Brighton Beach: A Kurtz and Barent Mystery (Kurtz and Barent Mysteries Book 5) Read online

  Brighton Beach

  A Kurtz and Barent Mystery

  Also by Robert I. Katz

  Edward Maret: A Novel of the Future

  The Cannibal’s Feast

  The Kurtz and Barent Mystery Series:

  Surgical Risk

  The Anatomy Lesson

  Seizure

  The Chairmen

  The Chronicles of the Second Interstellar Empire of Mankind:

  The Game Players of Meridien

  The City of Ashes

  The Empire of Dust

  The Empire of Ruin

  The Well of Time (Forthcoming)

  Brighton Beach

  A Kurtz and Barent Mystery

  By

  Robert I. Katz

  Brighton Beach

  A Kurtz and Barent Mystery

  Copyright © 2018 by Robert I. Katz

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form, without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover design by Steven A. Katz

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks as always to Lynn and Erica for their assistance in preparing this manuscript, and a special thanks to Philip M. Marshall, former prosecuting attorney, defense attorney and judge of the City Court of Buffalo, NY, for his critique regarding the accuracy of legal aspects and police procedures referred to in this book.

  Cast of Characters (in order of appearance)

  Arnaldo Figueroa: New York City detective, working undercover.

  Three hoodlums trailed by Arnaldo Figueroa: Members of a Russian criminal organization.

  Richard Kurtz: Surgeon, on the staff of Easton Medical Center and Staunton College of Medicine in New York City, also working part-time as a police surgeon for the NYPD. Kurtz is ex-army, has a black belt in taekwondo and can handle himself in a fight.

  Drew Johnson: Fifth year surgery resident.

  Linda Rodriguez: Surgical intern.

  Lew Barent: New York City homicide detective, Kurtz’ friend.

  Harry Moran: New York City homicide detective, Barent’s frequent partner.

  Allen Wong: Neurosurgeon.

  Iosif Kozlov: Former Colonel in the Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet Union, one of three Russian mob bosses in Brooklyn.

  Grigory Mazlov: Iosif Kozlov’s principal lieutenant.

  Vinnie Steinberg: Anesthesiologist.

  Jeffrey McDonald: Victim of a motor vehicle accident, Kurtz’ patient.

  Audrey Schaeffer: Jeffrey McDonald’s girlfriend.

  Christy McDonald: Jeffrey McDonald’s ex-wife.

  Mahendra Patel: Anesthesiologist.

  Steve Ryan: Plastic surgeon.

  Donna Ryan (née Petrovich): Steve Ryan’s wife, an investment banker and a childhood friend of Lenore Kurtz.

  Lydia James: Patient operated on by Steve Ryan, with Kurtz’ assistance.

  Lenore Kurtz (née Brinkman): Kurtz’ wife, a graphic artist.

  Juan Moreno: Colombian mob boss in New York.

  Hector Montillo: Juan Moreno’s first victim.

  Betty Barent: Lew Barent’s wife.

  Mitchell Price: Stockbroker and murder victim.

  Elias Levin and Walter Stockton: Surgeons.

  Gerald Cox: Co-worker of Mitchell Price.

  Javier Garcia: Mexican mob boss in New York.

  Sergei Ostrovsky: Former Major in The Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet Union, one of three Russian mob bosses in Brooklyn.

  Bill Werth: Psychiatrist and a friend of Kurtz.

  Lenore Kurtz (née Brinkman): Kurtz’ wife, a graphic artist.

  Stephanie Myers, Brad Jenkins, Bert Armstrong: Sick or injured cops, all patients of Kurtz.

  Cynthia Figueroa: Arnaldo Figueroa’s wife.

  The rabbi who marries Kurtz and Lenore.

  Kurtz’ father and Lisa, his guest at Kurtz and Lenore’s wedding.

  David Chao: Surgeon, Kurtz’ partner.

  Carrie Owens: Emergency Room physician, David Chao’s fiancée.

  Jordan Chance: Martial artist.

  Joe Ressler: Medical intensivist.

  Steven Hayward, Howard Mather and Douglas Jefferson: Friends of Jeffrey McDonald.

  Marilyn Hayward: Steven Hayward’s wife.

  Mrs. Velasquez: Steven Hayward’s cleaning lady.

  Jason Klein: Co-owner and Manager of Kingsford Household Supply, Steven Hayward’s boss.

  Sal Marino: Co-owner of Kingsford Household Supply, Steven Hayward’s cousin.

  Cindy Daniels: Assistant Manager of Kingsford Household Supply.

  Esther Brinkman: Lenore’s mother, a former housewife currently employed in a real estate agency.

  Stanley Brinkman: Lenore’s father.

  Sylvia Hersch: Esther Brinkman’s cousin, the owner of the real estate agency where Esther Brinkman is employed.

  Milton Hersch: Husband of Sylvia Hersch.

  Moishe and Natalie Hale, and their son: Guests of Esther and Stanley Brinkman.

  Esteban Martinez: Friend and associate of Javier Garcia.

  Croft: Pimp and police informant.

  Regina: Croft’s fiancée.

  Christine Morales: Owner of an exclusive and upscale escort agency.

  Joachim: Argentine businessman, client of Christine Morales.

  Reginald Rinear: Wealthy commodities broker, client of Christine Morales.

  Everett Johns: Reginald Rinear’s lawyer.

  An anonymous attempted murderer.

  Father Robert Kamenov: Orthodox Catholic priest, well-known and highly respected in the Russian community in Brooklyn.

  Alexei Rugov: Veteran of the Soviet Security Services, one of three Russian mob bosses in Brooklyn.

  Gregory Samms, Gene Bauer and Albert Morelli: Sick or injured cops, all patients of Kurtz.

  Vasily Lukin: Donna Ryan’s cousin, a principal lieutenant of Alexei Rugov.

  Ted Weiss: Senior Assistant District Attorney.

  James: Reginald Rinear’s butler.

  Andrew Fox: Partner of Steven Hayward.

  Ilya Sokolov: Sergei Ostrovsky’s principal lieutenant.

  Sean Brody: Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Staunton College of Medicine.

  Arkady Lukin: Donna Ryan’s cousin and Vasily Lukin’s brother, a financial analyst.

  Olga and Natasha Lukin: Vasily and Arkady Lukin’s younger sisters.

  Alan Saunders: Drug addict.

  Alicia: Alan Saunder’s girlfriend.

  Reggie Johnson: Friend of Alan Saunders, host of parties where drugs are bought and sold.

  A group of anonymous gunmen.

  Joe Danowski: Cop on the Narcotics Squad of the NYPD.

  Alejandro Gonzales: Member of Javier Garcia’s criminal organization.

  Mrs. Schapiro: Kurtz’ secretary.

  Abner Goodell: Lawyer.

  Abby Blake: Junior assistant District Attorney.

  Ilya and Dimitri Fedorov: Brothers who work in a bakery specializing in Russian pastries, owned by Masha Fedorov, their aunt, petty criminals.

  Celia Bauman: Gerald Cox’ secretary.

  Stephanie Rogers: School acquaintance of Celia Bauman.

  James Reilly: Lawyer.

  Dimitri Petrovich: Donna Ryan’s father, owner of an expensive and highly regarded restaurant that specializes in Russian cuisine.

  Jason Blair: Internal Affairs investi
gator with the NYPD.

  Rodrigo Diaz: Member of a Southwest gang with ties to Javier Garcia’s organization.

  Sebastian: Colleague of Rodrigo Diaz.

  Anonymous Gang Member: kidnapped, tortured and murdered by Rodrigo Diaz and his colleague, Sebastian.

  Anita Lopez: Waitress.

  Irina Zharkov and Natasha Baranov: Alexei Rugov’s two favorite mistresses.

  Timur Beshimov: Russian assassin.

  Jerry Conlon: Cop, Bert Armstrong’s partner.

  Alice Boyer: Cop, Union Representative.

  Eric Cantrell: Lawyer.

  Jeremiah Phelps: Investment banker and Senior Partner in the firm of Hotchkiss and Phelps, Donna Ryan’s employer.

  Ken Fischel, Dave Mahoney and Beverly Levinson: Junior partners in the firm of Hotchkiss and Phelps.

  Nika Fedorov: Ilya and Dimitri Fedorov’s mother.

  Olga Lukin: Arkady and Vasily Lukin’s mother.

  Contents

  Cast of Characters (in order of appearance)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Information About the Author

  Chapter 1

  During the course of a long and successful career as an undercover cop, Arnaldo Figueroa had developed a talent for passing unnoticed. He was average height, with an average face, thin but not unusually so. He looked nothing like an athlete, though he was, in fact, endowed with superior eye-hand coordination and excellent reflexes and had wrestled in high school and then in college.

  He had trailed the three men through the neighborhood at night. The three walked as if they owned the place, looking neither to the left nor the right. Though they were not on their own turf, they seemed afraid of nothing. The three passed four small groups of pedestrians, all of whom stepped to the side and hurried by without looking at their faces.

  Wise, Arnaldo Figueroa thought. These were not men whose attention you wanted to attract. Not at all.

  The three were big, white and probably Russian. Figueroa regarded the three men as an anomaly. They had no business here…unless, of course, they did have business here, which would be bad news for the denizens of New York City.

  Figueroa, whose business it was to keep track of other peoples’ business, was curious. He wasn’t crazy, though. He followed the three at a discreet distance, flitting from the cover of a tree to a parked van to a screen of bushes, from corner to corner, staying far back. Unnoticed. Hopefully.

  The three men stopped in front of a brownstone that was undergoing renovation. Scaffolding covered the sides and a sign reading, “Construction Zone: Keep Out” was displayed in front. The door was boarded up, the building dark and seemingly empty.

  One of the three knocked on the door. The door opened. A short, thin man looked at them, puffed up his cheeks and gave an abrupt nod. The three men walked inside. None of them had said a word.

  Expected, then. Arnaldo Figueroa shook his head and sighed. This was bad. Nobody scheduled legitimate meetings in an abandoned building.

  Turning on his heel, he scurried away. The blare of a car horn a block or so over saved his life. He jerked his head up at the sudden sound and neither heard nor felt the bullet that was intended to scramble his brain.

  The car horn was the last thing he would remember for a long, long time.

  Richard Kurtz held out his hand. “Sponge,” he said.

  The nurse handed him a pair of forceps with a folded four-by-four held in the tip. He dabbed at the abdominal wall, decided that the oozing was insufficient to cause any problems, and proceeded to run the bowel. Ten centimeters above the cecum, he found what he was looking for: a hard, solid mass.

  Kurtz’ fingers moved almost without thinking. He had performed this operation a hundred times before. The mass was isolated and the patient had been adequately prepped, having had an asymptomatic tumor found on routine colonoscopy a couple of weeks prior. The colonoscopist had taken multiple specimens and so far as could be determined by biopsy, the tumor had not spread.

  Unfortunately, however, the tumor had spread. Once the abdomen was opened, it could be seen that the liver was infested with multiple, tiny nodules. It was a surprise, since the patient’s liver functions were normal and MRI showed nothing suspicious. Kurtz sighed.

  The patient was forty-seven years old, young for colon cancer, but it ran in his family, which was why he had elected to have the colonoscopy at such a relatively young age. Not young enough, as it turned out.

  “Fuck,” Kurtz muttered.

  Drew Johnson, the fifth-year assisting on the case, nodded but didn’t say a word. There was nothing to say.

  Linda Rodriguez, the intern, too inexperienced to know better, said, “How about RFA?”

  Drew Johnson rolled his eyes. Radiofrequency ablation was the hot new thing. Like most hot new things, its benefits over the tried and true were hazy and still unproven.

  “Too many of them,” Kurtz said. “His liver is riddled.” He shook his head. “Fuck,” he said again.

  Might as well do the bowel resection, Kurtz reflected. No reason not to. Chemotherapy, mostly 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin, would probably give him another year or so, and at least he would die without a drainage tube. They took half a dozen punch biopsies of the liver nodules and sent them off to pathology, then Kurtz watched as Johnson clamped the colon above and below the tumor and cut out the offending piece of bowel. Then they waited. Twenty minutes later, pathology called to confirm that the frozen sections of the margins were clear and that the nodules from the liver were indeed the same type of poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma as the mass from the bowel. Once assured that this was the case, Johnson proceeded to stitch the two segments of bowel back together.

  Forty minutes later, the patient, awake but sedated, was resting comfortably in the recovery room. Kurtz had already given the family the bad news, a job that he always hated, and was changing in the locker room when the police beeper went off.

  He stared at it for a moment, then pushed the small button on the top and scanned the number. It was one that he knew well. He sighed and picked up his phone.

  New York City Health and Hospitals/Bellevue, formerly known simply as Bellevue Hospital, was the oldest such public institution in the United States, dating back to 1736. Bellevue had a long and storied history, having been responsible for numerous innovations such as the first city-wide sanitary code in the United States, the first cadaver kidney transplant in the world, the first mitral valve replacement, the first resection of a femoral aneurysm and the establishment of the first nursing school for men. Despite this illustrious history, Bellevue, as a city hospital devoted primarily to the care of those who cannot afford to pay, is today looked down upon by the more elite institutions in the city.

  Kurtz, who had unfortunately come to know the place well, did not share this opinion. The care provided by Bellevue, so far as Kurtz’ experience went, was generally excellent. Tonight, was no exception.

  Lew Barent and Harry Moran met him in the ER. “It’s Arnie,” Barent said. “Arnie Figueroa.”

  Kurtz winced. He knew Arnie Figueroa well. “Shit,” he said.

  “He’s been working undercover. We don’t know who shot him. It was a residential neighborhood in Williamsburg.”

  Kurtz by now knew the drill. As a police surgeon with the august rank of “Inspect
or,” his principal job was to oversee the care of injured cops, particularly those injured in the line of duty. In most cases, however, and this case was not an exception, the injured cop was already under the care of perfectly competent physicians who resented having an outsider looking over their shoulder, potentially criticizing the quality of care that they provided and gathering evidence for any professional liability suits that might result from a less than stellar outcome.

  Kurtz didn’t blame them. His real job, in his own opinion, was to provide a little hand holding, give some reassurance to the other cops and the patient’s family that New York City’s best was on the case, making certain that everything was being done to the highest standards. Which it was.

  As a police surgeon, Kurtz was entitled to come into the OR and observe, which he did as gingerly and unobtrusively as possible. The surgeon, a tall, skinny guy named Allen Wong, didn’t even glance at him, his attention focused on the patient’s exposed brain. Kurtz couldn’t see much of the actual operation, since the surgical field in a neurosurgery case was small and almost entirely obscured by the drapes and the bodies of the surgical team clustered around the field. That was alright. He listened for a half hour or so, gathered enough information to know that the patient was stable and the operation proceeding in as normal a fashion as possible, and made his way back out to the waiting room.