The Devil's Necktie Read Online Free PDF

had forced him into an early retirement. He had to occasionally stand while eating, and pop pain meds like vitamins. He worried sometimes about the side effects. The pills might dull his brain and slow him down a bit, but after three unsuccessful operations he’d vowed never to go under the knife again. He’d read somewhere that Homo sapiens used only one-tenth of their brains. He could live with those odds.
    Jack walked up Glencoe toward a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf behind the Barnes & Noble bookstore. Once inside, Jack decided on a pound of Italian roast.
    â€œYou a cop?” the shaggy-haired barista asked as if he was in the know.
    Jack didn’t want to go there and ignored him.
    â€œThat’s ground for a cone,” Jack said, handing off the bag of whole beans.
    â€œSo, you’re a cop.” It was a statement.
    â€œI used to be,” Jack admitted.
    â€œOnce a cop, always a cop,” the barista said with the maddening wisdom of youth as he walked away to grind Jack’s beans.
    Ever since he woke up, Jack had been sorting through his priorities. His first order of business was to call his old friend in Miami, DEA agent Kenny Ortega. They’d worked Mia as a team during the Alvarez case, and he might still have a line on her. At least Jack could get the lay of the land.
    The next call would be to Tommy Aronsohn. He had been a baby DA back when Jack was an up and comer. Fiercely loyal, an impartial jurist, and a pit bull in a court of law. He had a high-end private practice now with an office on Park Avenue after a successful career as a Manhattan district attorney. The two men had made their bones together and remained steadfast friends. Jack was hoping he would stay out of the fray—more specifically, out of jail—but he’d give Tommy a heads-up just in case. He knew Tommy would have his back.
    Jack was crossing Maxella on the way home when he heard, “Car wash . . . donations . . . car wash.”
    The high-pitched voices of twenty-something Hispanic women and children pierced the industrial sounds on Glencoe. “Car wash . . . caaaar . . . waaaash.” Jack knew what was up before he was close enough to read the hand-painted cardboard signs. Someone was dead.
    Lean, tattooed men in cutoff tees were working in the parking lot directly behind their women and children. The men manned wet rags, buckets filled with soapy water, and leaking hoses for the final rinse. There was no joy in their work. One of their own had died of a bullet wound to the abdomen. He needed to be buried. It was as simple as that.
    Jack understood the culture of violence. It had been part of his catechism growing up in a Mafia infested neighborhood. But the wanton disregard for human life that allowed one man to slaughter another like so much chattel—those were the lives he wanted retribution for. But even higher on Jack’s food chain were the men, removed from the violence, who gave the orders to kill. The men protected by their wealth, politics, and religion. Protected by their soldiers and bankers and lawyers and true believers. That’s who he wanted to track down in avenging Mia’s death.
    Jack folded a twenty as he crossed the street. He stood for a moment before a makeshift shrine to the recently departed and slid the bill into the uneven slit cut into the top of a red shoe box. He thought about Mia and got deadly angry.
    â€”
    Delgado studied his reflected image in the full-length mirror hanging in his walk-in closet. The closet was about the same size as the house where he’d been born and raised with his three sisters, drunken father, and beloved mother, just ten kilometers outside Bogotá. His long silver mane of hair framed his chiseled, weathered features. The thick lines that accentuated his clear gray eyes and cut across his wide forehead lent him an air of gravitas, a life filled with battles won.
    Delgado worked to