“This is going to cost us millions.”
“Maybe not, Freddy. I’ll get Markov his money. Hopefully, he’ll see how stupid it was demanding we close out his positions so quickly. Maybe I can talk him into putting everything back.”
“You really think so?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not giving up without a fight. You do whatever Markov wants. Keep him off my back while I squeeze everything out of his portfolio I can. We’ll see where it comes out. That’s all we can do.”
Milstein winced. “How bad is it going to be?”
“The portfolio could take a twenty, thirty percent hit.”
“Jeesuz.”
“Look, stop worrying about it. It’s my job. Just make Markov believe you’re doing everything you can for him.”
“Where’s Markov now?”
“How the fuck should I know? Probably gathering a million of his Bosnian ex-militia so he can go kill everybody in sight. Stay with it, Freddy. Markov is going to do what he wants to do. You do what you can to help him.”
Crane hung up.
28
Beck and Demarco arrived back in Red Hook just before 9 p.m. The bar downstairs was dark. They parked the Mercury Marauder across the street, stepped out of the car, and waited a few moments so they could be seen, just to make sure they wouldn’t be shot as they walked in the front door.
Beck wasn’t worried about Manny or Ciro, but he wasn’t taking any chances knowing that Ciro’s cousin Joey B had arrived to help guard the headquarters. Joey had a unique ability to act unencumbered by thought.
Beck and Demarco stood outside the front door, waiting. Beck took note of his new front window, the bottom third painted black exactly the way it had been. Ciro popped open the front door. Beck and Demarco entered quickly. Sure enough, Joey B had been planted in the bar downstairs with a shotgun. Beck greeted Joey B. He always got a kick out of trying to get his arms around Joey while receiving a bone-crushing hug from one of Joey’s huge arms.
Beck broke away from Joey B’s one-arm bear hug and asked Ciro, “Is Manny upstairs?”
“Yeah,” said Ciro. “Alex, too.”
“Okay, let’s go upstairs and talk. Joey, come with us and keep watch from the window up there. You can hear the plan.”
They quickly assembled around the coffee table. Joey stood at the second floor window looking out at the street, looking back at the others, walking from one end of the drapes to the other.
Just as Beck and the others sat down around the big coffee table, his cell buzzed.
“Yeah.”
Ricky Bolo’s voice asked him, “So we made it over to that Tribeca address you gave us.”
“Good. You have time to check the area?”
“Yeah. Did you figure the street in front of that address was gonna be filled with hard guys?”
“Shit.”
“Whatever you’re interested in on that block, somebody else is, too, Jimmy boy. There’s two gangster SUVs, one at each end of the block. Tinted windows, the whole nine yards, but we caught looks at the inside through the windshields.”
“What’s going on?”
“Each of the SUVs has a driver and a bad guy in the front seat and more hard cases in the backseats. But they’re still coming into the neighborhood. Every once in a while someone gets out of a taxi or shows up on the street and joins the party in one of the SUVs. The one near Washington Street should be about full. We saw four bozos get into that one. Only two so far on the one near Greenwich.”
Beck thought about what Ricky was telling him. Clearly, the Bosnians were gathering the troops. But why? To protect Crane? Seemed like an awful lot of men for that. What then? Had Kolenka located the Red Hook headquarters for Markov? Were they gathering to mount an attack?
He thought about how he should respond. It didn’t take long.
“Okay, Ricky, here’s what I want you to do.”
Beck gave instructions while the others watched and listened. The tension in the loft cranked up significantly. By the time Beck stopped talking, everyone knew what was next.
Beck hung up. Ciro asked, “So?”
Beck didn’t say anything. He sat, lost in thought. Finally after about twenty seconds, he spoke. “Okay. I don’t have time to fill you in on all the background. There’s someone on Hubert Street in Tribeca I needed to talk to tonight. And maybe some other shit. But now it looks like he’s either being guarded, or the guys watching him are gathering up enough strength to hit us tonight. Or both. I figure they didn’t know where we were, but now, or soon, they might get our location. So, we have to hit them first.
“We’ve got to move now. Manny, Ciro, you go with Demarco. I’ll take Alex and Joey in Olivia’s car. Everybody arm up. By the time we get to Tribeca, I’ll have it figured out what everyone should do. Alex, make sure you have your bag of tricks. You’re going to be doing a break-in.”
Everyone stood up and moved. No questions. No comments.
Beck was back on his cell phone before he hit the back stairs.
29
When they’d first arrived, Ricky and Jonas had driven around the Tribeca neighborhood in their nondescript van getting a general sense of who was on the streets. After Beck talked to them, the Bolo brothers circled the blocks from Hubert to Greenwich to Beach and back, on foot. They checked for any security cameras that might catch images of what was to happen.