Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 4-6: Blood Brother, In the Blood, Little Girls Lost. J. Kerley A.

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       Chapter 26

      Benny Mac slapped toast crumbs and clots of scrambled egg from the front of his shirt. The goddamn shirt had shrunk, buttons tight, belly hair pushing through the puckered openings. He was sitting at a small round table outside a coffee shop adjoining the entrance to the Watcher’s headquarters, the table his de facto office in decent weather. A half-eaten plate of bacon and eggs, pancakes and fried potatoes sat in front of him, as did two cellphones, three pens and a notepad.

      He paused in shoveling food into his mouth to observe the approach of a skinny black man in a blue uniform and crocheted Rasta hat. The man grinned from the pavement side of the low wrought-iron fence separating the tabled section from pedestrian traffic.

      “Hey, Jimmy Warbles,” Benny Mac said through a mouthful of egg. “S’up?”

      Jimmy Warbles ran the cleaning services at City Hall, was one of Benny Mac’s best sources of hot political dish. Benny wiped his mouth with a piece of buttered toast, lowered his voice.

      “You got anything, Jimmy?”

      Jimmy Warbles set his elbows on the fence, leaned forward, eyes making sure there was no one near. “I t’ink a lady in archives is makin’ it wit’ another lady in archives. T’ey bote married ladies, sure enough. They go in a supply room. Close t’ door.”

      “Muff divers!” Benny said, eyes widening. “You sure?”

      “Ever’body know ’cept the two ladies, who don’t know anybody know.”

      Benny Mac considered the situation. “Tell you what, Jimmy, you figure out when I can get in with a camera.”

      “It can maybe happen. What it wort’?”

      Benny Mac saw a 120-point headline on the cover of the Watcher: LESBO LOVE NEST IN CITY HALL.

      “If it makes the front page, Jimmy, you get five hundred. Inside gets three.”

      Jimmy Warbles snapped his fingers and grinned yellow teeth that would have done a horse proud. “Be back atcha, my man.”

      Benny thought a second, amended his proposal. “Tell ya what, Jimmy. If I can get a shot of ’em kissing, you get a grand.”

      A pair of lesbos kissing in City Hall. Magic.

      Warbles’s fingers flicked across Benny Mac’s palm, deal. He pimp-walked away, hands in his pockets, the bright hat bobbing like a multicolored mushroom.

      Benny Mac returned to his breakfast, eating with renewed vigor. He finished, set the plate on the clean table at his back. He looked at his phones, hoping a story would ring in. The lesbo deal wouldn’t pay off for a while. It’d been a slow news week and unless something came up, he’d have to hit the Watcher’s photo archives, make up another fucking space alien story.

      Benny Mac sighed, turned his eyes to a man pulling out a chair at a nearby table.

       I know that guy. Jeez, wasn’t he the one I took the picture of …

      “Hey, buddy. I know you. I saw you at the crime scene of that real estate lady. You were with my good friend, Shelly Waltz. Come over to my table, lemme buy you a cup a coffee. Hey, you don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

       You sound like a mush-mouth hickarooni …

      “Really? Inner-departmental loan, sent up to learn from the NYPD? I’m sure you have plenty to teach us as well. You want something with that coffee? Bagel? Danish? And is it officer or detective? Hey, those ladies that got cut wide open, Detective … How the cases going? Tough ones huh? I know, you can’t talk about it.”

       This hillbilly knows something …

      “I know, bud. NYPD sees stuff most departments never will. A lot of my friends are NYPD dicks. Shelly Waltz and me are like this. He’s always telling me stuff on the QT. When I finally write the story I always run it by the NYPD first. I could do a rough draft on the belly slasher story, fax a copy to Shelly and you this very afternoon. How do you spell your name? No, I don’t have to use it if you don’t want …”

       Come on, spill it …

      “Oh sure, the United Nations can be a big problem. The immunity thing. It’s true, a person could commit a crime and nothing can happen. It’s like they’re always in their own country. Sick. They come here to rape and pillage and then glide home scot-free. You can’t dynamite them out of the homeland. The only way to get at them is the free press.”

       Is Bubba suggesting someone with diplomatic immunity killed the woman? Please, what embassy? Please oh dear God … I can keep this on page one for a fucking month …

      “That’s the way it is up here. If the guy hops a plane back to his home country, it’ll take a helluva legal wrangle to get him back over here, if ever. Happens all the time. Gotta watch the airports, that’s crucial.”

       Did the hick just say NYPD’s staked out TAP Airlines? THAT’S PORTUGAL!

      “It’s a sad thing the way these foreigners take advantage of our good nature. Hey, gotta run buddy. Nice seeing you again. Enjoy your stay.”

      You idiot hayseed …

      Every Southerner knows the thicker your accent, the more you’re viewed as a naïve bumpkin by anyone north of the Mason-Dixon. After using my most cartoonish twang to shovel shit into Benny Mac’s nonexistent lap, I walked the streets to burn off energy. I went up Lexington, crossed to Central Park, spanked pavement down Eighth Avenue to Greenwich Avenue – passing within two block of Folger’s house – walked Greenwich to Sixth and into Tribeca. I angled east to the Lower East Side and turned back uptown. I was only a dozen or so blocks from the precinct when my phone rang: Clair Peltier’s cell.

      “Hi, Clair.”

      “I tested the hair and fiber evidence from the NYPD. It’s strange and I don’t think it’s what you expected.”

      Boom. That was Clair in work mode. Direct and focused, science all the way. One of the reasons she was one of the top pathologists in the country.

      “Uh, expected what, Clair?”

      “You said the hair and fibers found at the woman’s crime scene were from New York?”

      “Local shops, salons, barbers. At least that’s what everyone figured. What’s wrong?”

      “Let me walk you through it. We took what you sent and burned it all in the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.”

      “I don’t underst—”

      “Hush your head and listen. NYPD was right, testing on an individual basis was out of the question, unless you’ve got a hundred technicians or a couple of months. So our top tox guy, Ward, СКАЧАТЬ