Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

Catholicism to orphaned kids? There is you, O’Neil, Harragan, and Bellini. I know everything, because before he died, O’Neil told me.”

There was another long silence, but this one had a different flavor to it and I wasn’t about to hang up.

“What do you want?”

“I want what Harragan had.”

His voice was a sneer. “Well you can only have half of what Harragan had, can’t you!”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t screw the pretty Latinas now, can you? They’re all dead! You’ll have to make do with the money. You cops are all the same.”

“That’s cute. I’m getting lessons in morality from a pedophile and a murderer.”

“I didn’t…”

I waited. “You didn’t what?”

“Never mind. How much do you want?”

“To keep my mouth shut, I want twenty thousand dollars in used bills. Tomorrow at noon, Barreto Point Park, at the amphitheater. I’ll be sitting on the top step.”

He was sneering again. “Will you have a carnation in your lapel, Detective?”

“No, but I will have my snub nose .38, and if I even suspect that you have been talking to Bellini, you’ll be joining O’Neil in hell a damn sight sooner than you expected. Have I made myself plain, Sadiq?”

“How do I know it’s not a trap?”

“You don’t. You’ll just have to put your faith in human greed. Think you can do that?”

“And what do I get for these twenty thousand dollars? I want more than silence.”

I let the smile seep into my voice. “A long and beautiful relationship, outside of Riker’s Island.”

“I want something, Stone, something concrete. I don’t want this hanging over me for the next…”

I cut across him. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Noon. I’ll be with my partner. You come alone or there is no deal.” I hung up.

I played back the conversation. It had recorded successfully. I emailed it to myself at work and cc’d Dehan. Then I called her. She sounded sleepy. I could hear Walker Texas Ranger in the background.

“No, I will not come and cook you dinner.”

“We have him. I recorded the conversation on my phone. I emailed it to you. We have Sadiq Khan in the bag.”

She was quiet for a moment. “What are you… like… magic?”

“Must be.”

“You’re lucky you’re over there, I might embarrass you.”

“You having a glass of wine?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Good, have one for me. I’ll have one for you. Sleep well, Carmen.”

“G’night, Sensei.”

The captain stared at my phone on his desk and listened to the conversation. When it had finished, he shook his head in disbelief. Dehan was grinning at her boots. He looked at her and back at me.

“I have to hand it to you, Stone, you seem to have a bottomless bag of tricks. You are sailing damn close to the wind. His defense attorneys are going to be screaming entrapment to high heaven.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t induce him to commit a crime, Captain, I simply got him to admit that he had.”

He nodded. “You’ll need back up.”

“No, Dehan will be there with me. I don’t want to spook him. It has to look like the real deal. We can bring him in. He’ll be alone.”

He gave me a look. “Don’t lose this one, Stone. You have dragged triumph from the jaws of defeat. Don’t screw it up!”

“I won’t.”

“We won’t.”

We both looked at Dehan. I smiled. “We won’t.”

“Okay, so you bring him in, you charge him, right? Tell me you are going to charge him.”

“We charge him. Let him believe we have a full confession from Father O’Neil, but let him believe also that the evidence is thin against Bellini. If he gives us Bellini, we cut him a deal.”

The captain sighed. “The bishop. I don’t mind telling you I am going to catch some flak because of this.”

Dehan fixed him with her eye. “Sir, with all due respect, anyone who wants to defend that son of a bitch isn’t worth listening to. He colluded in the rape and murder of children.”

“You are right, of course, Detective. But politics is rarely that simple. Anyway, you know you have my full support, whatever the political consequences.”

We thanked him and left.

It was a short drive in the spring sunshine. We took Bruckner over the bridge and then Garrison and Tiffany Street all the way down to Viele Avenue. Even the Hunts Point industrial estate looked pretty, in some ghastly way, in the spring morning light. We left the car in the lot outside the park, in the shade of the maples, and strolled down to the water’s edge. We had fifteen minutes to spare, so we sat on the rocks and stared out at the East River. I had that feeling I often had with Dehan, that she had somehow managed to get inside my mind, or she was already a part of it.

“Will he show?”

I gave a small shrug. “You heard him. He was real motivated last night.”

She picked up a small stone and threw it out into the water. It hit the river with a hollow ‘plock’.

“If we lose him that will only leave the bishop.”

“And ‘H.’”

“You know who ‘H’ is, don’t you?”

I gave a few small nods. “Probably. But so do you.”

“I think so.”

“What do we do if Khan doesn’t show, Stone?”

I studied her face. She looked lost. She looked as though she was reaching out to me for a way forward.

“That depends on why he doesn’t show.” I looked at my watch. It was five to. “Let’s go.”

We climbed the steps of the amphitheater to the top. I sat and Dehan stood staring back along the path toward the entrance to the park. Noon came and slipped into afternoon by five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. At twenty past, I stood and said, “Come on,