Dunne believed it was better to think the worst, get ahead of the tragedy. Right now… this moment… envision something terrible, before it happens, he thought. God doesn't like this, because if He sees you're toughening up, getting ready for the worst, then no way does He let it happen. God is a surprise guy. He rips your heart out with the things you don't anticipate.

"You know I worked for the Russians?" he said.

"I heard you were doing something in Brighton Beach."

"I quit almost four years ago, but for the ten years prior, I worked for a man named Anatoly Lukin. The FBI and NYPD intelligence have linked him to Russian organized crime."

He spelled Lukin's full name, then told her what she would hear from the FBI.

"You think Lukin is behind this?" she said.

"No. He's just an old man, very sick."

"Then who?"

"Enemies," he said, the idea of it squeezing at the pit of his stomach. "We made a lot of enemies."

"Names, Eddie, names."

"Yuri Borodenko," he said. "Start with that one."

Babsie wrote furiously; it was a name she'd heard. Then she excused herself. Her back to Eddie, she walked into the living room again, talking quietly into her cell phone. He could have told her more, but what good would it do? He took a deep breath and composed himself. He couldn't let emotions interfere now.

Babsie had almost gotten to him with her question about sounds. The last sound he'd heard was Kate's voice. He knew that the sound of her voice at that moment would play in his mind for all the nights of his life. The flickering picture would fade, but her voice, hoarse and desperate, would always be there. She'd screamed one word, and all the failures of his life came out in that word. It was a word he hadn't heard her use since she was a child. He'd been "Dad" since her early teens. But this morning, his tough-minded thirty-four-year-old daughter had called for him. "Daddy," she'd screamed. Just "Daddy."

Chapter 3

Monday

3:45 P.M.

It was late afternoon when Eddie Dunne's Olds swerved around the corner of West Tenth Street in Coney Island. The trip down from Yonkers was a blur in his mind. Eddie couldn't bear sitting in that house any longer. He'd annoyed everyone with his muttering and pacing. He'd kept raising his arms, fists cocked, dying to hit something. Over the objections of Babsie Panko and the FBI, he'd left his brother Kevin to wait by the phone. He needed to get moving. He'd borrowed Kevin's cell phone and, on the way to Brooklyn, called his ex-boss. Not a direct call-Anatoly Lukin never spoke on the phone.