Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 4-6: Blood Brother, In the Blood, Little Girls Lost - J. Kerley A.

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Apple.”

      “I-I don’t believe that.”

      “It’s what she croaked to me on the plane: ‘You’re my Seeeer-rius, Jeremy. I neeeeed you.’ Not that I’d have surrendered my virtue. I can’t imagine anything more disgusting than grunting over Prowsie’s ancient body. It would be like fucking a corpse.”

      I heard the door open. Close. He was gone.

      I struggled twenty minutes with the tape, stretching it enough to work free. My devious brother had swiped the key from my pocket. By the time I’d returned to the hotel and had a second key generated, he was already in my room, beneath the bed.

      I fumbled toward the light switch, tripping over something on the carpet. I flicked on the lights and found a brown paper package, a folded-over grocery bag. I upended the bag over the desk.

      A woman’s panties and panty hose tumbled out.

      They were followed by a cheap postcard like ones sold across the city. It displayed a photograph of the Empire State Building. Above the building, in balloon type, were the words, WE’RE HAVING A FUN TIME IN NEW YORK CITY! On the reverse was a line written in purple ink. It said, simply,

       Do what he says. Please.

      Below that,

       Alice

      I held the postcard in my hand and stared out the window as the sun turned the sky to orange behind the skyscrapers. Alice Folger was alive. I had to hope Jeremy was in control enough to restrain his urges for now. His visit was to tell me that his capture meant Alice Folger’s death. My brother never made idle threats.

      I dressed and went to the station, arriving at seven. I saw Perlstein doing paperwork at his desk.

      “Yo, Perl … how’s the hunt for Ridgecliff?”

      “Cluff finally bought in to your rich guy view. He pushed your hoity-toity take on Ridgecliff up a notch, thought Ridgecliff might be artsy. Guess what? We saw a guy looked a lot like a Portuguese Ridgecliff waltzing past a security cam at the Guggenheim yesterday.”

      “That’s great,” I said, my mouth going dry. “Smart move.”

      “We’re gonna shoot this fucker dead on the street, Ryder. Thanks for pushing us on to the right path.” He shot a thumbs-up and turned back to his reports.

      Thanks to me, the cops would soon be breathing down my brother’s neck. Had I been smart enough, or less frightened, I’d have told Jeremy his disguise and habits were known. But all I’d been able to think about was his relationship with Vangie. It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized my plight. Folger’s plight. I had to somehow let my brother know the NYPD was on to his disguise.

      Why hadn’t he told me how to make contact? It seemed an omission on his part.

      I wandered out to the street to pull some energy from the sun now filling the streets. I passed a newsstand as a bundle of early-edition papers slapped the pavement beside the rickety kiosk. The papers had been tossed from a delivery truck, a flatbed piled high, a man on the back offloading bundles of the New York Watcher.

      “Hey, buddy,” I called to the guy on the truck. “You know where the Watcher’s offices are located?”

       Chapter 26

      Benny Mac slapped toast crumbs and clots of scrambled egg from the front of his shirt. The goddamn shirt had shrunk, buttons tight, belly hair pushing through the puckered openings. He was sitting at a small round table outside a coffee shop adjoining the entrance to the Watcher’s headquarters, the table his de facto office in decent weather. A half-eaten plate of bacon and eggs, pancakes and fried potatoes sat in front of him, as did two cellphones, three pens and a notepad.

      He paused in shoveling food into his mouth to observe the approach of a skinny black man in a blue uniform and crocheted Rasta hat. The man grinned from the pavement side of the low wrought-iron fence separating the tabled section from pedestrian traffic.

      “Hey, Jimmy Warbles,” Benny Mac said through a mouthful of egg. “S’up?”

      Jimmy Warbles ran the cleaning services at City Hall, was one of Benny Mac’s best sources of hot political dish. Benny wiped his mouth with a piece of buttered toast, lowered his voice.

      “You got anything, Jimmy?”

      Jimmy Warbles set his elbows on the fence, leaned forward, eyes making sure there was no one near. “I t’ink a lady in archives is makin’ it wit’ another lady in archives. T’ey bote married ladies, sure enough. They go in a supply room. Close t’ door.”

      “Muff divers!” Benny said, eyes widening. “You sure?”

      “Ever’body know ’cept the two ladies, who don’t know anybody know.”

      Benny Mac considered the situation. “Tell you what, Jimmy, you figure out when I can get in with a camera.”

      “It can maybe happen. What it wort’?”

      Benny Mac saw a 120-point headline on the cover of the Watcher: LESBO LOVE NEST IN CITY HALL.

      “If it makes the front page, Jimmy, you get five hundred. Inside gets three.”

      Jimmy Warbles snapped his fingers and grinned yellow teeth that would have done a horse proud. “Be back atcha, my man.”

      Benny thought a second, amended his proposal. “Tell ya what, Jimmy. If I can get a shot of ’em kissing, you get a grand.”

      A pair of lesbos kissing in City Hall. Magic.

      Warbles’s fingers flicked across Benny Mac’s palm, deal. He pimp-walked away, hands in his pockets, the bright hat bobbing like a multicolored mushroom.

      Benny Mac returned to his breakfast, eating with renewed vigor. He finished, set the plate on the clean table at his back. He looked at his phones, hoping a story would ring in. The lesbo deal wouldn’t pay off for a while. It’d been a slow news week and unless something came up, he’d have to hit the Watcher’s photo archives, make up another fucking space alien story.

      Benny Mac sighed, turned his eyes to a man pulling out a chair at a nearby table.

       I know that guy. Jeez, wasn’t he the one I took the picture of …

      “Hey, buddy. I know you. I saw you at the crime scene of that real estate lady. You were with my good friend, Shelly Waltz. Come over to my table, lemme buy you a cup a coffee. Hey, you don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

       You sound like a mush-mouth hickarooni …

      “Really? Inner-departmental loan, sent up to learn from the NYPD? I’m sure you have plenty to teach us as well. You want something with that coffee? Bagel? Danish? And is it officer or detective? Hey, those ladies that got cut wide open, Detective … How the cases going? Tough ones huh? I know, you can’t talk about it.”

       This hillbilly knows something …

      “I know, bud. NYPD sees stuff most departments never will. A lot of my friends are NYPD dicks. Shelly Waltz and me are like this. He’s always telling me stuff on the QT. When I finally write the story I always run it by the NYPD first. I could do a rough draft on the belly slasher story, fax a copy to Shelly and you this very afternoon. How do you spell your name? No, I don’t have to use it if you don’t want …”

       Come on, spill it …

      “Oh sure, the United Nations can be a big problem. The immunity thing. It’s true, a person could commit a crime and nothing can happen. It’s like they’re always in their own country. Sick. They come here to rape and pillage and then glide home scot-free. You can’t dynamite them

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