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

on the Nelson case. If we don’t get a confession, maybe we can get them to rat each other out.”

She was quiet a moment, thinking. Dehan couldn’t stop herself. “Is there any reason, Captain, why we can’t make the bust? It’s twenty K of cocaine, and it could secure a conviction on five unresolved homicides. Am I missing something?”

I saw the captain’s jaw clench. She narrowed her eyes and turned to me. “You have your authorization, John, and your backup. Get your partner out of my office before I change my mind.”

I turned and shoved Dehan toward the door. “Come on, get out of here.” She stepped out and I went to follow.

“John?” I stopped and looked back. “How wide is your investigation?”

I held her eye. I made no secret that I knew she knew. “Not that wide, Jennifer. We’ve eliminated the Triads and the Jersey Mob. So it’s got to be the Sureños, right? Who else is there?”

She nodded. “Right.”

“I hope to close the case with Carlitos in the next forty-eight hours.” She kind of smiled and stared at her desk. “Is there anything I need to know?”

She shook her head. “No. Good work.”

I left and closed the door.

Outside, Dehan was leaning against the wall looking sour. She gave me a glance that challenged me to say something. “Your mouth has two positions, Carmen. Two. Open and closed.”

She fell into step beside me as we went down the stairs.

“Give me a break! Twenty K of coke and possible closure on five unsolved homicides—and she’s going to think about it? Like there’s a fucking downside?”

“Confucius say, if ritoo glasshopper, no keep big fucking mouth shut, Sensei Stone smack lound head.”

“Pff! I’d like to see you try.”

“Do or do not, there is no try.”

And so saying, I smacked her around the head.

Fourteen

It was dark. We were on Food Center Drive in Hunts Point, and the streetlights cast a listless amber light over the warehouses and the bare concrete of the road. There was no moon and there were no stars, only a low ceiling of dirty-orange cloud. And silence, the dead silence of the urban desert—the silence of concrete and blacktop. Far off, a ship moaned out of the darkness from another world.

We had four unmarked cars. Two were in the fish market. Two more were parked on Food Center Drive, ready to block each exit. And there was also a patrol boat standing off on the river, keeping out of sight. I’d left my car at the precinct, and we’d used Dehan’s Focus. We had a total of eight officers plus me and Carmen, and the guys on the river.

Dehan took the radio.

“Unit one in position. Unit two copy, please.”

“Copy. Unit two in position.”

She checked on the other three. Everyone was in position. The patrol boat checked too. “All units, radio silence until I give the go.”

It was one thirty. We sat without talking for twenty minutes, and then we saw the headlamps in the rearview mirror. The car cruised past slowly. It was a black BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe with tinted windows. The kind of vehicle you’d use if you wanted to let everybody know you were a real bad boy dealing coke. We could just hear the throb of their sound system.

It slowed at the end of the road, and instead of continuing up the west side of the drive, it pulled into Farragut Street, where the fish market was, and disappeared from view. We waited another ten minutes, and a second set of headlamps flooded the car from behind. It was another BMW. This one was a Z4 with the hard top up. It was dark blue and also throbbing. At the end of the drive, like the other, it turned into Farragut and vanished into the shadows, down by the river. I took the radio while Dehan fired up the engine.

“Units three and four close in. No lights till I say.”

The cars on Food Center Drive began to move down toward Farragut, slow and quiet. By the river, Carlitos wouldn’t see or hear a thing till it was too late. When we were fifty yards away, I said, “Go. All units close in. Go! Go! Go!”

Suddenly the place was alive with lights and squealing rubber. Dehan hit the gas and we entered Farragut doing fifty and our headlamps on full beam, with two units just behind us. Beyond the fish market barrier, two cars came screaming up to cut off any escape through the parking lot. We could see the two BMWs parked side by side. Carlitos was staring at us, shading his eyes. Next to him was Chema, his right-hand man and enforcer. There were two other guys, also shielding their eyes from the glare.

The vehicles had their trunks open, and Carlitos was holding a large package. Chema had another. We screeched to a halt and threw the doors open. I had my weapon in my hands, and I got out taking aim over the door. I bellowed, “Freeze! You are under arrest! Do not move!” Within seconds they were surrounded and had ten officers training their guns on them, and a moment later they were floodlit from the river.

It was textbook. I shouted, “Take out your weapons and lay them on the ground!”

They were staring at us, with their hands in the air. Carlitos was the first to move. Cautiously he pulled what looked like a Desert Eagle from his waistband, behind his back. He held it up for us to see. Chema did the same. It looked like a Colt .45. Then things started to go wrong. I could see from their faces that the other two were not happy. There was an older guy, maybe in his forties, with a moustache and an Italian suit. His younger companion