“Hey, that’s the whole point here. This information on Beck will go a long way toward showing your client that you’re taking care of him. You tell me, is that worth twenty grand or not?”
Milstein needed Beck out of the picture. And he had to at least try to keep Markov from leaving Summit. Or give him a reason to come back.
“Fifteen thousand, plus the increase in salary and guaranteed contract extension, and we have a deal. But only on the condition I keep this client. If he goes, the firm will either close or cut staff drastically.”
Walter shook his head. “No deal. That leaves me taking all the risk.”
Milstein pushed. “Well I can’t take all the risk either, Walter.”
Walter paused. “Okay, here it is. I get the bump in salary. If the firm goes south, I get three months’ severance, plus the twenty-thousand signing bonus, and you cover two grand in expenses today, which you owe me anyhow.”
“Walter, come on, you have to do better than that.”
After a pause, Walter said, “Shit. Final offer, or I walk. I’m already tired of this. I’ll agree to the fifteen bonus, in my next salary check. You pay me the two grand in expenses today. And you start my salary increase today. Not at the end of the month.”
Milstein immediately did the math in his head. He wondered if Walter had actually figured it out. Starting the salary increase two weeks earlier just about met him halfway on the fifteen versus twenty thousand. Milstein made a note to watch Walter Pearce much more carefully.
He put his hand out. “Okay, we have a deal.”
They shook.
“I’ll get this set up for you as soon as I can. Be ready to meet this fellow at police headquarters.”
“And my check for the two grand? Unless you want to give me cash.”
Milstein frowned and pulled out a desk ledger checkbook from his top drawer and wrote Walter a check against the firm’s petty cash account.
48
Beck took the back stairs down to the ground floor, past where he knew Ciro Baldassare and Joey B were on watch, through Manny’s kitchen, stepping out into the downstairs bar shortly before 8 a.m.
Manny Guzman sat at a table near the front door with his 12-gauge Winchester Model 1300 shotgun. Demarco stood behind the bar in his usual spot. An assault shotgun had been placed within reach on top of the back bar cabinet. An AA-12 loaded with a 20-round drum box filled with 12-gauge shot.
“Morning,” said Beck. “I’m going downstairs.”
Without saying any more, Beck went through a door near the front of the bar and walked down a flight of wooden steps to the basement under his building. He turned on overhead bare lightbulbs as he walked through the musty space, making his way past the detritus that had accumulated over the decades: old radiators, shelving, boxes of junk, half-filled cans of old paint, rotting documents that nobody would ever bother to look at, old restaurant dishes and cookware. He went past the boiler room and continued on to almost the back wall.
On his left, a nine-foot set of metal shelves was set against the north wall. The shelves were crammed with more junk.
Beck braced himself and carefully pivoted the shelves away from the wall. A close look at the wall showed that part of it wasn’t completely solid. Beck worked his fingers into two small indentations, and gently but firmly pulled back a four-foot-square slab of plywood, plastered over so it looked like the rest of the wall. He slid the plywood to his right, just enough so that he could step into the opening and enter a passageway about five feet long connecting Beck’s building with the building next door. Bending low, Beck made his way into another basement, much newer and about four times the size of his. The area was clean and empty except for machinery in the far-west corner, and a free-standing one-man prison cell in the east corner.
The machinery consisted of a long steel table under a rotary saw. The powerful saw had been mounted on an aluminum frame so it could slide back and forth over the table. Just past the table sat a large industrial-strength meat grinder. The machine could grind a hundred pounds of meat and bone into paste in about five minutes.
All the equipment could be seen by whoever occupied the prison cell. The entire basement was dimly lit by sparsely spaced fluorescent lights that stayed on 24/7.
Upstairs was a warehouse, empty except for the first floor where a garden equipment business stored mostly stone and gravel. Beck had a twenty-year net lease on the building.
Ahmet Sukol sat on an iron bench that was chained to the bars of the cell. The temperature in the basement hovered around a perpetual fifty-five degrees. Not cold enough to freeze somebody, but cold enough to make any extended stay nearly unbearable. Over the course of days or weeks, without winter clothing and enough food needed to maintain a body temperature of 98.6 degrees, a person would gradually die of hypothermia.
Sukol wore his winter coat, a knit cap, and gloves.
Beck’s men had given him only water and one cold cheese sandwich.
Beck checked his watch. The man had only been in the cell about nine hours, but Beck knew that it probably felt more like fifteen or twenty.
He approached the cell, stopping about five feet from the iron bars. He looked at what he assumed was another Bosnian Serb. The man stared back at him.
Beck didn’t utter a word. Neither did the Bosnian. That told Beck this wasn’t the first time the man had been imprisoned. Beck preferred that the man had done time. Especially if he had ever been placed in solitary confinement. It didn’t much matter where or what type of cell. The horror of solitary derived from two things: no contact with the outside world, and no way to tell time.
If his prisoner had been in solitary before, the prospect of suffering it again would terrify him. Solitary confinement was one of the worst tortures ever conceived.
But that required this Bosnian tough guy to truly believe that it was happening to him. Suddenly. Out of nowhere.
Beck waited a few more moments to see if the man would ask him a question, curse him, yell at him, plead with him. Nothing.