Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (best ereader for academics .txt) 📕

super fast. Fast as the car goes, that’s how fast it loses its charge. Now, I have ideas, good ideas, about how you can stop that happenin’, dude. And I told those ideas to Jose, Dr. Robles, and he said they was good ideas. An’ that’s why he wanted me in his class. I told him, I want to run my own company, dude, fitting kick-ass motors to classic chassis, you feel me? Gonna be wild and bitchin’. Tell you! He said, ‘Yeah, you gonna do that, Am!’ I said, ‘You know I am!’” He sighed. “Now he’s dead, I can’t do that.”

I shook my head. “He was helping you, Am, but it was always going to be you doing it. It may be more difficult now, but you can still do it. There must be other lecturers who can help you.”

“Like Hays?” He laughed. “Hays is even more crazy than I am, man.”

Dehan laughed. “Well, there you go! If he could do it, so can you!”

He laughed out loud. “Yeah, I like that. Right. If he can do it, so can I. Yeah, man.”

I sat forward. “Am, did Jose ever talk to you about guns?”

“No way, dude. Me an’ him did not agree on that score. I’m like my daddy. I believe in the second amendment, man. Ain’t nobody gonna take my guns away from me, not while I’s alive anyhow. But Jose was all about, if you give people guns, they will shoot each other. And I’m like, no man. You give people guns and they will not shoot each other! You see me? I been around guns all my life, I never wanted to shoot nobody. Now, these boys around here? Guns pretty much illegal in New York, right? Well they can’t wait to git their hands on a piece and shoot somebody!”

I laughed and shook my head. “You just can’t decide whether you’re a cowboy or a badass black dude, can you?”

“I told you, man. I talk weird.”

“So Jose never asked you for a gun?”

“No way. And if he had, I would’a said no. I ain’t givin’ no gun to a dude like him.”

“What about Agnes? She ever ask you for a gun?”

He hesitated. “I didn’t know Agnes all that well. Never talked to her much. I seen her around with Jose, we never discussed nothing deep. She was real shy.”

I nodded. “So was that something Jose specialized in? Lithium ion batteries?”

“Yeah, man. He was lookin’ at ways of replacing the liquid. That liquid can form dendrites, see? And they will kill the battery and maybe even catch fire, cause all kinds of problems. Now, you replace that liquid with another substance like glass, or other crystalline substances, or gel, it is gonna be, like, more stable and hold its charge much longer. Me and him, we use to have long conversations ’bout that, man. I had some cool ideas. He liked them. He told me I was a genius. I felt good about that.”

“I bet you did. Did he ever discuss his personal life with you?”

He frowned. “Like what kind of thing?”

“His relationships with women, girlfriends, friends and family…”

His frown deepened. “No, he never talked about nothing like that. All he ever talked about was science, and the big revolution that was coming. He said men like me and him were gonna change the world. He said one day we would make a car called the Robles-Americano, and everybody would be drivin’ the Robles-Americano. Charge it once a year, dude, two hundred and fifty miles per hour, naught to sixty in one second. Bad ass car, man.”

I smiled. “A bit faster than my old Jaguar. OK, Am, thanks for talking to us. And stay with the course, don’t you go dropping out. We’re going to be checking.”

He nodded. “Was it helpful, what I told you?”

“I think it might be, yeah. Hang loose, dude.”

He shook his head. “It sounds wrong when you say it.”

I pointed at him. “It sounds wrong when you say it too!”

He laughed. “I know.”

When we stepped outside, it was dark. The wind blowing in off the river now seemed to be driving invisible needles. We clambered in the car, I put on the heating and pulled out onto Hunts Point Avenue and headed for the expressway. After a couple of minutes Dehan said, “Can you please explain to me what just happened? Have we slipped into some kind of parallel universe where crazy is normal and we are the normal ones, who are crazy?”

I nodded. “Yes. That just about sums it up.”

“Oh, OK, that’s all right then.” She was quiet for a moment longer and then said, “Because I thought I just met a mixed-race cowboy who tries to talk like Hollywood’s idea of a black Bronx badass, and is in fact a genius who is going to revolutionize the world by creating a battery you only need to charge once a year.”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll tell you one more thing. If there is one guy in the world who could have got Agnes her gun, it’s him.”

“Yup.”

“Jose had this guy’s dreams in the palm of his hand.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Stone, he was creating another dependency, just like he had Agnes, just like he had Hays, he was making Am emotionally dependent on him… That’s what this son of a bitch did in life. He went through life making people dependent on him. That’s how he got his kicks. He was a bully. A bully who created emotional dependency.”

“That is what it looks like.”

“And I can see how Agnes’ jealousy could lead her to want to kill him, or Alicia Cobos, but what I cannot see, Stone, is why this kid, whose whole future depends on Jose Robles giving him a hand up, would provide Agnes with a gun! Why would he