Thursday

11:00 P.M.

Babsie came to him as he sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the nightgown over her head and rolled back the covers. He loved that she was proud of her body, the fullness and strength of it. No charge for extra curves. They made love quietly but with an emotion born of a grief carried too long. He needed to be touched, needed to feel something, needed her, and she knew it. Afterward, he held her, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder.

"I've loved you since high school," she said softly. "Is that lame or what?"

"I was way too dumb for you then," he said as he rubbed his fingers across her back.

Eddie thought of an old Irish saying: "Better wed over the mixins than the moor." According to Kevin Dunne, it meant your chances of being happy in life were greater the closer you stayed to home. Babsie made him understand that. Ten days together and already they were finishing each other's sentences, laughing about the same stupid stories. What made it possible was the lifetime before these ten days, the shared childhood, which provided the foundation. The different paths they'd traveled since added the mystery. Everything Eddie had ever wanted was right here, on the hill where he'd grown up. It had just taken him so damn long to realize it. If God would keep Kate safe, he'd never ask for anything again.

"I have something to tell you," he said.

"Not now."

Babsie knew he'd been drinking, and she feared the Irish melancholy. She'd spent too many nights in bars with micks who sang songs of marching off to war. Eddie wasn't like that, but something was pulling him down. Best to wait until morning. Morning makes everything seem less ominous, she thought.

"I don't want any secrets," he said. "I know I'm putting you on the spot. You're still an active cop."

"Wait six months, until I retire."

"Some things can't wait, Babsie."

Eddie Dunne's secrets frightened her. He'd lived recklessly for longer than anyone she'd ever known. Since her divorce fifteen years ago, she'd avoided emotional ties. Her big family and her job were enough. She hoped this feeling for him wasn't some repressed high school crush. The good girl finally snags the dangerous boy. But she was too old and too smart for that. She loved him, plain and simple. These ten days, being near him, had resurrected feelings she hadn't had in years. Still, the little warning buzzer in the back of her head kept saying that Eddie Dunne might be more of a problem than any woman could bear.

"You know that torn photograph you put together?" he said. "The three of us in front of Paulie's boat. Me,

Paulie, and Lana. I told you the woman in the center was named Lana, right? And she was Paulie's girlfriend."

"Why am I not surprised there's more to Lana?"

"Everything I told you was true, Babsie. But I left out that Lana was a nickname for Svetlana. Svetlana Rosenfeld. Lana was Marvin Rosenfeld's wife."

"Jesus… Rosenfeld's wife. Don't tell me any more."

They lay there quietly, listening to the sound of Kevin's old car whining on the climb up Roberts Avenue. The steep hill required a good car. A better car than most of the locals cared to spend money on. They could walk or grab the bus to anyplace important. Kevin Dunne refused to pay more than five hundred dollars for a hunk of metal on wheels. He said that it was better the car growl than his stomach.

"I haven't been in love in a long time," Eddie said. "I've forgotten how to handle it."

"It's okay. Telling me says good things; you trust me. I guess that's a good thing. Okay… go ahead, tell me about Lana. Was it a full-blown affair?"

"He named the boat after her. Svetlana means 'bright star.' Paulie Caruso had a lot of women in his life, but he was crazy over this one."

"How long did this go on?"

"Two years, maybe a little longer."

"While she was married?"

"She was thirty years younger than he was."

"That's no excuse."

"I didn't say it was."

Kevin's car doors thumped twice. They both listened to the keys jingling as he and Martha went in their house. All sounds in the night were important now.

"The robbery was a setup, wasn't it?" Babsie said.

"So was the big shoot-out in the park. It was all a setup."

She thought of getting dressed and leaving. Maybe if he had a night to mull it over, he'd decide his secrets should remain with him. But Babsie made up her mind right then. She'd gone this far. Whatever it was, so be it. They'd be her secrets, too.

"How much did you know?" she said.

"It took me a few weeks to catch on. Remember you said you thought it was strange we just happened to be driving by the Rosenfeld house at the exact time of the robbery?"

"The first thing that occurred to me."

"Most cops say the same thing: too much of a coincidence. But I wasn't surprised. We drove by that house all the time. Sometimes ten, twenty times a tour. Paulie was always trying to get a glimpse of Lana. Like he was sixteen years old."

"Vestri and Nunez were patsies," Babsie said. "Set up to be killed, weren't they?"

"Paulie's brother Angelo engineered the robbery. He arranged for Nunez and Vestri to do it. Paulie had all the inside information. He knew where the safe was. He knew there was a ton of money in it, although I don't think he ever imagined how much."

"Paulie knew the exact day and time Vestri and Nunez would be there," she said.

"Probably down to the minute. After the robbery, Nunez and Vestri went to a prearranged spot in Marine Park. They were probably thinking they'd meet one of Angelo's men, switch cars or something. When Paulie followed them, he hung so far back on the Belt Parkway, I thought he was going to lose them. But he knew exactly where they were going. He drove to a spot hidden in a grove of trees. There they were. The shoot-out happened fast. As soon as we got out of the car, Paulie fired the first shot, but they already had guns in their hands."

"When they saw Paulie, they knew it was a setup. They had to be stupid not to smell something strange about Angelo giving them this big a job."

"Stupid, sure, that's why they were picked. But they did better than I did, because I didn't smell anything. None of it seemed forced or manipulated. Paulie was patient. He waited until we came up in normal rotation for that divisionwide burglary assignment. I fully expected him to ride by the house that day. It's what he did every chance he got."

"How much did the Carusos get?"

"Millions."

"How did they get the money out of the park?"

"I'm not exactly sure. After we shot Vestri and Nunez, I left to look for a telephone to call for an ambulance and the bosses. We had no radio in the car. I know, I know… part of the setup. I had to drive out of the park to find a phone. When I got back, ten or fifteen minutes later, I noticed Paulie had grass and twigs clinging to his pant legs. I asked him what had happened. He said he went into the woods to take a piss. He either took the money out of the trunk and hid it or passed it off to someone waiting."

"When did you figure it out?"

"It took me longer than I like to admit," Eddie said. "Maybe I didn't want to believe it. That night, we were heroes, our pictures in all the papers."

"I can't believe you didn't tell somebody about it. It's murder we're talking about here, Eddie. Why didn't you just leak it to IAB?"

"You're not going to like this."

"Oh no."

"Tell me if you don't want to hear it, Babsie. I'm serious. It implicates me."

He could feel her body tensing. Gone was the soft, warm drowsiness. He understood that it was natural for her to start thinking like a cop.

"In for a penny, in for a pound," she said. "I already know more than I want to. If you don't tell me, I'm always going to wonder how bad you really are."

Eddie said, "After the big press conference the next day, we're leaving police headquarters in Manhattan. We get in Paulie's car to go back to the precinct. Cops and brass are walking past us as we're parked there. Uniforms all over the place. Paulie tosses me a stack of bills, mostly fifties and hundreds. I say something like "Oh shit," and I shove it under my coat so no one will see it. I don't look until we're back over the bridge. Total of ten grand. He says he grabbed two stacks off the top, one for me, one for him. No big deal. He says no one has any idea how much money was there. The money was just going to Uncle Sam, and he'd never miss it."

"You kept the ten grand."

"I kept it. Eileen was sick; I owed everyone. It didn't seem like that big of a chunk of the four point two million we turned in. Remember, at that point I still thought it was a good shoot. I thought we were heroes. The only other choice I had was to turn on my partner. And, yes, as weak and wrong as it sounds now, I kept the money."

"Paulie was slick," she said. "He put you in a position where you were in it together. You couldn't go against him because you were equally guilty. No telling how much the bastard really grabbed."

Babsie thought, Five minutes after I tell this guy I love him, he drops a piano on me. That has to be a new record. What the hell is the rest of our life going to be like? But she had to admit, she thought the story was going to be worse.

"Next question," she said. "How did Zina find out about it?"

"Listen to me for a second," he said.

"Oh, Eddie. Don't do this again."

"I didn't know this until tonight," he said. "Mrs. Borodenko's maiden name is Sophie Ross. She's a model who grew up in Russia."

"I know that."

"She's also the daughter of Marvin and Lana Rosenfeld, Babsie."

"I thought their kid drowned in Russia."

'That's what I thought. Ludmilla told me tonight that Sophie's grandparents created that story to avoid a custody battle with the Rosenfelds. They hid her in some small village in the Ukraine."

Babsie could put the rest together herself. After Sophie moved over here, she somehow found out about her mother's nights on Paul Caruso's boat. She sent Sergei looking for Paulie. Paulie the Priest filled in the rest.

"One thing bothers me, Eddie. You said Paulie really loved Lana?"

"Like crazy."

"He put her in a hell of a dangerous position for someone he loved like crazy. In the middle of the robbery, with two nut jobs like Vestri and Nunez."

"That will always bother me, too," he said softly.

"What happens now?" Babsie said.

"This puts me more in the middle than I thought. Maybe Sophie blames me for what happened to her parents. I need to confront Borodenko, get it settled once and for all. Whatever he wants. Then I'll beg him to save Kate. She had nothing to do with this."

"I meant what happens between us," she said.

"Wait until this unfolds," he said. "Whatever you decide then, I won't blame you."