The Good Guys Page 32

  Karen Abbot laughed delightedly at his performance. Within the first few minutes O’Brien had realized that she was quite an unusual person. He considered himself an expert in reading body language, but this was his first experience reading wheelchair language. She used her chair as a prop, as other people might use their legs, rolling slightly backward in delighted response to a funny line, pushing closer when she wanted intimacy. Karen Abbot was, he finally decided, light on her wheels.

  Meanwhile, Gradinsky continued, this Skinny Al had recruited him. He didn’t really know what he was getting into until the first meeting. By the time he realized he was working for the Mafia, he explained, it was too late to do anything about it. He was working for the Mafia, “and,” he joked, “I couldn’t quit, because when the Mafia lays you off, they really lay you off.”

  Karen rolled backward as she laughed, and O’Brien and Russo smiled politely.

  It was obvious to Russo that Gradinsky was not aware of Skinny Al’s demise. She elected to wait until his story was done before telling him. But as she listened, it also became terribly clear that Professor Peter Gradinsky had absolutely no idea that he was trapped in a desperately dangerous situation. There would be no laughs at the end of this story. There was no escape for him. From this night on, his life was changed forever. He had information that both the mob and the Russians would kill to keep quiet. His eyewitness testimony would eventually put a lot of people in prison—that was an absolutely certainty. For the next few years at least, he would be forced to live in the shadows, showing up for law enforcement interviews, depositions, hearings, and trials. If he stayed with his wife, she would have to move with him to a secure and private location. They would not be able to communicate with friends or co-workers and would see members of their family only in carefully arranged meetings. His career at Columbia was finished. He wouldn’t be able to work publicly as a translator anymore, although it was probable the bureau or the government would be able to utilize his skills. There was always a need for competent Russian translators. And Peter Gradinsky, sitting there eating his Chinese food, happy and smiling, seemed completely oblivious to all of that. Quite unexpectedly Laura found herself feeling sorry for him.

  He’d met Tony Cosentino at that first meeting, which was held in a hidden room in the rear of a gas station. “You had to go through a really filthy, disgusting bathroom to get there. I think they keep it so disgusting so people won’t use it. But once you got inside, the meeting room was really nice.” His job was simply to sit in the back of the room, keep his mouth shut, and listen. Listen closely to anything the Russians said to each other in Russian, any little asides, any comments, any jokes, any expletives, any anything. And later, after the meeting, he would go through it all with Tony and Al and a couple of other men. This way the Italians got a lot of information that the Russians wanted to keep among themselves, and the Russians didn’t know they knew it. The professor gave them an edge. For the meetings, Cosentino even gave him a name, and he was introduced as Peter Two Tongues. “That was their joke. If the Russians asked about it in English, I couldn’t let them know I spoke Russian. I was supposed to tell them it had something to do with sex.”

  Karen rolled way back with that admission. Russo couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought Karen was blushing.

  O’Brien asked the million-dollar question. “So what were these meetings all about? What kind of business was Cosentino doing with the Russians?” Then he shut his mouth and waited for the million-dollar answer.

  “Oh?” Gradinsky responded, somewhat puzzled. “I thought you guys knew all about that.”

  “We wish,” Russo admitted. “Just that it’s something to do with gasoline.”

  “Absolutely.” Gradinsky chuckled to himself. “That’s exactly what it’s all about.” He paused and looked at Karen. “You all right? Want a blanket?”

  She was fine, she said.

  “Good.” Turning back to the agents, he continued, “Anyway, it seems like the Russians have been running this scam operation for a long time. It’s based on the fact . . . See, a lot of people don’t know this. I mean”—he tapped himself on the chest—“I certainly didn’t, but apparently we use exactly the same fuel oil for home heating as we do for cars. Who knew gas was oil? But it’s the same thing, same product, exactly. It comes out the same storage tanks, they just call it different things. The big difference is that the government doesn’t tax the oil used to heat houses, but there’s like forty or fifty cents tax on every gallon of gas.”

  Gradinsky was now in his teaching mode, O’Brien realized, lecturing to students he judged to be not particularly bright. He spoke with his hands, emphasizing each word of importance. And like a student anxious to please his professor, O’Brien scribbled away.

  “It turned out that the Russians understood American business better than Americans. What they did was set up companies to buy heating oil. They didn’t have to pay any taxes. They gave the company any kind of name, it didn’t matter. That first company sold all the oil it bought to another company that they also started. The second company sold it to a third company. You got to understand, these companies existed only on paper. They were all owned by the same people. They didn’t have any employees, they didn’t have anything except a name and a mailing address. The fifth or the sixth company that bought it as home heating oil would turn around and resell it to the next company—as motor oil. Without collecting a penny in taxes . . .”

  O’Brien stopped writing. This was like trying to take verbatim notes at a college lecture. He closed his notebook, leaned back, and listened with fascination. “It was called a . . . you know, a whatchamacallit,” Gradinsky continued. It took him a few seconds to find the proper phrase. “A daisy chain. That company would sell it to another company and so on and so on, until eventually they would sell it to gas stations and just pocket the tax money. By the time the government figured out the whole thing, the company that bought it as home oil and sold it as motor oil was long gone. It was out of business, no forwarding address, no owners, no records.”

  “So what are we talking about here?” asked Russo. “Hundreds of thousands of dollars? Millions?”

  Gradinsky laughed at that. “At least. And it looks to me like it’s just about foolproof.”

  Karen went to the kitchenette and returned with cans of soda, which she passed around. “I understand all that,” she said. “But I don’t see what this has to do with the Mafia.”

  “They were the cops,” he said, as if it were obvious. Then to the agents he admitted, “I guess I forgot to tell you about that part.”

  Rarely does an interview proceed so smoothly. It was as if a faucet at an oasis had been turned on; the information just poured out of him. As Russo listened, she began to understand that it wasn’t only Gradinsky’s life that would never be the same. This was a career- making case. This was going right to the top, and everybody who had a stake in it would go along for the ride. They were going to know her name, and O’Brien’s too, of course, in Washington.

  With so much money up for grabs, Gradinsky continued, several Russian crews began fighting for control. People were getting killed. “Supposedly one group, not Kuznetzov’s guys, another gang, threw somebody off the George Washington Bridge one night. They said they did it because he was some fly-by-night hustler.” Then he added, “But it was only from the lower level.” In an effort to stop this warfare the Russians hired Cosentino to act as a mediator. And when he had to enforce his decisions, he brought in members of his crew.

  Gradinsky didn’t have to tell O’Brien or Russo what happened next. Once Cosentino got a sniff of this kind of money, he wasn’t going to settle for less than a full-course meal. He wanted all the way in. The question became how and when Cosentino planned to make his move, and O’Brien doubted the professor knew that answer.

  The professor gave them everything, absolutely everything. Cosentino had been hired by a Russian named Vasily Kuznetzov. Vaseline, obviously. His
partner was named Ivan Chernanko, “Something like that,” the professor admitted. “These people aren’t big on last names. I always referred to him as Barney Rubble. You know, from The Flintstones?” He paused. “He was a really bad guy. Not that the other ones were so nice, but him?” He shook his head. “Just a really nasty man.”

  When Gradinsky hesitated, O’Brien guessed that a particularly unpleasant memory had popped into his mind. Maybe something this Barney had done to leave that impression. Instead, though, the professor asked, “Are there any more sautéed string beans?”

  Karen served him. As she dumped the last few string beans on his plate, she told him, “You’re just full of surprises, Peter. Who would’ve ever guessed, you and the Mafia? It’s amazing. It’s like The Godfather Meets Professor Higgins.”

  Russo prompted him to continue. “You were saying, Professor? Ivan, the second guy, the really bad one?”

  He nodded to Karen. “Just like in the movies.” And then to Connor, “He was a mean son of a bitch. Believe me, he’s not someone I’d want after me. He used to . . . I’m not kidding about this, he’d sit there and sort of pick his nose with that little thing, that little piece of raised metal on the end of a gun, the thing you aim with. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Uh-huh,” Russo responded, “the sight.” She glanced at O’Brien— and caught him staring at her.

  “I’ll tell you one thing. He and Skinny Al didn’t get along at all. No way. And Skinny Al was no day in the park either, believe you me. I think maybe they were too much alike. But it seemed like every time Skinny Al said something at one of these meetings Ivan would tell him to shut up. He’d scream at him that he was supposed to listen, he wasn’t supposed to talk. He wasn’t permitted to say anything.” This time Gradinsky did a poor imitation of the Russian: “Don’t you hear me no good? You say nothing. Nothing! Is not your place to speak, you fucking prick.”

  O’Brien opened his notebook and once again started writing.

  The professor exhaled. “And then Skinny Al would yell at him, ‘I don’t got to listen to you.’ You should’ve seen them, the two of them. Like bulls. There were a couple of times when they almost went after each other. People had to hold them back. One time . . . one time I remember Ivan said something in Russian to Vaseline. Basically he was saying, ‘I’m going to kill that prick, I swear to God. He doesn’t listen.’ I forgot what I told Skinny Al that Ivan had said, but I definitely didn’t tell him that. I didn’t want to cause any more problems.”

  The professor talked long enough for Connor to get hit with the insatiable desire for a second round of Chinese food. Neither he nor Russo found it necessary to ask many questions. On occasion they would push the professor in a slightly different direction, but Gradinsky needed little prompting. He was a performer. He loved the attention. Loved it. And they gave it to him, as much as he desired. Maybe most important to him was the fact that Karen was so impressed by his tale—reinforced by the great interest in it shown by not just one FBI agent, but two.

  Eventually he started running out of story. When Karen excused herself and went into the bathroom, essentially he was done. But there was one last piece of information O’Brien needed. “When they called you the same night Natalie Speakman called, what’d they tell you?”

  “Oh, it was nothing. They were just telling me when the next meeting was. I was supposed to call them back the next day to confirm it. Obviously I didn’t.”

  Thus putting in motion this entire investigation, O’Brien thought. “So when’s the meeting?”

  “What’s today’s date?” the professor wondered. Russo told him. “That’s interesting,” he said. “Tomorrow night.”

  While there was a mountain of detail still to be uncovered by investigators and, inevitably, prosecutors, O’Brien and Russo had the information they needed. Russo excused herself to use the telephone, leaving O’Brien alone with Gradinsky. “What happens now?” the professor asked.

  “That’s not really up to us,” Connor replied, skillfully avoiding a real answer. “Maybe you’d better start getting your stuff together, though. I don’t think you’ll be staying here tonight.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant, you know, about Grace?” He covered his face with his hands, a gesture O’Brien read as emotional exhaustion. “It’s so damned complicated.”

  Connor tried to be helpful. “How about this? You could tell her you got caught between the mob and the Russians. That’s why you took off.” He shrugged. “At least it’ll buy you a little time.”

  Gradinsky looked right at him. “And what do I do about Natalie?”

  There was no way of avoiding that question. “That’s a tough one, Professor,” O’Brien said weakly. “What can I tell you? Sometimes things have a way of working out better than you think.” He smiled sheepishly. “We sure do have a way of screwing things up, don’t we?”

  The professor responded with his own sad smile.

  It was after one in the morning when Russo woke Slattery at his home. He answered on the second ring, not a hint of sleep in his voice. Matter-of-factly she reported, “Well, we got him.” She covered the most important points in a few sentences.

  Slattery was properly impressed. “Sounds like you people had an interesting evening.”

  “Mostly,” she agreed, “but truthfully the Chinese food wasn’t that good.” Slattery told her to bring Gradinsky to the office. He would meet them there within the hour.

  The professor packed his few belongings. Russo offered to stay with Karen Abbot until she could get someone there to assist her. In response Karen laughed. “Are you kidding? You know what this means?” she asked. Laura shook her head. “I finally get my bathroom back.”

  FBI agents meet literally thousands of people during their careers. They meet all kinds, good and bad, smart and stupid. And very, very few of them really stick in their memory. As Karen rolled with them to the front door, both O’Brien and Russo knew they’d met a force not easily forgotten. “Maybe we’ll see you again,” Russo said, meaning it.

  “That’d be okay,” she replied. She stayed by her open door as they waited for the elevator. When the elevator doors finally opened, she shouted after them, “Just remember, I’m the wheel thing!” And laughed and laughed.

  On the drive downtown the professor was quiet for a long time and then asked, “Any idea what they’re going to do with me now?”

  O’Brien looked at Russo. He was elected. “Well, the first thing is to make sure nothing happens to you.” He tried to find something promising to say but could think of absolutely nothing.

  Finally the professor said something to himself in Russian. When Russo asked him what it was, he smiled weakly and said with resignation, “It’s just an old prayer peasants used to say at the beginning of winter.”

  An hour later O’Brien and Russo were sitting with Slattery in his office. Another team of agents had escorted Peter Gradinsky to a safe house, one of several apartments the bureau keeps in the city for just such a purpose. Because Grace Gradinsky’s telephone was tapped, he was not permitted to call her. Instead, agents were sent to her apartment to inform her that her husband had been found, that he was safe, and that he was in the bureau’s custody. They were vague about when she would be permitted to see him. Soon, she was told, as soon as possible. She was also told that her telephone was being tapped by the familiar “person or persons unknown.” She was warned not to tell anyone, including close friends and relatives, in person as well as on the phone, that Peter was safe.

  The agents stayed with her, waiting for a decision from Washington whether she would be permitted to remain in her apartment with security or be moved into protective custody.

  Slattery was quietly thrilled. He was not a man known for public displays of excitement, but by the time O’Brien and Russo walked into his office he was, he told them happily, “two Cokes to the wind.” For him that qualified as a huge celebration. Slattery continued to amaze O’Brien. It was
three o’clock in the morning, the man had gotten out of bed and raced to the office, yet from all appearances it could just as easily have been three o’clock in the afternoon.

  O’Brien and Russo settled comfortably into the couch and began filling in the details. Russo did most of the talking. Slattery listened without comment, occasionally making a few notes. Laura took off her shoes, stretched out her long legs, and rested her feet on the coffee table, causing Connor to remember for the first time that entire evening that his partner was a very attractive woman. The sudden realization that he had finally accepted her as a very competent, reliable, nongender partner, rather than a pretty girl whom it was fun to work with, surprised him. The fact that an attractive woman was capable of making him forget that she was an attractive woman made her even more attractive to him. In this particular coupling familiarity bred respect.

  When Russo finished, Slattery took a deep, satisfied breath. “Let me tell you, you guys did some great work. I mean great, great work.” Then, compliments done, he got right back to business. “So what do you think? Where do we go from here?”

  “Home?” O’Brien guessed.

  “Nice try,” Slattery responded. “But that’s not why we’re paying you people those big bucks.” The evidence provided by the professor might put a lot of people in prison, he continued, but that alone would not be enough to prevent the Mafia and Russian gangs from forging a powerful alliance. “Cosentino, those two Russians, they’re nothing. They’re replaceable parts. Once the Italians make a deal with the Russians, it’s not going to matter who signs the checks. Believe me, guys, if all we do is get rid of these people, there’ll be dozens more lining up to take their place. We’re talking millions of dollars here. What we’ve got to do is break up this romance.”

  It ended up being much more of an early morning than a late night. Several strategies were suggested, considered, and thoroughly debated. The most obvious—raid the meeting, arrest everybody you can grab, and throw the entire operation into disarray—was impossible. Raids took an enormous amount of planning, organization, legal support, equipment requisitions, manpower, rehearsals, and enough time for everyone involved to prepare a solid excuse in case things didn’t work out. They had one day.