The Con Man's Daughter (22 page)

"You have cable?" Caranina said.

"No, I need his cables, and the keys to the van."

Five minutes later, Eddie heard keys jingling. Tropicalia opened the door but left the chain on. She peeked through, checking him out. Eddie stood back from the door, not wanting to scare them off. He noticed Tropicalia now wore a head scarf, the sign of a married Gypsy woman. She opened the door just enough to reach her hand through to drop the cables and keys on the floor, but Eddie moved quickly, slamming into it with his full weight. The chain lock tore away from the old wooden frame as he bulled his way in. He charged through the
ofisa
, then through the beaded curtains. The floor of the back room was covered with mattresses; you couldn't tell where one stopped and another began. The apartment was overly warm and pungent. Eddie heard the bathroom door lock. He walked across the mattresses, stepping over women and children. Eddie raised his leg and kicked the door just above the knob. The door flew back. Parrot, sitting on the toilet, acted surprised.

"I have the flu," Parrot said.

"Dress," Eddie said.

"It's going around, the flu; everyone is sick."

"Wear these," Eddie said, throwing a pair of powder blue tuxedo pants at him.

"Tropicalia can do the cables," Parrot said.

"You want me to pull you off that thing?"

Grease from cooking covered the inside of the front windows. Packages of Yankee Doodles and Devil Dogs sat on the small table. The family bickered in Romany. Tropicalia was the loudest, Caranina the angriest, banging her finger into Parrot's chest. Eddie knew he was the
gadje
bastard, the non-Gypsy subject of the squabble, and neither woman was saying good things about him.

Except for Parrot in his red briefs, they all wore too many clothes. The adult women wore long nightgowns, as they did long skirts, to cover the "unclean" parts of their bodies. A guy he didn't know, late teens, remained on a mattress, lying under the covers. Probably Tropicalia's new husband. Eddie told him to stand against the wall, where he could watch him. Someone on one of the kids' mattresses began to cry. Another adult female, fifteen or fifty, crawled over to tend the sobbing child.

"We don't work like this, you and me," Parrot said, slipping into a pair of patent-leather loafers. "We work like gentlemen, not like this."

"Come on," Eddie said. "The sooner we get started, the sooner we get finished."

A box of wax likenesses of Madame Caranina sat open on the floor. She sold them to customers so they could meditate over them. Eddie handed Sergei's money to everyone, including the kids. The family argument escalated. Only Caranina and Tropicalia appeared to have a voice in whatever was being discussed. Parrot handed a pack of cigarettes to Tropicalia's apparent new husband. Then he threw a white silk scarf around his neck, and he was ready.

"You have made a dead man," Parrot said as they crossed Brighton Beach Avenue.

"It's four o'clock in the morning. No one will see us."

"They see everything. All day, all night."

Eddie remembered that Lukin always said, "If you cut the Gypsy into ten pieces, you have not killed him; you have only made ten Gypsies." The Parrot would survive.

Eddie had parked on Coney Island Avenue, next to the construction site where he'd lost Lukin's murderer on Tuesday. It was away from potential eyes in inhabited buildings. People always avoided parking near construction sites because of loose nails and screws. But Eddie's daughter had been missing for almost five days. He didn't care about flat tires any more than he cared about the problems of the Gypsy.

"You have no car emergency," Parrot said.

"In a way I do," Eddie said.

In the second-floor window above the Sea Lanes of Odessa Bakery, the stolen drapes were pulled aside as dark eyes watched Eddie and Parrot reappear from under the el. They got into Eddie's car together. Eddie tossed the carpenter's pouch into the backseat. He started the car and turned the radio on. Those watching from the second-floor window knew there was no
gadje
car problem.

"Have you delivered that Mercedes to Jersey yet?" Eddie asked.

"Maybe tomorrow."

"We're going tonight," Eddie said. "I'll go with you. Get it over with."

"No way, Eddie. Not tonight. Sunday afternoon is the best time to drive a stolen Mercedes to Jersey. Then I fit in with the Pakistani doctors going to Grandma's for dinner. Cops see me in that car tonight, I'm an automatic stop."

Eddie pulled out Sergei's money.

"I have almost ten grand here," he said. "It's yours if we deliver it tonight."

Parrot counted the money. A sound came from the trunk. Parrot looked around, but the noise stopped. Eddie turned the radio up.

"Short three eighty-five," he said.

"I gave it to your kids," Eddie said. "This is all you're getting."

"Ten grand buys twenty grand of trouble. What if I say no? You going to shoot me, Eddie?"

"I would, but I don't have to," Eddie said. "Come with me; I'll show you why."

A hint of dawn was beginning to light the eastern end of Coney Island Avenue. Eddie walked Parrot around to the back of the Olds. He opened the trunk.

Sergei shot straight up like an insane jack-in-the-box. Parrot stumbled back over a piece of rebar and fell on his ass. Eddie grabbed the growling Russian by the shoulders and tried to wrestle him back down. Somehow, he'd rolled over onto his knees. Grunting like a wounded moose, Sergei tried to dive face-first to the roadway. Eddie used his legs for leverage, pushing off the curb, stuffing Sergei back in his box, but not before allowing him to make eye contact with Parrot. Eddie flipped Sergei over on his back. Sergei kicked at him, even with both legs taped together. Eddie banged the trunk lid down on his legs. Only the bloody feet protruded.

"Now you're screwed," Eddie said; then he cemented the deal by wrapping Parrot's silk scarf around Sergei's right foot. He crammed his legs back in and slammed the trunk shut.

Parrot dusted off his blue tuxedo pants and got back in the car. He asked to use Eddie's cell phone. Then he told him where he'd hidden the Mercedes 450 SL. Before they got to the corner of Brighton Beach Avenue, Eddie saw the Ford with its coat of primer and sammy sosa scrawled on the side. Caranina and Tropicalia were loading all their worldly possessions into Parrot's van. He knew they'd pack only some clothes and all the mattresses, with the money sewn inside. In thirty minutes, they'd be traveling.

"Ever been to a Gypsy funeral?" Parrot said.

"I'll make a point to go to yours."

"You will dance and have the best time in your life. Big party, three days long, everyone gets drunk. They throw things in your casket, things that will make you happy. Magazines, whiskey, smokes. Then six weeks later, they have tribute. Tribute is a big banquet table filled with food. Women serve the men. Someone stands for you-he acts for you. Your friends buy you a new suit of clothes and Cuban cigars, give you money. They say toasts, calling your name, as if you were there. I stood in for my uncle Bebo. Top-shelf. Nothing but the best."

"That's why you gave that kid your cigarettes."

"Jimmy, my daughter's new husband. He will be me, so he needs to smoke Marlboros."

The Mercedes was hidden in plain sight in the doctors only section of a parking lot at Coney Island Hospital. Eddie used his own slim jim to pop the lock. He slid the thin, flat piece of steel between the glass and the weather stripping. He wiggled it gently until he felt the notch grab the lock rod, then pulled it up until the lock flipped over. From under the hood, Parrot complained he needed his tools. Eddie dumped Sergei in the big Mercedes trunk.

"I'll drive your Olds," Parrot said. The Mercedes was so quiet, Eddie didn't know it was running.

"No you won't. You'll just take off and I'll never see you again. I need you to get the Mercedes onto the dock. We'll ride together, then take a cab back."

"I don't do homicides."

"I'm not killing him," Eddie said. "I'm deporting him. I fined him; now I'm deporting him."

"They won't open this trunk until it reaches Odessa. He's dead by then."

"That's his problem."

Eddie drove. The Mercedes rode like a jet aircraft, smooth and powerful. The sun rose at their backs as they crossed the Verrazano Narrows. Eddie set cruise control to seven miles over the limit. It would be too suspicious to keep the speed right on the money at this hour. Parrot turned the heat on, then the radio. Diana Krall sang "Peel Me a Grape," the bass thumping softly in Eddie's throat. Parrot went back to counting money.

"You're paying for the cab back to Brooklyn," Eddie said.

"I'm not going back to Brooklyn."

"Good thinking," Eddie said. "Listen to the Gypsy in your soul."

"I have cousins in Queens."

"Go south, for God's sake, Parrot. Go where the weather suits your clothes."

"Talking in old songs is funny to you. You think this is funny?"

"No, I don't. I'd rather see you leave New York alive and happy, but dead is fine, too. Your choice, Parrot. But before you make the choice, you're going to tell me everything you know about my daughter. If you don't, I'll tell Borodenko that you did."

Not even the Mercedes could keep out the trash smell from Fresh Kills; it was the drawback of taking the Outerbridge Crossing to Elizabeth, New Jersey. Eddie turned the heat down; it was starting to make him sleepy. Parrot stared out the window.

"Don't protect these people," Eddie said. "They hate you, and you know it."

"You're the one who got me in this position."

"Borodenko would have come down on you sooner or later. He'd become a partner in Caranina's business. If you missed a payment, he'd have someone beat the shit out of you, and Caranina. They'd rape Tropicalia. You're a Gypsy; you're shit to him. He'd take or destroy everything you love."

"So you did me a favor," he said.

"I'm the only
gadje
friend you have."

"So my friend is next to me, what I need enemies for?"

"This is about my daughter," Eddie said. "I'll do whatever I have to. I thought you'd understand that."

The docks smelled more of the oil refineries than anything remotely nautical. Eddie stopped on an oil-soaked semicircular patch of dirt, a U-turn spot for big rigs. Across the street was a truck stop advertising hot showers and a breakfast special. Eddie hadn't heard any noise from the trunk since they'd left the Belt Parkway.

Parrot said, "If I was you, Eddie, I'd look in Coney."

"What am I looking for?"

"Remember that picture you showed me a few nights ago? You said it was a guy, and I didn't think about it, because it didn't look like any guy I know. But then I got thinking. The face reminded me of Zina. I don't know her last name. She's a lesbo, used to steal cars. Pretty good, too."

"She doesn't steal cars anymore?"

"I don't know, since she started working for Borodenko."

"You don't know where in Coney?"

"Near the boardwalk. She takes care of Freddie, a retard who works for Borodenko, too. They both live over there somewhere. She drives a silver Firebird, flames on the side. You can't miss it."

"You don't know what street."

"Across from where Luna Park was, one of those streets."

"Freddie?"

"Yeah, he's a retard. He's the guy who got burned when the Rolls blew up."

"They said nobody was in the Rolls."

"This guy was. He got burns on his face and arms. This guy eats at the El Greco diner, three times a day, seven days a week. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Other day, I asked this waitress I know, 'Where's Freddie?' because I always say something to him-you know, some bullshit. Nothing too funny, because he ain't right. She says he got burned when the car blew up and hasn't been in all week."

Eddie got out of the car. Parrot stretched his leg over the console and pulled himself across. He adjusted the driver's seat forward so he could reach the pedals. Standing in the chill of the morning, Eddie motioned for Parrot to roll down the window. The air was so thick with exhaust, he could feel himself breathing in the particles. With his back to the big rigs pulling in and out of the truck stop, he leaned into the Mercedes.

"What happens to this car now?" Eddie asked.

"I'll find a man in the trailer. He'll point, and I'll drive this into a container. I hope it is one with a car already in there. Then they'll lock it up."

"How much do they pay you for this?" Eddie said.

"For this car, two grand. But not here; I have to go to Brooklyn. So I give up two grand for you."

"Don't go back for the money."

"You fixed that already," he said.

Parrot made a U-turn and cruised toward the gate. He'll be fine, Eddie thought. The Parrot was indestructible.

Chapter 25

Saturday

7:30 A.M.

The trucker diner was half-empty, the long-haul guys long gone. Eddie called five cab companies before he got one that would take him from the track stop in Elizabeth, New Jersey, back to Brooklyn. While he waited, he had a fried egg sandwich, heavy on the catsup. He saw Parrot's van go past the window, heading toward the dock. The women had already loaded up their lives. They'd been in Brooklyn too long anyway. Gypsies are supposed to be on the move.

He called Babsie and asked her to check the FBI list for any Borodenko real estate holdings on the ocean block in Coney Island. He gave her the names Zina and Freddie and told her everything he knew, which consisted only of what Parrot had said. Babsie said she was cooking breakfast and then they were going to sign Grace up for the soccer league in Lennon Park. Grace yelled that Babsie had been teaching her how to handle the ball. Sitting at a table near the clatter of a truck stop kitchen, he realized how much he cared for Babsie. He told her he might have to beat up her brother again, because he definitely owed her a slow dance.

"Just get your sorry ass home," she said.

Back in Brooklyn, Eddie counted what he had left. Breakfast at the Elizabeth truck stop had cost him five bucks, including tip. The ride back to Brooklyn went for ninety-six, but at least he'd gotten a chance to close his eyes. Counting tolls and the parking ticket he found on his Olds, the night had been costly. He'd also been way too generous with Sergei's money. The hundreds he gave Parrot's kids had been stupid. He could use that money now, a little spread-around cash to get his foot through the doors of Borodenko's businesses.