“Who’s here?” asked Beck.
Demarco paused at the front door. “Manny and the lady, Ciro and Alex. All upstairs.”
“Okay.”
“And the doctor called. Said he’d be here soon. Said to clean out anything that’s bleeding before he gets here.”
“Right.”
Beck’s left leg hurt with every step up the back stairs.
He didn’t bother to stop on the second floor. He kept going to the third floor, the drying blood on his left shoe sticking to the wooden stairs with every other step. He didn’t stop in his bedroom for clean clothes. He went right into the bathroom to strip off everything, get in the shower, and go to work on himself.
Beck’s shower had a tiled ledge big enough to sit on. He sat for ten minutes, letting the hot water wash over him and his knife wound and bruises. He’d taken 800 mgs. of ibuprofen and much of the pain and stiffness had begun to ebb.
The first five minutes, he’d just let the shower wash off all the blood. Then he’d turned his left thigh into the spray, letting the water stream into the wound, gritting against the pain.
He’d brought a squeeze bottle of Betadine scrub into the shower. He turned away from the water and covered the wound with the sterilizing scrub, then worked it into the torn skin and muscle. After a minute, he let the shower rinse it away. He did this three times. Then he turned away from the shower water again, picked up another bottle and poured hydrogen peroxide into the wound, watching the liquid bubble and foam.
Beck knew there was no way he could tend to this wound.
By the time he stepped out of the shower, Brandon Wright sat waiting for him in Beck’s bedroom. Without a word, he stood up when Beck entered, waited for him to put on fresh shorts and a T-shirt, then led Beck to the large room at the west end of the third floor that served as Beck’s workout studio.
Beck lay down on a massage table in a corner of the large room. Wright said nothing. He just started working. Beck closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of surgical supplies being torn open. A needle being threaded. The quiet hiss of Lidocaine being sprayed on his wound.
He felt the coolness of the numbing spray. He ignored the insistent pricks and pushes and pulls as the doctor began stitching. Beck figured the wound would need at least thirty stitches to close it.
Wright continued to work without comment. Beck endured the silent reproach.
For a moment, Beck thought about saying something to his doctor friend. But instead he continued to think about what he was going to do once he was stitched up.
Wright worked quickly, deftly, but the procedure took nearly twenty minutes. As he finished up bandaging the wound, he finally broke the silence. “Do you know why I do this for you, James?”
“Because you’re a good man.”
“No, because you’re a man who helps people nobody else will.”
Beck didn’t respond.
“How many men have you and Walter Ferguson and this network of yours helped once they are out of prison?”
Beck didn’t answer.
Wright slipped off his latex gloves, dropped them on the floor with the used surgical supplies, and packed his bag. He grimaced a bit in frustration. Started to leave. Stopped. Turned to Beck and said, “Would telling you to be careful have any effect?”
Again, Beck didn’t answer.
20
Gregor Stepanovich stood waiting for the elevator to return to Crane’s floor holding up the bleeding, dying Igor, while Markov held the other man. And waited. And waited.
Finally, he had to lay Igor onto the floor and walk down six flights of stairs to find out what was wrong with the elevator.
When he saw the knit cap Beck had wedged into the elevator door, Stepanovich cursed and pulled it out.
On the ride back up to Crane’s apartment, Stepanovich held the knit cap in his hand and pictured punching Beck’s face again and again and again until bones broke under the skin and teeth cracked, until skin split and blood flowed.
He kept control of his rage until he and Markov got their wounded men into the car and sent them off, knowing he would most likely never see them again.
As he walked back to Crane’s building, Stepanovich vowed to himself that he was going to kill that bastard who had done this to him and his men. Slowly, if he could. Quickly, if he had to. But he would find out who he was and kill him. That was it. Markov’s orders no longer mattered.
When they came out of the elevator, the rank metallic odor of putrefying blood and acrid gun smoke filled Crane’s loft. The stench did nothing to improve their moods.
Stepanovich looked over at Crane who sat on his couch, his shirt torn from removing the duct tape, massaging his left shoulder, staring at his ruined fifteen-thousand-dollar dining table.
Markov walked to the couch, pulled out his cell phone, and began dialing.
When Markov finished the call, Gregor asked him, “Tell me, Leo, who was that fucking balija?”
“Criminal.” Markov answered. He turned to Crane. “Tell us. What do you know about that son of a bitch?”
“Me? Absolutely nothing. No idea. Ask fucking Olivia Sanchez. Or Milstein. Milstein told him to come here, right? Go ask him.”
Markov held up his cell phone. “I already ask him. He tells me he finds out this morning that he’s a bad guy. Convict. His name is James Beck. He tried to extort money from Milstein for the bitch. I told Milstein to send him up here. Milstein told him he should talk to you. What do you think he does to you, we’re not here?”
Crane looked at Markov like he was speaking a foreign language. “How do I fucking know what he would have done? What did he do to Milstein? Obviously not much. Maybe if your attack dog hadn’t stuck a gun in his face he wouldn’t have done anything. How much do you want to blame me for, Leonard? All I’m trying to do is protect your investments. And make you money. I haven’t done a fucking thing wrong, and you come in here…”
Markov snarled, “Stop being ridiculous, Alan.”