by Kevin Fox
“No such luck. You’ll be back to work in a few days. The blade she used was sharp, made a real clean cut, and she didn’t get it all the way in. You bled a bit, but the loss of consciousness was from ‘stress’.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, not liking the way he stressed the word ‘stress’.
“Hey, I’m making no judgments, but the docs said you were freaking out about the rain and it was just eight stitches. My little girl got more than that when she fell off her bike.”
“So make her a detective,” I told him, trying to not sound as bitter as I felt.
“She already is one… can we get on with this?” Burke asked, and I could see the judgment in his eyes.
“It wasn’t a panic attack or PTSD. I was stabbed.”
“Sure. I get it. I don’t like the rain either,” he said. “…Now, the woman who brought you in, did she say anything to you?”
‘I remembered the phrase she’d used in the car, ‘go dtí an chéad uair eile’, but I said nothing to him, unsure if the words were real or hallucinated gibberish. Burke must have seen my hesitation and he pressed the issue.
“So, she did say something to you. Do you remember what it was?”
“It wasn’t even English.”
“Was it Russian?”
His question put me on edge and tipped his hand. Burke had no reason to guess that it was Russian or anything like it unless he already knew about the yacht. Something wasn’t right, and as I grew more lucid, I started to see the shape of what it was – Burke was here, interrogating me, but why? Why would an old hairbag of a detective that had worked with my dad and uncle show up in the middle of a hurricane? Combined with the anonymous phone call luring me out to investigate the boat, something wasn’t kosher.
“It wasn’t harsh like Russian. It was sweeter. Singsong. But why does the woman matter?” I asked.
“She’s a material witness. The girl who stabbed you was probably just scared, but the other woman was there for a reason and I heard it was a woman that requested you at the scene,” he said bluntly. It was an accusation, pushing me to admit that I knew more about her.
“How do you know that? And why? Me getting stabbed in the middle of Frankenstorm isn’t important enough to send a detective, so stop bullshitting me.”
Burke smiled coldly and decided to shift gears.
“To be honest, I was already investigating that yacht. Was waiting for it where it was supposed to dock in Brooklyn. When the storm hit I realized it would complicate issues. Thought I got lucky when I heard it ran aground,” he explained.
“Why were you investigating?” I asked.
“Am I being interrogated now?” Burke smiled, as if he enjoyed my paranoia, then leaned back and settled in. “That yacht you were on? Belongs to a Russian billionaire whose son was supposed to be on it, but isn’t. A missing billionaire’s son is a crappy way to start a day.”
“That doesn’t answer why you were looking into it before he went missing?”
“Yeah, well, after I worked with your dad I stayed in narcotics. Long story, but you know how it is with the NYPD. You work a couple of big cases, you learn a couple things, you become the resident expert. This yacht’s owner, Alik Markov, he’s been known to traffic drugs, and girls, and arms, and anything else that keeps him in the black.”
“So why are you here and not at that yacht. Or out looking for his son?”
“Because missing Russian billionaires are enough to get the Feds attention. You know that.”
“The Feds?” I asked, missing something again.
“Yeah. Them. To be honest, I wasn’t even going to talk to you. You getting stabbed is a side note. But by the time I got to the yacht it was grounded and the Feds were swarming like the nest of WASPs they are. Wouldn’t let me on board.”
“So, you don’t know that there are at least four dead Russians and probably seven dead kids on that thing?” I clarified. Burke shrugged, being brutally honest, not blinking an eye at the mention of the dead kids.
“You know the Feds. They don’t like to share. So, do you mind? I’d like to get ahead of the Feds and not cover up anything just because daddy Markov owns too many shares in the big oil companies. …So, what’d you see?”
“Hang on a minute. Something stinks. It’s no coincidence I was the guy called out by some crazy woman – and that you knew my father?” I asked.
“Doubt it. I don’t trust coincidences. You shouldn’t either. All I know is that your dad and uncle were working on international smuggling way back when. Narcotics mostly – but like I said, some trafficking – even arms crimes bled over into it. Maybe there’s a connection. If I were you I’d ask the woman that called you. Who is she?”
“I wish I knew,” I told him truthfully. Burke stared, waiting for me to give him more. I couldn’t.
“Okay… How’d you end up on board?”
“…The boat was slamming up against the house. All I wanted to do was get on and get back off. In the galley there were some crates. I saw some packs of what I’d bet were heroin.”
“Your phone was missing from your personal effects. Any chance you got photos?” He asked, quickly, trying to catch me off balance. The question rubbed me the wrong way. What the hell was he doing going through my personal effects?
“Must be floating somewhere. I wasn’t sightseeing anyway. There were no photos.” Screw him. If he was going to go through my stuff, I was going to lie to him. I knew it was probably a bad idea, but one of my many child psychologists once told me I had ODD – ‘Oppositional-Defiance Disorder’. She said it was the inability to do what I was told or to take anyone’s word for anything. I was proud of that – why would I ever take anyone’s word for anything, and why should I do what I was told unless it made sense to me? It made me a good detective. Trust no one. Only facts.
“How many crates were there?” Burke asked, impatient.
“I didn’t stop to count. Maybe fifteen, from about a foot square to about four-foot square.”
“Damn. That’s a lot of pure skag.”
“Well, at least you caught it before it hit the street, right?”
“No. None of it was recovered. Feds claim that by the time they got there it was all gone. My bet is that’s why the woman who brought you in bolted.” Burke stopped there, leaving me to infer the rest.
“You think she went back to get that stuff off the boat?”
“Maybe.”
“In a hurricane?”
“Well, it’s gone. Somebody just lost a shitload of Afghan Albino and had four Russian Mafia soldiers killed in the process. The Russians are going to hunt down whoever did it and get rid of any witnesses, pronto. Either way, I need to find that woman. Fast.”
Burke made a good point. Stealing from the Russian Mafia was stupid, but making the son of one of their billionaire capos disappear after killing his friends was straight-up suicide, but I doubted the woman who saved me had it in her.
“What about the two girls?” I asked, knowing they’d probably be killed on principle alone.
“Two girls?”
“And possibly a teen boy. They got off the boat as well.”
“Good for them. What makes you think they’re worth anything to anybody?”
“They’re worth something because they’re people. Kids… Somebody should be looking for them.”
“Love your idealism, Collins, but they’re better off staying lost. If the Feds find those kids, they’ll send them back to whatever hell they were in before, or put them in danger of becoming witnesses – or targets. Your best bet is to walk away. Let ‘em go. Consider them lucky.” Burke stood to go, stopping at the door and looking back for a moment.
“Go home, forget about this. I owe it to your father and the memory of Joe Corrigan to keep you safe. I can’t do that if you get in the middle of it. Trust me.” With that Burke stepped out, letting the door close softly behind him.
I wish he hadn’t said that. Any time someo
ne tells me to walk away, it seems to me the request itself is a good enough reason to stick around.
A half an hour later I’d found my clothes, signed myself out against medical advice, and got sample painkillers from the hospital pharmacy. If I wasn’t going to develop a whole new series of night terrors, I needed to find those lost girls and the woman who saved me.
‘Rigan’. That was the name. I remembered that much…
Chapter Seven
The waters had receded and fourteen hours had passed since I was admitted, but it was still raining as I exited the hospital to find my car where I left it. The engine sputtered a few times, but eventually the moisture burned off and it caught. Power and tree crews were visible working on Seguine Avenue, clearing it, so I headed that way to get back to Holten. It still wasn’t easy. Cars had been abandoned in the storm and blocked the lanes where fallen trees and power lines had cut them off from whatever destination they had once dreamed of reaching, and I saw no signs of power anywhere. There were no lights in houses, no traffic lights, no sounds of music or movement other than the chain saws and diesel engines of the power crews.
I’m not sure why I felt the need to return to the wreck of the yacht, but after talking to Burke, I was sure that I’d missed something about this whole event that was critical. To be honest, given the stress of last night, I wasn’t sure how much of what I remembered actually happened and how much was part of the fevered dreams I had in the hospital.
The first blue and white I saw was parked at the end of Van Wyck, blocking the way to Purdy Place, its lights flashing lazily as the patrolman reclined in the passenger seat. I parked on what was once somebody’s lawn and walked down to the RMP, catching sight of the yacht, further inland than it was when I left it. After the Fat Man’s house collapsed, I guess there was nothing to stop it from floating over where The Annex once stood to where it now sat, wedged upright by debris. In the daylight, I could read the yacht’s name clearly – ‘Chistota’ – which I found out later means ‘purity’ in Russian. Nice.
Outside the crime scene tape, volunteers, firemen, and uniformed cops combed through the wreckage, looking for survivors as the odor of decay and the musty smell of ocean rot, fishy and organic, rose from all around. Seaweed and dead fish were lying on top of clothing and toys and pots and pans. The level of destruction was impressive, but I was focused on the decks of the Chistota, where I noticed a Crime Scene Unit doing all the technical work that I never had the patience for.
The details of the scene stood out to me – the crime scene tape was taut and in neat symmetrical lines; guys in matching blue raincoats who looked like they got their hair cut at SuperCuts were moving through the CSU guys; and nobody except those two groups were behind the tape. Feds, obviously. NYPD crime scene tape always flutters in the wind and goes from convenient point to convenient point – practical, not Federally anal – and we have better haircuts.
The patrolman in the car struggled to roll down his window, as if moving that index finger was outside of his contractually obligated duties. He was about to tell me all the reasons I couldn’t be here, so I flashed my shield.
“Middle of a natural disaster, we get no FEMA, but the FBI shows up right away? What’s the crisis?” I asked, playing on the natural distaste every street cop had for the Feds.
“Somebody called in the destruction of a mansion and a yacht and said there were bodies in the street. For all I know, Elmer Fudd washed up on shore.”
“Bodies? Really?”
“Feds are denying it, but some dimwit detective got here first, so we know it’s true. Too bad he got himself stabbed or it’d be our case,” he told me with a cop’s usual cynicism.
“Must be a big deal to bring out the Feds. Especially in the rain. Feds melt in the rain.”
“Don’t I know it. You shoulda heard the hissy fits they was throwin’ about the detective that got himself stabbed. They were pissed he ever got on the boat in the first place. Way I heard it, guy was tryin’ to arrest a local who was lootin’ the boat. She didn’t appreciate it and stabbed him. Shoulda let her drown, you ask me,” he told me, just making conversation.
“He rescued a woman?” I asked, beginning to see the outlines of what the ‘official story’ might become.
“Ask me, we should charge her with piracy. Bet we could make that stick. Probably the only time we could.”
“Thinking like that is what’ll get you your gold shield, officer. Who’s in charge from our side?” I asked, looking around at the sodden and miserable cops and volunteers moving over piles of broken two-by-fours and siding that had once been homes.
“Kill – I heard you almost added an ‘ed’ to your name,” I heard from behind me, before the patrolman could answer. I turned to find Lieutenant Demetrius stepping over the detritus of the storm. He looked miserable, wet and unshaven. “Get it? ‘E-D’, like in past tense?”
“I got it – and it’s no thanks to you, Demetrius,” I said, hoping that I didn’t look as bad as he did. Up all night with no sleep and no shower had aged him about five years.
“Wait, this is on me? All I did was ask you to come for a look-see. No one asked you to go play hero. What happened out here, anyway?”
“They’re not keeping you in the loop?” I asked, even more wary now.
“Feds ain’t tellin’ us shit. They claim Maritime is their jurisdiction.”
“Maritime? It’s in the middle of Purdy Place.”
“I’m gonna argue with Feds that want to take a headache off my hands? You really get stabbed? I heard it was just a panic attack.”
“You talked to Burke?”
“Of course. He said it was a scratch.” Demetrius said. I glared at him, my chest still sore. “C’mon, Kill, don’t be mad at me. It was chaos out here. Ten minutes after I called you, I got a call from the Chief of D’s telling me that the yacht of some Russian billionaire had run aground. We were to secure the scene but not go on the boat. I tried to call you—”
“By then I was probably on board.”
“Exactly. Why would I think you’d get on the damn thing? Go on a boat in a hurricane? Fog is too wet for you.” I let it go. Time to change the subject.
“So, Burke responded as soon as he heard the name of the boat?”
“Yeah, guy’s obsessive about this Russian billionaire and his drugs – but the Feds say there were no drugs. No bodies either.” Demetrius looked over his shoulder toward the FBI guys, lowering his voice. He nodded to me and moved further away from the uniformed officer in the car.
“…And don’t ask me nothin’ else, cause I know nothin’, Detective.”
“Cut the crap, I won’t quote you,” I said, but nothing about this felt right. It reeked of a cover-up – but why?
“There was heroin on board,” I prodded Demetrius.
“You’re mistaken.”
“And kids. Teen boys and girls.”
“You had a rough night and were sedated. I’m sure it’s all muddled, Killer,” Demetrius said, as if quoting a script.
“All right, play it that way. What’d the Feds say about why they’re here if there are no bodies and no drugs? National Security again?”
“They didn’t even bother to make an excuse this time. They said ‘you don’t see anything’, so I don’t see nothin’.”
“Why would the Feds cover up a boat full of drugs and kids?”
“Between you and me? The Russian billionaire it belongs to, Alik Markov? He’s got a hired army that’ll poison a reporter for daring to say his toupee is for shit, never mind ones that accuse him of being the drug-dealing piece-of-shit criminal that he is. It was before your time – mine too – but his brother Mikhail, a KGB guy, disappeared here back in the eighties. The KGB, still around back then, thought he defected. Put Alik Markov in Lubyanka prison for seven years just for being related to him. Since then the guy’s been nuts – blaming the CIA, the FBI – even the NYPD for his brother Mikhail going missing. I hear the Deputy Director of th
e FBI got a personal call from Putin on Markov’s behalf this morning, to make sure the guy’s son was on the first plane back to the motherland. Guess he’s afraid they’ll put him back in jail if his son pulls a disappearing act too.”
“So, you found the son?”
“No. Still missing. They were sending a message that they don’t want him held or questioned. Anyway, Markov’s kid, Josef, he’s got a record of his own and is accused of some pretty nasty shit.”
“Like?”
“A teenage girl was found in his hotel room last year, raped and beaten. By the time SVU showed up Josef Markov was on a plane to Moscow. Case died on the vine and the DA was told to bury it. Markov Junior’s passport was flagged and he was asked not to come back, but he doesn’t seem to care. He just pulls up in his yacht and doesn’t deal with customs.”
“I can see why you’re staying out of it,” I said, trying to wrap my head around all the moving pieces. If the son, Josef, was free in a country where he was wanted for a brutal rape, wandering the streets in the middle of a natural disaster after losing his daddy’s precious cargo, he’d be desperate and dangerous.
“Probably better for everybody if Markov Junior washed up somewhere along Holten or Purdy,” Demetrius muttered, looking at the chaos around us.
“The Feds really think they can cover this up? That they can send the son back if we find him? There are still witnesses. There’s a dozen dead and molested kids on that thing.”
“If the ones on that boat are dead, putting a guy on trial and making an international incident out of it isn’t gonna happen. Let it go, Kill,” Demetrius advised, glancing away as one of the blue raincoats approached. It was a Special Agent, and he tried to stare me down as he got closer. He made it to within ten feet of me before he looked away.
Jackass. Never try to eye fuck an Irish cop or a rabid dog. Neither has the good sense to back down.
