Fanatics (16 page)

7:04 P.M.

The Chechens' safe house in Rockaway was a one-floor prefab a block from the beach but without an ocean view, less than a thirty-minute drive from the apartment in Brighton Beach, and just over the border in the Borough of Queens, directly under the flight path of almost every transatlantic flight landing at John F. Kennedy airport.

The noise bothered the Chechens far more than what felt like arctic winds blasting in off the ocean. They were used to cold.

“Lovely sea breezes. They'll be blowing fucking shingles off the roof.”

“The surf here, it's too rough. Brighton was better. Nowhere good to eat either, just Irish bars.”

“They don't know borscht from beer, these Irish.”

The safe house was a summer bungalow rented cheap for the off-season, all cash up front from someone whose real name the owner would never know. Neither would the Chechens. The keys to the bungalow came with the Mercedes, the car now parked down the street well away from the house but within sight of the kitchen window.

The year-round residents on this quiet, isolated, windswept spit of sand and asphalt were Irish American for the most part and the nearest bar a few minutes' walk from the bungalow…McDonough's Grill.

Ben and Lenny made this walk on their first night in the safe house, after exploring in fading light and sudden snowfall the small neighborhood on the peninsula, an almost suburban retreat pounded by Atlantic waters on two sides and linked by a neck of land and the Cross Bay bridge to the rest of the Borough of Queens.

“It's fucking gorgeous in here” was Lenny's opinion of McDonough's when first setting foot in the bar. “Warm as a tsarina's ass tossing with Kremlin guards.”

Ivan and Vlad waited back at the house for their turn in the bar and grill. The security drill forbade the four going outside the house together except to perform a mission.

Above the bar's cash register, set between two long mirrors and under an old Budweiser sign of flashing lights, were photographs of John and Robert Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. The Chechens found these amusing. “Like Putin and the Patriarch, same fucking difference.”

A clutch of drinkers were gathered with the bartender at the other end of the bar watching the kickoff of a college football game. American-style football baffled the Chechens. “Like a dumb video game.”

They ordered four cheeseburgers, a bag of potato chips, two bottles of Guinness, and two shots of cold vodka.

“No cold vodka,” the bartender said.

This was even stranger than American football. “Okay, then with ice. Doubles.”

While they ate and drank, Lenny drew a rough sketch of the Rockaway quarter they'd just explored. “Apart from this bar,” he said in a low voice, “it's a total piece of shit here. Whoever picked this place should have his fucking brains knocked out. One lousy bridge, a boardwalk, water here, water there, and only a few narrow streets leading out of the place. Like rats, if we get discovered.”

“C'mon, drink up. Eat up. Wait for his fucking lordship Paul, he'll know what to do. No one's finding us here, long as we don't go walking bare-assed down the road and singing Russian psalms.”

“A whole week? They're not imbeciles looking for us, they won't be lying around with their thumbs up their asses. We ought to be out of here by now. It's not like we got a fucking armory in that shack.”

Two rifles. Two Glocks. Eight grenades. All under the floorboards in a bedroom closet.

“Christ, what do they see in that fucking game up there?” Ben poked his chin in the general direction of the TV and the crowd at the end of the bar. “These players, all dressed up like fucking robots, they run around less than a minute and then they have to rest and catch a breath. And all those ads. They call it a sport? Sometimes you really got to wonder about Yanks.”

“Drink up for fuck's sake, don't let 'em hear you.”

“They don't understand what we're saying.”

“They get your tone, your attitude.”

7:52 A.M.

A Bentley Mulsanne black sedan was parked outside the sagging brownstone building where Mrs. Kitty Smith lived.

A uniformed chauffeur sat waiting behind the wheel, an unusual, even startling sight at any time of day in this depressed corner of Brooklyn.

Detective Lieutenant Florence Ott's driver parked behind the Bentley. Flo eyed the luxury car warily. She was curious and cautious but could discern no danger, and she was in a hurry to extend her sympathies to Mrs. Smith before getting back to Cecil King.

She rang the ground floor apartment's bell. At once the door opened and an elderly woman in a black veil popped her head out, but it wasn't Mrs. Smith.

Far more quickly than Flo's early-morning state of mind would let her move, the woman grabbed Flo's arm and pulled her inside.

“God's comfort to you,” the old woman said quickly. “Not as the world knows peace today but as only He knows. I give you His peace and comfort, daughter. You're the police detective, I can tell. Come in, dear, follow me.”

Flo was startled as much by what the old woman was saying as by her appearance. Her face, dark brown and as wrinkled as elephant hide, was framed by a black cotton shawl with white trim almost like an old-fashioned nun's habit but without the starchy white accessories, an appearance remarkably reminiscent of the sainted Mother Teresa. The old woman's voice had the lilt of the Caribbean islands.

“I'm Mother Gloria,” she said. “Kitty told me all about you and I'm here to help you both.”

Before Flo could respond, and as if Mother Gloria already knew all the answers, the seer gripped Flo's arm and steered her into Kitty Smith's bedroom. Mrs. Smith was sitting up in bed, teacup in hand, her eyes ringed red from weeping.

“Good morning, Captain,” Mrs. Smith said. “Thank you for coming, now please sit down. We can finally find out what's really going on, just like I told you. And we can pray for my boys' souls. It won't take long. Will it, Mother?”

The wrinkled woman in the shawl shook her head and squeezed Flo's arm as if to reassure her,
No, it wouldn't take long
.

Next to Kitty Smith's bed were two folding chairs, a card table and, on the table, a teapot and two cups. Hesitantly, like an intruder or an apostate returning to the fold after many years and now uncertain of welcome, Flo slid into the chair facing Mother Gloria and Mrs. Smith.

This wasn't at all what she was expecting. So many fortunes heard before, in high school and at college party games, teenage teasing over cards on drizzly summer afternoons at the Breezy Point Surf Club, but still the fascination was always there, and Flo could have almost half-believed, if only during those long-ago moments, trusted in a trip far away, a tall handsome stranger, a phone call with fabulous news. Once a college friend high on illicit substances had looked at Flo's hand and refused to say anything at all—just to scare the hell out of her—and she felt this silence might have brushed closer to truth than anything spoken.

“See?” Mrs. Smith said. “I told you, Captain. Nothing but the truth. And I lost both my children in the worst way. I know exactly what I'm talking about. You listen up here, 'cause you got to stop all this killing going on. And Mother Gloria, you do your reading now, you tell her everything, no matter what those leaves and spirits say.”

Mother Gloria nodded. “It's hard, you know, it's very hard…” She swished tea around in a cup, emptied the cup into the other cup, and examined the leaves. “This is a public service. I come over as soon as Mrs. Smith called me. So much tragedy, it's the least I could do. But listen,” she whispered hurriedly. “I know what you're really looking for, Captain. But I can't talk details in front of this poor woman, she's suffered enough already. You want her son's killers before they kill the new senator, that right?”

Right and obvious.
Flo nodded.

“Go back now, Captain. They're not half as smart as they think they are. How could they mistake her son for the senator? No, you don't have to answer that. I will. They couldn't tell one of us colored people from the other, that's how stupid they are. It's simple. And if they're that stupid, they leave traces. Go back and you'll find something. They swear they'll do it again, right? I know, I read their website. And I saw our dumb mayor on TV. That one, he's a liar and even worse. I don't like him. He has the evil eye and that
is
the worst, almost impossible to defend yourself against the evil eye. And he went right out there on TV and mentioned your name. Even I heard it. So they must have certainly heard. And they understand. This means they might have to get you, too. That's exactly how they think, you know. And if they get you, they can get anyone. A senator, a president, anyone…”

“Is that your limousine out there?” Flo said.

“And chauffeur. You need a lift?”

“No, but I have to go now.”

“Me too.”

They paid their respects to Mrs. Smith and repeated their condolences, and when they were outside on the sidewalk, Mother Gloria said, “My car's too fancy, I know, but my Wall Street clients expect it, otherwise they think my advice won't be good enough if I'm not right up there with them. Now God bless you, Captain, may His peace be your comfort.”

The chauffeur held the Bentley's door open for Mother Gloria and Flo got into her NYPD car.

“The senator's place,” Flo said to her patrolman driver. “Eastern Parkway.”

And as they drove off she could hear the echo of Mother Gloria's voice…
This means they might have to get you, too. That's exactly how they think.

The warning may have sounded like prophecy, but to Flo's mind it was a dreadfully obvious conclusion.

8:42 A.M.

Zanonovich returned from his early-morning exploration of Brooklyn Heights and sat at the kitchen table in his safe apartment.

He spread out a map of Brooklyn and Queens. He would have to decide his next moves now. The dead were his least dangerous opponents and a cemetery the safest place to put a Lieutenant Florence Ott, NYPD. He would send her there.

He also knew from experience that, apart from bumbling Chechens, he was now on his own. The organization could communicate only so much to him. How he completed his job, how he stayed alive and free, was entirely his business. There were sufficient arms caches and he knew where the weapons were. The Chechens would wait for his next orders, certainly if they wanted the last installment on their fee. They had a week to complete the assignment and get out of this country.

But the detective Florence Ott, she was an obstacle.

Zanonovich considered the risk, getting lured by the lieutenant into a meeting versus bestowing least dangerous opponent status on this obstacle, assuming she was the brains behind the police scam. She was obviously ambitious, no doubt the mayor's pet, hence the on-air plug. A half widow, her husband incapacitated, a man out of her way. Her daughter off at college. No other Ott offspring listed as supporters, not on the Families of Paraplegic Veterans site. Lieutenant Florence Ott, Zanonovich surmised, lived alone in her place on Eleventh Street, where perhaps she had a cat, no time for a dog, not with the police hours she had to keep.

But a woman
. Tricked by a woman: the thought galled. He may have been mistaken about her prowess, her omniscience, her planning, but the mistake was as good as reality to his increasingly desperate mind. A woman shrewd enough to send in a black man as decoy. He had to give her high marks for that ploy, he had to respect the ruthlessness of her daring.
And how had she known?
She couldn't possibly have pinpointed that specific location. The dumb stooge she put on those school steps must have appeared somewhere else before, substituting for the target, but Zanonovich and the Chechens hadn't been scouting elsewhere. There was no time then and no time now. Never discount the value of luck: Zanonovich had faith in fortune, good or bad, and he tried to prepare for the bad. He'd also learned that from experience. That was why he was in this dusty old apartment with the fallback weapons. And why arms caches were in Brooklyn and Queens.

No, he was sure there couldn't have been too many with Lieutenant Ott's brains and talents on the New York police force, not from what he'd seen of their performance.

After all, they'd let him just about stroll away from that job back in April, in Washington Square, the ACLU president, a single round through the middle of her forehead sending the back of her skull smithereening across the park's chess tables. Judging from the breathtaking ineptitude of the New York police that time, one might have almost thought he'd actually done them an invaluable favor.

No…
the police in this city could ill afford to lose someone with the lieutenant's obvious capabilities. Taking Florence Ott out of action could have a highly salutary effect on their ability to perform at all.

Destroy your enemy…

Totally.

Zanonovich removed the rifle from under the sink, examined its parts, assembled the weapon and mounted the scope.

He moved to a back window and, with the business end of the rifle, parted the curtains not more than an inch. Standing back in the shadows, he raised the rifle and aimed at a window one floor below his and across the backyards. A young woman was seated at a computer, still in her bathrobe. A faded red bathrobe. Her head and neck filled the frame of the rifle sight. She had a pierced ear, double-studded gold earrings, and on her neck right below her jawbone a small mole. And that nose, what a hook, a veritable scimitar, she was incontestably the genuine article. A perfect specimen of Professor McLaughlin's invasive
bêtes noires
. At this distance, perhaps fifty yards at a downward angle, Zanonovich felt confident he could have sent a round spinning straight through the window and into the young woman's mole, exploding her neck and splattering her larynx and jugular vein right across that computer screen.

So far, so good…

8:51 A.M.

“It's Marty, Flo, for you.”

Frank Murphy passed his cell to Flo Ott. They were at the kitchen table in Cecil King's apartment, drinking coffee with the senator-elect.

“Flo,” detective Sergeant Marty Keane said, “we got some more positive IDs on the green van. And maybe the driver—”

“Where are you?”

“Gallagher's bar. Seventh Avenue and Prospect Expressway. The bartender, Frankie Carr, saw the van. But not that day. Before. Can you meet me?”

“I'm right over.”

9:20 A.M
.

The bar was just opening for business, and Flo found the ineradicable smells—stale beer, stale sweat, stale dreams—the entire atmosphere simply too bathetic.

But she'd learned that bars, gin joints like Gallagher's in Brooklyn and Hernando's up in Washington Heights, attracted killers like flies to rotting flesh. Bars were an unavoidable part of her beat.

Marty Keane and the bartender were at the far end, Marty sipping a glass of ginger ale and taking notes.

Flo regarded the bartender, a wiry, intense little man pensively chewing on Tums and answering Marty's questions in a half whisper. In front of him on the bar, the
Daily News,
and she could discern the tabloid's front-page headline: “
New Threat, Aryan Killers Still Loose.”

Subheads: “
20 Vows, 20 Victims Pages 3, 4, 5…Secret Witnesses or Cops Snookered?”
And a photo of the glowering mayor and his pugnacious police commissioner.

“Would you run through it again for Lieutenant Ott?” Marty Keane asked the bartender.

“Pleasure,” Frankie Carr said. “Whatever I can do for you.”

“Start with them,” Marty said.

“Right, the foreign guys. Four of them, vodka drinkers, stick to themselves. Nothing unusual, mind you, not around here.”

Flo said, “What about them?”

“I didn't think nothing about them, not until I seen the papers about the green van. They had one. And then the school blows up, 107, and I don't see them no more. And then a cop comes in here almost right after, asking me about a green van. And that's about it, I guess. You think they did it? You figure it's these crazy assassin characters running around killing everywhere? Scares the hell out of me now, I can tell you, them coming in here and I didn't suspect nothing. But there was nothing unusual about these guys, you see, not in here.” Frankie Carr slipped a fresh Tums into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “You know, only one thing funny, they talked about the beach and going swimming now this time of year. I says whereabouts, and they say Brighton, I ought to try it there, they say the cold water out at Brighton is very healthy for you.”

10:24 A.M.

Checking out a third Russian café in Brighton Beach, Flo Ott and Frank Murphy got a response from a bartender.

“They talk Russian, yeah, but with Chechen accent. Their super don't like them.”

“Who's she?”

“Lara. Lives back there.”

Back there was a block from the boardwalk.

10:33 A.M.

Flo rang the superintendent's bell.

A woman of indeterminate age, certainly not young, opened the vestibule door. She was overweight and wheezing heavily, a cigarette between her yellow-stained fingers, a half inch of ash threatening to drop on her faded blue quilted housecoat. She gave the detectives a sharp assessor's once-over, eyes squinting through curling smoke.

“Yeah?” Lara said.

Frank produced his detective's shield. “We're from homicide.”

“So? Who you looking for? Not me, I hope.”

“Some tenants, maybe Russians, maybe Chechens.”

“We're almost all Russians around here, always. Chechens, they're different. We don't like them. Look, c'mon in, it's freezing out here. Lousy landlord won't put no radiators in the vestibule. Chintziest bastard I ever know, swear to God.”