"Hunter, Jeffrey - A Secret Affair" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hunter Jeffrey)

"Shut up." The last thing the asshole had seen must have been the front of his car flying off the road towards the river.

"Look, I got something for you, Officer. I don't wanna drown! On my mama's grave, I swear it's the truth. You remember that necklace got stolen off that old lady?"

The Anna Hail case. It had been the hottest case in Persons Crimes for a long time, but now it was a cold fish, filed away in storage. Wow, John thought, wouldn't that be a peach--just transferred to Persons Crimes and already he's solved a big one. The robbery had been purely a crime of opportunity. Anna Hail had been going into a big-deal art show at the Blue Moon Gallery when a passing vehicle stopped and a black male rushed out. Classic cut and run, only while he was cutting her purse, he'd seen the necklace and snatched that instead. John couldn't remember if they'd gotten a legible print off the patent leather purse.

Anna Hail had put up a thousand dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the "brazen thief". Those were her own words. Around the office he was afforded less cordiality and given the title JAFN. Just Another Fucking Nigger.

"What about the necklace?" John asked, wondering if he'd just bagged JAFN.

"I's got the necklace, Officer. Now please get me outta here."

When John starting walking back to the hardtop, the black man began shrieking, carrying on about the car sinking.

"Shut up! You're not in the water," John yelled back to him.

The shrieks diminished into sporadic moans as John climbed up the steep path back to his vehicle. He opened the trunk and donned a pair of heavy gauge rubber gloves, then returned to the Taurus.

"Where's the fucking loot, asshole?"

"I's don't know, Officer. In the back somewhere."

The pillow sack was packed snugly on the floor behind the driver's seat. John opened the rear door and sat down so he could rummage through the stolen goods. He retrieved Stern's Rolex, ruby ring and a money clip with four hundred dollars in it. Obviously it was Stern's. John didn't need the engraved monogram to guess that. He found his own wallet and took the twenty-six dollars out of it, then threw it back into the sack.

"Quit crying like a fucking baby!" John demanded, pushing the driver forward so he could reach into his pants pocket.

John slipped the driver's license out of the wallet.

"Is this address current?"

"Yeah, Officer, it's current. What you doing? When you gonna call the ambulance?"

"I called back at the car. It's on the way. Now listen, where exactly is that necklace, Roy Scott?"

"It's in my freezer. I froze it in one a them things you put in a cooler. Them blue plastic water bottle things. It's got a white cap."

John could hear his police radio barking loudly from where he'd parked on the highway. Decision time, he thought.

"You better not be lying to me, Roy Scott."

"I's not lying, Officer. You get someone to check, you see it'll be there. It'll...."

His voice began losing its vigor until no more sound escaped his lips. John slammed the rear door shut, reached through the open driver's window and moved the deflated canvass airbag out of the way. He shoved the car into NEUTRAL, then pulled the keys from the ignition. Judging from his fragile whimpers, the driver was only semiconscious. He offered no protest when John put his foot on the front of the Taurus. Once John put all his weight into it, the Taurus began an easy roll down the steep incline that led into the river. John could see by the rippling brown surface that the current was strong. within a few minutes the car would be sucked out into the river.

He walked back up to his car, snapping off the gloves and wiping the powder off on his slacks. The Taurus belched one last spiral of bubbles, then disappeared beneath the murk. John turned the sedan around and headed back towards the city, answering the radio call with the feigned disappointment of a cop who had just lost the robber.

John spent most of the day writing out the report and giving statements to other detectives, but all the while he was biding his time to get to Roy Scott's place in the Bradbury Building downtown. It was a long, arduous day, and once he got home John spent a good deal of time sitting in front of his silent television sipping on a bourbon and coke and wondering if he should go for the glory or the loot. Solving the Anna Hail case would be a good move for him, but he'd have to be creative about it--he'd killed the thief. On the other hand, he could make an easy twenty grand by taking the necklace to some of his acquaintances who worked on the other side of the law. At eight o'clock that evening John got into the Crown Vic and headed to Roy Scott's place, Bradbury Building Number 512.

When he reached the twelve-story brick building, he was somewhat perturbed at the blue and white police car parked outside. It was a public housing unit, fittingly known as the asshole of the city, and it was prone to flaring up on a nightly basis, so a blue and white was not that uncommon. However, the two battleship gray Crown Victorias with commercial hubs and extra antennas meant something other than the usual domestic quarrel had taken place.