What the hell was he doing here? Guarding the woman, obviously. Even so, Gregor couldn’t believe Beck had wiped out three men he couldn’t have known were coming. How does this fucking guy keep doing this?
He had lost another man. He assumed Kolenka’s two men were also lost.
Markov would be furious. Kolenka? Who knows? This might send the old Vory over the edge. Good, thought Gregor. Kolenka has plenty of men. Maybe this will persuade him to send them against Beck.
Stepanovich vowed never to go after Beck, or anybody connected to him, without enough men to crush him. Next time, there would be no chance for Beck to fight him off. Stepanovich vowed to literally shoot Beck into unrecognizable pieces.
No one tried to stop the tall, raging Bosnian from leaving. He walked straight out the door, hailed a cab, and was gone before anybody could identify him as the man who had shot off a gun in the lobby of the Four Seasons.
*
They’d all piled into a cab on Second Avenue. Nydia directed the driver to her neighborhood up in East Harlem. Beck thanked Nydia again, dropped her in front of her apartment building, and then gave the driver directions for the long ride to Red Hook.
He sat on the right side of the cab’s backseat. Olivia to the left. Beck didn’t much want to talk, but he had to know how they had found her. Manny wouldn’t be stupid enough to check her in under her real name. And Beck was sure he had rented the room for cash.
“You checked into the hotel with Manny, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then how did they know your name?”
Olivia paused. For the first time Beck heard her curse. “That fucking idiot, Raymond.”
“Raymond? Who’s Raymond?”
“The manager.” Olivia turned to Beck. “Look, I know him. He comes on to me every time he sees me. Offers me discounts at the spa. Preferred rates at the hotel. I have lunch in their lobby café a lot. He saw me check in.”
“So you asked him for the preferred rate?”
“No. No. I specifically told him that”—Olivia made a quotation mark in the air—“I wasn’t supposed to be there. That I was checking in under a different name.”
“What name?”
“I told them to put the room under the name Ellen Grey.”
“Ellen Grey?”
“I was thinking of Earl Grey. The tea. So I changed it to Ellen.”
Beck asked just to make the point. “Do you have a credit card under the name of Ellen Grey?”
“No.”
“He has your card on file?”
“I don’t know. I’ve used it enough times in there.”
“For hotel rooms or the restaurants?”
“Both. I’ve stayed there a couple of weekends. And I’ve used my rate for friends. What does it matter? Manny paid cash. I told them I’d pay cash for incidentals. Told them I wanted privacy.”
“He probably used your card to credit you back the difference, trying to score points with you when you saw the nice surprise on your next statement. That automatically checked you in under your real name. Using a phony name for people calling around trying to find somebody doesn’t change the hotel billing system.”
“Christ, I can’t believe it. I could kill that idiot.”
“I should have made you go to a hotel where nobody knew you. It’s my fault.”
“No. It’s mine. But how did they find me?”
“Obviously Markov has connections to people who can access credit card records. And phone records and e-mails and blah, blah, fucking blah.”
Beck shook his head in disgust and slumped down in his seat, doing his usual inventory of where it hurt. His left elbow was going to be sore. There’d be the usual aches and strains in the aftermath of yet another fight. At least he hadn’t hit anything with his hands. Just the butt of his gun.
When they arrived at the safety of the Red Hook building, Beck let Manny find a room for Olivia on the third floor and settle her down. He went straight to his room, showered off the sweat and blood from his two fights, took four Ibuprofen, and collapsed into bed.
*
Markov had continued to work and wait for Gregor’s call to verify they had the woman. It was nearly two-thirty when his phone’s ringtone pierced the quiet of his room at the Waldorf. Too long. Markov knew Gregor had failed, but he waited to hear the words, “They got away,” and then he cut off the call without saying one word in response.
He muttered a stream of Russian curses. And then his phone rang again. He was about to throw it against the wall rather than speak to Gregor, but the caller ID showed it was Ivan Kolenka. Kolenka sounded very calm, which made it all the worse. He told Markov, “We are going to solve this Beck problem now. Come see me.”
Markov checked his watch. Two thirty-seven, Wednesday morning.
“When?” he asked.
“Two hours. The place near the boardwalk where we met last time,” said Kolenka. “I want to know exactly how many reliable men you can put into this. Exactly.”
Kolenka broke off the call.
Markov called Gregor back and told him to come to the lobby of the Waldorf in one hour and wait for him.
Sixty minutes later, after showering, shaving, and changing into his last set of clean clothes, Markov walked out of his room, towels on the floor, toilet unflushed, his clothing bag over his shoulder, heading for the lobby.
44
Beck slept a dreamless sleep for just over five hours before his cell phone woke him.
He recognized Ricky Bolo’s voice. Ricky always spoke in a low voice, out of the side of his mouth. He could have been in a secure facility in a sound-proof office with an encrypted scrambled phone, and he would still talk as if someone were standing right behind him.
“You up?”
“I am now.”
“Your boy just walked out of his place. Front door. Got into a Town Car driven by a big guy.”
“Milstein?”
“Yeah, you told us to look out for him.”
“What time is it?”
“Little before seven.”
“Okay,” said Beck, sitting up. The pain immediately sent him back down on his bed. “Okay, good. But right now I’m more interested in his driver. I expect them to go into that building on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Lex. The one with that plaza outside.”
“You want I should go in and see where he ends up?”
“No. I already know. Where’s Jonas?”