Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

Nice chase, Richard. You were just outclassed, son. Professionals never quit, he thought as he hurried for the exit.

Chapter 32

Paul Ernenwein was standing beside Chief Fabretti when I opened the door of the cramped observation closet on the third floor of One Police Plaza.

“Hey, Paul. What’s up?” I said with mock cheeriness as I shook the middle-aged redheaded fed’s hand.

As if I didn’t know.

It was too bright and too warm in the tiny space. The overhead fluorescent buzzed like a trapped angry insect. You could smell and almost taste the frustration in the close air.

“This nut won’t crack, huh?” Ernenwein said, cocking his chin at Pavel Levkov on the other side of the one-way mirror.

I looked over at him glumly. The muscular Russian was whistling as he drummed his fingers on the table he was sitting at. He had looked like that ever since I’d dragged him in. Like a hapless, lackadaisical guy with nothing to do, patiently waiting for a bus.

“That’s an affirmative,” I said as I tried to roll the tension out of my neck. “I tried three times, but our Russian friend here is about as communicative and cooperative as a cinder block. Any word on your informant that he scared away?”

“None,” said Paul. “We’re up on his wife’s phone, but so far, jack. What’s crazy is we have a crack Russian mob squad, and this Pavel here isn’t on any of our lists. He doesn’t go to any of the clubs out in Brighton Beach. We even checked his bona fides with our counterintel people on Russki spies, and he came back clean.”

“Exactly,” said Fabretti. “Besides the parking tickets, he’s never so much as gotten pulled over for speeding.”

“I mean, he looks mean enough,” said Paul, “but he’s not even remotely on our radar. I can’t for the life of me think why our informant is so scared of him. Guy like this who seems so deeply connected pops out of the blue, makes me want to consider retirement, purchase some land in northern Wyoming, maybe.”

I checked my watch.

“Whatever it is, we can’t hold him forever. What do you want to do?”

Paul yawned elaborately. Then he passed a hand through his thinning orange hair.

“Let him walk,” Paul said finally, taking out his phone. “I have a team of my guys waiting downstairs to cover him. Let’s put a little slack in this dog’s leash. Who knows? Maybe he’ll lead us to where he buried the bone.”

Chapter 33

After his release, Pavel went straight to the Bronx to the most secure of his several residences.

“Eat it, you stupid cops,” he mumbled as he hit a remote on the sun visor of his Jeep. He looked in the rearview mirror as the electronic security gate closed behind him, sealing off the driveway of his property on East 233rd Street.

He had noticed at once the three-car surveillance detail when he came out of the Brooklyn impound yard.

They wanted to watch him? They could do it far away, from the street. Maybe later, after dinner and a couple of drinks, he’d go to his window and give them something to look at—namely, a good long glimpse at the glowing white cheeks of his ass.

He came up the winding driveway toward the rambling old three-story Tudor house. Its six-acre wooded lot was completely sealed in by old rusting chain-link. He had bought the place in 2001 to build a housing development, but he never seemed to get around to it.

He got out into the circular drive. “What the hell are you doing, eh? Sleeping on the job?” he said as he knelt and kissed his two Dobermans, Sasha and Natalya.

He kept them within a tight perimeter around the house with an electronic dog fence that he called his moat. The dogs whined at him hungrily now.

“Okay, fine, ladies. I’m a sucker for such pretty girls.”

He took the creaky front stairs two by two and opened the big oak door into the darkened, drafty front hall. The house had great bones, as they say. Like so many of the house’s fine appointments, the elaborate mahogany staircase had been shipped over from a French château when it was built. But the house needed a couple million dollars of work.

Originally, at the turn of the century, it had been the compound of a paranoid, apocalyptic religious

group, and though he kept it to himself, in the house at night, Pavel sometimes heard some wild, unexplainable shit. Footsteps. Doors slamming. A few times what sounded like screaming.

If he didn’t sleep with his girls, a dead bolt lock on his door, and a fully loaded Armsel Striker street sweeper semiauto shotgun on his bedside table, he might have actually been scared.

“Hey, ghosts, I’m back. Miss me?” he said to the shadows as he headed to the butler’s pantry to get the girls their dinner.