Hey, hey, come on in here,” Slattery shouted to O’Brien and Russo as they walked past his office. “You guys gotta hear this.” Even before they’d settled on his couch, he hit the play button on the reel-to-reel.
“Jesus H.,” a familiar voice said. “Please. Somebody turn that guy down.”
Connor smiled at Laura. “Sounds like your boyfriend.” He started to ask Slattery, “How come you—”
He was interrupted by a loud, shrill whistle, then somebody shouting, “Benny! Shut the fuck up or I swear to God I’ll leave you hanging there all day.”
Slattery was sitting on the top of the desk, next to the recorder. “That’s Eddie LaRocca,” he said. “Sounds like they had some guy hanging up on something.”
Then an unfamiliar voice. “Bobby, help me out here. Guy’s fucking crazy. Hey, get me down and I got a great shirt for you, no kidding.”
“I guess that’s Benny,” Russo said.
Two other agents passing the office heard the recorded whistle and stuck their heads in the door to listen. One of them looked questioningly at Slattery and pointed at the recorder. “Bobby Blue Eyes,” Slattery replied loudly, “over at the Freemont. Come on in here. Listen.”
Bobby’s voice was heard again. “I don’t know, Benny. I thought you liked hanging around with all of us.” And after a brief pause, once again, “Here. Make yourself useful. And don’t go getting it dirty.” Then the social club erupted in laughter.
Slattery guessed at the action. “He must’ve given him something.”
To O’Brien most of this sounded more like it was taking place inside a college fraternity house than in an organized crime social club. Boys will be killers, he thought. In that ever-important category of level of maturity, it reminded him of the time they’d hidden one of his frat brothers inside a folded convertible sofa, then ordered a pledge to open it up. When that brother jumped out, they were afraid the pledge was going to die from shock. That was funny; but what these guys were doing was just cruel.
He eased back deep into Slattery’s comfortable couch and stretched, stifling a yawn by biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. You never want the boss to see you falling asleep at the office. But he had to admit it, he was tired; tired and frustrated as hell. And his eardrums were still vibrating from the night before.
He and Russo had spent the night at Off Limits. Ironically O’Brien had never been inside a strip club, but Russo had spent considerable time in the clubs while working undercover. Visiting them, as she had forcefully pointed out. At the time, the strip clubs in New York had not yet become socially acceptable. For the most part they were still exactly what they were intended to be: the place where money went to meet sex. O’Brien had just never felt comfortable being ripped off to watch women take off their clothes. He preferred the pleasures of his own apartment.
But Russo knew her way around clubs in Chicago, Florida, and Vegas. Strip clubs and the mob went together like rock stars and supermodels. It was the perfect business for organized crime: mostly cash—and even better, many of the men paying that cash did not want anyone to know they had been there. So all of the rules could be relaxed a little. Actually, a lot.
Off Limits was one of the first upscale clubs in New York. The bouncers wore tuxedos. The show room itself was dark, with pin spots lighting the semicircular stage in front. There were two poles on the stage, and as O’Brien and Russo walked in, two girls were riding them to the sound track of Urban Cowboy, which was blasting out of the two huge speakers on either side of the stage. The entire room was vibrating. O’Brien knew that one of the performers was undressed as a cowgirl because she was still wearing a ten-gallon hat and a quarter-inch rhinestone G-string, while the other girl had apparently been a nurse, as she had on a white G-string and a long stethoscope which seemed to disappear between her breasts. Watching them perform, O’Brien whispered to Russo, “Wow, I think I saw them on Star Search.” And then he corrected himself. “Or maybe it was Police Search.”
There were several doors around the room. Russo said into his ear, “They go to private rooms.”
O’Brien was gamely trying to keep his eyes off the stage, but losing. “Who does?” he asked.
“The doors,” she said emphatically. “Hey, stay with me, Agent O’Brien. Playtime later.”
He heard the irritation in her voice. For one of the few times in his life he really didn’t know what to say. Connor O’Brien was not a shy man. He had dated a lot of lovely women, but in all his travels he had never encountered a woman with the mountainous, perfectly sculpted breasts of the nurse. He was in awe of her physical geography. When he finally looked at Russo, he was very careful to look directly into her eyes, never letting his gaze fall any lower than her nose.
It suddenly occurred to him that she might be feeling somewhat intimidated by the girls on the stage. Trying to find something supportive to say to her, he whispered, in retrospect quite foolishly, “That’s a great blouse you’re wearing.”
Another thing he had never seen in all his travels was the look she gave him in response to that, which registered somewhere between “pathetic loser” and “immature moron.” Russo just shook her head in disbelief and moved across the room. O’Brien sheepishly followed close behind.
Off Limits was a little more than half-full, with most of the customers as close to the stage as legally permitted. As the dancers moved to the foot of the stage, these men slipped bills into the cowgirl’s hatband and the nurse’s G-string. In the dimly lit back of the room other strategically dressed women were socializing with customers and occasionally would escort one of the men through one of those doors. The bar was to the left, and it was being tended by two pneumatically breasted women wearing low-cut lacy bras. The waitresses, dressed out of the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog, moved around the room carrying drinks and bottles on trays balanced on their bare shoulders. Properly chastened, O’Brien made a great effort to keep his eyes on the bottles, and for the first time in his life he noticed the undeniably erotic shape of a champagne bottle.
They went through a set of black double doors under an exit sign into a corridor. The corridor was about as bright as dusk. “Boy,” Connor said softly to Russo, “they must save a bundle on their electric bill.” A door on the right was the men’s room, indicated by the silhouette of a cherub peeing, while the door facing it bore the outline of two pendulous breasts. There were four pay phones on the wall to their right. As O’Brien suspected, there were no numbers on these phones. Taped to the wall around the phones and on the privacy screens were numerous business cards, some of them featuring photographs of women in seductive poses, most of them having only one name—O’Brien counted three Monas—but all of them boasting “out calls.”
Both agents, armed with several dollars in quarters, picked up pay phone handsets and dialed a special number at AT&T. This service was used primarily by installers and repairmen to check their work, but when necessary, law enforcement agencies also used it. After a series of clicks and switches their calls were answered automatically. Within seconds a computerized voice reported the number of the phone from which they were calling. According to Bell Telephone’s records, six telephones connected to eight lines had been installed in Off Limits. One of them had been used to call the professor, causing him to leave his apartment and disappear. That call had not been made from either of the first two pay phones. O’Brien and Russo hung up and moved to the next pair of phones.
One of those phones was in use by a large man wearing what was obviously a cheap blond wig. He was whispering into the receiver, but O’Brien could hear him negotiating. The man sensed O’Brien behind him, turned, and looked at him with real disgust. O’Brien took a few steps backward and leaned against the opposite wall, waiting while Russo finished checking the other phone.
She was leaning forward into the booth waiting for a response from the phone company. Two men came out of the restroom and walked between O’Brien and Russo. Almost compulsively they examined Russo’s form. She’d spent enough time in these clubs to know exactly how to dress on the proper side of the line without making any kind of obvious statement. She was wearing a tastefully short skirt which showed off just enough of her well-shaped legs to be fashionable rather than provocative, ending slightly south of midcalf, sheer stockings or panty hose—O’Brien couldn’t be certain, but his bet was on stockings—and a cream satin blouse. The top three buttons of the blouse were opened to reveal the swell of her own cute breasts. She was carrying a trendy black purse, and O’Brien wondered if any of the men looking at her had any concept of the firepower inside that bag.
O’Brien watched the men watching Russo, while trying to project an attitude of protective independence. Admittedly he found himself following their eyes to her body. Within the realm of reality, he decided, she was fine.
The bewigged man hung up, hitched up his pants, and walked back into the club without looking at O’Brien. As Russo stepped back from the phone and shook her head, he picked up the fourth phone and dialed the service number. It took only a few seconds to confirm that the professor had not been called from this phone. So whoever had called him had not used a public phone, meaning most likely it was not a customer who had called him.
Russo guessed the other phones were in the office—that one probably had several lines—and in the strippers’ dressing room. O’Brien raised his eyebrows playfully and smirked when she mentioned the dressing room. She dismissed him coldly: “I got it the first time.”
The office was the more likely location, although considering how much they’d learned about the professor, it was not impossible the call had come from the dressing room. The office was behind a set of deep purple velvet curtains, which were almost hidden by a bouncer O’Brien estimated to be about the size of the New York Giants’ offensive line. As they approached him, he whispered to Russo, “Use your charm.”
”Excuse me,” she said pleasantly to the giant, who looked down upon her. The bouncer was a dark-skinned Asian; Korean of one of the northern Japanese islands, O’Brien guessed.
“Can I help you?” he asked politely.
She took her badge from her purse and showed it to him. “Yes, you can. I’m Agent Russo, this is Agent O’Brien, FBI. We’d like to speak with the manager.”
The bouncer looked from the badge to Russo, from Russo back to the badge. “Really?” he asked, surprised and impressed. “You’re an FBI agent? Like on TV?” She nodded. “Just wait right here,” he said, and slipped through the curtains.
O’Brien leaned forward and said quietly to Russo, “I’ll take it from here.” Even Laura couldn’t help laughing at him.
The bouncer quickly reappeared, holding open the curtain for them and revealing the first brightly lit area they’d found in the club. “This way, please.” As O’Brien followed three steps behind Russo, the bouncer winked at him.
It took his eyes several moments to adjust to the bright lights. At the end of another short corridor a middle-aged white man was standing in front of a half-opened gray steel door. The door had a peephole drilled into it about two inches below a store-bought Private sign and a Medeco lock. But it was the manager who caught O’Brien’s attention. The man’s thinning jet-black hair appeared to have been glued in place, and several very long strands were combed directly over the top, sort of like a thin shadow trying to cover the entire north pole. Connor guessed forty-eight, desperate for thirty-nine. He was of medium height and his upper body bore the last traces of once-serious muscles. He was wearing a black-and-white-checked sports jacket over a tightly stretched gray V-neck T-shirt. The T-shirt accentuated those muscles, while the single-button jacket was an obvious attempt to hide his paunch. The perfunctory gold chain hung loosely around his neck, matched by the equally perfunctory diamond pinkie ring. A large unlit half-chewed cigar was poked firmly into the corner of his mouth. Looking at him, O’Brien was absolutely thrilled. Thrilled! Standing before him was the living, breathing proof that clichés were indeed born of reality. He would have staked his inheritance that the man’s name was Sid. And he would have given great odds that he had at least one tattoo. “What’s the problem?” he asked.
Russo introduced herself and O’Brien, then paused to allow him to respond. “Okay,” he said, failing to identify himself, “so what’s the problem?”
“Are you the manager?” she asked.
O’Brien was practically mesmerized by the chewed cigar, which bobbed with every word.
“The owner.” He corrected himself. “Co-owner. Ike Jones. I’ll ask you again, we got a problem here?”
Sure it is, O’Brien thought, refusing to accept the name Ike for an answer.
“It’s really simple,” Russo explained. “I can get a warrant if I need one, but I’d rather not have to do that.”
Ike Jones held out his hands together prayerfully. “Please, I’m not looking for trouble. Just tell me. What? What?”
“We need to know the numbers of your telephones,” she told him.
He squinched up his face, tilting the end of his cigar almost straight upward. “What?”
“The phone numbers,” O’Brien repeated strongly. “Of your phone.”
Jones was wary. “That’s it? Really?” They both nodded. “You’re the FBI and you were going to get a search warrant for that?” He laughed at the thought. “Let me ask you this. Why didn’t you call information? We’re listed.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Sure, come on in.”
He led them into the office and closed the door. The room was obviously soundproof, as the thunderous music was reduced to a distant thump. There was a single three-line phone sitting on a coffee-cup-stained glass-top desk. While Russo checked the phone numbers, O’Brien surveyed the room. In addition to the desk, the office contained a high-back leather executive chair, two straight-back chairs, and a black leather couch. Notebooks dated by months lined the two shelves behind the desk. Obviously ledgers. There were three photographs in cheap black plastic frames hanging on the wall, all of them picturing Sid holding large fish. That was no surprise to Connor. Unlike a deli, this was not the type of place in which celebrities wanted to have photographs of themselves with the owner—or the entertainers—on the wall. “Nice,” O’Brien said admiringly, “nice.”
“Look,” Ike asked O’Brien, “what’s going on here?”
Here it comes, Connor thought hopefully.
Ike continued, “I run a clean place here . . .”
Yessss! O’Brien thought. There is a God in cliché heaven. “Of course you do,” he agreed.
“This is it,” Russo said, standing behind the desk and holding high the telephone receiver.
“This what?” Ike asked. For the first time he grasped the cigar stub and took it out of his mouth. Waving it to make his point, he declared, “This is bullshit is what it is, you ask me.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Jones?” Russo suggested, pointing to one of the straight-back chairs.
Defiantly Ike walked around the desk, settled into his desk chair, and leaned back. He picked up a tiger-shaped cigarette lighter and pressed down twice on the tail. The tiger’s red eyes lit up and a flame shot out of his mouth. As Ike lit the stub, he asked, “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Ike? Right?” Russo replied. He nodded.
O’Brien took out his notebook. Sid, he thought. And I’ll bet he has a whole collection of Hawaiian shirts for his trips to Florida.
“Okay, Ike,” she continued. “Do you recognize this guy?” Like a magician reaching into his top hat, she again reached into her purse, this time pulling out the photograph of the professor.
Ike examined it, then frowned. He shook his head slowly. “No, sorry. Doesn’t look familiar.”
A lot of guys come in here, O’Brien guessed he would add.
He handed back the picture and shrugged. “With all the guys who come in here . . .”
Placing it back in her purse, Russo asked, “So then, that wouldn’t have been you who called him from this phone last Monday night about eight o’clock?”
“From this phone? That’s interesting. Nah, wasn’t me.”
“You have any idea who might have made that call?”
Ike watched a single long strand of smoke spiral into the air. “Last Monday? Could’ve been anybody. Everybody uses this phone, the girls, the bouncers, friends drop by.”
Figures, O’Brien thought, all Monas all the time.
Ike shrugged again. “I wish I could help you, but it’s impossible.”
Without looking up from his notebook O’Brien took a shot. “Skinny Al ever use it?”
Ike looked at him curiously. “Skinny who?”
“Skinny Al. Al D’Angelo. Big fat guy comes in here sometimes.”
“Nah, I don’t know him. Skinny Mike, maybe. He’s this big fat black guy works here couple nights a week. But I don’t know any Skinny Als.”
“No Skinny Al,” O’Brien repeated, writing it firmly in his notebook. He looked up. “Any other Skinnys? Besides this Mike?”
Ike shot him a challenging look. “That s’posed to be funny?”
O’Brien had at least a dozen completely unprofessional responses to that very question he had been using since he was a teenager, ranging from a goofy expression to classic punch lines like, “Not as funny as your face.” The shame was that he couldn’t use any of them while on the job. But before he could respond, a young woman poked her head in the door. “Ike, can I use the—” She stopped. “Oops, sorry. Didn’t know you had company.” By the time O’Brien turned around, she was gone.
Russo answered for him. “Ike, were you here Monday night?”
He considered it. “I’m always here.” He beamed. “Hey, FBI, take a look around. Well, excuuuuussse me,” he said, doing a truly awful Steve Martin impersonation. “But name me one place any red-blooded American guy would rather be than right here.”
“Okay. Then you tell me, who made the call?”
He sighed. “Beats me. I’m telling you, your guess is as good as mine. I spent a lot of time out on the floor and this door’s open . . .”
Russo nodded agreement. “Sure. Yeah. So let me ask you this one, Ike. Who are your partners in this place?”
The bank, mostly, he said, laughing. Then he named several other men; the only one whose name was familiar to either O’Brien or Russo was a well-known Manhattan real estate developer. Two of them were Wall Street guys, Ike explained, who used the place to impress investors. Another one was the executive VP of an ad agency, and the last partner was “the faggot son of this rich guy who bought in trying to convince everybody that he’s straight.”
“Oh, Ikey,” O’Brien said doubtfully, “come on. A cash cow like this place? T&A, maybe a little hooking on the side, watered-down overpriced booze. Smack, snow, weed, whatever the fuck else. Just who the fuck do you think you’re kidding? You really expect us to believe nobody has hooks in here?”
Ike rolled his cigar stub around his mouth as he glared at O’Brien. Turning to Russo, he said, “Too bad Ed Sullivan’s off the TV. ’Cause your partner’s got some funny act.” Then to O’Brien he repeated coldly, “I said I run a clean place here.”
O’Brien stood up, knowing he was on the verge of becoming the cliché. “Well, I guess we’re gonna have to find out about that now, aren’t we?”
Russo also stood. “If we have any more questions, Ike, we’ll be back. And, just one more thing. Your liquor license? Is that in your name? Your real name?”
As they walked out, Ike was standing behind his desk, glaring at them, muttering to himself. O’Brien paused at the door. “And you know what else?” he said defiantly. “I don’t believe your name really is Ike.” He paused for emphasis, then snarled, “Is it?” Then he practically spit out, “Sid!” He marched out.
They had just about reached the velvet curtain when Ike shouted after them, “Hey, FBI!” They turned around. He was standing in the doorway, frowning. “Come on back.” When they were again settled in the room, he laid it out for them. “You hear this from me, I’m a fucking dead man, you know that, right?”
“Okay,” Russo agreed, “it’s a deal.”
He looked at O’Brien. “How ’bout Bob Hope there?”
O’Brien nodded. “Whattya got?”
“It’s mostly like I said, I run a clean place here.” He paused. “You know, considering.”
“Considering,” O’Brien agreed.
“No drugs in here, period. The customers or my girls, I’m real strict about that. That other thing, there’s nothing official going on, you know what I mean? But you’re a smart guy, you know the facts of life, you gonna operate in the city you gotta have a name.”
Russo held her breath. “Of course.”
Once again Ike rolled his cigar stub around his mouth, closed his eyes, and wiped his forehead with his hand. “I didn’t have much choice.” He inhaled deeply and explained, “Two-Gun Tony comes around pretty much every week. If not him, one of his people. I give him whatever I give him, usually between four and five Gs. I’ve never had one problem.” He paused, waiting.
Neither O’Brien nor Russo made a sound. Within seconds Ike leaped into the silence. “He was around Monday night with a few of his people. They come in the office, I go out on the floor. If somebody made a phone call, it was one of them.” He finally took the cold stub out of his mouth and squashed it into an Off Limitsashtray. “Anything else?”
“No,” Russo told him, “I think that’s it.” She looked at O’Brien. “You?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
As they stood up, Russo promised, “We got your back.”
Ike chuckled ruefully. “I sure hope so.”
Once again they had just about reached the velvet curtain when Ike shouted for their attention. “Hey!” And once again they stopped and turned. “It’s Arthur,” he said, and stepped back inside.
They ended up in a booth against the back wall at Odeon, making lists and diagrams on a paper tablecloth, drawing lines between names, constructing timelines, reviewing O’Brien’s notes, trying to find the pattern they just knew had to be there. They had added one really important piece of information earlier that night: The phone call from Cosentino had caused Gradinsky to pack a bag and get out quick. They now had pretty solid evidence that their original theory was right: Columbia University Slavic Languages Professor Peter Gradinsky was the connection between Two-Gun Tony Cosentino’s Bath Street crew and the Russian mob, at least Vaseline and Barney Ruble. Natalie Speakman put him with the Russians, Ike/Arthur tied him to Cosentino. The obvious assumption had to be that he was working as an interpreter for the Italians. It certainly couldn’t be the other way around, O’Brien pointed out over the Death by Chocolate, since Gradinsky didn’t speak Italian and it didn’t seem likely the Russians would need a Russian translator.
The fact that Cosentino was putting pressure on San Filippo to find the professor before Thursday night was a pretty good indication the two groups were planning to meet later in the week. Natalie had even given them some vague idea of where these meetings generally took place. The big questions were why: Why were they meeting and why was the professor on the run?
That’s pretty much what Connor was still trying to figure out as he sat in Slattery’s office the next morning with his eyes closed. Why and why?
But he snapped back to attention the moment he heard Bobby Blue Eyes’ voice on the recorder respond to some question, “I don’t know, open a gas station maybe.”
He glanced at Russo, who was looking at him, and saw the beginning of a smile forming on her lips. Either she was thinking about her Russian gas jockey or she was beginning to see the pattern too. “Open a gas station” is not the punch line of too many jokes.
All the friendly banter and the laughter in the office subsided as they listened to Bobby laying out his plan to hijack a fuel delivery truck. Organized crime at work. Slattery informed them, “This is all yesterday. The hijacking was supposed to take place last night. We’re trying to track it down, we’re talking to all the companies, but so far we haven’t got anything.” When Bobby finished describing the job, Slattery shut off the tape recorder. “That’s pretty much it.”
“Boy oh boy,” one of the other agents joked about Benny Rags as he left Slattery’s office, “I’ve heard of the Wailing Wall, but that was the first time I ever actually heard it.”
When the other agents were gone, Slattery closed his door. O’Brien and Russo had remained on the couch. He sat down across the coffee table from them. And smiled knowingly. “I know something you two don’t,” he said.
O’Brien took a guess. “You found Judge Crater?”
“Better,” Slattery promised, “much better.”
“Who’s Judge Crater?” Russo asked, looking from O’Brien to Slattery. Her whole body sagged. “Please. Don’t tell me somebody else is missing now?”
Connor explained, “He’s this New York legend. Joseph Force Crater. He was a state supreme court justice who walked out of his office one afternoon in 1930 and nobody ever saw him again.”
“That’s the legend,” Slattery agreed, “but the fact is that ole Judge Crater ended up in a herring barrel tossed into the East River. A mobster, Red something, killed him for beating up the guy’s sister, who was a hooker.”
“That for real?” O’Brien asked, impressed.
Slattery nodded. “Scout’s honor. They worked it in this office for fun about forty years ago. There’s a file around here somewhere. But I got something a lot better than that for you.” He stood up and returned to the security of his own desk. When you work on an investigation, you never know which single piece of the puzzle is going to make all the difference. So, like Connor O’Brien, you collect everything and you just keep hoping you get lucky. “Remember when they went to put the tap on Gradinsky’s phone, they found out somebody was already listening to him?”
“Cosentino?” O’Brien figured.
Slattery slowly and knowingly shook his head from side to side. “That’s what I figured too. Or at least somebody from the family. But I was wrong.” One of the least-known departments in the Federal Bureau of Investigation is ERF, Engineering Research Facilities. Through the years it’s had several different names and been moved around a lot in the organizational structure, but it’s always done an extraordinary job providing technical services to agents in the field. These are the guys who plant the microphones and the surveillance cameras and all the other devices the bureau uses in its investigations. “I’ll tell you what, I didn’t even know they could do this, but they traced it backwards. They found out where it was . . . um . . .” Slattery had never been particularly adept at technical descriptions, gravitating toward “whatchamacallits” and “whoozits” rather than the correct terminology. He waved his hands through the air. “Whatever it is they do, that’s what they did.”
It was not a particularly difficult feat of engineering, but it was very clever. The technicians traced the wire back to its point of origin, put a wire on that wire, and called the telephone company service number to find out that number. This was long before the availability of Google or any of the other search engines that allow you to type in a phone number to find out to whom it belongs and where it’s located. Law enforcement has long relied on the extremely limited-circulation reverse phone book, a phone book arranged numerically, to track a phone number. Slattery picked up a sheet of paper and asked, “Ever hear of the G&C Corporation?”
“Son of a bitch,” Russo said.
“The fucking Russians,” O’Brien said, disbelieving. “They were on to Gradinsky the whole time.”
Russo was trying to sort out the details in her mind. “How did they find him? I don’t get it.”
“Who knows?” Slattery replied. “There’s a million ways. These people have money, they have resources, and apparently they’ve got a lot to protect. When someone they can’t identify starts showing up at important meetings, they’re going to be curious. They got a lot at stake. You figure they’ll do whatever’s necessary to find out who he is. You ask me, I think there’s a pretty good chance that’s the Skinny Al connection.”
O’Brien just couldn’t believe it. “We were right there, at G&C. It’s a gas station in Brighton Beach. We were there.”
Slattery picked up a copy of their report. “I know, I read about it.” He paused and licked his lips and said very quietly, “There’s something else I want you people to hear.” He walked around his desk and handed them copies of a six-page document. “The techies went a little further for us. They tapped the tappers.” He chuckled. “Don’t ask me how. I still think it’s a miracle when I flip a switch and a light goes on, but those guys put a reverse wire on the Russians’ phone. This is a translation of a conversation that took place last night. Hot off the old Xerox.”
When the bureau chooses to focus its resources on a specific investigation or individual, extraordinary progress can be made very quickly. Even with all its well-publicized flaws, the FBI remains the finest crime-fighting agency in the world. Apparently the bureau had had a freelance Russian translator provide a translation. Actually the document consisted of transcriptions of three separate telephone conversations. The first and third conversations were in English, the middle conversation in Russian.
“This first call was made from the office of a parking lot in the Bronx,” Slattery continued. “It’s a place for truckers to leave their rigs for a few days till they get a load. We’ve got it under surveillance now.” He locked a large plastic reel onto the recorder and turned it on. A male caller identified himself as “Sean from the parking lot.” The recipient of the call was an unidentified male. It was obvious from his thick accent that he was an Eastern European, presumably Russian. Sean said he was afraid he had some bad news. “The truck didn’t show up,” he explained. Instead, he said, a “real nice-dressed guy” had appeared at the front gate and told him the truck was being held, and if the owners wanted it back, they had to call a phone number—Sean slowly repeated the number for emphasis—at noon the following day.
“That’s the Freemont,” Russo said when she heard the number.
“Hats,” O’Brien added. “You heard the guy say he was well dressed. It’s got to be him.”
Sean reported that the man had given him two hundred dollars to pass along the message and wondered if there was any assistance he could offer. The Russian asked fewer questions than either O’Brien or Russo might have anticipated, leading them to conclude that he had a pretty good idea who had hijacked his truck. He didn’t even seem to be particularly upset or angry. When asked for a description of the man, Sean was somewhat vague, explaining that it was pretty dark and there was a gate between them. But the few things he mentioned accurately described Bobby San Filippo. The Russian ended the conversation dispassionately, reminding Sean that a driver would be there later that evening to pick up the second truck.
“This next one’s all in Russian,” Slattery told them as he snapped on the second reel. “It was placed from the G&C office to a rental apartment in Brighton Beach currently occupied by a man named”—he searched the document for a name and found it—“Vasily Kuz . . . Kuznetzov.”
“Vaseline,” Russo said to O’Brien. Then to Slattery, “We know him. That’s one of the people Gradinsky was meeting with.”
This conversation was quite brief. According to the transcription, the as-yet-unidentified caller asked Kuznetzov if he was awake. “Yes,” he said, “very much.” Calmly the caller explained that “a big truck has been taken (hijacked).” He then told Kuznetzov to “go to the apartment and get the (UNI),” meaning unintelligible. He was then to “bring her to the company.”
Kuznetzov asked if this had to be done immediately. “Yes, right now,” he was told. Kuznetzov could then be heard telling someone that he “must leave to do some work.” In response an unidentified female in the background shouted something in Russian, which was indicated on the transcription as unintelligible.
Slattery took a deep breath as he took the second tape off the reel and put on the third tape. “This next one’s pretty rough,” he warned. “We know who this call’s to. We got it from both places.” It is not uncommon for someone to use a tapped phone to call someone who is also speaking on a tapped phone. In this instance the call was made to the social club, which itself was bugged. “This is from the Russian phone.” Slattery hit the play button. “Bobby?” the Russian said.
Bobby’s voice: “What?”
“So listen, we got your fucking message.”
“Jesus,” Russo said. She looked at Slattery, who nodded.
“Look at that, Bobby grabbed their truck,” O’Brien said. “Unbeliev—”
He was cut off by a long, seemingly inhuman scream, preserved crisply and forever by the most sophisticated recording equipment then available. According to FBI lore, there is a repository of tapes designated “sensitive,” which are never to be made available to the general public. Supposedly this collection includes a recording made by the serial killer on whom Thomas Harris’ memorable Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter was based, describing in detail each of his actions while skinning a living human being; a tape made by an individual who hides patiently outside his former home while waiting for his ex-wife to get there, then records when the woman arrives and is beaten to death; and several recordings made by people in the process of committing suicide. This Russian tape would surely end up in this repository.
The scream lasted less than five seconds. When Slattery turned off the tape recorder, the silence in the room lasted much longer than that. “Jesus,” Russo said again, this time almost a whisper.
“We haven’t identified the victim yet,” Slattery said professionally, avoiding eye contact. He removed the tape. “The tape we got from the social club goes on several seconds longer.”
“That’s all right,” O’Brien said, “I think we get the idea.”
“Go ahead and play it,” Russo said, then looked at O’Brien sternly. “I want to hear it.”
“Suit yourself.”
Using the tape recorder’s time counter, Slattery fast-forwarded the fourth tape to a point several seconds from the end. Still long enough to feel the victim’s agony. On this tape the scream seemed quite distant, muffled, but no less horrific. Then they heard the Russian hanging up, which was followed by several seconds of room tone, and finally someone asking, “What the fuck was that?” And then gently replacing the receiver.
This tape, made by the listeners in the Country Club, continued for several additional minutes. After the phone call had been completed, the voice asked again, “What the fuck was that?”
Bobby responded weakly, “That motherfucking Russian.”
“The gas truck guy? I figured,” the second man said, anxiety growing in his voice. “But I mean, what was that screaming? What the fuck was that all about? Bobby, tell me that wasn’t Ronnie.”
“I gotta go,” Bobby said.
“Want me to come?”
“That’s okay,” Bobby said in a fading voice, followed by the sound of the front door closing.
The second man shouted after him, “Call me, okay? I’m there.” And again, a second later, “I’m there.”
Slattery turned off the tape recorder and sat down at his desk. “That’s it.”
O’Brien was incredulous. “What are you talking about, that’s it?”
Slattery held up both his hands in restraint. “I mean, there’s nothing we can do right now. By the time we got to a location for the Russians, the place was quiet. Just a gas station. Whatever they did there, it was over. There was nobody there. We didn’t want to bust in and let them know we were there. The place is under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Anybody comes or goes we’re tracking them.”
“What are you, kidding me?” O’Brien said with frustration, indicating the tape. “You heard that. I mean, if there’s the slightest chance . . .”
Slattery shook his head. “There’s not. I’m telling you, we’re all over it.”
Russo spoke with more determination than O’Brien had ever heard. “When we go in, I want to be there.”
Slattery agreed. “That’s fair. Look, we need to get as much intelligence out of this place as possible before we take them down.” O’Brien could hear every day of Slattery’s long career in his voice as he continued, “I swear to God, Russo, if there was a chance we could make a difference, we wouldn’t wait. And when we’re done, somebody’s gonna go for this. But we got a shot here to find out what the Russians and the Italians are up to. We’ve been trying to get here for a long time. So we’re gonna wait and that’s it.”
“I’m outta here,” Russo said. And seconds later she was gone.
O’Brien sighed deeply. “Well, partner,” he said to Slattery, smiling wanly, “I think I’ll be moseying along.” And then he took off after his partner.
Being an FBI agent, a cop, a law enforcement officer of any kind, is a strange job. It requires you to put aside your normal human emotions while you’re on the clock. On some levels it’s a janitorial job, cleaning up the mess caused by exploding tempers and greed and accidents and pure stupidity. Responding to depravity, brutality, sadism, even death, is just part of the job. Destroyed lives aren’t supposed to affect you when you’re on the clock. From the first day of instruction you’re taught to deal with it professionally, then move on to the next assignment.
Of course it isn’t that easy. Changing gears abruptly is a really hard thing to do. For some people it’s impossible. Sometimes the time you need to decompress just isn’t there, so you just suck it up and keep moving forward.
Connor caught up with Laura Russo at the elevator bank. They rode down together without saying a word. Finally, as they walked briskly up Broadway, he asked, “What do you expect him to do?”
“Oh, it’s not Slattery,” she told him calmly. “I just need a little time, that’s all.”
He anticipated a long discussion about the job and responsibility and dealing with human suffering, after which she would have calmed down enough for them to get back to work. Truthfully he needed the cooling-off period too. Instead, she walked in thoughtful silence for several blocks. He stayed right with her. Eventually her pace slowed and she began glancing into shop windows. She stopped in front of a small lingerie boutique. Its single window was given to an elaborate display. Painted in lifelike detail onto a white paper screen which covered the entire back of the window was a black limousine with its rear door partially opened. And emerging from that door was a single long, slender mannequin’s leg, wearing a sharply pointed black high heel and a silk stocking held up by a garter. Finally she asked O’Brien, “Nothing’s changed, right? It’s still all about finding Gradinsky?”
O’Brien was staring at the window display, his mind envisioning the nonexistent woman. “He’s the mystery guest.”
Laura was also focused on the titillating display and said knowingly, “But he’s still a man, isn’t he?” She looked at O’Brien, busy with his fantasy. “We really haven’t thought too much about that, have we?”
Geri Simon had taken a “personal day.” “Use ’em or lose ’em,” was the way she described it. With the traffic on the Henry Hudson Parkway it took O’Brien and Russo almost an hour to find her small, neat house on Spencer Avenue in North Riverdale. It was the home in which she had grown up and lived in all her life, and there she still remained, single and resigned to it, sharing it with her elderly mother.
Russo dropped off O’Brien at Stromboli’s Pizza Café on Riverdale Avenue where he devoured a meatball hero while she went alone to Simon’s house. Certain conversations are easier just between women. Simon had initially claimed to be too busy for visitors when Russo phoned from the office, but reluctantly agreed to see her when Russo claimed it involved Gradinsky’s life.
The house remained rooted firmly in the late 1950s, from the faded white doily on top of the RCA Victor TV to the three-way illuminated log-set in the faux fireplace. Geri Simon had put on just enough makeup to try to make it appear that she wasn’t wearing any at all. They sat at the kitchen table because, Simon explained, indicating the bedroom where her mother was resting, “She doesn’t want me to smoke in the living room.” She made a face. “She says the smell gets into her curtains.” Simon lit a cigarette and savored a long puff. “You want something to drink? Some tea maybe?”
“No thanks,” Laura said. “I just had some coffee.”
“Sure.” Simon leaned close to Russo and said in a subdued, husky voice, “Now, tell me about Peter. You found him?”
It was “Peter,” Russo noticed. “Geri, I had a long conversation with Natalie Speakman,” she said. Simon leaned back as if that name were a great wind. “She told me all about their relationship.”
Simon pursed her lips and eyed Russo warily. “That’s why it was so friggin’ important for you to see me right away? To tell me that?”
Russo could feel Simon’s anger rising. “This isn’t easy for me either, believe me on that.” She gently placed her hand on top of Simon’s. “But I have to ask you this. Before Natalie were there other students . . . graduate assistants maybe?” Laura knew the answer; what she needed were the specifics.
She knew the answer because she had been in precisely the same situation. Larry Carty had been her first professor of forensic science. He was also her friend, her mentor, and eventually her lover. Unhappily married, misunderstood and unappreciated, burdened but brilliant, he had taken her under his wing and onto the convertible sofa in his office. Their romance lasted two semesters, which, she later discovered, tied his existing record. Their breakup was for her own good, he had explained to her. He was trapped at the university, and as much as he cared for her, he refused to hold her back from what he knew would be an outstanding career. There could be no greater proof of his love for her than the fact he would let her go. If she stayed and did not fulfill her potential, he would never forgive himself.
She had believed him right up until the day she met her replacement. Oddly enough, though, long after the storm had passed, she retained warm memories of him. And when she made her first arrest, she had called him with the news.
“What do you want me to say?” Simon asked. “Peter . . .” She waited for the right words. “Peter is a complicated man.” She tapped the ash from her cigarette into a restaurant ashtray, then looked away. “I’ve known Peter a long time,” she said, “a long time.” She looked directly at Russo. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” She was fighting tears; she wiped her eyes. “The smoke,” she explained.
“Of course.”
“Everybody in the department knows about Peter and his . . . his friends. It’s no secret, you know.” She considered that. “I think Grace knows too. I mean, how could she not after all these years?”
Russo pushed gently. “Does he keep in contact with any of them?”
Geri was looking straight down now. “Oh, you know, a couple of them, I guess.” It took some time for the meaning of that question to sink in. “You think?”
Russo nodded. “It makes sense. The special ones, the ones he trusts, I need their names and addresses.”
Geri Simon nodded in agreement and stood up. “I’ve got them in the office. Give me a minute to tell her ladyship.”