Beck put down another guy in the corridor. A big, burly European-looking, skinhead brute. He had appeared from practically nowhere, coming out of a black door on the right that had a 'Restroom' sign. Beck caught him on the nose with a stiff forearm smash and put him down with a hard punt to the balls. Then, killed him where he lay with a savage twist of his neck. He grabbed the guy's head, left hand under his chin and right hand over his scalp, pulled and jerked it sideward. The guy's fifth cervical vertebrae fractured and he died, instantly. It all happened in seconds. The guy having just stepped out the door, the fly of his pants still probably undone.
Beck left him lying on the floor and continued down the corridor to the end of the hallway, past the grey fire door he entered through, and turned left down another corridor, where he saw another black wooden door with a pink stainless steel sign on the front that said, 'Stairwell.' He pushed the door open and stepped into the stairwell.
It was cold and dark. Grey concrete walls and grey concrete steps. Dull orange lights hung down overhead. They buzzed and flickered and emitted a gloomy orange glow.
He ascended the stairs slowly, taking light steps, careful not to alert anyone else, who might be on them on the floor above, to his presence.
There was nobody there.
At the top of the stairs, Beck stepped through another black wooden door. It took him out into another corridor. This one was lavish and corporate-feeling. It had salmon pink papered walls and a thick black carpet.
There was another security guy there. He was standing in front of a black wooden door, the door that Beck presumed led to Vladimir Polanski's skybox. He was standing up straight, his arms folded and his head straight ahead. He looked big and heavy, about six-four and somewhere north of two-fifty. There was a deadpan look on his face. He looked like a man not many people would mess with.
The guy saw Beck come through the door and realized he wasn't supposed to be there. He unfolded his arms and pulled a menacing scowl and charged toward him, his right hand balled into a sledgehammer-like fist. He swung his arm back in the motion of a right hook.
Beck quickly drew his knife from the pocket of his coat and ducked the guy's vicious punch. Then, he stuck him deep in the stomach with the blade.
The guy grunted and flopped forward.
Beck let go of the knife and grabbed a hold of the guy's head with a firm grip of his massive ears. He held his head in place, tight, and kneed his face with savage brutality.
Right knee.
Left knee.
Right knee.
Then, finally, another left knee. That was the one that killed him. The guy's face disintegrated like a watermelon smashed with a lead pipe. He went boneless and Beck threw him to the floor. He dropped to the carpet in a beaten, mangled mess, landing side-on and rolling onto his back.
Beck sucked a breath and composed himself. That guy had been a job of work. But the elevator's bell pinged and the doors slid open. Then, a man stepped out. He had shiny brown hair styled in a slick pompadour and a smooth-skinned, pampered-looking face. He was wearing a shiny purple suit with a white shirt and pink and purple striped necktie, and he was carrying flute of champagne in his hand.
It was Calvin Trudeaux.
He stepped out into the corridor and saw Beck, then saw the security guy lying dead on the floor by the skybox door, his face nothing but a mass of bloodied bone and squishy red flesh, a knife sticking out of his stomach. He froze where he stood and gasped. His eyes widened. "What the?" he said, a mixed look of shock, surprise and fear on his face.
Beck stepped toward him and answered the question with a hard right jab to his nose and mouth. Hand glove-clad or not, the force was incredible. Trudeaux caved backward against the elevator's closed steel doors, bounced off them and crumpled to the floor. The flute of champagne flew from his hand and smashed on the elevator's metal frame. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth, his nose broken and his teeth shattered.
He brought his hand to his face and gently touched his nose and upper lip. It felt tender and sore and warm, sticky and wet. The pain shot up through his face. He stared at his blood-smeared fingertips in a horrified daze, thinking his face was ruined. Mangled. It hadn't quite dawned on him that it was the least of his worries.
Beck reached down and grabbed a hold of his hair, then smashed the side of his head against the elevator door. His skull made a loud, painful bang against the steel. He felt the pain howl around his head and shoot through his brain. Everything faded to a blur and, then, to a permanent black. His arms and legs twitched for a brief moment and he died lying slumped against the elevator doors.
Whoever else is in there is sure to get a surprise, Beck thought as he sucked a breath, having turned around and looked at the door the foreign goon had been guarding. But only one name flashed through his mind.
Vladimir Polanski.
Beck charged toward the door, whipped his knife from the dead guard's stomach and grabbed the door handle, flicked his wrist and opened the door. Then, stepped inside.
The skybox was lavish. Black and pink, it oozed with flamboyance and grandeur. Beck saw black, pink and white abstract art on salmon pink walls, black and pink marble tables and two black padded leather sofas sitting opposite each other on the thick black carpet.
Vladimir Polanski was sitting relaxing on the black padded leather sofa on the left, side-on to the door. His eyes were closed and he was sipping champagne from a near empty flute he held in his hand. It seemed an impossible feat, given the size of his nose. He was sitting back, relaxed and completely oblivious to what had just happened on the other side of the wall.
Josh Hefter was there, too. Alive and well. But far from comfortable. Beck saw him tied up and sitting strapped to a black wooden dining chair in the corner of the room on his right, a strip of brown duct tape also fastened over his mouth.
Feeling a draught creep in the door, Polanski opened his eyes and turned around hoping it would be Trudeaux with a fresh flute of champagne. But it wasn't. It was a six-foot-five, full-framed, muscle-bound, menacing hulk of a man dressed in black, with a scowl on his face, seething anger raging in his eyes and a knife in his hand.
Polanski gasped and grabbed the baseball bat from the cushion of the sofa on his left and moved to stand up.
Beck charged toward him and pushed him back down before he could steady himself on his feet. He dropped his knife to the carpet and grabbed the baseball bat from Polanski's hand and tossed it across the room, catching a whiff of Polanski's overly sweet cologne. It was disgusting. The baseball bat banged off the smooth pink papered breezeblock wall and landed on the carpet.
"You Vladimir Polanski?" Beck asked him.
Polanski stared up at him in horror, his eyes wide open and his mouth agape. He was in big trouble and he knew it.
Beck took his stunned silence as the answer. "This is for burning Naomi Hefter's salon to the ground," he snarled and smashed his face with a vicious left hook.
It broke Polanski's massive nose and knocked him off the sofa to the carpet. Even dislodged a few of his teeth from his gum. They went flying across the room and bounced off the thick glass window that looked down onto the dance floor.
Polanski groaned in pain, then brought himself up onto all fours on the carpet in front of the sofa, shaking and grunting and spitting blood from his mouth.
"I hear you know a guy named Rijkaard?" Beck asked him, rhetorically. "Owns a hardware store. I hear you've been making him pay you four thousand bucks a month for years? Telling him you'll murder his family if he stops?"
Polanski grunted his answer. It wasn't a yes or a no. Just a mere acknowledgement of the fact.
"Well, this is for Rijkaard and every dime you extorted from that poor old man," Beck shouted and blasted Polanski's ribs with a brutal right punt kick.
It knocked Polanski over on his side. He crashed back against the sofa and yelped in pain.
Beck reached down and grabbed a hold of his suit jacket and lifted him up fr
om the floor. He was heavy, but Beck's adrenaline was flowing like an injection of nitrous oxide into a car engine. He hauled him up from the carpet like he weighed nothing more than a newspaper and looked him deep in the eye. "See that innocent little boy you got tied up in the corner?" He nodded toward Josh Hefter and balled his right hand into a rock-like fist.
Polanski shook his head and grunted in a pained daze.
"This one's for him," Beck said and smashed his chin with a ferocious uppercut.
It knocked Polanski clean off his feet. His head snapped backward and he went flying up into the air. He landed back on the sofa and bounced on the cushions with a thump.
Beck glanced down at the knife he had dropped onto the carpet. He leaned over and lifted it up. Then, quickly plunged it down into Polanski's left thigh, about a half-inch above his knee cap.
Polanski screamed in pain. It was agonizing.
"That was for the butcher and his family, who I heard you dumped in the Detroit River," Beck said to him, then twisted the knife.
The blade carved through Polanski's leg as it turned, carving at his fat and muscle and scraping on his bone.
He screamed, again, even louder than before. Tears ran down his face and blood dripped down his chin. It stained his shirt a murderous shade of red.
Beck walked over and lifted the baseball bat from the other side of the room. It was hard and wooden, yet it felt light in his hand. He ran his eyes along the its barrel, taking in every scrape and scratch and time-faded splodge of blood. He wondered just how many people had felt it whip against their bodies, then looked over at Polanski.
His face was scarlet. He was sweating and shaking his head back and forth, grunting in pain. His legs were open wide and his left hand was wrapped around the butt of Beck's knife, trying to get enough grip to pull it out of his thigh. He opened his mouth and gasped for air. A thick red stream of blood ran down his upper lip and spilled onto his sparkling white teeth, staining them a grisly shade of orange and red.
"Please," he breathed, leaning back on the sofa, looking at Beck, a merciful begging look in his eyes.
"Please?" Beck asked, incredulous. "I bet that's what you heard from your victims a hundred times."
Polanski shook his head back and forth and grunted. "Please."
"Should have thought of that before you started extorting good, hard-working people out of their hard-earned money," Beck said and stepped toward him, ominously, carrying the baseball bat in his right hand, down by the side of his leg.
Polanski grimaced and grunted.
"Where is it?" Beck asked him.
"Where's what?" Polanski wheezed.
"The money. Where's all the money?"
"What money?"
"Don't give me that shit," Beck answered and wrapped both hands around the grip of the baseball bat, swung it back and forth and blasted Polanski's right knee.
The blow was hard. It hit his knee cap to the sound of a loud crack.
Polanski screamed like Tom Heaton had the night before.
But nobody could hear him. The skybox was practically sound proofed. It even dulled the music from down in the club to nothing but a low, rhythmic beat.
Beck swung the bat back and hit him, again. In the exact same spot he had hit him before.
Polanski's knee shattered into pieces. He screamed, again. This time, louder than last. He twisted and writhed and the tears streamed down his painstaking face.
"Well? Where the fuck is it?" Beck snarled.
"Fuck you," Polanski squealed.
"No," Beck replied. "Fuck you." He swung the bat and blasted Polanski's right knee, again.
Polanski roared in agony.
The pain was immense. It shot down his shin to his toes, then screamed back up to his broken knee. It was like nothing he had ever felt before. Unbearable. Torturous. Snot and blood dripped from his nose and mouth. And he seethed in agony and anger, sucking breath after breath, knowing that each one was another breath closer to his last. He looked back at the door, one last hopeful look in his eyes.
Beck saw it and shook his head. "There's nobody coming to help. Most of your men are dead. And nobody else can hear thing."
Polanski closed his eyes and sighed, painfully.
Beck dropped the baseball bat to the carpet and drew his Smith & Wesson from his coat pocket. He looped his right finger through its trigger guard and pressed its muzzle hard against Polanski's forehead and said, "I'm giving you one last chance to live."
Polanski stared back at him through seething, agonizing eyes.
"Tell me where you keep the money."
Polanski hesitated at first, then glanced around the room and saw Josh Hefter crying in the corner and Joe Beck standing right in front of him. He felt the muzzle of the gun cold and hard against his head and realized that this was the end, that nothing really mattered anymore. He coughed out his answer. "Salvage yard."
"Salvage yard, where?" Beck asked him, pushing his head backward with the gun.
"Rockwood."
Beck nodded. "That wasn't so hard, now, was it?"
Polanski said nothing. He just closed his eyes.
"Now, this one's for everyone else you've ever cheated out of a dime, hurt or victimized. And for trying to have me killed," he said and pulled the trigger.
Bang.
The gunshot rumbled around the room. It sounded like a one thousand page encyclopedia falling from a shelf onto a hard wooden floor.
Polanski's head snapped backward and rolled to a rest over his left shoulder, a dark fleshy hole between his eyes and blood spilling down his face.
Beck wiped the muzzle of his gun on Polanski's suit jacket, then stuck it back into his pocket.
He took a breath and looked at the mess that was left of the horror of a man who had haunted Detroit's streets for years, nodded at a job of work well and truly done and pulled his knife from Polanski's leg. He wiped that, too, on Polanski's suit jacket, then looked over at Josh Hefter, who was cowering on the chair, crying in the corner.
Beck staggered over to him and cut him loose with his knife, then eased the tape from his lips. He put the tape into his pocket and stuffed the rope down his coat, figuring it had Josh's DNA all over it.
Josh looked at him and cowered away, afraid, and cried.
Beck stuck the knife into his pocket and shook his head. "It's OK. I'm not here to hurt you."
Josh stared up at him, saying nothing.
Beck kneeled down and put his hand on his right shoulder. "It's all right, Josh. I'm here to take you home."
Josh looked up at him and stopped crying.
Beck nodded and smiled.
"Is it true?" Josh asked.
"Is what true?"
"What the bad man said about my mom?"
Beck flicked his eyes over to Polanski's dead body, then back to Josh. "What did he say?"
"That she's not real. That I was adopted."
Beck sucked a breath. Who the hell tells a child that? he thought. He nodded, slowly. "Yes. But that's who sent me to save you. Your real mom."
A tear slipped down Josh's face.
Beck wiped it away with the back of his glove-covered right forefinger. He sensed the warmth and softness of his skin through the glove.
"It's OK," he said. "Everything's going to be all right. I'm here to take you to your real mom."
Josh nodded, slowly, but said nothing.
"It's going to be OK, Josh. I promise."
Josh nodded and stepped toward him.
Beck smiled, gently. "That's it."
Josh walked into Beck's arms and cried.
Beck cupped the palm of his hand around the back of his head and pulled him in tight. "Shhhh," he whispered as Josh cried a little against his chest.
Beck glanced back at Polanski's body and looked down his watch. He realized it was time to go. "Josh," he said. "We have to go. OK?"
Josh nodded his understanding.
Beck smiled, again. He stood and lifted Josh up and
carried him to the open door in his left arm. He put his right hand into his pocket, wrapped it around the butt of his Smith & Wesson and stuck his head out and checked the corridor. It was clear. He darted for the stairwell door.
In the stairwell, he descended the steps quickly, as the situation required, but carefully, so not to fall. Beck made sure nobody was in front or behind them, checking after descending every flight and, eventually, they got to the ground floor. He opened the door and peeked out. He heard men's boots on the floor. It sounded like they were running away, down the corridor, toward the dance floor. Still holding Josh in his arm, he made sure the corridor was clear, then stepped out the stairwell door and made a break for the grey fire door he had originally entered through.
They slipped out through it, undetected, past the black Subaru and down the loading bay past the dumpsters to the parking lot. Beck paused at the edge of the building.
There were people outside in the parking lot. They had shocked and frightened faces. They were breathing white clouds of breath and shivering in the icy air. They had obviously noticed the grisly scene he had left on the dance floor.
He figured the men would be looking for whoever had done it. But he was comfortable that, as long as they made it to the car and got out onto the road, the men wouldn't find a thing. There were no cameras in the nightclub, either on the dance floor, in the corridors, in the stairwell or up in the skybox. It was obviously deliberate. A tactic Vladimir Polanski obviously employed to cover up what went on inside. A tactic that ultimately came back to bite him on the ass, Beck thought and slipped out into the crowd of people, holding Josh tight in his arm.
They made it to the car. Beck unlocked it. He put Josh in the back and buckled him in on the left passenger's seat behind the driver. Then, he got in and turned the key.
The Altima's starter motor clicked, but the engine didn't start. It must have been its battery waning from the cold.
Fuck, he thought, now's not the time or place for this shit.
A few Eastern Europeans were combing the parking lot, like they were looking for somebody. One of them had a flashlight. He shone it down the row, in the Altima's direction.
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