Read Hard Case Crime: Deadly Beloved for Free Online Page B

steps. He extended a hand to Rafe, and they shook, while the OCU captain nodded at me and I did the same back.
    Rafe said, “Hope you don’t mind us crashing the party.”
    “Never.” He tapped Rafe on the shoulder in tag-you’re-it fashion. “I’d love to get you interested in what we’re doing at OCU. Ready to transfer over from Homicide?”
    Rafe shook his head, laughed a little. “No way! I like coming in after the shooting has stopped, not putting my ass out on the firing line and getting shot myself.”
    “Spoken like a true Homicide cop,” Chic said.
    I was hearing this, but not looking at either of these good-looking coppers, my attention on the pictures that were one after another filling the screen, thanks to the policewoman at the computer doing a post-lecture check-through.
    As these largely unfamiliar faces flashed by, I said, “Don’t know many of these new players, Captain—but it sure looks like somebody’s organizing.”
    “Yeah,” Chic said, glumly, “and if these factions come together, like the Italian, Irish and Jewish gangsters did back in the Capone days? Well...then we get the perfect criminal storm.”
    “Speaking of which,” I said, and met the captain’s blue eyes, “my favorite ‘faction’ didn’t make the cut.”
    Chic offered up half a smile. “If you mean LCN, La Cosa Nostra’s cooperating with the Russians big-time back east....Different story here.”
    My eyebrows went up. “Really? My memory is, the Muertas were always good at bringing rival factions together.”
    Rafe was nodding. “Yeah, Chic—any sign of activity on that front?”
    Chic shook his head and a comma of blond hair dangled itself over his forehead. His hands were on his hips. “Guys, I know where you’re comin’ from, but I’ve worked on the Muertas and their LCN ties for many months....We haven’t found a damn thing to link them to organized crime—DEA, Customs, ATF, all come up bupkis.”
    “Currently,” I said.
    “Currently.” He shrugged. “Sharon! Put Dominic Muerta’s pic up, would you?...It’s been, what, two years since Mike and I put that evil old son of a bitch in stir, and almost that long since he died in there.”
    The face on the screen now was familiar, all right—the distinguished, white-haired, dark-glasses-wearing Dominic Muerta, with his narrow, high-cheekboned face seeming more Apache than Sicilian, a slender devil in dapper angelic white.
    “And then,” I said, almost to myself, “his daughter steps in. Dominic replaced by Dominique....”
    Chic called, “Put up the daughter’s pic, Sharon, would you?”
    But Sharon had anticipated the request, and Chic’s question was only half-asked when the image of Dominique Muerta loomed from the screen, a dark-haired woman in her early thirties, sleekly beautiful but something hard around the thin, well-shaped lips and something cold in the dark almond eyes.
    More images of her followed, surveillance photos mixed with wire-service ones, all painting a sophisticated, successful picture of a modern businesswoman.
    Chic was saying, “Brilliant executive, by all accounts, Dominique Muerta...well-educated, respected by the business community. New generation of Muerta who recognized that enterprises entered into, years ago, as fronts and money laundries had become profitable in their own right. Enormously so. Chiefly, entertainment....”
    “Like illegal gambling,” I said lightly, “and narcotics and child porn?”
    Chic turned to Rafe. “When’s the last time the Muertas were implicated in any of those, Lieutenant?”
    Rafe’s admission may have been reluctant, but it did support Chic’s thesis: “Not since cancer took the old man out.”
    Again Chic called back to the policewoman. “Sharon? Would you put up those Muerta Enterprises images?”
    “Certainly, Captain.”
    And the screen illustrated Chic’s words as he said, “As I tell our troops, Muerta Enterprises is an ever-expanding international network of