Cold Dead Hands (A Mike Casper Thriller Book 1)

by Sebastian Blunt

  “More than you know, Josh.”

  “So then just stay and let things simmer down until it all goes away.”

  Glenda felt frustrated and scared. “It won’t go away. They won’t stop. They’re like the freakin’ terminator.”

  Altman sat down on an old wooden desk chair. “Can’t you do what you need to do from here? You’ve got a stealthy computer and your contacts in New York.”

  “Not good enough. Listen. I know who took the photos of Bruner and the Queen. Yes. I’m that good. All the digging has paid off. There were two guys assigned to go to Manhattan and get dirt on the chief. One guy was named Jasper. He took a sniper bullet in his forehead. The other one got away. I know his name now.”

  Josh looked anxious. “So go to the feds!”

  “Won’t work. Not enough yet. I have to walk into the F.B.I. with my witness and the photos. Anything less, and Bruner will walk. The witness is not squeaky clean at all. They will lock him up, and he’ll be dead in a week. Me? I’ll have to run for the rest of my life—which will probably be about two months. This is the only way.”

  “I thought gross anatomy was baffling. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to buy a clunker and drive to Queens. I know a safe place in Kew Gardens Hills. It belongs to a religious Jewish guy who’s divorced and lives alone. He retired as an honest cop.”

  Josh smirked. “Seems like a good cover, unless the neighbors start talking about the transwoman shacked up with Mendel.”

  “His name is Moe, but I’ll keep a low profile. Can you get me a functional car cheap?”

  “What state are we in, Glenda?

  “I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll send you the money if I survive.”

  *

  Despite being extremely reticent, Kim gave into her anxiety and called the Long Island rental with her burner phone. Mike picked up after four rings. “Why are you calling?”

  “Sorry. I think I’m being followed.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I know this sounds crazy, but I had the driver drop me off in front of the Suffolk County Police.”

  Casper thought about that. His knee-jerk reaction would be to go ballistic, but then he realized that she had to be safe, even if it meant that he’d have to go on the run again. “Tell me what happened? Also, how close are you?”

  “I saw a cab follow me all the way from the interview. There was another car behind it.”

  “They both tailed you?”

  “The dark blue car behind the cab disappeared for a little bit, but I saw the plate. It showed up again. I had the driver pull into a parking lot. The cab stopped about 200 meters down the road, and a guy got out and then jumped into the blue car. His cab left.”

  “Where are you now? Exactly.”

  “I had my driver drop me off at a surgical clinic across the street from the police precinct.”

  “Alright. I got the picture. You did great. Those guys following you screwed up. They underestimated you.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Yes. It means those jerks are overconfident. I’m going to call Smith the taxi guy, and have him come out and pick you up. Timing is everything on this. Stay on the line.”

  Mike dialed Smith’s phone number. The reliable old driver said he would be at the medical clinic in six minutes plus or minus thirty seconds.

  “Kim. In six minutes, your ride will be there. In one minute, I want you to call the police station using a different phone. Tell them that you were driving down—where are they now?”

  “On a street called Ramsey Road about 200 meters away from the clinic. I can see them parked on the side of the road. One of the guys just got out. He’s looking in my direction, but I’m hidden. He’s got binoculars.”

  “Okay. Be cool. Use a different phone. Dial the police.” He told her the number. “It is exactly that precinct. Tell them that you were driving down Ramsey and saw a blue car stopped on the side of the road. Say that there is another car, and you think they are doing a drug deal. Then say that they may have seen you and hang up.”

  Mike listened while Kimberly pulled off a nearly flawless acting job. Thirty seconds later, the blare of sirens was coming loudly through her phone.

  “Two cop cars just pulled up around the blue car. I can see them from here. They have their guns out.”

  “You did great. Let’s hope the cops find a weapon on them.”

  “Collin Jones. You are a genius.”

  “Maybe. Just get the hell out of their visual range. Do you see Smith yet?”

  “Not yet.” She scanned up and down William Floyd Parkway, the main road out in front of the clinic. “Nope. Wait. There’s a cab. Please stay on with me.”

  “Okay. Don’t worry. I’m here, and you have the police station right there if things go bad.”

  “It’s Smith. I can see him.”

  “Good. Are you sure it’s him?”

  “Yes. Wait. Here he is.” She held out the phone and put it on speaker.

  “Hey. Mr. Smith. Can you please take my friend to the corner of Rockaway Trail and Wauweepex Trail in Calverton? Those are the streets near our house. Don’t go to the house. I’m—out walking.”

  About ten minutes later, Mike saw the cab coming down the road. When Kim got out, she hugged him but then gathered her composure and stood back a little embarrassed.

  The taxi driver looked up with one gray eyebrow raised. “Do you want to tell me what you got me into?”

  Casper blanched. “We don’t have a car, so you’re it.”

  Smith wasn’t buying it. “Bullcrap. I did two tours in Vietnam. I’ve been around the block a time or two. And you’ve been hiding out here between going to the morgue and the detectives in the city. Am I aiding and abetting, or are you in witness protection? If you don’t think you can trust me, then you should sneak out of here in someone else’s cab.” He waited.

  “We’re the good guys,” was Mike’s reply. It was a canned response that seemed to fit the moment.

  “That pretty much confirms my Spidey-Sense. Be smart, don’t call any other rides but me. One other thing, is that gray Toyota that followed me from the clinic one of yours?”

  Casper turned to Kim. “They must have had another one.”

  Smith looked concerned. “This is turning into a bit of an adventure. Why don’t you get your stuff, and I’ll take you somewhere without being tailed.”

  “No. That’s okay. We’re good.”

  The man shrugged. “Have it your way. You know where to reach me.” In an instant, he was gone, and Mike and Kim melted into the woods.

  “The bitch you had me tail is a smart one.”

  “Go on.” Claire was stretched out naked in her hot bathtub, a failed attempt at soaking away her paranoia.

  “She must have seen the cab I was in. She got out at a medical clinic. I had my guy pull a good way down the road. A couple of cops showed up five minutes later. They did a search. It was a minor inconvenience. The chick must have made us and called the pigs. They took the car apart just like they were looking for contraband.”

  Claire wanted to squeeze through the phone line and smack the shit out of him. “You’re an idiot for being seen.”

  “In my defense, the target was good.”

  “Do not blow smoke up my ass. Did they bust you?”

  “No. My piece was in the other car. The good news is that we tracked them to a place called Calverton, then they took off through the woods—but they’re in Calverton.”

  “Why are you saying ‘they?’ Who are they?”

  “There was a man with her.”

  “What?” Claire almost shrieked. “A guy met her? Where?”

  “I told you, in that little wooded area. She got out and ran away with him into the forest.”

  She sat up in the tub, wanting to claw her operative's eyes out. “Find them. And when you do, if they see you, I will cut your fucking fingers off one at a time. Tell your people that. I’m paying yo
u good money, so act like it.”

  “Understood.”

  “One more thing. Look up the daily or weekly rental houses in the neighborhood. That’s your quickest way to find them.”

  Claire hung up. The situation was getting reckless. Rules were being violated, which put her at risk. At the same time, both Manshu’s, Kenneth, and his soon-to-be-dead sister had stoked her anger into an inferno. The black Belizian was going to eat a knife, whether she had a man with her or not. She laughed and got up in front of the full-length mirror to admire her body.

  “You are so hot, Claire,” she muttered gleefully. “And, perhaps Claire will get to kill the man also—a two-fer!” She giggled while speaking in the third person. “Yes. Mrs. German-Clemp will slice up some flesh to satisfy her needs!”

  Her naked reflection calmed the raging torrent inside her.

  *

  “We should consider moving asap,” announced Casper.

  Kim’s mind was having a hard time processing much of what was coming out of his mouth. The trek through the woods, eluding Claire’s criminal partners, and dealing with the detectives in Manhattan were ridiculously stressful events. But, the thing that was front and center in her mind was the feeling she experienced while embracing Mike—when she reached him safely.

  “Did you hear what I just said?”

  “Sorry. Something about staying somewhere?”

  “Close, but not quite. I said that maybe we should move to a new place.”

  He stood on the opposite side of the white marble kitchen island staring at her intently. His hands were pressed flat onto the surface, and she noticed that Mike’s right palm was about an inch away from a glob of spaghetti sauce from a prior meal.

  “Can you move your right hand a little further to the right?”

  He looked at her like she was odd. “What???”

  Kim held up her finger and thumb. “You’re about this close to squashing a lump of tomato sauce on the countertop.”

  Casper looked down and stared at it. Then he lifted his hand a laid it dead-center on top of the clump of semi-dry sauce. “Is that better?”

  “To your right, not mine. What were you saying?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to gauge your opinion on moving to a different rental—maybe New Jersey or somewhere other than Calverton.”

  Kim’s head was still back on the street with Smith, the cabbie, and Mike. Her next comment was off-topic. “Look. I’m sorry that I jumped to hold you back there. I apologize.”

  “That’s why you are drifty and unfocused right now? Kimberly, you were being chased by guys who kill people.”

  “Yes. It did scare the hell out of me,” she admitted.

  “Exactly. So holding me was perfectly normal under those circumstances. It didn’t mean anything.”

  It took a few seconds, but then she realized that his words stung her. It didn’t mean anything. It occurred to Kim that there was pin-drop silence between them. “Um. Oh. Right. Of course, it didn’t mean anything.”

  Casper continued, “Absolutely. Now, as I was pointing out, we should maybe move to a new place. Not the city—there are cameras everywhere.” Mike’s words droned on. Still, Kim was dealing with a tiny yet expanding empty spot in her heart brought on by his plain words, “It didn’t mean anything.”

  “I’m kind of tired.”

  He tilted his head. “It’s only 7:30.”

  “Yes, I know, but today has been hard.”

  “Alright. We can move tomorrow. I think we’re safe for now.”

  Chapter 27

  Glenda looked at herself in the mirror. Some people are a challenge to disguise, she thought.

  Moe, her ex-cop friend, had always overlooked Jones’ status before becoming a religiously observant Jew. Nothing changed since, other than his divorce and retirement.

  “You look like something the cat dragged in, Glenda.”

  She sat down on a chair in her room. “I can’t begin to tell you how nice it is to hear that.”

  “You know me. Honesty is right at the top of my list. Maybe you should tell me why you showed up in a mess of a car with West Virginia plates.”

  “Thanks for reminding me. We need to take the plates off that thing.”

  Morris “Moe” Gold was a big guy. A few inches taller than Glenda and fifty pounds heavier. “That bad, huh?”

  “Yes. The worst. Can I bum a screwdriver off you?”

  “I’ll do it. First, tell me if I am harboring a wanted criminal.”

  “Wanted yes, but not a criminal. I don’t want to put you in the middle of something pretty ugly.”

  He sat down heavily on the bed. “Twenty years working in Manhattan. I’ve seen mostly everything. Tell me.”

  “Bruner.”

  Gold absorbed the implications of what he just heard. “No frickin’ way.”

  “Moe, it’s as bad as it can get. I don’t want you to get dead, so maybe I should just leave?”

  “Glenda. How long have I known you?”

  “Is this a quiz show? Twelve years.”

  “Right. Years before you did your surgery and before I started becoming orthodox.” He waited for Jones to acknowledge the simple history lesson. “Both of us have a chronic illness—a massive need to be straight up truthful and do the right thing.”

  The former cop waited.

  “Alright, but please don’t inject yourself into this business.”

  “Agreed. Give me the basics, and I’ll ask you questions at the end.”

  Glenda laughed loud and long because that was the same phrase she used to say to Moe when pumping him for a story.

  “I’ve been sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong. Bruner is in cahoots with the new drug boss of all New York.”

  “Bogus. Not about Bruner, but no one boss has ever been able to run the whole city.”

  “Hold onto your yarmulka, my skeptical Yiddishe friend. The boss is a woman, and only a few people know her identity. She’s ruthless. Bruner is deep into it.”

  “He’s always given me bad vibes, but I never got that close to him. How do you know all this?”

  “I’m glad you’re sitting down because I’m going to tell you the story about how I ended up with West Virginia plates on that piece of junk car out there—and you aren’t going to believe one stinking word.”

  “You’re right. I don’t believe you. The sex-change hormones must have affected your brain.”

  “Moe, I love when you are tremendously not P.C. Did you know that?”

  “Hey, I’ve got you as a good pal, right?”

  “Valid point.” Glenda pulled up her hair. “Look at that.”

  On her scalp, there was an evident scar, a cut that must have been nasty.

  “Wow.”

  “Yes. More like ouch. That wasn’t caused by a flying matzoh ball either.”

  Gold looked shocked. “And you fell over the garage wall and into a dump truck? If it wasn’t there, you would have done a header into the road.”

  “Otherwise known as dead, Moe.”

  “Damn. I am glad you didn’t die.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “Who’s your number one witness?”

  She debated whether to tell Gold more details but carried on talking. “The guy is on the run. He has pics of Bruner and the drug boss doing a 187 on a cop and another guy—gun and knife—I mean, it was done to set a tone and prove an ugly, bloody point. The witness ran, and I know his name. I also know that he went to Europe.”

  “How does that help you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m hoping I can find him. His dad was a cop who was killed in a Brooklyn bust. There are plenty of intertwining details that would get me a book deal if I can put it all together. The only believable rumor about where he went is Italy. I’ve been looking at Italian newspapers in my spare time, hoping to find a story about a crazy American.”

  “That seems like a waste of time.”

  “I thought so, too. Then I asked one of my
contacts to bug his Italian family about odd news that might have American’s in it.”

  “People that live in Italy?”

  “Yes. I said Italian.” Glenda smirked but continued. “I got stories about American pizza versus Italian pizza—stories about tourists trying to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa from the outside. And then I got a story about the rich woman whose husband’s boat sank in the Med.”

  Moe groaned purposely and loudly. “What a waste of time!”

  “Yep. A complete waste of time until I looked up the story about the Clemp widow and saw an insane piece from a couple of days earlier. Do you have a computer on?”

  The ex-cop retrieved a tablet from his bedroom and handed it to Jones.

  “Check this out.” Glenda typed in the name Cloudnews, and searched. “You see that image? That’s a fisherman who survived an eight-hour swim after his boat sank. Quite a good story, right?”

  “Tough dude.”

  “And, walla.” She held up a newspaper story that had an old photo of Mike Casper. It was after he was busted for suspicion of working in the drug business. “Nothing stuck, so he was out in a few hours, especially since he was the orphaned kid of a dead hero cop. Look at them together.”

  Gold put his glasses on and took a closer look. “Similar, but there are a lot of people in the world.”

  “No name was given for the fisherman swimmer guy. He disappeared in a car driven by some chubby Italiano with a woman. The guy covered his head. Never to be seen again.”

  “Circumstantial, at best.”

  “Ready for more? A few weeks later, the pretty woman in the picture was found dead in a little Italian fishing town called Pellaro. She was tied to a chair. Her murderer was found dead on the floor with a broken neck, and a broom handle stuck in his abdomen. No sign of the fisherman.”

  “That’s a helluva story, but it sounds like typical mafia crap connected to Sicily and Italy. How do you find out this stuff?”

  “I’m diligent.”

  Moe sat there shaking his head.

  “Do you know what I think happened, Sergeant Gold? I think Mike Casper walked in on the New York crew cutting his friend, the girl. Her name was Cassie Clark, and she came from a very wealthy British family. What if Casper found Bruner’s people torturing the girl? Casper is no wimp. Despite his dad being a good cop, little Mikey ended up as a street operator in Brooklyn. His job was to make sure the numbers added up—that’s all. He wasn’t a killer, but the man worked out there for years—he saw a lot of bad things.”