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

tell me about it. He didn’t want to worry me. He was a good boy. You could tell he was going to be a real mensch. He had a pair of balls on him.” Again she looked at Dehan. “You know what I’m talking about.”

To my surprise, Dehan nodded and there was a warmth in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. She said, “What can you tell us about this problem they were having?”

“He was vague, but he said her family were objecting to her seeing him. It’s the age-old story. But I had a feeling there was more to it than that. He never told me where she was from, but I got the feeling she was maybe from a rough neighborhood. The way things played out, I wish I had listened to my mother’s intuition.”

I said, “Can you tell us about the events of that night, and what led up to them?”

She looked a bit distressed and started rubbing her hands with her thumbs, staring at the carpet.

“She broke up with him. He was devastated. She was the love of his life. He was crazy about her. He went nuts. He was crying, he wouldn’t eat. He had no father—his father, God bless him, is in heaven—nobody could help him, and nothing would do but getting Maria back. So he went there, he called, he called her mother—he was nothing if not persistent. And eventually she spoke to him.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Well…! That was the worst thing that could have happened. Because now he’s convinced that she has been kidnapped, or abducted, or being held to ransom… God only knows what he was imagining. Personally, I think she’s trying to get him off her back. Her mother has told her, ‘you’ve got to marry a Catholic!’ I told him, ‘Marry a nice Jewish girl!’ But Sam isn’t having it. He is convinced that she’s being held against her will.”

“So what happened?”

“I said, ‘Go to the police!’ She told him not to. There’s a bent cop at the precinct. A likely story! So on the night of the November 13, 2007—I will never forget it so long as I draw breath—without my knowledge, he goes up into the attic and he gets his father’s revolver. A very nice pearl handled Colt .45, one of a pair that was given to him by his commanding officer…”

“They sound beautiful,” Dehan said. “I’d love to see them later. What happened?”

“So he takes the revolver, and he goes to the Bronx. It seems she had told him there was a man called Nelson who was forcing her to have sex with him and with other men. That night she was being forced to go to a poker party, where she would be raped. Well, poor Sam lost his mind. He was crying his heart out. He was raving. He said he couldn’t stand by while the woman he loved was raped. Like I said, he was a real mensch. So he went upstairs, took the gun, and went to look for her.”

I frowned. “But he didn’t know where to go…”

“He was a mensch, but he was stupid, like his father. He went to the roughest part of the Bronx—Hunts Point, down by the warehouses—and he was going like a crazy man from one bar to another, yelling and shouting, saying he needed to see Nelson Hernandez right then. It seems some feller said he’d take him to him. He led him outside and…”

She folded up, buried her face in her hands, and started to cry. Dehan got up, sat next to her, and put her arms around her. It was like her chest had clenched around her heart and wouldn’t let go. Her voice came, squeezed through her pain. “I’ll never have him back. Never see him again…”

We eventually soothed her and apologized for having brought back the memories. She called her neighbor to come over, and we left.

Eleven

Dehan rested her ass on the hood of my car in the dappled shade of the plane trees. “It wasn’t Pro, it wasn’t Zhu, and it wasn’t Mick. So by the process of elimination, that leaves us only one possibility.”

“The Angels of Satan.”

“The Sureños, the Ángeles de Satanás. There is nobody else.”

“That will not be the main thrust of the DA’s case.”

She didn’t seem to hear. She stared at me, and her eyes were on fire. “It has to be Mick!”

I shook my head. “Stop right there, Dehan.”

She held up her hands and closed her eyes. “Okay. Okay… I agree.”

We started walking, as though one of us had suggested it, but neither of us had, down the avenue toward the park. She kept talking.

“Early hours of Tuesday, November 13, 2007, Mick and Jennifer are at Hunts Point, goddamn it! Where Sam has been gunned down, a few streets away from where Nelson has been killed. At the same time, Pro is arriving in the neighborhood with his guys, for the purpose of killing Nelson. Zhu is arriving in the neighborhood for the same purpose. They are all there, and they all want the same thing. They all want Nelson dead.”

The sign said walk, so we crossed the road and stepped over the wall into the park.

I said, “But while they’re playing cards, the bell rings and Maria opens the door to somebody else.”

“Professionals, accustomed to killing. They work efficiently. They have a grudge against Nelson, and they take his money, which suggests they feel they have a claim on that money…”

“But…” I stopped and faced her. “They leave his stash of dope, of coke, of H, which must have a street value of several hundred grand or more, and they take Maria.” We walked on a few steps in silence. “And here is another question. Who was Mick drinking tequila with