Among Thieves (16 page)

Markov turned to the man who had been shot. There was no point in telling him the story.

Markov turned back to Gregor. “Can you carry Igor down to the car?”

“Yeah.”

“Wrap a towel around him, so you don't leave blood everywhere. Then bring it back up. We'll leave everything for Alan to clean up.”

Crane turned to yell at Markov, “For chrissake Leonard, get this fucking tape off me.”

Markov turned to him and suddenly something snapped. He moved quickly to Crane, picked up the thirty-two-ounce hammer, and began smashing it into Crane's precious cherrywood dining table.

He hit the table over and over and over, banging divots and dents into it, all the time yelling, “Shut up, shut up, fucking shut up.”

Crane kept his head down, trying to cover his face with his right hand so he wouldn't get hit by flying chips of wood. He couldn't look. He had his left hand in a tight fist, steeling himself, hoping the hammer didn't land on him.

Finally, Markov's rage ended. He dropped the hammer on the destroyed wood and muttered a final curse.

He turned away to watch Gregor lift Igor to his feet. He then moved to the third man, who put his good arm around Gregor's shoulder. Stepanovich was strong enough to get them both as far as the elevator door, but Markov saw they might never make it to the car. He would have to go down with them and bring the car to their side of the street.

He shouted for them to wait as he made his way toward the elevator. There was an astounding amount of blood where the fight had taken place. Puddled on the floor, splattered on furniture. Counter stools had been turned over. Books had been knocked off shelves. Chunks of Crane's carefully plastered walls were gouged out from bullet holes.

What the hell had just happened, Markov wondered.

*   *   *

The elevator stopped on the ground floor. Beck dug in his coat pocket and found a knit watch cap. He wedged it into the bottom of the elevator door to prevent it from closing, so it couldn't return to Crane's apartment.

He limped out onto Hubert Street, blood squishing in his left shoe. He checked his leg. The pants were torn, exposing a ragged knife wound oozing blood. He tried to calculate how much attention he would attract trying to get the Mercury out of the garage versus the mess he would make in a taxi.

He decided to get the Mercury. Blood all over a cab would attract too much attention.

He walked as quickly as the pain would allow him to the parking garage on Greenwich. Just before he entered, he plastered the loose flap of black denim against the wet knife wound, hoping the cloth would stick. The blood didn't show much on his dark jeans. Maybe the garage attendant wouldn't notice. Unfortunately, Beck saw he was making bloody left footprints on the garage's concrete floor.

He reached the attendant's booth and slipped his ticket under the Lucite barrier. A tired-looking, small Hispanic man time-stamped Beck's ticket, took his money, then came out and hustled off to get Beck's car, too busy to even glance at Beck.

As he waited, Beck called Manny.

“It's me. Your cousin still there?”

“She's just leaving.”

“Don't let her go. Tell her she has to stay.”

Manny knew by Beck's tone not to ask any questions.

“Okay.”

“I'll be there soon.”

Beck hung up. The blows from the steel baton were beginning to hurt now that the adrenaline had burned off. Beck tried to remember where else he had been hit. His right wrist, below the back of his hand. Elbow. Knee. Nothing felt broken, but it was going to be hell getting out of bed for the next week or so.

The Mercury came.

He tipped the garage attendant, who hustled back to his booth.

Beck slid into the driver's seat, furious at how much he had misjudged the situation. Milstein had double-crossed him. And he never envisioned the arms dealer stepping in so quickly with fighters of that caliber. But was he protecting Milstein? No, more likely all he cared about was his money. It looked as if he was about to begin torturing Crane when Beck walked in.

Beck took a quick look at himself in the rearview mirror. There was a red welt forming on his jaw just under his left ear. His hair was disheveled. He was flushed and sweating. But there was no blood or noticeable bruises on his face that would attract undue attention.

He took a deep breath. Ran a hand through his hair. Told himself to take it easy. Use the ride back to calm down, plan what to do. As he drove the Mercury out of the garage and took the right turn that would take him past Alan Crane's block, he thought to himself, man, the next time you get surprised like that … you're dead.

 

19

By the time Beck had reached the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel exit onto Hamilton Avenue, he had called everybody he needed to come to the Red Hook headquarters.

By the time he pulled up in front of the bar, he still hadn't figured out exactly what to say to Olivia.

He double-parked the Mercury next to Ciro Baldassare's Cadillac Escalade.

He limped into the bar. Only Demarco was downstairs, leaning against the back bar, in his usual spot.

Beck tossed the car keys to Demarco and said, “Put it in the garage, will you D? Sorry, but there's some blood on the front seat and the floor mat. I don't think there's any on the carpet.”

Demarco's eyes widened. He came out from behind the bar, heading for the front door, checking Beck for obvious wounds as he passed him.

“Who's here?” asked Beck.

Demarco paused at the front door. “Manny and the lady, Ciro and Alex. All upstairs.”

“Okay.”

“And the doctor called. Said he'd be here soon. Said to clean out anything that's bleeding before he gets here.”

“Right.”

Beck's left leg hurt with every step up the back stairs.

He didn't bother to stop on the second floor. He kept going to the third floor, the drying blood on his left shoe sticking to the wooden stairs with every other step. He didn't stop in his bedroom for clean clothes. He went right into the bathroom to strip off everything, get in the shower, and go to work on himself.

Beck's shower had a tiled ledge big enough to sit on. He sat for ten minutes, letting the hot water wash over him and his knife wound and bruises. He'd taken 800 mgs. of ibuprofen and much of the pain and stiffness had begun to ebb.

The first five minutes, he'd just let the shower wash off all the blood. Then he'd turned his left thigh into the spray, letting the water stream into the wound, gritting against the pain.

He'd brought a squeeze bottle of Betadine scrub into the shower. He turned away from the water and covered the wound with the sterilizing scrub, then worked it into the torn skin and muscle. After a minute, he let the shower rinse it away. He did this three times. Then he turned away from the shower water again, picked up another bottle and poured hydrogen peroxide into the wound, watching the liquid bubble and foam.

Beck knew there was no way he could tend to this wound.

By the time he stepped out of the shower, Brandon Wright sat waiting for him in Beck's bedroom. Without a word, he stood up when Beck entered, waited for him to put on fresh shorts and a T-shirt, then led Beck to the large room at the west end of the third floor that served as Beck's workout studio.

Beck lay down on a massage table in a corner of the large room. Wright said nothing. He just started working. Beck closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of surgical supplies being torn open. A needle being threaded. The quiet hiss of Lidocaine being sprayed on his wound.

He felt the coolness of the numbing spray. He ignored the insistent pricks and pushes and pulls as the doctor began stitching. Beck figured the wound would need at least thirty stitches to close it.

Wright continued to work without comment. Beck endured the silent reproach.

For a moment, Beck thought about saying something to his doctor friend. But instead he continued to think about what he was going to do once he was stitched up.

Wright worked quickly, deftly, but the procedure took nearly twenty minutes. As he finished up bandaging the wound, he finally broke the silence. “Do you know why I do this for you, James?”

“Because you're a good man.”

“No, because you're a man who helps people nobody else will.”

Beck didn't respond.

“How many men have you and Walter Ferguson and this network of yours helped once they are out of prison?”

Beck didn't answer.

Wright slipped off his latex gloves, dropped them on the floor with the used surgical supplies, and packed his bag. He grimaced a bit in frustration. Started to leave. Stopped. Turned to Beck and said, “Would telling you to be careful have any effect?”

Again, Beck didn't answer.

 

20

Gregor Stepanovich stood waiting for the elevator to return to Crane's floor holding up the bleeding, dying Igor, while Markov held the other man. And waited. And waited.

Finally, he had to lay Igor onto the floor and walk down six flights of stairs to find out what was wrong with the elevator.

When he saw the knit cap Beck had wedged into the elevator door, Stepanovich cursed and pulled it out.

On the ride back up to Crane's apartment, Stepanovich held the knit cap in his hand and pictured punching Beck's face again and again and again until bones broke under the skin and teeth cracked, until skin split and blood flowed.

He kept control of his rage until he and Markov got their wounded men into the car and sent them off, knowing he would most likely never see them again.

As he walked back to Crane's building, Stepanovich vowed to himself that he was going to kill that bastard who had done this to him and his men. Slowly, if he could. Quickly, if he had to. But he would find out who he was and kill him. That was it. Markov's orders no longer mattered.

When they came out of the elevator, the rank metallic odor of putrefying blood and acrid gun smoke filled Crane's loft. The stench did nothing to improve their moods.

Stepanovich looked over at Crane who sat on his couch, his shirt torn from removing the duct tape, massaging his left shoulder, staring at his ruined fifteen-thousand-dollar dining table.

Markov walked to the couch, pulled out his cell phone, and began dialing.

When Markov finished the call, Gregor asked him, “Tell me, Leo, who was that fucking balija?”

“Criminal.” Markov answered. He turned to Crane. “Tell us. What do you know about that son of a bitch?”

“Me? Absolutely nothing. No idea. Ask fucking Olivia Sanchez. Or Milstein. Milstein told him to come here, right? Go ask him.”

Markov held up his cell phone. “I already ask him. He tells me he finds out this morning that he's a bad guy. Convict. His name is James Beck. He tried to extort money from Milstein for the bitch. I told Milstein to send him up here. Milstein told him he should talk to you. What do you think he does to you, we're not here?”

Crane looked at Markov like he was speaking a foreign language. “How do I fucking know what he would have done? What did he do to Milstein? Obviously not much. Maybe if your attack dog hadn't stuck a gun in his face he wouldn't have done anything. How much do you want to blame me for, Leonard? All I'm trying to do is protect your investments. And make you money. I haven't done a fucking thing wrong, and you come in here…”

Markov snarled, “Stop being ridiculous, Alan.”

Crane changed the subject.

“Leonard, why are we arguing? I'm on your side. What's going on? Are you really serious about cashing out? You're going to lose a good deal of money.”

“What? You ask me this after a fucking criminal shoots my man? Comes up here to do who knows what? Are you fucking crazy? You think I leave my money with Milstein's business, with this bitch causing trouble? Talking to police? Bringing in convicts? Thugs? You ask me this?”

“All right, all right. Forget it. Whatever you want. You want your money, fine. But if I'm going to do this, I have to start as soon as I can. I have dozens of positions I've got to start moving on. I have index hedges, options that aren't close to being where I expect, currency contracts.”

Markov pointed a thick finger at Crane. “You don't have time. You get it done. Now. Fast.”

Crane mustered his courage. “I'll get it done as quickly as I can. But I'm not going to let you get reamed, Leonard. I'll need a few days. You should trust me when I tell you this. How long have we worked together?”

Markov waived a hand and stood up, walking away from the dining area. “Aaach. What does it matter how long we work together? Three years and two months, and now the jackals come after everything, so what good does it do me?”

“Nobody is going to take your money. And I've made you plenty. Well over forty percent year over year. You know anybody who's even come close to that?”

“Fine.” Markov turned and faced Crane. “But what about now? Now you bring this shit down on me. Stop talking. Get it done. I have work to do. I have two fucking shipments going out of Albania tonight. I still don't have the right certificates. And now I have this mess. So, do we understand each other?”

Crane had been distracted. He said, “What?”

Markov pushed himself off the couch and stepped toward Crane. “Are you not listening to me? Did you say ‘what'? What? You fucking motherfucker. You answer me like that? Maybe I should have Gregor take his anger out on you for an hour or so, you worthless piece of shit.”

Crane raised a hand. “Jeezus Christ, Leonard, take it easy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm trying to figure out … Christ, I don't even know what the fuck is going on.”

Stepanovich had moved closer to Crane, drawn to the possibility of violence, hoping Markov would unleash him.

Crane dropped his head and said to Markov, “I'm sorry this happened. I'll start closing down your positions. What else do you want me to do, Leonard?”