“Christ, it’s a shitty walk over here. Fucking cold enough to freeze dog shit out there. Feels like snow any minute. Come on, I gotta get back.”
Walter ignored Ronson’s lack of greeting. He wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries anyhow. He tapped a fold of five hundred dollars in twenty dollar bills against Ronson’s knee under the table.
Ronson slid out of the booth as soon as he had the money in his hand. Maybe he really did need to get back to his desk at the RTCC. Or maybe he had done a lousy job and wanted to get out of there before Walter had time to check what he’d brought and refuse to pay him.
Ronson hadn’t bothered to collate the pages he’d printed out. It took Pearce nearly an hour to sort through everything. When he was satisfied he had something worthwhile, he called Milstein.
*
Milstein had kept Walter on hold until he had settled in his chair out in the living room.
“Okay,” he said.
“Right,” answered Walter. He picked up the phone, took it off speaker, and spoke directly.
“So I got the information we want. It’s pretty much what I expected. Maybe a bit worse.”
“What do you mean, worse?”
“These are bad people, Mr. Milstein. The one with the neck tattoo is named Ciro Baldassare. He has a long record. Two incarcerations. He’s connected to organized crime. Most of the names I see on his sheets are based in Staten Island. Among other things he’s a bone breaker. His last bit was for assault in connection with collecting money. Don’t know what kind of debt it was, gambling or loan sharking, but whatever it was wasn’t pretty. He broke up two guys pretty bad. Sentence was three to eight. Would have been worse if it hadn’t been two against one.”
Milstein interrupted him. “Okay. Okay.” He didn’t want to hear too many details. He already had enough trouble sleeping. “Anything on the other two?”
“Nothing on the black fellow who passed us. I never got a good enough look at him to describe him. But I got lucky on the one who confronted you at work and took you off in the park. About a year ago, Baldassare got pinched driving a car he didn’t own. That same guy was with him, and went through the arrest process with Baldassare. Nothing came of the arrest, but I have the report. The man with Baldassare then is the same one we saw. His name is James Beck. Very interesting story.”
“Meaning?”
“First of all, he’s a cop killer.”
A chill went through Milstein that had nothing to do with his cold living room.
“What? A cop killer walking the streets; how’s that happen?”
“It’s not quite what it sounds like. About ten years ago, Beck got into a fight in a bar in downtown Brooklyn. I know the place. Used to be a lot of cops went in there. It’s close to the courts and detention complex. It’s the usual mess with cops and booze sometimes. Cop actually got shot in there long time ago, and that pretty much put the place out of bounds for years.”
“Who shot him? This guy?”
“No, no. It was another cop who shot him. I don’t remember the details, but somebody’s gun went off. Hit a guy in the leg. Drunken accident. Just telling you what kind of place it was. Anyhow, apparently this fellow Beck got into a beef and punched out a cop. Cop hit the floor. Busted his skull in three places. Died three days later.”
“Died?”
“Yep. One punch. Dead.”
“Must have been some punch.”
“A hard punch, a harder floor. It can happen if you land wrong. So Beck gets charged with murder. Gets convicted of first-degree manslaughter. Judge sentences him ten to twenty-five.
“That’s hard time. Maximum-security prisons. But Beck appeals. Gets a new lawyer. There’s a lot of background on this, bottom line the lawyer appeals based on procedural errors. Cited all kinds of shit, but mainly he found out the prosecutors suppressed a witness. Another cop in the bar who apparently was willing to verify Beck’s claim that the other guy started it.
“Takes eight years, but Beck finally gets out. Sues for unlawful incarceration and so on. Settles with the City and State for a little over two million bucks. After that it gets shady. Not much information to be found.”
Milstein closed his eyes, seeing what he was up against. “Anything else?”
Walter continued. “My guess is Mister Beck made some nasty friends during those eight years in prison, including Ciro Baldassare. It must have been a really tough stretch. You go into prison labeled a cop killer, life is not going to be easy. On the other hand, he certainly would have had some status with other prisoners. Kind of a good-news, bad-news thing.”
“Okay, Walter. Good work. What are your conclusions?”
Walter Pearce paused before he spoke, gathering his thoughts. He wanted to tell Milstein to get as far away from these people as fast as he could, but he knew it was too late for that.
“Like I said before, Mr. Milstein, these fellows are not your usual bad guys. They’re more sophisticated. Certainly Beck is. He’s clearly got a lot of enemies in law enforcement after what he pulled off, but he obviously has resources on the other side. I need to find out a hell of a lot more about him. Where’d he come from? What he was doing before he went to prison. Anything I can get on his prison record. But frankly, I don’t know that it will make much of a difference.”
Walter paused and then continued. “There are a lot of questions to answer, Mr. Milstein. What’s this man’s connection to Olivia Sanchez? How does she know Beck? Why did she send him after you? What exactly does she want? And if she gets it, does he go away? Or is it just the beginning of a long extortion that goes on and on until he gets everything he can? For sure, you don’t want to go up against this man until you know more about who he has behind him.
“I’m not saying these guys aren’t vulnerable. They have prison records. We could get this Baldassare fellow arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. He pulled a gun on me for chrissake. But then what? How many more are behind him?