by J. D. Robb
“Your boob, like the rest of you, belongs to the NYPSD. Besides, McNab’s going to ride you like a racehorse first chance. That’s your bonus.”
“You brought up sex and McNab!”
“This once, also your bonus.”
“I’ve got this outfit at home Dolly would wear. I’m going to put it on tonight and—”
“You didn’t earn that big a bonus. He’s going to lawyer up. We surprised him, confused him, so he didn’t start off yelling for one. But he’ll go that route.”
“We’ll have enough on him, and plenty to work a deal.”
“Yeah. I’d like to stall that for a bit. Why don’t you let the PA know we’ve got him in custody, and we’re going to start sweating him. I want that face match. We won’t have to deal if we can ID the muscle.”
“We’re running short on time before we have to notify the feds.”
“Tomorrow night, one way or the other. By tomorrow night we wrap it—or we bring them in.”
• • •
And she wanted to wrap it, Eve thought as she headed for Milo and Interview B. She really wanted to wrap it in a goddamn bow.
She stepped inside with Peabody—back in her jacket, her shirt primly buttoned. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Officer Delia, entering Interview with Easton, Milo. How’s it going, Milo?”
“I’ve got nothing to say.”
“Does that mean you’ve been read your rights and understand same?”
“I know my fricking rights. I want a lawyer. I don’t say a word without a lawyer.”
“That’s fine, no problem. Just some free advice. Word’s out that your . . . client, we’ll call him, is still cleaning house. You’re due to be swept up, Milo, so you’re going to want to be careful which lawyer you call in. Any connection to that client, it could mean we wasted our time saving your bony ass today.”
“Saving my ass? You think I’m stupid?”
“I’m told you’re really smart, e-wise. I don’t know how smart you are people-wise. You’re the last thread he needs to snip. You might think about hiding in that electronic fortress of yours, but sooner or later, he’ll get to you. We did, and it didn’t take much.”
Milo sat back, sneered. “Lawyer.”
“All right. Peabody, contact the PA, let him know Milo’s engaged his right to an attorney so there’s no need to craft that deal. And let’s get Milo his ’link call, then put him in protective lockdown, the full twenty-four/seven. We don’t want anybody saying we didn’t do everything we could to keep him alive while we have him.”
Eve swore she could see the wheels turning—or in his case, the motherboard firing—as she got to her feet. “You can pull in a fleet of lawyers, Milo, but you won’t walk out of this. We’ll have enough to tuck you away—without electronic access—for a couple decades. And that’s just with what we get out of your house. Add in the fraud charges, the tax evasion, the money laundering, book cooking, embezzlement, and you’ll be a broken old man before you see daylight.”
“You’ve got squat. You won’t find anything on my equipment, and the fraud? All that shit? Bogus.”
“Maybe you aren’t as smart as they said. Won’t find anything. Jesus, Milo, we found you, didn’t we? And I’m betting half of the parts and equipment—more than—you’ve got in your geek haven was designed, made, and sold by Roarke Industries. And the man himself is even now taking all your toys apart.”
It gave her some personal satisfaction to see his throat work at the mention of Roarke’s name.
“You think you’re the best? Please. You’re not half as good as he is. So you call that lawyer, Milo, and if you live long enough to go to trial, which is pretty damn iffy at this point, you’re going to go down, all by your lonesome, and spend the next, oh, I figure eighty years when you add it together, in a cell without so much as a PPC to play with.
“No deals for you.”
She walked toward the door.
“Wait a minute.”
“I’ve got places to go, people to see, Milo.”
“I want to know what kind of deal before I decide.”
“Oh, you want me to show you my cards, but you give me nothing? Forget it.”
She reached for the door.
“How do I know you’re not bullshitting?”
“Milo, Milo, we’ve got you cold. Why do I need to bullshit?”
“Why do you need to deal?”
“Me, I’d rather not, but the PA wants everything all tidy. Saves the taxpayers money. You’re the least of it, so they’re willing to give you a break in return for solid information. Alexander doesn’t need you anymore, Milo, and you know too much. But you can take your chances.”
“Look, look, the fraud, embezzlement, all that crap, that’s not on me. He just brought me in to hack some files, for the audit deal. Hell, it’s his company, right? If he wants to screw around with his own company, it’s his deal.”
“Lawyer or not, Milo?”
“Let’s just straighten this part out first. I don’t need a lawyer yet.”
“Your choice. Screwing around with his own company—i.e., misappropriation of funds, skimming, laundering money, defrauding other parties and so on? It’s illegal, Milo. And since he hired you, paid you, and you did work for him, you’re an accessory. You’re on the hot seat.”
“So I’ll give you the solid on it.”
“How?”
“My policy is copy and backup. I’ve got copies of all the files he had me destroy. And, you know, I like knowing the game through and through, so I hacked through his security. I’ve got names, contracts, deals. I’ve been working on his financials. It’s coming along.”
“And where do you have all this data?”
Milo shifted his skinny butt on the chair. “What’s the deal? Tell me the deal first.”
“You give me hard evidence that leads to the arrest and conviction of Sterling Alexander for murder and the state of New York will not pursue any charges of fraud, embezzlement or money laundering, or accessory thereto against you.”
“What about the e-crimes, the charges for what you pull in from my place.”
“Now you’re getting greedy. I just gave you back about fifty years of your life.”
“Come on. I can give you Alexander on a plate, and all his operatives. He’s got operations all over the place. Dummy companies, Internet scams, land fraud. You’ll put away a major case, right? How about I give you this, I testify against him, and then I just go away. Just—” He spread his hands, made a poofing sound.
“Can’t do it.” Eve gave a careless shrug. “Maybe I can talk the PA into lightening the load some.”
“Alexander’s the big fish,” Peabody put in. “We might be able to work something, Dallas. Maybe house arrest, five to ten?”
“Jesus, Peabody.” As if frustrated, Eve dragged her hand through her hair. “Might as well let him walk.”
“Give us a good faith,” Peabody told him. “You’ve got the hard on Alexander. Save us time, trouble, money. Give us some part of that. It’ll go a long way toward softening up the PA. Dallas?”
“Yeah, yeah, it would. Hell.” She sucked in a breath. “I’ll push for the five to ten, house arrest,” she told Milo. “On the hacking, on what we pull from your place outside of the Alexander issue. Give me something to push with.”
“I’ve got a safe room. It’s below ground level, fully secured and shielded. You can’t get in without my palm print, voice print, retina scan. You have to take me back there so I can get you in.”
Eve thought of Roarke, smiled. “We’ll see about that. Peabody.”
“I’m on it.”
“Peabody exiting Interview,” Eve said. “Okay, Milo. Now that we’ve got that tidied up, let’s talk about murder.”
“Huh?”
EVE GAVE HIM A M
INUTE TO ASSIMILATE, TO sit, mouth agape so his narrow strip of chin hair looked like the stem on a wide glass bowl.
“Murder, Milo. You know, the unlawful killing of a human being. Like say, Marta Dickenson.”
“I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill anybody. I hacked into her files, okay? I told you that. We made a deal on that.”
“That’s right. Now we’re talking about this.” She drew out the crime scene photo, slid it toward him.
“I didn’t do that.” He shoved the photo away again. “I never touched her. If you’re trying to throw that on me, I’m done talking.”
“Your choice.” She shrugged it off. “Same rules apply. I can’t help you out if you don’t talk. Or if you lie to me. If you try to tell me you weren’t there, you don’t know anything about it, we’ll just stop right here. We can pick it up again after the lineup.”
“What are you talking about? What lineup?”
“The one where we bring in the witness who saw you and your pal, and the van—your Cargo utility van—outside Whitestone’s apartment on the night of Marta Dickenson’s murder. Jesus, Milo, do you think we pulled your name out of a hat? We’ve got a witness.”
He shifted again, swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
“You’ve admitted to working for Alexander, for corrupting and destroying files Marta Dickenson was working on. You and your van were seen at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. You want to contact your lawyer, Milo, because I can promise you he or she will tell you that’s some pretty hot water you’re swimming in.”
“I didn’t kill anybody! Okay, yeah, it was my van, but all I did was drive.”
“All you did was drive?” Eve repeated, pleasantly, and thought: Gotcha, asshole.
“That’s right. I drove the van. I didn’t know she was going to get killed. I drove the van, and I was supposed to get through the security if the codes didn’t work.”
“What codes?”
“The codes for the apartment, the codes Jake Ingersol gave us. Alexander hired me to use my van, to drive it and get us in if Ingersol pulled any crap, see? That’s all.”
“Okay, I’m getting it. But let’s backtrack a minute. How did Alexander hire you? How did he contact you?”
“Through Ingersol. I’ve done some work for Ingersol before. I only work on referrals, you know? You have to be careful.”
“I bet. So Ingersol brought Alexander to you?”
“Yeah. They had a good thing going, but Alexander wanted some tweaking, and a thicker slice. That’s where I came in. You got a potential mark, or a group of investors. I’d put together a file on them. Financials, other investments, what they spent money on—who they spent it on. If they had something going on the side, if they were into the kink.”
Contradiction, Eve noted, as Milo had claimed earlier not to have been involved in the fraud. She’d give him more rope. “For blackmail purposes?”
“I didn’t blackmail anybody either.” Milo held up his hands. “I don’t do that shit. I just provide the data to the client. What the client does with the data isn’t on me.”
“Got it. But being thorough, you’d have put together files on how Alexander used the data. You’d have that as a just-in-case buffer.”
“Like I said, you’ve got to be careful. He put the screws to some of the marks, sure. Bled them a little harder that way if they started to make noise or tried to back out. Whatever. He’s a greedy bastard. You know he even tried to get me to cut my rates?”
“Imagine that.”
“Yeah, seriously. You get what you pay for, right? And my work made him a whole shitpot of money.”
“I bet it did. How long have you worked for him?”
“Six months. Just doing those tweaks now and then.”
“So you were involved in the fraud.”
He blinked, shifted. “I didn’t do any fraud. I just did the tweaks. We covered that.”
“All right. So you did the tweaks, and helped Alexander make that shitpot of money. But then he was going to have some trouble. This audit he couldn’t get out of.”
“Shouldn’t have been trouble, wouldn’t have been if Parzarri hadn’t gotten banged up, got put out of commission before he fixed the books. Now, see, here’s what I’m saying.” Comfortable now, Milo shifted forward conversationally. “He tells me he wants this new accountant picked up, to hack into her communications, get a line on her so she gets scooped when she leaves the office, before she can dig into the books. All I figure is they want the files, put some pressure on her to clam it up, go along. Maybe pay her a little, though, like I said, he’s a greedy bastard. All I did was monitor her ’links, poke around in her comms.”
“And drive the van.”
“Right. Alexander doesn’t like to pay, so he’s got me multitasking. I’m okay with it because he’s a steady revenue stream. I just drive his ass-kicker to the offices, then when he scoops the accountant, I take them to the apartment. No problem with the codes, so I just wait in the van. See? I never laid a hand on her. I was in the van.”
“Okay, that makes sense. What happened? Take me through it.”
“So, well, after she’s scooped in the back, she’s making some noise. The ass-kicker knocks her around a little. Look, I’m sorry about that, but it happens. It can be a rough business.”
“Understood.”
“Me, I just drive, then I check the security, the locks. We’re go. I get back in the van to wait. He’s not gone all that long. I don’t know, I was working on my portable, so time passed. He comes back.”
“And?” Eve said after a moment.
“That’s it. Guy’s not much of a talker. I just dropped him off back at Alexander and Pope like he told me, took the van back to the garage where I keep it, and caught a cab home.”
“Who’s the ass-kicker?”
“Don’t know.”
“Milo.”
“Truth.” He held up his right hand as if taking an oath. “Do. Not. Know. Don’t want to know. He’s a scary kind of guy, and I figured if I poked around there, things could get harsh. It’s not like we hooked up for jobs regular. I’d only seen him a couple times before, and after all this, I don’t want to see him again.”
She leaned toward believing him, but she’d push on it later.
“He didn’t say anything about Dickenson?”
“He didn’t say anything about anything, except take him back to the offices. He had her briefcase, and weird, I thought, her coat. I just figured he was giving her the business, making her get home without the coat. Bitching cold that night. Then I saw how she’d been killed. They said a mugging, but . . .”
“You knew better.”
“Well, it could have been a mugging, but I figured something went bad. I didn’t ask any questions. When you start asking questions, you’re asking for trouble.”
“You didn’t ask any questions when Alexander told you to break into the Brewer building, into the offices, into Dickenson’s comp, the safe, take and/or destroy files?”
“That’s a job.” Milo set the edges of his hands on the table as if putting the matter into a box. “Now, sure, you have to ask some questions, but it was pretty straightforward. I tried to tell him I could take care of the files before, but he didn’t want to pay the fee. He ended up paying it anyway, right? Cheap prick.”
“Did you ask questions when he told you to hack into the hospital’s communication and security?”
“Just standard ones, so I could program the job. Look, the same elements apply. I didn’t know they were going to kill Parzarri. I mean, grab some reality, right? The guy was good at his work.”
“What did you figure?”
“I figured Alexander wanted his guy to scare Parzarri, to make sure he hadn’t blown it, talked to anyone. He was incommunicado for a few
days, and Alexander started to sweat it. Especially after you got in his face. Man, he was steamed.”
“Was he?”
“Maximum steam. Okay, full disclosure. Total cooperation. He wanted me to hack into your comms—at Central, portable, at home. Let me say you’ve got some major mag shielding. I didn’t have time to get through it. So what I did, I got the other cop’s—the one who was in here?”
“Detective Peabody.”
“Yeah. NYPSD has some decent shielding, but it’s doable. I ran the locator on her comm. That’s how the ass-kicker knew where you’d be.”
“But you didn’t ask questions.”
“I had to figure he wanted to mess you up some, scare you off. I figure that’s stupid. He does that, you’re just going to put it together, but he doesn’t pay me for advice. Tossing that kid, that’s cold, man. That was very unchill. Superior catch, by the way.”
“Thanks. Let’s go back to Parzarri for a minute, just to tie it up. You hacked in, got the data on the shuttle flight, the ambulance crew, generated the fake IDs, sent the fake communication.”
“Yeah, that was the job.”
“And drove the ambulance.”
“That’s a kick.” He actually grinned. “Lights, sirens. A rush.”
“But while you’re driving, Milo, while you’re getting that rush, Parzarri’s in the back being smothered.”
“I didn’t know. Seriously, you have to pay attention when you’re driving an ambulance.”
“Tell me what you thought when you left it, and Parzarri at the underpass, switched cars?”
“Just like before.” His eyes cut away. “Putting a little scare into him.”
You’re lying now, Eve thought. Lying, weaselly little fucker.
“Putting a scare in him by leaving him hurt, since you didn’t know he was dead. Hurt and alone. Taking his suitcase, just driving off.”
“I got paid for the hack, the driving. That’s it, that’s all. And I wasn’t going to say anything. The ass-kicker looked . . . kind of pumped. Gave me a bad feeling. We’re supposed to go to the WIN building, so the ass-kicker can talk to Ingersol.”