Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery Read Free

got a whiff of stale beer in there as well. I felt like I had sat down in a dorm room garbage can.
    Wade thrust a pair of bulky headphones at me, and I hesitated, uneasy about putting those things over my hair, let alone on my ears. He picked up on my hesitation.
    “These go on your ears.”
    “Yes, I understand.”
    “That’s only if you want to hear.”
    Wade’s voice had softened now. It was as if we had gone from adversaries to business partners. Sitting in his car, I felt bad for the man. It was a hell of a way to make a living.
    I adjusted the headphones and fitted them over my head, trying to keep them off my hair as much as possible. Wade had his camera on the console between the seats. It was a big old Sony. There was no fancy little model for him; he was old school all the way.
    I leaned over and peered into the little viewfinder. I was nervous. I had just committed $2,000 to a large, hairy man dressed for the beach. And my career and bank account felt like they were hinging on this.
    Wade hit Play, and the viewfinder sprang to life. The shot started in the dark, the kind of dark you find at two in the morning when the only people out are the ones getting into trouble and those trying to stop, catch, or help them. Wade was crossing the parking area of the little Gulf station at the end of Twenty-third Street at the East River and shooting as he was walking.
    The light atop his camera was on, and up ahead in the darkness you could make out two cops standing at the guardrail at edge of the asphalt parking lot with their backs to him. The lights of their radio car flickered dully off to the side. They were looking down into the river, and Wade closed in on them like he had been invited.
    One of the cops spun around. She was young, Hispanic, with a chubby but pretty face. Her partner, a young clean-scrubbed kid, wheeled around, too.
    “Who the hell are you?” the young male cop asked.
    Wade’s voice was muffled. “Press,” you could hear him say.
    He moved right in alongside them without waiting for a response.
    “Where is it?” he asked.
    “Straight down,” the kid said. “Wedged in there by those posts.”
    Wade was leaning over and shooting down into the black water. There were clusters of posts sticking straight up, some barely above the water, others a few feet higher. All had jagged tops worn down by time and weather.
    The camera moved across the water, its dim light searching for the body. The light hit something. It was white, a dress shirt. You could see the body now. It was floating facedown, bobbing on the currents of the river. The body bumped into the maze of posts that prevented it from being swept down the river, through New York Harbor, and out to sea.
    “That is one fat son of a bitch,” the kid cop said.
    And he was right. The body was big and round, and the dress shirt ballooned out in the water, making the poor bastard look even fatter.
    In the distance the low rumbling of an engine could be heard. It grew louder, and Wade left the body and focused out on the river, where you could see a police boat approaching. Its pilot drove it like it was his car, cutting the engines and swinging it sideways as it came close to the posts. It was an old Harbor Unit boat, and you could see the large NYPD painted on its blue side. Floodlights flashed down onto the dark waters now.
    The guys in the boat jabbered with the Hispanic gal and the kid next to Wade. Fishing and swimming jokes were cracked while they got to work. Now there was the sound of a truck engine close by, and a few seconds later there was more commotion as the guys from the Emergency Services Unit arrived.
    The camera jiggled as someone gave Wade a shove.
    “Gonna need some room here, chief. Move over.”
    You could hear someone to the side asking about who the guy with the camera was, but everyone was more interested in the body.
    The cops got to work, the guys on the boat using a long pole with an open circle on the end to lasso