“Yesterday afternoon.”
“I see,” said Phineas.
Brandon asked Alex, “What happened out there?”
“We were attacked.”
“How many?”
“A lot. Cops came.”
“And our boys?” asked Phineas.
Alex said, “James had a plan. He can give you the details. I stayed in here.”
Phineas peeked out the window again. “Well, if they’re still looking for James, I’d say he’s fallen down pretty low on their list. Looks like they had a lot of other things to take care of last night.”
Just then a loud bang sounded as the kitchen side door opened and hit the wall, accompanied by grunts and voices.
From back in the kitchen, Manny Guzman yelled out, “Is it clear?”
Alex yelled back. “All clear.”
Ciro and Manny appeared in the bar, each with one of Joey B’s massive arms draped across their shoulders. The big man was clearly in excruciating pain, barely able to walk.
Blood covered Manny’s right shoulder and arm.
The left side of Ciro’s face was streaked with blood. But the strain of holding up Joey B seemed to be more cause for discomfort than their injuries.
Brandon stepped forward calmly. “Has he been shot?”
“No,” said Ciro. “The poor bastard slipped on the ice and went down hard on his ass. He broke something. Can’t walk.”
Joey B added, “Fucking can’t even stand. Hurts like hell. Fuck.”
“Should we lay him down?”
Brandon put up both hands, “No. No. Don’t put him on the floor. It’ll be too hard to get him up. We have to get him on a table so I can examine him.”
Ciro asked, “How about the bar?”
Brandon looked at Joey B and at the bar top. “No, not wide enough.” He looked around and then said, “Okay, come on. Let’s put four of these tables together.”
While Alex and Phineas slid the tables together, Brandon fished around in his medical bag and came out with a syringe and a vial. He filled the syringe, plunged it into Joey B’s huge thigh, right through his pants, and emptied the contents into him.
“You won’t feel much in a few minutes.” He turned to the others and directed Phineas to take Manny’s place. “Just lay him down on the tables.” He turned to his nurse. “Ruth, head upstairs. Manny will show you.”
Phineas, Alex, and Ciro maneuvered Joey B onto the tables. The shot already taking effect, Joey B laid his head back and said, “Jesus, give me some more of that shit, doc.”
“Let me get a little better idea of what happened to you first.”
Ciro asked Alex and Phineas, “You heard from James and Demarco?”
“No. How’d you get Joey in here?”
“Guys from the market let us borrow a panel truck. We drove it right in the warehouse. I wasn’t sure we were going to make it the rest of the way. Manny is stronger than I thought.”
Alex said, “You okay? You got blood all over your face.”
Ciro peered into the cloudy mirror over the back bar.
“Shit.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I think something tore off that SUV out back and it zinged across my face.”
Alex had already wet down half a bar towel and handed it to Ciro, who wiped away the obvious blood and held the dry end against his wounds.
Brandon continued to gently examine Joey B, moving his legs, asking questions.
Ciro asked, “Many cops around?”
“No. They opened up the streets about an hour ago. I took a walk around. All I saw were Crime Scene people in the back lot. And that one patrol car out front.”
Phineas said, “Best we get upstairs anyhow. Let’s go.”
“What about Joey?”
Brandon had finished his examination. “He’ll be okay. He broke part of his hip, but nothing serious. It’s just going to hurt like hell for a while.”
“That’s good,” said Beck.
Everybody turned. Beck and Demarco had come in unnoticed. Demarco was still holding him upright. The amount of blood on Beck turned everybody silent.
74
By 9 a.m. the second floor in Beck’s building looked like a combination hospital emergency room, computer hacker’s headquarters, and law office. With a kitchen.
The dining room table area served as Doctor Wright’s emergency room. The wrappers from surgical dressings and suture kits and bloodstained gauze littered the floor around him. The smell of isopropyl alcohol and Betadine mixed with the aroma of ham and eggs.
Phineas Dunleavy had taken over a space near the coffee table seating area, making phone calls to track down the court that had issued the warrants for Beck and Ciro.
Alex Liebowitz sat glued to his computer screens.
From the moment Ciro and Manny appeared with Joey B, Doctor Wright had instituted an efficient triage.
Joey B had been made as comfortable as possible downstairs, covered in blankets and dozing under a large dose of painkiller. Brandon was ninety percent sure that Joey had cracked the ischium, a part of his hip. It was painful, but didn’t require surgery. They would get him to a hospital to confirm the diagnosis when the cops cleared out of the neighborhood.
After Joey, he’d come upstairs. His nurse had prepped Manny, and the doctor began treating his bullet wound. His nurse then started prepping Beck.
Manny’s wound had given the doctor an open view of the acromion where a bullet had nicked off a small piece of the bone. There didn’t appear to be any fracture that had radiated from the area of impact. Wright already knew it was hopeless to try to get Manny to go for an X-ray. He did not take bullet wounds lightly. He carefully examined, cleaned, disinfected, and sutured everything. When he was done he gave careful instructions.
“Manny, wear that sling I put on you. You’ll have to sleep sitting up for a few weeks. Keep the wound clean. Finish the antibiotics. Okay?”
Perched on the edge of the dining table, his legs dangling, Manny nodded.
“Promise to let me know if something looks bad or starts to hurt too much.”
“I will.”
“Or if you start running a fever.”
“I will.”
Brandon looked carefully at Manny Guzman to make sure he wasn’t placating him. “Fine. Don’t push it. No fishing with that arm. Six weeks, you should be fine.”
Manny thanked the doctor and walked into the kitchen to continue preparing breakfast for whoever wanted it.
Wright determined that Ciro’s wound could wait, and turned his attention to Beck. Beck had been hit by two bullets as he fell to the ground to avoid the shots from Kolenka’s bodyguard, both causing fairly superficial wounds. One ran across the side of his left thigh, four inches above his knife wound. The second had slashed across the side of his left arm, just below the shoulder.
Branded injected the wounded areas with enough anesthetics that Beck actually fell asleep during the hour it took to examine, clean, disinfect, and stitch everything. The bullets had torn through clothes, skin, and muscles. They weren’t deep, but they had left ragged trails that had to be fixed before they could be sutured shut. As for the long knife wound on his back, it had been open too long to stitch. The doctor used a substance akin to Krazy Glue to hold the skin together, disinfected the area, and expertly bandaged the wounds.
By the time Wright turned to Ciro, he had been working nearly two-and-a-half hours without a break.
Whatever piece of the SUV that hit Ciro had ripped past his left eye and taken a narrow slice out of his eyebrow as it passed across his forehead and temple. Bandon cleaned the wound, pinched it closed, and used butterfly bandages to seal it.
“You’ll have a nice line through your eyebrow once this heals.”
“Good. Chicks dig scars.”
Brandon Wright pictured the end result and decided Mr. Baldassare’s scar would most likely make him look even more intimidating than he already did.
Brandon sat and
drank coffee with his surgical nurse while Demarco, who had emerged completely unscathed from his battles, cleaned up the bloody cotton, gauze, used syringe tops, and packaging that littered the floor around the dining room table.
Beck stood next to Wright putting on new clothes that Demarco had brought down when Brandon started working on him.
Wright said nothing, watching Beck gingerly step into fresh jeans and slip on a well-worn flannel shirt.
Wright nodded toward the bloody clothes he had cut off Beck, and his sliced-up bloody shearling coat on the floor and said, “Do me a favor and burn those clothes in case the cops show up and notice that bullets made those tears.”
“Will do,” said Beck.
Demarco was already stuffing everything into a black construction bag.
“D, can you go through all the pockets before you get rid of that stuff?”
“Sure.”
Beck turned to Brandon. “I really liked that shearling coat.”
“Be that as it may, you want to hear my lecture on what you should do right now?”
“Not really.”
“I’m giving it to you anyhow. You’ve suffered significant trauma. Knife wounds and bullet wounds like that are no joke. I just put a couple dozen more stitches into you. There’s a ton of shock and trauma to your body. Not to mention blood loss. Not to mention risk of infection. Not to mention all the contusions and hematomas and other assorted damage on you. My point is, you should get into a bed for the next forty-eight hours before you collapse.”
“Right.”
“But you’re not going to.”
“I will. But not just yet.”
“Do you realize how idiotic that sounds?”
Beck didn’t answer.
“Will you make sure to take the antibiotics I’m leaving for you?”
“Of course.”
Wright started to say something more, but lapsed into silence. He shook his head in frustration.
Beck sat down slowly in the chair opposite Brandon Wright on the other side of the dining table.
“Brandon, you’ve kept all of us alive, and risked going to jail for it. There’s no way I can express my gratitude, except to assure you without any doubt or hesitation that nothing we are doing, nothing I am doing is being done without it being absolutely necessary. We all risked dying tonight. You think I do that casually? Recklessly?”
Brandon Wright raised his hand. “All right. All right.” The doctor paused. “Can you tell me one thing?”
“What?”
“How much longer will this go on?”
Beck looked at his watch. “It’s a matter of hours. You have something that can help keep me going?”
“Absolutely not. In your situation there’s nothing safe. The last thing you should do is stress yourself with amphetamines. Or unnecessary pain meds. Try coffee. Keep those wounds clean. Sleep. Get out from under this as soon as you can. I don’t want to go to your funeral.”
Beck nodded. He didn’t press it.
The doctor stood, rolled his neck, flexed his big hands, stretched. He helped Ruth pack up the remaining supplies and instruments, grabbed his Carhartt coat off the back of a chair, and left.
Beck watched the tall man walk across the second floor and disappear down the back stairway without another word, including good-bye.
Beck took a deep breath, exhaled, carefully stood, bent his arm, lifted his leg, testing the feel of the new sutures, hoping he wouldn’t have to do anything to make them open and bleed for the next few days.
This was the endgame. Better get to it. He checked his watch. The market would open in a half hour. Time enough to have the conversation with Manny Guzman that he had to have.
As if on cue, Ricky and Jonas Bolo appeared, coming up the steps with Olivia. They’d probably passed the doctor on the way up.
Good timing, thought Beck. Better she didn’t see all the blood and wounds.
Beck wasn’t in the mood for small talk. He just nodded at the Bolos and said, “There’s coffee and food in the kitchen.”
To Olivia he asked, “Did you eat?”
“I will.” She looked at Alex, then back at Beck. “Anything important happening?”
“Check with Alex.”
Olivia nodded and headed toward the desk and computer monitors. Beck noticed she was beginning to look a little haggard. But as usual with her, it just made her appear attractive in yet another way.
She wore the jeans she’d been wearing, but now instead of the black knit top she wore a striped formfitting shirt. She hadn’t tucked in the shirt so it hung outside her jeans.
Seeing her reminded him of the half hour they’d spent in bed together. How long ago was that? Twelve hours? It seemed like twelve days.
Beck followed her over to Alex and as she took a seat next to him he asked, “You ready, Alex?”
“Ready.”
He said to Olivia, “We’re getting set up for the end. Alex, how many accounts you got set up inside that HSBC Cayman Bank?”
“Fifteen.”
“How long will it take you to move the money around?”
“Only as long as it takes me to type and click. It’s all internal. It should happen right away. Seconds.”
“And the wire transfers?”
“Nobody guarantees anything except same business day. But we’ve got it covered.”
“You do?”
Alex paused. Beck watched him go through it, rehearsing it in his mind. They both knew how complicated their next moves might be.
“Yes.”
“Are we ready with Belize like we planned?”
“Yes.”
“You have the SWIF numbers and all the routing stuff you need?”
This time Alex stopped answering Beck. He gave Beck a look that said he was too tired to answer him. He simply couldn’t waste the energy.
Beck nodded, said, “Don’t start the snatch until I tell you, okay?”
And then Beck went to Manny Guzman and said he had to talk to him. They headed for the downstairs kitchen and the most painful conversation of Beck’s entire life.
75
Even though Alan Crane had secretly sold his loft, the presence of Markov’s mercenaries sleeping on his couches and bed, heating up takeout food in his kitchen, stinking up his bathroom, made him want to set fire to the place.
And now Markov had arrived, looking as bad as Crane had ever seen him. He clearly hadn’t changed his clothes in a long time. He stank of a weird smell that Crane was convinced had to do with the drugs he imbibed.
The first thing Markov did when he stepped off the elevator was hand three envelopes, clearly stuffed with cash, to the mercenaries. For a moment, Crane wondered if his murder was included in the payment. He immediately dismissed the thought. This next hour or so was going to be crucial. He had to put everything out of his mind and execute his plan.
Crane smiled. Nothing like the possibility of snagging a hundred million or so to focus the concentration.
Markov dragged a chair from the dining room area over to Crane’s computer desk.
Crane cringed as the chair scraped across his precious Calamander wood floor. Still not saying a word, Markov set the chair next to Crane and tried to set up his laptop computer on Crane’s desk.
The stench of the man was bad enough, but having him try to crowd into his work space was too much.
“Leonard, please. Don’t put that there. I need room.”
“I want to watch.”
“Fine, have your men bring a table over for you. Sit where you can see, but you can’t be on my desk. It’s too distracting. Come on, the markets are about to open.”
“I want to see my account. How much money is in it?”
Crane clicked and expanded a screen on one of his four monitors that showed Markov’s bank deposit account. “A hundred million and change in the bank. The rest is coming into the brokerage as soon as I close out the last holdings this morning.”
“A hundred!? W
here’s the fucking rest?”
“In the goddamn brokerage account. For God’s sake take it easy. There’s a lot more to bring over. I warned you that there would be losses, but I’ve worked miracles here. Just relax, will you? I have to make these trades. The markets are open now.”
“I want to start moving it.”
“So log on and move it. I don’t give a shit. Just leave me alone.”
Markov bent over his laptop. He tried to get online. He couldn’t.
He barked, “What’s your Internet password?”
Crane was already clicking and scanning candlestick charts displaying values in one-minute intervals. The charts also showed moving average lines and blossoming Fibonacci radials.
“Aw for fuck’s sake, Leonard. Don’t you have it on that computer?”
“It’s not remembering it. Did you change it? What is it?”
Crane screamed, “Shit.” He clicked on another file. A screen opened on one of his monitors. Markov yelled at the mercenaries, “Get me a fucking table.”
Crane yelled back, “There’s a worktable in the back.”
Markov leaned closer to the screen, expecting to see the passwords, but all that appeared was a small screen asking for a password to unlock the encrypted screen. “What is the fucking password, Alan?”
“It’s in this file. But the file is encrypted. Hold on.”
The tension in the room had ratcheted up to a nearly unbearable level. Harris and Williams hustled to the back of the loft looking for the table. Markov loomed over Crane. Crane had to resist the urge to shove the fat, sweating, stinking man away from him with both hands.
Crane typed in the password that un-encrypted the page that displayed his passwords. It seemed to take forever. Finally, a screen opened on his monitor. It contained pages of passwords and IDs, all of them with complex series of upper-and lower-case letters, symbols, and numbers.
“Where is it?” demanded Markov.
Crane started scrolling through the pages. “God fucking dammit, I should be trading, not holding your fucking hand with this shit. There! There it is. And the Cayman passwords are above it. Everything is alphabetical.”
“I have those passwords.”
“Congratulations,” said Crane, as he immediately returned to his mouse and keyboard.
Among Thieves Page 37
