Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3)

Two hundred-plus city cams in Buffalo, thousands of private cams, cell phones, kids flying drones too small to register—but here, nothing. Video surveillance was everywhere, except where and when you needed it.
“Can I put my arms down? Blood loss is making my fingers cold.” I looked at both cops as if to say, Come on, fellas! Listen to your gut. “If you need a character reference, call Terry Chalmers and give him my name.”
Moss’s eyebrows went up, and he exchanged a look with McKelvey. Everybody in the department knew Terry Chalmers. A month earlier, he had been promoted to lieutenant in the Homicide Squad.
“All right,” Moss said. “Here.” Hand on his gun, he turned to the three men on the ground as I pocketed my wallet. “Now, you gentlemen got ID?”

2
Their names were Joseph Snell, Lawrence Winnicki, and Corey Parker. Joey, Larry, and Corey, hapless lifelong running buddies, a kind of Kaiser Town Three Stooges. All of them had criminal records and had done time, but only Joey, whose face and tattoo I still couldn’t place, had a Class A felony in his jacket. He had spent three and a half years in Attica for firebombing his stepfather’s car and leaving the old man with third-degree burns on his upper body. The circumstance that spared Joey a sentence of twenty to life for arson and maybe even a charge of attempted murder was Big Jake Finnerty’s documented history of abusing his wife in front of his stepson and his stepson in front of his wife. Laid out by one punch at nineteen when he decided to defend his mother, Joey squirted charcoal lighter fluid into one of Big Jake’s empty bourbon bottles, lit the rag he stuffed down inside it, and bought an admission ticket to the same cell block as Jasper Hellman. He had been released two months before our encounter on Franklin.
We learned all this before the preliminary hearing, scheduled for a week after his Monday arraignment. Unable to make bail and as an ex-con facing a bumped-up felony charge for possession of a firearm, he had been held over for what in New York had become rare, a mini-trial to determine whether he should be bound over for an actual trial. His too-ambitious public defender was gambling he could get the firearm charge thrown out before evidence was presented to a grand jury. Larry and Corey, however, had different public defenders. Each had pled to misdemeanor harassment and agreed to testify Joey had enlisted their help to beat down a guy who’d hurt one of his friends in prison. He had promised each a hundred bucks. Each denied knowing he had a gun.
Over Scrabble Deluxe the Sunday night before the hearing, I wondered aloud how a jobless ex-con who lived with his now-divorced mother could scrape together two hundred bucks. Had it come from Hellman, who, as far as I knew, had nothing? If so, how much had Joey got to make a run at me? Enough to chance a trial when firearm possession alone could get him twenty-five years?
Or maybe I was pissed I was such a cheap hit.
Adding an S to BATHTUB and forming SIZED all the way down to the lower right triple word box, Phoenix said, “You’re not a cheap hit, Gideon. You’re a priceless hit.” She calculated and wrote down her score—63—and then smiled. “Every time that sack of shit empties his sack of shit, he thinks of the guy who gave him the colostomy bag. The guy who took him off the street and killed his thrill run. To Hellman you’re Fort Knox on two legs, baby. He’s determined to blow a hole through the wall, even if he can’t walk away with anything.”
“But I’m nobody to Joey Snell,” I said. “How’d Hellman get him to try? Commissary money? Cigarettes? Friendship? Why didn’t Joey plead out? Hellman’s a fool who went on a killing spree with his psychopathic cousin. He’s not charismatic enough to have disciples.”
“Simple. He lied. He told Joey there was money stashed somewhere or gave him the name of some guy who’d pay him when you were dead. Whatever it took. He doesn’t give a rat’s fart about Joey, a tough kid but a few lumens short of a penlight. If he had any brains, he’d have Googled you first. You’ve been in the paper a few times, enough to tell a thinking person not to get too close. To shoot you from a safe distance.”
I nodded. “Kind of what worries me. The next guy may be smarter.”
Phoenix smiled sadly and pressed her fingertips against my cheek. “That’s not all your worried about, is it?”
I said nothing.
“You’ve been beating yourself up all week because you can’t remember when and where you saw him. He was following you around and you didn’t realize he was doing it. You let a threat get so close. You think you’re slipping.”
Still, I said nothing.
“But you proved last Sunday your reaction time is more than up to par. You saw the threat when it manifested as such and eliminated it. You’re not slipping. You’re still good at what you do. If you step outside the pity party for a minute you’ll see that.”
“You’re pretty smart for a pretty lawyer,” I said after several seconds.
“Better believe it.” She took five letters from the tile bag. “That’s why I’m kicking your ass.” Studying the new letters on her tray, she ran her tongue over her upper lip before she rotated the board and said, “Your turn.”


3
The next day, in the Frank A. Sedita City Court Building, I shared a witness bench outside Part 18 with two women I loved, Phoenix and my sister Mira. While I was in an old navy sports jacket and casual gray slacks, both of them were dressed to create an impression of serious authority, Phoenix in a dark power suit with a knee-length skirt and Mira in a modest rust-colored dress with a cropped black jacket
In court