Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) Blake Banner (read out loud books txt) 📖

maybe his lawyer. They were pretty close. I mean, as close as anybody ever got to Dave, you know what I’m saying? And in as much as he trusted anyone, he trusted him. But I can’t see it. It doesn’t make any sense, he would give him the story and not me…?”

I nodded. It made perfect sense to me. “What was his layer’s name, Mr. Shaw?”

“Oh, jeez…! Uh…he was Chinese or Korean or something. Korean. What’s that name—all Koreans have the same name, you know? Uh, Lee. Lee something. Or something Lee. They always have their names the wrong way ’round too. I don’t know if he was Lee something or something Lee.”

Dehan grunted. “Would you have this on file anywhere?”

He shook his head. “Nah. But Shelly will. Shelly will remember him. She knew him.”

Dehan looked sour and asked, “Any idea what became of him? Who he worked for?”

“No idea. I just heard Dave talk about him sometimes. I never met the guy. Like I said, you’re better off talking to Shelly. She moved in the same circle. It was a bit too rarified for me,”

I frowned at him. A bell inside my head rang a quiet alarm. “Rarified?”

“Yah! You know, in my day it was different. You were an editor in my kind of paper, you unleashed your hounds and they did their worst. Today it’s different. Editors have to rub shoulders with the mayor, senators, governors, ambassadors, princes, and oil barons. That was never my style, but Shelly excels at it.”

“Are you telling me that Shelly knows Carol Hennessy?”

“Sure. They all know each other. Shelly, Hennessy, Lee, the mayor… They all move in the same circle. That’s what I’m saying. It’s the way it works.”

Dehan drew breath and looked at me. Shaw barked a laugh and cut in before she could speak. “Draw your own conclusions, detective. I drew mine a long time ago. I’ve always done the right thing. It’s the way I was raised. You were probably raised the same way. But heroes are heroes because they do things decent people are too scared to do. I’m a decent man, but I ain’t a hero. When Dave was murdered, it took the fight out of me. I hadn’t the stomach for it anymore.” He looked at me. “They’re there, Stone. They’re there, in their manor houses and their towers of glass and steel, and their palaces. They run the show. They buy and sell people, they send them off to war, to be exterminated in their thousands and millions. They experiment on them, they enslave them, they send them down mines to die, men, women, and children. And they don’t give a damn.” He flapped both hands at me. “I ain’t big enough to go up against them. I’m old and they scare me. And Shelly…” He shrugged and shook his head. “Is there anything else?”

I sat and chewed my lip for a moment, then turned and looked at Dehan. She shook her head.

I said, “No, thank you, Mr. Shaw. You’ve given us plenty to be thinking about.”

He went to stand, but paused and looked at Dehan. “You’re a beautiful young lady, in the prime of your life. Be smart. Don’t go up against this woman. She’ll destroy you. She won’t think twice. She probably won’t even know your name.”

She stared at him.

He stood and then grinned at me. “You? You’re old and ugly like me. We get rubbed out, who cares, right?”

He laughed out loud. I smiled and stood. We shook hands and he left, leaving the door open behind him. I turned to face Dehan. She was sitting with her ass on the table and her arms crossed, watching me. We stared at each other for a long moment, thinking. It was a habit we both had which used to unsettle other people, but it helped us think.

Finally, she said, “Should be an interesting meal, Stone.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I think so. I think Shelly Pearce might know more than we first thought.”

“Keep your wits about you, Stone. Don’t get suckered.”

I smiled. “I’ve been around a bit, Dehan. I won’t get suckered.”

She sighed. “Guys…even smart ones like you, can be real stupid when it comes to women.”

“Okay, I’ll bear it in mind.” I jerked my head at the door. “Come on, I have some reading to do before I go home and change. You want a lift?”

“Yeah… No… I don’t know.”

Seven

I took her to a nice Italian restaurant I knew on Court Street in Brooklyn. The food and the wine were good, the table cloths and the napkins were crisp linen, but you didn’t have to book a month in advance to get a table.

She looked a little surprised when she saw we were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, and when I pulled up outside Queen, she raised an eyebrow at me and said, “You live in staggering distance of Brooklyn Heights?”

I smiled, climbed out, and went around to open the door for her. It was warm and pleasantly busy inside. Vincenzo greeted me like an old friend and led us to a table for two. He handed us a couple of menus and I ordered two martinis while we had a look at them.

When he’d brought them and departed I said, running my eyes over the daily specials, “Until this investigation is over, Shelly, I am afraid we won’t be staggering anywhere together.”

She raised her eyes to look at me and there was a flash of anger in them. “Boy, you really know how to woo a girl, don’t you?”

I made a face like an apology. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t really even be having dinner with you.”

She snapped, “You want to leave? You want me to get a cab home?”

I wondered briefly why women were so hard to talk to