The captain drove past the off ramp to Route 80 and pulled over onto a small gravel-covered parking lot in front of a boarded-up ice cream stand. He stopped the car and got out.
Cirba exited the front seat and Harry got out of the back.
“Cap,” Cirba said. “I don’t think we’re gonna get any ice cream from this place today.”
The captain ignored him. “You see this?” Kutter pointed out the perimeters of the small property. “About three years ago, Enterprise Estates bought this piece of land for $40,000 and got it zoned for food sales. A year later a New York firm bought the land for $600,000 and built this little Popsicle stand. They bought a soft serve ice cream machine and a couple of freezers. They ran it for a summer, employing a manager and a bunch of teenage kids, then in the fall they declared bankruptcy. Six months later they sold the land back to Enterprise Estates for $30,000. I talked to the manager. He got headhunted from a Dairy Queen up near Scranton. He told me he never actually met the owners. After a month he emailed them with a project assessment report detailing all the changes that were needed. They replied that things would be addressed for next season, but there was no next season. Even though they filed for bankruptcy he was paid in full and received a bonus.”
“That sounds fishy. Did you check out the manager?”
“He was clean, and as surprised as anybody. I tried to get in touch with the owners but could only reach their lawyers. I asked them to explain why their clients paid over half a million dollars too much for a spit of land. They said there’s no law against being stupid.”
“Nobody’s that stupid,” Harry said.
The captain walked back to his car and opened the driver’s door. “That’s exactly what I said.”
Back in the car, Harry asked: “What do you think happened?”
In reply the captain again answered with a question: “Have you ever had a white pizza?”
“A what?”
Cirba clapped his hands, smiled and rubbed his palms together.
“A white pizza?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Harry said, sounding a bit confused.
“The best white pizza is in Old Forge just outside of Scranton but the second best is just around the corner here,” the captain said, making a sharp right turn.
Harry sat back in resignation. “What is it with you guys up here? One mention of food and police work goes right out the window.”
* * *
The chief pulled into a space in the large parking lot next to a restaurant called Argeneto’s. Harry followed Cirba and the chief in. Gino, the owner, greeted the policemen warmly by name.
“Is there anybody in the back room, Gino?”
“You’re the top cop around here, Mr Kutter, if there was I’d throw them out.”
“You’re a good man, Gino.”
The owner showed the three men to a curtained-off room at the back that, thankfully, was unoccupied. The men sat around a large round table.
“Three ice teas and an extra-large white one,” the captain said. “You want any vegetables?”
“Ah sure,” Harry said.
“And some deep-fried zucchini.”
Harry wanted a salad but was worried that that would come deep fried too.
“So,” the captain said, “I tried to find out who would be paying over a half a mill for a shed-sized piece of land in the Poconos. The company was new, owned by a husband and wife named Stern. I did a background check on them and nothing came up, until I checked out the wife’s maiden name.”
At that moment Gino swooped in carrying the largest tray of pizza that Harry had ever seen. Behind him was a busboy with a tray of drinks and a lake-sized bowl of fried breaded zucchini. White pizza comes square not round. It’s cut in squares with a crust on the top and the bottom. Inside were at least five different cheeses. Gino was very tight-lipped about all of the ingredients, but there was certainly a lot of garlic, and half the slices were stuffed with broccoli and others with spinach.
“White pizza,” Captain Kutter said, holding up a slice like it was the Eucharist. “You can only get this stuff in the north-eastern Pennsylvania pizza belt.”
Harry, who wanted to hear more about the dodgy ice-cream shack, was initially annoyed when the food arrived, but the smell of it won him over, and after the first bite, all thoughts of criminal law vanished.
Two slices were twice as much food as Harry usually ate in a week but he stuffed them down. The captain had three slices, and Cirba ate an amazing four – a gastronomic miracle.
Harry wondered if it was going to be possible to even speak after that meal. He imagined that communication would now only be possible if they groaned in Morse code.
“You were saying, Captain,” Harry forced himself to say, “something about the maiden name of the people that bought the land?”
“I was,” Kutter said almost laying back in his chair. “As I said, the couple that bought the land for $600,000 were named Stern but Mrs Stern’s maiden name was Kozlov.”
At that moment Harry was glad he hadn’t tried to eat more because he almost threw up on the table.
“I see by your face you recognize the name,” the captain said. “I thought you might.”
“I don’t,” Cirba said.
“Nakita Kozlov is Russian Mafia,” Harry said. “A seriously nasty piece of work. You know about my son?”
“I do.”
Harry wasn’t surprised. He had never spoken to Cirba about what happened to his son, but he knew that Ed wouldn’t hire anybody without checking them out. “Well Kozlov is… a person of interest.”
“Did you tangle with him in Philadelphia?”
“No, I don’t have any connection with him or his family.”
“Then why is he a person of interest?” Cirba asked.
“Because somebody took my son. See, most organized crime has a ‘no family’ code. Hurting somebody’s wife or kids is the worst crime you can do in the Mob, but with Kozlov it’s his first choice. That’s what put him on my radar.”
The captain opened his briefcase and threw a manila folder on the table. “Here’s his file. Kozlov was one of a million black marketeers in the old Soviet Union. When the USSR collapsed, the shadier elements of society flourished. Bratva, the name the Russian Mafia calls themselves, quickly infiltrated almost every part of Russian society. Hell, by the nineties most banks in the country were owned by organized crime and over eighty per cent of businesses were paying protection money. Kozlov became a star in those ranks mostly because he was so ruthless. If you crossed him, a family member disappeared. Unfortunately for Kozlov, many of the Bratva were ex-KGB and could be even more ruthless than him. He was forced to flee Russia and came to New Jersey. Here he specialized in money laundering and made a deal with the Sicilian guys in New York and Jersey. The deal was that he wouldn’t interfere with any of their usual operations: dope, prostitution, loan-sharking. The only thing he’d do was money laundering. If they let him do that – he’d give them a good return on their dollars. If they interfered – they’d lose a kid.”
“This goes on in this day and age?” Cirba said incredulously. “How does he get away with it?”
“He got smart when he came to America,” the captain said. “He started a couple of accounting firms and recruited top accountants from the best business schools. All his firms are legit. At first. There’s no proof but people who have looked into the Goat’s businesses—”
“‘The Goat’?”
“Oh yeah, that’s what he’s called. Apparently, Kozlov means goat in Russian. Anyway, it seems he switches around which of his firms are doing money laundering and which are doing just legit accounting. If a company is getting too much heat from the Feds he shuts it down and starts another. Nobody is sure how many companies he owns.”
“So what do you think happened with the ice-cream stand?”
“I not sure, but what I do know is that half a mill came and went. Was the $600,000 dirty and now it’s clean, or did somebody owe the Goat money and that’s how he got paid? The only thing I know for certain is that it was dodgy, and that’s no lie.”
“So how come nobody’s busted Enterprise Estates?” Cirba asked.
“Because they’re not wholly crooked. As a matter of fact, they are mostly legit. EE buys and sells land all over New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey without anybody blinking an eye. Sure they own the land on which most of the strip clubs sit but they also own something like twelve per cent of the lakes and ponds. As land speculators they have a very good track record without any criminal stuff. Their crab apples are hidden deep in barrels of Golden Delicious.”
“And if you cross them they take your child,” Harry said.
“Do you think they took yours?” Cirba asked.
“There isn’t even a hair to link Kozlov with me but the fact that he took anybody’s kid puts him in my bad books.”
Gino came in and the men ordered cappuccinos all round.
“OK, Enterprise Estates is run by bad guys but let’s have a look at the Sweeney murder,” Cirba said. “Di Angelo and Sweeney talked about buying up the land behind the strip club and then decided against it. As far as we can tell the paperwork that Di Angelo tried to steal was the only record of it. But let’s say Kozlov did find out. How come he kills the lawyer and not Di Angelo?”
“What if Kozlov didn’t know and Sweeney was blackmailing Di Angelo by threatening to tell Kozlov?”
“That works,” Cirba said, “but where does Big Bill come in?”
“What if Bill found out about it?” the captain said.
“That would work if Bill was killed second,” Harry said, “but Bill was killed first.”
“What if,” Harry said, “EE found out about Big Bill not wanting to sell his land. If the Thomsons wouldn’t sell then the frackers might go elsewhere, and then EE’s land that the strip club was on would no longer be worth millions.”
“So Kozlov ordered Di Angelo to kill Bill?” Cirba said.
“And then what? Kill Sweeney ’cause he knew about the land deal? That’s thin.”
“Too thin for even a search warrant,” the captain said. “I have to get back to work,” he said, standing and then rubbing his protruding stomach. “From what I see you boys have a lot of stuff that adds up to nothing, and that’s no lie.”
* * *
Back in the serious crime room, Harry waited for Cirba to return from a squad meeting. Cirba returned, flopped down behind his desk and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Cap’s right, you know. Every fucking lead in this case turns out to be nothing.”
Harry didn’t answer because he couldn’t argue with that.
Cirba shook off his funk. “You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Good.”
“The good news is that the cap has organized some paralegals to sift through the rest of Sweeney’s papers. So we don’t have to go back to Jim Thorpe.”
“That is good news. What’s the bad?”
Cirba looked around to make sure no one could hear. “I have no idea what to do next.”
“We have to go spelunking,” Harry said.
“You want us to explore a cave?”
“No, sorry, that’s just what my old partner and I used to say when we were stuck. When there were no ideas then we would go spelunking, which was our codename for getting shit-faced drunk. What is the special at the Hillside tonight?”
Cirba chuckled. “I don’t know but I bet it’s deep fried. Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Tell you what, I was about to hit up petty cash for a taxi for Feather. I’ll give you the rest of the day off if you give him a lift home. Then I’ll meet you at the Hillside at six?”
“Sold.”
* * *
Harry expected Feather to be pissed off about the ordeal the cops had put him through, but when Harry apologized he said: “Hey, no harm no foul. Actually, I owe you one, Obi-Wan.”
Harry was tired of correcting Feather and just decided to accept his nickname. “How come?”
“If you hadn’t come by and chatted with me the other day I wouldn’t have cleaned out my house.”
Harry laughed. “I really was just going for a walk, you know. I didn’t even know I was on your street until I saw you.”
“Well, then I guess the good Lord is looking out for me.”
“Well, well, well, what do you know, an evangelical drug dealer.”
“Why not? I’m more honest than most of those bible thumpers.”
“Save it, Feather, you already gave me the, ‘I sell a product I believe in’ spiel.”
“It’s no spiel, Jedi.”
“I’ve seen what meth does to people, Feather. It’s bad shit.”
“Which is why you should get it from me. Look I’m not a big crystal fan. I got into it because my weed customers demanded it. I always prided myself on selling good weed. If it wasn’t great stuff I would always tell my customers that before I sold ’em. So when they started asking, I learned how to cook meth and I made sure I didn’t put shit in it that’d kill ’em. It used to be easy. You’d go to Costco, buy a trash can full of Sudafed and you were halfway there. Now that it’s tougher to get the decongestants, I don’t cook very often. I got a handful of customers who can handle the stuff, and they wait till I have enough pills to do a batch. My true love is grass. I got a couple of hydroponic sheds in the middle of nowhere and I know a couple of farmers that let me plant some of my munchie stuff in their cornfields.”
“Munchie stuff?”
“Yeah I got a strain of dope that don’t get you very high but gives you mean munchies. The chemo patients love it.”
“And you grow it in the corn?”
“Yeah, the corn grows faster than the grass so you can’t see it from the road, and I get it out before they harvest. I used to do it on the sly but these days the farmers and I well… Why am I telling you this?”
“People tell me things, Feather. It’s one of the reasons I do what I do.”
“It’s a funky job you have, Padawan. You make a living looking into people’s souls. And they say my job is unethical.”
He pulled into Feather’s potholed street and stopped outside his gate.
“You’re one of the few people that have a connection with Bill and Sweeney. You sure you can’t think of any reason why this is happening?”
“Honest to fucking god I don’t have a clue or I’d tell you. The only thing I know is that I’m freaked,” Feather said, and then looked in all directions before he got out of the car and scurried into his house.
* * *
In the library, Harry wasn’t surprised to find that an hour of researching Empire Estates hadn’t turned up very much. There were the usual press releases but little to insinuate that EE Inc. was not legitimate. Harry had some experience in Mob fronts and he knew, as a rule, they were extremely litigious. If a newspaper even hinted that the company was associated with any kind of criminality, the editor would have a letter from EE’s lawyers before the late edition hit the streets.
* * *
Harry took the Drunken Indians at Daytona 500 speed. He had seen Officer Barowski’s car outside the Oaktree Diner so he rightly assumed that the Five Mile Road speed trap was unmanned. The turns that made him scared and queasy when Cirba had been driving were a lot of fun when he was behind the wheel.
He pulled into his driveway and noticed that MK’s car wasn’t in front of her house. He toyed with the idea of calling her and letting her know he was going out to dinner with Cirba. Did he have to tell her that? Had their relationship gotten to the point where he had to check in with her? He’d like it if it did, but then again he was leaving when this thing was over – wasn’t he?
Harry carried his groceries in one hand as he unlocked his front door. He took one step inside and froze. On the kitchen floor was his teapot – broken.