Secret of the Seventh Son Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bruckner Expressway now, tracking east through the Bronx.
    "You know where we're going?" he asked.
    She found it in her notebook. "Eight forty-seven Sullivan Place."
    "Thank you! I don't have a fucking clue where that is," he barked. "I know where Yankee Stadium is. Period. That's all I know about the fucking Bronx."
    "Please don't swear," she said sternly, like a reprimanding middle school teacher. "I have a map." She unfolded it, studied it a moment and looked around. "We need to get off on Bruckner Boulevard."
    They rode in silence for a mile. He waited for her to resume her tutorial but she stared at the road stony-faced.
    He finally looked over and saw her lower lip quivering. "What? You're mad at me for dropping the F-bomb, for fuck's sake?"
    She looked at him wistfully. "You're different from John Mueller."
    "Jesus," he muttered. "It took you this long to figure that out?"
    Driving south on East Tremont, they passed the Forty-fifth Precinct house on Barkley Avenue, an ugly squat building with too few parking spaces for the number of squad cars packed around it. The thermometer was touching eighty and the street was teeming with Puerto Ricans, toting plastic shopping bags, pushing baby carriages, or just strolling along with cell phones pressed against ears, moving in and out of the grocerias, bodegas, and cheap mom-and-pop stores. The women were showing a lot of flesh. Too many heavy chicks in halter tops and short-shorts, jiggling along in flip-flops, for his liking. Do they actually think they look foxy? he wondered. They made his passenger look like a supermodel.
    Nancy was buried in the map, trying not to screw up. "From here, it's the third left," she said.
    Sullivan Place was an inconvenient street for a major murder. Cruisers, unmarked vehicles, and medical examiner vans were double-parked in front of the crime scene, choking off the traffic. Will pulled up to a young cop trying to keep one lane passable and flashed his badge. "Jeez," the cop moaned. "I don't know where to put you. Can you swing around the block? Maybe there's something around the corner."
    Will parroted him. "Around the corner."
    "Yeah, around the block, you know take a couple of rights."
    Will turned off the ignition, got out and tossed the cop the keys. Cars started honking like mad, instant gridlock.
    "Whaddya doing!" the cop hollered. "You can't leave this here!" Nancy continued to sit in the SUV, mortified.
    Will called to her. "C'mon, let's get a move on. And take Officer Cuneo's badge number down in your little book in case he does anything disrespectful to government property."
    The cop muttered, "Asshole."
    Will was spoiling for a dust-up and this kid would do just fine. "Listen," he said, boiling over with rage, "if you like your pathetic little job then don't fuck with me! If you don't give a shit about it, then take a shot. Go on! Try it!"
    Two angry guys, veins bulging, face-to-face. "Will! Can we go?" Nancy implored. "We're wasting time."
    The cop shook his head, climbed into the Explorer, drove it down the block and double-parked it in front of a detective's car. Will, still breathing hard, winked at Nancy, "I knew he'd find us a spot."
    It was a pocket-sized apartment building, three floors, six units, dirty white brickwork, slapped together in the forties. The hallway was dim and depressing, brown and black ceramic checkerboard tiling on the floors, grimy beige walls, bare yellow bulbs. All the action was in and around Apartment 1A, ground floor left. Toward the rear of the hall, near the garbage shaft, family members crowded together in multigenerational grief, a middle-aged woman wailing softly, her husband, in work boots, trying to comfort her, a fully pregnant young woman, sitting on the bare floor, recovering from hyperventilation, a young girl in a Sunday dress, looking bewildered, a couple of old men in loose shirts, shaking their heads and stroking their stubble.
    Will squirmed through the half-open apartment door, Nancy