The Con Man's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

poet. The only thing separating his house from the beach was a narrow concrete esplanade, badly in need of repair. Austere and window-less, except for the side that faced the ocean, the house was a series of rounded bare concrete walls. From the street, it looked like it could house a military regiment. The only breaks in the white background were a handful of metal boxes for security cameras. Getting in without being noticed would be a challenge. Eddie drove halfway down the block and pulled to the curb.
    At the ocean end of the block, an older man in a white T-shirt sprayed Borodenko's beloved Rolls-Royce with a hose. The man had parked the Rolls a good distance from the driveway, not quite under a dogwood tree in full bloom. The tree blocked Eddie's position from Borodenko's cameras, but there was no way to get closer to the house without being on-camera. Even if he could get close, the house looked sealed. Breaking in without being seen seemed a complicated task at best. Keep it simple for now, he reminded himself. The answer will come to you. Eddie made a U-turn and drove away.
    On the way back to Brighton Beach, Eddie finished the knish, then dumped the remaining water out the window. At the Amoco on Neptune and Coney Island Avenue, he stopped for gas. Twenty-two dollars and fifty cents filled the Olds. He put another three bucks' worth in the red gas can in his trunk. Lawn-mower season-everyone was gassing up. He paid cash.
    One more stop before going home: a weedy, debris-strewn dead end in Coney Island. Gulls screeched overhead as Eddie pissed against the fence protecting the entrance to the abandoned Parachute Drop. He'd heard rumors that the Parachute Drop was going to reopen; it had been closed for years. The structure was visible from the Belt Parkway. People dropping through the air in parachutes might draw customers in. Eddie rummaged through his trunk until he found two old towels he'd used for waxing his car. He tossed them in the backseat, along with a faded Yankees hat. Then he filled his water bottle three quarters full with gasoline and stuffed a dampened oily rag into the neck.
    With the smell of gas on his hands, Eddie returned to Manhattan Beach. All the tree-lined blocks were quiet, peaceful, bucolic. Manhattan Beach seemed a great place to live, the kind of neighborhood people never associated with Brooklyn. He adjusted the rearview mirror, then glanced down Yuri Borodenko's dead-end street. He jammed the Yankees hat down tight on his head, then got out and quickly wrapped the old towels over his front and rear license plates.
    Back behind the wheel, Eddie took one last look in all directions. Borodenko's block was empty-no drivers, no pedestrians. The guy who'd been washing Borodenko's Rolls-Royce was gone, the green hose no longer on the sidewalk. Eddie put the Olds in reverse and backed down the block at thirty miles an hour, stopping hard at the dogwood tree. Pretty pink petals blocked him from Borodenko's cameras. He opened the door and lit the oily rag. He held the bottle until the flame was fully engaged.
    Then he leaned down and rolled it under Borodenko's beloved Rolls-Royce.
    Two blocks away, Eddie heard the first explosion. A second explosion, this one louder, occurred seconds after the first blast. Black smoke rose high above the trees. He stopped by an empty lot to take the towels off his license plates. It was a start.

Chapter 5

Monday
    8:00 P.M.
     
    Twelve hours after his daughter had disappeared, Eddie Dunne sat at his kitchen table, trying to decipher a recipe for angel food cake. He'd taken refuge in the kitchen, far away from the overly reassuring young detectives hovering over the phone in the living room. The cake was his granddaughter's idea. Grace had called it "angel foot cake" when she was a baby, and it always made them laugh. She wanted to have a happy surprise for her mother when she got home.
    "The recipe says a tube pan," Eddie said.
    "I know which pan."
    Grace stood