"Dave Matthews," he said.

"Who are you, Dick muthafuckin' Clark?" she said. She slapped the change into his ice-wrapped hand, acting as if it were something she saw all the time. Coins hit the pavement, but Eddie took off. He was halfway over the bridge when the phone rang again; this time, he punched the right button. It was Boland. They'd found his gun. Next to the body of Misha Raisky.

The Sheepshead Bay Marina was a mile east of Brighton Beach and directly north of Manhattan Beach. The number of sailboats that called Brooklyn home always amazed Eddie. The row of masts ran forever alongside busy Emmons Avenue. He parked behind Boland's car in the marina parking lot and took the ice off his hands.

"I thought the pros knew how to duck," Boland said. "That eye looks like it hurts like hell."

"I've had worse," he said. "You sure it's Misha?"

"He had a picture ID from a foreign student immigration service. Name: Mikal Raisky. They called some old man from Queens, guy he used to live with. He's the ID at this point."

The Crime Scene Unit had finished and departed. Both the body and Eddie's gun were gone, as well. All that remained was yellow tape and a series of bloodstains shaped like a chain of islands. Misha's head had come to rest on the big island, near slip number 17, which was stenciled in white paint. They'd found Eddie's Sig Sauer next to his hand, as if the killer'd had a last-minute brainstorm and decided to concoct a suicide scenario. Five entrance wounds, three in the back, isn't even covered in Suicide for Dummies. Boland said he identified Eddie's Sig Sauer by the serial number he'd given him earlier.

"Was it a dump job?" Eddie asked.

"Just barely. We figure the shooting went down over there in the parking lot. Although it baffles me why they didn't leave him there, rather then take the time to drag him across the grass to this spot. I mean, what's the point?"

"Does this shit ever have a point?"

Boland said they'd picked up shell casings in the parking lot off Emmons Avenue. The CSU had found blood splatter on the blacktop and on the side of a broken-down pickup truck. The killer or killers had apparently dragged Misha about seventy feet from the parking lot to the wooden walkway that bordered the boat slips. It was evident from the scattered blood spots that he'd tried to crawl away across the walkway. The killer fired one more shot for good luck as Misha lay facedown on the boards. The CSU dug the bullet out of the wood, but the shell casing had probably bounced into the water.

"Broad daylight, busy street, apartment building across the street," Eddie said. "Pretty ballsy."

"Does that surprise you, with the Russians?"

A caretaker named Toby Davis had found the shirtless body shortly before 8:00 a.m. He insisted it wasn't there when he'd arrived for work two hours earlier.

"What time you last see him?" Boland asked Eddie.

"Four a.m. Give or take a few minutes. I didn't see him or my gun again after the scuffle in the stairway."

Eddie had filled Boland in on the happenings in the Eurobar, including a recap of the fight in the stairway.

"Sergei left with your gun and the kid?"

"According to Richie Costa. I wasn't sure who took my gun. But I stopped by the Bronx Knights on the way over. Richie Costa told me the last time he saw the Sig Sauer, it was in Sergei's hands."

"How the hell did you manage to get that out of him?"

"You don't want to know."

"I assume that's Costa's blood on your shirt?" Boland said. "Am I going to find him in a body bag somewhere?"

"Not by my hand, although I was tempted."

Without being asked, Eddie took his bloody shirt off and handed it to the detective.

"Jesus, your hands are cold," Boland said, pushing the shirt back to him. "I believe you didn't kill Costa, Eddie. And nobody thinks you killed this kid. Howie Danton caught the case. He knows it's nothing but a piss-poor setup. We have to go through the motions. You know that."

"So go through the motions."

"Okay. It's a safe bet ballistics will confirm your gun is the murder weapon. The squad is going to ask you where you were between six and eight this morning."

"In the Eurobar, being quizzed by the manager. I left a little before seven. Drove home up the West Side Highway."

"You stop by somewhere for breakfast, or make an impression on anyone?"

"I was in my granddaughter's school around eight-fifteen. Nobody can get from Sheepshead Bay to Yonkers that fast in the morning without a helicopter. I can get five nuns to swear I was there."

"Four nuns, I would have a problem, but five, I'm sold."

Eddie filled in more parts of the Eurobar story. He told Boland what the kid had said about a "she." Boland checked his list of known Borodenko cronies and found no mention of a woman. Eddie said that Babsie was checking the staff and management at the Elmsford auto-storage garage for female possibilities.

"Danton wants me to get the owners of the boats in this section," Boland said. "See if any names cross-check with our list."

"See Toby. He's been here forever."

"You're on a first-name basis with the caretaker?" Boland said.

"I worked in the squad here, remember?" Eddie replied. "Paulie Caruso kept a boat here for years."

"I remember the boat. Thirty-five-foot Grand Banks. Nice."

"'Sleeps four, fucks eight,' Paulie used to say. I'd sleep in it when I had an early court appearance or was too shit-faced to drive home."

"I always wondered where you crashed. I figured you had to have someplace to stay. From here to Yonkers every day is a pain in the ass of a commute."

"Paulie said I spent enough nights on that boat to qualify for a merchant seaman's license."

"Where was it tied up?" Boland asked.

"Slip ninety-one," Eddie said, pointing west. "Way down past the trees, near that pulley setup. He didn't want a place you could see easily from the street. You know, for those rare occasions when we partied on duty."

"Yeah. I heard all about you guys and your wild boat parties. Never invited me."

"You were into your career then."

The wind changed direction and came off the ocean. The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees in a matter of seconds. "An onshore breeze," Paulie had called it. Onshore because it was coming from off the water. Eddie always argued it should be called an offshore breeze, since it was coming from the ocean. It was a stupid argument, one best played out when they were bombed. One of many. Old friends replayed stupid arguments all then-lives. Only quarrels over women were fatal. Eddie felt the chill coming off the Atlantic, which was still bitterly cold from the long winter.

Wednesday

4:45 P.M.

Eddie left his car at the marina and drove with Matty Boland to Brighton Beach. They parked on Coney Island Avenue, near the entrance to the construction site where, thirty-four hours earlier, Eddie had lost Lukin's killer. The only thing he knew to do at this point was find Sergei Zhukov, and he needed help. He needed the feds fully in the mix. But finding Sergei would be the easy part. Eddie understood the futility of trying to get a hardened Russian criminal to confess. The word hardened didn't do these guys justice. Decades of frigid weather, deprivation, and sanctioned cruelty had forced them to develop a level of toughness and cunning beyond anyone's ability to understand.

"The biggest mistake you can make," Eddie said as they walked down Brighton Beach Avenue, "is to underestimate how smart Russians are. You've never gone up against people this slick. If you don't understand that, they'll play you like a mandolin."

Eddie set the pace on the crowded street, eating up sidewalk like a man on a mission. He realized Boland claimed he was trying to find Kate, but his eyes were on a different prize. Boland wanted to talk about the big picture: cartels, wiretaps, and worldwide crime. He needed to concentrate on finding a single redhead in a twenty-block haystack.