The boy hurriedly undid the wrapping. His eyes grew wide.
World Championship Poker. Pavel's face erupted in joy. "Come," he said, pushing the chessboard aside. "Let's play."
"My little Einstein wants to play poker? Okay. We'll go best out of three. Then I get to sleep for about a week!" Nordeshenko pulled up a seat, recalling his great bluff back in New York, which seemed a lifetime ago. "And I've got quite a poker story for you, Pavel."
His feet felt like twice their normal size. "Just let me take off these shoes."
Chapter 81
FOR A WEEK straight I never left my apartment. I kept replaying the tape from Cavello's escape. The scene in the elevator. I even timed it-- exactly forty-seven seconds. I'd watch it over and over. Then I'd rewind it and play it again. And again. And again.
The phone would ring. My doctor checking up on me. My department head from school. The Bureau-- there was still an inquiry going on. And Andie-- she called my cell phone a couple of times.
Finally, I stopped picking up, even my cell. All I did was watch the tape. Each time it was the same. Cavello lunges out, hits the button. The two marshals try to rein him in. The doors open. In steps the guy with the beard, surprising them. No time to react. He takes out the marshals, flips Cavello the disguise. In a moment they're gone.
I focused on the guy with the beard. Zoomed in on his face. I tried to memorize every line, every feature. I kept running through the Homeland Security photo books I'd been given. I didn't know what I was looking for. But something. There had to be something.
Cavello was gone. Probably already out of the country by now. You could get aboard a freighter out of Newark or Baltimore; you could hop a private jet to some landing strip in Mexico, without filing a flight plan. Passports could be doctored.
I kept reminding myself I'd been an FBI officer for thirteen years. It had been my world, my life. The vows I took, to uphold the law-- these were sacred vows.
But something Andie said had got me thinking.
You can't make the world come out right just because you want it that way, she had whispered to me through the door.
Outside, darkness had fallen again. I took another swig of beer. I rewound the tape.
I remembered what I'd said back to her, through the door.
I can try.
Chapter 82
THE BUZZER RANG, startling me. I thought about just letting it go. Don't even move. Whoever it is, they'll go away. They always do. I took another sip of beer and let it go down slow.
The ringing continued. Insistent. Irritating. Then maddening.
"Nick. Come to the door. Don't be a poop." It was Andie.
Maybe I was ashamed to see her because I'd made promises that now seemed empty. Maybe I was afraid to cause her more pain, or drag her in, now that I'd made up my mind what I wanted to do.
The buzzing continued. "Nick, please. You're being a jerk."
Maybe because I knew if I opened that door, I wouldn't be able to close her out again. And maybe that scared me a little. Maybe it scared me a lot.
But she was sitting on that damn buzzer.
I paused the tape. Then I walked into the hallway. I stood for a moment in front of the door, still not sure what I was going to do. She buzzed again.
"Hey!" I called out, finally opening the latch. "I'm coming."
She was dressed in a green cowl-necked sweater over jeans. "You look awful," she said, staring at me.
"Thanks." I let her in. "How . . ." I started, but she cut me off.
"You look like you've been wearing the same clothes for a week, and a shave sure wouldn't hurt."
"How did you find me?"
She stepped into the apartment, her eyes surveying the place. "You think there's another Nicholas Pellisante who was shot and taken to Bellevue Hospital? You didn't return my calls."
"You'd make a good cop," I said, shuffling into the living room.
"You make a lousy friend."
"You're right. I'm sorry."
"Apology not accepted. This could be a nice apartment."
Andie took off her coat and scarf and draped them over a chair. I sat down against the padded arm of the couch.
"I went to the Bureau after I left the other day. I tried to put myself back on the case."
"Okay . . ."
"They told me I was out. Off the case. No way in hell I'd ever get back on."
Andie looked shocked. "Why?"
"Too emotional, they said. Too close. They'll hook me up with any case I want. Just not this one."
"That seems totally unfair. What are you going to do now?"
I looked up at her. Her molten eyes. The sweater, contracting and expanding with her breaths. "I don't really know, Andie."
"You know what?" She came over and stood in front of me. She cupped my face in her hands. "You are too emotional, Pellisante. You are too close."
She brushed a kiss against my cheek. Then my eyes, my lips. I pulled her in to me. Her mouth was soft and warm, and tasted delicious. This time she kissed me hard. My hand traveled under her sweater. Over her bra. Every nerve in my body was excited, on edge. The hairs on my neck were standing. Andie had very soft skin, very nice breasts.
She kissed me again, unbuttoning my shirt, popping a button. She ran her tongue across my shoulders and chest, licking along the edge of my wound. Then she yanked her sweater over her head. Was this a good idea? Did it matter? Not anymore it didn't.
I pulled her to the couch, undoing her pants. She grappled with my trousers, kissing me again, her thick hair falling all over my face.
"I think we need each other, Nick," she whispered, touching her lips to my cheek. "Whatever the reasons, it's just the way it is."
I slid out of my pants and back onto the couch, and I pulled her soft body onto mine. I was finally inside her, and it felt right. We started to move against each other, into each other, whatever.
"I'm not arguing. I'm glad you came."
"Not yet . . . but very soon."
Chapter 83
THE FIRST TIME, we made love like two starved people who couldn't get enough of each other, who hadn't been with anyone for a long time. Which happened to be the truth. It was sweaty and frantic, and at that slapping, breakneck pace, we couldn't hold back, and didn't. I think we both came at about the same time, locking hands, locking on each other's eyes, maybe already falling in love.
"Oh, Jeez." Andie collapsed into me, her hair damp with perspiration, her body drenched and spent. "That was long overdue, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," I said exhaling, agreeing, rolling onto my back. "Overdue."
The second time it was a lot more tender. We moved into the bedroom, with a bottle of Italian Prosecco on the night table, Tori Amos on the CD player. This time it was slow and much more romantic, at least my idea of romance. It was like slow dancing. We found this nearly perfect rhythm. Both of our bodies were slick with sweat. I loved it.
The third time, we went back at it like numero uno. Couldn't control ourselves. The hottest yet. Probably the best. I guess it was something we were dying to do for a long time.
The fourth . . .
All right, there was no fourth. We were too empty, too spent. We just lay there, coiled together in each other's arms. Andie's heart was racing against my chest. I loved that too.
"Don't get the wrong impression," she whispered. "I'm not that easy. I usually don't give it up until the second trial."
"Me either," I said, breathing heavily. "Unless we're unable to reach a conviction."
We stayed like that for a while, entwined and exhausted. It took all my remaining strength just to caress the curls of her hair with one finger.
"I meant what I said before, Nick," she whispered. "I know how much you want Cavello. And I know how much it hurts after what happened the other day. I know what it feels like having the thing you want most in the world taken from you."
"I know you do," I said, squeezing her tight.
"What I'm trying to sa
y is, I want whatever happens between us to be in spite of that, Nick. Okay?"
"Andie, I'm not going back to some bullshit job at the Bureau policing corporate tax returns. I can't. I'm gonna get Cavello. With their help or without. For you, for me . . . it doesn't matter. I can't be right until it's done, until it's over."
"And me?" She shrugged. "Am I wrapped up in that, too?"
"You?" I leaned on my elbow and smiled. "I think we're sort of wrapped up in each other right now."
"I'm serious," she said. "What happens now?"
"Now?" I didn't have an answer. I was a little scared by this incredible magnetism between us. In fact, I felt myself come alive again. All of a sudden we were at it again-- my hands massaging her, Andie making ever-descending circles with her nails just above my crotch.
"Now" --I rolled on top of her again-- “I guess we go for four."
Chapter 84
ANDIE AND I MADE LOVE a lot over the next couple of days. Four turned into seven, seven into ten, but neither of us was really counting, nothing as rational as that. A couple of times we even got dressed and went out in the neighborhood for a meal or some coffee. But all it took was a look. That look. And we'd rush back.
Maybe both of us just needed the thrill of feeling excited again. After our long, inward thaw, I couldn't take my hands off Andie. I couldn't wait to feel her body next to me, merged with me. I didn't want to be separated from her. Cavello could wait for a while, just this once. It was like the tap was wide open and the water kept pouring out. We both needed it. But the reprieve didn't last very long.
I hadn't checked my messages for days. When a call came in, we'd listen to the voice on the machine and pretend it was a million miles away.
Until this one call. The caller's voice froze me with surprise.
"Hey, Pellisante." The smirking Jersey accent was about the last one I expected to hear.
I spun over to the side of the bed and fumbled for the phone. "Frankie?"
"Nicky Smiles." Frank Delsavio acted as if he were talking to a long-lost friend. "You know that postcard I was talking about, from that mutual friend of ours?"
"I know who you're talking about, Frank."
"Well, wouldn't ya know, I got one after all. How 'bout that?"
I stood up. "Where is he, Frank?" It was more of a demand than a question.
"Where is he?" Delsavio chuckled, clearly finding amusement in twisting me on a string. "He's at the end of the earth, Nicky-boy! He told me to tell you that." The scumbag started laughing." That's what he said to say, ‘the end of the fucking earth, Nicky Smiles.' "
Maybe he knew. Maybe he knew I was out of the game--that I couldn't touch him, whatever he said or did. I clenched my fists and felt the blood surging through my veins.
"I told him you needed to know and it was urgent," Frank Delsavio said, still chuckling. "He told me to send you his regards. He said to make sure I said that-- those exact words. End of the earth. 'Come and get me, Nicky Smiles.' "
Part Three
THE EEL
Chapter 85
YOU NEVER QUITE KNOW when the breakthrough comes, that one, case-altering clue. Usually it's not an ahha! Just someone talking to someone else, rolling over to escape prison time. Sometimes it's one of those moments, though. A blur in a sky full of shining stars that all at once takes shape and becomes stunningly clear.
For me, that moment came while watching the courthouse tape. Those forty-seven seconds I'd been over so many times.
A buddy in C-10 kept me going with updates on the case for old times' sake. A female court employee named Monica Ann Romano had been found murdered the day after Cavello's escape, and they were looking into it. Her mother said she'd been seeing someone. She'd never met him--nor had Monica Ann's friends at work--but she knew he had an accent of some kind. The cops were thinking she may have been blackmailed into planting a gun inside the courthouse.
The getaway Bronco had been ripped apart for prints and DNA. The house where Denunziatta's sister had been killed turned up nothing. The neighborhood around Paterson, New Jersey, was being canvassed. Every toll camera on I-95 and the Jersey Turnpike was being reviewed.
It was the middle of the night when I found it. I hadn't been able to sleep.
I was at my desk on my computer, going through the courthouse tape for maybe the thousandth time. I had printed off the face of the guy with the beard to show to Ogilov, running over what leverage I could apply. Which was basically none.
I'd let the tape roll to the end. My eyes were growing heavy. It was after two in the morning. I needed a little sleep. I made a move to rewind.
Then suddenly, I stopped.
I blinked. It was a eureka sensation, as though I'd just found a cure for cancer or a deadly virus. There it was.
I leaned forward, panning in with the remote on the accomplice with the beard. But not his face this time --or the gun or his watch-- things that were already burned into my memory.
On the sonovabitch's shoes.
I pressed the remote, zooming in on the shoes. I was wide-eyed now. There was a distinct rubber logo above the heel.
Some kind of circle-- with a wavy line bisecting it.
Jesus, Nick! Why hadn't I seen this before?
I knew those shoes.
My chest started to pound. Three years before I had made a special trip to the Middle East, to train inspectors.
The shoes were Israeli-made. For the Israeli Army. For extra support.
I had even worn them when I was there.
Chapter 86
CAVELLO'S ACCOMPLICE had to be Israeli. I actually had something.
The frustration of losing that black Bronco was fading away.
It was almost morning. It took another cup of strong coffee to keep me focused, but I started going back through the books of terror suspects I had gotten from Homeland Security. I felt I had something to fix on. The needle in the haystack had just gotten a bit larger. Most faces appeared to be Middle Eastern, but I leafed past those. I was looking for a European. I had an approximate height and weight.
Three o'clock turned into three thirty. Then four. There were books and books of faces to scan through. Hundreds. Pakistanis, Basque separatists, al Qaeda sympathizers, FALN. IRA. All were on some kind of terror-watch radar. All had been thought to be in the country at some time. Many had explosives knowledge. Four started to bump up to five. I never even noticed when the first rays of light hit my window.
Then something made me stop. I came upon someone else. Maybe I'd passed him before. Maybe I'd passed the face a dozen times.
The man had short brown-gray hair and Slavic features, serious, slate-gray eyes.
Russian--and that wasn't all that interested me.
He was an ex-member of the Spetsnaz Brigade. Army Special Forces. He'd been stationed in Chechnya. In 1997 he went AWOL. For a long time he had simply disappeared. He was thought to have gone over to the rebel side.
Remlikov. Kolya.
I pulled out the file.
He'd been implicated in several Mafia-type slayings throughout Russia and Europe. A corrupt police inspector in St. Petersburg. A testifying gangster in Moscow. He was also being sought for questioning in the very public killing of a Venezuelan oil minister a year ago in Paris.
But what really stopped me wasn't just his résumé. Which had promise. Or even those brooding, dark eyes.
It was that he'd been wounded-- in Chechnya. His right leg had been struck by shrapnel from an exploding grenade. He was thought to still walk with a slight limp.
I was thinking about those shoes.
I put the small file photo close to the screen, side by side against a frame from the courthouse tape.
Holy shit! It was a long shot, but it just could be.
I glanced at the clock. It was already after five. Nothing was going to happen here, but that meant it was lunchtime halfway around the world.
I opened my desk and leafed through packets of business cards I had held
together with rubber bands. I had a number, somewhere, for the antiterror desk at the Russian Security Service in Moscow. I'd used it when we wanted to extradite a contract killer who had worked for the Russian mob and had fled back home. I frantically searched through my files and found it. Lt. Yuri Plakhov. Federal Security Service. FSS. I dialed the thirteen-digit European number. I was praying to find him at his desk. It was a prayer answered when I heard his voice.
"Plakhov, vot."
"Yuri, hello. You may remember me." I reintroduced myself, reminding the Russian official who I was. It was a bonus to be able to keep this call this far away from the Bureau.
"Sure I recall you, Inspector." Yuri Plakhov's English was well practiced and colloquial. "We tracked down that mafioso of yours. Federev, right?"
"Good memory, Yuri," I congratulated him. "Now I need you to run someone else through your files." I read him off the name.
"Rem-li-kov?" He stretched it out. "Rings a bell." I gave him a moment while he punched it in. "A little early back there, is it not, Inspector?"
"Yes," I answered quickly, not into small talk. "It is."
"Here it is, Inspector. Remlikov, Kolya. Wanted in questioning with several murders throughout Russia and Europe. Quite a dossier. Among his credits, he's suspected of taking part in bringing down an entire apartment building in Volgodonsk, in which a government official resided. Twenty-four people were killed."
My adrenaline was pumping. "How do I find this man, Yuri?"
"I'm afraid I'm unable to give you his mobile number, Inspector." Plakhov chuckled. "It's clear here he's used several aliases and passports. Estonian, Bulgarian. Names of Kristich. Danilov. Mastarch. We think he was in Paris last year, when that Venezuelan oil minister was killed. The trail is very gray. I doubt he is in Russia. It says he is known here, Inspector, as the eh-oop, the Eel. Very slippery, yes? I can send a facsimile of his fingerprints, if you like."