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

I showed him an expressionless face. “Talk. Let’s see what you’ve got. Right now, you’re the punk who tried to shoot my wife last night. Show me I’m wrong and I’ll take the cuffs off.”

He slouched back.

“OK, couple of month ago, I start shooting at Coyne Park, in Yonkers. Is ten, fifteen minutes drive. I know guns. I like guns. But I am only professional there. Everybody else is big mouth, no experience. Then I meet Am.” He laughed. “Americano! He’s nice guy, always joking, making funny. But he knows guns. He never been in army, but he know guns. He have the mind and the heart of a warrior. Cold inside. I know. I recognize. I tell him, you wasting your fucking time in university. I introduce you to people, you can make big money doing what you love.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “But he don’t want to know. ‘No,’ he say me, ‘No, I gonna make an electric motor!’” He threw his head back and burst out laughing. “He is going to make electric motor! Electric motor is going to make him rich man, like Elon Musk!”

Dehan said, “What made him think that?”

“Because his professor is telling him, ‘You and me going to make electric motor, with fantastic battery, fastest car in world.’ He tell me, ‘Peter, this car going to go two hundred mile an hour, minimum! Accelerate zero to one hundred in one second.’ It’s going to be fucking space ship.

“OK, so then week is passing, two weeks, and he ask me, ‘Hey, Peter, you in the Russian Army?’ I tell him yeah, I was in special unit. We do a lot of bad things. He tell me, ‘My friend is looking for tough guy like you to help make a job.’ I tell him, I am not cheap. He wants me to kill somebody, it is going to cost ten thousand dollars minimum. If is university professor, it is going to be more.”

I said, “Names.”

“Not yet. So he tell me this is very expensive. I say to him, ‘Look, you can do this. You don’t need spend money on professional like me. I only advise you, tell you how, two thousand bucks, you make the job. He think about it and he says OK.

“So this the job: professor who was going to make super car with him, Dr. Jose Robles. Now he is going to sell idea to big company.” He thought for a moment. “There were two company, LightYear was one, then Electron was other. He was interested in LightYear. But he not tell Am about this. Am is find out because…” He screwed up his face. “Dr. Robles’ lawyer is tell Am about it! So I am saying, what the fuck? What the fuck, man? You bring lawyer, he sit down here with me and you both going to tell me fucking everything. His lawyer is telling you? Somebody trying to screw somebody, right?

“OK, so then lawyer is Costas Varufakis. And it don’t take me long find out that lawyer Varufakis is fucking Robles, and Robles is threatening to sell story to TV. So Varufakis and Am making a plan to fuck Robles.” He threw back his head and laughed out loud again. “Everybody fucking somebody.”

I said, “So you advised them?”

“Yeah, they come to my house. We drink, we make plan. They tell me everything. I tell them, OK, this how you going to do it. You kill him and you kill woman. She going to be easy to kill. Then, he like wine, so you make it look like they been having drink, she is in love with him, everybody in love with Dr. Robles, she jealous, she kill him. Some fingerprints on gun, on glasses. You take her, put rocks in her clothes and put her in river. She is probably in Bahamas by now. She killed him and she run away. Simple.”

I shrugged. “It’s a story. Where’s the proof?”

He looked at me with dead eyes. “I not finished yet. Give me pen and paper.”

I handed him my pen again and a slip of paper. He scrawled down a series of numbers alongside dates and an address downtown.

“Four payments of five hundred dollars in cash. Nielsen goes with Varufakis to this ATM to collect money. You check Varufakis account, you see he makes these withdrawals. This money is to pay me for my advice on the murder of Robles and Shine.”

I glanced at Dehan. She took the piece of paper and left the room. Yeltsin said, “More. I was at house when they prepare for killing. I see Am kill Agnes. He use his arm in arm lock and strangle her. Varufakis run upstairs and sick in toilet. Am is cool, he set glasses out on tables by chairs, pour wine, only a little in each glass, pour half the bottle down sink, then Varufakis come down. I go check all his sick is gone. I come down and Am call Roble on Agnes house telephone. He tell him to come over to Agnes house. He has to argue, but finally Robles is agree. So if you looking for fingerprints on Agnes house phone, you going to find Am’s prints. They are going to be last prints on telephone.”

I took my cell from my pocket and called Joe.

“John, how’s it going?”

“Joe, can you get a team over to Dr. Agnes Shine’s house, dust her telephone, the landline, see if Am Nielsen’s prints are on it. Theory is he was the last person to use it.”

“Sure. I’ll get a team over there right away.”

“Thanks.” I hung up. Yeltsin continued:

“Dr. Robles arrive. Am let him in, close door and pull gun. ‘You go and you sit down. Pick up fucking glass. Put down.’ Bang! Eight times. Bang! Bang! Bang! Then wipe gun