Beck leaned forward again, sitting on the edge of his chair again, speaking low and fast and hard as he stared into her eyes.
“You know what you have to do. What we have to do.”
“What?”
“We do exactly what Markov fears we will. We steal his fucking money. The only way we survive this is to take control of that money. The only edge we have is to make him choose between us and his money.”
Olivia stared at Beck. “How?”
“We’ll figure out how.”
“No, how is that going to stop him? That will make Markov want to kill us all the more.”
“No. He kills us, he loses the money.”
“You think if we make some sort of deal he’ll agree? Walk away?”
“You leave that up to me. Right now, the thing you have to do is help us get control of Markov’s money. Can you do that? Can you help us?”
Olivia answered without hesitation. “Of course I’ll help you. I’ll tell you whatever I know. I’ll do anything I can.”
Back sat back in his chair, nodding. “Good.”
Suddenly, Olivia slid off the end of the bed and sat down on her folded legs in front of Beck. She wrapped her arms around his legs, holding on to him tightly. Beck felt her breasts pushing into his knees. Her face was nearly level with his. Less than six inches separating them.
He could smell that feminine soapy scent she had. He thought about her bare skin under her crisp white shirt. He stared into her gold-flecked brown eyes. They seemed luminous. Her closeness, her completely unchecked, uninhibited hold on him made the moment feel incredibly erotic.
“You have to help me. You have to, James. I won’t survive this without you.”
“I know.”
38
The clock next to Walter Pearce’s computer said 11:52 p.m. The caller ID on his ringing cell phone said MILSTEIN.
“It’s me. What have you been doing all day? Have you found Beck for God’s sake? I need results, Walter.”
Walter had no intention of telling Milstein what he had spent most of his day doing.
After he had dropped off the material on Beck and Baldassare, Walter had intended to catch up on his sleep. But he thought of a way he might find Beck, so he’d sat in Milstein’s lobby using information from Beck’s trial records to locate Beck’s law firm, which turned out to be a mostly one-man operation run by a lawyer named Phineas P. Dunleavy. He called the office, explained to the woman that answered that he had urgent correspondence for one of the firm’s clients, James Beck.
The woman told him all correspondence for Mr. Beck came through their office. Pearce told her he needed to get an envelope to James Beck by end of day.
The secretary responded that their messenger service could guarantee delivery by end of day for a $150 express-delivery fee, if Pearce could get the envelope to her by three o’clock.
That confirmed that Beck was somewhere in the Tri-state area. Pearce agreed to the price of delivery and said he would have the material in Dunleavy’s office in time. It was just after 2 p.m.
Pearce walked over to the Staples on Lexington and prepared an envelope. He picked one that was a distinctive color, green, and big enough to spot from a distance, ten-by-fourteen inches. He filled it with meaningless papers, drove to Dunleavy’s office in Lower Manhattan, and parked at a hydrant across the street.
He was up to Dunleavy’s office and back in his car before anyone had time to ticket him. He waited behind the wheel of his nondescript Toyota Camry. A half-hour later, a messenger entered Dunleavy’s office building. He came out carrying the green envelope.
The messenger jumped in a cab, and Walter fell in behind it, tailing as closely as he could. The stop-and-go traffic made it easy to follow the cab.
What Pearce didn’t know was that as the cab pulled away, Phineas P. Dunleavy stood at the window of his office watching Pearce’s Camry slip behind the messenger’s cab. Despite being just past sixty years old, Dunleavy had excellent eyesight. From the second floor he was able to see the license plate on the Toyota, noting it down on a yellow legal pad, wondering what fool was trying to find James Beck with one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Dunleavy frowned at the departing car. He had given the messenger an address in the opposite direction of Beck’s location, a restaurant on City Island up in the Bronx.
Dunleavy was a sturdy man with a head of thick white hair and a booming voice made pleasant by the hint of an Irish brogue. He was well practiced at playing the role of a friendly scoundrel who loved his Irish whiskey. But underneath the hale-fellow-well-met act, Dunleavy was a shrewd, tireless, implacable advocate for his clients.
Watching the clumsy ruse set against Beck made Dunleavy more than slightly angry. Angry because one of his clients appeared to be in some sort of danger. But even more angry because whoever was behind this thought Dunleavy was stupid.
The lawyer set about finding out who owned that car. He didn’t intend to take long doing it, or in letting Beck know what was afoot.
Nor did it take Walter Pearce much time to realize after following the messenger for nearly an hour that James Beck had no connection whatsoever with a City Island lobster restaurant shut down for the winter.
Beck had already made him feel incompetent and ashamed. Being sent on a wild-goose chase had only added to the sting. It made him more determined than ever to find James Beck. The minute he got home, Pearce immediately got on his computer and his phone searching for James Beck, only stopping when his phone rang.
Milstein’s rude insistence only increased Walter’s anger. There was no way Walter was going to tell him that he’d wasted most of a day on a wild-goose chase. Instead he answered, “I spent most of the day following a lead that went nowhere. I’ve been working nonstop. I’ll call you when I find something.”
“No. You pick me up at seven tomorrow, first thing in the morning. I want a full report on everything you’ve done. I have to make some decisions. Fast.”
Walter didn’t have time to protest or answer before Milstein hung up on him.