Burn (Michael Bennett 7) (21 page)

“What’s that?” I said, playing along since I had no other choice.

“It looks like you’re doing a far better job of getting booted off this case than I ever could,” Vonroden said.

As the chief left, I got a call from Detective Siobhan Barton, one of the responding Fifth Precinct detectives I’d sent to canvass the neighborhood. She was calling from the Kate Spade’s around the corner, one of the stores whose bag the female thief had been seen holding.

“Hey, good news, Mike,” the rookie detective said. “We got a lead, I think. Clerk in here says a woman came in and bought some sandals about an hour before the robbery. She paid in cash, but they have a camera, and I got a pretty good shot of her.”

“Was anybody else with her?” I said.

“No, but it’s the woman. She fits the description exactly. Same platinum-blond hair, same black dress.”

“Excellent,” I said.

“That’s not all,” Detective Barton said. “It’s just like the jewelry store staff said. She had a Russian accent.”

CHAPTER
70

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER,
with the processing of the SoHo crime scene wrapping up, I made some phone calls and got into my cruiser and headed east and then north up the FDR for the not-so-trendy Boogie Down Bronx.

Just over the Harlem River at Macombs Dam Bridge, I pulled over onto Jerome Avenue in front of Yankee Stadium’s Gate 2 and parked. I made another phone call. About ten minutes later, one of the stadium’s maintenance doors opened and out came a guy in a security guard uniform. He was a short, potbellied middle-aged man with a huge bald head and an even huger grin on his face.

“Mike, I am so glad you called me,” said my old buddy, Yaakov Chazam, as he happily climbed into the cruiser.

Yaakov was quite an interesting character. An immigrant from Moscow, right after the Berlin Wall fell in ’89, he’d been a brilliant math professor at NYU before he ditched academia for the life of a professional poker player. We’d come into contact over the murder of a young Wall Street trader I had worked five years before.

As it turned out, the murdered guy had been killed over gambling debts to Russian mobsters accrued in the underground Brooklyn gambling dens that the mobsters controlled and where Yaakov played. Yaakov, who had been a good friend of the young guy, had done the right thing by contacting me and anonymously named enough names to get the loan shark enforcer and his Mob boss put away.

Since then, Yaakov had turned out to be a veritable font of information about the Russian Mob in Brooklyn. I would tap him for info from time to time, as would the FBI and the DEA.

Though squealing about the Russian Mob was highly dangerous for him, Yaakov couldn’t help himself because he was an incurable mystery reader, police buff, and lover of all things cop. Which explained his choice of low-paying security guard jobs like the one here at the stadium. He didn’t even need a job, with all the money he made playing poker. He just wanted to wear a uniform.

“So, Yaakov, staying out of those poker dens?” I said as I made a U-turn and drove up 161st Street past the iconic Bronx County Courthouse.

“Oh, yeah. Only a little here and there when I’m tight,” he said, rolling his eyes sarcastically. “Actually, my new wife, she hates when I go, yet she never objects to going on these monster shopping sprees when I win. Weird, huh? What can I do for you, Mike? You got something juicy for me?”

“I’m trying to identify a woman. Might be from your neck of the woods,” I said, turning onto the Grand Concourse and pulling over and taking out my iPhone.

“Oh, pictures!” he said excitedly as I brought up the video I’d gotten from the Kate Spade store. “I love pictures. Is it of a crime scene? Is she dead? Naked, maybe?”

“Sorry, Yaakov,” I said as the security footage loaded. “Unfortunately, she’s alive and dressed.”

“This isn’t so bad,” he said as he watched the mystery blonde put on shoes. “She has nice legs. What am I supposed to be looking for? If I know her? Seen her around?”

“Exactly,” I said.

He peered at the screen.

“No, I don’t know her. I don’t think so. Though it’s pretty impossible to tell with those big sunglasses, and that looks like a wig, right? Though she is Russian Mafia.”

“She is?” I said. “How do you know?”

He rewound and hit Pause and pointed.

“See here? The green mark on her left ankle. That’s a
nakolki
, a Russian jailhouse tattoo. These Mafia idiot types are gaga about their stupid tattoos. A cat wearing a hat like that one is Mafia from way back. What is she? A hooker?”

“We think she was involved with a robbery. A diamond heist today in SoHo around noon.”

“There was another diamond heist today? Like the other one downtown that was in the paper? That’s the case you’re working? That’s so cool!”

“Let me ask you, Yaakov. Do Serbians and Russians get along?”

“Actually, they do a little. They trace a common ancestry. At least, a lot of Serbians say so. Why?”

“There’s a group of Serbian crooks in Europe called the Pink Panther gang. They travel around the world knocking over jewelry stores. Japan, Paris, London. Do you think if Serbians came here they’d work with a woman from the Russian Mob?”

Yaakov shook his head.

“No, I don’t think so. Why go to all the trouble to come to the States and then use some woman you might not trust so much? Last time I checked, Serbian thugs had their own bitches to do shit for them. Why not bring one along with you?”

“Good point,” I said as I finally thumbed off my phone.

I tried to piece things together. I was having some trouble. So it wasn’t Serbians?

“Stolen diamonds, mysterious blondes,” Yaakov said, staring at my phone. “This is like Hitchcock, only for real, man. What a freaking awesome country this is!”

CHAPTER
71

INSTEAD OF ANOTHER ROUND
of La Grenouille’s prix fixe, that night’s dinner consisted of stale vending-machine Oreos washed down with even staler vintage instant coffee. My repast was served cubicle-side in Major Crimes’ deserted squad room as I stayed late running down leads on my case’s potential new Russian connection.

With a blown-up printout of my mystery woman taped to the shade of the desk lamp beside my computer, I scoured the entire female Russian Mob suspect section of the electronic mug book from the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau. But even after two hours of clicking through the Russian female version of the mad, the bad, and the crooked, there was nothing even resembling a match.

My informant, Yaakov, had been right, I thought as I unsuccessfully tried to blow the cookie crumbs out of my keyboard. With the woman’s wig and big glasses, she could have been anyone at all.

My only luck came around eight-thirty when I took a stab in the dark and managed to get Sergeant Eileen Alexander, a sympathetic OCCB detective, on the phone to help me. The Organized Crime Control Bureau detectives were good to have on your side, since they worked with the FBI and had federal security clearances. After much cajoling and some downright begging, I managed to get Eileen to agree to run the photo through the feds’ more extensive Russian Mob databases.

“Not exactly a family portrait, huh?” the cop said skeptically after I e-mailed her the security camera still. “This is the best you got?”

C’mon, Eileen
, I thought but didn’t say, since every Eileen I knew cringed whenever someone brought up that aggravating ’80s pop song.

“It’s
all
I got, Eileen,” I said.

“And I thought I was having a bad day,” the detective finally said. “I’ll be in touch if I get anything, but waiting by the phone might not be the smartest move for you.”

I decided to take her sage advice.

Twenty minutes later, I came over the threshold of my apartment to find Joseph, our faithful new Polish doorman, standing watch.

“Hey, Joseph, you’re here late. You change shifts or something?” I said.

“No, Mr. Bennett. Ralph call in sick,” he said forlornly. “Last minute, too. I had concert ticket. Bullet For My Valentine at Roseland. Girlfriend is pissed. Hundred fifty bucks gone. Wish day was just over, you know?”

“Joseph, I know all about it,” I murmured as I got into the elevator.

By the time I’d unlocked my apartment door, I’d whittled down my wants to two, a cold beer and a hot shower. I’d just decided on both at the same time when I spotted Mary Catherine on her cell phone in the kitchen. Mary Catherine on the phone, red-eyed. Crying?

I immediately panicked. Mary Catherine did a lot of things. She baked brownies, doled out Band-Aids, guided people through the perils of fifth-grade geometry, usually all at the same time. What she didn’t do was weep. And yet here she was, doing precisely that.

My first thought, of course, ran to Seamus and his recent stroke.

“Mary Catherine, what is it? Is it Seamus?” I said.

Mary Catherine stared at me perplexed as she continued to listen. Then she nodded and hastily said good-bye and hung up.

“Oh, no, no, no, Mike. Seamus is fine. It was my sister, Claire, on the phone. It’s about my mother. She just had a brain aneurysm about three hours ago. She’s in the ICU at South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel. She’s in a coma, Mike. On a ventilator. I can’t believe it. I was just talking to her three days ago.”

“Oh, no, Mary Catherine. I’m so sorry,” I said, embracing her.

“I have to go back to Ireland, Mike. Perhaps for a week or two. But how can I? We’ve barely unpacked and gotten the kids settled here. How can I leave you guys in the lurch?”

“It’s not a concern, Mary Catherine. Your mother needs you. You’ll go. End of story,” I said, wiping a tear from her cheek with my thumb.

CHAPTER
72

“OK, MIKE. SO JULIANA
and Fiona have dental appointments at eleven on Tuesday,” Mary Catherine explained as we sped along the Cross Bronx Expressway early the next morning.

“What else?” she said. “Right. Wednesday is the after-school parent-teacher meeting over that scuffle Trent had with that bratty bully, Julio, in his class. And don’t forget, the super is going to install the new dishwasher that’s coming on Friday, but you have to remind him. He’s got a brain like a sieve. I should probably write all this down.”

“Mary Catherine,” I said when she came up for air. “You did. You printed it out. I got it. I got it under control,” I said, patting her knee.

That was a complete lie, of course. I didn’t know what on God’s green earth I was going to do once she left. But the least I could do for Mary Catherine, after all she’d done for us, was to try to keep her as calm as possible as she went back home to the unenviable task of attending to her terminally ill mother.

“Don’t worry, Mary Catherine,” Juliana said as she leaned forward and gave Mary Catherine a huge hug from the seat behind her. We know what to do. We won’t forget what you taught us. All of us, even the boys, will make you so proud. You’ll see.”

I looked away, kept my face on the horrible potholed roadway. I, like everyone, had been on the verge of complete emotional devastation after hearing the news that Mary Catherine had to leave. There was definitely something weird about the whole situation that I couldn’t put my finger on.

Instead of her leaving for just a week or two, it really felt, for some strange reason, like we’d never see Mary Catherine again. Or was it just the possibility? It was almost scary how much we loved and needed her. Mary Catherine wasn’t the only one who was going to have to say good-bye to their mother.

“Holy cow, Dad! Look!” Ricky suddenly cried from the back of the van as there was a thunderous ripping sound and three South Bronx youths shot off an expressway entrance ramp. At first I thought they were on motorcycles, but then I looked again and realized they were on ATV four-wheelers.
Huh?

“Check it out!” Eddie yelled as they roared around the van. “They’re not even wearing helmets!”

“And they’re wearing blue bandannas and LA Dodgers jerseys,” Ricky said. “I saw this on the Internet, Dad. They’re Crips! Actual Bronx gangbangers!”

“On actual ATVs,” Eddie cried excitedly. “Quick, Dad! Lend me your phone so I can video this! YouTube, here I come!”

Instead, I slowed down to let the Bronx Inner City Road Warriors get safely ahead before I shared a head shake and a smile with Mary Catherine.

“Mary Catherine, if we can handle getting you through this city to the airport alive, we can handle you being gone for a couple of weeks. Everything’s going to be fine,” I said.

We did manage to escape from the Bronx and get to JFK about thirty minutes later. I got us a little lost when I instinctively took us to the massive, busy airport’s Terminal 4, where I’d been many times before, sending off and receiving Irish relatives hopping the pond on Aer Lingus for weddings and visits and wakes. But Brian looked up on my phone that Aer Lingus had recently moved to JetBlue’s Terminal 5.

Everybody had been doing relatively well in the stiff-upper-lip department, but as we finally approached Terminal 5, it started. Everybody, seemingly at once, started weeping. When I stopped the van and turned to my right, I saw why.

There, on the other side of the fence, it was, standing on the tarmac, waiting. The big green-and-white Aer Lingus 747 with the shamrock on its tail that was about to take Mary Catherine away from us.

“Stop crying, please, now, would you? It’s not so sad,” Mary Catherine said, using both hands in a useless attempt to stop her own tears.

I quickly popped the doors and got out and grabbed the bags as Mary Catherine doled out hugs to the sobbing children. Shawna, who seemed to be taking it the hardest, clung to Mary Catherine so fiercely I didn’t think she’d ever let her go.

“It’s OK. I’ll be back before you know it,” Mary Catherine whispered to her between her own sobs.

But Shawna wasn’t having any of it. She just kept clinging and silently crying as she shook her head. Smart kid.