Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

don’t think there is much Detective Dehan or I can add to this discussion, sir. I think we would be better employed going to get Fillmore.”

He nodded. “If anything comes up I’ll contact you.”

Dehan stood, and as she did her phone rang. She looked at the screen, then at me. “Teddy.” She swiped. “Yeah, Teddy, what have you got?” She took out her pad and leaned on the inspector’s desk, taking a pen from his pot. “Yeah, yeah, it’s OK, Teddy, I know you’ve been busy. Shoot.” She recited as she wrote: “Top floor, Seven fifty-seven, Bryant Avenue. Thanks…” She paused. “What? His social security number? Yeah, give it to me.” She scribbled it down, looked at the inspector, jerked her head at his laptop and made typing motions with her fingers. He nodded and started rattling at the keyboard. She said into the phone: “Yuh. Yeah, don’t worry about it. Better late than never. Bye.”

She hung up and looked over the inspector’s shoulder as he typed. After a moment she pointed and said, “OK, that’s him. James Philip Fillmore, Bryant Avenue, print it!” The Inspector looked at her with raised eyebrows. She half grinned and said, “Sir?”

The printer spewed his photograph, general description and last known address. I picked them up and looked at them. He fit the description we had from Wayne and Michael Shine. “Sir.” I looked at the inspector. He and the Assistant DA had gotten to their feet. “This address is two or three hundred yards from the café.” I glanced at my watch. “At this time he is most likely to be at work. Dehan and I will go to the café. We need a car to go to his address and bring him in if he’s there.”

He nodded and reached for the phone. “Done. Get on it.”

It was a ten minute drive across the river on Bruckner Boulevard, then up Garrison and into Longfellow. I didn’t figure we would need backup. In fact I was pretty sure, despite what I’d told the inspector, that he wasn’t going to be there. Dehan didn’t say anything to me during the drive, and I didn’t feel much like talking either. I pulled up outside Eva Maria’s Café and we went inside.

It was pretty much how Wayne had described it. Respectable and clean, at least on the surface, but the clientele was pretty representative of that area: people struggling to make ends meet, by whatever means available to them; and that meant anything from fifteen hours hard work every day of the week, to theft, prostitution and violence. They were all there, drinking coffee, eating ham and eggs, and reading the paper at mock-pine, melamine tables, while Eva Maria turned a blind eye to anything that went down that she didn’t need to see.

Suspicious faces pretended to ignore us. We ignored them back and walked to the counter. Eva Maria, or whoever was in her shoes that day, gave us that ‘now what?’ look. “Help you?”

I did something that could have been a smile if she’d wanted it to be, and asked her, “Jimmy in today?”

“Jimmy don’t work here no more.”

“Since when?”

“Since right now. He didn’t show up this morning and now the cops are looking for him.” She paused. “You are cops, right? You got the look.”

I showed her my badge. “I got the badge, too. Where is he?”

She shrugged and spread her hands. “Who am I? Yoda? There’s a disturbance in the force on Bryant Avenue! Gimme a break! I told you, he didn’t come in and he didn’t call.”

“You got an address for him?”

“What do I need an address for? He comes to me. I don’t go to him. You want his Swiss bank account too? I got that back there along with his social security number. He’s casual. I pay cash. End of story.”

“You don’t know where he lives?”

“I just got through tellin’ you that.”

Dehan slammed her open palm down on the counter and made a noise that seemed too big for such a delicate looking hand. She snarled, “Can the attitude, Eva! We ain’t vice, but I know a guy who is. You want we should start going through pockets here?”

There was an immediate scraping of chairs as people started getting to their feet and hurrying casually to the door. Eva spread her hands and looked past us at her departing customers. “Hey! What the…!”

“A little cooperation, Eva!”

“I don’t know where he lives! What you want me to do? Get on my knees and pray for his address?”

Dehan leaned close to her and growled. “You got his phone number, Eva. Get it!”

She made a face that was a sullen scowl, looked in a notebook and wrote down the number. She handed it to Dehan and said, “It’s pay as you go. You won’t get no address from it.”

I nodded. “What about friends, girlfriends? He hook up with any of the girls?” She drew breath and her face told me she was going to lie. Before she could speak I turned to Dehan. “Get Max, tell him what we’ve seen. Get him to put surveillance on this joint. Facilitating the traffic of prescribed substances…”

“OK! OK! OK, already! She goes by the name Zena. Twenty maybe, Puerto Rican, she usually wears a little black leather skirt. She’s got a stud in her nose and another in her bellybutton. She hangs out on the corner of Edgewater Road, by the railway tracks. She takes her tricks down to the park.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “She should be there in an hour, maybe two. And for cryin’ out loud, you didn’t hear it from me!”

I smiled. “Course not, Eva. We heard it from Yoda.”

My cell started ringing as we stepped onto the street. Dehan sat on the hood of the Jag and watched me