Bronx Requiem(108)
When they reached the second floor, Alex Liebowitz and Willie Reese were the only ones present. Alex sat at Beck’s computer. Willie napped on one of the couches.
Beck took a seat at the dining table.
“Amelia, can you put those ledgers on the table?”
She did.
“Try to get some sleep.”
Amelia understood that was Beck’s way of politely asking her to leave. As she walked upstairs, Alex came over and sat next to Beck. Willie Reese woke up and joined them.
They waited for Beck to finish typing text messages into his smartphone. One for Walter Ferguson and one for his lawyer, Phineas Dunleavy, asking both of them to please come to the Red Hook headquarters at eleven A.M.
When he’d finished, he looked up and said, “Okay, guys, I don’t have a lot of gas left.” He handed the external hard drive to Alex and said, “See if you can open this.”
Alex went off to check the drive.
Beck turned to Willie. “Everything okay?”
“I got a lot of eyes and ears out there. It’s quiet, boss.”
“I don’t think anything will happen until Sunday or Monday. Tell your guys to watch for two things. Cops moving in a group, and any rough boys they don’t know. In particular, a black albino guy, big, wears his hair in dreads. He’ll probably be wearing sunglasses.”
Reese scowled. “What do you mean? Like a white black guy?”
“Yes.”
“Never seen one.”
“Hopefully, you still won’t. From what Demarco tells me, he’s dangerous.”
“Then if we see him, we should put him down. Fast.”
Beck thought about his answer for a moment. “If it gets to that, agreed. Main thing right now, Willie, I want you to keep an eye on Amelia. I’d prefer she doesn’t leave the place, but if she gets restless and wants to take a walk, or really needs something, you stick with her. Nobody bothers her.”
“Done.”
“Last, before I forget, when Demarco comes down, ask him to make sure and secure the gun Amelia has in a red laundry bag in her closet.”
“Got it.”
“Thanks. I’ve got to sleep.”
On the way to the back stairs Beck passed Alex.
“Any luck?”
“I haven’t gotten through the password protection yet.”
“I need what’s in there, Alex.”
“Go get some sleep.”
When he stripped for bed, Beck avoided looking at the purplish bruises blossoming all over his arms and torso. He did check out the wound on his forehead, gently pulling off the large three-by-four-inch adhesive pad. Janice Elkins had done a good job squeezing the split skin closed and securing it with butterfly bandages, but there would still be a scar. Beck spread a finger of antibiotic ointment on it and covered it with a fresh adhesive pad.
He rummaged around in his medicine chest, deciding he’d better take a Vicodin or he’d never sleep. And he knew he had to stop his mind from constantly wrestling with his seemingly intractable, interlinked mess of problems. The worst of which was how to take out an NYPD detective, a politically connected one to boot, without creating a firestorm of investigations that would bring all of them down.
Beck would not risk allowing any of them to have any contact with the judicial system. Despite their resources, one mistake, one misstep, one person in the monstrous machinery of law enforcement, and they could be incarcerated for years. And if things went really bad, for the rest of their lives.
And now Beck had two wildcards to deal with: Amelia Johnson, a young woman more volatile and unpredictable than most adults he’d ever met. And Queenie, a woman who had much of her humanity leached out of her first by years of being abused, and then by years of being the abuser.
Beck lay down on his bed, trying to clear his mind while a dozen questions, concerns, and thoughts swirled into a blur that slowly pulled him into a deep, merciful sleep.
64
At 6:50 A.M. the Vicodin had worn off. When Beck rolled over, the pain pulled him out of his sleep. He forced himself to get up and move. Shower, coffee, food. He pushed through it all, step by step.
When Beck emerged on the second floor, he saw Manny at the stove, heard the soft sizzle of eggs frying, and smelled the tang of maple-honey ham frying in a skillet all mixed with the scent of strong coffee brewing.
Amelia and Demarco sat side by side at the work island, eating and sipping coffee from oversize mugs. It sounded to Beck like they were talking about clothes.
Alex sat at Beck’s computer, printing out documents on Beck’s high-speed laser printer. He’d been working steadily for six hours.
“How’d you get it open?”
“I went in through the BIOS and disabled the password, but it didn’t get me very far. The files are encrypted.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Especially since I don’t have the original computer they used to encrypt the files. Were there any computers where you found this hard drive?”
“I didn’t see any, and we searched the place pretty thoroughly. So what did you do?”
“I had to reach out to a hacker group that has the firepower and software to search the drive sector by sector, find the encryption keys, and open the files.”
“How much did that set us back?”