Jack and the Beanstalk by Ed McBain

Author:Ed McBain [McBain, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: United States, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Police Procedurals, Literature & Fiction, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense
Amazon: B005WZZUDU
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2012-10-22T11:00:00+00:00

I called Bloom the moment I was in my office.

I told him that Veronica McKinney’s chiropractor had a Spanish accent.

He said, “Yeah?”

I reminded him that Sunny McKinney had overheard her brother in conversation with a man who had a Spanish accent and that—

“Yes, I know,” he said.

—according to her they’d been discussing the theft of cows.

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to that telephone conversation,” Bloom said. “I’m not so sure they were talking about cows. Remember my first impression when I heard this kid had forty thousand in cash? I thought dope is what I thought, the kid was involved some way with dope. Okay, last October he gets a call from a guy with a Spanish accent—all your cocaine comes up from Colombia, Matthew, the dope heavies in Florida are mostly all Spanish. And the guy says how many and the kid says fifteen at thirty. Okay, Matthew, I know this is far out, I know it’s pretty much off the wall. But the going rate for good cocaine in Miami is fifty grand a kilo. Okay. Suppose you could get shitty cocaine for thirty grand a kilo?”

“You think Jack McKinney was selling cocaine to this man? Instead of cows?”

“No, sir.”

“You just said...”

“I think it could’ve been the other way around, Matthew. The guy with the Spanish accent was selling the girl—”

“What girl?”

“The dope. Girl, coke, snow, nose candy, they’re all names for cocaine. ‘The brighter the blue, the better the girl’—you never heard that expression?”

“Never.”

“Your hotshot dope dealers’ll test the coke with cobalt thiocyanate to make sure it isn’t Johnson’s Baby Powder or something. If it turns blue, it’s the McCoy. The really pure stuff turns a bright blue. Live and learn,” he said.

“And that’s what you honestly think? That McKinney was buying cocaine from this guy with the Spanish accent?”

“It’s possible. Fifteen kilos of not very good dope. At thirty thousand bucks a throw.”

“That comes to four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“It does.”

“You think McKinney had that kind of money, huh?”

“If he was trafficking in dope, that’s peanuts.”

“Well,” I said.

“What does ‘well’ mean?”

“It means this all sounds like sheer speculation.”

“It is. That’s the business I’m in, Matthew. Speculation. Until all the pieces fall together, that’s all it is—speculation. What’d Mrs. McKinney have to say about her Spanish chiropractor?”

“She told me he’s Cuban.”

“You asked her?”

“Right after I met him. She was driving me over to my...”

“Oh,” Bloom said, “you met him?”

“Yes. His name is Ramon Alvarez.”

“How’d you happen to meet him?”

“I went to his office with her.”

“This morning?”

“Yes.”

“And in the car afterwards, you happened to ask her whether he was Cuban, is that right?”

“Well, I’d asked her last night if she knew—”

“Oh, you were with her last night, too?”

“Yes.”

There was a silence on the phone. I knew just what Bloom was thinking. Veronica had been with me last night, and she’d been with me again early this morning. Bloom was thinking just what Mrs. Martindale had thought.

“Did she come over for a swim, too?” he asked.

“She came over to talk.

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