Zurawski glared at him, a sudden anger burning in his eyes intense enough to turn him to ash.
Arshavin laughed and swiped to the next one. It was a guy called Connor Tierney. He was smaller than Hurlock. Six-one and two-twenty. American, but he looked Irish. He had red curly hair and a pale white freckled face. It was like a map of Ireland was practically tattooed across his forehead. Again, he wasn't the guy.
Arshavin flicked to the next one. A Hispanic named Carlos Estevez who lived in Grand Rapids. Again, not the guy. Arshavin flicked to the next. And, then, the next. Same result each time. Two men who also looked nothing like Joe Beck. One of them was old, in his mid-sixties, and the other was short and fat, like a beach ball on stilts. Arshavin continued flicking on through the next forty-one records. Again, not a one being an exact match for the guy from the salon.
It wasn't until record forty-seven that they finally got somewhere. Number forty-seven was a guy by the name of Gordon Durie. He was a security guard who lived over in Lansing. He was dark-haired and peach-skinned. His face was masculine and lined with a dark, bushy stubble. And he was tall. But too tall. He was listed as being six-eight and three hundred pounds.
"Similar, but not the guy," Salenko said, shaking his head.
"You sure?" Arshavin asked, looking at Durie's picture like he had seen him before.
"Yeah," Zurawski added. "He's too tall. Practically the height of a lamp post."
Salenko nodded. "Yeah. That's not him."
Arshavin concurred and flicked to the second last one in the pack. Record number forty-eight. That was when everyone's face changed.
Record forty-eight contained information about a man named David Maus. He was a Michigan-registered private detective and former police officer. And he also held a private security license. He was listed on record as being six-four and weighing two hundred and fifty pounds. He had green eyes, short dark hair, sharp defined cheekbones and a square masculine jaw. Just like Joe Beck. In fact, just as they say everybody has a double somewhere in the world, David Maus looked almost exactly like him. On first glance, it was him. Except he didn't have a scar on the left side of his neck.
Zurawski's upper lip curled upward in disdain and a menacing scowl swept across his face. His mind was made up. He was looking at the guy who had knocked his block off.
Salenko's mind was about made, too, but there was a hint of doubt floating around in there somewhere. He pointed toward the guy's neck in the photograph. "Look. No scar."
Arshavin turned his iPhone around and read the biography, glancing up at the photo with each piece of information he read. He nodded slowly and looked at Salenko. "But that doesn't mean it isn't him. This could've been taken before the scar got there."
Salenko nodded. Arshavin had a point.
"It's him, all right," Zurawski sneered, not once taking his eyes from the photograph. "That's the bastard."
Arshavin nodded and grinned. "I think we found him, boys."
"But let's see the last one," Salenko said. "Just to be sure."
Arshavin placed his iPhone back down on the center console and rotated it one hundred and eighty degrees. Then, swiped to the right and brought up the last record.
It was for a guy named Tommy Callaghan, who lived in Detroit. He was five-nine and one-seventy, and he had a red oblong face with sandy hair and glasses. In the picture, he was wearing a crisp white shirt and white tie and a beige trench coat. He looked like the typical sort of sleuth who gets off on theorizing about the source of clues and asking people polysemous questions, but who would run to the cops for help the minute shit gets real.
Zurawski shook his head and sat back in his seat. "David Maus," he hissed. "He’s the bastard."
Salenko smiled and nodded his agreement. He, too, was now convinced.
Arshavin swiped back to record forty-eight and brought up Maus's photo. He took note of the two addresses on file, his office on Maple Street in Dearborn and his home in Westland, and glanced at his watch. The time was eleven-thirty. "At this time, he'll be at work. We'll go to the office. Better chance of finding him there."
"Or somebody else who can tell us where the hell he is," Zurawski added.
Salenko nodded his agreement.
Arshavin grinned and scooped up his iPhone to call Adamczuk and have him meet them at Maple Street.
TWENTY-ONE
Back out on Woodward Avenue, Beck checked his watch. It was eleven forty-five. He had a quarter-hour until the gentlemen’s club opened. He glanced at the other open nearby store. Rijkaard's. The 'be back later' sign in the door was gone and he could see the outline of somebody moving around inside through the glass. He walked toward it and pushed it open.
The bell dinged, then donged.
An old, thin and wiry-looking guy wearing jeans, a dark blue flight jacket with a cream fur collar and a navy blue Detroit Tigers ball cap was half way up a ladder at the back of the store. His back was to the door. He was lifting what looked like boxes of tiles up onto wooden shelving racks high overhead on the back wall. He heard the bell and turned his head to the right and called, "Be right with ya,” as he placed the tiles on top of another box.
His thin, frail arms and bony hands shook from the weight of the box and pressure of the angle, but he managed it. Then, straightened the box with OCD-induced precision and stepped down from the ladder. He breathed a loud, exhausted sigh of relief at a job of work just about sorted and turned around. "What can I do ya for?" he asked Beck, who was glancing around the store.
The store was bigger on the inside than it looked from the outside. It was light and bright, and it smelled workman-like. Beck caught the scent of white spirit and graft. There were shelving racks either side of him. They were stacked high with hardware supplies. He saw racks of hammers. Boxes of screws and nails. Reams of tape. Tubs of adhesives, fillers and cements. Cans of oils and lubricants. Tins of paint. Packs of paint brushes and rollers. And shelves full of building materials like underlay, timber, tiles and flooring.
"I'm looking for information," he answered.
"You working a project? Looking to find out what sort of paint to use? Or what type of hammer to knock a few nails in with?"
Beck shook his head and took a few more steps deeper into the store. "No. Not that sort of information."
"Ah, shit. Then, I can't help you. All I really know about is what I sell - hardware supplies and some building materials. If you need information about anything else, you go to the Google." He laughed. "At least, that's what my grandkids say."
Beck shook his head, again. "It's not the sort of information that you find on the internet I'm looking for."
His response peaked the guy’s intrigue. He scrunched up his face. "Eh? What do you mean?"
Beck glanced around and made sure there was nobody else inside, then said, "I understand you owe some men some money?"
The guy said nothing. He just looked back at him.
"Four thousand dollars worth, to be precise," Beck added. "That you happen to pay up, what, every month?"
"Ahhh, shit," the guy said. "I just paid that last night. C'mon, I'm barely making ends meet here. I don't have the money to pay you, too."
Beck shook his head, again. "I'm not here on the take."
The guy pulled a curious-looking face. "Then, what the hell are you here for?"
"Like I said," Beck began and walked toward him, stopping a few paces away. "Information. In this case, about some real tough sons of bitches, foreign sons of bitches, who're haunting these streets, making decent folks like yourself and the woman who owned the salon down the street hand over their hard earned income."
What he had said seemed to strike a nerve.
"Damn right," the guy said. "They are sons of bitches. I saw what they did. I saw it this morning," he said. "Poor woman's livelihood. Her salon, they burned it to the damn ground. I only ever spoke to her once. She was new, but she seemed like a nice one. You know?"
Beck nodded. “You saw them do it?
”
“No,” the guy answered, shaking his head. “I meant I saw what they did, not when they did it. They must’ve done it last night. She mustn't have had the money. Four thousand dollars is a lot of cash to have just lying around. I figured she probably couldn't pay. And that's why they did what they did."
Beck nodded.
The guy continued. "That's what the bastards do, you know?"
"What's that?"
"Threaten to put you out of the game. You don't pay, they wipe you out, torch the place."
Beck nodded, again.
"But that isn't the end of it. They don't let you off there. Oh no. See, the same thing happened to a guy right up the street a few months back. A butcher, and a damn good one at that. They came knocking one night. He didn't have the cash, so they beat him black and blue. Burned his shop to a pile of ash, while he watched. Then, told him he had three more days to pay up, or they would come for him. And his family."
"What happened?"
"The three days came and went, and they grabbed him. Didn't they?"
He asked it like it was obvious, like Beck would've known the answer, then continued.
"Yeah. They rolled right up to his home and took him a knife point. His wife and kids, too. Gave him one last chance to pay up. But he never had the money." He frowned and shook his head. "Then, I heard they beat them all like a piñata, well, that’s what the headlines in the local papers said, anyway. They were vicious. Killed them all by blunt force trauma. Wrapped them in chicken wire and dumped their bodies in the Detroit River. Cops found them about a month later during a routine dredge. Story was they were softened beyond recognition. Went all white and gnarly. The fish nibbled their faces and fingers away to the bone. They say they had to rely on dental records to identify them."
"Wrapped in chicken wire and tossed in the river?" Beck asked, shaking his head.
The guy nodded. "That's right. And naked, too."
Beck shook his head, again. "Christ."
The guy nodded, again. "Yeah."
"And I presume, that's why you pay them, right?"
"Damn right," the guy answered, anger in his voice. "Otherwise, who knows what would happen. I’ve given them every last dime I got. I've given them my earnings. My savings. My pension. My grandkids’ inheritance. Everything."
Beck said nothing.
"Why do you think I'm sixty-nine and still here, selling hardware supplies?"
Beck remained silent. He thought the guy looked in pretty good condition for sixty-nine, still able-bodied and breathing.
"It's damn sure not for the love of what I do. I’ll tell you that for free. Lifting this shit is hard work."
Beck nodded. It looked it. The boxes of tiles looked full.
"It's because I've given them everything. And, yet, they keep on coming back." He glanced around and nodded toward a pile of boxes of tiles beside him. "I'm too old to be doing this shit. At my age, I should be sipping a beer on a beach down in Florida. But I gotta keep on, so I can continue paying those fucks."
"You've never thought of taking off? Just selling up and disappearing?"
" Yeah. A thousand times," the guy said and nodded, then shook his head. "But it's not an option. To sell up, this place would have to be a viable going concern. But, according to the books, it makes nothing. And I can't just stop paying them to pump up my profits to make it actually look like it's earning what it actually is, either."
Beck looked him the question.
"Because, they'll kill my grandchildren if I stop. They said it themselves. I don't pay, Ethan and Aria wind up like the poor butcher's kids." He paused. "And their boss, he's a real sick fuck. Who knows what he would do to them first?"
"Who’s their boss?”
“Some foreign asshole. Immigrant fella.”
“You know him?"
"Hardly. I only ever met him once. But it was one more time than I ought to."
"What happened?"
"It was years ago, the only ever time I was struggling to pay. He walked right in that door. A big, fat red-faced European guy. He carried a baseball bat in his right hand. I remember it like yesterday. The bat was brown. Stained with blood. Blood, he said, that belonged to the families of every poor sole who had made a thing of missing the payments."
"What did you do?" Beck asked.
The old guy looked at him, incredulous. "What do you think? I took a loan. Made sure I had the cash to pay them for when his men came back. What would you do?"
Beck offered him an understanding glance. "You said 'years ago.' Do you remember when?"
The guy shook his head. "Nah. But sometime around two thousand and ten."
"So, about five years back?"
The guy nodded.
"And you've been paying them for that long?" Beck asked, surprise in his voice.
The guy nodded, again, sadness in his eyes. “Why do you think I say I’ve got nothing left?”
Beck nodded, apologetically. Then, after a momentary pause, he asked the question.
"How much?"
The guy blew out his cheeks and shook his head, then began counting it up in his mind. "Must add up to about a quarter-million? It's four thousand a month. Every month. No excuses.”
Beck's eyes widened. "A quarter of a million dollars?" he asked, shaking his head.
The guy nodded, sadly.
"Jesus."
The guy said nothing.
"The laundrette across the street, you reckon they would be paying them, too?" Beck asked him.
"Damn right they are. Why you think most places on this street have closed down? There's not a business lining this sidewalk that doesn't pay them. At least, not unless its a big brand, a part of multinational corporation."
Beck cocked his head and looked him a question.
"Because they pick the low hanging fruit. They squeeze the small people, because they know, we can't squeeze them back. They come and threaten us and there ain't nothing we can do about it. Sure, we could go to the cops, but then, they would burn us out and take the damn baseball bat to our families. And when we pay up, nobody gives a shit. Our accountants don't care. We're small time. They just sign our books and leave us in the cold. They don't go looking into the gaping holes that all these payments cause. They don't care if we're running our businesses at a loss or barely breaking even."
Beck shook his head. "Accountants. Damn snakes in a suit."
"You got that right," the guy said. “Show them you got a dime, they wanna take you for a hundred dollars.”
"The men," Beck said. "Are they part of a racket?"
"A racket?"
"A gang."
"Ah, a gang. You could call it that. Yeah."
"Do you know its name?"
The guy shook his head.
"OK. What about this guy they work for? Do you know his name?"
The guy grimaced.
Beck nodded. He saw the answer in the guy's eyes. "Can you tell me it?"
After a long, tense pause the guy answered with a sudden coyness in his voice, "Maybe." He paused and looked around. "What do you want it for?"
Beck grinned. "Because, I promised a nice lady we both know that I'd get her out of the hole she’s in. And that involves stopping a bunch of European assholes extorting money from her. Permanently."
"Permanently?" The guy's eyes widened. "How permanently?"
"Indefinitely," Beck replied.
The guy nodded, interested, but also sensing the opportunity. "Suppose I have his name. Don't you think that sort of information would be worth something?"
Beck nodded and drew his wallet from pants.
"No," the guy said and shook his head. "Not money." He nodded back to the boxes of tiles at the back of the store. "Lift those boxes up onto the shelves for me and I'll tell ya." He flicked his eyes up and down the length of Beck's monstrous frame. "Doing that is a shift for me, but it should be a breeze for a guy like you."
Beck glanced at the boxes. There were twenty of them. Ea
ch box was looked to be about twelve inches wide by twelve inches long, and maybe fifteen tiles full. He figured they weighed, maybe, fifty pounds each.
He nodded and said, "Fine," then shoved his wallet back into his pants and walked over to the back of the store.
He lifted them two at a time, two handed, one box atop the other, like they were full of nothing heavier than Christmas cards. He piled them high on the shelf in two stacks of ten, lining them up with the edge-to-edge precision the old man would expect, finishing the job in only a matter of minutes.
Once he was done, he stepped back and inspected the pile. He noticed the bottom box was sitting about a half-inch further forward than the rest, having edged forward under the pressure of the boxes stacked on top. He stepped back over and realigned it to sit flush with the others, then flicked his eyes up and down the two stacks and beamed, satisfied at a job of work well done.
The guy stared at him, incredulous. "That barely even took you five minutes! And you never even broke a sweat. You some kind of machine?"
"Nah. Just a guy who knows the extent of his ability," Beck said and smiled. "Now, the gang boss's name?"
The guy glanced around and made sure nobody else was in his store, then swallowed, hard, and stepped forward toward Beck and leaned in close, like he was about to say something dangerous, something that could get him killed. Something he really didn't want anyone else to hear him say, even though there was nobody else there. “This never came from me,” he said.
Beck nodded. “Understood.”
The old guy took a long pause.
Beck pulled a face and willed him on.
"It’s Polanski," he whispered, almost hauntingly.
"Polanski?" Beck asked, making sure he heard him right since he had said it in such a quiet voice.
"Jesus," the guy said. "Keep it down. You can't go saying that name too loud around here."
"Yeah. Right. This Polanski, you know where I can find him?"
The old guy shook his head, a frightened, sheepish look on his face, almost as if he had given up a shadowy, forbidden secret. "No idea. You had better get on your way. I got stuff to be doing."
Beck saw the change in his demeanor. He heard the fear in his voice. Just saying the name was getting the guy spooked. The pitch of his voice was all over the place. But he needed more. A last name wasn't much to go on, not unless there was only one Polanski in Detroit. And, definitely, not unless this Polanski was on social media or in the phone book. And that was something Beck wasn't willing to bet on. He needed a first name, an address, a place of employment, a contact. Something.
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