Free The Con Man's Daughter by Ed Dee

each one trying to flaunt his personal street smarts and outflank the competition. All maneuvered to get the front-page angle on a slow news day. An on-camera reporter from NY1 planted herself in front of the Brighton Beach subway sign. Several ambitious cameramen found their way to local roofs and were filming from above.
    "Listen, Howie," Eddie said. "Call the borough now. I want to get working on the sketch while I still remember. Guy my age forgets things fast."
    "Yeah," Danton said. "I gotta get this crime scene closed before that transit schmuck has a coronary."
    Enough good-byes. Eddie left. The others had time to bullshit and flirt- their daughter wasn't missing. He ran down die stairs, wondering why he didn't feel any sense of loss for Lukin, the man who'd turned him around at the lowest point in his life. Perhaps he'd come to realize that he hadn't been shown a new road after all, just another highway to hell.
    Eddie grabbed a taxi on Coney Island Avenue. "The Six-seven" was all he told the driver. The driver didn't ask for a street address. If a cabdriver knows nothing else, he knows where all the police precincts are located. Eddie'd pick up his Olds after he finished with the sketch artist.
    In the back of the cab, he studied the list of Borodenko locations, trying to decide where to start. There had to be some connection between Kate's kidnapping and Lukin's murder. He had two very different pieces of a puzzle: a stolen BMW, and now a quick glimpse of a face. Dark skin, big nose. Probably not even enough for a decent sketch. Boxing was so much easier. In boxing, you knew exactly who to hit, and he could run no farther than the ropes. It all came down to pain, who could inflict and absorb the most. He'd been absorbing more than his share. He needed to hunt this person down. Corner him. Corner her. Either way, it would be over fast. It felt good to think this.

Chapter 9

Tuesday
    7:45 P.M.
     
    Cops hate mysteries. Eddie heard the grumbling under his kitchen window as the night tour relieved the day tour. Standing by their cars in Eddie's driveway, cops and FBI agents whispered among themselves. No phone calls, no ransom note-what the hell kind of kidnapping was this? Welcome to the club, Eddie thought. If I had the slightest idea where to go, I'd be there now. But these spoiled bastards, they forget how to investigate. The overwhelming majority of criminal cases are solved for one simple reason: Someone tells the police who did it. A witness plus an informant equals a confession. Case closed. Well, it isn't the formula this time, boyos, so suck it up. Get off your dead asses and goose the case, work something, invent an angle, anything. You never know when you'll get lucky.
    "I know winos sleeping in Larkin Plaza who look better than you," Detective Babsie Panko said.
    "I'll bet you do," Eddie said.
    "Yeah, that's what I get for growing up in an Irish neighborhood."
    Early for her twelve-hour shift, Babsie hung her coat on the wall pegs next to the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table. The table was strewn with doll clothes from a pink Barbie doll suitcase Grace had emptied out. Grace sat on Eddie's lap, watching him struggle to squeeze the doll's long plastic legs into a pair of red panty hose. Babsie shoved doll clothes aside to make room for her case folder.
    "I have the same trouble with my panty hose," the detective said, but it didn't get a smile out of Grace. Eyes down, she ran her fingers over her grandfather's smashed knuckles, gently tracing the consequence of too many fights with poorly taped hands.
    "I'm on the phones this shift," Babsie said. "I'm ordering you to get some sleep."
    "Tonight," he said, mostly for Grace's benefit. "Tonight I'm home."
    After Lukin's murder, he'd spent the rest of the daylight hours in Brooklyn, first putting a face on paper, then driving around searching for its flesh.
    "You want to talk about the case?" Babsie asked. She gestured toward Grace, questioning