Beck wriggled toward the Chevy's back right tire. The only one left still fully intact. The car's cold metal underbody was only about two, maybe three, inches from his nose.
The Rotterman at the back of the car was behind him, maybe only six or seven inches away by its trunk. It hunkered down and pressed its head under the car, pushing its snout into the gap between the lower skirt of the car and the ground. It snapped and snarled and pushed its way in as far as it could, trying to get him.
It was, maybe, only an inch away. Beck could feel its breath on the side of his neck, warm and wet, and he could feel splashes of its saliva spit across his cheek.
The other Rotterman did the same at the other side. It stuck its head in underneath the car's lower skirt and snapped his jaws at Beck's right arm and torso.
He could feel its teeth on the sleeve of his coat.
The sounds the dogs made were horrendous. They were like satanic devils, possessed in their pursuit of human flesh. Joe Beck's flesh.
He thought, right there, underneath the condemned Chevy, that there was no way out, that he was going to die. Either crushed by the weight of the falling vehicle, should they decide to bite out its last remaining tire, or eaten alive by the two hairy, hulking, four-legged monsters.
Joe Beck isn't a suicidal guy. But, for a brief second, he closed his eyes and let the thought enter his mind. It seemed like a viable third option, maybe the most humane way to go. But he thought of Naomi Hefter and what he had promised her, and he quickly dismissed it, shaking his head, and vowed to fight on, to conquer one of his utmost fears and stand up to the pair of snarling demons.
He turned his right hand back on himself and angled the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson up toward his ear, toward the mouth of the Rotterman that was trying to rip it from the side of his head. He flicked his eyes downward looking at his Smith & Wesson, the muzzle of the gun now barely visible in the corner of his eye, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was bright and thunderous. The muzzle flashed like a firecracker in the night sky on the fourth of July. The barrel lit up bright white and a few sparks flew from the end as the 9mm round tore from the Smith & Wesson's muzzle like a bat screaming its way out of hell.
The flash left him temporarily blinded, his eyes scalded by the intense brightness of the light. And the bang left a disorientating high-pitched sound ringing in his ears. Everything around him temporarily morphed to a distant blur.
He didn't even hear the Rotterman yelp as it caught the 9mm round with the back of its throat, or the crunching thud its rock hard body made when it toppled over to the snowy ground.
Beck came back around about ten seconds later, to the seething sound of last Rotterman still snarling beyond his head, its foul, venomous breath whipping through his hair. Unable to properly angle his gun around his head toward it, he thought fast and did something he thought would have been unimaginable, given the circumstances. He let go of his Smith & Wesson and stretched his his right arm out and reached back around his head toward the dog's mouth.
The dog saw his glove-clad fingers moving toward its jaws. Its eyes lit up like a fat man's at a buffet. It snapped at them like they were sticks of jerky, forcing its head in underneath the car even further, squeezing the skin of its face tight and back, its teeth now maybe only a half-inch from Beck's head and hand.
And that's exactly what Beck wanted. He quickly reached around the beast's mouth and head, and grabbed a hold of its steel chain collar, then whipped it forward, hard, with all of the strength he had. His arm shook with pressure as the steel chain cut into the dog's neck, forcing the side of its face in against the inside of the tire and squeezing the air from its throat.
All in all, it took just a couple of minutes. But it felt like a lifetime. Beck's arm and hand went numb and his shoulder hurt like hell. The Rotterman's snapping eased and slowed, becoming more like harmless flapping. It exhaled a painful breath, then went limp after its airways had collapsed.
Beck held on for, maybe, another minute or two longer than he needed to, making sure the job was done. Then, he let go of the chain and sighed. He lay there underneath the Chevy completely exhausted, physically and mentally drained, his nerves completely shattered.
It was only the thought of making amends for what had happened to Naomi's salon that made him get up.
He grabbed the lower skirt of the Chevy and hauled himself out from the underneath its collapsing dead weight. He grabbed his gun as he slid past, making his way out alongside the Rotterman's dead body, head-first, then shoulders and chest, then torso, then his lap and legs, and, finally, his feet. As he pulled his left foot out, the pressure from the car's slumping body caused the lug nuts to pop off the wheel studs that held its brown rusted wheel in place. It popped off and the car dropped to the frozen ground with a thud, crushing the dead Rotterman's head underneath it.
Beck breathed a sigh of relief and used the handle of the door to pull himself up. Standing on his feet, he dusted the light covering of frost and snow from his coat and pants, then looked around, checking for any more of the four-legged monsters. He saw and heard nothing. Not one sight or peep. He relaxed, but only slightly, and made his way deeper into the dark fog-filled yard of old cars, Smith & Wesson firmly in hand.
Deeper inside the salvage yard, Beck saw a glimmer of light shining up ahead amid the dense blanket of fog. It was small and square, like it was coming from a window, and it lit the fog up a glowing shade of yellow. He headed toward it and saw the outline of a cabin appear through the white, misty air.
It was a white wooden cabin, on one level and, maybe, twenty feet wide. Through the window, he could see the light on and the outline of a man moving around inside.
Beck continued toward it, right forefinger looped through the trigger guard of his Smith & Wesson, fingertip on the trigger. If the money wasn't inside, chances were, this guy would be able to tell him exactly where it was.
Reaching the cabin, Beck hunkered in against the side wall, standing up straight and trying to make himself as unnoticeable as possible. Difficult for a six-foot-five man dressed in black to do against a white background. But with his years of training in approaching and navigating hostile structures, he succeeded. He quietly eased his way along the cabin's exterior wall to its white wooden door at the far end, ducking under the window on the way past.
Thinking he didn't know exactly who or what was on the other side of the door, Beck decided not to breach. Instead, he knocked on the door and quickly ducked around the side of the cabin out of sight.
For the first one one or two beats, nothing happened. Then, he heard a click, followed by a machine gun spraying the door. It made a series of loud crackling pops. It sounded like popcorn being cooked on a scorching stove in a steel saucepan. The bullets pummeled the door, blasting about a hundred holes through the wood. The guy inside, obviously, hadn't been expecting any visitors.
Beck allowed another couple of long, nervous beats to pass, unsure whether or not there would be more gunfire. He figured there would be and stayed still, out of the line of fire.
There was. But just one more blast, like the guy had anticipated somebody ducking out of the way. The bullet from the machine gun ripped another hole through the door and whizzed off into the yard, smashing against the windshield of a car piled up in the distance to the shattering sound of glass.
A few seconds later, the door swung open and man stepped out. He was thin and old, about five-nine and he looked like he weighed around a hundred and eighty pounds. He had short grey hair and a red face with a nose covered in purple and blue spider veins, a sign of high blood pressure. He was wearing blue jeans and a white t-shirt. And he was carrying a black and brown AK-47 Russian assault rifle across his chest, one hand cupped under its brown lower handguard, the other wrapped around its brown pistol grip, with his right forefinger covering the trigger.
"How you like that, fucker?" he snarled, speaking in a deep Russian accent, as he stepped out
the door. He stopped, standing a couple of paces outside and looked around, expecting to see a dead body lying on the ground.
Instead, he saw nothing.
Beck waited another second or two for more men to join him. They didn't. There were none. Knowing the guy was the only one, he jumped around from the side of the cabin and shot him where he stood. But he didn't kill him. Not yet, anyway. Instead, he shot him on the hip.
The bullet tore into the guy's pelvis. He screamed in pain and dropped the AK-47 from his hands. It thumped against the ground. He collapsed sideward after it.
Beck stepped over and kicked the assault rifle out of the way, then leaned forward over the top of the guy and said, "Polanski told me I would find some money down here. You happen to know where it is?"
The guy writhed on the ground and groaned in pain. "Fuck you," he snarled.
"Oh, fuck me?" Beck asked. "I asked you a simple question, like a civilized adult, and that's the response I get?"
"Yeah. Fuck you, asshole," the guy yelled, grunting in pain, agony on his face and his hands on his waist.
"Asshole?" Beck asked. "That what you want? OK. I can be an asshole," he added, then raised his Smith & Wesson and shot the guy on the shoulder.
The gunshot was thunderous. But the impact was worse. The guy's bursa and clavicle exploded into chips of bone and fragments of flesh. Blood went everywhere. He howled in pain.
"The money. Where is it?" Beck asked him.
"Fuck you," the guy snarled, foaming from the mouth.
"Wrong answer," Beck said and angled the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson up to the guy's head and pulled the trigger, blowing a hole between his eyes.
The guy's head thumped back, hard, against the ground.
I wasn't getting shit from him, anyway, Beck thought and scooped up the AK-47, figuring that it would come in handy, then stepped into the cabin.
It was basic and fairly open-planned. Hot with heating. And empty. There was a spotless white kitchen off to the right, an open brown door at the back that led through to a toilet, another open door beside it that looked like it led through to a bedroom, and a small lounge ahead on the left. The lounge was nothing more than a wooden floor with white walls, a grey rug and a pine wooden coffee table with a green fabric soda and a television on on silver metallic stand. It wasn't switched on.
Beck looked around and went straight for the bedroom and bathroom, checking inside. They were empty. In fact, the whole cabin was empty. Too empty. Suspiciously empty. Not the sort of place that would be buried deep in a salvage yard full of starving dogs and guarded by an AK-47 wielding Russian gunman for no reason. The money was in there. And Beck knew it. It was just a matter of finding exactly where it was kept.
He walked into the lounge and sat down on the sofa, laying the AK-47 down on the seat beside him. The sofa was hard and uncomfortable. But he didn't care. He was too busy looking around, thinking.
The walls looked pristine and smooth, like they had been plastered some time ago, so it probably wasn't in there. Nor was it in the bedroom under the bed. He had checked in there. Same for the bathroom. It wasn't hidden inside the fixtures and fittings. He had checked. He thought about it some more.
The kitchen. He walked into it and opened the cupboard doors. He found some stainless steel cutlery, navy blue crockery and some canned and packaged cupboard food. Stuff like soups, canned meat and beans. But no money. He looked back into the lounge.
The sofa. He walked over and lifted one of the cushions and checked underneath. Nothing but fiber and foam. He shook his head. It's in here. It has to be, he thought and stepped backward onto the rug, and that's when the floor creaked.
He spun around and looked down at it. Reached forward and swiped the pine coffee table aside. It hit the wall with a bang. He did the same with the rug, lifted it and slung it aside to his right toward the kitchen. And that was when he saw it.
A wooden trap door with a wrought-iron ring handle.
He grabbed the handle and pulled.
The door barely moved. It was locked. Tight.
Shit, he thought. There must be a key. Somewhere. He thought about the old Russian with the assault rifle and darted outside. Swept the pockets of his jeans and found it nestled in the bottom of the guy's back pocket alongside a stubbed out cigarette, a wallet and a pack of gum. He glanced at the wallet and looked inside. There was a Michigan driver's license, but not much else. Beck glanced at it. The guy was Russian, indeed. From a place called Omsk. His name was Dragan Mladenovic.
Beck slung the wallet aside and rushed back into the cabin, where he slipped the key into the slot on the wrought-iron handle. He turned it to the right.
Nothing.
He turned it to the left.
Result. The locking mechanism clicked and the lock sprung open. The door jumped in its frame.
He grabbed the handle for the second time and whipped the trap door back. Practically tore it from its metal hinges and looked underneath.
Underneath the door, there was a gaping hole, maybe four-feet-wide by as much as seven-feet-deep. It was filled with black holdall bags. Lots of them.
He reached in and lifted one of the bags out. It was heavy and full-looking, like something was inside. He undid its zip.
As the zip eased back and the black teeth parted, the money appeared. Green and white dollar bills in various denominations. Fives, tens, twenties, fifties, hundreds. Thousands of them. All stuffed into the bag in a loose pile. It was filled with it. Maybe three or four thousand bills, making about fifty thousand bucks, judging by the weight, the volume and the denominations he could see.
He lifted a handful of bills out and beamed, then looked down into the trap door and counted another thirty-eight bags, all of them as big and full-looking as the one he had opened. He sat back on the floor and took a deep puff of the warm cabin air and realized he had hit the motherload. He grinned, then got to work. He grabbed the other bags and lifted them out of the hole, one by one, quickly unzipping each of them to verify the contents, while roughly tallying up the total amount as he went.
One hundred thousand. One hundred and fifty thousand. Two hundred thousand. And beyond. All the bags out of the hole and piled up in the cabin's bare lounge, he estimated it to amount to about two million dollars, and sat back on the floor, again, in dreaming daze, all thirty-nine of the black bags rammed full of cash sitting stacked up beside him.
Almost two million dollars, he thought. One hell of a lot of money.
He thought about taking the lot and just taking off, disappearing into the sunset, maybe going down to Florida and kicking back for the rest of his days. Living the good life and buying a boat and the biggest BBQ grill that money can buy. He smiled, picturing himself slapping the biggest of steaks down on the flaming hot grill while casually sipping a double bourbon and watching them sizzle, slowly, for no reason other than because he could. It was a nice prospect.
Then, thought of Naomi and her salon and everything she had been through with her son. Next, he thought about the old guy at the hardware store. He thought about the plight Polanski had put him through and realized that some of this cash really belonged to him. And that's when he made up his mind and decided to do the right thing.
Four bags at a time, about two hundred thousand dollars or about thirty pounds of weight, he carried them back through the salvage yard and out the palisade gate and put them in the trunk of the Camaro, then went back for more.
He filled the trunk first, then the back, piling the bags on top of each other all the way up to the roof. He put the last of them in the front, filling the space beneath the glove box and piling them up on the passenger's seat.
About an hour later and one bag left to squeeze in, he got in and sat on the driver's seat and laid it down on his lap, closed the door and started the Camaro's powerful engine.
The car rumbled to life and the heating came on. The warm air felt good blowing against his skin. The sound system followed it and kicked in a s
econd later and Bruce Springsteen giving a live rendition of Born to Run began to play.
Beck sat back and smiled, a rich man, listening to the mouth organ and gentle stroking on the frets of the guitar and 'The Boss' singing about a runaway American dream, then slipped the Camaro into gear and set off northbound back toward Detroit.
FIFTY-TWO
After two local cops found the Rockwood Police Station reduced to a blackened pile of ash, all hell broke loose. They alerted the Michigan State Police, who alerted the FBI, who alerted the ATF because it was an arson-related crime. Together, they formed a multi-agency task force, with the objective to find the person or persons responsible for what they deemed to be a 'cop killing.' It soon became one of the biggest investigative cases in the history of the state of Michigan.
The task force combed the scene with a fine tooth comb. They bagged and tagged every shred of evidence they could find, although what they found was limited given the chemical fire destroyed virtually everything. They went back and checked up on everyone who had ever been catalogued by the Rockwood Police Department for the past ten years, irrespective of severity, whether it was for committing a homicide or failing to pay a parking ticket. They looked at everything and everyone, hunted down those whose sentences had been served and even the one who had been implicated, but never charged. Nobody genuinely knew anything about it, and in the end they found nothing to directly link it to Joe Beck.
The same was true for the bodies of the two Russians, Kanchelskis and Kuznetsov, found shot to death on Newark Street. Detroit PD opened a murder investigation, but with an absence of concrete evidence beyond a few spent brass shell casings without a gun to match them to, no witnesses and a shortage of leads, the case soon went cold.
A murder investigation was also opened for David Maus's assistant. Police quickly named Darius Adamczuk, Arshavin, Salenko and Zurawski as the main suspects based on CCTV footage nearby showing the men entering the office before her approximate time of death and, then, leaving immediately afterward. An eye witness also placed them at the scene, claiming they heard the gunshot that had killed her.
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