In the quiet kitchen, just the two of them, Beck didn’t press. He folded his arms, sat back in the chair, and took notice of the wear and tear and isolation of Manny’s OG life. The scar embedded in his right eyebrow, deep crow’s feet around his dark eyes, the blue ink of prison tattoos peeking out from his white shirt at neck and wrists. But mostly Beck looked at Manny’s eyes for the presence of this new person. He couldn’t see a thing.
Beck sniffed. Cleared his throat. Twisted around on the hard wooden chair. Then just came out with it. “Okay, Manny, who is it? What’s going on?”
Instead of answering Beck, Manny asked, “You okay? That guy hurt you?”
“Little bit here and there.” Beck flexed his fingers. “I was lucky. My hands are going to hurt. Guy’s head is like concrete. His skull must be five-inches thick.”
“You gotta hit a guy like that with a bat, not your hands.”
“I’ll remember next time.”
Manny nodded and finally answered Beck’s question.
“I got a cousin. She’s a lot younger than me. My grandparents had a lot of kids. This is on my mother’s side. Don’t know shit about my father’s side. So Olivia, that’s her name, she’s the daughter of my mother’s youngest sister. My aunt Ruth. Her name is Olivia Sanchez.”
“Okay. A cousin.”
“She’s a civilian. Good lady.” Manny waived a hand dismissively. “All the rest, long gone. I don’t blame them. But this Olivia kid, she didn’t go that way. She stuck by me. More like a little sister than a cousin. And believe me, I didn’t give her any reason to. Back in the day, I didn’t give a fuck about anybody. Family, friends, nobody. You know how that works.”
Beck nodded.
“But this Olivia, I don’t know, no matter what anybody told her, she didn’t give up the connection.”
Manny paused. Beck watched him thinking about it, remembering this part of his past.
“Olivia, you know, in the midst of all the shit around my family, she kept herself together. Stayed in school. Got regular jobs. As soon as she was like, seventeen, eighteen, she’d come to see me. And she wrote me. The whole time I was in that last bit, she wrote me. Visited me twice a year. Christmas and my birthday. Even during those three years I was in Dannemora.”
“That’s a long trip.”
“Over three hundred miles she’d come. Christmastime and my birthday.”
“From the city?”
“Yeah. I don’t even know how many hours it took. She borrowed a car or something. I don’t know. December and August.”
Manny leaned forward and sipped his rum and coffee, grimacing. “Truth? I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to see her. You know, getting those connections to the outside, that’s not so good for you.”
Beck nodded.
Manny cocked his head, “But what was I gonna do? She was a kid. She even made sure to send me ten bucks every once in a while for canteen. Can you imagine that? A kid like that giving me money.”
Beck smiled at the notion that Manny Guzman, who ran more drugs and gambling in Dannemora than almost anybody, would need an occasional ten bucks from a seventeen-year-old-girl.
“You must love her.”
Manny blinked. “I do.”
Beck nodded, feeling Manny’s emotion. He could see where this was going. This was going someplace that wouldn’t fit. Someplace that might not be easy to deal with.
“She worked in a financial place. A brokerage or something. I don’t know what she did there, you know. But with the executives. In charge of something important. Helping run things. Like that. She worked hard. Smart. Good-looking woman.”
“Okay.”
“So, some asshole up there, he likes throwing his weight around. He and Olivia, they don’t get along.”
“Who? What do you know about him?”
“I don’t know much but a name. Alan Crane. I don’t know what Wall Street fucks do. I don’t know what this guy does. But he’s high up in the company. From Olivia, I get that he was in charge of a bunch of money, and he was cutting corners or doing some risky shit.”
“And?”
“James, this isn’t a little grab-ass or something. This guy had a beef with Olivia.”
“Yeah. Okay. I understand. So what happened?”
Manny held up his left hand, his shirt cuff pulled back enough to reveal a bit of the rough prison tattoos on his forearm. He looked Beck in the eye and folded his first two fingers down to his thumb, leaving his little finger and ring finger extended. Beck watched as the lethal anger rose in him.
“So this fucking coward comes in yelling shit at her, and pounds his fist down on her hand.” Manny pointed to the little finger and ring finger of his left hand. “He breaks two of her fingers.”
Beck squinted, feeling the waves of anger coming off Manny.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“He breaks her fingers?”
“Yeah. And threatens her, tells her she’s fired.”
“Threatens her how?”
“She won’t say exactly.”
“Where’d this happen?”
“In her office. Late. She works late. Around seven.”
“And what’s she do, this guy breaks her hand?”
“She gets the fuck out. Goes to a hospital. Calls the cops while she’s sitting in the emergency room. Of course, by the time she gets her fingers fixed, they still don’t show, so the next day she goes to the precinct near where she works. Files a complaint. Big fucking deal. Then, she goes to … what do you call it, the personnel people in her office?”
“Human Resources.”
“Yeah. Tells those fucks what happened. Tells her boss what happened.”
Beck saw it now. He started filling in the rest so Manny wouldn’t have to go through a recitation that would rile him up even more.
“Okay, let me guess. The guy denies he did anything. Says she’s crazy. Says she’s lying. Out to get him. Says he has no idea how she broke her fingers. Cops say they have no evidence. He says, she says. No witnesses. She left the premises where it happened, blah, blah, blah.”
“Pretty much. But worse.”
“How?”
“The guy says she’s … what do you call it? Slandered him? Defamed him? He sues her for a bunch of shit. Everybody at the company goes on his side. They fire her. Now she’s got no job. No health insurance. No references. And she can’t get a new job. She’s got nothing but her two broken fingers and a little bit of savings that ain’t going to last long.”
Beck nodded. “So she comes to you.”
Manny sneered. “You think the cops and the higher-ups are going to help her?”
“When did she finally talk to you?”
“Two days ago.”