Tears of Murder

By Neal Chadwick

Tears of Murder

Neal Chadwick

A gripping thriller!

Investigator Barry Dvorkin has been badly shaken by fate. His wife is in a coma after a traffic accident, his son is autistic. He's under pressure from the syndicate. He has to make sure that a few competing gangs are eliminated, otherwise something would happen to his family. At first Barry Dvorkin thinks he has no choice but to do what he is asked to do...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BEKKERpublishing
• Release date: Jul 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781393093848

Book preview

Tears of Murder

Neal Chadwick

Agripping thriller !

Investigator Barry Dvorkin has been badly shaken by fate. His wife is in a coma after a traffic accident, his son is autistic. He's under pressure from the syndicate. He has to make sure that a few competing gangs are eliminated, otherwise something would happen to his family. At first Barry Dvorkin thinks he has no choice but to do what he is asked to do...

Copyright

NEAL CHADWICK IS A PEN-NAME OF ALFRED BEKKER.

A CassiopeiaPress Book: CASSIOPEIAPRESS, UKSAK E-Books and BEKKERpublishing are Imprints by Alfred Bekker

© by Author /COVER TONY MASERO

© of this issue 2018 by AlfredBekker/CassiopeiaPress, Lengerich/Westphalia in arrangement with Edition Bärenklau, edited by Jörg Martin Munsonius.

The imagined persons have nothing to do with actually living persons. Identical names are random and not intended.

All rights reserved.

www.AlfredBekker.de

[e-mail]

The protagonists of the novel:

Barry Dvorkin - Special Agent at the FBI.

Jaden Hecker - Special Agent at the FBI

Kellerman - her superior

Valentina - the'black widow from Brooklyn' leads a syndicate after her husband's disappearance.

1

When I got home that day, I had a hunch something was wrong.

It was just a feeling.

A brawny guy stood in my living room and put a gun in my face.

Don't move, he said.

He had an accent. Russian, Ukrainian or just Brooklyn. Because there's a big fucking colony of Ukrainians and Russians in Brooklyn now.

He took my gun.

My swivel chair seemed to turn around on its own.

A woman in a tight black dress was sitting in it. The legs were crossed. The breasts had been very large and probably quite expensive. That's probably what the lady saved her bra for the next few years.

Her hair was up. And the smile that now appeared around her full, somewhat artificially inflated lips seemed mean for several reasons.

Once it just seemed spiteful and wrong.

But this is human, albeit unpleasant.

The second reason it seemed mean was the obvious botox abuse. I honestly cannot understand why a woman in comparatively young years already begins with this crap. The wrinkles of a thirty-year-old can hardly be as nasty as a frozen joker grin, so that such a treatment could be aesthetically justified in any way.

But that's a matter of taste, of course.

Some women feel more beautiful like that.

They accept that their faces will become rigid masks.

The woman said, May I call you Barry, Barry Dvorkin?

What may I call you?

You know who I am. And if not, you can check your databases. I'm sure you'll find something about the black widow of Brooklyn...

...who inherited her missing husband in the leadership of the Ukrainian syndicate, I concluded.

Just call me Valentina.

I'll just call you an asshole while that beefy guy over there is pointing his gun at me.

Victor, please! Valentina moved her hand and the beefy guy lowered his gun.

What do you want from me, Valentina?

You're a cop.

You could say that.

Special Agent Barry Dvorkin of the FBI!

I see you have informed yourself.

Fate's really taken you away lately.

Oh, but now you're not saying that you came to speak out of compassion.

Your wife was in a traffic accident. Since then she's been in a coma at St. Joseph's Clinic.

You seem to have spied on me, Valentina.

Your son is 14 and autistic. He lives in a specialized institution that ensures that he can manage his daily life and complete mathematics studies at an online university in Silicon Valley. but he'd never be able to use the subway, let alone go to a normal high school.

What are you getting at?

You know I know a lot of people. people who owe me a favor and who know other people.

It's called organized crime.

It's called a network.

Whatever.

There may be a maid or a therapist in the sheltered facility with your son on this network.

Ah!

And it could also be the nurse who changes your wife's IV bag.

My eyes became narrow.

I was beginning to understand what this was all about.

You're threatening me.

I just want you to understand what your situation is, Barry. I can call you that, can't I?

If you harm my wife or my son, I will kill you, valentina!

But Barry! Something like that in your mouth! You seem to have forgotten yourself a little bit. That's against the law, I've been told.

She grinned.

Then she continued: I want you to work for us, Barry. Then I can guarantee that nothing will happen to your wife or son.

So that's what you thought...

I know what's going on with you now, Barry. You're mad at me. You'd love to get at my throat. They curse the circumstances, but they're just the way they are: You can't keep your wife safe because she can't be moved. And you can't just move your son to another facility because it would set him back years if he were suddenly no longer in his familiar environment. I'm really sorry for you.

Fuck you, I said.

She crossed her legs.

Provocative.

Fuck you, Valentina, she said. I'd love to hear you call me Valentina.

Maybe I'd better stay with Mrs. Asshole. But I'm sure we can think of some more reticulate names for a piece of garbage like you!

You disappoint me, Barry. I thought you were a man who was quick to accept reality. I thought, despite all your hard to bear righteousness, you'd be someone who might listen to what he has to do to stop all the terrible things you're imagining happening in your head right now.

Oh, yeah?

I want you to work for me, Barry. This is about a few gangs which have been very damaging to our business lately."

You don't say.

I want some people permanently removed from the game. They're people who deserve it. Scum. Tattooed killers!

You're talking about the Mara gangs?

I want them crushed. And as far as I know, you're working on it anyway. So do your job!

Okay.

Say okay, Valentina.

I hesitated.

Okay, Valentina.

She rose and approached me. It's all right! She flicked her fingers. The beefy guy reached into his pocket and got out a smartphone. He gave it to Valentina. And Valentina gave it to me.

What are you doing?

We'll be in touch through this thing. For your own safety, use only this device. And then there's some additional information for you... Listen to me carefully, because I won't repeat anything.

I knew I had no choice.

I'm listening, I said.

I'm listening, Valentina!, she corrected me.

I'm listening, Valentina.

We're gonna get along, Barry. I'm sure you will. Oh, say hello to your colleagues for me, Mr. Jaden Hecker, by the way.

You know him. too?

Was a brothel raid a few years ago. I wasn't the black widow of Brooklyn then.

So?

I wasn't even a wife then. I was charged with prostitution and my future husband paid my lawyer. Who knows, I might never have met him otherwise. In a way, I am therefore indebted to your colleague. But maybe you'd better not bring that up with him.

Why not?

He's hardly gonna remember me.

If she had small breasts and no face disfigured by Botox at that time, that might have been true.

She continued: Apart from that, he might be embarrassed.

Why?

Because he wasn't wearing any pants when the raid started. He wasn't there on business.

I took a deep breath.

That was a message from the 'Things I never wanted to know about colleagues' section. 

2

Ivisit my son regularly and as often as my time allows. This time he showed me something he had found.

It was a book.

A collection of mathematical formulas, I saw.

That's what he's particularly interested in.

The book was older.

It looked like someone borrowed it from a library and didn't return it.

Look!

I opened it.

Greetings... from Valentina! was written there by hand.

It was like a blow to the head. That couldn't be a coincidence. That was a threat.

Where did you get this?

Found.

Where... found!

"It was on the nightstand. It