COPS SPIES & PI'S: The Four Novel Box Set

by David Wind

  I cocked my head up at her and winked. “You never know.”

  “I know,” Gina said and left for the kitchen

  “Chris, can you find out if there are any rumors connecting Santucchi to the kids who get caught on the Internet.”

  “I’ll ask around, but I haven’t heard anything out of any of the families.”

  “I can tell you,” Gina said, reappearing with coffee cups, “they don’t usually go there, it’s the way the big crime families looked at drugs. They didn’t mess with them until it was forced down their throats in the early fifties. It would bring on way too much heat.”

  Amanda came carrying two more cups. The two women retreated to the kitchen and returned within a minute with the coffee pot and dessert. Conversation paused while we had the first cup of coffee and the peach cobbler.

  When the second cups were poured, and everyone was sitting back and relaxing, I put voice to a new thought. “What if this was a side thing for Santucchi, like drugs were for the boys back then. That’s how they got into it; a couple of hotshots would make a deal with out of town sellers, and then resell to whoever was dealing. The drug situation got so rampant the bosses realized in order to control it they had to run it. They figured they could keep it local to the blacks and Hispanics because the good ole’ white folks didn’t use the stuff.”

  I wagged a calloused. “Look at it this way: Santucchi has someone who deals in the kids who are getting older and are no use for the shits who take them. Let’s call him a distributor who deals to the highest bidder.”

  “That’s a little over the top. Gina, you agree?” Chris asked.

  Gina nodded. “The organized crime division has never had a whisper of that.”

  “Which means nothing: these people are careful because they can’t have either the cops or the higher ups in the crime families finding out. But let’s hypothesize; say its happening and this distributor has these predators working for him, luring girls out of their homes and into their arms. They’re young, easily broken and then molded into whatever is needed. When these… predators are done with the girl, and instead of making them disappear, they sell them to this distributor and go after their next victim. Possible?”

  “But not probable,” Gina replied. “There would have been some indication.”

  “Word is Streeter always had one or two underage girls hustling for him and has been doing it for several years and you don’t have an indication on that, eh?”

  Both Gina and Chris shook their heads. “It’s a theory, nothing more.”

  “Have you seen the journal?” I asked Chris.

  He shook his head and looked at Amanda. The ever-present comma of dark hair` dropped across his forehead with the movement. “She was too involved to share.”

  Amanda flashed him a smile. “I’m done, it’s yours to see. And you,” she said charged, fixing me with what I would describe as a mother’s irritated look. “Who is the woman?”

  “You have no idea?”

  “Gabe, I need to know the players to figure it out. I don’t think I do, do I?”

  She had me there. “No, you’re right. But bear with me for a little while. Tell me what impressions you got from the journal.”

  “I can do that. The relationship came out of the play and she has something to do with it. Perhaps she’s an actress.” She paused. Twin vertical lines creased the center of her forehead. “He was afraid of having a deeper relationship than friendship. At first I thought it was because of his past romantic problems, but the further in I got, the less likely that seemed.”

  Amanda picked up her cup with both hands and took a sip. “Then the tone of his writing shifted. He was split between wanting to go further with the relationship and listening to an inner sense stopping him at an instinctive level. It was something he couldn’t understand or ignore.”

  She set the cup down. We three waited patiently. Each of us knew, as a clinical psychologist, Amanda Bolt was at the top of her profession.

  “There were a lot of puzzle pieces in the writings, but even more was between the lines: It wasn’t something he was hiding from, they were things he understood without having to go further with his own explanations.”

  “What I saw in the last entry told me whoever she is; she’d gone through some terrible times and blocked them from her mind. Knowing Scotty as I do─” She bit off the last word, squeezed her eyes shut and said, “As I did. Damn it, I’m having a hard time with him being gone….”

  “Amanda,” Chris began.

  She stopped him with a look. “I need to do this.”

  She straightened her shoulders, drew in a breath and continued. “As I said, knowing Scotty as I did, I believe he suspected she was abused as a child, sexually abused, either by her father or a pedophile. Scotty was sensitive to that. He would have been doing research on her—you need to look in his files again, go through all of them. It would be there.”

  “But her memory?”

  “Either she wouldn’t tell him, or she doesn’t remember. It’s a safety valve. A young child is molested, raped, abused for years—this kind of terror and fear can’t be handled in the normal way. At some point, a survival mechanism kicks in and pushes her memories deep into a subconscious vault. Sometimes the memories come up by themselves. You read about it all the time. Look at the scandal with the Catholic Church a few years back.

  It takes someone like me to begin unlocking the vault. You bring up the memories carefully. If not, the damage will be deadly. Suicide is easier to handle than living with the memories and pain. Which I believe is the danger Scotty referred to.”

  Pausing, she scanned our faces. “There are also those who begin to remember, years and years afterward, because something happens to trigger one of the buried memories and they begin to emerge. The results can be insanity or suicide or both, unless they are lucky enough to find someone who can help them deal with the memories in an organized manner.”

  The picture she’d painted was a landscape of despair. “And the children you work with, there are some like that?”

  “The older ones, the seventeen and eighteen year olds, yes, there are some. Who is the woman?”

  “Lia Thornton.”

  The only sign Amanda had heard me was a twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Oh my.”

  “You’re sure?” Chris asked.

  “I braced her and she admitted it. I didn’t push it.”

  “Good.” Amanda narrowed her eyes at me. “Do you think she killed Scotty?”

  “I’ve considered it,” I admitted, “She spent some time hustling and dancing in clubs. She dated mobsters and danced in chorus lines on Broadway before she met and married Jeremy Thornton. But what we don’t have is information on her childhood years, which is what I will have tomorrow. But the anger at the scene doesn’t seem to fit her. Her style is more cool and calculating.”

  “Perhaps you should find a way for me to meet her. Maybe I can get more of a read,” Amanda offered.

  “That may work,” I said as Anna appeared from her room to announce her homework was completed.

  Chris grabbed her and plopped her onto his lap where her eyes grew wide at the site of the cobbler. “For me?” she asked in a sugar sweet voice.

  Chapter 35

  Gina and I stood on the corner across from the Looker’s Club. I’d tried to talk her out of coming, but she’d gone stubborn on me. When we’d left Chris’s, Gina had asked me to come up to her place to ‘relax’.

  While relaxing with Gina would be a lot more enjoyable than what I’d decided on for post dinner entertainment, I needed to keep moving forward. The disappointment shadowing her face had fled with my explanation. Then she’d told me she would be going with me. It wasn’t what I’d had in mind, but her argument had been convincing—her bureau shield.

  After a cab unloaded another group of men in front of the club, we crossed the street and almost walked into the gorilla that seemed to live in the front entrance. He stiffened when he sa
w me, but said nothing.

  Being a gentleman, I naturally let Gina go in first. When the girl at the door, not the same one I’d talked with, asked for the cover money, Gina flipped her shield. “Tell Mr. Santucchi we’d like to speak with him.”

  “He’s–”

  “He’ll see us,” I said and gave Gina a gentle shove forward. The wall of music slammed at us. All I could make out was the thumping heavy bass and some high-end guitar licks. Still, it was the perfect music to go with the topless and almost bottomless girls dancing on poles or on the laps of the customers seated at the small tables surrounding the dance floor. The lighting was set low so the girls under the spotlight were seen clearly, while the customers hid in the anonymity of shadows. The club was full, the bar cluttered with men watching the naked girls strut their stuff. Three bartenders worked the long bar, two women and one man. The one with the future pelican tattooed on her left breast was working up a sweat as she fielded the waitresses drink orders at the far end.

  Taking over the lead, I headed for the back and Santucchi’s office. We almost made it when the office door opened and three men stepped out, looked at us, and moved aside.

  We went into the office and Santucchi’s bodyguard closed the door behind us. Santucchi stayed seated at his desk, his eyes narrowing. He wore a black silk suit, a lavender shirt and dark purple and black stripped tie. His dark wavy hair was slicked back. He wore an annoyed expression with practiced ease. “I don’t remember you as a Fed, Storm.”

  Gina stepped around me “He’s not.”

  “Agent Torrelli,” Santucchi said with a nod. “Strange company you’re keeping.”

  “Strange place I find myself in. We have some questions for you—my civilian consultant and I.”

  Gina took the seat to the left and I took the one to the right. “You remember an incident last week?”

  Santucchi had the balls to smile. “Yeah, someone missed you with a lead kiss.”

  “And hit a friend of mine. We need to know who.”

  “I already told you I don’t know.”

  Leaning back, I crossed my left leg over my right knee. “Agent Torrelli was very interested in what I had to say. It seems her team finds the goings on here interesting as well.”

  He stared at Gina. “Is that so, Agent Torrelli?”

  Gina’s face was emotionless. “Something came across my desk the other day, and from what detective Storm tells me, you may be involved. You see, our agents share information with the local police. And this particular report bothered me a lot.”

  Santucchi appeared calm and relaxed. “And?”

  “A young girl was found in the Hudson. Her throat had been cut.”

  “And that means what to me?” His calm delivery didn’t mask the caution in his words.

  “It means this girl, who was abducted several years ago, showed up last week working the street a few blocks from here. And guess what? Her pimp’s disappeared.”

  “It still means nothing to me,” Santucchi said, but his eyes said different.

  Gina ran with the lead. I loved watching her work—enjoyed the way she could turn into the hard-ass cop while looking even more beautiful than before. “I’m sorry to hear that, because the pimp has been connected to you. He goes by the name Streeter, but you know that already.”

  “That’s bullshit! I don’t work pimps.”

  “Anymore, maybe” she said, her voice a whisper in steel.

  They stared hard at each other, electricity crackled between them and I knew it was time to take some heat. “Word is Streeter is connected to you. I’ve got a half dozen people who will swear to it.”

  “You’ve got half a dozen liars,” he snapped. He eyed me and then looked back at Gina, a knowing grin spread across his features. “You fucking him? Is that why you’re here with him?”

  Gina smiled. It was the first time I’d ever seen her smile that way and I almost felt sorry for Santucchi. “Whether Mister Storm is fucking me or not,” she said in a tone cold enough to freeze lava, “is nothing compared to the way I will fuck over you, Mister Santucchi, every day until I get the satisfaction of watching a cell door slide shut on you. You got that?”

  He held her stare for five seconds before folding. “Yeah, I got it. Sorry, no harm intended.”

  “Good. You need to understand where this is going. We’ve got abduction of a minor for the purposes of prostitution as well as another half dozen federal statutes. Word goes out there’s a connection between the dead girl and you, and there won’t be a minute of the day or night without an agent or a city cop parked on your ass. I will personally assign agents to sit at the bar every hour this club is open, and if need be, in every one of your clubs. I will guarantee your business will suffer, and I doubt your bosses will like the heat being directed to them or their loss of income.”

  She allowed him three seconds to think. “On the other hand, and in the interest of helping out the law, as any legitimate businessman would want to do, please consider answering Mister Storm’s questions.”

  “What?” he snapped and looked at me.

  “Where’s Streeter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You stood bail for him last week.”

  “That’s not a crime. He called and I owed him a favor. I lawyered him up and posted the ante. No crime in that.”

  “And then he killed the girl and blew town. Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know what he did. And, I can’t tell you what I don’t know. The last time I spoke to him was when he hit the street and called to thank me.”

  “If he doesn’t show for the hearing, you’ll be out the ten grand.”

  “We’ll see. But Storm, I’m telling you real straight, I don’t deal with Streeter’s girls. I helped him out when he first showed up, gave him some work to keep him in food. Its good business to keep watch on what happens in my area, but I don’t do business with him.”

  This time I believed him. “Next question: who was the guy in the upstairs room?”

  “I can’t give you anything.” There was no anger and no toughness either.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t know who it was. Word came down to make the room available and to make myself scarce.”

  “It didn’t feel that way the last time we met.”

  “Look. You came in here pissed and ready to tear everyone apart because a friend of yours bought it. The last thing I needed was to have you going off here, so I said what was needed to get you out.”

  “And the assholes that have been tailing me aren’t your men?”

  Caught off guard, his eyes narrowed. “No.”

  “And you don’t know the sniper who took a shot at me and a client in her living room?”

  His face went blank. “No shit. Too bad he missed.”

  “He meant to miss. It was a warning. His mistake though.”

  Santucchi enjoyed a laughed. “You keep telling me how tough you are. Personally, I think it’s an act.”

  “That kind of thinking would be a mistake,” Gina said.

  I wasn’t sure if the smile I was doing my best to hide didn’t show a little, but if it was, Santucchi didn’t react; instead, he leaned forward and spread his hands out, palms upward. “I can’t help you with this.”

  “It would be in your best interests,” Gina said

  “No can do. Look, let’s make a truce.” He looked over our heads. “Joey, get us some drinks. What would you like to drink, Agent Torrelli?”

  “Diet coke works for me.”

  “Storm?”

  “Whatever you’re having,” I answered.

  He gave me a lopsided smile and waved the burly guard out without specifying the drink.

  When the door closed, he leaned forward. “Torrelli,” he said, dropping the agent part, “we’ve butted heads on and off for a few years and I will admit, while you’re a genuine pain in the ass, you’re also a pro. You don’t cut corners, and you don’t do dirt, so if you give me your
word, I’ll believe it.”

  Gina held his gaze for a moment before nodding.

  “I’m making a stretch, but you ain’t here on Bureau’s business. This is personal, yes?”

  With Gina’s second nod, he said, “So if I say it’s off the record, it stays in the room?”

  “It stays here,” She agreed.

  “You understand I run a legitimate business. You know how many clubs we got open, and I can tell you that we got another six on the way. The clubs make a shitload of profit, legit profit. And the women who work the clubs, they’re all legal. I don’t need underage girls. The girls work here because they get paid well, they don’t have to work the streets, and they get protection against the asshole customers who try to take what they see. You know I’m not stupid, Torrelli, why would I bring in an underage girl and take a chance of blowing it all?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer to the rhetorical question. “I don’t deal with Streeter or his girls.” He fixed me with his stare. “Now, ask your questions and get them done before Joey gets back. I don’t need anyone thinking I’m talking to you.”

  “Where is Streeter?”

  “I don’t know. He comes from Miami…. Who knows, maybe he went home.”

  “What about the dead girl?” I asked, storing the last piece of information along with the way it was given.

  “Nothing.”

  “The guy in the room upstairs?”

  Santucchi’s left eye twitched. “I don’t know who he is; I just know he’s protected. I got a call and gave him the room. That’s it.”

  “But you have an idea of who he is.”

  “Look me in the eyes, Storm. Look close.” He leaned toward me, his small black almond shaped eyes open wide.

  “I can tell you he’s powerful, and he has ears up the line. They do what he asks, and I do what I’m asked. I’ve never seen him and I don’t want to. Whoever he is and whatever he does, I don’t want to know.”

  His eyes told the truth. He couldn’t have hidden it even if he wanted to. “The guy from last night, he wasn’t one of yours?”