Connor slid one of the surveillance photographs across the table to Laura Russo. “Here’s a good one of the happy couple.” The photograph, taken the previous afternoon, showed Bobby Blue Eyes and Little Eddie leaving the Gradinsky apartment. As seen from the roof of the five-story brownstone diagonally across the street, the two mobsters cast long, thin shadows as they walked briskly down the steps.
Laura was slowly working her way through a pile of photographs, carefully examining each one with the large rectangular magnifying glass that she had received as a graduation gift from her mother. She glanced casually at the picture and forced a smile. “Nice hat,” she said. Then went back to work.
Connor frowned. “Boy, even his shadow’s better dressed than I am.”
She looked up, and this time her smile was real. “Oh, come on, Connor, you dress fine. You just have your own style, that’s all.”
“Yeah. Moe Ginsberg chic,” he said, referring to the cut-rate clothier on Fifth and 21st Street where he bought most of his clothes. Unlike his father, Connor did not have a “wardrobe.” Rather he had “clothes.” In his case it was usually “a pile of clothes.” When it came to dressing, he followed one strict rule: Socks had to match. Everything else was fair game.
His lack of interest in dressing properly used to drive his mother crazy. “I guess the good news is that you can’t dress down for this occasion,” she said sarcastically as he got ready for a high school dance, “because you’re already there.”
Connor was one of those few people whose closets improved significantly when they joined the bureau. Agents were expected to dress appropriately for their assignment, which most often meant a blue suit, white shirt, and neutral tie. The day he graduated from Quantico he bought three blue sports jackets and three pairs of slacks, a blue suit and a gray suit. He had yet to wear the gray one. Fortunately for him, agents working organized crime in New York were allowed to dress casually so as not to stick out in Little Italy and other mob hangouts.
O’Brien was wearing what he called his “comfort clothes”: khakis, a white shirt, and cordovan moccasins. Not only wouldn’t he stand out in a crowd, no one would notice him if he was all alone—which was exactly how he preferred it. He took a good long look at another surveillance photo before spinning it across the table, and stated firmly, “Maybe it’s just me, but personally I never trust people who wear hats that don’t have writing on them.”
Beginning an investigation is like trying to follow a road map on which the roads and the towns are not identified. No matter how long you stare at it, you don’t know where you are, where you’re going, or how you’re going to get there. O’Brien and Russo had bits of intriguing information that seemingly led nowhere. They had spent the entire morning reviewing everything they had, trying without success to fit some of the pieces together. Russo called this kind of work “a strategy review session,” while O’Brien referred to it as “the usual bullshit.”
At the beginning of their careers most FBI agents dressed alike and worked alike. They followed the standard procedures taught at Quantico. They didn’t take the side roads or look for shortcuts. But as they gained experience, each agent developed his or her own methods for working a case. O’Brien preferred covering as much ground as possible, talking to people, making himself visible, figuring he’d eventually shake loose some information. Russo was more of a plodder, much like her favorite detective, Agatha Christie. She liked taking the time necessary to examine each piece of evidence, believing without any doubt that there was always just a little more information to be squeezed out of it if she were just smart enough. She would literally spend hours bent over a single photograph with that magnifying glass. Early in her career, to perfect her skills, she had attempted to identify every book seen in the background in a photograph of John Kennedy sitting at his desk in his Hyannis Port library. She’d managed to list 256 titles.
The boredom was beginning to get to O’Brien. “Hey, I got an idea,” he said brightly. “If we’re gonna spend all day in here looking at pictures, why don’t I go out and get us the new Playboy?”
Without even bothering to look up from the photograph she was examining she told him, “You’re not funny, Connor.”
Connor pulled down the skin under both eyes as far as possible with his forefinger and middle finger, then rolled his eyes as far up into his head as possible. “How ’bout this, then?” he asked. “This any funnier?”
This time she leaned back in her chair and looked at him. And frowned. “What are you gonna do next? Fart jokes?”
“C’mon, Russo,” he practically begged, “this isn’t getting us anywhere. We gotta find this guy, and unless he’s hiding under this table, he’s not in here.”
“Just give me a couple more minutes,” she said in what definitely was not a couple-more-minutes voice. The only good news, as far as O’Brien was concerned, was that they just didn’t have too much more to examine. Russo had gone through most of the surveillance photos. Both of them had read the most recent transcripts from the taps in the social club and Gradinsky’s apartment. The Gradinsky apartment had picked up seven personal calls in which the professor was not mentioned and one order for Chinese food. About all they learned from the pile of material was that Grace Gradinsky was still not discussing her husband’s absence with anyone, which O’Brien believed reinforced his theory that she knew where he was, and that she preferred hot-and-sour over wonton.
O’Brien had just started making a list in his notebook of lists he intended to compile when Russo hummmmmmed in interest. “This is interesting,” she said. “Look at this.”
He walked around the table and leaned over her left shoulder. And the extraordinarily fresh scent of whatever it was she was using in her hair hit him hard in his gender. It took him a couple of seconds to refocus on his professionalism. Russo was looking at the photograph given to her by Grace Gradinsky. It pictured Grace and the professor with another couple, sitting at a table in a restaurant. They had obviously finished dinner, as empty coffee cups and the remains of dessert littered the table. Grace and the other woman were holding cigarettes and smiling directly into the camera. From the cut of her hair and up-to-date dress it was apparent to Russo that the photograph had been taken within the past couple of years. “Who are those other people?” he asked.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Now, how do you expect me to know that? I got an idea. Why don’t we ask her?” She shook her head and returned to the photograph.
“Well, then, what’s so interesting?”
“Look.” She held the magnifying glass over an area of the table directly in front of the professor.
Connor leaned forward to get a better look. “Whoa,” he said, stepping back, “you’re right. That’s the biggest damn glass of water I’ve ever seen.” She took one very deep “how long do I have to put up with this?” breath, and Connor suddenly became serious. “All right, okay, what? What’ve you got?” He looked at the picture again. Framed by the magnifying glass were a glass of water, part of a knife, a saucer with two cigarette stubs drowned in a spill of coffee, a little pillbox holding what he guessed were saccharin pills, a pack of Marlboro, and a book of matches. “Yeah? And?”
“Check out the matches, Sherlock.”
He looked again. In an elegant Palace Bold Script typeface the name “Gino’s” was clearly embossed on the matchbook cover. Below it, in a much smaller type partially hidden beneath the scratch strip, were the words “Maspeth, N.Y.” Connor guessed there was a phone number on the back. He stood up straight. “Okay. So what am I missing here?”
“Don’t you know who Gino is?”
“Lemme guess. Gino?”
“Uh-oh, somebody hasn’t done his homework, has he? See what it says, Maspeth? Maspeth, Queens? Ring any bells?”
He got it. Louder than the Liberty Bell. “Tony Cosentino,” he said with admiration. “Of course. Tony’s gotta be Gino, right? Damn, if I wore a hat, I’d tip it to you.” He picked up her magnifying glass and held it high in the air, carefully examining it. “I got to get me one of these.”
The first connection had been made. Admittedly it was pretty thin, but it made complete sense. They had known from the day they overheard Bobby and Little Eddie in the social club that the professor was in some way connected to the mob. What they didn’t know was who or why. The body of Skinny Al D’Angelo had been found in a car trunk the day after the professor went missing. D’Angelo was a member of Cosentino’s crew. And here was evidence that the professor had been at Cosentino’s restaurant. Either it was a truly amazing coincidence or these men had something in common. It was the beginning of “who.”
Searching for a loophole in her reasoning, Connor pointed out, “Well, first of all, we don’t even know for sure that this picture was taken at Gino’s. They could’ve gotten the matches some other time.”
“Big deal. Doesn’t make any difference. I mean, we can find out easy enough where this was taken, but the fact that he’s got the matches is what matters. It’s a connection. Remember what his wife said, that they didn’t own a car? Then what the hell were they doing going all the way out to Queens for dinner?”
“Maybe they couldn’t resist that wonderful Queens cuisine.” Connor couldn’t argue with Laura’s assessment. He’d lived in the city most of his life—and never once had he gone out to Queens for dinner. Not counting the Bridge Diner, of course, but nobody who’d ever eaten there would count it.
“And second of all?” she asked.
“Just kidding about that,” he admitted. Assuming Russo was right, and at this point in the investigation they had nothing else, Professor G and Skinny Al had Tony Cosentino in common. Two-Gun Tony Cosentino had been elevated to captain in the bloodletting after the sudden and expected death of Carmine Galante, who died with his lit cigar in his mouth when a shotgun was fired into his chest from about six feet away. Cosentino was considered a real heavyweight. Nobody knew for sure, but the bureau estimated he had participated in at least twelve hits. Possibly more. Thus far, though, the bureau had been unable to get anywhere near him.
Tying together the professor and the victim, Skinny Al, opened up all kinds of possibilities. Identifying Skinny Al’s killer, or even finding out why he was killed, might lead them to the professor or, more likely—considering the players—whatever was left of the professor. Conversely, finding the professor might lead them directly to Skinny Al’s killer.
Admittedly there were many questions this scenario didn’t begin to answer. Like who was the Russian on the telephone with the professor? And why were Skinny Al’s arms and leg practically crushed before his killers bled him to death? But it was a beginning. Connor figured it was sort of like the first words on a map, words that supposedly gave you important information but in fact told you absolutely nothing you didn’t already know: “You are here.”
Connor was waiting with anticipation and impatience as Laura slowly worked her way through the pile of surveillance photographs. Three more pictures and they’d be out of that room. Two more . . .
Meanwhile, he brought all the necessary paperwork right up to the minute. The primary purpose of all these reports, which when read carefully confirmed that they knew almost nothing about the “disappearance of Gradinsky, Peter NMI, Professor of Slavic Languages, Columbia University,” was to provide Jim Slattery with the official cover he needed. Few supervisors played the paper game better than Jim Slattery. Inundate headquarters with paperwork, he knew from experience, and it’d be a long time before anybody bothered looking at all of it. Long enough, he was betting, for this investigation to be concluded.
. . . and just as Russo reached for the last photograph, a clerk walked into the room carrying a large manila envelope. Placing it on the desk, he said to her, “Here are those pictures you wanted.”
O’Brien felt like somebody had punched him in the stomach. “Ah, Russo, c’mon. Please. This is bullshit.”
Her elbows resting on the table, she spread her hands in supplication. “Hey, nobody’s making you stay here. Go. Please. You got something to do, go do it. Meanwhile . . .” she indicated the new pile—“I’ve got work to do.”
He leaned way back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. In a controlled voice he asked, “Okay, let’s try it your way. What’ve we got there?”
She held up the first photograph for him to see. It was black-and-white and pictured the body of an obese man squeezed into the trunk of a car. The lid was up as if to display the contents of the trunk. The body was lying on its left side, facing outward. His head was pushed down into his chest, probably to enable the trunk to be closed, making it impossible to see the final expression on his face—although shoving his head down into his chest had caused the skin from his fleshy neck to swell outward, much like what happens when someone sits on a water bed, forming a collar of fat into which his chin had sunk. His light-colored shirt was almost completely stained dark with blood. His left arm was under his body, and his right arm from the elbow down was bent straight backward over his hip at an impossible angle, folded back like a jacket sleeve being packed, making it obvious it had been snapped.
A crime scene photograph is not intended to be a piece of art. Its only purpose is to record all possible details of an event at a specific time and place. Just about every violent crime scene or fatal accident is photographed from every conceivable angle. These photographs are admissible as evidence during a trial. I couldn’t begin to estimate how many crime scene photographs I’ve looked at during my career, how many bodies I’ve seen pictured bloody and bent, broken and cut up. And whatever their intended purpose, these photographs never fail to stimulate the senses. It’s macabre, I know, but for me, at least, it’s impossible to look at a photograph of a corpse—usually bloodied—and not wonder about the person and how he got there. And maybe wonder what he was feeling at the last moment of his life. Having been in situations that I thought could end up with me being in one of these pictures, I remembered my own feelings. It was as much practical—how the fuck did I get here and what can I do to get out of it?—as it was nervousness, fear, or apprehension.
O’Brien stared at the photograph of the late Alphonse D’Angelo and wondered what the hell Skinny Al had done to end up stuffed in that trunk. “Very nice,” he said finally, putting his thumbs and forefingers together to form a rectangle, then pretending to look through it at the photograph as a director might look through a lens, “although I’m not crazy about the composition. And the model ain’t so beautiful either.”
“Look at all the blood. Old Al must’ve bled eight buckets.”
“Gee, I’m sorry the poor man’s death affected you so terribly. Try to hold yourself together.”
Laying down the picture, she began examining it by quadrants. She didn’t spend a lot of time looking at D’Angelo’s body. The forensic pathologist would determine what the body had to say. As she worked, she asked O’Brien, “You ever hear of anybody burning out the eardrums? What do you think that’s all about?”
Surprisingly O’Brien hadn’t seen that many real bodies in his career. Contrary to the general belief, the bureau didn’t work many homicides. Murder is a federal crime only under very specific circumstances, for example when it is committed on federal property or across state lines. Your everyday murder isn’t something that agents can legally investigate, although the resources of the legendary FBI crime lab are always available to local law enforcement agencies. And the burned-out eardrums were completely new to him. There is a widespread belief that the mob uses some sort of code to make clear to everyone the reasons a person was killed. Leaving dimes on his closed eyes means the guy was an informer. I’ve heard of victims found with a canary in their mouth, obviously meaning they talked too much. Chopping off a victim’s hands meant he somehow violated the family’s security; he allowed someone or something to get too close. Cutting off a guy’s prick and stuffing it in his mouth meant that he had some sexual problems and maybe messed with the wrong man or woman or man’s woman. But Connor had never heard of anyone’s eardrums being burned out.
The meaning appeared to be pretty obvious: Skinny Al had heard something he wasn’t supposed to hear and therefore had to be killed. But when dealing with the mob, Connor knew that what seems obvious may be quite different. “Hear too much evil, I guess. I mean, with these guys who knows?” He glanced through the pile of photographs of D’Angelo’s corpse in the trunk. He looked just as dead in all of them. Having seen more than enough of Skinny Al, he sighed loudly. “Russo, please,” he said, “that’s enough. Let’s get out of here.” And then, without having planned it, he added, “C’mon, I’ll buy you some dinner.”
“Why, Agent O’Brien,” she responded, “that’d be very nice. But I think they roll the stand away at five o’clock.” As soon as she heard the words come out of her mouth, she regretted them. If she could have grabbed them out of the air and stuffed them back in, she would have done so. Laura Russo would never admit it, but she was flattered. While they’d shared many meals in the weeks they’d been working together—mostly takeout at the Country Club and in O’Brien’s car—this was the first time that O’Brien had made what sounded suspiciously like an invitation for a real dinner. Before O’Brien could respond, she tried to cover for herself. “I’d like to but I can’t. I got plans tonight.”
Plans tonight? she thought. Plans tonight? What a poor excuse for an excuse. But having said it, she was committed to it.
Plans tonight? O’Brien knew exactly what that meant: plans tonight was the ultimate “I can’t think fast enough to make up a believable excuse” turndown. Like every single man trapped in New York’s dating jungle, Connor had heard it before. And like pretty much every single man in New York lacking Donald Trump’s ego, he interpreted that to mean: I’d rather wax my entire body three times a week than spend one minute more with you than absolutely necessary. “That’s fine,” he stammered, “no big deal. There’s just a few things I wanted to go over. We can do it tomorrow.”
“Great.” She sat there pretending to examine a photograph of the car trunk after Skinny Al’s body had been removed, but that was a prop to cover her embarrassment. Why, she wondered, why, why, why?
Both O’Brien and Russo, two highly professional law enforcement officers, were desperate to get out of that room without further embarrassing themselves. Their egos were saved by the ringing telephone. Connor grabbed it. After listening for a few seconds he said, “Right away,” and hung up. “Slattery,” he told her. “He wants to see us for a minute.”
“Let me grab my stuff,” she said, so incredibly grateful for that phone call that she had to constrain herself to pack up her belongings at a natural pace.
Slattery was beaming when they walked into his office, but for reasons having nothing to do with the case. Minutes before, an administrative clerk in Washington had called to tell him that they were confident they knew what had happened to his personnel folder, although they had not yet found it. Until it was located, however, whenever necessary they would accept his stipulation in lieu of the proper support paperwork.
“In other words,” he’d told the clerk, “I am, therefore I exist.”
It was a weak joke—Slattery accepted that—but even then the officious clerk had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Instead, he cautioned him, “You really shouldn’t let something like this happen. It creates a great deal of difficulty for us.”
He was still smiling when they sat down. “Here,” he said, handing a memo across his desk to O’Brien. “Somebody’s been using your guy’s credit card.”
According to the National Bank of North America, which had been officially requested by the bureau to report all transactions involving this card, Peter Gradinsky’s Visa had been used the previous night to pay a $75.00 bill at the Morningside Heights Tavern, a restaurant on 118th Street. The fact that the card had been used was interesting, but it was hardly proof that the professor was alive. Slattery had used exactly the right terminology: “Somebody” had used the card. It could have been anybody. But they also knew the chances that a thief—or a killer—would risk using a victim’s credit card in the area in which the victim might be known were pretty slim. Generally, stolen credit cards are used within hours of being grabbed—before the owner can report them missing or before the owner can be reported missing—and usually a long distance from the owner’s neighborhood. So there was at least a slight reason for optimism.
Russo also found it curious that exactly seventy-five dollars had been charged to the card. She had seven credit cards that she used too often—including J. C. Penney and Macy’s—and she could not recall a single time her total bill had come out exactly anything. Particularly such a nice round number. More likely, she figured, he was getting some cash. There was only one way to find out. “Hey, sailor,” she said to O’Brien, “still wanna take a dame to dinner?”
The words “What happened to your plans?” had formed in his mind and were racing toward his mouth, but he caught them at the last second. “Sure,” he said. “There’s this nice little place I know on 118th Street.”
Only after O’Brien and Russo had left his office did it occur to Slattery that somebody should inform the professor’s wife. That wasn’t his job, he knew that, and this type of information was supposed to be kept confidential. But he figured that by this time the woman would be absolutely frantic. He opened up the case file and dug through it until he found O’Brien’s report of his interview with . . . Slattery checked the wife’s name. Grace Gradinsky. No harm done, he decided, and picked up the telephone.
The Morningside Heights Tavern had been carefully decorated to look as if it hadn’t been decorated. It would probably best be described as studied casual. As you entered, a long bar faced the door, stretching the width of the room almost from wall to wall. There were cash registers at both ends of the bar and large television sets suspended almost directly above them. Only one of them was on, turned to the local news. On the wall to the left a five-dollar football pool sign-up sheet announced that the Giants were three-and-a-half-point favorites over the Redskins. It was still five days before the game and most of the boxes were already filled in. Columbia University’s football schedule, cheaply framed photographs of old Columbia athletes, Ivy League pennants, and several fraternity banners were hung evenly spaced on the other walls. Booths covered with powder-blue vinyl lined the three remaining walls, and several small wooden tables were set up next to the booths, leaving the area in front of the bar empty for the meet-and-greet crowd. Connor couldn’t quite see for sure, but he would have bet his inheritance that names and political slogans had been carved into every table in the place and that there were chunks of ice at the bottom of the urinals. Connor had spent four years in campus bars exactly like this one. He decided the only thing missing from this one was the sawdust on the floor.
There were about a dozen people in the place. Two dark corner booths were occupied by couples, a knot of coeds was gathered at one end of the bar, and at the other end one man was sitting alone, hunched over a book and a beer. The bartender was wiping glasses and hanging them mouth-down in an overhead rack, and the single waitress was serving the couples in the booths. O’Brien and Russo sat at the bar.
The bartender was big enough to double as a bouncer. Early thirties, Connor guessed, popular with the coeds. The kind of bartender who might accurately be described as “a big lug of a guy.” “Hey,” he said pleasantly, smiling confidently, “what can I get for you?”
Bureau regulations strictly prohibited agents from drinking on duty, but in those situations in which it would be inappropriate not to have a drink agents have been known to imbibe. Unofficially you do what you have to do and the system looks the other way. Connor ordered a beer, Laura a glass of white wine. As the bartender served their drinks, Connor introduced himself and Russo as FBI agents.
“For real?” the bartender asked Connor. “Her too. Really?” When Connor confirmed that, he looked at Russo and smiled. His name was Billy Garvey, he said smoothly, “But people call me Gravy.” Sure, he’d be delighted to answer their questions. In fact, he decided, it was more than that—he’d be privileged to answer their questions. He was a bartender—answering questions was an important part of the job. Yes, he had been working the previous night. No, he didn’t know Professor Gradinsky by name, but that didn’t mean anything—lots of people whose names he didn’t know came in regularly. One reason people go to dimly lit bars, he pointed out, was to protect their privacy.
Russo showed him the professor’s picture. Garvey stared at it hard, then frowned. “Maybe? I don’t know.” He took a deep, thoughtful breath, really focusing on the photograph. “You know, he looks sort of familiar, but it’s not like he’s a regular. Guarantee you that. Why, what happened to him?”
Finding the answer to that question, Laura explained, was precisely the reason they were asking these questions. “So, Gravy,” she asked, “you see him last night? It’s important.”
Continuing to look at the picture, Garvey shook his head while inhaling, to emphasize the fact that he really was trying to place the face. “It was real busy. It was ladies’ night. You know, girls drink free. And then one of the frats had a thing for some pledges. Man, I was humping all night.”
O’Brien repeated the question. “So? Did you see him or not?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I mean, who knows? It’s possible. What can I tell you?” As Garvey returned the professor’s picture to Russo, he snapped a well-practiced “aw shucks golly-gee” grin at her.
She ignored it, then told him, “Well, apparently he used his credit card in here last night.”
Garvey pushed back from the bar. “Hey, what do you want me to tell you? If he did, he did. I’d like to help you out, swear to God, but I don’t remember seeing him and I was here the whole night.”
O’Brien asked about the waitresses. Three girls had worked the floor the previous night, Garvey said. He knew their first names, but not their last names or telephone numbers. He had nothing to do with scheduling, he explained, that was the manager’s job. “And when will he be here?”
“He’s the manager,” Garvey said, flashing a big smile at his very own cleverness. “He manages himself.”
O’Brien handed him his card. “Ask him to give me a call when he comes in, okay?” And then he flashed him his biggest and phoniest smile in return.
Back out on the street O’Brien did a passable imitation of the bartender. “He’s the manager”—big smile—“he manages himself.”
Laura Russo laughed easily.
“Let’s go,” he said, jerking his head, “I got a place.”
His place was El Polo Loco on West End between 98th and 99th. Even that early in the evening it was crowded and noisy. “Hey, Mr. Connor,” a chunky hostess greeted them, “how you doing? Come. Come.”
They were seated against a wall. Their conversation was carefully professional. When you’d go through Quantico? Who were your instructors? Where’d you go from there? You know so-and-so? Russo was surprised how comfortable she was with him. If he was coming on to her, she decided, he was amazingly good at hiding it. She tried to identify the strange feeling in her chest. It took a while, but finally she realized that it wasn’t what she was feeling, but rather what she wasn’t feeling. And that was anxiety. Connor wasn’t treating her like this was a date; instead, it was just the guys out for a pleasant dinner after a long day.
He did everything right as far as she was concerned: He didn’t put his hand on her back and try to direct her, he didn’t help her with her coat, he barely even held open doors to allow her to proceed him, and at the end of the meal he accepted her share of the bill without protest. He was the perfect nongentleman, which Laura appreciated and naturally interpreted to mean that he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in her.
That pleased her. It was exactly what she wanted: to be treated as an equal. One complication in her life that she definitely did not need was another relationship with an agent. Another agent? She didn’t need any type of romantic relationship at all. None. And just to make sure she didn’t forget it, she repeated that thought to herself.
As they left the restaurant, she made a point of holding the door open for him. He didn’t seem to notice. The temperature had fallen several degrees. They stood in front of the restaurant and Laura began listing the things she wanted to accomplish the following morning. He noticed that every word she said was punctuated with a white puff of breath, almost as if she were speaking in cartoon speech balloons. He wondered if it was possible to blow breath rings, remembering his grandfather’s amazing ability to blow concentric smoke rings. He decided to test it, puckering his lips and exhaling slowly. The result was a steady white stream of visible breath. “You know,” he said, cutting her off in midsentence, “there’s something I want to show you.”
“Excuse me,” she corrected him curtly, “but I was in the middle of a sentence.”
“Sorry,” he apologized with considerably less sincerity than she would have liked. “But I promise, this is something good.”
She stared at him, wondering what it might be. Oh, please, she thought, don’t let him screw it up by doing something stupid. “What is it?”
“Hey, c’mon, gimme a little break here.”
Reluctantly she nodded in agreement. “Okay,” and then added a bit more lightly, “Legally I have to warn you, though, these hands are registered weapons. Don’t make me use them.”
As O’Brien drove over the Brooklyn Bridge, he asked if she had ever been to Brooklyn. Once, she said, and only very briefly. Since arriving in New York she hadn’t even had time to explore Manhattan, much less the other boroughs. “Then you’re in for a real treat,” he said, morphing into a tour guide. “They built this bridge in the 1870s ’cause Brooklyn was ready to declare itself an independent city. New York didn’t want the competition. When it opened, the toll was a penny.” There was an old legend, he continued, that if you tossed a penny off the bridge, you would receive an abundance of success.
“So what do you get for a dollar?” she asked. There was surprisingly little traffic. The views from the bridge enchanted her. She looked over her right shoulder at the brightly lit Lower Manhattan skyline. “Wow,” she said, “double wow.”
“And when the Mafia expanded out of Little Italy, Brooklyn was right there waiting. There were probably a million Italian immigrants living there who didn’t trust banks. It had the docks, it had trucking, swamps, unions, everything the aspiring mobster needs.” The Mafia, he explained as he drove through Brooklyn Heights and down Flatbush Avenue into Prospect Park, found its home in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn surprised her. From everything she’d read, even after her brief visit, she’d believed Brooklyn to be one massive drug-ravaged decaying city. She had imagined acres of burned-out and abandoned buildings, filthy streets, and gangs camped on just about every corner. Instead, Brooklyn appeared to be a series of small neighborhoods, some better maintained than others, but almost none of them fitting her apocalyptic vision.
Almost as if O’Brien were reading her mind, he continued, “Don’t let this fool you. There are pretty rough parts too, just not around here.” He turned onto President Street.
“Why’s that?”
He stopped across from 561 President. “Money and Mafia,” he said. “Nobody screws with either one.” He pointed at a well-kept brownstone with a large front stoop. “That’s it.”
The building had a long, narrow front yard with two rectangles of grass separated by a cement walk. The front of the property was protected by a six-foot-high chain-link fence. A small sign warned that the premises were protected by the Silent Guardian, presumably an electronic monitoring service. Unlike similar houses on either side, she noticed, this house had no bushes in front. The entire yard was well lit. Every window in the house was covered with curtains. “What are we looking at?”
In his best tour guide voice he said, “To your left, ladies and gentlemen, is the home of Robert San Filippo, better known to his fans as Bobby Blue Eyes and Bobby Hats. Mr. San Filippo has lived there with his wife, Veronica, and their ten-year-old daughter, Angela, for nine years.” He looked at her and smiled. “And people say I don’t have an exciting social life.”
The stakeout is second only to working a listening post when rating the most boring law enforcement assignments. A stakeout consists almost entirely of sitting or standing and watching. Some of the time it means watching an inanimate object, a building, a restaurant, maybe a car. Only if the person you’re watching moves do you move. In the winter it’s too cold, in the summer it’s too hot. If you’re standing outside, you get really tired; if you’re in a car, you get cramped. In the car you can’t keep the engine running because you can’t waste gas. You can’t drink too much coffee to stay awake because then you have to go to the bathroom. Same thing with eating. You definitely can’t read. About the only thing you can do is listen to a transistor radio.
“What are we doing here?” Russo asked.
“Nothing really,” he admitted, without taking his eyes from the house. “I just like to know as much as possible about the people I’m investigating.” He glanced at her. “Looks pretty normal, right? I mean, you know, for a mafioso.”
“Yeah, very.” She watched as O’Brien took his notebook from a jacket pocket and wrote a few sentences. “What happens if they spot us?”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s he gonna do? Quit the Mafia? These guys already assume we’re everywhere. It’s probably a good thing that they see us every once in a while.” He stopped writing. “In the old days each of the bosses had at least one agent assigned only to them. Some agents spent most of their career watching one person.”
They sat there for almost an hour, mostly in silence. There were a lot of questions Russo would have liked to ask him, but knowing that in response she’d have to answer similar questions, she kept quiet. O’Brien let her lead. Several lights were on in the house when they got there. After the first twenty minutes a light went off in one room and seconds later a light was turned on in another room. Maybe ten minutes after that, a curtain was pulled back and somebody peered outside for a few seconds, then released the curtain. At that distance it was impossible to see who it was. Several cars passed. One car parked and the driver got out and went into a brownstone farther down the block. Eleven people walked by: four singles, two couples—one of them walking a golden retriever—and a group of three teenage boys. About every four minutes a plane roared overhead, causing Connor to explain, “This is a secondary flight path to Kennedy. They use it when they get backed up.” And that was it, that was all the action. There had been no sign of Robert San Filippo, a.k.a. Bobby Blue Eyes, a.k.a. Bobby Hats.
“Had enough?” he asked finally.
“That’s enough for me.” As they started back to Manhattan, she wondered, “Think that was him looking out?”
“No way,” O’Brien said. “He’s not gonna be sitting home this early. This is business hours. He’s out there somewhere doing his thing.”
For a few minutes Russo tried to imagine what it might be like to be married to a hood like San Filippo. Not real good, she decided. And for an instant she flashed on her mother, remembering her standing stoically at the kitchen window, waiting hopefully for her husband to come home.
Connor dropped her off in front of her apartment. “See you in the morning,” he said easily.
“You got it.” She gave a little wave over her shoulder as she went up the steps. She was pleased that there had been none of that end-of-date uneasiness. But she did notice that he waited in front, watching her, until she was safely inside.
It was exactly eleven o’clock when he got home. Connor melted into the deep pillows on his couch and turned on the local news. Wind-down time. Well, well, well, he thought, this is an interesting development. He’d had a good time, no doubt about that. And he had the feeling, as in one of the B movies in which the plain-looking secretary takes off her glasses and is transformed into a beautiful woman, that if Russo took off her officious personality, she would be pretty damned interesting.
His phone rang. “Hey, Con,” Diana Thomas said with a happy bounce in her voice, “whatcha doing?”
After a momentary hesitation he replied, “Nothing.”
Laura Russo was luxuriating in her bathtub. She finally had proof that this indeed was a special night: For the first time since she’d been in New York she’d managed to find the elusive balance between hot running water and cold draining water that kept the tub perfectly warm. It was close to a perfect time. The only light in her apartment came from candles scattered around the bathroom. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, which she loved although she seemed constitutionally unable to match the correct season to the music, was playing softly on her cassette radio. And her cat, Buck, was stretched across the closed toilet lid keeping her company.
The night had confused her. Connor O’Brien had turned out to be both less and more than she had originally pegged him. Russo was just beginning to explore her reactions when she heard the unmistakable sound of someone trying to open her front door.
One of the first things she’d done after moving into the apartment was screw a thin piece of metal to the door frame. It didn’t prevent the door from being used, but when the door was opened or closed, it scratched against it. Anyone who didn’t know it was there would assume the sound was ordinary wear and tear, the settling sounds a house makes, and wouldn’t even notice it. But to anyone listening for it, the sound was unmistakable. The cat, Buck, had heard it first. His ears suddenly cupped with curiosity, then he sat up. That had gotten Laura’s attention. She turned off the water and the music and heard it too.
The apartment was a floor-through. The front door opened onto a narrow hallway. To the left, after entering the apartment, were the kitchen and living room. To the right was her bedroom. And almost directly across the hallway was the bathroom.
Whoever was at the door was having great difficulty getting it open. That was obvious from the ticking sound the plate made each time the door was pushed or pulled. She had installed a Medeco lock and a security chain the day she moved in, and she had also replaced the existing tumbler, so it would require extraordinary smithy skills to break in. Either that or simple brute force. She wasn’t sure she had remembered to chain the door; usually she did, but not always. That didn’t really matter. If someone wanted to get in badly enough, they could get in.
There was no one who could help her. The building had only two apartments on each floor and her neighbor, Ginger Snaps as she referred to herself, loved to party. She was out every night. Not that Ginger could provide any real help if she were home. In fact, it was probably better she wasn’t home. That way she couldn’t get hurt.
Laura moved deliberately. She got out of the tub and blew out all the candles. Then she stood still for several seconds, letting her eyes become accustomed to the darkness. She took several deep, calming breaths. Laura Russo took great pride in her ability to maintain her composure in stressful situations. Not many things frightened her. But even she would have to admit that her heart was pumping big-time.
She focused on her primary objective, her only objective, which was to get hold of her weapon. She knew exactly where it was: in its holster under her bed, where she’d kicked it out of view when she’d stripped for her bath. She grabbed a large bath towel and wrapped it around her body. Then she let the towel drop onto the floor, deciding if she had to move quickly, it might inhibit her. And if it fell, she didn’t want to be distracted when automatically grabbing for it.
She felt around the bathroom sink. As she did, she almost knocked over her toothbrush holder, a ceramic mug from San Jose that she’d bought to commemorate a successful job working undercover in a Medicare fraud investigation. But she caught it, preventing it from crashing to the floor. She placed it gently on the sink counter, then continued feeling around until she found the large bottle of mouthwash she knew was there. She unscrewed the cap and put it in the sink. Mouthwash wasn’t much of a weapon, but if necessary, she’d splash it in the intruder’s eyes, which would buy her a few precious seconds. Then, purposefully, she walked out of the bathroom.
As she passed the front door the intruder pushed hard against it. She heard him grunt with the effort. She stopped and waited. A few seconds later she heard a slight scratching sound she recognized instantly—he was trying to pick the lock. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark now and she could move around a lot more easily. She went back into the bathroom and retrieved the towel, then laid it on the floor next to the front door. Anyone coming into the apartment wouldn’t notice it; they’d trip or their feet would get entangled in it. That would give her a little more time.
She reached under her bed and grasped her weapon, the standard-issue 9mm SIG. It fired sixteen shots—fifteen in the clip, one in the chamber—rapid, accurate, and deadly. She slid it out of its holster and switched off the safety. The moment she wrapped her palm around its handle she knew she had control of the night. The telephone was on the far side of her bed. She started to move around the bed, intending to call 911, then stopped. Fuck you, she thought, I got my gun and the darkness. Fuck you. You’re trying to bust into my house. I win.
She was freezing. She had cracked open a window in her bedroom when she got home, and now she was standing there naked and wet. That’s fine, she decided, cold keeps you alert. Holding the gun with both hands, she eased her way along the wall, moving toward the door. If possible, she wanted to get a look at the intruder through the peephole. He was still there—she could hear him muttering as he worked the lock. She leaned against the door and with her left hand reached for the peephole.
“Fuck,” he snapped angrily. “Fuck—” His words sliced through the door. He was inches away from her. The width of the door. Two, three inches at most. She held her breath. “—This bullshit.” His voice had a meanness to it. It was gruff, threatening. Dirty. She thought she recognized it from the Country Club sessions but couldn’t be certain.
She exhaled. She took another deep, soothing breath and slid open the peephole—just in time to see the muscular back and shiny long black hair of a tall man disappear down the stairs. She leaned against the door and put on the safety. She relaxed. The sound of the exterior door slamming shocked her back into action. She moved quickly through the living room to the front windows. As she pulled back the blinds, she heard a car door slam. She scanned the street, but it took her several seconds to find the car. It was a dark sedan. From that height she couldn’t identify the make or model. It looked like some type of sports model, but she couldn’t even be certain of that. The driver pulled out from the curb and took off down the block. The car was already moving before he turned on the lights.
The traffic signal on the corner had just turned red when the car reached the end of the block. The driver paused to check traffic, then made a left turn through the red light. And was gone.
It was several minutes before she turned on a light. And then she turned on all the lights in the apartment and picked up the phone to call O’Brien.