Tragic Read Free

for a man to show up at his New Rochelle home so that Bebnev could shoot him was harder than it originally sounded. He figured there were going to be a lot of sleepless nights putting this one out of his mind.
    In the backseat, Alexei Bebnev fingered the gun he’d put back in the pocket of the long black leather coat he was wearing. Unlike the other two, he was not troubled by a conscience. He’d been raised in an orphanage on the outskirts of Moscow—an odd, distant child, who’d been unwanted by any prospective parents and eventually ran away to the streets, where he made his living as a small-time criminal. He’d come into some real money when he attempted to rob an old Jewish watchmaker in his apartment and ended up killing the man, but not before his victim told him where he’d stashed a small fortune in gold coins. It was enough for Bebnev to buy his way out of Russia to the United States, where he’d believed he would soon be living the sweet life. Life, it turned out, was not that easy. He became a dishwasher at a Russian restaurant in Brooklyn and dreamed of having money and respect as a hit man for the Russian mob.
    Trying to prove himself, Bebnev accepted four hundred dollars to kill two nobodies who got behind in their gambling debts to Lvov, a small-time loan shark and bookie with connections to the Malchek bratka, or “brotherhood,” the Russian mob equivalent ofa gang. Bebnev had hoped that his cold-blooded efficiency would get him noticed by the bigger mob bosses and help him climb the organized-crime ladder.
    It looked like this might be his big break. Lvov contacted him at the restaurant and said a friend of his in Manhattan had a big job that would pay good money, and more importantly get him noticed by “important” people. Lvov said he’d met this guy Joey some years ago down at the Brooklyn docks where Lvov ran small gambling operations and that the job had something to do with problems in the North American Brotherhood of Stevedores union that ran the docks on New York City’s west side.
    Bebnev met with Lvov, Joey, and Jackie at a bar in Hell’s Kitchen. He’d walked up behind the men, who were sitting at a booth, just in time to hear Joey tell Lvov that “Charlie wants this done ASAP.”
    They didn’t mention “Charlie” again, and Bebnev didn’t care. Joey, who did all the talking, offered Bebnev $30,000 to “eliminate” a man named Vince Carlotta. Excited by the money and the big-time nature of the hit, Bebnev agreed to take the job.
    It was supposed to look like a home invasion robbery that got out of hand. But as the day approached, he started to get cold feet and decided to bring DiMarzo in on it “if you can find someone with a car.” He told DiMarzo that he and the driver would split $14,000 while Bebnev would keep the lion’s share for pulling the trigger.
    “I’ve got to piss,” Miller said and opened his door. He got out of the car and walked over to a hedge that bordered the school grounds and relieved himself on a patch of snow left over from a storm a week earlier. Spitting one last time into the beer bottle, he tossed it into the bush. If they had to take off fast, he didn’t want its noxious contents spilling on the front seat.
    Miller had just turned to walk back to the car when headlights suddenly appeared from behind his car moving in their direction. He crouched by the hedge as a large SUV passed the Delta 88and continued on down the hill until it turned into the driveway of the house they’d been watching. A man and woman exited the car, with the woman opening a rear door and removing an infant. Then the family entered the house.
    Jumping back in the car, Miller turned to DiMarzo, who was studying a photograph that had been torn from the Dock: The Official Magazine of the North American Brotherhood of Stevedores in the light given off by a streetlamp. The photograph showed four middle-aged men, one of them with a circle drawn around his face and some