Among Thieves (33 page)

“Lastly, you were sitting here ready to dump me if I hadn't come up with the information you wanted on Beck.” Walter raised his hands. “Hey, that's your prerogative, but I end up with nothing after a lot of sweat and putting myself on the line for you. How is that fair?”

Milstein started to speak, but Walter cut him off.

“On the plus side, except for your idea that I should be at your beck and call 24/7, you gave me a cushy job for about eighteen months, and fairly decent pay.”

“Are you done?”

“No. Here's how I see it.” Walter lifted his big hands palms up, weighing each option. “On one hand, I walk out of here, you get nothing about Beck, and I get nothing from you. Clearly, you wouldn't even pay me the lousy two weeks' severance. But I'm free and clear, and that would mitigate the risk that anybody in the department finds out that I dipped into classified information.

“On the other hand, I give you the information on Beck, you thank me, and wait for the right time to fire me. Either way, I'm screwed.”

Milstein nodded. “Now are you done?”

“Last point, I've demonstrated to you that I'm not a dumb fuck that can be exploited, which ultimately makes me a much more valuable guy to have around.”

“So again, what do you want?”

“Again, what are you offering?”

Milstein could see Walter had maneuvered him into making the deal so he got to it.

“Okay, fair enough. How about this. I give you a fifty-percent increase in salary. Your contract goes until April, if I remember right.”

“End of April.”

“Right. End of April. I'll make the increase start first of April, and guarantee to renew your contract for another year, at the increase. It's a very good deal, Walter.”

“It is. I appreciate it. But I also want a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus for this year's work. That's chicken feed for a year-end bonus around here. And just so you don't get second thoughts, you guarantee if you fire me, for any reason, you have to pay off the balance of the new contract.”

“You realize I'm losing my biggest client.”

“Hey, that's the whole point here. This information on Beck will go a long way toward showing your client that you're taking care of him. You tell me, is that worth twenty grand or not?”

Milstein needed Beck out of the picture. And he had to at least try to keep Markov from leaving Summit. Or give him a reason to come back.

“Fifteen thousand, plus the increase in salary and guaranteed contract extension, and we have a deal. But only on the condition I keep this client. If he goes, the firm will either close or cut staff drastically.”

Walter shook his head. “No deal. That leaves me taking all the risk.”

Milstein pushed. “Well I can't take all the risk either, Walter.”

Walter paused. “Okay, here it is. I get the bump in salary. If the firm goes south, I get three months' severance, plus the twenty-thousand signing bonus, and you cover two grand in expenses today, which you owe me anyhow.”

“Walter, come on, you have to do better than that.”

After a pause, Walter said, “Shit. Final offer, or I walk. I'm already tired of this. I'll agree to the fifteen bonus, in my next salary check. You pay me the two grand in expenses today. And you start my salary increase today. Not at the end of the month.”

Milstein immediately did the math in his head. He wondered if Walter had actually figured it out. Starting the salary increase two weeks earlier just about met him halfway on the fifteen versus twenty thousand. Milstein made a note to watch Walter Pearce much more carefully.

He put his hand out. “Okay, we have a deal.”

They shook.

“I'll get this set up for you as soon as I can. Be ready to meet this fellow at police headquarters.”

“And my check for the two grand? Unless you want to give me cash.”

Milstein frowned and pulled out a desk ledger checkbook from his top drawer and wrote Walter a check against the firm's petty cash account.

 

48

Beck took the back stairs down to the ground floor, past where he knew Ciro Baldassare and Joey B were on watch, through Manny's kitchen, stepping out into the downstairs bar shortly before 8 a.m.

Manny Guzman sat at a table near the front door with his 12-gauge Winchester Model 1300 shotgun. Demarco stood behind the bar in his usual spot. An assault shotgun had been placed within reach on top of the back bar cabinet. An AA-12 loaded with a 20-round drum box filled with 12-gauge shot.

“Morning,” said Beck. “I'm going downstairs.”

Without saying any more, Beck went through a door near the front of the bar and walked down a flight of wooden steps to the basement under his building. He turned on overhead bare lightbulbs as he walked through the musty space, making his way past the detritus that had accumulated over the decades: old radiators, shelving, boxes of junk, half-filled cans of old paint, rotting documents that nobody would ever bother to look at, old restaurant dishes and cookware. He went past the boiler room and continued on to almost the back wall.

On his left, a nine-foot set of metal shelves was set against the north wall. The shelves were crammed with more junk.

Beck braced himself and carefully pivoted the shelves away from the wall. A close look at the wall showed that part of it wasn't completely solid. Beck worked his fingers into two small indentations, and gently but firmly pulled back a four-foot-square slab of plywood, plastered over so it looked like the rest of the wall. He slid the plywood to his right, just enough so that he could step into the opening and enter a passageway about five feet long connecting Beck's building with the building next door. Bending low, Beck made his way into another basement, much newer and about four times the size of his. The area was clean and empty except for machinery in the far-west corner, and a free-standing one-man prison cell in the east corner.

The machinery consisted of a long steel table under a rotary saw. The powerful saw had been mounted on an aluminum frame so it could slide back and forth over the table. Just past the table sat a large industrial-strength meat grinder. The machine could grind a hundred pounds of meat and bone into paste in about five minutes.

All the equipment could be seen by whoever occupied the prison cell. The entire basement was dimly lit by sparsely spaced fluorescent lights that stayed on 24/7.

Upstairs was a warehouse, empty except for the first floor where a garden equipment business stored mostly stone and gravel. Beck had a twenty-year net lease on the building.

Ahmet Sukol sat on an iron bench that was chained to the bars of the cell. The temperature in the basement hovered around a perpetual fifty-five degrees. Not cold enough to freeze somebody, but cold enough to make any extended stay nearly unbearable. Over the course of days or weeks, without winter clothing and enough food needed to maintain a body temperature of 98.6 degrees, a person would gradually die of hypothermia.

Sukol wore his winter coat, a knit cap, and gloves.

Beck's men had given him only water and one cold cheese sandwich.

Beck checked his watch. The man had only been in the cell about nine hours, but Beck knew that it probably felt more like fifteen or twenty.

He approached the cell, stopping about five feet from the iron bars. He looked at what he assumed was another Bosnian Serb. The man stared back at him.

Beck didn't utter a word. Neither did the Bosnian. That told Beck this wasn't the first time the man had been imprisoned. Beck preferred that the man had done time. Especially if he had ever been placed in solitary confinement. It didn't much matter where or what type of cell. The horror of solitary derived from two things: no contact with the outside world, and no way to tell time.

If his prisoner had been in solitary before, the prospect of suffering it again would terrify him. Solitary confinement was one of the worst tortures ever conceived.

But that required this Bosnian tough guy to truly believe that it was happening to him. Suddenly. Out of nowhere.

Beck waited a few more moments to see if the man would ask him a question, curse him, yell at him, plead with him. Nothing.

Shit, thought Beck. He doesn't believe it.

Beck put it aside. He concentrated on looking at the man in the cell as someone who had been part of a force gathered to kill, or maim him. Or do that to his friends. Beck pictured the man attacking him. Shooting him. Or striking with a knife or bat. He worked at connecting the man in the cage with pain that could have ended his life. Or the lives of the others.

Beck stared at Sukol and imagined the Bosnian kicking him in the face. Breaking his teeth. Maybe stomping out an eye. He thought about fists and feet slamming into his back, ribs, head. Beck thought about the pain. About the number of agonizing days he might have suffered. About the certainty of permanent damage.

The hate welled up. The mercy leached out. And the Bosnian saw it happen right before him. He saw Beck's face. He was ready to believe it now.

It seemed that the man was about to say something, but right at that moment Beck turned and walked back toward the opening in the far wall, his footsteps echoing off the concrete floor, filling the cold, forlorn, unidentifiable space behind him with the sound of his retreating steps. Empty save for the dim lights and the meat-grinding equipment.

When Beck reached the opening in the wall, he stopped to place four fingers over four light switches. With one move, he flipped all of them down.

The fluorescent ceiling fixtures all went off, plunging the entire space into darkness so deep and profound that he knew Gregor's man would not be able to see his hand in front of his face.

As he ducked into the opening Beck heard the man cry out, “Wait. Stop.”

Beck grimaced. Nope. No stopping now.

 

49

By the time Beck had made his way back to the bar, Manny, Ciro, and Demarco had assembled around the big petrified wood coffee table on the second floor. Joey B remained downstairs watching the street.

Manny and Demarco had their shotguns within reach. Ciro had a semiautomatic version of the M-16 assault rifle, a weapon designed to fire bullets at very high velocity.

Alex Liebowitz sat at the other end of the loft, eyes glued to his computer monitors. Apparently Alan Crane was back at work.

Beck asked. “Where's Olivia?”

Manny answered. “She's keepin' to her room. When are we going to move, James? Sitting here waiting for the shit to fall on us is a bad idea.”

“The list of shit about to fall is going to take me some time to explain. Let me talk to Alex, first.”

Beck headed to the other end of the loft. Liebowitz leaned back in his desk chair, arms crossed over his chest, eyes half closed staring at the computer monitors in front of him. Each monitor was divided into four segments, so Alex was watching eight different images simultaneously.

“Your hack is working?”

“Not exactly a hack. I'm not controlling anything. Yet. But the malware I implanted is humming along nicely.”

“So I was only half-listening to you last night, what exactly did you end up doing with Crane's setup?”

“I spent a chunk of time in the cellar tracing his phone wires. His Internet connections, luckily, ran through the basement, too, instead of just along outside walls. They wired the whole building when they renovated it. But his wiring is special. He's got a full 4nx T-1 line in there. No fractional. Plus, four different phone lines. Plus…”

Beck interrupted, “So did you get everything done you wanted?”

“Close enough. Hard to tell when you don't know everything he has in that apartment.”

“What happened with his computer?”

“After I disabled and rerouted all his alarm shit with some routing boxes Ricky lent me, which are tricky because you have to get all the interfaces wired in before you reroute…”

“Uh-huh.”

Alex could tell Beck was being patient, so he tipped forward in the chair and tried to be more specific, but he just couldn't avoid talking about relays, codes, information packets, Internet protocol, radio frequencies, access controls, identity management, and alarm systems.

Beck gave it a minute, then carefully interrupted and said, “So, Alex, did you get what we needed to find out about what Crane is doing and where he has the hedge fund money?”

“Yeah. As far as it goes.”

“What do you mean, as far as it goes?”

Liebowitz talked to Beck while glancing intermittently at the images on the computer screen.

“Like I said, after I overrode all the alarms and security, I went up into the apartment. His computer was on, but of course access had shut down and I didn't have time to get through his pass code. I suspect he has at least two layers. Long story short, I just bypassed everything and copied the entire hard drive.”

“And?”

“And I've been spending the last six hours unbundling everything, while I'm key-tracking everything he's doing when he's online. I've got just about everything opened. But, it's only current from the time he shut down last night. He started up again about a half-hour ago. I'm still catching up.”

“And you can do that how? The short version, Alex.”

“Short version, I loaded a sniffer program into his computer. Routed it through his T-1 line to a VPN connection that is hooked into this computer which is maybe an hour from being a full twin of the one in his apartment. Mostly. Whatever he does on that computer, he does it on this computer.”

“Okay.”

“Thing is, I can see what he's doing, but that doesn't mean I completely understand what I see. He places his trades through a very high-end platform. It's been customized a hell of a lot.

“From what I've tracked so far, he has four or five different accounts in his fund that he trades through leased servers. Those servers connect to six or seven electronic exchanges. He routes every trade into the exchange that gives him the best price, so it's a lot to keep track of.”