"What's his first name?"
The guy shook his head.
"What's he do? What else is he involved in? The men who work for him, you know their names, too?"
The guy shook his head, again. His face said he didn't know. His eyes said he wouldn't say much more, even if he did.
Beck nodded and thanked him for what he had said, then left his store.
Back out on Woodward Avenue, he checked his watch. It was almost twelve-thirty. The gentlemen's club would be open.
TWENTY-TWO
David Maus's office was a small unit on the corner of Maple Street and Michigan Avenue in heart of Dearborn. There was a barbershop beside it on the left, a small parking lot and café opposite it across the other side of Maple Street and the Dearborn City Hall on the right on the other side of Michigan Avenue. The City Hall was a large red brick building with big, circle-topped white paned windows and a brown slate roof. A grand stone staircase led to its entrance. The stars and stripes fluttered proudly in the chill winter breeze on a pole attached to its roof. There was a sort of presidential aura about it.
Arshavin pulled the Impala into the parking lot outside the café.
Adamczuk was already there, standing outside his black Subaru in the cold, leaning against the driver's door drinking coffee from a brown paper cup. He took a slurp and slung it to the white, snowy ground when he saw Arshavin, Salenko and Zurawski pull in.
Arshavin killed the Impala's engine and the three men jumped out of the car.
"David Maus," Adamczuk said, looking across the glistening frosty street at the sign above the entrance to David Maus’s detective agency. "He the guy you’re after?"
Salenko and Arshavin nodded.
"Damn right, he is," Zurawski hissed. "Let's go get his ass."
Adamczuk slung the rest of his coffee aside and said, ”Lead the way.”
The three men, then, turned and walked toward David Maus’s office, Adamczuk following close behind them. They crossed the busy road without waiting for a break in the traffic or going down to the pedestrian crossing. Oncoming cars slammed their brakes and their drivers honked their horns and hurled abusive language at them. The men didn't care.
They stepped off the road, over the hard white ridge of snow that had accumulated by the curb from the slow ploughs and traffic whizzing past, walked across the white, frosty sidewalk and stepped into the office, one by one, slowly, ominously. Zurawski was first, followed by Arshavin, then Salenko. Adamczuk entered last and closed the door behind them.
The office was small and warm. There wasn't much to it. It was just a rectangular room with a white wooden door on the back wall that led through to another office. The walls were white. Plain. And the carpet was navy blue. A few pictures of David Maus in police uniform lined the walls on either side. They were in white plastic frames, and were proudly hung for visitors to see.
The Christmas decorations were also up. Early, considering it was before Thanksgiving. There was a tree in the front right corner by the window. It was thick and bushy, maybe seven-feet-tall, and decorated with gold baubles and tinsel and topped by a gold, glittery star. Cool white lights in the shape of stars twinkled along its branches. It was beautiful. Cliff Richard's Mistletoe & Wine was playing softly in the background from speakers hidden somewhere underneath it.
The four men paid no regard to it at all.
There was a woman up ahead. She was thin and pale-skinned. A long black fringe covered most of her forehead with the rest of her hair cut short and styled in a bob. She had a long oval face with a chin as round as a ball. She looked about thirty-years-old. A pair of thick, dark-rimmed glasses sat across her eyes. The lenses were like the bottom of beer bottles. She was wearing a cream pearl necklace and a plain grey sweater that looked to be about six sizes to big for her. Its sleeves extended over her hands and it hung completely flat over her body from her neck down. She wasn't attractive.
She was sitting behind an office desk, looking at the screen of a black computer. She was getting into the festive spirit, moving to the Christmas music as she worked, bobbing her head back and forth and swaying her shoulders up and down as she clicked the computer's mouse. She saw the men coming in from the corner of her eye and glanced up from the computer screen and looked at them over the rim of her glasses. Instantly, she felt tense.
They were big and burly. White-skinned and foreign-looking. One of them had short blond hair and a chin shadowed with a thick, dark stubble. He was wearing a pair of dark boots, black jeans, a black t-shirt and a black ribbed gilet. He was huge. Tall and thick. He had the density of a bodybuilder.
The other three were clean shaven with tattooed necks and short dark hair that was undercut at the sides and swept back over their skulls with a comb. The hair of hooligans. It looked gelled in place. They were all dressed the same, wearing black ribbed puffer jackets, plain black v-neck t-shirts, black loose-fitting jeans and black boots.
The one on the right had a face that looked like a boxer’s after going twelve rounds with Mike Tyson at his prime. His nose was blue and his eyes, black. The black circles lightening to tender-looking, jaundiced-shaded yellow rings that stretched as far as his forehead and cheeks.
She gulped. "Can I help you?" she asked them, apprehension in her voice.
"Damn right, you can!" Zurawski yelled. "You can tell David Maus to get his ass the hell out here. We're here to see him."
The woman's eyes widened. She sensed the menace of trouble in the air. She shifted in her seat, visibly uncomfortable. "Mr. Maus isn't here, I'm afraid,” she replied, speaking to Zurawski, the guy with the battered-looking face. “Can I take a message for him?"
"Where is he?" Arshavin asked her.
"Out."
"Where?" Salenko barked.
She flicked her eyes over to him and shook her head, slowly, apologetically. She was breathing fast, light breaths. "I'm sorry, Sir. I'm afraid, that's not something I can tell you. Please, can you lower your voice?"
Adamczuk shook his head and sighed and stepped forward between the three men. He walked over to the desk and cocked his head and looked at her, long and hard, deep in the eye. Then, he balled his fist and smashed her face with a hard right hook.
She yelped and flopped sideward off her chair to the floor on her right, falling to the navy carpet behind her desk.
"Bet you're really sorry, now?" he snarled and swiped the computer off the desk with his right forearm. It slid off the side with a crunching bang, the screen shattering on the floor, the base unit crunching the top of it and the mouse sliding off the side and flying through the air like a chairoplane, before landing on the carpet. He reached down and slipped his left hand under the side of the desk and flipped it up from the carpet and slung it sideward against the wall. It toppled over the computer and hit the wall with a smashing bang.
Then, he stepped forward and stood over the top of her as she lay on the carpet shaking her head, disoriented, shocked, sore, and making painful groans. He asked her the question himself, in a more menacing-sounding voice than Arshavin had managed, and using more abrupt language. "Where the fuck is he?”
She raised her hands to her smacking sore cheek. Her skin was burning and her cheekbone felt tender where he had hit her. It felt stinging and soft, like it was maybe broken or badly cracked.
He leaned over and balled his hand to hit her, again. Whipped his arm backward, swinging his fist up into the air with a teeth-bearing scowl across his face.
"Please," she whimpered. "Don't hit me."
"Tell me where the fuck he is, then," Adamczuk snarled.
"OK. OK. He's out on a job. Up on Pontiac. It's a stakeout."
"Where?!"
"Fildew Avenue," the terrified woman replied, then closed her eyes shut, tight. "Please."
Adamczuk lowered his arm and leaned back, but kept his fist balled. His knuckles twitching, still a ghostly shade of white. The pressure in his fist must have been immense.
She opened her eye
s, slowly, and saw he was still there, primed and ready, possibly thinking about hitting her again. "He'll be in his black Mercedes," she whimpered. "Please, don't hit me."
Adamczuk slowly straightened out his hand, his knuckles easing to a calm, peachy still, and nodded. "See, it wasn't that hard, was it?"
She shook her head, afraid, tears in her eyes from the pain in her cheek.
But before she could say anything, he reached into the right pocket of his gilet and drew out a Walther P99, a lightweight black polymer-framed 9mm semi-automatic pistol that originated in Germany. His right forefinger looped through the trigger guard and his finger squeezing the trigger, he leaned over and placed its hard plastic muzzle firmly against her forehead.
It felt cold and hard against her skin. She gasped, realizing what was about to happen. Her eyes widened with fear, then she squeezed them shut, tight. "Please."
He leaned in close and smiled and said, "Happy Holidays,” then pulled the trigger.
Bang.
The gunshot was loud. It sounded like a giant firework exploding in the sky on the fourth of July.
Even the Christmas tree flinched in shock.
Adamczuk tucked the gun back into his gilet and turned around and looked at Arshavin, Salenko and Zurawski with a wolfish look in his eyes. "That's how it's done," he said to them. "Now, let's go get him."
Arshavin smiled and nodded his approval, an admiring look in his eyes. He knew Polanski probably wouldn’t have approved of the use of the firearm, but he liked Adamczuk's abrupt style. However, he saw he wasn’t much of a thinker and was about to leave behind a problem. Arshavin glanced up at the CCTV cameras in the corners of the room. They were small black semi-circles fixed to the ceiling, so well positioned, not even an inch of the room was blind. "Let's take the hard drive for the cameras. We don't want the footage of this being left around for somebody to find."
Adamczuk smiled. "Good idea." He looked at Salenko and Zurawski.
They nodded and walked over. Salenko pulled the base unit of the computer from the wires that connected it to the screen and the wall. And Zurawski ducked through the door behind the desk. He emerged a moment later, another slick, black base unit in his hand.
Arshavin drew the blinds across the window and door and Adamczuk led them back out to a snowy, white Maple Street to go get David Maus.
TWENTY-THREE
Beck pulled up by the curb at the side of the road outside Diamond Dolls. In the past half-hour, the snow had been cleared from the lot, shoveled, maybe, and now sat piled up at the far end by the sidewalk. The padlock and chain were gone, and the wrought iron gates across the door were open. A new white acrylic sign hung across the door. It said, ‘Open,’ and there were already nine vehicles outside. Six were sedans. One was an old clunker, two of them were small economy models, and the last three were big gleaming executive cars. The other three vehicles were SUVs. Two were black and one was white. All were the same model.
Beck eased the Camaro away from the curb and drove forward, looped around at the intersection and pulled into the parking lot, parking the Camaro in a spot seven away from the entrance between one of the executive sedans and a black SUV. He killed the car's engine and stepped outside to the freezing cold. Walked along the shoveled and salted concrete lot and in through the building's black windowless door.
Inside, there was a waiting area. It was dimly lit to a dull blue and purple glow and it smelled of sandalwood and jasmine. Some sort of relaxing rhythmic jazz beat played in the background. It was a tune he had heard before, but didn't particularly recognize. Up ahead, there was a large ornate fireplace with a burning coal fire in the center of the back wall. It glowed orange with white ashy embers at its base, heating the room to warm eighty-something degrees. A pair of thick-looking purple velvet curtains hung down over the wall to its right. It looked like they covered a doorway that led through to some sort of corridor or back room. A corridor he imagined fed through to the doors of the individual private bays where the action happened, or so he could tell from the satisfied moans and groans that were coming from deep behind the other side.
Two topless attractive young women dressed in thongs and black silk robes clip clopped around in stilettos on the hard mahogany floor. One of them, a young black girl, led a sleazy-looking, but wealthy old Japanese man by the hand through the curtains to the back. The other women, a blonde, was left standing alone by the fireplace. The orange glowing coals shimmered along the length and breadth of her smooth, tanned legs. She made eye contact with Beck as he entered, and smiled, her smouldering brown eyes staring into the deep green abyss of his.
He flicked his eyes up and down her trim frame, stealing an admiring glance at her trim body and fine cleavage, wondering for a brief moment exactly what else was underneath her silk robe, but otherwise ignored her, instead opting to focus on the task at hand. He walked toward the mahogany wooden podium on the right of the entrance.
The topless blonde in the silk robe saw his lack of attention as a challenge. Nobody ever dismisses my advances. And neither would he. A vixen like me? Not a chance. He’s mine for the taking, she thought and walked over toward him, the six-inch heels of her stilettos clip-clopping against the hard wooden floor.
A heavyset black woman was standing behind the podium. She had long purple dyed dreadlocked hair that probably hadn't been washed in twenty years and long acrylic purple nails that looks like talons. She wasn't attractive, but her weight had nothing to do with it. A protruding bum chin overwhelmed her jaw and the thickest set of lips Beck had ever seen flanked the top and bottom of her mouth. Her cheeks were scarred with holes like craters and her eyes were big and bug-like. He wondered how somebody like her ever got a start in a place like this, then figured she was either somebody's sister or booty mama.
"Can I help you?" she asked him, speaking in a deep masculine-like voice.
Before he could answer, the attractive blonde was standing right behind him. He could smell her sweet, spicy perfume. She put her hand on the outside of his left arm and smiled, then squeezed his triceps muscles, hard. "You seem tight. You wanna get loosened up, honey?"
He turned his head and looked her way. "No,” he answered, then looked back at the ugly black woman. There was a scowl on her face. “I'm here to see Vanessa," he said to her.
"Vanessa isn't in today," she growled. "But Crystal, here, she can help. She'll show you a real good time for just two hundred bucks."
"Yeah, two hundred bucks an hour and I'm all yours, honey. I'll do anything you want. Anything," the blonde, whispered into his hear, her breath feeling warm on his skin, and seductively bit down on her bottom lip with her front teeth.
"No. Thanks," Beck said and shook his head. "Vanessa's the one I need to see."
It wasn’t the answer Crystal wanted. She scrunched up here face and let go of his arm, then stepped backward. "Asshole. It’s always fucking Vanessa," she sneered. "What the fuck's up with me?" she asked him.
He said nothing.
She made a face and sighed with discontent, then turned and shuffled off, her heels clip-clopping on the hard wood of the floor.
"Well, that was just plain rude," the ugly black woman barked, an even more menacing scowl on her ugly face. "And Vanessa's off duty."
"Call her up and bring her in," Beck said to her.
"I'll do nothing of the sort," she replied.
"Fine. But I'm not leaving here until I speak with her," he said and turned around and walked over to the left of the room and took a seat on a purple fabric sofa that faced the podium. Some sort of waiting area.
Shame about the view, the sofa's actually rather comfortable, he thought, then flicked his eyes over to the more pleasant sight of the attractive blonde named Crystal.
She was standing by the fire, awkwardly, almost, looking away, annoyed. Probably pondering her entire purpose in life in that single second.
The black woman's eyes widened. "What the? You can't wait...oh, Jesus. I'm going to call
management. You hear? DaMarcus gonna come out here and have your ass." She lifted the handset of a black corded phone from underneath the podium and pressed the first number on speed dial, not once taking her eyes off Beck. Her gaze was penetrating.
"DaMarcus, we got a situation out front. Some asshole's come in, disrespected Crystal and is demanding to speak with Vanessa. I told him she was off duty, but he said he's not going anywhere until he sees her. You had better come out here." She nodded, then hung up the phone.
Crystal foresaw that a situation was unfolding and quickly ducked behind the purple curtains and disappeared through to the back. Beck stole an admiring glance at her as she stepped through. There was nothing wrong with her at all, just he was there for business, not pleasure. The clip clopping sound of her footsteps faded to silence.
The ugly black woman followed her, but not before giving him a stern warning. "You got about two seconds. If I was you, I'd get my ass the hell out that door,” she said, scowling and pointing toward the exit.
Beck flicked his head upward, dismissing her threat, an unconcerned look on his face, as if he couldn’t care less.
She shook her head and stepped through the curtain.
A moment later, two men stepped out from behind it. They were big. And black. Maybe six-three. And muscular. Dressed in white sneakers, black jogging pants with cuffed ankles and white tank tops. One had short clipped hair and the other had thick cornrows. They both had thick, muscular arms, maybe as big as tree trunks, and fat, round flabby stomachs. They stepped through the curtain with puffed out chests and the confident swagger of two men in charge. Their eyes scanned the waiting area and settled on Beck.
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