Page 43 of Under Cover
“Not authorized to be here,” Crosby replied. “Treat him like a fly on the wall, per Harding, but he’s not to interfere with our op.”
“The fuck?” McEnany spluttered. “Crosby, are you fucking kidding me? I’m here to investigate your shoot yesterday—”
“No you’re not,” Natalia Denison said, emerging from the coffee corner to hand Crosby and Garcia their own mugs before turning to get her own. “We’re not stupid. We know why you’re here and why you’re zeroing in on Crosby. Go to your corner and let us work.” She made a little shooing motion with her hand, and McEnany’s eyes narrowed. He advanced on her, shoulders swinging.
“Look, you fuckin’ bi—”
Gail stuck her foot out and tripped him.
McEnany went sprawling, and the mood in the situation room was grim enough that not one person laughed.
Instead, they turned toward Gail and Manny. “What do you got for us?” Garcia said.
“It’s a hot one,” she told them, like that foot thing hadn’t happened. “See this guy?” On the screen at the far end of the table a picture appeared of a fleshy businessman in a very pricey suit. His thinning hair was coarse and black, like his eyebrows, and his scalp showed pink underneath.
“Mobster,” Natalia said, taking a sip of her coffee and stepping delicately around McEnany as he was trying to pull himself up.
“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Gail told her. “This is Maurice St. James, but that’s an assumed name. His real name is Mauritz Stoya. Businessman, illegally in this country from Russia, master of imports and exports, owner of one of the biggest strips of warehouses off the Hudson in New Jersey.”
“I take it he’s been under observation?” Harding said, strolling in from his office. McEnany was reaching for a chair to help pull himself up, and Harding pulled the chair away from him and sat on it.
“For a number of years. FBI and NYPD Vice both have dossiers on this guy, boss,” Gail said. “He’s slippery, but my contact at the FBI says they were closing in on him—the sting was supposed to go down this weekend.”
“Ah,” Harding said. “That explains a lot.”
“It does,” Swan replied. He hit a key on the board in front of them and another face appeared on the monitor at the end of the room. “This is his six-year-old son, Kosta, by his mistress, Tatya Zarim.” The boy appeared, smiling shyly, in the lap of a thin, tired-looking blond woman who had obviously lived happier days. She was doing her best, though, kissing the boy’s ear, holding up a favorite toy. The boy was reaching for the toy as the photo was taken, and Crosby got the impression of a dragonfly captured in amber at a perfect moment.
“The boy’s okay?” Crosby asked, suddenly not aware of McEnany in the least.
“As far as we know,” Gail said. “He disappeared from his bedroom last night, and while his mother is doing all the batshit crazy things you’d expect from somebody worried to death, his father is not.”
“So, uh, whatisStoya doing?” Gideon Chadwick asked. He and Joey Carlyle were seated on the far side of the table, shoulder to shoulder, as focused on the case as Garcia and Crosby. McEnany had managed to get himself upright by now and was glaring at Denison. He’d taken two steps toward her, mouth opened in a snarl, when Harding stood fluidly and blocked his path.
“Stoya,” Gail murmured, checking her notes, only a little oblivious to the byplay, “is gathering his goons. I’ve got possibles—a private jet booked to Moscow and another to Prague. Moscow is closer to home, but given the current political climate there, I think Prague is safer.”
“And he’s going to want a safe place, isn’t he?” Harding murmured, frowning.
Garcia asked, “Do we have a family history for him?”
“Hm….” Gail went to work. “Gimme a second here….”
“Got it!” Swan said. “Yes, yes we do. His father bailed before he was born. Raised by his mother, but she bailed too when he was a kid, and his maternal grandmother took over. She was… oh.”
Gail looked over his shoulder to see the intel on his laptop. “Ugh.”
“You guys are freaking me out here,” Garcia said, and Crosby felt the tension that had wrapped his face in eel wire since he’d come in and seen McEnany relax with Garcia’s easy presence. “It’s gotta be bad.” Garcia was working; Crosby could work. Right, relax—just enough to get into the swing of things, to do what his team always did.
“She ran the family business,” Gail said, glancing up.
“Same business Stoya inherited,” Swan added. “She was apparently very good at it.” He met everybody’s eyes. “According to the data available to the FBI, Stoya probably saw his first murder at age ten.”
The room recoiled. “That’s fucked up,” Carlyle said, and there was an exhalation of agreement.
“So what’s that got to do with anything?” McEnany asked, apparently drawn into the puzzle more than he was upset at the players.
“It means we know where he’s going,” Harding said crisply. “I know the political sitch is bad in Moscow, but our Stoya’s going to want to bring his son into the fold. He’s taking the plane that will take him home. Where’s that one departing from?”
“La Guardia’s private jet field,” Gail said, tapping. Manny pulled something up on his computer and showed her. She nodded andhmmed. “Chief, it looks like Grandma Gargoyle had two properties. Prague is still in the running.”