69
Beck slid into the open passenger door of the Mercury.
“I was about to climb into that lot and pull out your body,” Demarco said.
“No. I wouldn’t want you to risk hurting yourself.”
Demarco sped away, steering the Mercury straight through the intersection of Beard and Van Brunt. He avoided turning on Van Brunt. He kept the car headlights off, racing along the dark street until he was well past the intersection.
Beck sat back in the passenger seat, closing his eyes, pressing his shoulder against the seat back to help stop the bleeding from his knife wound. The warmth in the car making him sleepy.
Demarco wore a light down jacket. Black. Black wool pants and black suede shoes with rubber soles. He had a black Kangol fur cap turned backward on his nearly bald head so the brim wouldn’t bump into the windshield as he peered out, finding his way along the dark streets with his lights off.
He asked, “Whose blood is that on you?”
“His, except for in back.” Beck turned so Demarco could see the slice through his coat.
“Bad?”
“I don’t think so, but I don’t want to look just now.”
“I take it you won?”
“You take it right. If there’s a hell, that bald bastard is in it.”
“What happened to the rest of them? The cops get them like you planned?”
“I saw them arresting one of them. Hopefully, they wounded or killed the rest. Cops arrived way too late. Ciro came back and saved my ass.”
Demarco smiled and shook his head in admiration.
“He get away?”
“I hope so. If he could climb that fence in front of the food store, he did.”
“Good. Where’d the bald fucker end up?”
“Out on Beard Street. I tried to make it look like he ripped his neck open getting over the fence. How’d you and Manny do?”
“Got ’em all. I think Manny wounded one guy. I don’t know how many of them got burned up. Hopefully, all of ’em.”
“And Manny got away?”
“Far as I know, he and Ciro and Joey followed the plan. Left all the guns in the Porsche. Left the Porsche parked in the food store lot, then went down to the warehouses on Van Brunt to make believe they’re unloading trucks. The crew there will cover for them if the cops come looking.”
“Good.” Beck felt himself succumbing to the exhaustion.
He relaxed now. He knew if anybody could maneuver the confusing streets of Red Hook to avoid whatever cops were descending on the neighborhood, it was Demarco. He tilted back his seat and stretched out. It felt like the wound in his back had stopped bleeding, but if the cops stopped them, there’d be no hiding the blood on him. Demarco would just have to deal with it. It was in his hands.
Beck took a last look out his window. They were already on Bay Street. If Demarco could maneuver around and get on the Gowanus Expressway, they’d make it out of the neighborhood.
“You okay?” asked Demarco.
“Yeah. Just let me close my eyes.”
“We got some killing to do, James.”
“I know. Wake me when we get there.”
70
Alan Crane took another Ritalin and continued scrolling through his positions for what seemed like the thousandth time. He pushed himself, knowing that in these last hours the difference in working every trade rather than giving up and closing out positions could amount to tens or even hundreds of thousands.
He checked his watch. Three in the morning.
Markov’s minders were working in shifts. The one with the beard was up now, watching him while the other two slept.
Fucking ridiculous, thought Crane, but who cares. Let Markov waste his money, and these bozos waste their time. At least they had enough sense to keep their mouths shut while he worked. Crane wondered what their exact orders were. Probably something simple, make sure he doesn’t go anywhere and keeps working.
As if I weren’t going to do that anyhow.
Crane sat back and rubbed his face, trying to focus on a one-minute-interval candlestick chart showing the creeping spread between the U.S. dollar and the euro.
He stared at the Bollinger Bands beginning to bulge in the direction he wanted. Crane found himself pleased that he was still able to maintain his discipline. At this stage, Crane believed ninety-nine percent of traders would be pulling the trigger too soon, too weary to eke out the last bips. But he had a big position to close out and right now the bips were going in his direction. He willed the next candlestick to turn green.
The minute interval felt like ten. The chart blinked. The candlestick moved up.
Got it. Crane calculated an eighty percent chance the trend in the next few minutes would continue up. He clicked his first sell order, grabbing the first tranche. Then he quickly pulled up his order ticket and typed in sell orders in ascending values, hoping the trend would last for a few minutes.
He was on a roll. He knew he’d grab each price. He felt it. He’d make a profit on this position. And not for you, Markov, you fucking Russian cunt. Putting these assholes on me. Having them snoring and shitting and sleeping in my house. Bringing their mess and their stink and their bullying. Fuck you, Markov.
Crane pushed back from his desk. He turned to Anastasia. He made a point of not asking permission or informing him of what he was doing, and went to the kitchen.
Ralph Anastasia sat in one of Crane’s custom George Smith chairs and watched him without comment. He had concluded early on that Crane wasn’t going to present any problems. It was just a matter of keeping an eye on him and killing time, not something that Anastasia found hard to do.
He could hunker down and wait for days doing essentially nothing. Ralph Anastasia had been shot at enough times to appreciate an opportunity to get paid for hiding out and laying low.
Harris and Williams were a bit more restless, but every once in a while Anastasia would send one of them out to walk the neighborhood and look for anybody lurking or watching Crane’s building.
As Crane walked barefoot to his kitchen, his Bluetooth earpiece buzzed. He continued walking, headed for the bathroom in the main area of the loft, and waited until he was out of sight before he tapped the on button.
“Hold on,” he said. When he had the bathroom door closed, he continued talking. “Yes?”
Olivia Sanchez spoke in a soft voice, obviously somewhere she didn’t want to be heard talking on her phone.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“It’s going. What about you?”
“They’ve got me stashed away up in East Harlem.”
“Why?”
Olivia lied, “Beck’s place is getting too crowded. There’s nowhere for me to sleep. One of Manny’s gang people is watching over me at this place. Luckily she prefers watching TV to watching me. Where are you at?”
“Closing out everything I can. Grabbing profits, minimizing losses. Same thing I’ve been doing for days. I’m planning to have everything closed out by ten, eleven o’clock this morning. I won’t make it much longer. There isn’t much left.”
“Good. When is Markov going to take over the account?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard shit from him. He must be busy with something else. Drugs, whores, or presumably killing Beck. You sure your guys are going to survive this?”
“Well, nobody is going to take them by surprise, that’s for sure.”
“If Beck doesn’t make it, you realize, we’re fucked.”
“No, we just go to plan B and take it ourselves.”
“And be on Markov’s kill list for the rest of our lives?”
“We’re not giving up now, no matter what happens.”
Crane said, “Agreed.” But he was thinking it through. Realizing now that he had to have a plan in case Beck and his men didn’t make it.
He asked Olivia, “Where are you going to be when the market opens?”
“Hopefully back at Beck’s.”
/> “Hopefully?”
“He said I would.”
“You’ve got to be there to see where they put the cash.”
“I will. I will. Just hang in. Eight more hours and it’s done. If you don’t hear anything from me by nine-thirty, you’ll know I’m back there.”
Crane calmed himself. “Fine. You keep them pointed in the right direction. I’m assuming Markov will show up to look over my shoulder and breathe his stink all over me sometime soon. When I start consolidating everything in his bank account I’ll do it fairly fast. I’ll make the amount of the last transfer about five million, so hit it when you see it going in.”
“Got it.”
Olivia cut the connection.
Crane splashed his face with cold water, washed his hands, and headed back to his computer.
Anastasia stared at Crane when he returned.
Crane stared back at him, almost daring him to say something. He didn’t.
Crane asked, “You hear from Markov?”
Anastasia shook his head.
“When is he going to show up?”
“No idea.”
Anastasia continued staring at Crane. For the first time since they’d been guarding him, Crane wondered, is this guy just trying to fuck with me, or could Markov be paying these thugs to watch me until he has his money, and then kill me? No. He’d made money for Markov in the past. If he made him almost whole this time, there’d be little reason for Markov to kill him, but still—definitely got to think about a Plan B. There’s no downside having a Plan B.
All right, Crane told himself, keep going. Make this work. Cover your bases. First, get the fucking money. Money can solve anything, even this hard ass watching him like he was a target.
As Crane settled behind his keyboard, he had a disturbing thought. If these guys did manage to kill him, Olivia could very well end up with everything.
For a moment, Alan Crane tried to calculate the possibility that Olivia Sanchez had planned it that way from the very beginning.
71
It took Jeffrey Esposito and his men two hours just to square away the bodies and arrest the survivors.
They’d left the Seven-Six in four cars. Esposito and Augustus Mosebee in the lead, driving an unmarked squad car. Behind him the three detectives from his precinct squad in another unmarked. Behind them were two patrol cars. He’d managed to wangle one more than he originally planned after talking to Pearce, both cars with a team of two uniformed cops.
They’d heard the gunfire and seen the light from the burning gasoline five blocks away. Esposito stopped and immediately called for support. All police personnel in the area were told to respond to gunshots at Beck’s location.
Esposito sent one patrol car to investigate the fire on Conover. He and his detectives and the other patrol car converged on the gunshots on Reed Street.
By the time Esposito screeched to a halt near the bullet-ridden SUV blocking the empty lot, the gunshots had ceased. He flooded the SUV with his high beams. The unmarked and the patrol car pulled in next to him and did the same. That’s when he spotted the two men Beck and Ciro had knocked out lying on the ground.
Everyone stayed behind the cover of their open doors. Esposito got on his loudspeaker and ordered, “Police. Anybody in there, come out with your hands up.”
Immediately, shots rang out, bullets hitting their cars. Esposito and his men returned fire, but the advantage of the two remaining assault rifles almost outweighed their superior number of handguns. Two patrol cops taking cover behind car doors were hit. One in the hip, the other in the lower part of his bulletproof vest.
By then, more police flooded into the area and joined the gunfight.
Eventually, the overwhelming firepower of the cops prevailed. Of the six remaining Bosnians, three were killed, two seriously wounded. The sixth evaded injury by taking cover in a dip in the ground behind a pile of discarded tires. He surrendered babbling unintelligible English.
Before it was all over two more cops were hit, both in the lower legs.
Everybody was half deaf from the gunshots.
On Conover, the first fire truck had arrived before the cops. Two more were on the scene by the time the flames were extinguished.
Three more patrol cars arrived on that side of Beck’s building, but they had stayed well back of the billowing fire, even though they saw bodies on the street and sidewalk.
All five men that Demarco had wiped out had survived the fires because they were on the far side of the SUV. Four suffered extensive burns when the SUV went up in flames, but by then the firemen were on the scene and had dragged them away.
The driver died from inhaling superheated air and burns over most of his body. The arsonist that Manny had shot had managed to roll away from the flames, but he was badly burned and unmoving.
Once the paramedics loaded ambulances with the survivors, all under arrest and escorted by police, the Crime Scene Unit teams began securing the area, waiting for the Medical Examiner personnel who would investigate and handle the dead.
While all that was going on, Esposito and Mosebee pounded on Beck’s front door. Alex Liebowitz appeared in his pajamas, looking bewildered and somewhat terrified at the gunshots and fires.
Of course, he had been prepped by Beck.
All the computer equipment and files had been locked and secured behind a fake back wall.
Whatever questions the cops asked him, he answered, telling Esposito that James Beck was not around, he didn’t know where he was, or when he might return. As for Ciro Baldassare, Alex told the cops he had never heard of him, but that James Beck might know him.
He volunteered that they should contact Beck’s lawyer, who he was sure would straighten everything out.
Alex kept jabbering at Esposito and Augustus Mosebee, distracting them, trying to hand them a piece of paper with the phone number of Phineas P. Dunleavy.
When they asked Alex for ID, he presented it. When they asked why he was at this address, Alex said he was staying there while his place was being renovated.
Esposito finally grabbed the piece of paper Alex kept trying to give him and threw it on the floor. Knowing the building would be empty, he and Augustus did a cursory search and stormed out.
Esposito realized this was now out of his hands. His only course of action was to stay out of the way of McManus and the other higher-ups now on the scene. He and Augustus trudged back to his car. They’d already given their preliminary interviews. Now they would have to wait for their union delegates, and start the long procedures that were standard.
While he waited, Esposito tallied the damage. He counted seven out front, eight in the back lot. All of them either dead or out of commission. As far as Esposito could figure, the only ones dead had been killed by police gunfire or by a gasoline fire that looked like it had been started by the men who had been burned.
A sixteenth body had been found out on Beard Street. A preliminary investigation concluded that he had cut his neck on razor wire trying to escape over the fence at that end of the lot. Probably while Esposito and the others were emptying their guns at the other end.
The sky was beginning to lighten.
Augustus had somehow obtained a pint of Johnnie Walker Black. He took a long pull and handed the bottle to Esposito, who shook his head.
“Fucking mess,” said Augustus.
“Goddammit.” Esposito shook his head.
“What?”
“We got played.”
“What do you mean? How?”
“That retired cop who came to see me.”
“What about him?”
“He told me to come out here heads up, ready to call for backup because there would be more than the two guys on our warrants at the location.”
“Well, he fucking got that right.”
“No. I thought he was talking about Beck’s crew.” Esposito motioned toward Conover and the empty lot. “You think any of these guys are in Beck’s crew?”
A
ugustus shrugged. “Who gives a shit? It still turns out good for you. You took down a bunch of bad guys. Armed. Trying to kill cops. End of story.”
Esposito shook his head. “I don’t like being played.”
Augustus waved a hand, too tired or uninterested to argue the point.
“Think about it. Beck had to have planned this whole thing. Sixteen men show up here with guns and gasoline. Why? To take down Beck and whoever else was here. Sixteen of them. None of them even got near the place. They didn’t firebomb it. There’s not even a bullet hole in that building. Beck, and whoever he had with him, somehow got the drop on all sixteen. They fucked some of ’em up pretty good, but didn’t kill them. So there’s no murder investigation. That takes most of the heat off this. The only ones who killed anybody is us. We’re the ones who are going to be investigated.”
“Correct. And we’ll get medals for it. It was a righteous shooting.”
“Probably. But where’s Beck? Who helped him? How many of them did it take to do all this damage?”
Augustus took another pull of Scotch. “Don’t know. Don’t give a fuck. I’m gonna rack out in the backseat of your car. Let me know who we have to talk to, and when I can get the fuck out of here.”
“Go ahead.”
“And one more thing, Jeffrey.”
“What?”
“If you still got to serve those warrants after all this shit, don’t call me.”
72
Beck’s phone woke him from a nearly comatose sleep. Demarco was just exiting the Belt Parkway, headed for Coney Island Avenue. Beck fumbled for the TALK button and croaked, “Hang on.”
He took a deep breath, trying to come fully awake, to focus.
“Go ahead.”
Ricky Bolo muttered into the phone.
“Congratulations. You’re still alive.”
“So far. What’s happening?”
“Things have been quiet since that group headed out. About thirty seconds ago, a black Tahoe pulled up. It’s sitting right in front of the entrance to that apartment building.”
Beck said, “Hang on.” He turned to Demarco, “How far away are we from Kolenka’s?”
“About five minutes.”
Among Thieves Page 35
