Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [readnow TXT] 📗

I sat. “Did you like him?”

She turned her eyebrow on me. “You know, you don’t have to talk. You don’t have to ask questions. I’m coming to that.”

“Okay.”

“Good. So dinner one is at Uncle Ben’s apartment in Manhattan. He introduces us. Polite chat. Saul’s family is there. We are discreetly forced together, left alone. ‘You young people must have a lot to talk about.’ You know the kind of thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I told Ben, ‘I am not looking for a relationship. I’m not looking to get married.’ Set the table, will you? It was painful, but I got through it. But Uncle Ben won’t take no for an answer and he arranges another meal.”

I got up and started setting the table. She continued talking.

“So dinner number two is also at his apartment. He says it’s just informal, just me, him and a few friends. A little get together. The little get together is just Ben, me and Saul. And Ben retires early. So Saul is coming on to me. He likes me a lot, maybe we could go out some time, get to know each other, and I am telling him I have no time, my work rules my life, yadda yadda.”

“If you don’t like him, couldn’t you just be straight?”

“He is my uncle’s partner’s son. Also, I didn’t dislike him. I just didn’t want to marry him or go out with him. But I didn’t want to offend him either. He’s a friend of the family. So I escape and I go home. And I call Uncle Ben and I tell him to lay off. And he lays on me this whole, fucking trip about family, and my dad, and don’t make the same mistakes he made, I have a duty to my elders, I should marry a good Jewish boy, and when am I gonna have kids and do I wanna grow old alone and man!”

She dumped the steaks on a couple of plates and came out of the kitchen with them. She put them on the table. “So when he called again, Saul that is, did I want to go out with him, I had this huge guilt complex thing that I should say yes. And suddenly, I was on this fucking road that led straight to marriage, kids, grandchildren! I was going to have dinner with him tonight and marry him in six months! And I had never even kissed the guy!”

“So what did you do?”

“He picked me up, asked me if I wanted to go and change. I told him no. He looked a bit put out. By the time we got to the restaurant I had worked through it in my head. I told him he was wasting his time. I was a fucked up cop with a bad attitude, and he would be much better off with somebody else.”

“Wow.”

“There were no cabs, so I got the subway and buses, and I bought the groceries on the way. Stone?”

I smiled and said, “Yes. Welcome back.”

I am not the huggy type, but that night I made an exception.

Nineteen

I woke up at seven AM, after just four hours sleep. I had a headache that made me groan. I sat up, and after a moment, the room caught up with me. Then, the sounds and smells of Dehan cooking breakfast in the kitchen reached me. I smiled and staggered to the shower.

When I got down, she put a cup of coffee on the breakfast bar for me and said, “This is just kind of a random reaching, clutching at straws if you will, but just assuming for a moment that you’re right…” She paused and pointed at me with a spatula. “And I think you are, if Jacob was hanging with the Sureños, or some other Latino gang, and that somehow caused his death, the one and only thing that links him with his father’s death…”

I was nodding before she got to the end. “Is El Chato, I know. Good morning. I was thinking that in the shower.” I sipped the coffee. It was good. Then, I went over to the frying pan and inhaled the fumes from the bacon. “Man! That is good. But connection is putting it very strongly. The connection is that El Chato is Latino and was a member of the Sureños.”

“No.” She shook her head and started spilling bacon onto two plates with toast and fried mushrooms. “There is more.” She broke four eggs into a pan. “There is also the fact that he was there, lurking in the garden, right by Humberto’s hideout, within days of Simon’s murder.” She wagged the spatula at me again. “There is the fact that he is probably Humberto’s Diavolo Incarnato.”

“You have a point.”

“Ha! I ain’t just a pretty Jewish girl with no prospects of ever getting married or having kids.”

“I would have to agree with that assessment.” I drank more coffee as she began to slide the eggs out of the pan and onto the toast. I tried to visualize it. “So how does it work?”

She brought the plates over to the table. “You haven’t set the table? Get the knives and forks, would you? And the salt. Oh, and the pepper. I have no idea how it works. El Chato is not married, and as far as I am aware, he has no kids. Not acknowledged, anyhow. He’s got to be fifteen or sixteen years older than Jacob, so I don’t see them hanging out together, either.”

I sank back in my chair and stared at her. She stared back. “What?”

I nodded. “That’s it. That’s the connection. It’s good to have you back, Dehan. I was going crazy last night, going ’round in circles. But you just put your finger on it.”

She smiled and focused on her food. “I did, huh? Like