Numbers can’t lie. Dig deep enough into the numbers and the answer is there. Most people never think about it, but almost all of their daily transactions generate numbers, and those numbers can often be attached to them and can then be used to create the legendary paper trail. Law enforcement agencies not only think about it, they rely on it. The foundation of pretty much all intelligence-gathering is built of numbers.
The FBI’s information-gathering machine was finally operating at close to full strength, collecting those raw numbers from banks, credit card agencies, the telephone company, even the Motor Vehicle Bureau, any numbers that might be used to track the professor. But as always, it was up to the agents to turn those numbers into facts.
O’Brien got to the office almost an hour earlier than usual the following morning. He walked into the conference room just as Russo was taking a big bite out of a lightly buttered bagel. Two empty coffee cups and an opened folder were in front of her. Another pile of reports was sitting in the middle of the conference table. “Morning,” she said midbite.
“Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked incredulously as he hung his wet trench coat over the back of a chair.
“Sure I do,” she said. “I think I did it last year.”
He took his own bagel and two cups of coffee from a white paper bag. “Here you go,” he said, placing one of those cups and two packs of Sweet’n Low in front of her. “So?” He indicated the pile of reports: “What do we got?”
“Thanks,” she said. She tore the sipping triangle off the plastic lid. “Some of this stuff is pretty interesting.” She flipped through several pages until she found what she was looking for. “Look at this. These are his phone records. Remember, his wife told us that the phone call that got him moving came in at about seven-thirty? There were only two calls to his number around that time, give or take what, fifteen minutes, say. One was from his office, the other one was”—she searched for a different sheet of paper and found it almost immediately—“from a phone in a place called Off Limits. It lasted”—she checked the first sheet—“one minute and twenty-eight seconds.”
“What’s Off Limits?”
She smiled. “Nothing, apparently. That’s the joke.”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s a strip club. That’s their slogan, ‘Nothing is Off Limits!’”
O’Brien squared his shoulders, stood up ramrod straight, and in the most officious tone he could muster said nobly, “Perhaps it would be better if I take this interview on my own.”
“Down, boy,” she commanded. “Down, boy.”
His shoulders deflated. “You never let me have any fun.”
Ignoring him, she continued reading from her notes. “The morning after he disappeared somebody used his ATM card at three different banks for a total of $650. He still has in his possession a Visa, a MasterCard, a Macy’s charge card, a discount card from something called Diner’s Delight, a few more things like that, but except for the bank card and the Visa at the Heights restaurant, none of them have been used.”
O’Brien confirmed the obvious. “I guess that’s the good news. If somebody else had them, you figure they would’ve used them at least once, right? Before getting rid of them?”
She picked up the coffee cup and swiveled to face him. “Not the mob. They don’t take those kinds of chances.”
The bright red polish on her nails stood out against the stark white Styrofoam cup. He’d never noticed that color before and wondered if she was doing something new or whether he was simply paying closer attention. “Yeah, you’re right. Anything else?”
“Yeah, one more thing,” she said, imitating Slattery’s understated sense of drama. “This.” She handed him two sheets of paper stapled together.
The logo at the top of the first page identified it as an official communication from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. He glanced at the numbers. “Whoa,” he said, impressed, “double whoa.”
In response to a subpoena issued by Judge Margo Sklar the DMV had provided information concerning two vehicles registered in the state of New York. Asked to identify any vehicles registered to Peter Gradinsky—both his home and his office addresses had been provided, as well as his Social Security number—the DMV reported that seven months earlier Gradinsky had registered a light brown 1981 Datsun 280Z to his office address. Motor Vehicles provided a license plate number and a copy of an unpaid ticket issued to that vehicle for parking at an expired meter six weeks earlier. “Who’da thunk it, huh?” Russo said. “New women, fast cars. Our guy’s leading a whole secret life.”
“Least we know what he’s doing with the mob’s money,” O’Brien replied, somewhat distracted. It was the second part of the report that most intrigued him. It was a copy of a report filed by two agents O’Brien did not know, Richard Soll and William Madden, “concerning the surveillance of a known member of Henry ‘the Hammer’ Franzone’s organized crime family, Robert San Filippo, a.k.a. Bobby Blue Eyes, a.k.a. Bobby Hats.” This was a bit of information that had been lying there unnoticed for a couple of days, lost in a blizzard of paper, but to Connor it stood out like an elephant in a game of musical chairs.
As a normal part of the investigation into the murder of Alphonse “Skinny Al” D’Angelo, surveillance teams had been assigned to several different crews. There was some speculation that this killing might be the first shot in what was potentially a major family war over disputed territories. In fact, when O’Brien and Russo were working at the Country Club, they had been alerted to pay particular attention to any mention of this killing.
Skinny Al’s funeral had been as much of an event for the bureau as it was for the mob. Strict mob protocol is observed at funerals, which allows the FBI to keep track of winners and losers in the ongoing power struggle inside organized crime. It was learned from an informant inside the Freemont Avenue Social Club that San Filippo had been asked to represent Franzone’s crew at the funeral. The morning of that funeral Special Agents Soll and Madden had been assigned to follow San Filippo. This was a “bright light” operation, meaning the bureau wanted Bobby Blue Eyes to know he was being tailed. The bureau wanted him to know that it had taken a special interest in his future. That’s standard operating procedure. It tends to make people nervous—specifically the person being followed and all the others deemed not important enough to earn a tail. It makes all those others wonder what the FBI knows that they don’t know.
According to Soll’s report, when he and Madden arrived outside San Filippo’s home early on the morning of D’Angelo’s funeral, they discovered another vehicle already waiting there. Initially they had assumed that the two men in the car were also members of Franzone’s crew. Probably security. At first the occupants of this vehicle did not appear to be aware of the FBI’s presence, but even after they realized a second car was tailing San Filippo, they made no move to respond. In fact, they did absolutely nothing to interfere with the tail. When this three-car motorcade reached the funeral parlor, the two men in this car were welcomed inside, making it highly likely they were mobsters. Soll and Madden dutifully recorded the license plate number of this vehicle, a 1983 charcoal Pontiac Firebird, and submitted it as part of their report. Just another piece of basic information. A straw in a haystack. Nobody bothered to check the plates.
Until Jim Slattery found it. Slattery knew that Bobby San Filippo was also searching for the missing professor, so he’d requested Bobby Blue Eyes’s file on the slight chance there might be something there that could assist the bureau’s investigation. The presence of the second car caught his attention. Years of experience had taught him that San Filippo was simply not important enough to merit an escort. He was security, he didn’t get his own security. So who were the guys in the second car? He ran the plate through the DMV.
“You see this?” O’Brien asked. The car was registered to the G&C Corporation, 1405 Brighton Beach Boulevard, in Brooklyn. Brighton Beach. Little Odessa. The Russians were finally in play. He let out an appreciative whistle.
It wasn’t just that two Russians were tailing San Filippo. What made it even more interesting was that the two men in the car also attended the funeral. This was mourning by invitation only. The fact that these two Russians had been invited guests at the funeral of the month raised all kinds of unpleasant possibilities.
Russo asked, “You have any idea what G&C might be?”
“Just some bullshit dummy corporation,” O’Brien guessed. “They use them all the time for cover. Use ’em and lose ’em. If there’s any kind of problem, they just evaporate. This is probably just a mail drop.” He picked up the phone and dialed Brooklyn information. “Let’s find out.”
“It’s unlisted,” she told him.
He hung up the phone. “You ever had a blintz?”
She looked at him suspiciously. “A what?”
“A blintz. You know.”
“You sure you don’t mean a Blimpie?”
“No, I don’t. I mean a blintz.” He tried to describe it. “It’s like a pancake, except it’s not. Put your coat on.”
Before leaving the office they requested copies of the corporate records of the G&C Corporation, located at 1405 Brighton Beach Boulevard. O’Brien figured a dummy corporation would probably have dummy directors, but you never know. It was worth the five minutes it took. They also called Jeff McElnea, the bureau’s liaison with the NYPD, gave him the plate number of the professor’s car, and asked him to request a soft alert. If the car was spotted, they wanted to be notified immediately, but they did not want the car stopped.
One bagel into the day, they were on their way to Brighton Beach. Even with light traffic on the Belt Parkway it took them a full hour to get there. Actually that was not a long time, Russo realized as she looked around, to get to another country. Brighton Beach could have been a small Russian village on the Black Sea. There were more signs in Russian than English. Many of the women were wearing scarves and heavy black coats. As they looked for 1405 Brighton Beach Boulevard, O’Brien gave her the two-minute tour: Brighton Beach was a small village wedged between the much more upscale Manhattan Beach and world-famous Coney Island. Historically it had been a fishing community, but eventually it had become a popular haven for mostly Eastern European immigrants. In the years following World War II, survivors of the Holocaust had settled there, and the area had become largely Jewish. A second wave of immigrants, this time from the Soviet Union, began settling there in the mid-1970s. New Yorkers knew it mostly for the large restaurants near the beach that served huge platters of every known type of fattening food. “See, you don’t even have to fool around with the meat,” he explained to Laura. “There’s no pretense here. You can just order your fat straight.” She looked extremely dubious. “Hey, I’m not kidding. It’s true. You can order it boiled, fried, well-done, however you want it. Believe me, Russo, you like fat, this is the place to get it.”
“That’s gotta be it,” she said, ignoring him. “There’s your mail drop.”
He followed her gaze across the street. She was looking at a large, somewhat run-down Gulf station. In front were two cement islands in parallel, with two sets of pumps on each island. Behind them was a garage with two repair bays. The door to one of the bays was raised and two men were working underneath a car on a lift. Above the garage doors the nearly faded remnants of the name Albie’s Service Center, which had once been spelled out in blue block letters, was barely visible. O’Brien looked around for the current name but couldn’t find it. Then, in gold letters on the inside of the glass door to the office, he saw the name G&C Corp. The owners weren’t exactly hiding the name, but they certainly weren’t advertising it either.
He pulled up to one of the pumps and got out of the car. The attendant, a ruggedly handsome square-jawed man, approached him. “I help you,” the attendant said in a thick Russian accent.
He’s thirty-four, O’Brien guessed, tells the girls he’s twenty-eight. “Fill it, please,” O’Brien told him, “the cheap stuff.” He glanced around the gas station. He could see a half-filled candy and gum rack and a soda machine inside the office. “Where’s your men’s room?” he asked.
“In back,” the attendant told him, pointing with his thumb. “Key in the office.”
“Thanks.” As Connor walked toward the office, he glanced back at the car. Russo was half-turned in the passenger seat, looking back over the seat at the attendant. Not her type, he thought. A second man, an older man, thin and dark and cold, was sitting behind an old wooden desk, reading a Russian-language newspaper. The man handed him the key, which was attached to a metal ring obviously made to fit around a wrist. A metal tag indicated it had been stolen from the Surf Motel of Brighton Beach.
Connor’s first thought when he opened the door to the men’s room was that it had seen better times. The Civil War, for example. Filthy did not begin to describe it. The whole place stunk. The toilet seat had lost a bolt and was askew on the bowl. A corner of the porcelain lid had been broken off. The cloth towel had been ripped off the dispenser winding mechanism and hung straight down, covered with dirt and grease. In the sink a thin stream of water ran from the cold water handle, while the hot water handle was missing. There was graffiti written in black marker on the walls. On the mirror someone had scratched the words “Suck my big dike” and provided a phone number. Some of the tiles were missing from the floor, revealing the cement subfloor.
It was the kind of place that made O’Brien decide to throw out his shoes because they touched the floor. He stayed in there just long enough to be convincing, careful not to touch anything, and returned to the office. “It’s beautiful,” he said to the older attendant, putting down the key. “Who did your decorating?”
The man obviously didn’t have the slightest idea what O’Brien was talking about, and just as clearly did not care. He didn’t even bother putting down his newspaper. Connor continued, “Is the manager around? The temperature gauge in my car is way up, maybe somebody could take a look at it?”
“No manager,” the man grunted. “Not here now.”
“Well, then, you think maybe one of those mechanics might take a look at it?”
“Busy.” He finally looked up from the newspaper. “Everybody very busy today. Tomorrow good time for you come back. Hokay? Tomorrow?”
“How about you? Is this your place?”
The man shrugged proudly. A good firm “maybe.” “Tomorrow, come back,” he repeated. “We take good care of you.”
For an instant O’Brien considered identifying himself as a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the most this might have accomplished in this situation, he knew quite well, was that the guy would put down his newspaper to be polite. Contrary to how members of the Efrem Zimbalist Jr. fan club felt, the badge wasn’t all magic. It would not make the owner or the manager suddenly appear. And it would definitely make his interest in the gas station known to people he didn’t necessarily want to know about it. “I’m sure you will,” he said pleasantly as he left.
The first attendant was still hanging around the car, drying his hands on a filthy rag. “Three dollars ninety-five cents,” he said. “Even.”
“I guess I must’ve had more gas than I thought,” Connor replied, handing the guy four dollars. “Keep the change.” The man smiled good-naturedly at the joke, revealing two large gold teeth in the front of his mouth. Seeing that, O’Brien smiled broadly in return.
There were several cars parked on the side and in the rear of the station. O’Brien drove around the side, but the charcoal Firebird was not there. “I didn’t think it’d be here,” he told Russo. “You know what this place is, right?”
“A gas station?” she guessed.
He nodded. “Either that or the biggest mailbox in the world. Okay, I admit it, I was wrong. Happy? So now all we gotta do is figure out the connection between a Russian-owned gas station and organized crime. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Let’s ask Slattery to put some surveillance on it,” she suggested.
“Right.” O’Brien was one of those agents who liked to absorb the entire scene and then focus on the details later. After leaving a place he’d sit down and list in his notebook everything that caught his attention. His theory was that the things he remembered would most likely be the important things. He had the same theory about women.
One of the things he did remember was the way Russo looked at the husky attendant. So when they stopped at a red light, he turned to her and asked, “I want you to tell me the truth. Do you think I’d look better if I had gold teeth?” He bared his teeth in the rearview mirror. “Just like a couple.”
She laughed. “Gold teeth?” She looked at his reflection in the mirror. “Let me see.” She looked carefully and thought about it. Nodding her head, she decided, “Maybe a gold tooth.” As he eased into traffic on the Belt Parkway, she said, “Hey, O’Brien, what happened? I thought you were taking me to a Blintzie’s?”
“Next time.” He skillfully moved into the fast lane. “Let me ask you this, Russo. What do you think? You think he’s still alive?”
She stared straight ahead. The most significant difference between being in the middle of a real criminal investigation and the stories you see on TV is that in the stories the good guys always win at the end. Going in, you know Brad Pitt isn’t going to be killed in the last fifteen minutes. The killer is going to get caught. And all the scars are makeup. Unfortunately that’s not the way the real world works. Cops do get killed. Killers do get away with murder. Scars last a lifetime. And when you’re in the middle of a case, you never know if the next step you take will break it wide open or cost you your life.
Speculating doesn’t do you any good. Any time I spent while working undercover trying to figure out where the operation was going proved to be a colossal waste. I never knew what was going to happen in the next five minutes, much less at some indeterminate time in the future. The only thing that really matters is facts. What happens next.
Sometimes during an investigation agents get to know people they will never meet. They learn secrets about them that have been carefully hidden from the world, hidden even from those people closest to them. And when an agent focuses on one person, it becomes difficult not to wonder about them. To wonder where they might be at some particular moment, to wonder about their fate. To wonder why they took a particular action or what they were thinking when they did it. Laura Russo was too good an agent to admit that she had spent considerable time wondering about the professor. “Sure, sometimes I do,” was the most she would tell O’Brien. “I don’t know. I just can’t think of any reason they’d want to get rid of him. I hope so. You?”
“You ever see The Man Who Knew Too Much? The Hitchcock picture?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s about this really nice guy, that’s James Stewart, who the bad guys are after because they think he knows something, but he doesn’t know he knows it. All he knows is that to save his family he’s got to find out what it is that he doesn’t know that they think he knows. It’s a great picture.”
She looked at him curiously, trying to decide just how serious he was. With O’Brien that was always a difficult question to answer. “All right,” she surrendered, “what happened at the end?”
“James Stewart found out what he didn’t know that he knew. Doris Day sang ‘Que Sera, Sera, Whatever Will Be, Will Be,’ and they got their child back safely.”
“Good. Now that that’s cleared up, I don’t have to see it. And your point is exactly . . . ?”
“Whatever it is that the mob and the Russkies are doing together, we can assume it’s not a nice thing. And it has to be really lucrative, because it would take a small fortune to keep these guys from killing each other.” As always, he was thinking out loud, almost as curious as Russo to hear if he stumbled onto anything important. “We know for a fact that the Italians don’t know where the professor is, so obviously they didn’t take him. And I just don’t believe the commies would jeopardize this alliance by holding him. If I’m right, he’s more important to us than he is to them, because he can put the Italians and the Russians in business together.”
She was confused. “So what is it that we know that we don’t know we know?”
“That’s our real problem,” he said earnestly. “We don’t know.” He shrugged. “But that might be why the Italians are looking for him.”
About a half hour later, as they approached the city, the radio staticked to life. As O’Brien preferred to use his own car, a car on which he lavished pennies, this CD radio was arguably the slum of the art. “O’Brien,” he acknowledged.
“Hey, O’Brien, it’s Freiberg.” Agent Mickey Freiberg ran the Special Operations Group in New York. He was the go-to guy for just about all technical matters. “I got some news for you. The cops have spotted that car you were looking for, the Z.”
Peter Gradinsky’s car. “Where is it?”
Freiberg rustled some papers. “I got it right here . . . somewhere. Here. Like five minutes ago he was driving downtown on West End Avenue. A squad car picked up on him on 96th Street. They’re waiting to hear what you want to do.”
He glanced at Russo. She gave him the thumbs-up, then leaned over the seat and picked up the emergency beacon he kept in the back. It attached to the dashboard with a big suction cup. O’Brien keyed the mike. “Okay, it’s gonna take us at least twenty minutes to get there. Tell the cops to stay with him, but lay back. Don’t lose him. Thanks.” Laying down the mike, he guessed, “Maybe he’s going home.”
“Right,” she said doubtfully, “in a sports car his wife doesn’t know he has? I don’t think so.” Laura took the cigarette lighter out of its socket and laid it in the ashtray, then plugged the emergency beacon into the socket. “Here we go,” she said, and turned it on.
For the most part the drivers in front of them ignored the flashing red light. Begrudgingly they would eventually move to the side so the agents could pass. O’Brien knew what they were thinking, the same thing any real New Yorker would think: I wonder where he bought that red light? Maybe I should get one.
The beacon helped, not tremendously, but it helped. When they reached the Manhattan Bridge, a cop held up traffic for them, which enabled them to race across the bridge at speeds approaching twenty-five miles an hour. O’Brien went up the East Side. Freiberg continued to report the Z’s position. The car had not even slowed down when it passed the professor’s building. It had turned onto Broadway and was still heading downtown.
By the time O’Brien was able to intersect the Z on Park Avenue and 58th Street, rush hour had begun. Traffic was barely moving. The two cars passed heading in opposite directions, O’Brien going north, the Z moving south. The Z was in the inside lane. “There he is,” O’Brien said, but the Z’s tinted windows made it impossible to see the driver. The NYPD squad car, alerted by radio that O’Brien had finally reached the area, spotted his beacon and hit his siren very briefly to attract his attention.
Unfortunately that siren also got the attention of the person driving the Z. The car edged over two lanes, into the turning lane. “He’s moving over,” Russo said. “I’ll bet he saw our light.”
At the next corner O’Brien made a U-turn and began heading downtown. Slowly, very slowly. He shut off the beacon. He was a full block behind the Z. Traffic was moving forward by the inch. “You see him?” O’Brien asked.
“He’s all the way over on the right.”
O’Brien keyed the mike. “Okay, we see him. Looks like he knows we’re here.” The NYPD dispatched several unmarked cars to the area. They were told to block the intersections when they got to that stretch of Park Avenue. The problem was that normal rush-hour traffic was already blocking several of those intersections, making it extremely difficult for the police cars to get there.
Like an ancient sailing ship in pursuit on a windless sea, O’Brien drifted forward inches at a time. He was using all his New York City driving skills. The instant he saw the slightest opening, he went for it. Once he sliced in front of a woman driving a station wagon, getting a blocking bumper in front of her before she could cover—and in response she flashed her middle finger at him. The car to his left switched lanes, unexpectedly vacating several valuable feet of space. A cabdriver spotted the gap at the same instant O’Brien did and challenged him to it. It was a game of hard-core bumper chicken, of who would brake first. O’Brien knew he had the edge, because he cared nothing about adding another dent or scratch to his car. He played the game with expertise, refusing to look at the cabbie, thus avoiding the often critical mistake made by amateurs in this game. The cabbie hesitated, suddenly uncertain O’Brien knew he was there, and braked at the last second—allowing O’Brien to slide in and fill the traffic vacuum. “God, I love these people,” he said.
Block after block, irritated drivers banged on their horns, battling for every precious foot of rush-hour road. The Z was moving too, but O’Brien saw right away that its driver was considerably more cautious than him—a fatal vehicular weakness after three o’clock on a weekday afternoon. The agents moved almost a full block in less than fifteen minutes, gaining almost two full car lengths on the Z.
Suddenly O’Brien screamed, “Hold on!” and darted forward about eight feet. He looked at Russo and took a relieved breath. “You okay?”
She could see how much he was enjoying this. She frowned. “Not funny.”
He knew it was funny. “Hey, partner, think of it this way. We’re making history here. This has got to be the slowest chase in history. Can’t you just feel the tension building?”
“Oh. Oh,” she said in the monotone delivery of a really poor actor. “Be still, my heart. I can hardly bear it. This is even more exciting than bumper cars.”
“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it,” he said, opening his door, “you drive.” O’Brien got out of the car. A pizza deliveryman was bicycling down Park, skillfully slaloming between cars. As Russo watched incredulously, O’Brien took out his badge and held it up high as a highwayman stopping a stagecoach. The pizza deliveryman walked his bike to a halt. Russo could see O’Brien say something to the teenager, who nodded and got off his bike, taking his pizza with him. O’Brien mounted the bike and began pedaling down Park Avenue.
She sat there in stunned disbelief. But one very long threatening horn blast from the big Buick inches behind her knocked her back to reality. The car directly in front of her had moved forward almost three feet and she had remained in place. Through some osmotic process she understood that this was a grave violation of traffic jam etiquette. She scrambled into the driver’s seat and rolled forward.
During their career almost every agent does at least one thing that one day causes them to wonder, what the hell was I thinking? Why in the world would I do something like that? But few of them ever do anything as ridiculous as Connor O’Brien, who had appropriated a pizza delivery bicycle and was pedaling it down Park Avenue in pursuit of Professor Peter Gradinsky’s Datsun 280Z.
Initially O’Brien had stayed as close to the curb as possible, but even that path was blocked. He had the option of dashing through the stalled traffic, but he knew there is a vast difference between exhibiting a good sense of humor and a death wish. So he made a decision, lifting the front tire over the curb and onto the sidewalk. Seconds later he was madly pedaling down the sidewalk, bending forward over the handlebars, elbows flared, yelling, “Out of the way. FBI! FBI! Coming through.”
He could have easily walked or jogged up to the Z. It was caught in traffic, it wasn’t going anywhere, fast or slow. He would never admit his real reason for taking the bike, but at least a little part of it came from a childish urge to impress the girl. Within a minute he had caught up to the car. As he got off the bike, a fashionably dressed couple was walking past him. “Here,” he said to the man, “hold my horse.” The man reflexively accepted the bike and stood there holding it.
As O’Brien started moving toward the car, he heard the man’s wife telling him, “Put that bike down right now, Marty. Why are you always doing things like this to me?”
The Z’s tinted windows prevented O’Brien from seeing inside. Normally this would have made him very wary. Tinted car windows are the hallmark of drug dealers, and drug dealers often carry large guns. But this car belonged to a college professor. What could he be packing? A thesaurus? O’Brien had no idea who was behind the wheel. It was entirely possible he was about to meet the elusive Professor Gradinsky. Somehow, though, he didn’t believe that was about to happen.
O’Brien remained cautious. You never know. In textbook fashion he approached the car on the driver’s side, cutting down the driver’s angle of sight by brushing against the car. He stopped before reaching the driver’s window. Anybody feeling the need to take a shot at him would have to twist almost completely around to get a clean shot, which was very difficult to do while sitting in the driver’s seat. He reached under his jacket and grasped the butt of his own gun. Just in case.
Russo was five car lengths behind him. She watched him ease carefully alongside of the car—and when she saw him reach into his jacket for his weapon, she decided to move. Screw this, she said to herself, turning off the engine and dropping the keys on the floor mat. She grabbed her handbag and put it over her shoulder. And then she got out of the car and started walking rapidly toward the Z.
There is a story New York cops like to tell about the rookie detective who was investigating a Manhattan robbery. He asked the victim, “Have you seen anybody around here acting strange lately?” Twenty-four hours later he was still writing. So New Yorkers are used to seeing some pretty unusual things. But even the experienced New York drivers behind and next to Russo were completely shocked to see a woman get out of her car right in the middle of rush hour and simply walk away, abandoning it on Park Avenue. They responded instinctively, like great animals in distress, crying out with their horns.
O’Brien kept his right hand on his gun. With his left hand he reached over and tried to open the car door. It was locked. He tightened his grip on his weapon and again tried to open the door, at the same time screaming loud and clear, “FBI! FBI!” The door remained locked.
Russo was darting between cars, banging hard on their hoods as she walked in front of them to make certain the drivers saw her. She assumed most of the drivers would figure she was insane, which was not necessarily a bad thing in this situation. They weren’t going to interfere with her. Her bag was open and her hand was holding her gun, but she didn’t show it. Finally she took a position by the passenger-side window of the Z. She was blocking a white sports car, and its driver was practically apoplectic, leaning out the window to scream at her, “What the hell’s a matter with you, lady? You can’t stand there. This is Park Avenue!”
O’Brien banged on the car window. A second later the window smoothly slid down. Again he shouted, “FBI! FBI!”
An attractive young woman leaned out the window and turned to look at him. “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she said, obviously confused. “I don’t know . . . Was I doing something wrong?”
Both agents took their hands off their weapons. Park Avenue had become a band of a thousand car horns. Drivers who could not possibly see what was taking place had picked up the cry and were leaning on their horns. Over the racket O’Brien pointed to the curb and told the young woman, “Pull the car over there.”
Russo shouted to him, “I’m going to get your car.”
The woman edged the car to the curb. O’Brien noticed that the ends of her medium-length light brown hair were curled in that brainy coed style. He couldn’t see her body but ventured a guess anyway: twenty-three and tells the truth about her age to the day.
Russo completely ignored the venom other drivers were hurling at her. Instead, she felt liberated. She was an extremely responsible person, an FBI agent, sensitive to the needs of other people. No one who knew her would believe she was capable of abandoning a car in the middle of rush hour. But she’d done exactly that. She’d done it. As she slid back into the driver’s seat, she glanced into the rearview mirror. She could see the driver of the car directly behind her. His face was scrunched up and his mouth was moving rapidly. She couldn’t hear him, but she had a really good idea what he was saying. Or, actually, screeching. She watched him for a few seconds, then opened the window and stuck her middle finger victoriously into the air, feeling very much like she was on her way to becoming a true New Yorker.
“Special Agent O’Brien. FBI,” he told the young woman, flashing his badge. “Can I see the registration for this car, please?”
“Really?” she said. “FBI?”
“Really,” he told her. “Now, let me see the registration, please.”
“Why? Was I doing something wrong?” she asked, fumbling through her thick wallet. She smiled at him. “I mean, I couldn’t exactly have been speeding, right?”
“No.” He smiled back. “Just let me—”
“I know, I didn’t signal when I changed lanes, did I?” She continued searching the compartments of her wallet, which seemed to be leaking slips of paper from every pocket. “It’s got to be here,” she said, almost to herself. Then she stopped and looked right at him. “Are you really FBI?”
“Yeah, really. C’mon, show me the registration.” She was quite attractive in a youthfully exuberant way, Connor decided. He knew the type: a young woman certain of her abilities and confident that success and recognition were only a few years away.
Meanwhile, Russo had taken one very big breath and cut over to the curb. As she got out of O’Brien’s car, the driver of the Buick that had been caught behind her put down his passenger window and screamed at her, “You bitch.”
She didn’t hesitate, shouting right back at him, “You prick!” and feeling very good about it.
The young woman driving the professor’s car sighed, snapped closed the purse on her lap, looked sheepishly at O’Brien, and, as he described such behavior, tried to “cute her way” out of a problem. “It’s not really my car,” she admitted. “I don’t have the registration.”
He did have to admit that she was sort of cute—in a confrontational way. “All right, then, whose car is it?”
She averted her eyes. “Well, he’s sort of my boyfriend.”
O’Brien locked a pleasant expression on his face. He had no intention of providing any information to her. He wanted to create a vacuum of information and let her rush in to fill it. “Okay, what’s your boyfriend’s name?”
Russo joined them at the car window and identified herself as an FBI agent. The young woman smiled at her too, seemingly impressed.
O’Brien told Russo, “She doesn’t have the registration with her. Says it’s her boyfriend’s car, not hers.”
Russo asked the young woman, “What’s your name?”
“Natalie Speakman.”
“And what’s your boyfriend’s name?”
In an instant Natalie Speakman’s attention shifted from O’Brien to Russo. Abandoning cute, she went directly for sisterhood. “I think you know that already. That’s obviously why you stopped me, isn’t it? See, here’s my problem,” she appealed to Russo. “His wife doesn’t know about . . . you know, about us. He said he was going to tell her, but if she finds out and—”
Russo was coldly professional. “Stop. Please. I have no idea what you’re talking about. All I asked you for was his name. I don’t care about the details, I just want a name.”
“You know who it is. Peter Gradinsky,” Natalie admitted. “Look, this is really embarrassing for me. He’s my mentor at Columbia, and if his wife finds out about us, she’ll . . . This is ridiculous. I mean, you’re his . . .” She sobbed two, three, four times, then burst into tears.
“Look, Natalie,” O’Brien began sympathetically.
Russo gently pushed him aside. She leaned into the car, inches from the young girl’s face. “Stop it right now,” she ordered. “We don’t have time for it. We need some answers from you, you got it?” When the girl failed to respond, Russo repeated firmly, “Got it?”
Natalie gulped, then looked at Russo and nodded.
“Let me explain the situation to you,” she told Speakman. “You’re driving a car that belongs to a missing person. You don’t have the registration. Believe me, we can cause you some serious problems. But I’m going to offer you a choice. You can either come back to the office with us and call your lawyer from there, or you can come with me right now and answer a few questions.”
“But I need to talk to you,” she insisted. “I want to.”
“Fine. Good.” Russo stood up and looked around. She spotted a parking garage just around the next corner. She told O’Brien to get in the Z and park it in that lot.
O’Brien did as directed. He was quite impressed at Russo’s ability to play good cop, bad cop. Or, as he decided would be more accurate in this instance, good cop, bad copess. Russo and Speakman followed him into the garage in his car. Minutes later the three of them were sitting in a booth in a coffee shop.
“Okay, now,” Russo said, “let’s hear it. What are you doing with Gradinsky’s car?”
“I just want you to find him,” Speakman said.
“Then answer my questions,” Russo told her. She reached across the table and put a reassuring hand on Natalie’s, and in a much softer voice added, “We want to find him too. But we’ve got to have your help.”
If O’Brien hadn’t seen Russo do almost exactly the same thing with Grace Gradinsky, taking her hand and holding it, he would have sworn it was heartfelt. Coughing into his cupped hands to hide an appreciative smile, he opened his notebook.
Speakman surrendered. She was working toward her master’s in Russian literature, she explained, and had been Gradinsky’s graduate assistant for almost a year. They had started dating a month after they’d met. “You know what I mean,” she said to Russo, making quotation marks in the air. “Dating?”
Both agents acknowledged that they understood.
Absolutely no one knew about their relationship, Natalie continued, especially his wife. At least once a month, sometimes more, he’d told his wife that he had to go to some secret meeting, which would allow them to spend a night or two together in her apartment. He’d bought the car several months earlier, paying for it in cash, but that was a big secret too. She kept it for him. That’s why she had the keys and was driving it. He was such an extraordinary man, she rhapsodized, sensitive, caring, open. His passion, she explained, was the Russian language.
O’Brien studied her as she rambled on about Peter Gradinsky. Yeah, right, he thought, the Russian language and a few other things. Her description of Gradinsky had about as much resemblance to anything O’Brien and Russo knew about him as would his portrait painted by Jackson Pollock.
“You want to tell us where he is?” Russo asked gently. An interesting way to ask that question, O’Brien noted, as it assumed she knew the answer.
“I don’t know, honest,” the young woman claimed. “The last time I spoke to him was more than a week ago. I called him and told him I needed to see him. We were supposed to meet for lunch.” She exhaled. “He never showed up. That’s the last time I spoke to him.”
O’Brien was surprised. “You called him at home?”
Her answer seemed obvious. “Sure, I called him there all the time. I’m his assistant. I mean, if I hadn’t called him at home sometimes, Grace . . . his wife?”
“We know,” Russo affirmed.
Natalie continued, “She definitely would have suspected something was going on. Don’t you think? Like when I talked to her, I would make up this boyfriend I supposedly was going out with and I’d make up all these details.” She smiled demurely. “His name is Simon and he was . . . he is a carpenter. I didn’t want him to be one of those intellectual types.”
Russo laughed, a little too hard to be natural, O’Brien thought, then she said, “I can’t believe it. I did the same thing when I was in college. I made up a boyfriend just to get my mother off my back. Only mine was a crusading journalist, a muckraker.”
“You remember his name?” Natalie asked.
“Sure I do.” Russo blushed. “Alex Newman.” She chuckled at the memory, then repeated his name. Russo then asked Natalie if she believed those secret meetings actually took place. “Oh yeah,” Natalie said firmly. “Absolutely. Peter told me everything. You mean you don’t know?”
“Know what?” O’Brien asked.
“Wow, that’s weird,” she continued. “Peter told me he was working for you guys. For the FBI, as an interpreter. He said he went to meetings that the FBI had with Russians. He was interpreting for you guys.”
“And you believed him?” Russo asked.
She nodded vigorously. “Oh, absolutely. Peter never lied to me. Never,” she insisted. “Why? You don’t think it’s true?” She smiled knowingly at both of them. “I mean, come on, let’s look at the facts here. Why else would you people be trying to find a missing college professor?”
O’Brien answered, “Well, Natalie, the bureau’s a big place. We don’t know everybody who works for us. I’m sure it’s possible.” He looked to Russo for support. “Right?”
“Of course it is,” she agreed. She explained to Speakman, “They just told us to find him. They didn’t tell us why.”
“Well, I’ve known Peter for almost a year. And he’s not the kind of person to lie.” She caught herself, then added, “Except, you know, when it’s absolutely necessary. Like to Grace. But I’m absolutely positive everything he told me is true.”
O’Brien asked, “Let me ask you this, then. Did he ever tell you anything about these meetings with the Russians?”
Connor really hadn’t expected much of an answer, so he was quite surprised when he got a good one. “Uh-huh, yeah, he told me all about them. He even described some of the Russians who were there. There were like these two Russians. What was his name?” As she scanned her memory, neither Connor nor Laura dared move. “Vasily,” she finally remembered, “Vasily something. Peter always called him Vaseline because that’s how smooth he was. Peter told me about his accent. Peter’s very good with accents, you know. Vaseline wasn’t from Moscow, he said. He said he was probably from somewhere in the Ukraine.”
O’Brien was writing furiously. “He say anything about the other guy?”
“Barney Ruble?” She laughed at that thought. “That’s what Peter called him, Barney Ruble because he said he looked just like that character in The Flintstones, Barney Rubble. He said he had blond hair, a real big nose, and he didn’t have a neck. The big difference, he said, was that Barney Rubble was smarter.”
Russo chuckled pleasantly. “Peter sounds like quite a guy,” she said, sounding so sincere that O’Brien almost believed her.
“Oh, he is, he is.” In response to another question from Russo, with whom she was clearly bonding, she said that Peter told her the meetings were held in a lot of different places. “Like one night he went to this diner on Route 3 in New Jersey, a couple of times he had to go all the way out to Brighton Beach, once they met in this big room in the back of an old gas station. Then there was”—she grimaced, trying to remember—“Little Italy, I think, one night . . .”
Watching Natalie open up so completely to Laura Russo, Connor couldn’t help but admire the younger woman’s complete loyalty to Gradinsky. The fact was that during his own undergraduate years he’d known a dozen Natalie Speakmans, girls who maintained a fierce faith in their own vision of the world. In that world he usually played the part of the mirthful cynic, but a cynic who just might possibly be converted by the love of a nubile young woman. It worked for everyone involved. No hard feelings. Nobody got hurt. He looked at Natalie and considered it: Yep, he decided, under very different circumstances he could definitely play in her world.
And then he glanced at Laura Russo, leaning forward, intense, operating simultaneously on three, maybe four different levels. Doing so well exactly what they had been taught—she had become the person the subject needed her to be.
Russo glanced at him, indicating that it was his turn to ask a question. In his reverie he’d lost his connection to the interview. He had no idea what Russo had just asked. “Okay, good,” he said, hoping that made some sense. “Did he ever tell you what they discussed at these meetings?”
Natalie nodded. “Yes, definitely. But he told me I couldn’t discuss it with anyone. It was mostly economic negotiations, he said. They were talking about selling billions of dollars’ worth of oil.” She emphasized the word “billions,” to ensure that it would not be mistaken for “millions.”
“Billions,” O’Brien repeated. “Wow, that’s a lot.” Russo kicked his calf with her foot under the table.
But the young woman agreed with him. “He used to joke about borrowing a few million. He said they’d never miss it.”
“Natalie”—it was Russo’s turn—“did Peter ever claim he was involved with the Mafia?”
She laughed. “Oh yeah, I forgot all about that. Yes, yes, he did. He told me he knew some of the boys.” She put her index finger against the side of her nose and pushed it to the side. “If I knew what he meant.” She waived the possibility away. “That was the one thing I really wondered about, Peter and the Mafia? What did he need them for?” She said the “them” with disdain.
They asked her several more questions, but that was pretty much the extent of her knowledge. It was likely she was telling the truth, that she didn’t know where he was. They traded telephone numbers, and O’Brien and Russo walked her back to the garage.
Later, as they drove uptown, Russo asked, “You hear that thing she said? About borrowing a few million? You don’t think he really did something that stupid, do you?”
O’Brien considered that. “Well, he might have considered it, but I don’t think he was ever in a position to get his hands on that kind of money.” They drove in silence for a few minutes, then O’Brien started laughing.
“What?” she asked.
“Newman? New man? That was the best you could do?”
“Well, it could’ve been true,” Russo responded. “So now let me ask you a question. You think she’s cute?”
He made a face. “She’s all right, I guess.” He wondered if there could possibly be a right answer to that question.
Russo agreed. “Well, I thought she was attractive.” She cleared her throat. “Did you notice anything . . . you know, special or different about her?”
He thought about that. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
It was Russo’s turn to laugh at men’s insensitivity. At least this specific man. “Are you telling me you didn’t even notice she was pregnant?”