Neptune Avenue

by Gabriel Cohen

  The past forty-eight hours had been damned busy ones.

  Acting on Jack’s tips, Narcotics squads had set up surveillance on Semyon Balakutis’s doughnut shop and Daniel’s fish company.

  Tyrese Vincent had called the sketch of the blond man a definite match, as did another McDonald’s employee who had witnessed the original shooting.

  Jack had gotten hold of Zhenya’s phone records (and managed to keep them to himself); he’d found that several calls had come in from pay phones in Brighton Beach. The times matched his memory of when Zhenya had suddenly canceled their dinner plans.

  Other memories assaulted him: their happy times out on the balcony; the occasions when she had asked him how the investigation was going; nights when they had hardly slept at all, for the very best of reasons. Times when he had watched her staring off into the distance, and wondered what she might be brooding about.

  Well, now he knew. She had just been using him.

  All that remained was to find out how directly she had been involved in her husband’s murder. Whose idea had it been? Had she been there on that dark, lonely night out on Neptune Avenue? Had she pulled the trigger herself?

  The detectives had roamed all over the neighborhood. They’d showed the sketch to countermen in delis and coffee shops. They buttonholed passersby on the streets. They tried the old ladies on the benches and the old men playing chess. They asked local patrol cops to question their snitches.

  Nada.

  Jack turned to his partner. “The word is out that we’re searching for the guy here, so I don’t think he’s gonna stick around. I think we oughta look a little farther afield.”

  Vargas frowned. “New York is a big place.”

  “Not for him. He won’t hide far from where people can speak Russian. Why don’t we poke around Coney a bit?”

  His cell phone trilled. He looked down and saw Zhenya’s name in the little window. Thankfully, Vargas wasn’t paying much attention; she was wiping crumbs off her lap.

  She looked up casually. “Aren’t you gonna get that?”

  Jack picked up his phone, pretended to look at the caller I.D., then set it down again, facedown. “Nah. It’s not important.”

  He had phoned Zhenya from a pay phone the morning after the hotel incident. It had been a hell of a call to make. He hadn’t said anything about what he’d seen; he’d just told her that he wouldn’t be able to get together for a few days, that he was working on a very big case. He had neglected to mention that she seemed to be at the center of it. He had also neglected to mention that she was now under twenty-four-hour surveillance. One small mercy for both of them: Sergeant Tanney had applied for a tap on her phones, but a federal judge had turned it down due to lack of evidence.

  He wrapped up the remains of his knish; he just wasn’t hungry. He felt as if he was getting an ulcer. It was too much to contend with all at once: his worries over his own involvement in the case and how he could possibly emerge unscathed; the struggle to find their suspect; his bitter disappointment over Zhenya’s betrayal.

  For the past two days, his mouth had been full of a sour taste, and he wanted to smash his fist through a wall.

  HE DIDN’T HAVE ANY snitches in Brighton Beach, but Coney Island was a different story. First they paid a visit to a hooker who hung out in front of a fast-food joint on Stillwell Avenue. (He admired the owner’s gall: the place was called Kantacky Fried Chicken.)

  No luck.

  They talked to the owner of a liquor store on Mermaid Avenue.

  Zip.

  They drove on. Scraps of trash blew along Surf Avenue, swirling outside storefronts selling crappy fried seafood. The new baseball stadium (on the site of the old Steeplechase Park) was supposed to help revive the neighborhood, and maybe it would, but Coney seemed especially desolate that afternoon.

  They dropped in on an employee of Astroland Amusement Park, a bandy-legged old ticket taker. Instead of the cheery carnival music from Jack’s childhood, this ride now blasted rap music, and homeboys with gold-capped teeth held on to their shrieking girlfriends as the little cars whipped around. Jack stood twenty yards away and gave his informant the nod.

  Five minutes later the man joined the detectives in an alley behind Nathan’s. A hard life with too much sun had given him a reddish hide like shriveled leather.

  “You recognize this guy?” Jack asked, holding up the sketch.

  The old-timer frowned. “I think I might’a saw him. About a week ago. Over on the boardwalk where they got that salsa dance thing goin’.”

  “You know where he hangs out?”

  The man shook his head. “Nope. You talk to Little Danny?”

  Jack patted the man on his shoulder. “That’s our next stop.”

  Across from the Cyclone roller coaster, Surf Avenue was home to a strange blocklong flea market, a row of run-down stalls filled to overflowing with an incredible assortment of junk: broken eight-track players, belted nylon slacks in various pastel colors, scratched LPs by no-hit wonders. Little Danny Vletko had managed to keep his business going for years, though he rarely displayed anything any sane person might want to buy. It was rumored that his true business was fencing stolen goods, but Jack didn’t look too hard—the man’s information had proved valuable more than once.

  Danny was small in stature but not in weight; his potbelly alone must have weighed a hundred pounds. He looked—and smelled—as if he bathed maybe twice a season. “Not here,” he muttered when Jack and Vargas approached him. “In the back.” Jack sighed. This was one of the hazards of getting information from the man. You had to squeeze down a narrow aisle, risking avalanche from the ceiling-high heaps of old clothes and bric-a-brac. In the tiny back room Danny’s body odor became almost intolerable. That afternoon, though, the visit proved worth the trouble.

  ACTING ON LITTLE DANNY’S tip, the two detectives took up positions on the Coney boardwalk, just downwind of a scruffy, open-fronted bar that sold cans of Coors Light for a buck. Toothless women in bleached jeans paraded in and out with scraggly men sporting biker vests and wallet chains.

  “I’m going to the ladies’ room again,” Linda Vargas said.

  Jack shook his head. “I told you ya shouldn’t have eaten those clams. Hey, can you buy me a ginger—” He stopped. A blond man was skulking along the edge of the boardwalk. He wore track pants and an oversize red and black jersey. He stopped under the bar’s awning, took off his backpack, lodged it between his feet, and pulled out a CD player. He inserted the earphones and stood scanning the beach through blue wraparound sunglasses.

  “That’s our guy,” Jack murmured. “Don’t spook him. Why don’t you call in some troops?”

  Vargas took out her cell phone and made the call. Jack sat watching the Russian over the top of a newspaper. He was tempted to hurl himself forward and start throttling the bastard, but he waited instead, muttering, “Come on, come on,” afraid their quarry would slip away.

  Finally, a hundred yards to the east, a patrol car drove up and blocked off the boardwalk. A few seconds later, from the west, a dark blue Crown Vic came cruising up the boardwalk itself. The car stopped a good ways off, but seeing as how most vehicles were prohibited from driving there, it was hardly inconspicuous. As the doors opened, the suspect’s head snapped up. He turned the other way and saw the patrol car blocking his escape. He bent down to pick up his backpack and then he took off, sprinting across the boardwalk toward the beach. He cleared the railing with a flying leap. Down on the beach, he picked himself up and ran as best he could. Speeding across loose sand was hard enough, but he staggered, trailing one leg. Jack came to the railing and looked down: a bunch of broken bottles littered the sand.

  He ran along the boardwalk, shoes thumping on the wood, watching to see which way the guy would go. To his right the Wonder Wheel, Astroland tower, and Parachute Jump rose up like giant children’s toys. The shooter ran toward the water’s edge, where the sand was hard-packed. Jack found a stairway down to the beach and high
tailed it after him. The Russian veered toward the east. Lines of low clouds ranged above him to the horizon. Out across the water, on a spit of land called Breezy Point, a row of beach houses glowed bone white in the late afternoon sun.

  A patrol car zoomed out onto the beach about a hundred yards ahead. The suspect spun around, almost falling in his haste, and ran west. A group of seagulls stood on the sand, all facing into the wind—as he plowed through them, they sprayed up into the air. The man limped on, a lone figure silhouetted against the blue-gray water, making his way toward the sun. And two more uniforms. By this time, Jack thought, he must be cursing his instinct to take off toward the ocean; it left nowhere to hide. Except, of course, the water itself. In one last hopeless move he floundered out into the waves.

  Zhenya’s lover splashed around—he was a terrible swimmer. Jack jogged up to the uniforms at the edge of the beach, where they were cracking wise and making bets on how long the guy could keep his head up. Jack looked on; some fierce, angry part of him was tempted to let the man drown.

  He spit on the sand. There was no way he could let a murder suspect just sink beneath the waves. He kicked off his shoes, waded out into the chilly water, and hauled the punk’s sodden ass back to shore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  WHILE ALEC SHVIDKOY SAT shivering in the interview room at the Sixty-first Precinct house with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, a thoughtful group stood watching him through a two-way mirror next door. Jack’s bosses had traveled from their Coney Island headquarters for this, and they were joined by Linda Vargas and Scott DeHaven, the local detective assigned to the Lelo case. And Jack, who had borrowed a towel and some dry gym clothes from another local detective.

  At first, their suspect had refused to talk—he was playing the tough guy, the junior gangster—but a driver’s license in his soggy backpack had given away his name. Linda Vargas looked it over, then handed it to Jack and pointed to the category. It was a Class M license. For motorcycles.

  Shvidkoy, it turned out, was only twenty-eight. Evidently, Jack thought with a shiver of repugnance, Zhenya Lelo liked lovers of different ages.

  He wondered if Shvidkoy knew he was being watched, but their suspect seemed oblivious; every few seconds, he tilted his head and smacked it with his hand, trying to drain it of ocean water. Or he lifted his foot to examine the bandage there, where the beach glass had cut him. Jack hated to admit it, but the guy was strikingly handsome, with a lean, chiseled face.

  “Look at that punk,” muttered Sergeant Tanney. “I think we should drop heavy on him, let him know we can nail him for the McDonald’s shooting.”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “If we push too hard he might lawyer up, and then we’ll have to run the risk of a bad I.D.” Lineups were notoriously unreliable. If Tyrese Vincent and the other McDonald’s witnesses failed to identify him, the detectives would be screwed. Better to try for a confession first.

  “Let Vargas do her thing,” Lieutenant Cardulli said calmly. “We’re not in any rush.”

  Jack and his colleague went into the interview room and sat down; they were joined by a Russian interpreter from the Six-oh, a brisk white-haired woman with the anonymous professionalism of a court stenographer. Jack leaned back in his chair; he had to struggle to keep his distaste for Zhenya’s lover from showing.

  “Where are you from?” Vargas asked.

  The interpreter translated.

  Shvidkoy just crossed his arms.

  Vargas shrugged. “Okay, Alec. You can remain silent and get a lawyer in here, and then we’ll have to officially charge you, and then you can take your chances with the courts. Or you can cooperate a bit. This way, we’re just having a little informal talk.”

  Shvidkoy considered his options. “I’m from Ukraine,” he finally said, in Russian, grudgingly.

  The translator did her thing.

  Vargas nodded. “Okay. That’s good. You work with us, we’ll make this easier for you. Now tell me, why did you run this afternoon?”

  Through his translator, Shvidkoy replied, “I thought you had mistaken me for someone else. Some bad person.”

  Jack rolled his eyes.

  “Right,” Vargas said. “Now tell me how you met Eugenia Lelo.”

  The man tried to play it cool, but instinctively he drew his arms in close to his sides. “I do not know this name.”

  “You never met her?”

  “I don’t know anything about this.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Shvidkoy nodded, wary.

  Jack pictured him kissing Zhenya in front of the hotel, holding her close, and he wanted to ask for five minutes alone with the suspect in the little interview room. Someone would have to clean the place up with a mop after. …

  Vargas changed gears. “How well do you know Andrei Goguniv?”

  Shvidkoy looked completely blank. “I never heard this name.”

  The answer seemed convincing, but by this point Jack was not too big on trusting his own intuition.

  “Let me ask you this,” Linda Vargas continued. “Were you in Coney Island in August of 2001?”

  Shvidkoy shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

  Vargas eyed him coolly. She asked a number of other questions, but the young man had little of significance to say.

  Despite his anger and distaste, Jack regarded their captive thoughtfully. He knew that they were going to have to take this slow. Interrogations were like fly-fishing: you had to play your suspect carefully. First, you let him run out some line. Every now and then you gave a gentle tug, sank the hook a little deeper.

  Yank too hard? Snap.

  AFTER HALF AN HOUR, Vargas had pulled out every trick she knew, but their suspect remained uncommunicative. The detectives regrouped outside the interview room.

  “Let me have a go,” said Scott DeHaven. “Maybe I can play the pal.”

  The detective was compact and well muscled. Young, but with rough, chapped-looking skin; he looked as if he might spend a lot of time in sports bars.

  Cardulli thought it over, then shrugged.

  DeHaven and the interpreter went into the interview room. “How ya doin?” he said. He extended his hand. “My name’s Scott. The other detective’s gonna be right back. I’m just here to fill in for a minute.” He took out a toothpick, set it in the corner of his mouth, and sat back as if he had all the time in the world.

  Shvidkoy didn’t know what to make of this new presence.

  DeHaven gave his outfit the once-over. “You like rap music? Hip-hop?”

  Shvidkoy made a sour face.

  “No?” DeHaven rested an arm on the table’s edge and leaned forward. “Whaddaya like? Techno? Rock?”

  “Techno,” the suspect said, relaxing just a tad. No one could arrest him for his taste in music.

  “You like Basement Jaxx? How about DJ Keoki?”

  Shvidkoy looked shocked. “How do you know these names?”

  DeHaven shrugged. “I like to go out after work. You know, places in Manhattan: the Roxy, the Sound Factory … You ever been there?”

  Shvidkoy nodded. “I’m going to be a DJ.”

  “Is that right? Well, good luck to you.” DeHaven leaned back again.

  In the dark room next door, Jack loosened his collar. He was accustomed to long interrogations, but the small talk was suffocating him. He wanted to reach through the two-way mirror with both hands and force Shvidkoy to finally tell the fucking truth.

  Scott DeHaven looked considerably more patient. “You been cooperating with the detective that was in here?”

  Shvidkoy crossed his arms.

  “You know what? I don’t know if you know about cops over here in the United States, but things’ll go better if you just tell the truth. I mean, it sounds like they already have a lot of information about you. They know you’ve been hanging around this woman Eugenia Lelo. And they know you were involved in that shooting at the McDonald’s.”

  At this first mention of that crime, the young m
an looked stunned, but he didn’t respond.

  DeHaven leaned closer, in a friendly way. “If you want, I can help you, make sure they take it easy on you. …”

  Shvidkoy scowled, but he seemed far less cocky. “I have nothing else to say,” he told the interpreter.

  DeHaven tried to resume the friendly music talk, but at the mention of the McDonald’s shooting, the suspect had totally withdrawn, like a turtle into his shell.

  Jack, watching, said, “I think we oughta give him some time to worry how much we’ve really got on him.”

  Tanney nodded and stepped out to retrieve Scott DeHaven.

  “Good job,” Cardulli told the young detective when he rejoined the group.

  Tanney nodded, impressed. “You’re really into this new music, huh?”

  DeHaven scoffed. “I did some undercover in a tag-team thing with Narcotics—somebody out here was running Ecstasy into a club in Chelsea. Personally, I think this techno shit is about as exciting as a StairMaster.”

  THE DETECTIVES WATCHED SHVIDKOY fidget in his chair. They decided to keep him waiting, let him get good and nervous.

  “You guys wanna order in some dinner?” Scott DeHaven said. “How about Chinese food?”

  Tanney shook his head. “I had Chinese for lunch.”

  “How about Indian?”

  Lieutenant Cardulli shook his head. “I don’t like spicy food.”

  “You can get Indian that’s not spicy. There’s this creamy sauce called korma. …”

  Jack couldn’t focus on the conversation. He remembered what he had told Kyle Driscoll about not taking the job personally. That wasn’t strictly true, of course: any detective worth his or her salt had cases—a child murder or a particularly brutal attack—that became an obsession. For the other detectives in the room, though, this wasn’t one of them. Some Russian guy had gotten popped on Neptune Avenue; catching his killer would improve the yearly crime stats. That was about it.

  But the case was twisting Jack’s guts. He kept trying to think a step ahead. If Shvidkoy finally talked, the next move would be to arrest Eugenia Lelo. It was only a matter of time … and then what?