Deadly in New York Read Online Free PDF Page B

an old friend of Jacob Montgomery Hayes, and he certainly wouldn’t have tipped off the Fister people.
    And Renard was dead … or was he?
    Hawker remembered what Hendricks had said about the scorpionfish being fatal 90 percent of the time when the victim received no medical attention. But Hawker had pulled the French assassin into the water himself.
    Even if the poison hadn’t killed him, he would have certainly drowned.…
    As Hawker lost himself in thought, he momentarily lowered the Colt.
    It was a mistake.
    The wounded man’s right hand was a blur as it arced toward Hawker’s face. The stiletto glimmer of steel told him, in that slow-motion microsecond, that the man had drawn a knife as he huddled close to the pavement.
    Hawker got his left hand up just in time. He caught the man’s wrist and diverted the power stroke away from his body, into the pavement.
    Hawker clubbed the man twice in the face with the back of his right fist, but lost control of the knife in the struggle.
    With a final effort, the man swung the knife at him again. Hawker managed to knock it away, then put all of his weight behind an overhand right that crushed the man’s throat closed.
    The man gagged and floundered on the pavement, clawing at his own face, desperate for air.
    Hawker stood away from him and watched as the man’s face slowly darkened, turning blue. The man gave a final convulsive heave, then lay still.
    Hawker retrieved the Colt he had dropped in the struggle. He weighed it reflectively in his hand, then looked around at the silent black Lincoln, the taxi, and the four corpses.
    When the taxi driver had been shot, he had fallen back into the cab. The door of the cab was open, and the dome light showed the driver’s face as a black mask frozen in pain.
    Hawker noticed there were more lights on in the row of brownstone houses now. People peeked out from behind curtains.
    In the distance, he could hear the anxious scream of sirens.
    James Hawker shook his head wearily.
    Shit , he whispered.

six
    Detective Lieutenant Scott Callis usually worked undercover. He worked narcotics, homicide, and sometimes even vice.
    But tonight, he was on conventional duty, working the streets.
    Like all the other precincts in The Bronx, the Pelham Station was overworked and understaffed. Their precinct was a war zone, ripe with teenage thugs, lunatic rapists, and professional crooks, murderers, and hookers.
    The one place they rarely had trouble in was the Rhinestrauss Avenue section, an area of older German immigrants.
    But lately, even the Germans had been getting their share—and Callis had a good idea why. Like tonight. A hysterical call about gunshots and multiple homicides on Rhinestrauss.
    If it was true, it might be time to do some serious checking. He had heard the street talk, and he knew a little bit about Fister Corporation.
    But rumors were one thing, and proof was something else.
    It took time to get evidence. It took time and money and manpower—luxuries his precinct didn’t have. Pelham Station was little more than a fort among savages, and few cops lasted more than a year or two there.
    But Callis had lasted.
    Callis had lasted eight years, going on nine. And in his years, he had seen every brand of crooked scheme, every form of human suffering.
    The years had taken their toll. Callis had been shot once, stabbed three times, and, bizarrely, he had been infected with gonorrhea after being bitten and scratched by a Gun Hill whore.
    Of the five wounds, the gonorrhea had been the most difficult to explain to his wife.
    Now his ex-wife.
    Like most cops who worked violent crime, he was divorced.
    Callis was a third-generation New Yorker of Greek immigrant stock. He had the wavy black hair, the prominent nose, and thick stature of most men from the ancient island. He was 5’ 10” and weighed 195, with wide shoulders and massive olive-tinted hands.
    As he forced his unmarked car, with siren