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"How?"

"I don't know Maybe he switched sorab the whole bundle and run with it He th of it she told Chance she wanted out She wasn't going to be turning tricks anyuess, I'd say he did a switch and went out of the country to unload the good stuff Kiot back it was going to be Happily Ever After time But he never came back"

"If he never came back, who killed her?"

"The people he crossed They decoyed her to that roo to beanyone to a hotel room to meet a john In fact she'd never been ets a call from somebody who says he's a friend and the boyfriend's afraid to co followed, so would she please meet hiot all dressed up, she wore the presents he gave her, theThe jacket wasn't worth a fortune because the guy wasn't rich, he didn't have ive her a terrific e He was in the business, he could take one of those s for her"

"So she went over and got killed"

"Right"

Danny Boy drank so back?"

"No They killed her to kill her"

"Why?"

"Because they were Colombians," I said, "and that's how they do it When they have a reason to hit soo for the whole faure it's a deterrent," I said "I could see where it ularly, especially in Miaets waxed because somebody burned somebody else in a coke deal Coloot the best coffee, the best marijuana, the best cocaine"

"And the best euy I figured he was, that's why he was so hard to get a line on, but he never married Maybe he never fell in love until he fell in love with Kim, and maybe that's why he was ready to kick his life over Anyway, he was a bachelor No wife, no kids, no living parents You want to rub out his fairlfriend"

Bryna's face was as white as her hair now She didn't like stories where they killed the girlfriend

"The killing was pretty professional," I went on, "in that the killer was careful about evidence He covered his tracks pretty well But so made him do a butcher job instead of a couple of quick bullets fro about prostitutes, or eneral One way or another, he went and did a number on Ki with the ot out of there He left the fur jacket and he left the "

"Because it orth so , and for all I knoas cut glass and she bought it for herself But it ht have been an eht it was It's one thing to leave a few hundred dollars on a dead body to show you don't rob the dead It's soht be worth fifty thousand dollars, especially if it's your emerald in the first place"

"I follow you"

"The roo kid named Octavio Calderуn Maybe that was a coincidence There are a lot of Colombians in town these days Maybe the killer picked the Galaxy because he knew somebody orked there It doesn't nized the killer, or at least knew enough about him to keep his mouth shut When a cop came back to have another talk with him, Calderуn disappeared Either the killer's friends told him to disappear or Calderуn decided he'd be safer so house in another part of Queens"

Or ht That was possible, too But I didn't think so When these people killed, they liked to leave the corpses in plain sight

"There was another whore that got killed"

"Sunny Hendryx," I said "That was a suicide Maybe Kiered that, so maybe the man who killed Kim has some moral responsibility for Sunny's death But she killed herself"

"I' about the street hustler The TV"

"Cookie Blue"

"That's the one Why did she get killed? To throw you off the track? Except you weren't on the track to begin with"

"No"

"Then why? You think the first killing turned the killer nuts? Triggered soain?"

"I think that's part of it," I said "Nobody would do a second butcher job like that unless he enjoyed the first one I don't know if he had sex with either of his victis had to be sexual"

"So he just picked up Cookie for the hell of it?"

Bryna blanched again It was bad enough hearing about soirl- friend It was even worse hearing about a girl getting killed at random

"No," I said, "Cookie was killed for a specific reason The killer went looking for her and passed up a batch of other streetwalkers until he found her Cookie was family"

"Family? Whose family?"

"The boyfriend's"

"He had teeties, this jeweler? A call girl and a transvestite hustler?"

"Cookie wasn't his sweetie Cookie was his brother"

"Cookie-"

"Cookie Blue started life as Mark Blaustein Mark had an older brother named Adrian ent into the jewelry business Adrian Blaustein had a girlfriend named Kim and some business associates from Colombia"

"So Cookie and Kim were connected"

"They had to be connected I'm sure they never met each other I don't think Mark and Adrian had any contact in recent years Thatto find Cookie But I knew there had to be some kind of link I told someone earlier that they were sisters under the skin That wasn't far off They were alht about this, then told Bryna to give us a few moments alone This time I didn't interfere She left the table and Danny Boy motioned to the waitress He ordered vodka for hiht now," I said

When she brought back the vodka he took a careful little sip and set the glass down "You've been to the cops," he said

"No cops"

"Why not?"

"Just didn't get around to it yet"

"You had to coht"