The Russian Heist, page 15
Bynoonthey’dhavealltheiraddresses,phoneandbankrecords,school, employment,hospitalrecords,licenses,credithistories,anycriminalorcivil records since birth, and every fact of their biographies to be known about Smith, his wife, and son. The professor might take longer, some big lacunae in his youth appeared in the preliminary checks, but they were getting information from all directions. We need to get one, she believed, to roll overontheshooter,whosepositioninthebackof thecargovanwasacertainty to her. The hours ahead were lockstep borne of habit and patience. Gather and process evidence, canvass more neighbors, acquaintances, friends, employers, family, associates. The BOLOS were out. Keep jurisdictional snafus and logistical kinks to a minimum.
She checked her watch. She was going to be late for the autopsies. Elizabeth herself was cutting.
Every highway and interstate would have their faces and plate numbers clippedtothedashboardof statepatrolvehiclesinthehundreds.Turnpike exits were covered as well as the rest stops between Cleveland and Toledo as far south as Cincinnati. At the end of the meeting, Puglese had tempered some whiz-bang DA’s rep and her gleeful prediction that the son wouldbeusedagainstthefatherincourt—“Let’scatchthesonsof bitches first,” he said.
AFISturnedupgoodpartialsbutonlythesecurityguardwasinthedata base. They were working on ballistics and might get lucky. IBIS would nail them if they recovered the weapons. Forensics had all their shoeprints and sizes with amino black. They discovered a walkie-talkie seventy yards from the hangar, which made no sense to the investigators, but its prints would put whoever was holding it on a gurney in the death house someday. They were all facing death penalties, the woman and boy included, forget the twenty-five to life plus mandatory eight for use of weapons in the commission. They knew they were going to be famous so they must have planned for new identities afterward. Money you can’t spend won’t help you if you can’t show your face.
She was edgy from more than lack of sleep. The cops in the meeting weretooconfident,callingitaslamdunk.Triplemurdershadawayof galvanizing operations no matter how much red tape swirled; detectives were bloodhounds on a 48-hour leash. She couldn’t shake the feeling that, once they crashed the door, something else was at work.
Her father used to quote Sophocles to her: “Count no day good until it is over.” The net being woven for them was begun on the day they were born.Beyondthesmudgedwindow,awhitesunburnedfromitsnoontime meridian. It gave neither heat nor warmth. She was going to be thirty-nine years old tomorrow and nothing seemed to change except the faces and nationalities of the men she hunted down.
ShehadacardpostmarkedfromtheUKshehadbeencarryingallweek inherpurse.SheknewitwasfromReggie.Sheunsealeditandliftedoutthe birthday card sent from Maida Vale. He must have thought her birthday waslastweek.Hedescribedatlengththecomplexitiesof hislifeatthemoment: a fellowship in Wales he was considering, his worry that a muchpublished Cambridge don was favored, his recent nomination for an exclusivemembershipintheAtheniumClub,PallMallnightlifeandswinging London, the various kudos garnered since their marriage collapsed. He asked her to meet him at the Cosmos Club next month in DC—typical Reggie:Drop whatever you’re doing, I’ll be in town. . . Her birthday greeting, yet it was impossible for him to abandon his favorite subject even for a moment.
SheinfuriatedhimoncebycorrectinghisawkwardschoolboyMandarin. She looked at the lines scrawled at the bottom of the card. Typical of her narcissistic ex, too, that he didn’t bother to credit the source. She recognized the “terrifying angel” line from Rilke’s Elegy.
That was the trouble. Everything ordinary seemed to carry its own ounceof thebizarre,thesupernaturalcreepingintotheordinarinessof life and habit—sorrow was eating her heart, and she didn’t understand its root causes. Surely not the loss of her marriage. Reggie had long since made it clear he was unredeemable. Her own family tragedy, she thought, was securely locked away in a secret compartment and she couldopen it with her key whenever she had the strength, remaining oblivious to the scratching behindthedoor.Shethrewthecardinthewastebasketbythedoor.Shehad to hurry. Elizabeth’s bone saw waited for no one.
Chapter 16
Monday, the Day after the Heist: Superkiller Marge, fast becoming Harry’s personal Minister of Disinformation, finally put the call through to Cheng.
“We’ve got a make on the fat one,” Kirran said. “You can ride along.”
She said she’d be right there, had some calls to take first, but she would meet him at the bar in Vienna just south of the county airport.
“You can’t miss it,” Kirran said. “It’s a wooden-shingle job with a sloping roof just south and east of the landing field on one-ninety-three, goes right through town.”
ShehungupandfinishedredactingherreportonAlekseiAnatolivevich Gunin.
Kirranwassittingonthestoolwithahalf-finisheddraftinfrontof him. The bartender, a big, muscular man in his thirties, was leaning toward him talking intently. There was no one else in the place but she saw six news mediacars,vans,andSUVswithwhipaerialsfromYoungstown,Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, their “Live Action” logos and call numbers splashed luridly across door panels. Kirran must be keeping them at bay, she guessed.
“Yo, Chen,” he said. “Buy you a beer?”
He made the introductions. The bartender’s hand had diamond points ontheknuckleslikeaboxer’sfists.ShewasannoyedthatKirrandidn’tmeet her outside so they could discuss what to ask him. She asked Tony if she and the detective could talk in private for a moment. He gave her a big smile, all proprietorial largesse.
“Sure, take your time.” He walked off making a big show of his strut.
She said, “What’s he know?”
“Relax, have a beer. The stud knows the big guy. Told me all about him. Macbride, our guy, began drinking in this dive a couple weeks ago. Some kind of college professor, he says.”
“How does he fit in with the one from the DMV?”
“Not the faintest,” said Kirran.
They had de la Torriente’s vitals, a thirty-year-old resident of Warren, INSwasdiggingintothePuertoRicanbackground.Helivedon501NorthwestTwenty-ninthstreet,wherehesharedaduplexwithhisdomesticpartner, Felix Esparra. He was treated and released for a drug overdose at Warren General.
Kirran looked blank.
“Attempted suicide,” she said.
“Jesus, love’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
The big bartender came back uninvited. “I can’t get over it, man. Five million, fuck me.”
“Three people were murdered,” she said to him.
“Tough shit. Send flowers.”
Kirran said, “You didn’t hear him or Nelson Smith say anything that night you were telling me about?”
“Noway,nohow.”Tonysmackedahandonthebar.Hisexpressionwas gleeful, enjoying the limelight, but mixed with anger, too. “Everybody’s three sheets to the wind by midnight, Smitty’s got his whang out for some air, broads are dancing on the bar shaking their titties—”
Kirran put a hand up. “We’ll get to all that later, Zee. Did Smith and Macbride meet in here very often?”
“The fat fuck started drinking in here sometime before Christmas. I don’t know when exactly, you know? Asshole just showed up like they all do. No big. Kept to himself, bored the shit out of me, got drunk, didn’t leave a fucking dime—”
“How exactly did he bore you?” Cheng asked.
“You know, the way people do when they think you give a shit.” He smiledather,rippledhisbicepsforeffect.Sheassumedit’sreflexactionfor women, and by the looks of the place, not many would do their drinking inhere.Itwasoutof thewayandearmarkedforseriousbarfliesdespitethe attempt to update it.
“How did you know he’s a professor?”
“Fuckin’ told me, man. Used a lot of ten-dollar words, you know?”
Kirran said, “Tell her about the big blowout, the dancing girls, all that.”
“Look, I don’t want this shit getting back to my boss, OK? The guy’s a fucking Jew prick.”
“No worries, amigo.” Kirran pinched his lips together with his fingers and made the Boy Scout salute.
She could see Kirran was drunk or near it. Tony shifted gradually until he was telling her, lacing it with amusing banter and without the rude invectives or smut he used with Kirran, whom he now ignored. He scoped her with cold, roving eyes.
An hour later, standing outside, Kirran cupped his hands around a Bic lighter. “Jee-sus, this wind, it feels like another ice age coming—”
“Is he coming downtown for his statement?”
“Yeah, I told him he could talk to the reporters for ten minutes first.”
“I bet you a dollar to a donut the guy’s got a record,” she said.
“No bet, O agent of the FBI. He stinks of convict rebop. But does he know a goddamn thing worth anything? So Macbride and Smith drank there, so what?”
“Hard to say,” she said. Her scarf whipped around her face. “He sounded insulted he wasn’t invited in for a cut.”
Kirran looked at the orange tip of his cigarette. His hair stood up in the wind,andhecoughedfromthesmoke.“Beforeyougothere,hewastelling me about Smith’s views on the ‘inky tide.’ Goes like this. If blacks achieve a thirteen percent ratio, it means social chaos.”
“What? Thirteen percent of the population of the state?”
“Anything. A shopping mall, a school, a city.”
“My background on Smith says he isn’t political.”
The wind blew the coals off Kirran’s cigarette and he swore. “Zulinsky calling Smith a hardcore racist is a case of pot-calls-kettle-black.”
“He took great pains to let me know he himself wasn’t in case I had forgotten my ethnic heritage,” she said.
“Ibelievethetheoryexcludeswomenforsexualpurposes,”hesaidwhile managing to relight his cigarette.
“Areyousurethatisn’ttheKirrancorollarytothe—whatisit—Smith’s inky tide theory?”
“Please yourself at my expense if you must, Agent Cheng.” He jabbed anotherfierytipinthedirectionof thebar.“If thatguy’sright,theyjustmet up a less than two weeks ago. Smith hooked your professor in at the last minute.”
“Unless it was a ruse,” she said. “Maybe they wanted people to think that while they kept an eye on the airport.” She remembered that the colonelsaidthemilitarywastakingoverthecivilianpartof theoverseasoperation very soon after New Year’s.
Beginner’s luck and an inside man didn’t square with three dead bodies, one of whom was in the vehicle driven by Smith and subsequently executed along with the female security guard and the other man, Thibodaux, whowasjustalucklessmanwithaheartcondition;helosthisjobasaspotwelder and was working part-time in the hangar.
She stamped her feet to make her toes sting. “So Smith passes up a perfectly good thug in there to take a chance on an effeminate male homosexual and a white-collar professional who could be unkindly described as morbidly obese.”
“You’re right, Cheng. That dog don’t hunt.”
This whole amateur-hour caper annoyed her. She was used to the methodical and predictable mayhem of her Russian gangs. According to the shift supervisor, who had opted for a personal day, the violencecould have been much worse. One employee scheduled to work called in sick and two others who were supposed to be inside were making an unscheduled delivery to the Boeing hangar at the time of the robbery.
“Watch this,” Kirran said. “I’m sending the vultures in.” He waved his arm in the all-clear signal and suddenly four SUVs disgorged their human contents at once. They watched the news media pile out of their vehicles and race for the door.
“Lookatthem,”hesaidwithdisgust.“Likeclownspilingoutof aVolkswagen. They can’t wait to get a quotable morsel from that gash hound.” Kirran snapped out instructions to a pair of uniforms standing by.
He turned to face her: “So what have you got on this professor of economics so far?”
“We’re still running him down. I checked YSU, the Kent branches in Trumbull, Stark, and Summit counties,” she said. “He teaches a microeconomics at the Behrend College for Penn State, in their Black School of Business.”
“That’s all the way up to Erie.”
“His personal life was unraveling fast from what I’m hearing. Apparently Macbride has a pattern of getting the chop at the end of the semester from one college or another.”
“You’re telling me? I have one friggin’ guy’s who’s so eager to drop some poop on him he left five messages on my machine, some Paki at Trumbull.”
“‘Paki,’ Michael, really?”
He ignored the rebuke.
“Something pushed Macbride over the edge this time.”
Her fingertips stung and the backs of her legs were raw. Warmed by alcohol, Kirran’s coat was open to the neck.
“Imagine it,” he said. “A college teacher taking down scores. Whatever is the world coming to?” He raised his arms, coat and tie flapping, in a mock-gesture to the perfidious heavens. Heathcliff ranting on the moors, if that’s what he aspired to—but she saw a tipsy cop using booze to get braver.
She remembered her father in his white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows,standingbeforeablackboardfilledwithhisneatscriptwiththeslightest tilt to the serifs. His career at Peking University unraveled so fast in the aftermathof TiananmenSquarethatshewouldneverfeelsafeintheworld again.
“Smithfitstheprofile.Half thearmoredcarheistsinagivenyearareinside jobs.”
“Yeah? In a given year how many do five million scores? How many bringtheirwivesandteenagedsonsalong?RecruitaMuttandJeff teamlike delaTorrienteandMacbriderightoff thestreet?Youguysbetterredoyour profile, Cheng.”
She said, “Stanley Carter, Smith’s supervisor wrote him up a few times for lateness, suspended him once for drunk on the job, but his drug tests come up clean. This Carter says he, and I quote, ‘accumulated grudges.’ Smith was ‘a whiner, not much liked by his fellow employees, kept to himself,’ according to Carter.”
“They know about the Smiths’ swinging lifestyle?”
“CarteractedsurprisedwhenItoldhim.He’snothespian.Theguyknew and I’ll bet my next paycheck his dislike of the husband doesn’t extend to the wife.”
“What’s the report about the Smiths’ kid from school?”
“All his teachers and the assistant principal agree. They say Faron Smith is a serious discipline problem. Been suspended twice so far. Collects detentionslikethey’reprizes.Fliestheflagof insolencewhenheattends.The guidance counselor says he’s borderline psychopathic.”
“AugiePugleseknowshim.Saystheboy’snamehasturnedupinseveral railroad thefts in the Conrail yard. He hangs out with some local punks, all juvies.”
“Your turn now,” she said. “How about the wife, this Roberta?”
Kirran flipped through his notebook. “Roberta, goes by Bobbi, born Bluefield, West Virginia, thirty-four, no priors, wants or warrants. The patrolman who did the neighborhood canvass didn’t give me very much. Down at the precinct Dalheim didn’t want this let out but he said he remembered seeing her years ago on stage in a topless bar when he was with Cleveland PD. She had quite a local fan club, but he says her IQ is in her bra size.”
“Maybe she’s more than that, detective.”
“Could be. I don’t underestimate the female species as a rule. By the way, there are no brains in this caper or did you miss the blood on the floor?”
She wondered if drink was his hair-trigger. He fidgeted outside, full of nervous impatience, whereas he was immobile, contented, inside the bar. She recalled something Reggie used to say, taverns were more than wateringholesandplacesof seduction.Forsomementheyweremysticalplaces.
Kirran checked his watch. “Betcha he’s bartering for quim in there right now. You catch the leggy strawberry blonde going in?”
“How ever did I miss her?” She let the sarcasm drip.
“She’s known around town for putting out for big scoops.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t be speaking from personal experience.”
He reenacted his Boy Scout oath.
“Show your virtue after you resist temptation, not before.”
“Jesus Christ, Cheng, it’s freezing out here. Let’s go.”
They huddled briefly at their cars, backs to the wind ripping across the low fields empty fields. Impossible to believe there would ever be green here. When he asked about her again about the file on Aleksei, she said she’d bring it to him the next meeting. They agreed to meet back at the crimescenebythelake.Shewantedanotherwalk-throughbeforethebriefing downtown with the task force.
“I’mnotrulingoutyourbadguyinthebackof thevan,”hesaid.“None of the ones we know about looks like a killer.” The wind blew his tousled hair into wisps. “I want a reason to suspect your Aleksei.”
“I don’t have one to give you yet.”
“Jesus,Cheng.Idon’twanttoseeaninvasionof thesepeople.Youguys keep them in Manhattan.”
“Detective, all I know right now is that Aleksei is definitely connected to the Vorbrotherhood, but I can’t say the hangar is connected to Aleksei’ murder.”
“Great.”
Her source in the Russian FSP gave her a line on three k.a.’s believed to have immigrated illegally to America close to the time Aleksei did. One of them was flagged as one of the new breed of assassins. The term didn’t translate well from the Russian, but “superkiller” came close enough. She didn’t trust this small-town cop nearly enough to reveal more.
“So tell me again why you’re the so-called expert?”
“I told you at the meeting this morning. The Organizatsiyais my assignment.WeconnectedacasetooneHarrywasworkinghere.NewYorksent me to help out.”
“Harry’s been dealing with mob guys before you were out of dresses.”
“I know these Russians, detective. You’re right, by the way. You don’t want them here. They’ll shoot you just to see if the gun works.”
Shewasn’tgoingtowinthisargument.Untilyousawitforyourself,you didn’t believe it. Only the older Muscovites in thrall to the mayhem inside their country or honest Russian immigrants in Little Odessa were true believers. The superstitious among them believed superkillers to have eyes completelywhite—soullessmenpossessedbythedevil.Notallweremindless thugs raised in gutters, hardened in gulags by other zeks. Evsei Agron, the “Little Don,” stepped from the chaos of Russia’s collapse into a lucrative career as arms dealer, money launderer, and infiltrator of legitimate businesses.
