"Exactly. Which is why I'm calling them," she said and raised her cell phone in front of her face and began to key in the number.
Beck closed his eyes and shook his head. No other choice, he reached into his coat, past the brown paper bag of money and drew his gun. A silver Smith & Wesson 5906. A stainless steel semi-automatic pistol he had picked up from a guy in South Dakota for a few hundred bucks, having paid an extra hundred for it to come with its serial number filed off, rendering it not only unregistered, but also untraceable back to him. It was completely anonymous, and fully loaded with a full magazine of ammunition plus a bullet in its chamber.
He pulled it from his coat and held it in his right hand, his right forefinger looped through its trigger guard, its muzzle pointing downward at the snowy sidewalk, hesitant to raise it, thinking just the sight of it would be enough. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you," he said.
She looked down at the gun and gasped. Her pupils dilating like she was standing in a dark, candle-lit room. "What the?"
He shook his head. "I can't let you make that call."
"Why? Was it? Did you?"
"No,” he interrupted. “I told you what happened. He killed her. And I hit him."
She said nothing. There was a suspicious look on her face.
"I just can't let you make that call," he added. "Not tonight."
"Why not?"
"Because, there's a drug deal going down at a bar around the corner. And I'm on the way there to pick somebody up. I can't afford to get caught up in local police bullshit."
She kept silent, processing what he had just said, still looking at him through suspicious eyes. She was questioning who he was and, from the way he answered her question, also whether or not he was maybe a police officer, or a federal agent. But, also, at the same time, wondering whether he actually maybe killed both of them himself.
"It's unfortunate that you've stumbled across this," he said. "But I've told you what happened. And there's nothing you can do. There's nothing the police can do. Hell, there's nothing more I can do. So, put your cell phone into your pocket and just walk away. Go back into your salon and lock up for the night. Then, go home. Shelter from the snow. Make some tea. Watch TV. Forget you ever saw me. And Forget you ever saw this."
She nodded, slowly, taking light breaths of the icy winter air, realizing that he was probably not the type of guy to mess with. She moved to do as he said, lowered her cell phone to her pocket, then stopped, swallowed hard, and said, "I can't."
"Wrong answer," he said and shook his head, then raised the gun, arcing its muzzle up through the air. The snow swept across its barrel and stuck to its sides. It turned white and frosty in seconds.
"Wait!"
He nodded his head, once, as if to gesture her to put away her phone, the muzzle of his gun now pointing toward her face.
She slipped her cell phone into her pocket.
"That's it. Now, go," he said and flicked his eyes across the street to her salon.
Her eyes filled up. She shook her head. "I can't."
He looked at her, curiously, his eyebrows having narrowed over the bridge of his nose. "Why not?"
"Because,” she said and exhaled a stressful sigh.
“Because, what?”
She sucked a breath of the frosty air. “Because, I'm in trouble.”
“Trouble?”
She nodded. “And, from what I've saw here, I think you might be the only person who can get me out of it."
"Out of what?"
She said nothing. She flicked her eyes to his gun.
He lowered it.
She closed her eyes and exhaled, relieved.
"Out of what?" he asked, again.
"A money thing."
“A money thing?"
She bit down on her bottom lip.
"Either you tell me, or..." He said and glanced back down at his gun.
"OK. OK," she said and swallowed, hard. "It's three men. They came by my salon yesterday, demanding that I pay them four thousand dollars."
Beck winced as what she had said sunk in. He had seen this type of thing before. He knew exactly what it was. "The three men, you know who they were?"
She shook her head. "No. I've never seen them before. Please, can you help?"
He put his gun into the front right pocket of his coat and nodded. "Tell me exactly what happened."
"They came in sometime around three o'clock. One of them told everyone to leave. The other two turned three of my clients out onto the street. Then, one of them closed the door and stood across it. The other one took a seat on one of my salon chairs and the guy who told everyone to get out walked toward me. He pulled a knife and said that, if I want to stay safe and stay in business, I had to pay them the money."
"OK," he said, nodding. "What did they look like?"
"They were white. Big and tall. Broad shouldered. Like you. Except they had tattoos. And short, severe hair cuts. The guy who spoke sounded foreign, like he wasn't from here. He looked foreign. Actually, they all looked foreign."
"What did he sound like? Where would you say they were from?" Beck asked.
She shrugged. "I don't know. Europe, maybe? It was definitely a European accent."
Interesting, he thought, Darius Adamczuk popping up in his mind, considering he was a Polish immigrant. "OK. And did he say who they were? Or who they were there on behalf of? Did he mention any names?"
She shook her head. "No. Nothing like that at all. They just said I had to pay up, otherwise there would be consequences."
He nodded. That was a typical party line. "Did they say by when?"
"Yeah. They said they would be back tonight, shortly after ten. And that I had better have the money ready and waiting for when they show up."
"Tonight?"
She nodded, slowly, desperation in her eyes.
"And I take it you don't have it?"
She nodded, again.
"Have you called the cops?"
She shook her head. "I can't."
"Because...?"
"Because, they said they would kill me if I did."
There were tears in her eyes.
He nodded, unsurprised. "Then, it sounds like you're in a whole world of shit, lady."
She nodded her agreement, worry on her face. "Please. I don't know what to do. And I don't have much time left. Will you help me?"
He took a moment to think about it and decided he would, but that he would be coy about it.
"I've somewhere else to be right now, just like I said. But suppose that I do. Suppose I come back shortly before ten. Suppose I'm there for when the men come knocking. What's in it for me?"
She looked down at the dead parking attendant and the blood-stained snow, the outline of the machete and, finally, the dead guy lying flat out with the ski mask over his head. She gestured her hand, open palmed, in a circular motion. "Whatever this is, whatever's gone down here, it stays between us. You do whatever you have to do and come back by ten, I'll look the other way. I won't say anything about any of this to anyone. I promise."
"How can I be sure?"
"I'll swear to it on my son's life. If you help me, I'll help you."
Beck didn't have kids, and he didn't want any, either, but a mother swearing on her child's life is about as good a verbal commitment a man can get, almost like having it written in blood. That he knew, for damn sure.
"Fine," he said. "I'll help you."
She smiled, relieved. "Thank you."
"OK. Now, go back inside your salon and draw the blinds. Do something to keep yourself occupied between now and ten o’clock. I'll be back shortly before then. I'll knock on the door three times, so you know it's me."
"OK," she said, relief on her face, sounding as if a weight had just been lifted from her shoulders. "OK," she said, again, and turned around and walked back across the white snowswept street.
Beck watched her disappear back into the salon. She closed the door and drew the blinds, just as he had ins
tructed. She kept the light on, but walked off to the back of the building. He watched her silhouette through the frosted glass and light grey blinds disappear off to the salon's rear.
The street around was still deserted, but he couldn’t leave the scene as was. Even though the snowfall had covered some of it up, the scene was still obvious. A blind man would have noticed the bodies. And, then, he would’ve called the cops. And they would have uncovered the machete, then looked at the footsteps around the scene, undoubtedly tracing them back to Beck’s black Camaro. He knew what he had to do. And he realized he had to do it fast, because the deal in Ernesto's Bar was about to go down any minute from now, which meant he was already late.
He glanced at the now snow-covered dead woman and dead guy and, then, the red Buick and quickly thought it through. Plan in mind, he dipped the dead guy's pockets, finding nothing but a pack of cigarettes, a light and a key. A key for the Buick, illegally parked up at the curb. It was exactly what he was looking for.
He tried the lock. The car’s doors clicked open. He opened the driver's door, leaned in and popped its trunk. It also clicked open. He darted around back and opened it up, then hurried over and reached down and lifted the dead guy up from the ground by his underarms. He was petite. Thin-boned and scrawny. He doesn't weigh much more than a newspaper, Beck thought as he hauled him up into the air and slung him over his shoulder, then walked around the back of the car and slammed him down into the trunk. The car's suspension dipped, but not by much.
First problem solved, Beck looked back at the parking attendant and her blood sloshed across the snow. Just a poor old woman, a mother, a grandmother, caught up doing the right thing in the wrong place at the wrong time by the wrong person. He sighed and shook his head, then flicked his eyes back to the trunk of the car, looking inside, beyond the dead guy's body. There was a plastic red gas canister on the left, a couple of dark grey plastic grocery bags lying on the floor of the trunk underneath his body, what looked like a silver spanner and a black tire iron inside one of them and, then, exactly what he was hoping to find. A compact snow shovel. It was tucked underneath the plastic bags on the right.
He leaned in and reached under the dead guy's body and swept the bags aside, yanked the shovel out and laid it down on the snow by the curb. It had a black steel head and a thick wooden handle. It was the solid sort of shovel all cars should have in their trunk in the heart of winter. It was perfect for the task at hand.
He hurried over to the dead woman's body, grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her foot-first to the back of the car. Her cut throat traced a carmine trail of blood across the pathway of snow it slipped over as he dragged her down past the side of the Buick. At the back of the car, he lifted her up, carefully, making sure not to get any of her blood on his clothing, and tossed her in the trunk beside her killer.
Second problem solved, he thought and looked down at the melting puddle of blood-soaked snow where the woman had lay and, then, the smearing red slick that led to the back of the car.
He leaned over and grabbed the shovel and quickly used it to scoop the bloody snow up from the sidewalk. He tossed it into the trunk of the Buick, throwing it over the two dead bodies as fast as he could, like he was throwing salt onto a frozen path. It all went where it was supposed to go, but scattered everywhere inside, over the gas canister, into the grocery bags and into the creases and folds of the dead man’s and woman’s clothing.
It wouldn't matter, he thought. The car would sit in that spot for days, weeks, months, even, before anybody found it.
He was right. After a few days, the city’s Parking Violations Bureau would assume their enforcement officer was MIA. They would try to contact her, but she wouldn’t reply. They would, then, assign the route to somebody else. That person would see the car there every day, parked illegally, sitting in the same spot, and they would slap a new ticket on its windshield each time. It would take maybe sixty days from today for the first one to go unpaid long enough to raise questions. An automated system would trigger the ticket to go to default status and alert the 36th District Court. The 36th District Court would reissue the fine. But it would go unpaid. And, so, the details would be passed on to the Secretary of State’s office. The Secretary of State would try to cancel the driver’s license, assuming he had one. But their letters would go unanswered, because he was lying dead in the trunk. And as the parking tickets mounted up, so would the severity of the infringement. The vehicle’s details would be passed on to the Detroit Police and they would start looking for him, trying to determine his whereabouts. They would also have the vehicle impounded. It would be uplifted by a tow truck and driven down to the pound where it would be logged and dumped in a slot beside about a thousand other seized cars. They would search it, eventually, but it would take a while. And, when they did, they would be able to close their fugitive-at-flight case and replace it with a murder investigation. But, by then, it would be too late. Beck would already be off in the wind. And there would be nothing to find, anyway, because the snow would either have melted away or new snow would have fallen, covering up what was there, and he was careful not leave any identifiable evidence at the scene other than his footprints in the snow along the sidewalk.
Beck shovelled the last of the crimson snow into the back and tossed the shovel in after it, then he scooped up the machete and threw it in, too, and locked the car with the key. He tossed the key into the trunk somewhere between the man, the woman, the shovel, the snow and the machete, and slammed the trunk shut. Then, glanced at his watch.
Nine-forty.
Shit. Realizing he was late, he quickly looked around and made sure nobody else was about, that nobody had saw what he had just done, then hurried north and looped around the corner onto Grand Central Boulevard.
TWO
Ernesto's Bar was maybe only a hundred yards along Grand Central Boulevard from the corner with Woodward Avenue, up ahead on the left. It was smaller than Beck had anticipated. Not much bigger than the width of a house. It was wedged between a small and virtually empty snowswept open-air parking lot and a closed down Italian takeaway, and it had a very nondescript, discreet appearance. It was painted black and had absolutely no windows. It was just a sign and a door. A door he made his way toward.
Maybe fifteen feet from the entrance, a black Mercedes drove past on his right. The warm white beams from its headlights shone along the snowswept road and the snow crunched under its tires as it rolled past. Its windows were dark, tinted, and its license plate was missing. Beck could hear music playing from inside, a loud rhythmic beat with a heavy base, as it pulled up by the curb on the other side of the road, adjacent to the bar's entrance.
Not even a second later, a guy stepped out of Ernesto's Bar in front of him. He was short and black. Maybe five-ten and about one-eighty. He was wearing dark sneakers with baggy black jogging pants and an olive green hoodie. The hood was up over his head and his hands were stuffed inside the hoodie's front pocket. He ran across the white empty road, his head bowed, hunkering down, trying to protect his face from the thick blizzard of snow that was lashing the streets of the motor city. He opened the back passenger door of the Mercedes and dived in, then closed the door.
Beck watched the car pull away and speed off westbound into the night, sliding left and right, its tires slipping, struggling for grip on the snow. There was no doubt in his mind who the guy was. It was textbook. He was the mule. And he was the only one Beck saw entering or exiting the bar in the last couple of minutes, which meant there was a good chance that Adamczuk was still inside. Which meant it was now or never. And he knew it. If the mule had left, Adamczuk would be next. If he was still in there, and he was going to grab him tonight, he would have to act fast. He put his right hand into the front pocket of his coat and cupped it around the butt of his Smith & Wesson, ready to draw the gun at a heartbeat's notice, and stepped into the bar.
The inside of the bar was warm. And dimly-lit to a dull orange glow. The floor was wooden,
the walls were exposed brick and the ceiling was black. There was a black wooden bar ahead on the right. A warm white rope light ran along the edge of the counter for the length of the bar, and a sign with Ernesto's name in black steel writing was bolted to the bar's front. There was a calm, relaxing ambience with a Jay-Z track playing in the background at low volume.
A dark-haired male bartender with a black soul patch below his bottom lip, dressed in a black long-sleeved shirt and dark pants was standing behind the counter. He was drinking a bottle of beer and looking up at the screen of a black twenty-four inch LED TV that was fixed to the wall on a black steel bracket. It was showing a replay of a Detroit Lions game from a few days ago. The score was 14-6, with the Lions down 8 points, nearing the end of the first quarter in a game that they went on to win.
Beck wiped the covering of snow from his coat and glanced around, surveying the scene. A row of black leather booths lined the wall on his left opposite the bar. They had rectangular black wooden tables between the seats. The seats were empty and the tables were clear. There were two small square black wooden tables on the right of the entrance, wedged in between the end of the bar and the brick wall. Two black wooden chairs sat opposite each other on either side of each table. Again, all of them were untouched and clean. The chairs were pushed in. There was no sign of Adamczuk or anybody else around the bar. The place was empty. The bartender seemed to be the only other person there.
The only evident sign of anybody else's presence was an empty lowball glass and a plate of peanuts sitting on the wooden counter in the middle of the bar. Beck walked toward it, catching a hairspray-like whiff of residue vodka from the glass and the smell of the peanuts. Warm and spicy. Sweet chilli. Not to his taste.
The barman had clocked him coming in, but hadn't said anything. He was busy watching the rerun of the game. Sensing him now standing at the bar, he asked what he wanted without looking away from the TV screen. "What can I get ya?"
Easy Money Page 2
