Forgotten in Death(80)

“That’s handling,” Peabody insisted, “and that’s keeping Tovinski alive, that’s nailing down justice for Alva and Delgato. That’s a fucking win.”

“Well.” The fire in Peabody’s eyes burned away the weight on Eve’s shoulders. “I’ll return the wow.”

“Fucking A!”

“Do me a solid and write it up. I want a copy in the case file I left on your desk and another for the unidentified remains. Then contact Bolton Singer and let him know his site’s clear.”

“Got it. He was telling the truth about the sanctity of pregnant women. Or he doesn’t remember making an exception in this case.”

“Oh, he’d remember. Whoever she was, however she ended up behind that wall, it wasn’t on his orders.”

When she stepped back into the bullpen, she caught Jenkinson’s long stare. Despite the tie, she walked to his desk. “Do you figure I can’t hold my own with an eightysomething-year-old gangster, Detective?”

“You hold your own, LT. Some of us are old enough to remember when Yuri Bardov wouldn’t have shown his face in a cop shop unless he was in cuffs.”

Jenkinson looked around the detectives’ bullpen. “Well, one of us is old enough.”

“Did you ever tangle with him?”

“Not directly. When I was still in uniform, back when you were still in diapers, I had a weasel. An asshole, liked to play big shot, but he had his ear to the street. So he tells me he’s hearing about a big one coming up. Weapons deal. Now, back then, Bardov was all over the weapons trade, had a pipeline going up and down 95. Weasel says he’s got a meet on it and he’ll pass on what he gets, how it’s going to cost me big. Next day, he’s floating in the East River, throat slit with a dead rat tied around it.

“Guy was an asshole.”

“But he was your asshole.”

“Yeah. His hands look clean, Dallas. They ain’t. Never have been.”

“No question of that. What’s his deal with women and kids?”

“Never touched the sex trade. Word was he felt it was beneath him. Gunrunning, cybercrime, booze, the protection racket, all that, but no sex trade and no kiddie porn or exploitation.”

“Okay, so he’s got a code, or a line he won’t cross.”

“You could say,” Jenkinson agreed. “I remember—my gold shield’s still shiny—there was a task force working on a child porno ring. Getting close, that was the buzz. Before they nailed it down, every one of the ringmasters ended up dead.

“Organized hits,” Jenkinson said, “coordinated, professional hits. It had Bardov all over it, Loo. Couldn’t pin it on him.”

Now he shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t try so hard.”

Jenkinson gave her that long stare again. “You would’ve. You don’t have to mourn the fucking perverts to do the job. Are you looking at him for something?”

“He doesn’t fit. Pregnant woman, shot, maybe thirty-five to forty years ago, as yet unidentified. Walled up in the wine cellar of an old building—old restaurant.”

“The other Hudson Yards case. Yeah, I heard some of it.”

Absently, he fiddled with his tie. Eve’s eyeballs vibrated.

“Not going to be Bardov. Not a pregnant woman. The bastard has a code, like you said. And he loves kids. Doesn’t put a fucking halo on him, but he loves kids.”

“He’s got four.” Eve reached back to the backgrounds she’d run. “Two of each, and no criminal on any of them—or their kids. No connections I found to his organization.”

“Wouldn’t be any. The story goes he fell for this Russian girl—like a friend of a cousin—and fell hard. He was already taking over—who the hell was it?—Smirnoff—like the vodka—Smirnoff’s territory. Had a rep, wasn’t afraid of doing his own wet work. This is before my time. I ain’t that old.”

“He’s been married close to sixty years,” Eve pointed out. “That puts you in the diapers.”

He smirked. “Yeah, well. Story is, she laid down conditions to marry him. He kept the business outside the home, and when they had kids none of them would be part of it. She wouldn’t interfere in his business, but she didn’t want it in the home, didn’t want it passed to their kids. So that’s how it is.”

“Not her kids,” Eve noted, “but her nephew. This is good to know, Jenkinson.”

“He may not like putting a target on women, but you being a cop changes that. Cop’s first.”

“He’s got no reason to put a target on me. Yet.”

She walked over to Peabody’s desk. “When you’re finished, have the files picked up. Then go home. Or wherever.”

“We had a good day, Dallas. Are you heading out?”

“Just about.”

One more thing, Eve thought as she went to her office, sat down at her desk. One more.

She contacted the police department in Moses, Oklahoma.

“Moses Police Department, how can I assist you?”

“This is Lieutenant Dallas, New York Police and Security Department. I need to speak with Chief Wicker.”

“All the way from New York?” The man on-screen looked more like a cowboy than a cop to Eve’s eye. Ruddy face, faded blue eyes, crooked smile, and sun-bleached hair. “Can I tell the chief what this is about?”