The Good Guys Page 8

  As gently as possible, Russo asked her why she hadn’t called the police.

  “I don’t . . . I mean, I don’t know,” she said, fumbling for the right words. “Peter is such a . . . he’s such a shy man. I was certain he was going to come back any minute. And I knew if I made a big fuss about him, he would just . . . he wouldn’t understand. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I promise you, it would if you knew him.”

  “The man who called,” O’Brien asked. “You remember anything different, anything unusual about his voice?”

  She considered that. “Well, he did have a pretty strong Russian accent. I mean, all that he said to me was, like . . .” In a bad parody of a Russian accent she said in a masculine voice, “‘I speak please to Professor Peter.’ That was all he said.”

  Russo asked, “Did Peter talk to him in English or Russian?”

  “Russian. I couldn’t tell what they were talking about. I only know the tourist words. You know, nyet, dos vadanya . . .”

  For the next hour Grace Gradinsky seemingly did her best to answer all their questions. Peter Gradinsky had been born in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents had settled there after immigrating from the Ukraine. His father worked in the paint box at a General Motors plant. His parents primarily spoke Russian at home, which is where he had learned the language, and then he majored in it at Colgate. They had met at Colgate and had been married for twenty-eight years. They’d lived in this apartment for more than twenty years; it was rent-controlled and the landlord really wanted them to move out. They did not own a car. They had no children. No, Peter had not been acting any differently recently. Organized crime? No, that’s ridiculous, Peter didn’t know people like that. No, he didn’t seem unusually nervous when he left the apartment that night. No, he’d never just disappeared like this before. The longest he’d ever been gone without an explanation was a few hours. As far as she knew, he was not in contact with Soviet government officials. No, he was not spending any more money than usual—she actually laughed out loud at that question—and there certainly had not been any unexplained deposits made to their bank account. Yes, she always held on to both their passports; Peter didn’t even know where she kept them. She thought it might be important that on occasion he worked as a translator for the State Department. She didn’t really know what level security clearance he had; Secret, she thought. At least that’s what was stamped on those folders he brought home.

  “Excuse me?” Russo asked somewhat incredulously. “You’re telling us that Peter brought home folders that were marked Secret?”

  Grace appeared unsettled. “That isn’t all right?” She looked at Connor. “He told me he had a clearance for all those papers. He just translated them, that’s all. He wouldn’t even let me look at them.” She smiled at the memory. “I used to say to him, ‘Who am I going to tell, Peter? My mother the big famous spy?’”

  O’Brien could hear the tremor in Laura’s voice as she asked, “Mrs. Gradinsky, are any of those folders here now?”

  “Oh no, I’m sure of that. It didn’t happen that often. I mean, he only brought them home a few times. He just isn’t doing much work for the government anymore.”

  “Those times that he did bring them home, where’d he keep them?”

  “In his desk. In his office.” She pointed toward the closed doors. Behind one of them, obviously, was the professor’s office. “He put a little lock thing on the drawer. He didn’t tell me the combination, but that’s where he kept them.”

  Connor O’Brien leaned forward and listened intently to her answers. As always, he took copious notes, but within minutes of beginning this questioning he was certain of one thing: Her answers were total bullshit. This woman knew substantially more than she intended to reveal, and nothing short of pulling out her badly chewed fingernails with a pair of pliers would make her tell them the truth.

  An experienced agent can tell pretty quickly whether or not a subject is being truthful. Answers consist of a lot more than words; what’s important is the pauses between those words, the attempt to inject phony emotion into them, body language—unusually egotistical or arrogant people like to lock eyes when lying to you as a means of proving their intellectual superiority—and even demonstrating extreme concern by being overly cooperative. People telling the truth just tell the truth, whereas people who are lying try to act like they’re telling the truth, usually with about the same success as a drunk trying to act sober.

  So to O’Brien the first question to be answered was why she was lying. Everything else flowed from that. When Russo had finished compiling a list of the professor’s co-workers who would know his normal routine, O’Brien asked, “How is his health, Mrs. Gradinsky? Blood pressure, cholesterol, things like that?”

  She actually laughed at that question. Peter Gradinsky was the most health conscious human being she had ever known. Obsessive. Fanatical. That’s why she laughed, she explained. “He thinks there’s a vitamin that can cure anything. You wouldn’t believe how many pills he swallows every day. Red ones, green ones, you just name it, he takes it.”

  O’Brien smiled as if in recognition. “I know. I know exactly what you mean. My father was very much like that. There must have been a thousand of those little bottles all over the place.” That was a complete lie, of course, and even he was amazed how easily the words slid off his tongue. But then he made his point: “So where’d Professor Gradinsky keep all those bottles? If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a look at them.”

  Surprisingly this was the question that stopped her. She coughed nervously, then recovered her balance and explained that he kept his pills locked in the same desk drawer in which he kept the documents he brought home.

  She waited expectantly for Connor’s next question. But he just sat there, looking right at her, as if waiting for her to continue her response. That was an interviewing technique he often used. Silence makes most people uncomfortable, creating a vacuum that they invariably fill with additional details. “I mean, I don’t know the combination,” she finally added. “You know Peter,” she said, then caught herself. “Well, you don’t. But as I told you, he’s a very private man. He doesn’t like anyone touching his things. Even me. You should just see how upset he gets if I look in his pants pockets when I do the laundry.”

  Rather than being upset that her husband was missing, O’Brien realized, she was furious. He could feel her anger swelling as she continued, “It’s like I committed a federal crime. Days’ll go by and he won’t talk to me. And for what?” She looked to Laura for support. “For looking in his pockets?” Just as suddenly as the outburst began, she caught herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, deflated, “I’m just . . . I’m upset is all.”

  She composed herself, brushing off her blouse as if it were covered with crumbs. She brushed too hard and too long. Russo saw the tears forming in her eyes. “I love Peter,” she said finally, and added emphatically, “Really I do. But sometimes . . . sometimes I don’t understand why he does the things he does.”

  They understood, Russo said supportively.

  “Would you do me a favor, Mrs. Gradinsky?” O’Brien asked politely, handing her his notebook. “Would you write down for me the medicines he takes, and maybe the name and phone number of his doctor and the drugstore where he fills his prescriptions?”

  While Grace provided that information, Connor excused himself and used the bathroom. When Grace finished, Russo asked her for a recent photograph of her husband that she could keep. The best Grace could offer was a picture of the Gradinskys with another couple taken in a crowded restaurant. “That’s him on my right,” she said, pointing to him, “the shorter man.”

  When Connor returned, she gave him back his notebook, in which she had listed all his pills and vitamins. In return, both agents handed her their business cards, the expensive ones with the full-color raised FBI seal and the New York headquarters phone number. They asked her to contact them the moment he returned, promised to keep her informed of any progress t
hey made in their search, and finally Russo suggested, “Mrs. Gradinsky, don’t you think it would make sense for you to file a missing persons report with the NYPD?”

  “Oh no no, not yet,” she responded instantly. “Peter’s all right, I’m sure of it. Really, you just don’t know how angry he’d be with me when he found out I went to the police. Please don’t do anything. Just . . . just give him a few more days, please. If he isn’t back, I’ll do it. I will, honest I will.”

  “Wow, that was a strange one,” Laura said as they walked to his garage to pick up his car. “I’ve seen people get more upset about their cat getting loose. She’s a tough one, isn’t she?”

  “I think she knows where he is,” O’Brien responded, “or at least she has a pretty good idea. She knows he’s safe too. That’s why she doesn’t want to get the cops involved. And wherever he is, he took off on his own. If he was running, he was running real slow. Anybody who takes the time to pack all his pills isn’t in a big hurry to leave.”

  “I thought she said they were locked in his desk.”

  “Sure they were. Except that when I was in the bathroom, I checked the medicine cabinet. Three of the shelves were crammed with pill bottles, aspirin, all kinds of cold crap—some of it expired two years ago—hair spray, all the usual stuff. You couldn’t fit one more thing on any of those shelves. But the bottom shelf was empty. Obviously the professor cleaned it out.”

  As they walked along, occasionally their shoulders touched. It was casual, accidental, natural, and neither of them said anything about it and moved farther away.

  “So what are you thinking?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know exactly. I mean, let’s look at it: We got a missing college professor that the mob’s more interested in finding than his own wife. And after meeting her I’m wondering that if I was Gradinsky, who would I rather have find me?”

  Driving downtown, they debated their next move. Officially this was the end of their investigation. Unless they could come up with a compelling reason to continue, it was back to the Country Club. Slattery couldn’t justify giving them any additional time without opening up the great gates of the bureaucracy and letting loose the flood of paperwork that would inevitably flow through.

  If there is a single aspect of the job despised by just about every agent, it is the paper trail. Every aspect of every investigation has to be reported and recorded, every plan has to be approved, every dollar has to be accounted for with receipts, and every additional request has to be put on paper. People often ask me how difficult it was for me to work undercover inside the mob for six years. It was real tough, I tell them, real tough, but it did have at least one wonderful benefit: For six beautiful years I didn’t have to fill out a single form. Except for the fact that I could have been uncovered and whacked at any minute, I was in agent heaven. I rarely took any notes—I couldn’t risk the wiseguys finding them in my apartment—and I wore a wire fewer than a dozen times. I remembered as much as I possibly could about every day, every conversation, and as often as was safe and necessary I spoke with my case agent and gave him all the details. The case agents with whom I worked were responsible for generating the mountains of paperwork.

  The fact that the mob was looking for a Columbia University Russian professor was interesting, but certainly not of sufficient importance to justify a commitment of substantial government resources. Simply stated, no one was going to make a federal case out of it. But for Russo, and only slightly less so for O’Brien, it offered the lure of opportunity. For at least the next few months they were stuck in the Country Club. While they were part of a potentially important investigation, laying the foundation for an attack on the entire structure of organized crime in New York City, their role was little more than record-keeper. They spent their days and nights noting who came to the social club and when they left and who farted into the microphone and laughed about it. After perhaps another six months spent listening to the same people telling the same jokes they would testify at numerous trials that the official transcriptions were true and accurate reports of legal wiretaps.

  It was a necessary assignment in the building of a successful career, but Laura Russo was just too ambitious to sit back and let the bureaucracy control her destiny. There had to be a way to convince Slattery that there was substantially more to this case than what had thus far surfaced.

  O’Brien listened politely as she laid out the arguments she would use with Slattery. He had already decided to support her, but his reasons were less professional than personal. Things do happen that way on the job. Simply put, he was having a good time working with her.

  If asked, O’Brien would have claimed that he firmly supported the relatively new movement for women’s equality, but it was still very hard for him to completely overcome the evolutionary process that had created the American male. He would definitely have objected to being called a male chauvinist pig—he was thrilled to be in the women’s camp—but the undeniable fact was that when she was working intently, she really was cute. Even during the long interview with Grace Gradinsky, even after sitting through the four-hour mandatory sensitivity training course, even after competing against female agents at Quantico, he just couldn’t help appreciating the way her white silk blouse followed the contours of her lovely breasts. As much as he tried to resist, several times that afternoon he found himself stealing looks at her, trying hard to make it appear as if he were looking at the books behind her. “Look,” he told her as they parked in the bureau’s underground garage, “I think I got a good idea about how we can get this case going.”

  “Tell me,” she said, and her face brightened.

  Several minutes later they were sitting in Slattery’s office. “National security,” he said to Slattery, invoking the holy phrase.

  Slattery sighed deeply. That was just about the last thing he wanted to hear that afternoon. The good news for O’Brien and Russo was that Slattery was having a very bad day. Some clerk in Human Resources was giving him a hard time about his 67-E, his personnel file. Slattery was just beginning to think about retiring—he had his years in—so he wanted to make sure his records were in good order. That way if he made the decision, he would have no difficulty getting his pension and health insurance benefits. As it turned out, it was a very good thing he’d initiated the process.

  According to the bureau, Special Agent James Slattery did not exist. His 67-E was gone. The clerk had assured him that this was not really a problem, that almost definitely his records had been taken upstairs to be transferred to a computer disk, and that whoever took the file just forgot to leave a red slip in its place. Nothing to worry about, the clerk said.

  “Let me make sure I’ve got this right. You’re telling me that officially I don’t exist and that I shouldn’t worry about it,” Slattery had asked incredulously.

  “Oh, come on, of course you exist,” the clerk replied. “Just not on paper.”

  Slattery was furious. He wanted to know exactly what he had to do to make sure the problem was solved. Actually, the clerk told him, that was sort of the tricky part. Because officially he didn’t exist, he couldn’t make any requests to Human Resources. Somebody else would have to make that request for him.

  Slattery had slammed down the phone without resolving the problem. He hated himself for yelling at clerks, but how the hell could they lose his entire career? It was embarrassing. Americans throughout the world were relying on the efficiency of the FBI to fight crime and protect them from domestic upheaval. Or whatever they were calling the fight against communism. But according to the bureau, he had officially become the man who never was. Real efficient.

  And then O’Brien and Russo were sitting across from him suggesting they open up a major new investigation. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  That’s when O’Brien invoked the magic words “national security.”

  Slattery buried his face in his hands and just couldn’t help laughing. What else could hap
pen to him today? National fucking security. The two words that throughout the forty-year cold war opened the vault. “Oh, please,” he practically pleaded, “don’t do this to me today.”

  O’Brien knew that he had him on the run. “C’mon, Jim, look at what we got. There’s something going on here. One, a Russian-language professor who occasionally translates secret documents for Uncle Sam suddenly turns up missing. We don’t know what kind of documents, we don’t know the last time he worked. We don’t know if he owed anything to anybody or what he might have had in his possession. We know diddly-squat is what we know. Two, we do know that the mob is looking for him, but we don’t know why. Three, his wife says that the night he disappeared he got a phone call from a man speaking with a Russian accent and responded by putting on his coat and walking out the door. Certainly sounds a little Manchurian Candidate to me. Four, he’s been gone at least three days and she still hasn’t reported it to the cops. It doesn’t even look like she called the college to find out if he was showing up to teach his classes. Which he isn’t, by the way. And we’re pretty sure she knows a lot more than she told us . . .”

  “She definitely wasn’t too upset that he was gone,” Russo added.

  “Five, we’re guessing now, but it is possible somebody warned her not to make a big deal out of it and he’d be fine.” He paused and looked at Russo. “Anything else?”

  “He left on his own, we know that,” she added. “He took time to pack all his pills, so he had to know he was going to be gone for at least a few days. And he’s definitely connected.”

  Slattery had really tried to pay attention, but one thought kept flashing in his mind, bright as one of those neon signs in Times Square: I’m the fucking invisible FBI agent! But still he managed to hear enough of O’Brien’s earnest pitch to know there was very little there. Put it all together and it sounded an awful lot like a guy who owed something to somebody had just taken off. Only a few years earlier Slattery had worked with the NYPD on a joint task force investigating the Michele Sindona case. Sindona, the pope’s banker who had been indicted for looting the Franklin National Bank, had been kidnapped on 42nd Street in the middle of the afternoon, about a week before his bank fraud trial was set to begin. It turned out that Sindona had fled to Sicily to avoid the trial until the chief witness against him could be murdered. He was hidden by the Gambino family.