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

of society’s marginalized minorities, of those who have no voice and are the victims of abuse. Those are my people, and I look out for them.”

He didn’t answer and I looked at the sparkling girls with which he had surrounded himself. “Mr. Lee and I have a little business to discuss in private. He’ll catch up with you in just a little while, won’t you, Lee?”

“Um…” He looked at them and nodded. “Yes, indeed. I’ll catch up with you in just a moment.”

They looked put out, muttered something about “Yeah, sure,” and drifted away.

I leered at Lee. “Introduce me to Hennessy.”

“What?”

“Do it now.”

“I can’t just go over and…”

“I’m not giving you an option, Lee. I know you’re connected. This is your chance to start backing the right horse.”

He frowned and shook his head. “No! Leave me alone. How the hell did you get in here, anyway?”

“You’d be surprised at the friends I have, Lee. Now I am going to give you one more chance to do the right thing. Introduce me to Hennessy, now.”

“No!”

“Do you know what I have in my pocket?”

He sighed. “Stone. Leave me alone or I’ll call security.”

I grinned. “I really wouldn’t do that, Lee, because by the time they get here the two ounces of crack cocaine I have in my pocket will be in your pocket, you’ll be face down on the floor and cuffed and facing prosecution for possession in the third degree. That’s a class B felony, Lee, punishable by one to nine years in prison. And you can be sure I will make it a show trial.”

“You wouldn’t…”

I laughed. “Why not? Because you’re connected? Screw you. Did you see who my date is, tonight? The editor in chief of the New York Telegraph. You know what she’d pay me for that exclusive?”

He had gone very pale. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Very probably. Now we are going to stroll over, like old pals, and you are going to introduce me to Carol Hennessy.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Somehow, I don’t think he’s on your team.”

He placed his empty glass on a passing tray and picked up a full one. He drained off half of it, took a deep breath, and led me across the crowded room to where Hennessy was talking to D’Angelo. They were moving slowly away from the group she’d been talking to.

She looked up at us as we approached and I noticed that her eyes were a very pale blue, and very hard, like diamonds that managed somehow to be ugly. I also noticed that D’Angelo was shaking his head at Lee. Lee’s voice croaked as he spoke.

“Senator Hennessy, what an honor. I have been required, in the strongest possible terms…” He laughed as he gestured toward me. “I have literally been given no option, but to introduce you to… to my acquaintance, Detective John Stone, of the NYPD.”

She looked at me with cryogenic eyes and a face that was devoid of any expression at all.

“Detective Stone, aren’t you a little out of your element?”

I shook my head. “Not at all. I feel right at home here. It’s just like Hunts Point, only with less diamonds and more coke.”

“Is that a joke?”

“No.”

“What do you want, Detective Stone?”

“I want to talk to you, Senator Hennessy. And let me tell you something before you answer. I will talk to you. I am not a Rottweiler. Rottweilers piss themselves and whimper when they see me coming. I am not relentless or obstinate, either. Relentless and obstinate adopt the fetal position and sob when they see me coming. You need to know that I am here, Senator Hennessy, and you need either to kill me, or talk to me. Which is it going to be?”

There was a very embarrassed silence. D’Angelo had gone ashen, and Lee was staring at me with his mouth slightly open. But Hennessy was giving me all the confirmation I had been looking for in my little speech. I have seen people decide to kill me several times in my career. Looking into the eyes of somebody who has decided to kill you is a unique experience. They transmit some kind of subliminal message which tells you that that part of the brain that deals in empathy and compassion has shut down, and they have made a commitment that goes beyond what normal human beings are capable of. They are going to do a terrible thing to you. That was what I saw in Senator Carol Hennessy’s eyes. And I also saw something else. She had arrived at that decision without difficulty. It was a place she was used to.

She gave a small sigh.

“Very well, Detective Stone. Come to my office tomorrow, at the Foundation. We’ll talk there and we’ll reach some kind of understanding.”

“Good. What time?”

She turned to D’Angelo. “What time?”

He blinked several times and drew breath. “Um, three. Three tomorrow afternoon.”

She looked at me with her blue ice-eyes, calibrating me, calculating, trying to read me. “Satisfied?”

I shook my head. “No. I’ll see you tomorrow, Hennessy.”

I walked away, toward where I had left Shelly. She was talking to a couple of guys with expensive hair-perms, but excused herself as she saw me approaching and came to meet me.

“You are either going to make my career or destroy me. Which is it?”

I shrugged with my eyebrows. “That’s up to you. You have to make a choice about whom you are going to back. But I’ll give you a tip, Shelly, because I like you and I believe you are a good person.”

“So much bewildering stuff in one short speech. A cop who says whom? You like me? I’m a good person? A tip?”

“All of those things. Within the next forty-eight hours, Senator Carol Hennessy will make an attempt on my life.