22
Beck parted the heavy curtain just enough to see outside.
He stepped back and told Ciro, “Take it easy, I got this.”
Willie Reese stood across the street next to a plate glass installer’s truck.
Beck parted the curtains and cranked open his casement window.
“Quiet down, Willie. I’m coming. Don’t move.”
*
Willie Reese turned to the man behind the wheel of the van. “Don’t move.”
Beck went downstairs. Manny and Olivia were in the downstairs kitchen. Demarco stood at his usual spot behind the bar. Beck pulled open the front door and motioned Reese inside.
“You got something against knocking?”
“Not on this fuckin’ door. Too many damn shotguns on the other side.”
Reese stepped into the bar and stood near the cracked front window. He looked even more frightening than before. His nose was grotesquely swollen, splinted with adhesive tape across his forehead and cheekbones. Both nostrils were filled with gauze. There was an eye patch that Reese had flipped up for the moment, showing the white of his left eye still filled with blood. He wore his usual bad guy clothes, huge arms folded across his chest.
“You’re on the case,” said Beck. “That’s good.”
“Yeah, so look here, this guy talkin’ mad money for this shit. For a fucking window. But he’s sayin’ I should ask you if you got insurance.”
“I do.”
“I didn’t know nuthin’ about that.”
Reese had anticipated some kind of reproach, but instead Beck responded, “No reason you should know.”
“Yeah, okay. So, how’s that work? I mean, can I use it?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. You got this far. The rest is easy.”
Beck walked behind the bar and opened a drawer under the old National Cash Register that dominated the back shelf. He pulled out a folder and shuffled through papers until he found the insurance policy issued to the real estate partnership that owned the property. He handed the policy to Reese.
“Take this out to the window man. Have him take the information he needs. It’s on the front page there. Then gently persuade him to file the claim, or have his office do it so you don’t have to bother with it, and then suggest that he go ahead and replace the window, or wait here for the authorization from his office if he has to, and then replace it. There’s a two-hundred-fifty-dollar deductible. That’s out of your pocket.”
“What’s a deductible?”
Beck liked the fact that Reese wasn’t embarrassed to ask about something he didn’t know.
“It’s the part the insurance doesn’t pay. They pay everything after two-fifty.”
“Well, he’s sayin’ it’s a lot more than two-fifty.
“Thus the need for insurance.”
Reese nodded, while he looked at the form. “Yeah, but hold on. How much you payin’ for the insurance?”
Beck turned to Reese, pleased by the question. “That’s the next logical question. But for someone like me, I’m ahead. Stay with your guy until the job is done.”
“Okay.”
“Part of that is so you get it done today and don’t have to bother with it, and part is because I want you around.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means you’re hired.”
Beck bent back down and pulled open another cabinet under the cash register. He opened a safe built into the wall. He pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills and counted out ten of them, stood up and turned to Reese.
“Here’s a thousand. Normally, that would be pocket money for a month to keep an eye on things. You hit it lucky. That’s money for a week, not a month. We might have trouble coming our way. I want you and your boys to be on the lookout. All eyes open.”
As Beck talked, he wrote down cell phone numbers on a bar napkin.
“You see anybody coming through the projects headed this way, you or your guys start calling those three numbers until you get someone. If you get voice mail, hang up and call all three numbers again. If you get nobody, double back and leave messages. You don’t stop anybody; you don’t jump in unless we talk that over. Just call and give us a heads-up. After this week, the fee goes back to normal.”
“What’s normal?”
“Like I said before, a thousand a month. How’s your nose feel?”
“Like shit. Can’t breathe through all this packing.”
“Yeah, you’re going to be a mouth breather for a week or so. But make sure you leave it in. That gauze in there holds the shape of what’s healing around it. You take it out, it’ll collapse. Keep it in and you’ll be breathing better than you have in years once it all heals.”
“So you did me a big favor busting it up.”
“Funny how it works out that way sometimes.” Beck came out from behind the bar, pulling out his cell phone again. “So I’ll leave you to get the window done. Who’s going to paint the bottom?”
“Probably me.”
Beck headed back toward the kitchen. “Flat black. Same height. Straight line. Call me when you get your crew organized.”
Reese called out to stop Beck. “Hey, what we lookin’ for?”
Beck stopped and turned back.
“White guys. Eastern Europeans. Military types. You know, like short hair. In shape. Dressed in clothes that won’t slow them down. I don’t know what they’d be driving. It may be other types, I don’t know. But people who don’t look like they belong in the neighborhood. Probably moving in pairs. Maybe three at a time. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
Beck continued to the back of the bar, listening for his call to go through.
Brandon Wright answered without any preamble, “I see you’re still alive.”
“So far. Thanks. I think of you every time I take a step.”
“Leave those stitches alone.”
“I will. I need another favor.”