Hide in Place Read online

  CHAPTER

  30

  AT THE TIME it seemed the decision to focus on Hopper and bring him in as a CI was one the entire team undertook. But really, when she tried to remember, it was always Harry who’d pushed for it.

  “Put the word out,” Harry had said. “Ask the regulars if they know who he is. I’m telling you, he’s going to be the one. He’ll give us the rest of them. My gut tells me so.” Harry’s gut had solved hundreds of cases in his career and he was fond of it, not shy about giving it credit.

  Laney, no less desperate for a proper break in the case, saw the sense in what he said and asked Bunny and a few others to keep an eye out for the tall, older guy with the blond crew cut. Besides, she had no further leads. She’d be making dime-bag buys for a year before they had anything near felony counts on any one of the Orlov dealers, and they still would not have Orlov.

  “Him?” Bunny asked, perfect eyebrows rising. “The really old dude?”

  “Well, he can’t be more than midforties. Why, do you know him?” Laney asked.

  “No!” She tsked. “What do you want with him?”

  Laney rolled her eyes, then asked if Bunny had any dope on her (she knew she didn’t, could see from the sheen on Bunny’s forehead and the slight trembling in her hands that she was jonesing, needing a fix, and soon). This led to another buy from Malyish, followed by a well-deserved hour in a fiercely air-conditioned bar with Harry and Mike.

  “I saw our white John Doe today.” Harry sipped his Scotch. “Over by Baikal. He must live in the area.”

  “But what makes you think he’s part of Viktor’s group, though? Maybe he’s just another dope fiend,” Laney said.

  Harry shrugged. “I got a feeling. He doesn’t have the dope fiend look.” He patted Laney on the back. “How’s Alfie doing?”

  She gulped down half her lager. “You know. Good.” She nodded. Her son had been quiet since the swimming pool incident at camp back in August and the subsequent expulsion. Subdued, wouldn’t talk about it, but clung to her when she was home, sometimes even sitting on her lap when they ate dinner. Theo’d say, you’re too old for that, sit in your own chair, but Alfie would remain glued to her thighs and she allowed it, and in the end Theo would frown and pour another glass of wine.

  At last, three weeks after she’d first seen their John Doe, Bunny sauntered over and asked Laney for a cigarette. Laney always made sure to have a fresh pack, just for sharing.

  “So, that guy you’ve been ogling?” Bunny lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  “Yeah?” Laney tried to sound bored. With Bunny, a jaded vibe worked best.

  “Turns out he works in a pharmacy.”

  “Ooooh, that explains the nice clothes.”

  Bunny snorted. “What nice clothes? That JCPenney bullshit he’s got going on? Really?”

  Laney shrugged.

  Bunny looked at her and shook her head. “He’s in with Viktor Orlov.”

  Laney bit the inside of her cheek, feigned a confused frown. As far as Bunny was concerned, Laney knew nothing about Orlov.

  Bunny said, “Stay away from him. And”—she paused for extra drama—“he’s married. With a kid.”

  Laney had to look across the street so as not to give away the excitement galloping within her. All these months, and here, potentially, the weak link. A man involved with their target. A man with a family. Family made a person weak.

  Harry was right. His gut had killer instincts.

  She looked back at Bunny and winked. “I like ’em better married.”

  Bunny laughed, then grew somber. She stomped out her cigarette and placed both hands around Laney’s biceps, bending down so their eyes were level. “I’m serious, baby. Stay away from him. Those Russians are no joke.” She straightened and flipped her long hair off her shoulder. “Just saying. Woman to woman. You don’t want to get mixed up in that shit.”

  “I know.” Laney frowned. “But you know how it is. I like him.”

  “Baby, you don’t know him! You just saw him the once! What’s the matter with you?”

  Laney thought that standing on a corner waiting to get done by a drug dealer might begin to answer that question. She said, “You wouldn’t happen to have his name, would you?”

  Bunny sighed, then stuck a Post-it note on Laney’s chest before walking away, her hips swinging lusciously atop long, glossy legs. Owen Hopper’s name and phone were on that yellow Post-it.

  After that, all they needed was a half hour’s worth of checks and they knew where he lived, where he worked, his wife’s name, his son’s, his car, his license plate number, his moving violations, his wife’s parking tickets. As they suspected and hoped, he was no relation to Viktor Orlov. His wife was Russian, but she arrived in the U.S. back in the midnineties, her entire family remaining overseas. If cornered, his only familial obligations were to himself, his wife, and his son. He was perfect.

  All they needed next was to pin something on him. It had to be big enough to potentially send him away for a year but not so big that being a CI couldn’t save him. A small sentence could be negotiated away with a trophy as substantial as Orlov in return.

  They decided to begin with surveillance.

  CHAPTER

  31

  SEPTEMBER UNFURLED ITS mild breezes, chased away the oppressive heat. For six days she played the role of a homeless woman, padding her body with pillows under shapeless clothes she’d rubbed with dirt. It was a peaceful week, sitting on a park bench in the sun, facing his building. When he went to work, she followed, pushing her shopping cart full of trash. A few times she followed his wife and son.

  The son was a couple of years older than Alfie, and she found herself studying him, sometimes following him when she was meant to trail the father. The boy had both a sweetness and an intensity to him that reminded her of Alfie, and Hopper was endlessly caring toward him, spending hours in conversation with him, shooting hoops, playing chess in the park after work.

  The boy took after his dad in looks and tastes—a blond, gray-eyed, gangly teen in skinny jeans and expensive sneakers. Despite his father’s love and attention, or maybe because of it, Laney had a feeling she wasn’t going to be the last cop showing an interest in him. Once school began, he cut classes to ride the subways, jumping on top of cars only to flatten himself just before they screeched into a tunnel. The second time she followed him, her maternal instinct overwhelmed her and she took pictures, printed them, and left them in the Hopper mailbox. As far as she could tell, that was the last of both school cutting and train jumping.

  Most mornings she lingered on a stoop next to the pharmacy where he worked.

  “Goddammit,” she told Harry midweek back at the precinct, “your gut should have its own pension.”

  “Oh yeah?” He grinned, leaned back in his chair, popped a pretzel into his mouth. “Bingo on our guy Hopper?”

  “Every morning, carloads of people are unloaded at the pharmacy. Eighteen yesterday, twenty today. They go in all together, like a tourist group, and come out all together a half hour later. Then the dopeheads start arriving, like clockwork. The really shabby ones who are about to shit themselves go into the alley behind the pharmacy.”

  Harry extended the bag of pretzels, and she grabbed a handful, then continued. “So I go to the alley and shuffle over to one of them—you know him, Guppie—the one with all the pockmarks?”

  Harry smiled and nodded.

  “I say, you holding? And he says, nah, I’m waiting. And I say, for what, and he says, just wait. And what do you know? Guess who opens the back door and comes out for a cigarette break, except he’s got everything you want—he’s got oxy, dope, coke, whatever.” She crunched on a pretzel. “I think we can bring him in just based on what I witnessed today, but we’ll need a few buys to seal the deal.”

  Next week, wired up with the ghost kit, she listened in as one of their newer undercovers, Kyle Thompson, went into the pharmacy where Owen Hopper worked. She strolled past the alley,
made sure she’d have a clear, unobstructed view, crossed the street, leaned against the brick wall of a storefront accountant office, and shook out a cigarette.

  The pharmacy was owned by an octogenarian immigrant from the Soviet Union, a man who’d served ten years in the gulags for political reasons and been a refusenik in the seventies until he finally managed to escape the motherland and land in Brooklyn. Now he suffered from diabetes, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, varicose veins, asthma, and depression and rarely inspected his place of business, leaving the running of it to Hopper.

  They had timed Kyle Thompson’s visit a few minutes before the truckload of patients arrived. Kyle milled between the aisles, his blurred outline winking in and out of view, bought a bottle of vitamins and left, walked to the end of the block, then turned back. When the first junkie sidled into the alley behind the store, he followed. Kyle was too much of a novice (his hair too short, his physique too well fed and healthy) for him to play anything but what he was, a suburban working-class guy, and the act worked; his buys were usually quick and efficient.

  He joined the junkie already waiting and squatted against the wall. Laney couldn’t see their faces clearly, but her view was good enough for her not to worry. Through her headset, she heard Kyle’s soft breathing and his “Hey, man” to the junkie.

  When the back door opened and Hopper stepped out, the dopehead, dispensing with niceties, creaked to his feet and said, “Two perc tens.”

  Hopper ignored him and faced Kyle, his posture stiff, shoulders squared.

  The junkie shifted his feet and stared at Kyle too.

  “Hey,” Kyle said.

  Hopper nodded.

  “I saw your post on Craigslist,” Kyle said. Hopper listed his inventory online but in posts so cryptic that they had to show them to one of their other CIs for translation. He changed it every day or so, another curious detail setting him apart from Viktor’s associates. He’d made himself traceable. At the time she thought this meant he wasn’t so smart, would be an easy win. Later, of course, she understood Hopper was simply following orders, never questioning their origin or purpose.

  Hopper said nothing.

  “I’m Kev,” Kyle said, which was his entirely unimaginative undercover name. “Craigslist? I asked if you had thirty mgs and you said sure.” His posture was relaxed, easy. He was just a contractor taking a half hour out of fixing someone’s kitchen to get done. “You said thirty bucks each, right?”

  Hopper nodded.

  Kyle fished three hundreds from his jacket pocket and held them up. The junkie stared at the cash, and even from across the street Lanie suspected he was drooling, though she couldn’t be sure due to his general decrepitude.

  Hopper went inside, then a few minutes later came out with a small paper bag, handed it to Kyle, took the cash, and turned to the junkie, who, still staring wide-eyed at the undercover, had to be prodded to produce his paltry scrap of bills.

  “Positive buy,” Laney said into her set.

  “Great job!” Harry said once they were back in the office. “Criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree.” He handed her a bag filled with chebureki, still hot from the fryer, then bit into one himself.

  “Lamb?” Laney sniffed the pastries, and Harry nodded, wiping the juice from his mouth. She fished out a turnover and nibbled the flaky corner. “I guess we have him,” she said.

  Harry and Mike brought Hopper in the next day, waiting for him to leave work before approaching and asking him to come with. He refused at first. They were in plain clothes, the unmarked Impala parked at a meter a few cars down, and they told him they’d have no trouble calling a patrol car and having him arrested right then, in front of everyone. So do it, he said, and stomped away. But they wouldn’t leave him, matching his stride, and as they all walked, Harry and Mike pointed out two of Viktor Orlov’s cousins staring out a deli window. What do you suppose they’ll think, Harry said, if they see you carted away in a police car? What do you think they’ll do? Hopper shrugged, said I don’t fucking care, and Harry smiled his thin smile, only his lips stretching, and said I believe you care.

  Hopper slowed, stopped, squinted at the two detectives, and said, “Fine, but I’m not getting into that junker that’s screaming it’s a cop car. I’ll walk.”

  Laney watched Harry and Mike question Hopper on camera in the small interview room at the back of the precinct. He could never know she was a cop. As far as Hopper was concerned, Laney would also be a confidential informant, another person caught up in the drug world and stuck between prison and an offer of clemency.

  “We have enough evidence to put you away for a while,” Harry said. “Could be nine years. That’s a long time in your kid’s life.”

  Hopper sat in his uncomfortable chair calmly, his arms crossed. “So why am I not arrested yet?” he asked.

  Mike said, “You want something, maybe? A coffee? Tea? I think we have soup in the kitchen today.”

  “I’m fine,” Hopper said.

  Harry sipped a soda. “Look,” he said, “it’s clear you’re smart. You have a nice family. We’ll take you, but we don’t really want you.” He put the soda down and leaned forward. “You know who we want.”

  Hopper looked down, his first indication of unease. “I have no idea who you want,” he said.

  “No?” Harry cocked his head. “We want Viktor Orlov.”

  Hopper tensed, his shoulders squaring, his hands twisting into fists, evident even in the gray surveillance footage. He said nothing, wouldn’t look up.

  “Owen,” Harry said, “you sold felony-weight controlled substances to an undercover. Other undercovers can testify to you possessing and selling multiple weights on multiple days. Depending on the DA’s mood, that’s anything from one to nine years. Add one to nine years for each occurrence. We can arrest you today and you will never see your son graduate from school. I doubt he’ll go to college or anything. Hard when your dad’s in prison. Not providing.”

  He sat back and picked up his soda, sipped again. Said amiably, “Or who knows, maybe that crazy-hot wife of yours will get remarried and the new guy will pay for college. It happens.”

  Hopper raised his head, but there was a steadiness to him. He was listening, hard.

  “Putting you away will give us nothing. Orlov will have another guy in that store tomorrow. If we close down that store, he’ll go somewhere else. We need to get him.”

  Hopper looked up at the camera, and Laney shrank back. He seemed to be staring directly at her. After a moment, he placed his elbows on the metal table and faced Harry. He said, “Viktor is a smart guy. He keeps himself to himself. I don’t know if I can help you. Even if I wanted to. Which at the moment I don’t know if I do, since you haven’t told me what I’ll get.”

  Mike said, “If you give us enough information to put away Viktor Orlov, we may be able to persuade the DA to put you on probation, seeing as it’s your first offense.”

  “Probation will not help much if I’m dead. Which is what I will be if I give you what you want.” The tendons were jumping in his jaw. “Just arrest me now. They’ll take care of my family.”

  Harry held up his hands, palms out. “Hold on, hold on there. You seem almost eager for prison.” He smirked. “Family life getting to you? Need a break?”

  “Fuck off,” said Hopper. “I can’t help you. Just do what you need to do and fuck off.”

  Mike said, “I think you misunderstand us. We don’t expect you to testify or anything. Nobody will know it was you. Just keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll send another confidential informant to work with you. Get them acquainted with Orlov’s men. If you can, introduce this person to Orlov and the CI will make all the buys. When it’s time to testify, you’re out of it.”

  “Are you serious? Nobody will know?”

  “Not unless you blab,” Harry said. “You don’t strike me as someone who blabs. Do you blab?”

  Owen looked at Harry, then Mike, then Harry, then the camer
a.

  Something cold coiled and turned inside Laney’s gut. Excitement (because the hunt was about to start), apprehension (because the hunt was about to start), and maybe a touch of pity (because didn’t she know him by now?).

  “It’s just a recording,” Harry said, never taking his eyes from Hopper.

  “Okay,” Hopper said. “I’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose, right? Isn’t that your point?”

  Mike clapped him on the shoulder. “Exactly our point, my man. You sit tight. I’ll be back with some forms and we’ll get started.”

  For the first couple of weeks after this, Hopper gave them dreck. The names and numbers he wrote down led to dead ends, abandoned apartments, absent dealers, empty storehouses.

  “Douchebag’s fucking with us,” Mike said.

  “Wants to play that game, we’ll raid the pharmacy and arrest him today,” Harry said.

  “Wait until Saturday,” Laney said. She knew from her surveillance that Hopper’s son, Otto, played varsity basketball on Fridays and Owen always went, escorting his flashy wife to the bleachers, buying them all hot dogs and pretzels. It was a completely stupid, unreasonable, unprofessional reason to hold off an arrest, but something in her wanted to see them all three together, happy like that. If he was going away for years, he might as well get one last, beautiful night with his family.

  As it turned out, Owen did not get to see his son play basketball that night, but he did get an extra two months with his wife and son due to Viktor Orlov’s calculating nature.

  That Friday afternoon, two men in black tracksuits approached Hopper as he walked home, their bodies tautly muscled, wiry, their feet nimble as they directed him off to the side and then down the steps leading into a building’s inner courtyard.

  Laney, in her homeless-lady drag for the day, schlepped her shopping cart to the top of the steps and crouched. It never ceased to amaze her how easy it was to be invisible. Make yourself dirty and fat, layer torn, shabby, filthy clothes over your body, rub oil into your hair, and voilà! No one looks at you. Even the criminals look away.