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“Let's move,” Brenda told Mack.
Chapter 4
Mack followed Brenda outside into the cold. Snow was still falling from a dark and ugly sky.
“Hungry?” he asked, leading Brenda to a parked Oldsmobile sitting on a crowded street lined with shabby apartment buildings that cost a fortune to rent. A mixture of old and new snow-covered vehicles lined the street, sitting like dirty tools that belonged in a deranged mafia movie—at least that's the way Mack saw the scene. Mack knew his imagination sometimes had too much caffeine, but he didn't care.
“Does Amy live close to the diner?” Brenda asked, throwing her suitcase into the backseat of Mack's car.
“Close enough. Get in.”
Brenda climbed into the front seat of the Oldsmobile, checked her gun, then buckled up.
“Did she seem upset at the death of her boyfriend?”
“No,” Mack answered as he got the car moving, carefully making a tight U-turn in the falling snow while checking the rear view mirror. “We're clear for now.”
“For now,” Brenda agreed, “but not for much longer. I'm sure Curanto has found out by now that I killed two of his crew.”
Mack reluctantly nodded his head.
“Brenda, Curanto is bad news. He's not going to take you slapping him in the face lying down. The guy is going to make sure you're dead before night falls.”
“I don't see you back down like the rest of the cowards.” Brenda glanced over at Mack's hard face.
“I don't intend to back down,” Mack reassured Brenda, reaching the end of the street and hanging a hard right. “We all have to die someday, Brenda. I'd rather die being able to look myself in the mirror than die an old man who can't hold his head up. If I walk away from a drug rat and let a seventeen year old kid's murder float into the wind, I'll never be able to live with myself.”
“And if you let me die—”
“I don't intend to let that happen.” Mack narrowed his eyes. “Alonzo was a street dealer, a teenage punk working his way toward prison, but he was still a kid. You can get evidence that the person who is going by the user name 'Underyournose' is making contacts on 'Dazed' from Curanto's home, right?”
“The IP address I traced leads right to Curanto's front door,” Brenda confirmed.
“All I have to do is tie Alonzo’s murder to Curanto and find a judge brave enough,” Mack continued, navigating his car down another snowy, dirty street.
“Which won't be easy.”
“Maybe not, but I do know a judge that still has some guts to him. He's an old timer, hard as rocks. Met the guy two years ago; he took a liking to me.” Mack glanced over at Brenda.
For a woman who had just nearly been filled with bullets, Brenda was sitting as calm as a cold clam—at least on the outside. Mack wondered how Brenda was feeling on the inside.
A few months before, after relocating to New York too, Brenda showed up in his office one morning. Brenda was working on a murder case that involved a criminal Mack was trying to take down. Over time, Mack noticed that Brenda had become harder… more distant… than the woman he had encountered on a dark and stormy night years before.
“You okay, Brenda?” he dared to ask.
Brenda looked at Mack, read the man's eyes, and
then focused on the windshield wipers that were batting at the falling snow.
“No worse than you, Mack,” she answered in a low voice. “Let's face it, you and I aren't the life of any party. We're two cops fighting a losing battle while carrying a death wish.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.” Mack changed the subject. Work was all either of them had anymore. “Amy is a pretty, black-haired girl. She's a snippy little brat, too. If she's at the diner, be prepared to catch a little lip.”
“Understood.”
Brenda didn't speak again until Mack parked his car in front of the same run-down diner from the night before.
Brenda checked her gun and then stepped out into the snow. She scanned the area: a few lousy apartment buildings and some seedy businesses that were probably nothing but fronts for drug and gun runners. She then made her way across a sluggish, grimy street toward the diner.
