The next call he made was to Chief Malenko. His cell rang five times and cut to voicemail. Polanski seethed and left him a message.
"There's two people I want you to find. The first is a blonde, a woman named Naomi Hefter. Date of birth: August tenth, nineteen eighty-six. And the second is a boy, presumed to be her son, Josh Hefter. Date of birth: April seventh, two thousand and nine. I want you to find out where they are and I want you to call me as soon as you do."
Just as he finished giving Malenko his orders, the limousine pulled into the nightclub construction site off Jefferson Avenue. The parking lot was nothing more than frozen mud lined with potholes that were still to be filled. The limousine's wheels bumped over the holes, its body shaking side to side. It eased to a halt by a white portacabin that served as the site’s office.
Unlike the parking lot, the nightclub building looked well. It was maybe fifty-feet-tall and clad in pink-tinted stainless steel. There was scaffolding wrapped around it and the new nightclub's name was still to be fixed to the side. There were men working all around the site. They were wearing yellow hard hats, yellow high visibility vests, thick checked shirts, jeans and tan boots. They were chewing gobs of bubblegum and they were carrying a variety of tools and materials: hammers, saws, extension poles, timber planks, bags of nails, and cans of paint.
Trudeaux was standing outside the portacabin, a yellow hard hat on his head, breathing warm white clouds of breath through the frosty winter air. Jim McGrath was standing beside him. He was wearing a navy blue gilet over a thick-looking woolen checked shirt and a white round-neck t-shirt, a creased but straight-fitting pair of blue jeans and a pair of well-used Timberland boots on his feet. There was a pair of yellow work gloves over his hands. He was holding a black clipboard in his left hand and wearing a hard yellow hat on his head. He, too, was exhaling heavy warm clouds of breath through the icy air, although at a much quicker rate than Trudeaux was. He was anxious.
Polanski drew his iPhone from the side of his face and killed the call. Then, brought the McGrath family photograph up on its screen before placing it down on the seat beside him. He leaned over and lifted a green glass bottle of Bollinger from the black marble bar. The bottle had a gold foiled neck and was sitting on ice, in a stainless steel bucket beside three sparkling, fresh flutes. He tore the foil from the bottle's neck and popped the cork. It made an abrupt pop that sounded a bit like a gunshot. The cork flew across the car and landed on the seat opposite him, rolling back and forth on the leather cushion as he began to pour the champagne into the first of the three flutes.
Trudeaux opened the limousine's back door and gestured McGrath to climb inside.
He gulped and obliged.
NINETEEN
After the call with Naomi, Beck followed I-94 back toward Detroit. After taking the exit slip and merging onto John R Street, he waited behind a grey Nissan sedan at the intersection before making a left and doubling back on Edsel Ford Service Drive onto a snowy Woodward Avenue. It looked like the scene of an Arctic canvas, all white and powdery with the lamp posts lining the street glistening with frost.
He continued along Detroit’s Main Street, cruising at a steady forty-five miles-an-hour back toward the city for about a half-mile before slowing outside the gentlemen's club in the north end of town to survey the scene.
It was discreet. A windowless single-story free-standing black-painted brick building with a black windowless door, set back from the road on an expansive lot that wrapped around on all sides like a moat rings around a castle. The lot was empty, with no vehicles outside. And it was piled high with snow. A pair of black wrought iron gates were drawn across the building's door, locked with what looked like a heavy duty steel padlock and chain. A white acrylic sign was stuck across the middle behind where the chain interlinked with the padlock. It said, ‘Open 12:00 til late.’
Beck looked at it and, then, the snow and thought long and hard. In this weather, it was maybe fifty-fifty that the place would actually open. But there was no way to know for sure until the time actually came. He checked his watch. It was eleven-thirty. He had a half-hour to kill between now and then. He thought about Naomi and her salon. Hot on the trail of Adamczuk and or not, he had promised to help her and he wasn't about to back out. He never backed out. And, anyway, thirty minutes was a fair bit of time, certainly enough to go survey the scene and knock on a few nearby doors, see what anybody else knew.
He eased the Camaro away from the curb, pushed his foot to the floor and gunned its engine north, the speedometer touching seventy. The main streets were gritted, and cars had already carved a path. Plus, there were no cops around and no sign of any traffic cameras, either, and besides, from his thirteen years on the force, he knew one thing. It was only a crime if you got caught.
A few minutes later, he pulled in by the side of the road outside what was left of Angel's salon. He parked up and stared out the window at its remains, silent and shaking his head in disbelief.
Naomi’s salon was a far cry from how it looked the night before. From how he remembered it. The building had been reduced to a blackened pile of rubble. The ceiling had caved in and what was left of the exterior walls was warped out of shape. The looked like they could crumble inside or topple over onto the sidewalk at any moment. Most of the front wall was missing completely. It had disintegrated into the salon. Scorched timber planks and bricks and warped interior fittings were piled high in a mound with shards of black, smoke-tainted glass scattered all around. Everything looked burned to a crisp. And the fire department had already been on hand. They had erected tall steel fences around the exterior and adjoining buildings to keep anyone from getting too close. The fences had large white signs attached to them that said, 'Danger. Keep out.'
He sucked a deep, sobering breath and killed the Camaro's engine, and thought of how Naomi must have felt when she saw it. Her heart must’ve sank. She must’ve panicked. Then, it would’ve hit her. And she would’ve got upset. He wasn't surprised she was an emotional mess when she called, angry and annoyed and sad. If he was in her shoes, he might have been the same.
He unclipped his belt and opened the Camaro's door to the foul acrid smell of the salon's remains. It wasn't pleasant, but then, charred wood mixed with chemicals never is. Recalling what it looked like and smelled like the night before, just a few hours ago, he felt terrible. It was her place of employment. Her sense of purpose. Perhaps, maybe, the only good thing she had going for her in her life, and it was reduced to nothing but an ashy pile of danger and dust.
He sat in the frosty, winter air, the icy breeze whipping his face, and thought about the final demand letter that was stuffed between the pages of her magazine. Then, he visualized the one hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars of debt she was in. He saw it as great big red amount almost the length of a telephone number. He imagined an unforgiving stick in a dark grey pinstripe suit sitting behind a big wooden desk pushing papers around in a bank. He pictured the guy looking at Naomi's payment record and shaking his head and picking up the phone line to the collections agency. All because she couldn't pay. Because, those three foreign goons had taken away her livelihood. And, perhaps, because he handled them in the heavy-handed way that he did.
He felt responsible. He thought of what might have happened had he not hit that guy. He felt his stomach knot like a bag of constricting snakes. The guilt weighed heavy on his mind. He couldn't change what had happened. He knew that. But he also knew that he could impact what would.
He reached into his front right pocket of his coat and wrapped his palm around the finely checkered black polymer butt of his Smith & Wesson. He squeezed it tight. The plastic felt hard on his skin. The pressure shot through his fingers. Those three men, whoever they are, are going to pay, he thought. That's for damn sure.
He took a deep breath and let go of the gun, then stepped out of the car. Standing on the sidewalk, he craned his head left and right, looked up and down the white, snowy street, and glanced at the fro
nts of the stores around and opposite the salon's remains. He saw seven other businesses.
A shuttered shoe store. A boarded up drug store missing half of the sign above the door, the other half cracked and worn, making the text illegible. A hardware supplies store called Rijkaard's. It still looked like it was in operation, but a sign hung in the door that said, 'Be back later.'
There was the liquor store across the street that the parking attendant's killer had come out of brandishing a bloodied machete the night before. It, too, was closed. Its owner probably down at the Wayne County Morgue, he thought and glanced at the 2005 red Buick LaCrosse. It was still there, parked up, inconspicuous in its spot.
A blank outlet with no sign was next to it. It looked as if it had been done up, as far as he could tell from its polished shutters against old, long retired grocery store next to it. That store's shutters looked rusted and crusted with grime, and beaten pillar to post by the weather like they had been out down for a very long time.
Then, finally, the seventh one was another place across the street. One that looked open, judging by the red sign hanging on the other side of its dirty glass doors. He glanced up at a sign above the door frame. It said 'Kim Seung Laundromats' in a thin Lucinda red handwritten font. If Naomi had to pay the men for her salon, so would the launderette across the street, he figured and walked across the road toward it, pushed open the laundromat's doors and stepped inside.
A blast of hot air whizzed down over his face as he stepped through the door. The laundromat smelled of fresh linen and detergent. It was empty, and bright. But noisy. White halogen strip lights buzzed overhead and a row of white tumble dryers, stacked one atop the other, rumbled on either side. He flicked his eyes along their circular glass port doors, watching what looked like white and cream bedding and bundles of dark-colored clothes and heavy duty uniforms being in tossed around on the other side. There was a row of white washing machines in front of him, stacked two high and sitting back to back on the cream hard tiled floor. They hummed and swooshed. He imagined the piles of dirty clothes swirling around in warm white soapy water inside. He flicked his eyes along them, his gaze eventually settling on a young woman who was sitting on a chair behind a black cash register that sat on a wooden counter on the other end of the shop floor. Maybe fifteen paces from the door.
She was wearing a cream long-sleeved silk shirt that had a pink floral pattern - roses with short green stems. She had long, straightened black hair. She was Asian. Petite and slim. Her cheeks were thin. Bony. A pair of dark, thick-rimmed glasses rested on the bridge of her tiny little nose. They seemed to take up her full face. She’s an odd-looking person, Beck thought.
She flicked her eyes up at him for a second, noticing him stepping in, but she otherwise didn't move. There was a black smartphone in her hands and she was engrossed in a WhatsApp chat.
"Excuse me, Ma’am, is this your store?" he asked, walking toward her.
She glanced up at him, again. This time, a peculiar look in her eyes, as if she didn't even know what he was saying.
"I asked, is this your store?" he asked her, now five paces closer.
She shrugged.
"Are you the mana..?" he begun to ask, now only about five or six strides away, before pausing, as another woman emerged from an open archway in the red wallpapered wall behind the younger woman.
She was old and short. Maybe fifty-eight or fifty-nine years old and not an inch taller than five-feet. She was wearing a burgundy suede cuffed sweater with a long black skirt and a tiny-looking pair of black pump shoes. Her hair was short. Permed. And two-toned. Grey at its roots around her scalp and black through the middle to its thinning ends. Horizontal contours of time lined her forehead. They looked like brush strokes streaked across a smooth latte-colored wall. She, too, had a pair of thick-rimmed glasses across her face. Although, the lenses looked thinner than the younger woman's and the frames were gold.
"May I help you?" she asked, in a very distinct Chinese accent and with a curious look on her face upon noticing he wasn't carrying any bags of dirty laundry.
Beck nodded and continued toward her. "Yes. You can." He stopped about a pace away from the counter.
"Do you have a ticket? What's the number?" she asked him.
He shook his head. "I'm not here for laundry," he said. "I'm looking into the fire at the salon across the street. And..."
"No," the older woman interrupted and raised her right hand, open-palmed, whilst shaking her head. "No."
"No?" Beck inquired. His eyebrows narrowed over the bridge of his nose.
"We know nothing about that," she added quickly and turned and whispered something in Chinese or Mandarin to the younger woman.
The younger woman nodded and muttered something back, then quickly rose from her chair. She clutched her cell phone, tight, and disappeared through the archway to the back of the store. A door slammed shut somewhere on the other side of the arch.
The older woman took her seat. "We clean clothes and bedding for money," she said to Beck. "That's all we know."
"All you know about what?"
She paused for longer than she needed to. Beck knew she knew something.
"About America. About Michigan. About Detroit. About whatever happened across the street," she answered.
Beck frowned. "So, you've never met a bunch of Eastern Europeans?"
The woman shook her head.
"And you've never been asked to hand over cash by a group of three men and threatened with consequences if you don't?"
The woman shook her head, again. "Never," she lied. "We know nothing."
"You've never been asked to give them four thousand dollars worth of your hard earned money?"
She shook her head, again, for the third time. A glimmer of fear flashed through her eyes. "No."
Beck knew she was lying. He saw the truth in her eyes and he heard the apprehension in her voice.
"Listen. I know you’re lying. I know you know them. And I know you’re paying them. If you’re afraid of them, if they’re making threats to make you pay them, if they're extorting money from you, you can tell me. It's OK. I can help."
She shook her head for a fourth time. "No. We know nothing," she said, again, quickly. This time her voice even more abrupt and impatient. "Now, you either pay for laundry or you go."
Beck sighed and shook his head. "Look, lady. I know what’s going on here. You and I both know you're lying. Now..."
She interrupted him. "No. No. We no know. We no know nothing. You pay laundry or go, or I call cops." She lifted a black clamshell cell phone from behind the cash register and shook it, menacingly, in Beck's direction.
He pulled a face and sighed, then shook his head. "Fine. You can keep on paying them for all I care," he said and turned and left the laundrette.
TWENTY
Arshavin’s iPhone pinged with Polanski's email. He tucked the photograph of Josh Hefter into the front pocket of his jacket, holding onto it just like Polanski had ordered, tapped the alert and opened the email. It featured the same one line message that Malenko had sent Polanski with a block of white empty space above it and a PDF attachment. He flicked his eyes to the attachment and tapped it. It began downloading.
"The boss has sent through the details of the Michigan private investigators and security guards," he said, flicking his eyes up from his cell phone to Salenko and Zurawski.
Zurawski's eyes lit up.
Arshavin gestured toward the door and continued. "He wants us to concentrate on identifying that asshole from last night. Let's get out of here and go back to the car."
"Yeah. Let's get him," Zurawski sneered and lowered his crow bar.
"What about the boy?" Salenko asked.
Arshavin shook his head. "Boss says to leave that for now. We're to focus on the security guard," he answered.
Salenko nodded his understanding. He tucked his crow bar into his jacket and turned around and led the way toward the open door, stepping out of Naomi's apartme
nt and into the corridor.
Zurawski followed suit.
Arshavin followed behind them.
Preferring not to wait on the elevator, they walked to end of the hall and ducked through a heavy mahogany fire door that led through to the grey concrete stairwell. They descended the stairs quickly, their boots smashing on the aluminum stair nosings, reaching the ground floor in minutes.
Arshavin walked out into the lobby first. The front desk was empty, the chair still ajar from the desk. There was no sign of any reception personnel. He turned and waved Salenko and Zurawski forward.
They stepped out through the doorway behind him and followed him across the white marble floor out to the doors to the cold, then walked on to the car.
Arshavin unlocked the Impala and they all climbed in. Again, Arshavin in the driving seat, Salenko beside him in the front and Zurawski in the back, straddling all of the rear seats.
Arshavin unlocked his iPhone. Polanski's attachment had downloaded. He tapped the icon and the PDF popped up on screen. It was a forty-nine page document. He looked at the first page, then laid his the cell phone down on the Impala's center console, so that they could all see the first guy in the pack, and said, "Terry Hurlock."
He was an American, dark-haired and tall, six-three. He had a hard, thick nose and a square face. His lips were fat like they had been warped by a few dozen punches and chin was clean shaven. There were deep, circular punched-out lesions on his cheeks, maybe from a bad bout of acne earlier in his life. It made his face look like it had come through about a hundred wasp stings and gave him a sort of no-messing image. His occupation was listed as 'Private Security.' And he looked hard as nails. His office and home was listed as being on Vale Street in Battle Creek, Michigan.
Salenko and Zurawski studied his photograph and biography, long and hard. Then, Zurawski shook his head. "Not the guy," he said.
"How would you know?" Salenko asked, chuckling sarcastically. "Picture doesn't show the shape of his knuckles."
Easy Money Page 16