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days of Eddie's police career, Boland was a hotshot rookie in the Detective Bureau.
    Grace put her finger in the vanilla extract and tasted it. She made a pained face as the front doorbell rang. Eddie had assumed Boland would walk around back. Only people who didn't know them rang the front doorbell. Grace wiped her tongue with her apron.
    "Why don't you go watch TV for a while, babe. I have to talk to this guy."
    "Is he going to help find Mommy?" she asked softly.
    "Absolutely. I just have to fill him in. Then we'll get this cake rolling after that."
    "We don't want it rolling, silly," she said.

Chapter 6

Monday
    8:30 P.M.
     
    Both detectives hustled to the front door as Detective Matty Boland rang the bell again. As he yanked on the antique door, Eddie reassured them he knew the guy. The hand-carved wood, curved on top to fit the arched doorway, swelled up and stuck in damp weather. It was the original door, and he'd been babying it for years, not wanting to think about the hassle of replacing it. Then he wondered what the hell he was worried about. Would it really matter if it crumbled today? He put some muscle into it and it popped open.
    "Jesus Christ," Boland said, smiling. "We kicked down steel doors in Harlem faster than that."
    "Nobody ever uses this door. I thought you knew that."
    "How many years since I was here? I'm supposed to remember doors?"
    Eddie had always liked Matty Boland. He was cocky, but not afraid to back it up. His looks and Manhattan social life made him a media darling, but he was a tough street cop. When Eddie was under the IAB microscope,
    Boland went out of his way to support him. After Eddie was forced to resign, Boland came up to him and said that if he ever needed anything, he should just call.
    "Anything new on your daughter?" Boland asked, as Eddie led him into the kitchen. "Jesus, I can't even imagine-"
    "How did you find out?"
    "Detective Panko, Yonkers PD, called the office, asking about certain names in the Russian mob."
    "She called the Seventeenth squad?"
    "No, I'm outta the Seventeenth, be a year in June. I made a move into a federal task force working Russian organized crime."
    "Is that why you're here?"
    "C'mon, Eddie. I'm being up-front about this. I'm working with the feds on the Russians. What more can I say?"
    "Let me guess," Eddie said. "The feds smell an opportunity. They sent you because they think you'll raise my comfort level with whatever deal they're offering."
    Boland smiled sadly and looked around the room. His teeth looked like they'd been bleached. He had an upscale haircut, and his handsome features had a pampered glow, like he'd been to a tanning parlor or invested in some expensive skin care.
    "I remember this place now," Boland said. "Your wife is a redhead, right?"
    "Eileen passed away a few years ago, but you're right, she was a redhead."
    "I didn't know that, Eddie. Sorry. Shit, I still sound like an idiot, don't I? I probably should have let someone else do this… but I figured I'd look out for a cop better than… you know… them ."
    Boland gestured toward the living room and a Yonkers cop he'd assumed was a fed. The fed-hating thing was part of his act. Boland had a charming, bad-boy way that women fell for. Eddie remembered that Eileen, who had never liked any of his cop friends, spoke of Boland for days after she first met him.
    "The reason I'm here," he said, "is because the powers that be in the Russian task force want to offer you a deal. It's a quid pro quo arrangement, according to them. They help out on this case, you help them with the Russians."
    "We already have an FBI team working solely on the kidnapping. Why can't your task force guys pick up a phone if they hear something about Kate?"
    "Because nobody's heard shit," Boland said, taking a seat at the kitchen table. "And we're probably not going to. That's the problem. We know Brighton Beach is stirred up. Things are happening, but we can only watch it from a distance. You follow