Unfortunately, there were too many of his positions underwater. He was going to have to monitor every holding closely, take advantage of every uptick, and close out anything immediately that turned south. It would mean constant attention over as many days and hours as he could get from Markov.

Crane kept pacing, trying to figure out his alternatives. He needed to know how this thing had suddenly blown up. What had Milstein told Markov?

He picked up his cordless phone and pulled on his headset so he could keep pacing. He punched a speed-dial number. Milstein answered on the second ring.

“Alan.”

“Yes. So Frederick, do you mind telling me what the fuck is going on?”

“Don’t shout at me.”

Crane shouted even louder. “I’ll fucking shout at you all I want. Markov almost took a hammer to me, and his goons tried to kill that guy you sent up here. Who the hell was he? He shot one of Markov’s men and crippled another before he got away. They practically destroyed my place. It took me two hours to clean up the blood.”

“What!?”

“You fucking heard me, Frederick, goddammit, or have you gone deaf?”

“All right. Calm down, Alan. Calm down. This is crazy. He was just supposed to go up there and hear your side of the story. Markov was supposed to explain to you the deal I made to pay off the woman, get you to agree to back off, and convince that thug to go away. What the hell happened?”

Crane took a deep breath.

“Christ. Tell me exactly what happened to you and what you told Markov. Then I’ll explain what happened here.”

It took five minutes for each man to fill in the other. Finally, Milstein said, “Alan, this is completely out of hand. We’ve got to contain this. We have to shut this down.”

“Forget it. You’re not shutting down Leonard Markov. Not after what happened up here.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“He wants to kill Olivia and Beck. And if I don’t close out millions in positions without incurring big losses, he’s going to kill me, too.”

“I can’t believe this is happening. Is Markov really threatening to kill you?”

“Yes. No. Not exactly. But he’s doing a good job of terrifying me into thinking anything is possible.”

“What do you want me to do, Alan?”

“Has Leonard called you?”

“Yes. I’m supposed to locate Olivia Sanchez for him.”

“So do it. What about Beck?”

“He wants me to find him, too.”

“Good. Find them and let Leonard take care of them.”

Milstein’s voice dropped into a tense whisper, “I’m not in the business of getting people killed, Alan. I didn’t even start this.”

“Neither did I. That bitch started it. And made it worse by sending in her tough guy threatening to kill you. And I’m sure he came up here thinking he could do the same to me. And now they’re both going to get what’s coming to them. It’s out of our hands.”

“This is going to cost us millions.”

“Maybe not, Freddy. I’ll get Markov his money. Hopefully, he’ll see how stupid it was demanding we close out his positions so quickly. Maybe I can talk him into putting everything back.”

“You really think so?”

“I don’t know. But I’m not giving up without a fight. You do whatever Markov wants. Keep him off my back while I squeeze everything out of his portfolio I can. We’ll see where it comes out. That’s all we can do.”

Milstein winced. “How bad is it going to be?”

“The portfolio could take a twenty, thirty percent hit.”

“Jeesuz.”

“Look, stop worrying about it. It’s my job. Just make Markov believe you’re doing everything you can for him.”

“Where’s Markov now?”

“How the fuck should I know? Probably gathering a million of his Bosnian ex-militia so he can go kill everybody in sight. Stay with it, Freddy. Markov is going to do what he wants to do. You do what you can to help him.”

Crane hung up.

28

Beck and Demarco arrived back in Red Hook just before 9 p.m. The bar downstairs was dark. They parked the Mercury Marauder across the street, stepped out of the car, and waited a few moments so they could be seen, just to make sure they wouldn’t be shot as they walked in the front door.

Beck wasn’t worried about Manny or Ciro, but he wasn’t taking any chances knowing that Ciro’s cousin Joey B had arrived to help guard the headquarters. Joey had a unique ability to act unencumbered by thought.

Beck and Demarco stood outside the front door, waiting. Beck took note of his new front window, the bottom third painted black exactly the way it had been. Ciro popped open the front door. Beck and Demarco entered quickly. Sure enough, Joey B had been planted in the bar downstairs with a shotgun. Beck greeted Joey B. He always got a kick out of trying to get his arms around Joey while receiving a bone-crushing hug from one of Joey’s huge arms.

Beck broke away from Joey B’s one-arm bear hug and asked Ciro, “Is Manny upstairs?”

“Yeah,” said Ciro. “Alex, too.”

“Okay, let’s go upstairs and talk. Joey, come with us and keep watch from the window up there. You can hear the plan.”

They quickly assembled around the coffee table. Joey stood at the second floor window looking out at the street, looking back at the others, walking from one end of the drapes to the other.

Just as Beck and the others sat down around the big coffee table, his cell buzzed.

“Yeah.”

Ricky Bolo’s voice asked him, “So we made it over to that Tribeca address you gave us.”

“Good. You have time to check the area?”

“Yeah. Did you figure the street in front of that address was gonna be filled with hard guys?”

“Shit.”

“Whatever you’re interested in on that block, somebody else is, too, Jimmy boy. There’s two gangster SUVs, one at each end of the block. Tinted windows, the whole nine yards, but we caught looks at the inside through the windshields.”

“What’s going on?”

“Each of the SUVs has a driver and a bad guy in the front seat and more hard cases in the backseats. But they’re still coming into the neighborhood. Every once in a while someone gets out of a taxi or shows up on the street and joins the party in one of the SUVs. The one near Washington Street should be about full. We saw four bozos get into that one. Only two so far on the one near Greenwich.”

Beck thought about what Ricky was telling him. Clearly, the Bosnians were gathering the troops. But why? To protect Crane? Seemed like an awful lot of men for that. What then? Had Kolenka located the Red Hook headquarters for Markov? Were they gathering to mount an attack?

He thought about how he should respond. It didn’t take long.

“Okay, Ricky, here’s what I want you to do.”

Beck gave instructions while the others watched and listened. The tension in the loft cranked up significantly. By the time Beck stopped talking, everyone knew what was next.

Beck hung up. Ciro asked, “So?”

Beck didn’t say anything. He sat, lost in thought. Finally after about twenty seconds, he spoke. “Okay. I don’t have time to fill you in on all the background. There’s someone on Hubert Street in Tribeca I needed to talk to tonight. And maybe some other shit. But now it looks like he’s either being guarded, or the guys watching him are gathering up enough strength to hit us tonight. Or both. I figure they didn’t know where we were, but now, or soon, they might get our location. So, we have to hit them first.

“We’ve got to move now. Manny, Ciro, you go with Demarco. I’ll take Alex and Joey in Olivia’s car. Everybody arm up. By the time we get to Tribeca, I’ll have it figured out what everyone should do. Alex, make sure you have your bag of tricks. You’re going to be doing a break-in.”

Everyone stood up and moved. No questions. No comments.

Beck was back on his cell phone before he hit the back stairs.

29

When they’d first arrived, Ricky and Jonas had driven around the Tribeca neighborhood in their nondescript van getting a general sense of who was on the streets. After Beck talked to them, the Bolo brothers circled the blocks from Hubert to Greenwich to Beach and back, on foot. They checked for any security cameras that might catch images of what was to happen.