Brides Of The Impaler by Edward Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

intently, assaying body language and eye movement. “Maybe I can do something for you, Cinzia, but you know how life is. To get something, you have to give something.”
    The girl groaned. “Jesus, you gotta be kidding me; you guys are cops .”
    “Relax, I’m not talking about sexual somethings—”
    “Shucks!” Slouch laughed.
    Taylor jerked her chair back. “You give us the make on your johns so we get an assist from Vice—”
    The girl groaned.
    “And, you give us some info that leads to a bust on the hardware store,” Vernon ganged up. “A little bird says you saw something last night.”
    For once, the girl seemed enthused. “Oh, yeah, I saw the whole thing near Seventy-seventh. The hardware store near Greenflea. It was like three in the morning.”
    “That’s a bit late for a little girl to be wandering around,” Taylor said, then shoved her chair back toward Vernon.
    “Did you see the perpetrators?”
    “Yes, four or five of them. They’d broken the front window. Right when I was walking by after a—well, you know. They all jumped out the hole in the window and ran away.”
    “Four or five of them? They didn’t happen to be—”
    “It’s these nutty homeless chicks I see all the time hanging out around Broadway, near—what is it? Dessorio Avenue?”
    Vernon and Taylor traded raised brows.
    “But last night they were up around Seventy-seventh busting into the hardware store,” she went on. “The reason I recognized them is I see ’em all the time during the day panhandling on Sixty-eighth.”
    “Homeless girls…”
    “Yeah, crackheads. They’re pains in the ass. They live place to place to place. You know.”
    “No, we don’t know,” Vernon said. “ What place? The shelters south of town?”
    “No, no, a building gets sold or a restaurant goes under, lots of the bums will squat there until someone comes in to start work on the place and throws ’em out. But they hang around this area. Upper West Side’s a good place to beg for change. You want to see ’em, go down to where that guy sells off-brand hot dogs and says they’re Sabrett’s.”
    “That’s half the vendors in New York, honey,” Slouch said.
    “It’s the guy who’s always around Dessorio and Sixty-seventh,” she added. “I see them all the time, bumming change around there.”
    “Pretty interesting, huh, How? The bum part?” Taylor remarked.
    “Just like those girls last December.”
    “And they’re real nutty and silly,” the prostitute complained. “Giggling and jabbering. They’re worse than the damn pigeons.”
    “Have some compassion, Cinzia,” Vernon told her. “They’re probably all schizophrenic. What’s your excuse for being a non contributor?”
    The girl put her head down.
    Vernon rubbed his hands together. “What you gotta understand is this is about the cushiest precinct in the city.These girls stole a pissant forty bucks’ worth of knives last night and a bunch of Christmas tree stands last December.”
    The girl gave him an odd look.
    “That’s right. Christmas tree stands. Not exactly the crime of the century, huh?” Vernon went on. “But because our jobs are so easy here, if we don’t solve this real fast—like in one day —we’ll be the laughingstock of the department. So here’s the deal. If your blood test comes up negative for drugs, and youddd show us where these nutty homeless girls hang out, I’ll call the magistrate and have him drop your charges, if you agree to do some informant work for the Vice unit. That way, you stay out of jail, and we get something to do that makes us look like we’re earning our pay for a change.”
    “All right,” the girl said.
    Vernon uncuffed her. “And clean that silly makeup off your face. It makes you look asinine.”
    “Thanks…”
    “You’re going to go with Detective Taylor now and show him where these girls congregate.”
    “I’m almost off-shift,” Taylor complained.
    “Such are the hardships of public