Bronx Requiem(79)

“Best you don’t remind me of that.”

“Let’s cut the bullshit. You could have killed me back in the parking lot. You could have killed me after I took out your man who likes hitting people with baseball bats. You want information, I’m making a reasonable offer.”

“I got half a mind to start slicing you up right now. See how tough you are.”

“Up to you,” said Beck. “They say people who are tortured will say anything. You never know what’s true.”

Oswald stared at Beck. Beck returned his gaze. Oswald couldn’t see any fear in James Beck’s eyes.

“All right, tough guy. We’ll play it your way for a couple of minutes. One way or another, I’m gettin’ my answers. First question: Why are you up here poking your nose around?”

Beck answered quickly. “Because you’re the one responsible for murdering Paco Johnson.”

“Who?”

“Paco Johnson. He was released from Eastern on Tuesday.”

“Where the hell did you come up with me being responsible for the murder of some worthless convict?”

“Hey, I get a question now.”

“Fuck you.”

“It’s an easy question.”

“I’m not playing games.”

“Neither am I. Did you, or did you not, arrange the murder of Paco Johnson?”

Oswald Remsen hesitated, then answered. “What the hell, you’re not going to be alive to do anything about it. First of all, I couldn’t give a shit about that *. A goddam pain in the ass. Some new fish transferred in and told him some shit about his daughter getting whored out. So what? That’s got nothing to do with me. I didn’t arrange for anybody to kill him and trust me, I’ve paid my dues, boy. I got enough connections to have a piece of shit like him taken out in two seconds if I want to.

“All I did was give some people a heads-up cuz I knew the guy was a troublemaker. What’d he do? Go and piss somebody off? If they killed him, it ain’t my fault.”

“What people?”

“Not your turn, convict.”

“Okay.”

Beck cleared his throat and spat into the ground, buying time, carefully clocking the position of each man. The elder Remsen stood in front of him, five feet away. Joe, still holding his revolver, stood about four feet to the right of his father. William stood about ten feet to the left of Oswald, a few steps closer to the lean-to.

“Who told you to come looking for me?”

“Nobody. A man gets out of prison after seventeen years, he’s not going to get killed for something he did a few hours after he got home. It had to be connected to something that happened at Eastern.”

“You’re lying. There’s a whole lot of people in that prison, convicts and staff, but you came looking for me. I want to know who put you onto me. And I’m warning you, convict, the next thing comes out of your mouth better be the truth, or I’m stringing you up and cutting it out of you.”

Beck had no intention of telling Remsen the truth. It would mean implicating Walter Ferguson and Rita. He shifted his weight on the narrow stump, pictured the possibility of diving to his left to get out of the circle of light, and trying to get his cuffed hands under his legs and in front of him.

He gently pulled the cuffs wide, gauging how many links were in the chain, trying to figure if he could pull his hands far enough apart to get them past his hips and legs. It felt like the cuffs weren’t spreading apart much at all. Maybe the links were kinked. He ran his right thumb back and forth along the chain joining the cuffs, and suddenly felt something. Was it true? He ran his thumb over the handcuff housing. He couldn’t believe what he felt.

Carefully, he brushed his thumb over the lock housing. It was true. He could feel the shim, still stuck in the slot between the cuff and the lock housing. The top of the shim had been bent over from Austen dragging him, but the rest was in the slot, jammed in with dirt and grass.

He needed time to try to clear away the dirt and straighten out the shim.

“All right. There’s more to it.”

“What?”

“Like I said, I figured Johnson’s murder had to have something to do with prison. So I made a few calls. I still know guys serving time at Eastern. I talked to an old-timer in there who told me Packy didn’t have any beefs going on in the population. Cons respected him. Nobody wanted to do anything to jam him up before he was about to be released.”

“I’ll want to know who you talked to, but go on.”

“So if it wasn’t the convicts, I figured it had to be something between him and the guard staff.”

“Why?”

“Process of elimination. Had to be one or the other.”

While he talked, Beck cleared away the dirt and bent back the shim. He shifted on the stump, trying to give the impression that sitting on it was uncomfortable, but really so he could maneuver his hands into position.

“You’re trying my patience, Beck. Why me? Of all the guards at Eastern, why me?”

“The truth? I had no real idea you had anything to do with it. I just wanted to talk to some guards, see what I could find out. I’ve been in town all day. Didn’t take long to find the COs watering hole. I went into that bar to see if I could get some information. And then I see you sitting there, fat and happy, collecting payoffs.”