He thought about blasting in the front door and grabbing Vladimir Polanski by the scruff of his neck and beating his ass, but he didn't know for sure or not if he was there. And Naomi needed him. Fast. Instead, he quickly wiped the snow and ice from his Camaro's windshield with the back of his right hand, drew the key from his coat and unlocked the car. He climbed inside and fired it up, turned up the heating and set off for Naomi's motel in Dearborn.
He followed Michigan Avenue east all the way for about ten minutes, a Bruce Springsteen album playing through the car's sound system, until he saw the Value Inn up ahead on his left on the other side of the street.
It was a white roughcasted building with a grey slate snowswept roof. It had a large porte-cochere at the front that faced onto an empty parking lot and overhung an icy white concrete drive.
Beck crossed the road and pulled the Camaro into the lot. He drove past the porte-cochere and headed around to the back of the building where he parked up in a spot outside room twelve, next to Naomi's white RCZ that was sitting nose-in in the spot outside the window of room thirteen.
He hushed the Camaro's engine and jumped out to the cold and knocked on the motel room's navy blue wooden door, rapping his knuckles on the wood three times. Just as he had done with her salon's glass door the night before.
The light was on and Naomi was inside. She was moving around by the foot of the bed, pacing back and forth. He could see her silhouette through the light net curtain.
She came over to the window and poked her head around the side of the curtain, saw him and opened the door.
She was wearing dark crop pants and a light grey woolen coat over her black silk salon shirt. A light and dark grey checked scarf hung loose around her neck. Her hair was straightened and her face was accented with makeup. She looked beautiful, but worried. Her eyes may have been sparkling, but they looked full and red and teary. And there was anxiety on her face.
She held up her cell phone for Beck to see. Her hand, shaking. "Look."
Beck looked at the screen.
It displayed a picture of a little blond-haired boy tied up and lying side-on, curled up in the trunk of a black car. He was wearing a royal blue sweater and fawn chinos. There were no shoes on his feet, just black socks. His wrists and ankles were bound together with rope. And there was a strip of brown duct tape across his mouth. He was chalk white. And crying. Tears looked to be trickling down his face. He looked terrified.
Beck glanced at Naomi. There were tears in her eyes. She sucked a breath and swiped the phone's screen. Another picture popped up. It was of the same little boy, this time showing a rear view of him strapped to a brown wooden dining chair with duct tape, sitting in the corner of a room with salmon pink walls and a black carpet. He was tied to the chair with rope, his little arms down by his sides, and it looked as if his mouth was still gagged with duct tape.
Beck shook his head, a flash of concern on his face.
Naomi minimized the picture and a message appeared on a chat thread below it. The message said, '7000 Tuxedo Street.'
Beck glanced at it, then flicked his eyes up at her, worry in his eyes. "Is this it? Did they say or send anything else?"
She shook her head and allowed her iPhone's screen to fade to black. Lowered it by her side.
"Aren't there any specifics, like a time or further instructions?"
She shook her head, again. "No. Just his picture and that address."
"Then, this isn't a ransom exchange."
"What?" she asked, surprised. "What do you mean?"
He shook his head, slowly. "If this was an exchange, they would have detailed the specifics. They would've given a time, reinforced the amount and, maybe, even, told you to come alone. They would, probably, even, have specified exactly where to park your car and given the procedure to follow for when you approach whatever's at that location."
"Well, what is it, then?" she asked and slipped her iPhone into the pocket of her coat.
"I don't know," he said, grimly, fearing the worst. "But we're going to have to go to that address and find out. That's for damn sure."
She exhaled a slow breath. Her face had gone pale. Chalk white, almost. Sickly.
He reached out and took her hand. Held it tight. "Whatever this is, I'm behind you. A thousand percent."
She nodded, vaguely, a distant, glazed-over look in her eyes.
"Let's get going," he said to her and gestured out the door toward his car.
Naomi nodded and slipped out the door, pulled it shut and locked it behind her, leaving the key in the slot. She shivered in the icy chill of the air and hurried to Beck's car, rubbing her arms with the palms of her hands to get some heat into her body.
Beck grabbed the key from slot of her door, then unlocked his car.
She jumped in.
He followed her, giving her the key to her motel room and putting on his gloves after getting in.
"Oh," she said, cupping it in her left hand and staring out the windshield at the curtained window of her room, the light still on inside. "Thanks. I didn't even realise."
"Don't mention it," he said and fired up the Camaro's engine.
The car roared to life. The heating kicked in and set a whirring blast of hot, dry air out across their faces. Then, the sound system came on and another Bruce Springsteen track started up. It was the River, distinguishable from its distinctive harmonica opening.
Beck thought about what the guy in the hardware store named Rijkaard's had said and quickly switched it off. In a chilling silence, he backed the Camaro out of the slot, locked the wheel and spun it around. Then, gunned its engine out onto Jonathon Street.
FORTY
Beck and Naomi pulled onto Tuxedo Street about fifteen minutes after leaving the motel. The place was the picture of destitution. 'Foreclosed' and 'For Sale' signs lined either side of the road and every home was nothing more than a whiteout derelict, crumbling shack. It was hard to imagine how anybody could ever have lived there.
The one they were looking for was the house at the end of the row. Like all the others, it was single-story, grey and wooden. The wood was black with rot. Its roof and open-air front porch were covered with snow, the porch itself ringed with a rusting black wrought iron fence that was covered with a layer of white permafrost about two inches thick. The snow in the front lawn was knee-high and looked compacted enough to be hard as nails. But not all of the front yard was snowswept. A pathway, maybe, a snow shovel head's width wide had been cleared from the sidewalk to the home's rotting black front door.
Beck eased the Camaro to a halt by the curb two houses back and killed the engine.
Naomi moved to open the door.
He put his hand across her chest and said, "Wait."
She looked him a question.
"This could be a trap," he said, not once taking his eyes off the home and surrounding area. He scanned the windows and front yard and road outside, looking for the signs. Shadows, cars, anything. Anything that would signify the presence of life, the presence of people lying in wait.
He saw nothing. No snow-free cars ahead or behind, no shadows cast on the Arctic white snow, no silhouettes in the windows of the adjacent run-down homes and no footprints leading to the doorways nearby. It seemed like there was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. But he was cautious. He preferred that they wait a little longer, thinking that people get anxious. Impatient. Trigger happy. He worried that any of the doors could swing open at any moment.
Five more minutes passed by with no signs of anyone.
Beck nodded, slowly, and said, "OK. Lets go." Then, he drew his Smith & Wesson from the pocket of his coat, as a precaution, and got out of the car.
Naomi followed behind.
They walked up the sidewalk, Beck first, holding his gun by his side, primed and ready, his right forefinger looped through the trigger guard. Naomi walked close behind. The snow crunched under their feet and their breath made warm clouds in the icy air.
At th
e edge of the yard, Beck looked down the street, then craned his head left and right, and turned and looked behind. The street was empty and there were still no signs of anyone or anything. He looked at Naomi and nodded toward the home, gesturing her to follow him in.
She nodded, shivering in the cold.
They walked up shoveled front path and climbed the three rickety steps to the open-air porch. The home's front door was ajar. It was open maybe two inches and looked primed, like somebody had left it that way for a reason.
Beck sucked a breath of the chill air and raised his gun. Then, slowly, pushed the door open. The hinge squeaked and the wood creaked, then the door collapsed sideward from its frame, landing with a bang on the hard wooden floor of the entrance hall. It disintegrated into about twenty pieces.
Beck and Naomi froze a second, waiting for somebody to appear inside, in response to the loud thud.
Nothing happened. Nobody appeared.
Naomi glanced in and looked at Beck.
He stepped in over the broken fragments of wood, Naomi following behind, looking ahead inside, checking for signs of movement.
There were none.
The entrance was small, and rectangular, maybe ten-feet-wide by twenty-feet-deep. It smelled of damp and dust and rot. And it was cold. Freezing, actually. The undoubtedly condemned heating system quivered under the menace of the winter Arctic chill. There were doors all around. They were wooden, white. Painted. The paint was cracked and chipped. All of the doors were closed.
As they walked down the hall, Beck checked the rooms on either side. Working right, then left. He opened the doors and looked inside the rooms, making sure they were clear, that nobody was lurking inside them.
Passing over the ramshackle that was left of the home's two long-abandoned bedrooms, lounge and dilapidated kitchen, they came to the last door on the left. There was a message carved into it with what looked to be a sharp, pointed instrument. A knife, perhaps. The paint had been scraped from the wood. The message ominously said, 'In Here.'
Naomi glanced at Beck. Beck glanced at Naomi. They each swallowed hard and braced themselves for whatever or whoever was on the other side of the door. Beck held his Smith & Wesson steady, aimed forward at waist height, ready to fire on the first hint of movement. He reached for the handle and opened the door, then pushed it open.
Behind the door was a bathroom. Once cream and white, the floor tiles were chipped and cracked and covered in a thick brown layer of dirt and dust. Some were missing entirely. The wall tiles were the same. They were broken and brown with grime. There was a toilet and sink straight ahead, they were covered in a thick black coating of decay. There was no sight or sound of anybody inside.
Beck stepped in. Naomi followed behind him. Small fragments of tiles shattered under the soles of their shoes.
He saw a bathtub on the right behind the door. It was fixed to the wall. It was in the same condition as the other fittings, decrepit and broken, except it was filled to the brim with sludgy brown water.
Naomi looked at him, confusion on her face and questions in her eyes.
He looked back at her, shaking his head slowly. Then, he noticed something duct taped to the back of the bathroom door. A piece of paper. A5 in size. It flapped lightly under the tremor of the air.
He reached out and swung the door over toward its frame and whipped the paper from the duct tape.
Naomi saw what it was and gasped.
It was a photograph of a little baby boy wrapped in a white woolen shawl.
"Jesus," she said. "That's, that's, that's."
Beck looked her way. She was white with fright and her hand was up over her mouth.
She gulped. "That's the photo of Josh that I kept in my bedroom drawer." There was distress on her face. She brought her right hand up against her forehead. "They've been inside my apartment. They've been inside my bedroom." She retched at the thought.
Beck grimaced and turned it over. She was right. His name and date of birth was there, handwritten in neat black ink. But so was another, newer-looking passage scribbled in blue ink from a fountain pen. He flicked his eyes across it and read the words out loud.
"You're here, because you owe me. If you don't pay up, we do to your son the same as we've done to this guy. Except, you won't find him in a bathtub. You'll find him at the bottom of the Detroit River. You want to keep your son alive? Pay up. $4,000 in $20 bills. Newark Street behind Michigan Central Station. Midnight, tonight. Come alone. And bring the money in a brown envelope. His life depends on it."
Naomi's face clouded over.
Beck lowered the photograph and looked at the bathtub. He swallowed and holstered his Smith & Wesson in the pocket of his coat, stepped over and yanked the lever switch behind the chrome mixer tap.
It broke between his fingers, but the plug whipped from the hole. The pipes gurgled and groaned.
Naomi and Beck watched on, Naomi looking sick with worry, Beck looking apprehensive, but curious, as a whirlpool appeared above the plughole and the brown water swirled around and drained away to a gurgling swooshing sound.
As the water level dropped, a man's body appeared. He was dishevelled-looking, wet and old. He had the hair of somebody who hadn't seen a barber or a shampoo bottle in years. It was long and straggly, dirty and tangled. And he had the beard to match. It hung down from his chin and twisted into damp knots over his chest. His ankles and wrists looked smashed. His hands and feet were sitting at one hundred and eighty degree angles the opposite way from how they should've been. And his body was bruised. Badly. It was peppered with deep black circles and bloodshot welts. His eyes and mouth were wide open, looking almost afraid and aghast. His rotten yellow teeth were smashed and his lips looked pulverized to bloodied pulp. He was also completely naked and wrapped in chicken wire, from head to toe.
Naomi gasped and turned around and retched. She leaned over and her stomach heaved.
Beck grimaced. He had saw people leaving messages before, but nothing like this. What they had done to the poor guy in the tub was just sick. It was chilling. He heard and saw Naomi. "Don't puke. You can't leave that at a scene like this," he said. "We need to go. We need to get the hell out of here."
Naomi leaned back up and nodded, sobbing, a grim look on her face.
They stepped back out to the hall.
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes, and nodded back toward the bathroom. "What am I going to do?" she asked him, her voice sounding weak and broken.
Beck thought about it for a beat. "There's only two things you can do," he answered. "One, pay the money."
Fear entered her eyes. "I can't. I can't pay money I don't have."
"Well, that leaves option two," he said.
They walked out the front door to the snowy yard. She gulped and shivered and looked him the question.
"Fight."
"How can I?," she replied and shook her head. "Didn't you understand what that message said? Didn't you see what they did to that poor man? We can't risk them doing the same to my son." She bit down on her lip and looked away.
"Then, you have to pay the money."
"How? I already told you I don't have it."
Beck sucked a breath and thought about it. "Well, I've got around three-and-a-half thousand dollars on hand. About five hundred bucks in my wallet and another three grand in the car. I can draw another five hundred from the bank, make it up to the four thousand they want."
She shook her head. "No. I can't ask you to..."
"You're not asking. I'm offering. Besides, it's the least I can do. After all, I feel partly to blame. What happened at your salon seemed to just make things worse."
Naomi said nothing. She agreed, but didn't want to say. Not right then.
Beck unlocked the Camaro and looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty. "We got three-and-a-half hours until midnight. Lets go find an ATM and I'll draw you the cash."
FORTY-ONE
After Vladimir Polanski left the message on Naomi's voicem
ail and sent her the photograph of Josh, he had briefly sat back and relaxed on the skybox's black leather sofa drinking his delightfully expensive champagne and watched Josh quiver, afraid, in the corner.
By seven o'clock, his mind began to wander. He began to think of Arshavin, Salenko and Zurawski pulling into the Rockwood PD's parking lot and walking into the station house. He imagined Malenko greeting them at the door and leading them to Joe Beck's cell. He figured Joe Beck's face would have been a picture when he saw them appear on the other side of the bars. He would have loved to have saw it.
By seven-thirty, he began to wonder if it had been done. He glanced down at his iPhone. There were no new notifications. He took a sip of champagne and nodded, figuring that, maybe, they were taking their time. That they were beating him up and down the jail cell, whipping his ass like a government mule, teaching him a lesson.
By seven forty-five, he checked his iPhone again. There were no new notifications. He drank some champagne and relaxed, looked at Josh sobbing under the threat of his presence.
But by eight o'clock, he began to worry. He put his flute of champagne down on the black and pink marble table to his right and stood up and began pacing the room.
It was almost as if Josh Hefter was invisible, whimpering in the corner. Polanski paid him no attention. Instead, he walked back and forth and back and forth, wondering why nobody had messaged or called to say it was done. He went over to the window and looked down on the bar.
It was lavish. Rose gold in the shape of a half-rectangle, standing about chest-height from the floor, with a bartop that was shiny and specked with flashes of pink. Bottles lined the shelves high on the wall behind it. Everything from vodka to whisky, to spirits and pre-mixed cocktails. Red and white wines and an array of champagne fit for a king. There was also a few tall glass bottles of some sort of pink alcoholic liquid.
Trudeaux and Adamczuk were there. Trudeaux was standing behind the bar, casually wiping the counter with a black cloth, while Adamczuk was sitting on a bar stool, sipping what looked like a measure of vodka from a shot glass, a bottle of Lubuski on the counter beside him. They were talking. It looked like they were going over the evening's plan.
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