‘What about positive connections with Russia?’ asked Danilov.
He saw Bradley’s shoulders go up and down in a shrug. ‘Organised connections, we don’t know. Never come across a trail so far. But everyone at Brighton Beach’s got family in the old country.’ He stretched backwards, offering a folder. ‘Guess you probably got them already, but there’s our sheets on Chebrakin, Chestnoy and Rimyans. Mug shots, too. All we’ve got on your fourth guy, Valentin Yashev, is a suspect file, and we’re not sure if the photograph really is him: it came from an informer who probably wanted the twenty bucks to score a coke bag. Yashev’s supposed to be an enforcer, heavily into extortion: muscle right up through to the top of his head.’
‘A man who would kill if he were told,’ said Slowen, thoughtlessly.
‘Shit, man!’ exclaimed Bradley. ‘All these guys will kill, sometimes just if they feel like it. You know what Chebrakin said when he was questioned… questioned by some dumb fuck who hadn’t read him his Miranda Rights, so we couldn’t produce it at the trial…? He said he shot this liquor store owner because the man had waved him away dismissively. Not shown the proper respect. From that, some motherfucker defence lawyer made a case for self defence manslaughter, can you believe! What it was was Chebrakin sticking a thirty-eight in the poor bastard’s face and pulling the trigger because he hadn’t paid his dues.’
‘Was that how he was killed, shot in the face?’ seized Danilov at once.
‘Sorry,’ apologised Bradley. ‘Just a way of talking: it was actually a body wound.’
‘Is there any ritual, about the way they do kill?’ asked Cowley.
Bradley’s eyes came up in the rear-view mirror again. ‘We’ve asked around about mouth shots. No one’s come across that before, not among the Russians. Looks like a first.’
‘I ran the same check with the same result,’ said Slowen. ‘None of our people had come across it outside the Sicilian or American Mafias.’
Bradley came into Brighton Beach from the north, driving parallel with the ocean. Danilov saw that boardwalk meant exactly what it was, a very practical planked thoroughfare stretching out over the seafront from which sand could easily be swept between the palings. A lot of advertisements and cafe and shop names fronting the water had the word ‘Moscow’ in them.
‘Welcome to Little Odessa!’ said Bradley.
‘Odessa’s in the Ukraine,’ said Cowley.
‘Give the man a present from the back shelf!’ said Bradley. ‘That’s where most of these immigrants come from: more Ukrainians than any other ethnic group.’
Bradley hefted the police emergency globe back on to the dashboard, and halted the car beneath a sign prohibiting parking on Brighton Beach Avenue. He got awkwardly from the vehicle, slowed by his bulk, and said: ‘Let’s go hear the word.’
There was an alley from the avenue, leading to the boardwalk. A black in jeans and basketball shoes was leaning against a wall at the far end. When they got closer, Danilov saw the T-shirt slogan read ‘Jesus for President’. Bradley hesitated, leaving the contact to the other man, who shrugged and came up to them immediately.
‘There ain’t no secrets here,’ he said. ‘I might as well be in uniform in a black-and-white with the siren going.’
Bradley introduced him all around, just as Wilkes, before saying: ‘Well?’
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ said Wilkes. ‘No-one knows nothing about nothing. The last address we had for Chebrakin is a no-call. It’s over a laundry: was two rooms that were let up until a year ago. Now it’s the laundry store-room. Full of washing powders and ironing flats and shit like that.’
‘Shown the pictures around?’ pressed the lieutenant.
The black detective nodded. ‘Covered all the bars for three streets back from here: few on the side as well. Brought in the entire night shift last night and four guys today. Zilch…’ He smiled towards Cowley and Danilov. ‘You guys shouldn’t have bothered to leave home.’
Cowley said to Bradley: ‘What about regular informers?’
It was Wilkes who responded, nodding seriously. ‘Your guys are here somewhere. One or two of them, at least. I know that because of what we’re not getting. The word’s out, OK? By now there should have been something coming back, even if it was bullshit: guys trying to rip us off for a few bucks. It happens every time we raise a red flag, promising reward for results. This time we got nothing. Which tells me our snitches know they’re going to get their peckers nailed to that boardwalk over there if they even so much as acknowledge the existence of the people you want.’
Cowley sighed. ‘Somehow I wish you hadn’t told me that.’
‘What do you want to do?’ asked Bradley.
Cowley wished he knew: he’d hoped the local PD would have had leads, things to follow up, by the time they arrived. He looked at Danilov.
‘Let’s start with the laundry,’ suggested the Russian.
Just he and Cowley went, the others going with Wilkes to meet Brooklyn detectives still on the streets.
Both men in the laundry were wearing Jewish yarmulkes; one was much older than the other, and Danilov guessed they were father and son. When they produced the photograph of Chestnoy the younger man said someone had already asked and they didn’t know where the man was: they hadn’t seen him for more than a year. The older man continued working at the steam-press, wisped in white mist. He started, visibly, when Danilov repeated the enquiry directly at him in Russian – the younger one looked surprised, too – but repeated his son’s denial, in that language. When Cowley, also in Russian, asked about redirected mail, the younger man said Chestnoy’s mail had stopped, months before. When there had been some, the man had called to collect it, not given a forwarding address. They didn’t know any magazine or periodical to which he had subscribed when he had lived there; they didn’t know any of his friends or any of his favourite places in Brighton Beach, either. They also didn’t know if he’d had a girlfriend or a wife. He’d never paid his rent by cheque, always cash, so they didn’t know which bank he used, if any. There hadn’t been a telephone connected upstairs and he’d never asked to use theirs, so they hadn’t overheard any conversations.
Danilov and Cowley accepted the offer to look at where Chestnoy had once lived. Danilov went determinedly through both rooms, looking for anything that might have been left behind, even scanning the walls and scattered newspapers on the floor, upon which the man might have written a reminder note or a telephone number. He got dirty and dusty doing it, and found nothing.
They worked their way shop by shop, bar by bar, cafe by cafe along the boardwalk and then moved back into adjoining and parallel streets, constantly speaking Russian, which did not always work: sometimes people replied in Ukrainian, which neither Cowley nor Danilov spoke. It was well past lunchtime when they stopped at the Moscow restaurant, fronting the sea, and had borscht and boiled sturgeon. Danilov insisted on paying. They delayed their questioning here until they’d finished eating. No-one admitted ever having met or known Yuri Chestnoy or anyone else on their list.
The FBI local supervisor and the Brooklyn detectives were waiting at the pre-arranged rendezvous, the alley where they’d met Wilkes, when Cowley and Danilov returned in mid-afternoon.
‘None of my guys came up with anything,’ reported Wilkes.
‘I’ll buy the beer,’ announced Cowley, nodding back along the avenue towards a bar adorned with less graffiti than any of the surrounding buildings. No-one protested they couldn’t drink on duty. Everyone did order beer except Bradley, who asked for Black Label scotch, and Cowley, who hesitated and had soda with a lime wedge.
‘You know the heat there is on this,’ Cowley reminded, gazing around the table. ‘We’re at government-to-government level, questions being asked for which a lot of important people want answers that make sense. So far…’ he nodded sideways, towards Danilov, ‘… we have not been doing very well providing them. I don’t want to go back to Washington to tell the Director in person that people we want very much to talk to – people whose names were listed by a murdered Russian diplomat – are somewhere here in Brighton Beach but we can’t find them. I want the entire population of this little town to think the pogroms of Stalin and the Nazi invasion have started all over again, in tandem. I’ll get as many extra men as are necessary drafted in and I’ll have the Director personally tell your department the Bureau will pick up the tab for all the overtime. I don’t want a dealer selling a dime bag to any screaming addict. I don’t want a bet placed on a number or a horse or anything else. I don’t want a hooker turning a single trick. If a seagull shits on the boardwalk, I want it arrested and charged. I want Brighton Beach to be squeezed dry and I want it known why it’s being squeezed dry…’ He looked at Wilkes. ‘Tell your snitches and tell them to tell everyone else: Brighton Beach is out of business and out of bounds until we get a steer towards Chebrakin or Chestnoy or Rimyans or Yashev. Everyone sweats until I get cool. OK?’