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

“The same person who left their prints on the glasses and the dishes of nuts.”

“Right. She opens the door and they come in fast. It’s like a raid. Mick’s at the front. Who’s he got with him? A couple of Sureños. They rush in. They’re shouting and hollering, ‘Freeze! Nobody move!’—that kind of stuff.”

“That’s why nobody reached for his piece.”

“That’s right. They’re surrounded. They’re taken by surprise. Plus, they can see it’s Mick and some guys they know. They’re wondering, ‘What the hell? What’s going on?’”

“And they execute them.”

“But the Sureños got to make a point. They’re punishing this guy. You don’t presume to tell the Sureños who they do and don’t support. So they cut off his balls and his head. Leave them on the table as a message to anybody else who wants to declare himself king of the Bronx.”

I nodded. “Now the guys leave, and Mick takes his dues, all the money Nelson had at the house…”

I looked at her, and she looked at me. She shrugged. “It sounds awful generous coming from the Sureños, but maybe Mick was holding something over them.”

“Yeah… I’m wondering what it is exactly Mick has done for them. Okay, he was there and he shot at least one of Nelson’s gang, but in this scenario, he’s just come along with the Sureños. It’s the Sureños who made the hit. They didn’t need Mick.”

She sighed. “Okay, then it was hired muscle. Couple of guys he paid to do the job with him. Either way, they leave. He takes the money and the girl. They have tequila. They get in the car and they go, leaving Pro, Vincenzo, Chen Zhu, and the NYPD all scratching their heads.”

I played a short tattoo on the table with my fingers. “It’s a scenario. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions. But it gives us one thing.”

“The girl.”

“Yup. Chances are high she was from the neighborhood. Let’s pray that for once the stereotype holds true. Latina girls love their mothers. Wherever she is, she may well still be in touch with Mamita.”

“How do we find Mamita?”

I pointed at her. “You will find her. You will go around the hood putting up flyers, talking to community leaders, talking to parish priests. Did a young girl in her twenties go missing about ten years ago? You will not say, but you will allow them to think, that remains have been found.”

“But if she’s still in touch with her mom, her mom will know that she’s not dead.”

I nodded. “Correct, but the chances are that only her mom will know, and it will be their secret. So there is every chance that an aunt, a cousin, a sister a brother, a parish priest, will get in touch with us. Maybe they won’t, but it’s worth a try. I suggest you do it in uniform.”

She frowned and sounded skeptical. “You think that will inspire more trust?”

“No, it would just be nice to see you in uniform.”

“Take a hike, Stone.”

“I’ll tell you something else that keeps playing on my mind. How did that hit man out at Yonkers know to follow us?”

She made a face. “There are only two possibilities.”

“And one of those possibilities is in bed with the Triads and wanted Kirk dead.”

We spent the next day canvassing from East Bay Avenue to Lafayette in Hunts Point. Dehan did most of the legwork because most of the people we needed to talk to would refuse to talk to me. Dehan was half-Mexican, looked Mexican, and grew up in the neighborhood. If anybody had a chance of getting through, it was her.

I focused on the Seventh Day Adventist Church, the African Methodist Church, and the Corpus Christi Monastery of nuns. The priests at the first two were very understanding and promised to spread the word and encourage anybody who remembered anything to come forward, even if it was through them, rather than directly. The mother superior at the monastery had been there for thirty years, and she remembered something.

We sat in her office overlooking the small woodland that was part of the grounds, and she peered at me over the top of her reading glasses.

“This is Hunts Point, Detective Stone. Young Latina girls go missing every year. Some are murdered, others die of drug overdoses, others escape to try and make a new life for themselves. You are interested in one particular girl who disappeared ten years ago…”

It wasn’t a question, but she made it sound like one. I haven’t got a lot of patience, but I mustered what little I have and smiled.

“Mother Superior, we could get into a long, involved discussion about the complicated social interactions between the NYPD and the residents of Hunts Point, and the socioeconomic and political dynamics that condition those interactions. But that is a discussion which won’t lead us anywhere except to where we are right now. The fact is there are dozens of girls, and boys, and men and women and children that we can’t do anything to help. But there is one whom maybe we can help.”

She gave me a frigid look and then smiled. “I shall consider myself duly told off.” She sat back in her black leather armchair and heaved a large sigh. Her eyes kind of glazed, and I could imagine her traveling back in time. “Ten years… 2007… the Indianapolis Colts won the Super Bowl, the Oregon Beavers won the College World Series, George ‘dabaya’ Bush was in his last year, and the financial crisis had struck.” She nodded. “Yes, there was a girl. Maria. She was eighteen or nineteen. She came to me in considerable distress.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged. “She wouldn’t tell me. She said she was forced to marry a gang member with whom she was not in love. She feared