Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

The line went dead. I stared at Dehan for a moment. “Come on, I’m driving you home. I have to go to Zerega Avenue.”

I took her arm and started to walk back toward the car, outside Emilio’s. She said, “I’m coming with you. You are not going alone.”

“A, if he sees you he’ll bolt. B, I am not letting you within a mile of that man.”

“What does he want?”

“He says he wants to tell me what the case was all about.”

She frowned. “What does that mean?”

We had got to the car and I opened the door. “You and your open questions, Dehan. One day they will get you into trouble. I’m serious. Get in.”

We got in and slammed the doors. I fired up the engine and took off toward Haight Avenue again. I said, “It means that Wayne never knew we had Rosario and Sonia. Tonight he was watching the news and he found out.”

She shook her head as I accelerated toward our house. “So? Stop talking in riddles, Stone!”

I skidded to a halt outside our front door and climbed out. I had my piece in my hand. “I haven’t got time now, Dehan.”

She pulled her weapon and I opened the door. I flipped on the light and we checked every room. There was nobody there. I ran down the stairs to the living room and at the front door I held her by her shoulders. “Listen, expect a call from me in about half an hour. Don’t talk, just listen and record the call. If necessary, call for backup. I’ll be where Angela was murdered.”

“Jesus, Stone…”

“The answer to your questions is lipstick!”

I ran down the steps, climbed back in the Jag, did a ‘U’ and accelerated south, toward Zerega and the Westchester Creek.

Sinatra called New York the city that never sleeps. That may be true of Manhattan, but the vast residential and industrial areas in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and the rest—after sundown, they become empty, dark places, with shadows that are only made deeper by the lifeless street lamps that bathe the blacktop and the sidewalks in dead orange and amber. You don’t see anybody in those desolate streets, except the occasional lost soul: lost not because they don’t know the way home, but because they have no home to find their way to.

I drove fast through these spiritual wastelands, and eventually passed under the multiple bridges of the Bruckner and Cross Bronx expressways, like huge portals into the underworld. There I joined the path of the Westchester Creek that ran black and cold beside me on the left, and soon came to Randall Avenue on my right.

All the parking spaces, packed full during the day, were empty now. But up ahead, on the left, I saw the dark silhouette of a BMW. I slowed and pulled in a couple of spaces away, just past the gate where we had recently gained access to the river. I killed the engine, dialed Dehan’s number, put the phone back in my pocket and climbed out. Ten yards away, in a pool of sickly light from a streetlamp, I saw a figure climb out of the BMW and close the door. He lit up a cigarette and by the flame of his lighter I saw it was Wayne.

He took a deep drag and put his lighter away, then walked toward me, blowing smoke. His footsteps were loud in the stillness of the night. Finally he stood in front of me, massive, menacing and smiling. “Hello, Detective Stone Cold. This is the first time I have seen you when you haven’t had my future in your hands. It feels good.”

“What do you want, Wayne?”

He laughed. “That question again. It’s what my therapist kept asking me inside: ‘What do you want, Wayne?’” He shrugged and chuckled. “It’s a stupid question. What you want changes from one moment to the next, don’t it, Stone? Half an hour ago you wanted to cuddle up in bed with your cute lady. Now, just thirty minutes later, you want to find out what I know. And in another thirty minutes, who knows what you’ll want then?”

“I’m getting bored. Have you got something for me or not?”

“Oh, I have got something for you, Stone, for sure.” He shook his head. “Ask not what a man wants, John, ask always what a man intends. What he wants may change from one moment to the next, but if he is a man, what he intends will remain constant.”

“All right, Wayne, what do you intend?”

“I thought I had made that clear, John.”

“Cut to the chase. You’ve got thirty seconds. Then I am getting in my car and I am going home. Your bullshit bores me, Wayne. Get to the point.”

He stared at me for a long moment and his eyes were dangerous. There was a hunger in them, and a suppressed rage. “Thirty seconds? Is that all you give me? Thirty seconds and counting. What are we down to now? Twenty? Fifteen?”

I sighed, pulled my keys from my pocket and turned toward my car.

He spoke from behind me: “Always with the ultimatums. Or should that be ultimata?” I opened the door and went to climb in. He said, “I want—I intend—to tell you the truth.”

SEVENTEEN

I paused, looking at him across the roof of my car. I spoke with more anger than I had intended. “Is this going to be fifteen hours of B movie bad guy bullshit? Or do you intend to get to the point before breakfast? Because I am telling you I am not interested in being a captive audience of the Wayne Harris Show. You are not amusing and you are not interesting. So unless you have something to tell me, Wayne, you can go to