Bronx Requiem(75)

“Straighten his legs. Give him some goddam air.”

Remsen stood up and stared down at Beck, waiting for him to come around. He kicked the bottom of Beck’s foot. Beck stirred. Remsen kicked again, harder. Beck came to, instinctively tried to sit up, but fell back as a piercing pain shot across the middle of his back. Bruised ribs. Maybe cracked. He gritted his teeth, breathed carefully, dizzy but trying to focus on what was happening.

There were five men standing around him, and one man on the ground, the one Beck had gotten on top of and beaten.

Remsen told the two men nearest to Beck, “Get him on his feet.”

They were the two who’d sat with Remsen in the bar. Remsen’s sons. They lifted Beck up, causing enough pain that Beck stopped breathing. They propped him against his Ford Ranger.

As they held him, Beck leaned forward and threw up, feeling the acid sting of the whiskey and beer coming out of him. Some of it hit the bigger man’s pants and shoe. Both men cursed Beck and shoved him back against the truck, which caused Beck even more pain than vomiting had.

Beck’s head cleared a bit.

Oswald Remsen stepped forward, his sons still holding Beck’s arms, grabbed a fistful of Beck’s hair, and held his head up.

Beck looked back at Remsen without expression.

“You are one stupid, sorry son of a bitch, my friend. You think you can walk into my place and eyeball me, ask questions, and I’m not gonna notice it? I been watching sneaky *s like you a long time, boy.”

Beck didn’t respond.

“I recognized you about two seconds after you showed up. You’re that piece of shit cop killer who was in my prison awhile back.” Remsen paused, trying to remember the name. “Beck. That’s right, your name is Beck. I know you. What I don’t know is what the hell you’re doing in my bar.”

For a moment, Beck thought about spitting in Oswald Remsen’s face, but he knew another round of fists and feet might finish any chance he had of surviving this.

“I’m gonna ask you one time, what were you doing in my bar?”

Beck croaked out one word. “Drinking.”

“Asshole.” Remsen shoved Beck’s head away and told the others, “All right, let’s get him out of here before anybody notices this commotion. Who’s got cuffs?”

One of the men on the fringe stepped forward and extended a pair of handcuffs toward Remsen.

“What am I?” said Remsen. “Workin’ for you? Go on, cuff him. Joe, empty his pockets.”

Joe Remsen yanked out Beck’s wallet, money, truck keys, and his other set of brass knuckles. He handed everything to his father. Remsen shoved the contents into the pockets of his Windbreaker without bothering to look at any of it.

Once they were done searching him, Remsen’s man pulled Beck’s arms behind his back and cuffed him.

Beck made sure to clench his hands into tight fists so that his wrists were a fraction of an inch thicker than they would be when he unclenched them.

After the man finished cuffing Beck, Remsen told him, “Okay, Fred, get Vic into your car and drive him on over to the hospital. Tell them he was in a bar fight.”

Remsen told his sons holding Beck, “Put him in the GMC. William, you stay with him in the back. If he moves, knock the shit out of him. Joe, you drive. Follow me.”

Remsen’s sons pulled Beck toward a new GMC Terrain. As they walked toward the car, Beck opened and closed his mouth slowly to make sure they hadn’t broken his jaw. He could feel his left eye swelling, remembering a stinging kick that had hit him on the cheekbone. He opened his left eye wide, hoping it wouldn’t close completely. He could breathe normally so his nose wasn’t busted. He decided his ribs were bruised, not broken. His right shoulder where the baseball bat had hit him was already sore and swollen. His knees were okay, but his arms, right thigh, back, and hip would be covered with deep bruises come morning. He forced himself to stop thinking about the pain. If he didn’t keep focused and concentrate, there would be no morning.

William Remsen shoved Beck into the backseat of the SUV. Beck had to lean forward because his hands were cuffed behind his back. He laid his forehead on the passenger-seat headrest.

William slammed the door. Beck leaned away just in time to avoid being smacked on his throbbing shoulder.

Joe Remsen got behind the wheel.

While William walked around the back of the GMC, Beck slipped his right thumb behind his belt and felt for a small, thin piece of steel taped under a piece of masking tape.

By the time Beck walked out of prison, he so hated being handcuffed he’d made it a point to study every means, every trick invented to escape from them. It boiled down to two methods. Either using a universal key to open the cuffs, or a shim. Universal keys didn’t open every brand of cuff and were much harder to conceal, so Beck settled on shims. He taped them on the back of every belt he owned, under the tongues of his shoes, and hid one in his wallet.

Even under the best of circumstances it wasn’t easy to blindly slip a shim into the tiny opening where cuff fit into the lock housing. Beck didn’t want to think about how much harder it would be trying to do it riding in a moving car, with his hands cuffed behind him, after a brutal beating.

In the few moments William took to walk around the SUV, Beck had freed the shim from his leather belt. He held it in his right hand, waiting until William climbed in next to him and the GMC stopped rocking.