Текст книги "Among thieves"

Автор книги: John Clarkson

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For my Friends

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Also by John Clarkson

About the Author

Copyright

1

Tuesday morning started out damn near perfect. Right up until Demarco Jones told James Beck, “Manny wants to kill somebody.”

Demarco hadn’t told Beck right away. He’d been waiting for the right moment, as if there were right moments for that sort of news.

Beck was at his usual spot: sitting just past the turn of an old oak bar in a hundred-year-old-saloon that occupied the first floor of a ramshackle building Beck owned in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The bar ran nearly the entire length of the room, curving to meet a solid plaster wall coated in a century of paint, currently a pale green that Beck didn’t particularly like, but felt he should leave unchanged. It was a bright, cold February morning, the sun streaming in through the bar’s plate glass window, warming Beck’s broad back as he made his way through the front section of The New York Times and his second cup of coffee.

Demarco stood in his usual spot behind the bar, leaning against the back cabinets. Relaxed. Watching Beck. Waiting.

Demarco Jones could watch someone without them hardly noticing, which was surprising, because when people saw Demarco they usually looked twice. He was six four, wide shouldered, muscular, around ten percent body fat, skin about the color of Beck’s strong coffee. He was handsome, but tough looking, especially with his shaved head. He wore a dark blue Nike tracksuit over a black T-shirt.

But Beck noticed. He could feel Demarco waiting for him to look up from his morning paper, even though Demarco didn’t give Beck any indication of anything. He just stood there, his long muscular arms crossed, waiting for Beck to put his perfectly fine Tuesday morning on hold.

Beck lifted his eyes from his paper, stared straight ahead for about four seconds, turned to Demarco and said, “What?”

Demarco turned and gazed calmly at Beck.

Beck waited.

Demarco said, “Manny wants to talk to you.”

“Manny.”

“Yeah.”

“About what?”

“Manny wants to kill somebody. Figures he should talk to you first.”

Beck knew that if Manny Guzman had said the word kill, it was not metaphorical.

And if Emmanuel “Manny” Guzman, former lord of a Dominican street gang, former shot-caller of several prison gangs including the most feared Latin gang in Dannemora wanted somebody dead, that person’s last breath on Earth wasn’t far away.

Beck took another sip of his coffee. Now it tasted sour.

He slid off the bar stool, standing there in a pair of worn gray jeans, sturdy black tie shoes, a maroon plaid flannel shirt. Winter clothes. He folded the paper. He stared at the front section of the Times and thought about the juxtaposition of a newspaper not even a day old resting on top of a bar more than a hundred years old.

Although property records showed that the old brick building which housed Beck’s bar was owned by a limited-liability real estate partnership, it would take a great deal of work to uncover James Beck as the managing partner and owner of 24.75% general shares, and a 1% manager share.

A dense thicket of legal filings designed by Beck’s bulldog lawyer Phineas P. Dunleavy stood between Beck and public knowledge of his ownership. Dunleavy was a thorough man, the same man who had taken up Beck’s cause while Beck was serving ten to twenty-five years for first-degree manslaughter. Dunleavy had pursued justice for Beck, had burned through Beck’s last dollar, but had restored that dollar many times over by winning a settlement for wrongful conviction that netted James Beck $2.1 million, a large part of which Beck used to buy the old bar and the three-story building that housed it, and a small part of which he used to make sure nobody knew about it.

The other partners were a very select group of three men: Manny Guzman, Demarco Jones, and Ciro Baldassare.

The only patrons Beck allowed into his waterfront hangout were members of his network, and a few misfits from the neighborhood he tolerated because they either interested him or because they needed something he felt like giving them.…

Like the twenty-pound sealed bags of ground meat scraps and bones he gave to a wild-haired Greek woman who collected the free mash of protein for the wild neighborhood dogs she fed. Beck liked her spirit, and every once in a while he needed a good way to get rid of ground meat and bones.

Or the shots of Jameson Demarco doled out to Arnold, an aging alcoholic who checked into Beck’s bar much like he would to a hospital emergency room. Beck allowed him to sit and sip his Jameson if he remained quiet and didn’t smell too bad.

There were others who stepped into Beck’s bar, but not many. If they were people Beck didn’t like or know, they were quickly told they had entered a private bar not open to the public.

When told this by Demarco Jones, very, very few did anything other than apologize and leave.

But this morning, something else had entered Beck’s enclave. Something that had set Manny Guzman on a dangerous path.

Emmanuel Manny Guzman kept the old Red Hook place clean to the core. No grime. No stink of beer. Barely a hint of dust anywhere. And windows polished to a gleam every other week. Even the glass and frames holding faded photos of ship hands and dock scenes were shined to a gleam. Even the insides of drawers were clean all the way to the back.

And everything in working order: the plumbing, the light fixtures, everything.

There was no slippage with Manny Guzman. If Manny wanted something done, it was done.

Shit, Beck thought. He turned and headed back to the bar kitchen where he knew Guzman would be sitting, waiting for him.

But before he had gone three steps, something hard cracked into the plate glass window that fronted Conover Street. It was a brutal, disturbing sound that made Beck turn back and curse.

“Christ, now what?”

He strode quickly to the front of the bar and saw a crack that ran diagonally from the left lower corner of the window to almost the middle.

Demarco joined Beck at the window. The bottom third was painted black so that passersby couldn’t see in, but they were both tall enough to see a beat-up van parked outside across the street. Four black gangbangers in various sizes stood around one huge, heavily muscled thug who yelled, “James Beck, come out here before I come in after you.”

Beck grabbed a leather shearling jacket from the coat peg near the front door. He looked at Demarco and nodded. Demarco moved fast in the opposite direction, toward the back of the barroom.

Beck, seething, walked out his front door and stood on the sidewalk across from the rock thrower, breathing deeply, giving himself time to burn off the flight-or-fight hormones coursing through him, forcing the rational part of his brain to start working.

Four of them flanked the big man, two on each side. He dwarfed all of them, standing a few steps out near the middle of the street, wearing a black leather hoodie, unzipped to reveal a torso bulging with muscle under a tight white T-shirt. He had on thick, dark denim pants and heavy Timberland boots.

Beck figured the muscles had been built in a prison iron pile. The clothes seemed to be just-out-of-the-joint new. What the fuck is this, he wondered. He remained on his side of the street. He didn’t see any guns or other weapons brandished, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

The big man’s hands were balled into fearsomely large fists. He wore no rings, no jewelry, no watch. It reminded Beck of being called out for a prison yard fight. It seemed absurd. Absurd, but dangerous.

Beck took a couple of steps forward and stopped at the curb, watching and waiting.

“I’m here to tell you what’s what, Beck.”

Beck had never seen this guy before. Maybe he recognized one or two of the others from the neighborhood. But not Mr. Muscles. He said nothing.

“Them little punks you pay over in the projects to give you a heads-up? They don’t do that anymore. I’m back. This is my hood. Now you pay me and my people. And the price has gone up, motherfucker.”

Beck waited a beat, “When are you going to fix my window, asshole?”

The big man reared back. “You know who the fuck I am?”

“No.”

“I’m Willie Reese. You want to live here, you pay me.”

“Willie Reese.” Beck shook his head. “The name doesn’t ring any bells. Does your mother know you’re out here breaking windows?”

That ignited the spark. Just about the way Beck had wanted it to. Willie Reese puffed up and, ready to enforce his demands, let his anger take over.

Beck had reached an alert state of calm. The trick now was to survive the first seconds.

Reese rushed at Beck in long steps, arms coming up into a fighting position, fists balled into clubs, coming at him fast.

Beck turned to his right and ran. Faster. Faster than he looked like he could.

Beck’s sudden move confused Reese. He lunged at Beck, took a wild swing and missed, his Timberlands slipping on the cold, slick cobblestone street. Within three seconds, Beck was ten yards away from Reese and running easily. Reese got his footing and took off after him.

The others hooted and jeered and stepped out into the street yelling at Beck about being a punk-ass coward, cursing him, shouting about how bad he was going to get his ass kicked. Beck ignored them, but Willie Reese listened to his crew and believed them. Beck just kept running, but not as fast now. He slowed down so Reese wouldn’t give up. Or do something really stupid like pull out a gun and shoot at him.

But Reese surprised him and closed the gap more quickly than Beck expected.

Shit, Beck thought. He sprinted toward a beat-up Volvo station wagon parked to his right, managed to get a foot on the front bumper, and vaulted up onto the hood just as Reese came close enough to lunge at him, grabbing for his foot. Beck pulled his foot away and kept right on going, jumping onto the roof of the Volvo.

Reese splayed across the hood, having just missed catching the bottom of Beck’s jeans. Beck kept going, jumped off the car, landed on the street, slipping a bit on the slick cobblestones.

By the time Reese picked himself off the hood, Beck had circled wide around him and was running back toward the bar, about five yards out in front of Reese, but this time at half-speed, conserving his wind, staying just far enough in front to taunt Reese into catching up to him.

Beck also slowed down because Reese’s gang had come into the street to block his path. They figured they’d keep him trapped, so their man could get to him.

Reese saw it, too. Beck had nowhere to go. He slowed down, slipping a little on the uneven street, trying to get his footing and catch his breath. He’d been raging, burning energy, but now he had this guy. Time to get it together.

Behind Beck, Reese’s gang hooted and yelled for blood. In front of him, the big man closed on him slowly.

And then, before any of them realized how it happened, everything changed.

Just as Reese was about to reach Beck, he stopped backpedalling and lunged forward, slapping aside Reese’s huge outstretched arm with his left hand, and stabbing two stiff fingers into Reese’s left eye. The pain and force of the hit stopped Reese so suddenly that his feet nearly went out from under him.

Back near the bar, Demarco Jones appeared out of nowhere. He stood behind the four gangbangers who were watching their man closing in on Beck. Demarco held a Benelli M3 shotgun firmly pressed into his shoulder, aimed right at the group of four standing near the beat-up van.

At the same time, Emmanuel Guzman, dressed in his usual dark-blue work clothes and stained apron, emerged from between two buildings north of the van aiming a second shotgun at the group. It was a beautiful old Winchester 12 gauge, its dark grain walnut stock gleaming in the bright winter sun.

At first, neither Demarco nor Manny said a word. The chilling chu-chunks of the shotguns being pumped stopped all the bravado and yelling. The shotguns were one thing. The men holding them were the main thing.

Demarco said, “Hands.”

All four of them, heads swiveling back and forth at the men in front and behind them, raised their hands.

Guzman continued to advance until he had the long barrel of his Winchester pressed into the forehead of the nearest gangbanger.

Manny Guzman was shorter, stockier than the young black man, but implacable. He just kept walking forward, pressing the muzzle of the Winchester into the soft skin of the young man’s forehead, pushing him toward the van.

“Leave. Now. Or I kill you.”

All four of them tumbled and pushed their way into the battered van, three of them falling through the sliding side door and one jumping into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and accelerated down the street, swerving and sliding on the slick cobblestones.

Now that the four behind him were taken care of, Beck circled to Reese’s left, his blind side. Reese had his left hand clamped over his suddenly throbbing blind left eye, giving Beck an opening to slide forward and twist a fast, hard right into the left side of Reese’s nose. The septum broke with a sharp crack.

One moment Reese was thinking about taking apart James Beck. The next he was half blind with a screamingly painful broken nose.

Beck stepped back, figuring that should do it. But he was wrong. Taking out an eye and breaking a nose weren’t disabling blows, just horribly painful. And pain wasn’t going to stop Willie Reese.

He lashed a roundhouse left at Beck, more to knock him away than to knock him out. Beck leaned back from the fist, but not far enough. The fist only grazed the right side of his head, but the power and speed behind the wild punch still were enough to make everything go black for a moment.

Beck didn’t hesitate. He leaned right back in toward Reese and fired a fast right fist around the hand protecting Reese’s left eye, landing a solid blow to Reese’s left temple. Hitting Reese’s big head with such force nearly broke two of Beck’s knuckles. It was a knockout punch, but it only staggered Reese. Beck followed it with a left elbow to the face, a right to the side of the neck, and a left aimed at Reese’s throat.

Reese somehow slap-blocked the last punch and lunged forward quickly enough to grab Beck’s coat, rear back, and snap a vicious head butt at Beck’s face.

Beck barely jerked out of the way in time. Reese’s huge forehead banged into Beck’s left collar bone. It felt like being hit with a bowling ball.

Reese tried to throw Beck to the ground, but Beck grabbed Reese’s massive forearms, widened his stance, twisted back against Reese, and levered his own head butt directly into Reese’s already broken nose.

This time the pain was too intense even for Willie Reese.

Beck heard him gasp and growl in agony. Reese couldn’t move, but he held onto Beck’s coat, so Beck pounded six hard fast lefts and rights into Reese’s liver, floating ribs, and sternum, twisting, aiming, grunting with exertion as he landed each blow. Reese could do nothing but hang on to Beck, who couldn’t believe that Reese was still standing.

Finally, Reese hurled Beck away from him. Beck’s feet left the ground and he went down hard onto his back. Reese tried to step toward Beck so he could kick him or stomp him, but his legs wobbled under him as he staggered forward.

Beck rolled sideways and scrambled to his feet, quickly backing away from Reese, who managed to stay on his feet, blood streaming from his nose, left eye beginning to swell, huffing and puffing for air, two cracked ribs splinting pain with every breath.

They both knew it wasn’t over. Beck would have to step in to finish Reese off. And if Reese managed to get his hands on Beck, he might find a way to grab Beck’s throat so he could crush his windpipe. Or smash Beck’s head into the ground. Or manage one hard blow that would knock Beck out.

Beck shook out his arms, staying back, breathing deeply. Getting ready.

He said to Reese, “You that hard up for my business?”

Reese spat out a mouthful of blood and turned his head sideways to look at Beck out of his good eye.

“Ain’t about that anymore.”

“What’s it about?” asked Beck.

“You and me,” said Reese.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to have anything to do with you, man. You’re a fucking handful.”

Reese looked over at Demarco and Manny, watching, cradling the shotguns.

“Maybe you should have your boys shoot me. You don’t want me comin’ back for you.”

“Maybe. But there is an alternative.”

“What’s that?”

“You working for me, like you said.”

“What?”

As soon as he heard that answer from Reese, Beck knew he wasn’t a complete maniac. And that meant there might be a way out of this without one of them dying.

Beck continued to keep his distance and said, “Hey, like you said, I hired Shorty and his little gang to give me the heads-up on anything coming this way through the projects, but he didn’t do it, did he? He didn’t have the balls to tell me you were coming.”

“Nah, he didn’t.”

“So what do you want more? A job or a chance to keep beating on me? Which I guarantee you isn’t going to work anyway, ’cuz they will shoot you down if it gets out of hand.”

Reese looked at Demarco and Manny with their shotguns. He spit out more blood.

Beck said, “Fuck it. Your guys are gone. Tell them you beat a job out of me. I don’t give a shit. Think it over. It’s too damn cold to stand out here discussing it.”

Beck turned his back on Willie Reese and headed toward his bar. He told Demarco and Manny, “Don’t shoot him if he wants to come in.”

2

Beck walked behind the bar, flipped open the lid on the ice maker, and shoved both hands into the pile of frozen cubes.

Manny headed for the bar kitchen. Demarco took a seat at the table farthest from the front door. He placed the Benelli on top of the table and sat facing the door.

About the time Beck could no longer feel his hands, the front door opened and Willie Reese leaned into the bar. Demarco didn’t pick up his shotgun, so Reese stepped inside.

From behind the bar Beck said, “So?”

Reese stood near the front door looking at Beck. His left eye was killing him. His nose continued to bleed. His muscle T-shirt was more red than white. The bruises on his ribs and body thrummed with pain.

He said, “You asked me do I want the job.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Well, you fucking failed the first part of the interview.” Beck motioned with his head toward a table near the door, one of three set up against the wall opposite the bar. “Have a seat, and let’s see how you do on the second part. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Reese sat two tables away from Demarco, whose right hand now rested on the Benelli’s trigger guard. Demarco stared back at Reese without expression. Beck dug out his cell phone and made a call as he headed back toward the bar kitchen.

*   *   *

Beck found Manny at his two-chair wooden table in the old first-floor kitchen where Manny spent much of his time. The shotgun was back in its rack, but Manny’s white kitchen apron didn’t cover the bulge of the Charter Arms Bulldog revolver that he always carried in his right front pants pocket. It was a small inexpensive gun, but at .44 caliber it had tremendous stopping power. With only a four-inch barrel it was the kind of gun that had to be used up close, which was fine with Guzman.

Manny sat with a cup of the same coffee Beck had been drinking, except Manny brewed his version with twice as many grounds. This morning, however, Manny also sipped from a shot of dark, one-hundred-proof rum. Manny took a sip of the sweet liquor, followed by the coffee. He sat motionless, the air around him pulsing with murderous rage.

“Not a good way to start the day,” said Beck as he took the seat opposite Manny.

Manny made a face. “I was ready to kill somebody even before those coños showed up. That punk don’t know how close he came to losing the top of his head.”

“Actually, I have a feeling he does know.”

“Yeah, well, I can see not shooting ’em, but they come up on us like that and don’t even get a beating? I don’t know.”

“One of ’em did. The others … maybe their time will come.”

“I don’t like that they thought they could do that. Like they don’t know who we are.”

Beck answered, “They do now.”

Manny replied with a half grunt.

They both sat quietly for a few more moments. Manny took another sip of his rum and chased it with the strong coffee. Then a deep breath. And a long exhale.

Beck waited for more of the tension to ebb out of Manny. He shifted in the hard wooden chair. He asked, “Those guys have anything to do with your…?”

“No. I don’t know what the fuck any of that was about.”

“About being stupid, I guess.”

Manny moved his head a fraction, not saying anything. And then, “Stupid is a good way to get killed.”

Beck nodded. “Yeah. Well, I’ll look into it. So what about the thing D told me? What should I know about it?” Beck leaned forward. “Is it something to do with us?”

“No. It’s my thing. It’s family. My family.”

This surprised Beck. After so many years in the gangs and in prison, as far as he knew, Manny Guzman’s family had either died or abandoned him long ago. He wondered if there was an ex-wife or a child. Beck knew a great deal about Manny, but he hadn’t heard much about any of his family members.

“I see,” said Beck.

Manny swallowed, not coffee or rum, just moving his mouth and swallowing as a way to relieve tension. Beck waited for the rest, not pushing it. Manny sat shrouded in stoic silence.

It reminded Beck of when he’d first met him at Dannemora Prison in upstate New York. Manny’s reputation had preceded him, but even if Beck had never heard anything about him, one look at Manny Guzman sitting in the yard at Dannemora, surrounded by his clique, was all Beck needed to know that this was a dangerous man. The kind of man they’d built Dannemora to house.

Located just south of the Canadian border, Dannemora was a cold, desolate place so isolated and remote that even if someone managed to escape, it wouldn’t do them much good. There was literally no place to go outside the walls of the prison. The main street of Clinton ran right alongside the prison’s main wall, but didn’t lead anywhere. Either side of the wall, you were still hundreds of cold, bitter miles from anywhere.

Even though Dannemora had been designed to isolate and demoralize hard men, Beck knew that for some men, men like Manny Guzman, the place actually made doing time easier.

For them, the best way to do time was to never think about the outside. If you thought about the outside, it could drive you into despair. You did your time on the inside. In the here and now. Moment to moment, according to a routine. Inside. The outside couldn’t exist in the mind of a long-term convict. And Dannemora was perfect for that. Inside that prison, you were nowhere but prison. Which made Beck even more surprised to hear about this family member Manny had stayed connected to.

For Manny there were three categories of people: those who were with him, against him, and undetermined, which corresponded to alive, dead, and irrelevant.

But now, in the with-him category, was a family member Beck didn’t know anything about.

“There’s only one,” said Manny.

“Uh, huh,” said Beck.

Again, he waited for more information, watching Manny, feeling his mood. Waiting for the thick-bodied, dark-skinned man with dense graying hair and mustache to say more.

In the quiet kitchen, just the two of them, Beck didn’t press. He folded his arms, sat back in the chair, and took notice of the wear and tear and isolation of Manny’s OG life. The scar embedded in his right eyebrow, deep crow’s feet around his dark eyes, the blue ink of prison tattoos peeking out from his white shirt at neck and wrists. But mostly Beck looked at Manny’s eyes for the presence of this new person. He couldn’t see a thing.

Beck sniffed. Cleared his throat. Twisted around on the hard wooden chair. Then just came out with it. “Okay, Manny, who is it? What’s going on?”

Instead of answering Beck, Manny asked, “You okay? That guy hurt you?”

“Little bit here and there.” Beck flexed his fingers. “I was lucky. My hands are going to hurt. Guy’s head is like concrete. His skull must be five-inches thick.”

“You gotta hit a guy like that with a bat, not your hands.”

“I’ll remember next time.”

Manny nodded and finally answered Beck’s question.

“I got a cousin. She’s a lot younger than me. My grandparents had a lot of kids. This is on my mother’s side. Don’t know shit about my father’s side. So Olivia, that’s her name, she’s the daughter of my mother’s youngest sister. My aunt Ruth. Her name is Olivia Sanchez.”

“Okay. A cousin.”

“She’s a civilian. Good lady.” Manny waived a hand dismissively. “All the rest, long gone. I don’t blame them. But this Olivia kid, she didn’t go that way. She stuck by me. More like a little sister than a cousin. And believe me, I didn’t give her any reason to. Back in the day, I didn’t give a fuck about anybody. Family, friends, nobody. You know how that works.”

Beck nodded.

“But this Olivia, I don’t know, no matter what anybody told her, she didn’t give up the connection.”

Manny paused. Beck watched him thinking about it, remembering this part of his past.

“Olivia, you know, in the midst of all the shit around my family, she kept herself together. Stayed in school. Got regular jobs. As soon as she was like, seventeen, eighteen, she’d come to see me. And she wrote me. The whole time I was in that last bit, she wrote me. Visited me twice a year. Christmas and my birthday. Even during those three years I was in Dannemora.”

“That’s a long trip.”

“Over three hundred miles she’d come. Christmastime and my birthday.”

“From the city?”

“Yeah. I don’t even know how many hours it took. She borrowed a car or something. I don’t know. December and August.”

Manny leaned forward and sipped his rum and coffee, grimacing. “Truth? I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to see her. You know, getting those connections to the outside, that’s not so good for you.”

Beck nodded.

Manny cocked his head, “But what was I gonna do? She was a kid. She even made sure to send me ten bucks every once in a while for canteen. Can you imagine that? A kid like that giving me money.”

Beck smiled at the notion that Manny Guzman, who ran more drugs and gambling in Dannemora than almost anybody, would need an occasional ten bucks from a seventeen-year-old-girl.

“You must love her.”

Manny blinked. “I do.”

Beck nodded, feeling Manny’s emotion. He could see where this was going. This was going someplace that wouldn’t fit. Someplace that might not be easy to deal with.

“She worked in a financial place. A brokerage or something. I don’t know what she did there, you know. But with the executives. In charge of something important. Helping run things. Like that. She worked hard. Smart. Good-looking woman.”

“Okay.”

“So, some asshole up there, he likes throwing his weight around. He and Olivia, they don’t get along.”

“Who? What do you know about him?”

“I don’t know much but a name. Alan Crane. I don’t know what Wall Street fucks do. I don’t know what this guy does. But he’s high up in the company. From Olivia, I get that he was in charge of a bunch of money, and he was cutting corners or doing some risky shit.”

“And?”

“James, this isn’t a little grab-ass or something. This guy had a beef with Olivia.”

“Yeah. Okay. I understand. So what happened?”

Manny held up his left hand, his shirt cuff pulled back enough to reveal a bit of the rough prison tattoos on his forearm. He looked Beck in the eye and folded his first two fingers down to his thumb, leaving his little finger and ring finger extended. Beck watched as the lethal anger rose in him.

“So this fucking coward comes in yelling shit at her, and pounds his fist down on her hand.” Manny pointed to the little finger and ring finger of his left hand. “He breaks two of her fingers.”

Beck squinted, feeling the waves of anger coming off Manny.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“He breaks her fingers?”

“Yeah. And threatens her, tells her she’s fired.”

“Threatens her how?”

“She won’t say exactly.”

“Where’d this happen?”

“In her office. Late. She works late. Around seven.”

“And what’s she do, this guy breaks her hand?”

“She gets the fuck out. Goes to a hospital. Calls the cops while she’s sitting in the emergency room. Of course, by the time she gets her fingers fixed, they still don’t show, so the next day she goes to the precinct near where she works. Files a complaint. Big fucking deal. Then, she goes to … what do you call it, the personnel people in her office?”

“Human Resources.”

“Yeah. Tells those fucks what happened. Tells her boss what happened.”

Beck saw it now. He started filling in the rest so Manny wouldn’t have to go through a recitation that would rile him up even more.

“Okay, let me guess. The guy denies he did anything. Says she’s crazy. Says she’s lying. Out to get him. Says he has no idea how she broke her fingers. Cops say they have no evidence. He says, she says. No witnesses. She left the premises where it happened, blah, blah, blah.”