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

hiding a smile. I turned left into the concrete desolation of White Plains Road, Babies “R” Us and Kmart, and said, “So, as we’re sharing, why the attitude?”

She was quiet all the way to the railway bridge. As we crossed it, she said suddenly and with feeling, “I guess most guys are assholes. I got into the habit of kicking them in the nuts before they open their big mouths.” She thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Not just guys—women too. Most people are too damned stupid to be worth the effort.”

I turned right onto Morris Park Avenue. It was agreeably green and leafy after the dead concrete of White Plains. I was grinning. “Being pleasant is an effort?”

She turned to face me and smiled for the first time. “Yeah. With most people, yeah.”

I took the third left and parked.

Sam’s house was tall, narrow, gabled, and green. He opened the door to us like we were his long-lost family. Maybe after forty years on the force, that was how he felt about cops.

“Come on in! I live alone with my cats. My wife died. My kids moved away. I have some coffee on. There are cats everywhere. Come in, sit down.”

He ushered us into his sitting room. There was a green sofa, and there were two green chairs. They were all occupied by cats that told us with their faces to sit somewhere else. Sam reproved them and threw them gently on the carpet.

“Sit! Sit!”

We sat. Five minutes later, he sat too, pouring coffee.

“So you’re pulling Nelson out of cold storage, huh?” He gave a small laugh and handed Dehan a cup. “I wish you luck. You got a fundamental problem with that case.”

He poured again and handed me a cup. “What’s that?”

He sipped and sat back, crossing one leg over the other. His face was humorous and intelligent. “To begin with, there was no damn physical evidence. The lock wasn’t forced. The damn key was in Nelson’s pocket. The place was rich with prints. They mostly belonged to Nelson and his gang. There were a couple of others, on the glasses and bottle, on the little dishes of nuts. But they weren’t in any database. There were no weapons. The blade used to castrate and decapitate Nelson was sharp, but whatever it was, it wasn’t there. We searched far and wide for four shotguns and a machete or a knife. They never showed up. My guess, they’re at the bottom of the river. So, that was the first problem, no physical evidence.”

He sipped his coffee again.

“The second problem was worse. Whatever witnesses there might be were never going to talk. Because the background to this killing, and the style of the killing, were all saying one thing. Gangland execution. So any witnesses to the killing were either dead or involved, and it’s more than their lives are worth to spill the beans.”

“Did you have any theories?” Dehan said.

He nodded. “Oh sure. We’re talking about the area south of the Bruckner Expressway, Hunts Point. Back then it was a disputed area. The local population were mainly black, white, and Latino. But the drugs and the prostitution were a gold mine for whoever controlled them. Until 2004, that was the Albanians. You know, the Five Families never really had a presence in the Bronx, and the Albanians moved in back in the ’60s and ’70s and took over. But that pretty much ended when we took them down in 2004.”

“I remember. So what happened?” I said.

“Well, that left a vacuum. Don Alvaro Vincenzo, the head of the New Jersey Mob, moved in. It looked like the New York Big Five weren’t interested and gave him the green light. So he moved in a few boys to start taking control of the drugs and the prostitution.”

“You think they killed Nelson?”

He pulled a face. “Nyeeeah… that was like my best guess. See, Nelson was kind of out of his mind. I think he did too much coke when he was a baby or something.” Dehan sniggered and Sam grinned appreciatively at her. “He was a real psychopath, and being Latino, you know, he had a lot of support on the streets, which the Italians haven’t got in the Bronx anymore. And Nelson was feeling kind of invincible. But that’s always a mistake with the Mob. The word was that Vincenzo sent his top hit man, Morry ‘Pro’ Levy. Not an Italian, a Jew, but close to the family and a total nut. He was as crazy as Nelson, but he had years of experience and the backing of the Jersey Mob. That was the word on the street. But right there is the second problem I was talking about. Where are your witnesses? Who’s gonna tell you, ‘Yeah, I saw Pro Levy coming out of Nelson Hernandez’s place carrying four shotguns and a meat cleaver’?”

He spread his hands and cocked his head in a “what the hell you gonna do” gesture. Then he smiled. “We canvassed, we knocked on doors, but it was pointless.”

Dehan was making notes in a little booklet. I said, “Pro Levy, didn’t he turn State’s evidence?”

“Yeah, against the Gambino family,” Dehan said.

Sam said, “It caused a lot of upset at the time. He’s in witness protection now, but word is he kept his ties with the Vincenzo family.”

I frowned. “Word from whom?”

He flapped his hands at me. “Ahh! I been out of the business for too long. That was the word on the street back when I retired. Might be bull for all I know. But I do remember that there was talk about Vincenzo having some kind of beef with a cop. It might be totally unrelated, but it was all around the same time and it might be helpful. Don’t quote me, right?”

Dehan had looked up from her notes and