Among Thieves (12 page)

Milstein took a long, deep breath. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to stop thinking. He told himself he had worked out a plan with Markov. Stick to it. Take it step by step. Stay calm.

Suddenly, he felt exhausted. He had been fending everything off until he'd finished the call. Now the tension, the fear, the worry seemed to smother him.

Well, he thought as he pushed himself out of the sitting chair, there is nothing more to do tonight. Except get rid of this fucking phone. He pried opened the back of the cell phone with his fingernail, dug out the SIM chip, went out to the hallway outside his apartment.

He tried to twist the SIM chip and break it as he walked toward the garbage chute at the end of his hall. He couldn't. He couldn't break it. He just opened the garbage chute and tossed the phone and the chip into the disposal, holding the door open, listening as the pieces fell fourteen floors to somewhere.

 

12

“So maybe you cut off this
coño's
head and put it on the other motherfucker's desk, and both of them get the message,” said Manny.

Beck pictured a severed head on Milstein's desk at Summit Investing, and tried to imagine the effect.

“I suppose that would get everybody's attention. Not sure Olivia would be all that comfortable with it.”

Manny and Beck sat on couches facing each other on the second floor of Beck's Red Hook building. Beck had returned from Central Park a little past midnight.

“She don't have to know the details,” said Manny.

Manny Guzman sat back on the comfortable couch and took another swig of his favorite Mexican beer.

The second floor where they sat was much different from the bar downstairs. Except for shoring up the floor and some rewiring, the first floor had been left as it was when Beck bought the building. But he'd gutted the two floors above the bar down to the bare walls and rafters, then built everything out to his exact specifications.

The second floor was now an open loft space. At the west end were three large comfortable couches surrounding a six-by-five-foot coffee table made of petrified wood, hard as iron, hundreds of years old.

Manny's couch faced the bare brick north wall where a low mahogany credenza had been placed. On top of the credenza sat a fifty-five-inch LCD TV, with a cable box, Blu-Ray DVD player, DVR, speakers, and a few other pieces of equipment Beck didn't really understand or care much about.

An eighteen-by-twenty-foot Oriental rug with blue and cream colors defined the seating area at the west end of the floor. Dark red velvet drapes covered a long set of double-paned windows at that end of the loft, lending warmth and privacy.

The rest of the space contained a large kitchen, a dining area with a rectangular oak table that could seat fourteen, and finally at the east end of the open space an office area where Beck's custom-made desk sat holding his computer, printer, phones, and two monitors. Behind the desk, papers, books, and files were stored in floor-to-ceiling shelves.

Manny asked, “You really think this guy is going to come up with that amount of money?”

“Yes.”

Manny made a face. “If you say so.”

“I'm pretty sure Milstein gets it.”

“But not the other guy?”

“Probably not. Not yet.”

“Which is why you want to go see him.”

“Partly.”

“What's the other part?”

“When was the last time you talked to Olivia?” Beck asked.

“Yesterday. After we talked, I told her you was coming up to see her.”

“You should have warned me.”

“'Bout what?”

“Her looks.”

“Easy, amigo, that's my cousin.”

Beck smiled. “A cousin ain't that close.”

“She is. Maybe the closest I'll ever get to a daughter.”

“I know, I know. I get it.”

Manny took another sip of his Negra Modelo dark beer.

Beck lifted a rocks glass holding three fingers of Jameson, took a long sip and chased it with the same beer. Beck set his drink on the table and leaned forward. “Manny, the point I'm trying to make—her effect on men is another reason I want to see Crane.”

“What do you mean?”

“Guy does violence like that to a woman like Olivia, it's crazy. I want to know what kind of crazy I'm dealing with.”

“What do you mean? You think she had something going with this guy Crane?”

Beck shook his head. “Not exactly. I got the feeling she was very careful about how she deals with men in her professional life. But maybe Crane had some shit in his head about her. Maybe this started with more than just her getting into his business. I won't know until I see him.”

Manny nodded, thinking it over. “So you think this is something about Olivia rejecting this guy?”

Beck could see Manny's anger rising, but he didn't downplay it.

“Maybe. Maybe it's part of it. Maybe not. Either way, I don't want this asshole to think he can continue having anything to do with your cousin. No lawsuits. No blackballing. Nothing. And if he's got some bullshit fantasy about her in his head, it stops. He stops even thinking about her. Not even in his dreams.”

Manny nodded, agreeing. He was silent for a few moments, and then he asked, “How's some Wall Street fuck get the stones to do any of this shit?”

“It's a good question. I asked Olivia.”

“What did she say?”

“She said the guy's a bit crazy to begin with. Wired up tight because there's a lot of money at stake. Enough to make him reckless. Also, turns out he runs money for some arms dealer. Olivia doesn't know much about him other than he's got connections and isn't exactly legit. She thinks Crane is riding on his coattails. Tough guy by association.”

“An arms dealer? What the fuck is that? What's that mean? Who is this guy? What's he got going for him?”

“I don't know. And frankly, I'd rather not turn over that rock. Let Crane and Milstein worry about their client. My guess is they'll keep their mouths shut about this and pay the money to make this problem go away. Milstein gets it. Now I just want to make sure Mr. Crane understands he shouldn't make the mistake of wearing someone else's balls, or try to get in the way of this severance deal for Olivia.”

Manny nodded. “It's either that, or just fucking kill him now and be done with it.”

Beck shook his head. “No. Killing him now isn't the right move. Too much chance it will rebound onto Olivia.”

“I bet she'd stand up.”

“Maybe. But what's the point? We get rid of one problem and create an even worse problem for her. Your cousin is a civilian. What she wants is her life back. She gets associated with a murder, no one on Wall Street will come within a mile of her. Plus, we'll have cops and investigators and parole assholes crawling all over you. It's almost certain you'd go back inside until we beat it.”

“Comes to that, I can deal with it.”

“It's not an option.”

Manny made a face, and said, “Okay. We'll go talk to this prick. Take care of it.”

“Not we. Not yet. Me.”

“You already told me he might be hooked up with some people.”

Beck shrugged. “I'll make sure Crane gets the message to unhook himself.”

“Then bring Ciro with you.”

“Come on, Manny, Crane is no hard guy. His boss has already gotten a taste of Ciro. Probably already told Crane to stop fucking around. Let me seal the deal and be done with this.”

Manny finished his beer and set the bottle on the coffee table. He stared at Beck with his baleful eyes and said, “James, I know you always figure shit out five, six different ways, three, four steps ahead. So much I don't even bother trying to track it. But just make sure this motherfucker don't cause Olivia any more problems. Because if he does, he will be chopped up into little pieces and be so fucking gone there won't be nothing left. Not a fucking cry, or a word, or a whisper. Nothing.”

“I know, Manny.”

Guzman shook his head. “He should already be dead.” He pointed a finger at Beck. “And don't make any mistake, James. These high-and-mighty assholes with more money than they can count, they think they have all the power. They look at us like cockroaches. Fucking ignorant ex-cons. They think they can snap their fingers and the system comes down on us and we're gone. Garbage taken out. Like we're nothing. You think you can change that?”

“No. But so what. I only have to convince two assholes this is in their best interests. Olivia gets paid. Puts her life back together, and when the time is right, we do what we have to do. Or not. That's all I'm saying.”

Manny nodded imperceptibly, frowning his agreement.

“You usually don't have trouble being patient, Manny.”

Manny shifted on the couch. “This feels different.”

“You want something to do, call Olivia.”

“Why?”

“I have to run this deal past her, obviously. I can't see her not taking it. But she should hear it from me, with you in the room. So she knows you agree.”

“All right.”

“Plus, I'm going to brace this Crane asshole at noon. Maybe she can tell me something more about him. The more I know when I walk in there, the better.”

“Okay.”

Beck paused. “And as long as she's here, talk to her about this arms dealer. How it works. Where he makes his money. His operation. Maybe we get Alex to do some research on him.”

Manny tipped his head and squinted an eye at Beck.

Beck said, “What?”

Beck watched the wheels turn in Manny's head. He was happy the old con was seeing it now.

Beck nodded, acknowledging that Manny had figured it out. He said, “I don't like doing something for nothing. I will if I have to, because this involves one of yours, Manny, but … you know.”

Manny smiled. “Okay, James, you keep thinking. Just don't get too cute with this. You know where I'm headed. Down the line, like you say, but that's where this is going.”

 

13

Milstein lay wide awake next to his softly snoring wife. But it wasn't her snoring that had awakened him. A dream or a half-awake memory of his cigar being slapped out of his mouth jerked him awake.

He laid immobile in his bed, his heart pounding so hard he had trouble breathing. When the beating subsided, he rolled over halfway to look at the glowing digits of his clock radio. 3:14 a.m.

Milstein kept seeing the face of the man who called himself Mr. Smith, feeling the hand around the back of his neck and the thumb on his throat, remembering the strength that nearly lifted him off the bench. Milstein wasn't a big man, but he still weighed 155 pounds. How many men could lift that much one-handed? Whoever the man was, he didn't look that big, but clearly he was strong. And he had a cocky invulnerability about him. Who the hell was that son of a bitch?

Milstein tried to get back to sleep. He might have dozed off a bit, but deep sleep evaded him. He finally sat up and swung his feet onto the floor. The clock read 4:32 a.m. He ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. His right hip ached. His bladder was full.

He stood up in his undershirt and boxers. The bedroom was cold. He picked up the cell phone from the night table. He stepped into his slippers, lifted his robe up off the floor and shuffled off to the bathroom.

This was going to be a grind, getting through a day without enough sleep.

Just as he was about to empty enough of his bladder to feel comfortable, his cell phone began vibrating in the pocket of his robe.

“Fuck.” He pulled out the phone. Walter Pearce's number displayed on the caller ID.

“Hang on,” he said.

*   *   *

Walter Pearce filled one side of a small booth in a twenty-four-hour diner located on Trinity Place in downtown Manhattan, his phone held to his left ear.

The diner was within walking distance of One Police Plaza, where his contact at the Real Time Crime Center had been working the twelve-to-eight shift.

He had been in the diner since 2 a.m. calling back and forth to his contact at One PP. His eyes were stinging, he felt wired from too much coffee, and he felt queasy from a greasy serving of ham and eggs with home fries, followed an hour later by an order of pancakes.

As he waited for Milstein to come back on the phone he switched the phone from his sweaty left ear to his right. Tired of holding it, he put the phone on speaker and set it down on the Formica-topped table.

The work for Walter had gone in two parts.

First, finding a contact to do the research he needed. He had done that from home, calling until he had located a detective he'd worked with four years ago named Edward Ronson. Then he'd headed downtown to meet Ronson and tell him what he needed.

Ronson had made a big deal about it, even though they both knew he'd either find what Walter asked for in about fifteen or twenty minutes or he wouldn't.

Ronson's main selling point was his availability. Most cops and more than most detectives wouldn't risk screwing around getting information from the NYPD databases and passing it on, even to a licensed private detective who was a former cop.

Ronson, however, always needed money. He had two ex-wives, two sets of children, hefty bar bills, and a habit of midweek gambling sprees at the Yonkers racetrack slot casino.

Walter made sure to tell him three times what he was looking for and to just print out everything he could find and bring it to him.

The problem was, Walter had no idea when Ronson could slip in his search requests, so he just had to wait. And wait.

When the disheveled detective finally walked into the diner, Walter spotted a large manila envelope under his arm. It looked fairly full. A good sign.

Ronson slid into the booth across from Walter, hatless, wearing a worn suit and a wool overcoat that had seen better days. He dropped the envelope on the table and held out his hand under the table.