© 2003

It took me a long time to get this story on paper and I owe several people for getting me back on track. First, the people at Warner and Mysterious Press: Kristen Weber; and Harvey-Jane Kowal for her infinite patience with my odd cop lingo; and especially Sara Ann Freed whose encouragement and belief meant everything. To Peter Grinenko, a great friend since our days in the NYPD's Auto Crime Division, who guided me through the back streets of Brighton Beach. His knowledge and insight into Russian Organized Crime were invaluable. To my daughters, Brenda and Pat, who were die kind of hilarious rugrats whose wacky exploits provide die heart and joy. Finally, my wife, Nancy, who reads each book more times than anyone should have to read anything, for being crazy enough to live with a cop who became a writer.

Monday, April 6, 1998

7:25 A.M.

The sins of Eddie Dunne's past returned on a cold morning in April, more than four years after he'd turned his life around. The fifty-four-year-old ex-boxer and former cop was walking his granddaughter to school when he spotted a black BMW moving slowly behind them. Every few yards, it swung in behind parked cars and waited while Eddie and Grace strolled a few steps farther down the steep incline of Roberts Avenue. But the driver was far too anxious, twice creeping to within a block of them. Close enough for Eddie to hear the engine tick. Eddie Dunne knew an amateur tail job when he saw one.

"Knock, knock," Grace said. His granddaughter was in the middle of her favorite joke, a long, strung-out knock-knock joke. The longer she could string it out, the funnier it became. Everything is hilarious to a six-year-old.

"Who's there?" Eddie said.

"Banana," she said.

Eddie stared straight ahead, following the car's reflection in store windows. The BMW wasn't a total surprise.

Lately, he'd spotted other strange cars skulking through the shadows of his neighborhood. It could be anybody in that car, he thought: jilted lovers, vengeful bartenders, screwed bookmakers, Russian thugs, or cops. It didn't matter. They'd all be looking for someone he used to be.

"Granpop," Grace yelled, her eyes teary with laughter. "I said 'Banana.'"

"Banana who?"

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Banana," she said for the fifth time in a row.

Eddie turned up North Broadway toward Christ the King elementary school, climbing another Yonkers hill in a city of hills, where nothing was on the level. He held on tight to Grace's hand. He knew that by the end of this joke she'd be laughing so hard, he'd have to hold her or she'd fall to the ground.

"Banana who?" he said.

"Knock, knock," she said, trailing off in a fit of giggling.

All his instincts told him a cop, someone new to the art of tailing, was driving the BMW. Eddie knew how cops worked. Before the bottom fell out of his life, he'd spent eighteen years in some of the best detective squads in the NYPD. After that came a blur of alcohol-drenched years as courier, chauffeur, and bodyguard for a Russian businessman, whom the FBI considered a crime lord. Lately, he'd heard rumors that the Justice Department had declared war on the Russian mob. The odds said this was about the Russians.

Grace squeezed his hand, prompting him to say his line.

"Who's there?" he said.

"Banana," she said as they cut across the wet grass of the school yard.

He hoped it wasn't the FBI. Feds were the worst. They started working you on the word of a paid informant, some skell who'd been selling them a line of shit about you just to stay on the government gravy train. The agents then fed the story to their supervisor, some guy from Horseshit, Nebraska, who thought he was sitting on the next French Connection. They'd wind up spending too many man-hours on you, and they'd get nervous. They needed to show results. Feds only knew one result: your name on an indictment. And they always found something. The trick was to stop them before they got their claws into you. No matter who was driving the BMW, he had to put an immediate kibosh on their grand plan.

"Say your part, Granpop," Grace said as she skipped up the steps to the school's blacktopped playground. Eddie took one last glance back. The car hadn't followed them onto North Broadway, but he knew it wasn't gone.

"Okay, here we are, babe," he said. "All your pals are waiting for you."

"First say, 'Banana who?'"

"Banana who?"

"Knock, knock," she said, now laughing so hard, her nose began to run.

"Who's there?" he said.

"Orange."

"Orange who?" he said, knowing the punch line had finally arrived.

"Orange you glad I didn't say banana?" she said, bending over and laughing so hard, she went limp and her backpack slipped down her shoulders. She let it fall to the ground, because that seemed to make the joke funnier than it had been yesterday or the day before. Eddie picked up the heavy backpack.

"I laughed my backpack off, Granpop," she said.

"What have you got in here, a case of beer?" he said, but it was a mistake, because that ignited the laughing again. Eddie didn't understand why this little girl thought he was so funny, or why she loved him so unconditionally. God knows, he didn't deserve it. He knelt down, took a tissue from his pocket, and attacked her runny nose. He'd learned he should always carry a pack of tissues. His face inches from hers, Eddie saw himself in those liquid blue eyes.

"Mommy says I gave my cold to her," Grace said.

"No, you didn't. Your mom works in a hospital. She catches all her colds there."

"Will you take her to the doctor today?"

"Are you kidding?" he said, thinking that Grace's mom, his stubborn daughter, Kate, like every nurse he'd ever known, thought she could diagnose and treat herself better than any doctor. "She'll get some sleep and be better by the time you get home."

Grace kissed him, then ran to join a cluster of girls in burgundy jumpers. The school uniform had changed since the years when Kate attended. Twenty-five years ago, the girls wore dark green tartan, a color that accentuated the striking red hair of his tall, rawboned daughter. Twenty-five years ago, Sister Mary Elizabeth would clang a handbell and Kate and her friends would freeze on the spot, the class clowns twisting into exaggerated poses. On the second bell, they'd line up with their respective classes, two by two. On the third, they'd march to their rooms. All this was accomplished in thirty seconds, in total silence.

Silence had fallen out of style long before the tartan jumpers. These days, the noise level actually rose after the final bell. Eddie waited until his granddaughter and the rest of the first grade meandered into the building; then he turned, planted his foot on the handrail, and tightened the laces on his running shoes. He couldn't see the black BMW. Either it was hidden by the bushes to the south of the school or waiting back on Roberts Avenue.

Eddie leaned against the fence, stretching his hamstrings, taking the extra few seconds to look for heads in the cars parked along the street, making sure there wasn't a backup. The wind off the Hudson carried a hint of a late-season snow, and all he'd worn was a light sweatshirt and a pair of nylon running pants. Normally, he'd start his morning run now, but he needed to get this over with. He needed to confront his trackers, blow whatever fantasy they were concocting.