Paranoia (Michael Bennett #17)

CHAPTER 68

I WAS SURPRISED to see Terri Hernandez huddled with Rob Trilling and Walter Jackson when I stepped through the office door. They sat at a table surrounded by desks that were rarely used. We called it the temporary duty area. That’s where detectives who were helping us could do their work. As I came closer to the trio, I realized this was not a social get-together. Instead of greeting them, I simply said, “What’s wrong?”

It was Terri Hernandez who turned to me and said, “Another drug dealer was killed.”

“Trilling said you thought it was a domestic. Did you learn something new?”

“That was Saturday night. Last night, a guy named Oscar Tass was murdered in his apartment. We even have the time of death narrowed down to a tiny window. He had his on-again, off-again girlfriend in the apartment. They had some kind of argument and she left. When she came back less than twenty minutes later, Tass was on the floor with his neck slashed and almost a dozen stab wounds in his lower back. Someone who knew what they were doing didn’t want to take any risks with him surviving. Forensics hasn’t come up with any decent leads. It looks to me like it was a professional.”

Trilling added, “And Sunday night’s victim was friends with Saturday night’s victims.”

I eased into the chair at the next desk. “That also makes Saturday night’s shooting look more like a hit than a domestic.”

Terri said, “Exactly.”

I took a few minutes to fill Terri in on the investigations I had been working quietly for Celeste Cantor, with Trilling’s and Walter’s help.

Terri said, “I’ve also been trying to find another drug dealer—or, supposedly, former dealer—Trilling and I talked to last week. His name is Silbas. He’s not answering his calls and he wasn’t at home when I knocked on his apartment door. I think we should make an effort to find him. Or maybe he’s already been crossed off someone’s list.”

I looked over at Walter Jackson. “You were the first one to bring up the link between former arrests by the Land Sharks and drug dealers being murdered. We combine that with the retired cops, it’s a pretty serious body count. The situation seems to be spiraling into something big. Really big. And a little unsettling. And the one thing they all had in common was some connection to Richard Deason. The closest connection we have to him is his son, Antonio. We don’t have any idea what their relationship was like. We also have almost no idea what Antonio has been up to, beyond the makings of a drug deal with your gang in the Bronx.”

Terri looked at Trilling. “We know what Antonio’s been up to. Following in his father’s footsteps.”

I said, “Walter found some family connections from the mother’s side. One of the uncles looks like he’s a mercenary type. Maybe he’s doing the killings on behalf of his nephew. Or, more likely, hired someone to do them.”

Walter Jackson said, “That’s a lot of territory to cover. Where do we start?”

We hadn’t heard anything from Rob Trilling yet. I turned to him and said, “What do you think?”

As always, he took a moment to answer. He wasn’t being sly or coy. He was being thoughtful. “Looks like the most obvious course would be for us to go back to SoHo, keep trying to follow Antonio Deason and see exactly what he gets up to during the day.”

I looked at Terri and Walter and said, “He’s really starting to get the hang of this whole investigation thing.”

Walter said, “He’s learning so fast, he’s in a class by himself.”

Everyone groaned at that pun. It was the first time I’d ever seen Walter look defensive. He raised his hands and said, “C’mon, I came up with that one on the fly. I deserve a little credit.”

The three of us were already thinking of our surveillance plan.