Cold Blooded (Dennis McQueen 02)

by Randisi, Robert J.

  COLD BLOODED

  Book Two of the Detective McQueen Series

  By Robert J. Randisi

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2013 / Robert J. Randisi

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Robert J. Randisi has been called by Booklist “. . . the last of the pulp writers.” He has published in the western, mystery, private eye, horror, science fiction and men’s action/adventure genres. All told, he is the author of over 602 books, 50+ short stories, one screenplay and the editor of 30 anthologies. He has also edited a Writer’s Digest book, WRITING THE PRIVATE EYE NOVEL, and for seven years was the mystery reviewer for the Orlando Sentinel. In 1982 he founded the Private Eye Writers of America, and created the Shamus Award. In 1985 he co-founded Mystery Scene Magazine and the short-lived American Mystery Award; a couple of years later he was co-founder of the American Crime Writer’s League. In 1993 he was awarded a Life Achievement Award at the Southwest Mystery Convention. In 2009 he received the Life Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America.

  Randisi was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. After 41 years in N.Y, he now resides in Clarksville, Mo., an Artisan community of 500 people located right on the Mississippi. He lives and works with writer Marthayn Pelegrimas in a small house that overlooks the Mississippi.

  Partial Book List

  The Joe Keough Series

  Alone With the Dead

  In the Shadow of the Arch

  Blood on the Arch

  East of the Arch

  Arch Angles

  The Detective McQueen Series

  The Turner Journals

  Cold Blooded

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  For Marthayn,

  who keeps my blood anything but cold

  COLD BLOODED

  PROLOGUE

  The average age of the members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club was sixty-two, and that was because the youngest member, Bobby Kelly, was only fifty-eight years old.

  As the nine men spread out on the beach and discarded their clothing, Kelly looked over at eighty-four-year-old Walter Dunham, who was wearing the skimpiest bathing suit of all of them. There was entirely too much of his pale, slack skin in sight.

  “What the hell is that?” Bobby asked.

  Dennis Hasselbeck turned and looked over in Walter’s direction.

  “Those are his French-cut trunks,” he said. “His wife got them for him.”

  “His wife?” Bobby asked. “Ain’t she even older than him?”

  “Yeah,” Walter said. “Louise is eighty-six. She calls Walter her boy toy.”

  “Yuck,” Bobby said. He was hopping around on one foot, trying to get his other pant leg off, and almost toppled over before recovering his balance.

  “Whatsmatta?” Walter asked. “He’s skinny enough to wear ‘em.”

  The man touched his bulging belly. “Wish I was.”

  “How old are you, Walter?”

  “Sixty.”

  “Be happy you ain’t so old and senile enough to wear somethin’ like that.”

  The rest of the Polar Bears got their pants off and began hopping from foot to foot, rubbing their arms to ward off the twenty-five degree cold. Bobby shook his head. If these old geezers couldn’t take this, what were they gonna do when it got down to zero? Of course, they weren’t as young as he was, but it was kind of pathetic for a guy to come out here alone and swim in the cold water off Coney Island, and they were the only group of its kind on this beach. He could have joined a couple of clubs on Jones beach, but he hated Jones Beach. It reminded him too much of when he was a kid, having his parents drag him there in the summer when it was wall-to-wall people. This was the way to swim on the beach, when you had it all to yourself.

  “Okay, Polar Bears,” Sammy Saperstein shouted. “Into the water!”

  Saperstein was the president of the club, and he always called for them to get in the water like he was Napoleon at Waterloo ordering his troops to battle.

  Bobby looked up and down the beach. As usual there was seaweed and driftwood in either direction, not to mention garbage. There was even an old mattress that had drifted in from somewhere. He remembered the days when this beach was spotless. Even when he hated being on Jones Beach at least it had been clean. These days if you wanted a clean beach you had to go to Jamaica, or Hawaii or someplace like that, and Bobby Kelly was not about to spend that kind of money.

  Bobby headed for the water with the rest of the men. Experienced Polar Bears, they did not hesitate or stop when they stepped into the icy water. They kept on going until they were waist-high, then chest-high, and finally swimming in the Atlantic.

  Bobby enjoyed the shock to his system as the cold made its way to his bones. What people didn’t realize was that once you were in the water it felt colder when getting out. The true bone-chill occurred when you made your way back to the beach, where the wind met the wet on your body.

  Bobby looked over at Walter, wondering how many more years the older man could last before the cold gave him a heart attack. He also had to wonder if he’d still be doing this—or even be around—when he was the age of some of these other duffers, let alone Walter Dunham.

  Bobby felt something swirling around his feet as he swam. He didn’t know if it was seaweed or fish or garbage, but it made him head back to shore before the others. He did not, however, exit the water at the same point where he had entered it. The waves had carried him farther down the beach, and as a result he came out near the water-soaked, garbage-covered, discarded old mattress.

  Only there wasn’t just a mattress there. As he came out of the water he spotted something else lying on the beach. He squinted, wiped salt water away from his eyes and slowly approached the debris. He thought he knew what he was looking at, but he was hoping he was wrong.

  “Hey, Kelly,” Sammy Saperstein shouted. “What are ya doin’?”

  Bobby waved Saperstein away impatiently and continued to approach the mattress.

  “Hey Bobby,” Dennis Hasselbeck called. “You lookin’ for a place ta lie down?”

  Kelly ignored the others as they all joined in to toss catcalls at the youngest of their number for leaving the water first, but he didn’t hear them. As he got closer he realized that he was, indeed, seeing what he thought he was seeing, and the chill that he felt no longer came from the cold water or the icy wind.

  When he reached his goal, he stopped and stared at the arm that was draped over the mattress. He was surprised that it looked so gray. In fact, he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, black, white or Mexican, but it was definitely a person.

  “Bobby, whataya got?” Hasselbeck asked, coming up behind him. He came up next to Bobby and stopped short. “Jesus! Who is it?”

  “I dunno,” Bobby said.

  They stared at it for a few moments, long enough for Saperstein and some of the others to join them. Before long they had formed a circle around the body.

  “
Somebody’s gotta take a look at it,” Hasselbeck said. “What if they ain’t dead?”

  “Of course they’re dead,” Tony DeMarco said. “Lookit the color of the skin. Ain’t you ever seen a dead body before?”

  “We gotta check, anyway,” Saperstein said. “Bobby, you found it. You check it.”

  Bobby didn’t mind. Suddenly, he was the center of attention.

  “Okay,” he agreed, “but you guys gotta move the mattress so I can take a look.”

  They all looked at each other, and then Saperstein said, “Well, come on, grab the edges and let’s move it.”

  “Wait, wait,” DeMarco said, “don’t touch nothin’. We should just call the police. They’re gonna be pissed if we move somethin’.”

  “Tony,” Hasselbeck said, “this person could still be alive.”

  “I’m tellin’ ya, they’re dead—” DeMarco replied. “Move the damn mattress so I can take a look!” Bobby yelled.

  Four of the men—Saperstein, Hasselbeck, Eddie Delaney and old Walter Dunham—each grabbed a corner of the mattress and lifted. But it was so waterlogged it was too heavy and sagged in the middle. Two more Polar Bears stepped forward and grabbed hold and the six of them finally shifted the thing and uncovered the body.

  “What is it?” somebody asked as Bobby leaned over it. “Man or woman?”

  “Jesus,” Bobby said.

  “What?” Saperstein asked.

  “What is it, Bobby?” Hasselbeck asked.

  “Can we put the mattress down?” Walter asked.

  “It’s a man,” Bobby finally said, “a kid, from the looks of him.”

  “How long you think he’s been in the water?” DeMarco asked.

  “Not long,” Bobby said. “Except for the color of his skin he looks like he could be . . . sleeping. Except for one thing.”

  “What?” Saperstein asked. “What thing?”

  “Lookit him,” Bobby said, pointing. “He’s got ice on him. He’s frozen stiff.”

  The Observer watched from the boardwalk as the members of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club gathered around the body on the beach. This was his fourth morning in a row watching and waiting for the body to wash ashore, and for someone to find it.

  His research of the tides here had told him the body would wash up somewhere along this stretch of beach.

  “What’s going?” a young man asked, coming up next to him.

  “Dunno.” He pulled the woolen cap farther down on his head. “Looks like they found somethin’.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  Before he could answer, a young woman came up next to the second man and asked, “What’s goin’ on?” She’d been running along the boardwalk, wearing a sweatshirt and shorts to show off her runner’s legs. She was also wearing headphones, which were hanging from her neck now. The Observer ignored her, because she disgusted him.

  “We don’t know,” the second man said. “Looks like the old farts found somethin’.”

  “I wonder what it is.”

  The Observer remained silent, but not so his two companions, and before long he was standing in the center of a line of people who were watching and waiting . . . and were still doing it when the first police car arrived.

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Detective Sergeant Dennis McQueen stopped his car behind an EMS van on the Coney Island boardwalk. In addition to that vehicle he saw the medical examiner’s van, a Crime Scene Unit vehicle, an unmarked Precinct Detective Unit car and a 60 Precinct radio car, obviously the first car on the scene, since it was penned in by all the others.

  He was driving his own car, a three-year-old Toyota, rather than an unmarked department car because there had been a shortage of cars recently—cars that would run, that is. Although he was a boss and entitled to first pick over other detectives, he preferred to use his own car and leave the department autos available to his men.

  He got out of the car as his partner, Ramon Velez, exited the passenger side.

  “Goddamn,” Velez said. He didn’t say another word but McQueen knew he was complaining about the cold. Winter was his partner’s least favorite season, and they were right in the middle of it. This was the coldest New York January in recent history. They were lucky there had been no rain or snow to go with it, but that didn’t cut much slack with Velez. He never really complained when it was wet, just when it was cold.

  “Yeah,” McQueen replied. He pulled his cheap Burberry knockoff close around him and headed for the beach.

  McQueen thought that the sand of Coney Island’s beach felt like concrete beneath his feet the closer they got to the water. That’s what below-freezing temperatures did, turned even the softest of things hard.

  His partner was cursing about what the sand was doing to his expensive new shoes. McQueen didn’t care what happened to his shoes, because he had an identical pair at home. He’d bought them both when they were on sale at Payless Shoes. Ray Velez would never have been caught dead buying shoes on sale. That wasn’t the only difference between the two men, but they worked together remarkably well. That had been why McQueen had managed to take Velez with him when he was transferred from a precinct-level detective unit to the Brooklyn South Homicide Squad. At least that way, starting a new assignment didn’t mean breaking in a new partner.

  McQueen stepped around a frozen puddle as he made his way toward the water’s edge, where the tide coming in and out had kept ice from forming. Here and there, however, there were patches of ice where the water had been trapped in a sandy depression.

  “Well, step back, boys,” a man in a black trench coat announced. The coat was belted, but the wind had it flapping around his legs. “The Homicide Squad has arrived. This mess is all yours, Dennis.”

  “Parker,” McQueen said, greeting the 60 Precinct detective. “Where’s your partner?”

  Parker usually worked with a man named Franks. Both of them had better than twelve years in.

  “I think he went to see if he could find somebody to fire up the Nathan’s grills early. Nothing like some hot dogs and fries for breakfast. Whataya say, Ray?”

  “I say you don’t need any more hot dogs, Parker,” Velez replied. “That belt is about to pop.”

  “Fuck you,” the other man responded good-naturedly. “We ain’t all got your Latin metabolism.”

  “You got that right,” Velez said.

  Parker looked at McQueen.

  “You catch this?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Then I’m handin’ it off to you,” Parker said, with a bow. He had caught the case originally on a precinct level, and it was he who had put out the call for Homicide.

  “Don’t forget to copy me on your reports.”

  “I’ll get to them as soon as I get back to the house.”

  “What made you call us, Parker?” McQueen asked.

  “Hell, Dennis,” the other detective said, “this boy’s dead, and he was murdered.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Instinct.”

  If it had come from anyone else McQueen would have labeled the call for Homicide to the scene as premature, but Dan Parker was one of a handful of detectives in the department whose instincts he truly respected.

  “Duty Captain get here?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Okay,” McQueen said. “I’ve got it, Dan. You better go and find your partner before all the hot dogs are gone.”

  “No chance of that,” Parker said. “Don’t worry. We’ll leave some for you boys.”

  He moved past McQueen, touching him lightly on the arm, then waved to Velez and started across the beach to the boardwalk.

  Chapter 2

  When McQueen and Velez reached the body the M.E. was already crouched over it. The Crime Scene techs were standing around, waiting their turn impatiently. As far as McQueen was concerned, the advent of all the C.S.I. TV series had given them an exaggerated idea of
their own importance. It made them arrogant, and more difficult to deal with. He didn’t watch TV cops shows himself, but colleagues who did preferred the Law & Order series to the CSIs. McQueen thought they were all crap, and that went for NYPD Blue, as well. When he watched TV he preferred sitcoms. He worked with cops all day, he certainly didn’t want to watch TV shows about them at night. Besides, he still felt that the best and most accurate cop show on TV had been Barney Miller. He’d seen nothing since that one went off the air to change his mind.

  He looked back up at the boardwalk, which was not only clogged with vehicles but with rubbernecking observers, as well. The boardwalk was lined with them, but since they weren’t in the way he disregarded them. The killer—if there was one—could have been standing among them, but he left that sort of psychological mumbo jumbo to others.

  Dr. Ethan Bannerjee looked up at McQueen and said, “Detective.”

  “Got a cold one here,” Bannerjee said, “real cold.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “Not much until I kept him some place warm,” the medical examiner said. He stood up to his full height, well over six feet. McQueen liked the man in spite of the fact that his thin physique always made the larger detective feel clumsy and even bigger than he was when in the medical man’s presence. In his late forties, the doctor was only four or five years younger than McQueen, but somehow the years had not managed to etch a single line onto the man’s face.

  “The body is a young male in his twenties, naked and dead.”

  “Wow,” McQueen said.

  “I earn the big money,” Bannerjee said.

  “You can’t tell me what killed him?”

  “Like I said, not until I thaw him out. Can’t even guess at a time of death, not with this cold. Let the fancy boys here have a look and then we’ll move him.”