by J. D. Robb
He touched her hair, the lightest stroke. “Never.”
“Exactly. And her eyes are all puffy and red—and shiny. And her belly’s poking out. This little white lump sticking out. What was I supposed to do?”
“Exactly what you did.” He shifted to kiss the top of her head. “You’re a good friend.”
“I’d rather be a bitch. It’s easier, and more satisfying emotionally, to be a bitch.”
“And you’re so good at it. Well, this should be a fine time for me to fire up that barbecue grill again.”
“I can’t believe you’d kick me when I’m down.”
“I’ve a handle on it now. I’ve been practicing on the side. We’ll have burgers. They’re the simplest.”
She could’ve told him she’d had a burger for lunch, but that would have put too glossy a shine on what she’d swallowed at the Blue Squirrel.
“I just want to work,” she complained. But it was for form. It might do them, do everything some good, to have people around. Making noise, taking up energy.
Keeping the illusion all was normal, in place.
“I just want to spend a regular evening working through the insidious and murderous plots of the HSO and foreign techno-terrorists. Is that too much to ask?”
“Of course not, but life will intrude. Would you like me to tell you how Feeney and I did in Queens?”
“Shit. Shit!” She threw out her hands and nearly caught Roarke on the chin with a fist. “See? This has got me so messed up I didn’t even remember what’s going on with my own case. Where’s Feeney?”
“He stayed back in Queens to supervise the removal of some of the sculptures. They’re being impounded. You were dead-on about the bugs.”
Look how you watch me, he thought. Trying to see inside my head, to read what’s there. So we won’t have to talk about it again.
What are we going to do about this? he wondered.
“We found six sculptures—three out and three in—that were bugged.” He smiled. He couldn’t make it reach his eyes, but he smiled. “Very sexy technology, too, from the looks of it. It’ll be fun to take one of the devices apart for analysis once we hack it out of the metal.”
“Eyes or ears?”
“Both. From preliminary study, using a satellite bounce. No question whoever was watching and listening knows we’ve found them.”
“Good.” She pushed to her feet. “If Bissel was spying on his own wife for the HSO, they already know we’re making moves. I had a meet with an assistant director today.”
“Did you?” He said it very softly, very coolly, and sent a chill up her spine.
“Yeah. And if Bissel turned and was working with the other side, though I don’t see a hell of a lot of differences between sides here, they’ll be scrambling. I’m going to handle it,” she said, and let the pretense drop, for a moment. “I’m going to handle it.”
“No doubt. I don’t intend to tell you how to handle it,” he added, very carefully. “Can you say the same?”
“It isn’t the same. It—” She pulled back, like a woman who felt herself sliding over a cliff. “Let’s just table that. Concentrate on what is.”
“Happy to. What is?”
“The investigation. We should take this upstairs, fill each other in.”
“All right.” He touched her face, then leaned in, brushed his lips over hers. “We’ll do what’s most normal for us, for now. Go up and talk about murder, then have a meal with friends. That suit you?”
“Yeah, it does.” She made the effort, kissed him back. Then got to her feet. She rolled her shoulders. “This is better. Briefing and a burger. Keeps my mind off Trina and her scary bag of tricks.”
Because he wanted her to smile, needed her to, he walked his fingers up her arm as they started upstairs. “What flavor skin cream do you suppose Trina will put on you?”
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
This,” McNab said as he took in a gulp of tropical air, “is living.” “We’re not living. We’re investigating. There’ll be no living until we’ve completed the investigative purpose of this trip.”
He cocked his head, studied her from behind his fuchsia-tinted sunshades. “You sounded just like Dallas. I find that strangely arousing.”
She elbow-jabbed him, but didn’t put much behind it. “We’re going straight to Waves and interview Diesel Moore regarding Carter Bissel. We’ll go by Bissel’s residence, speak to any neighbors or associates.”
“Now you sound bossy.” He gave her butt, currently covered in thin summer pants, a friendly pat. “I like that, too.”
“You’ve got a grade on me, but I’m Homicide.” And boy, did she love saying that. “So I’m in charge of this hunting party. And I say first we do the job, then we . . . live.”
“I hear that. Still, we gotta rent transpo.”
He slid his gaze to a line of scooters chained outside a hut beside their hotel. They were as colorful and bright as a circus parade, and screamed tourist.
Peabody grinned. “And I hear that.”
Waves was a hole-in-the-wall joint screwed into a clapboard building on one of Kingston’s less welcoming streets. They’d gotten lost twice—or had pretended to get lost as they’d scooted along narrow streets with the island breeze fluttering over their urban cheeks. After some heated debate, they’d agreed that he’d drive to, and she’d drive from. Peabody found it just as much fun to ride pinion with her arms clutched around his waist as it would’ve been to man the controls.
But as they made their way into the poorer and less hospitable section of the city, she was glad she had her weapon strapped under her summer-weight jacket.
She saw three illegals transactions in a two-block radius, and spotted a pair of funky-junkies jittering together on a stoop. When a flash all-terrain sportster cruised by, and the driver aimed his dark, dangerous eyes at her, she almost wished she was wearing her uniform.
Instead, she aimed hers right back, and deliberately, visibly, laid her hand on her weapon.
“Nasty vibes,” she said into McNab’s ear as the car gunned and slid off down a side street.
“Oh yeah. Penalties for illegals are stiff as a teenager’s dick down here, but nobody seems to care in this sector.”
There were sex shops and clubs, and the street LCs who sold the same commodity. But none of them looked particularly alluring. She could hear music pumping out of a few doorways, but the exotic charm of it was lost in the bored and repetitive come-ons of the hookers and the front men.
Tourists might wander in here, she thought, but unless they were looking for sex, illegals, or a blade in the back, they’d hurry out again quick.
They parked the scooter in front of the mean little bar, and while McNab used the chain the rental agent had provided to lock it to a lamppost, Peabody looked around.
“I’m going to try something,” she said. “You might have to back me up.”
She selected the two young men, one black, one white, sitting on a stoop and smoking Christ knew what out of a black pipe they passed between them. Gearing herself up, she put on her coldest cop face and swaggered up to them. And ignored McNab’s hiss of warning from behind her.
“See that scooter?”
The black man smirked, took a long slow drag on the pipe. “Got eyes, bitch.”
“Yeah, looks like you’ve got a pair each.” She shifted her weight, used her elbow to ease the jacket back so her badge and weapon peeked out. “If you want to keep them in your skulls, you’ll keep them on that scooter. Because if I come back out and it isn’t where I left it, in the same condition I left it, my associate and I are going to hunt you down like sick dogs. While he’s shoving that pipe up your ass,” she said, showing her teeth to the white guy, “I’m going to pop your fellow asshole’s eyes out. With my thumbs.”
The white guy bared his own teeth. “Hey, fuck you.”
Her stomach jittered, a little, but she kept the fierce and toothy expression in place. “Now, if you talk
like that you’re not going to earn the nice prize I have for you at the end of our contest. The scooter’s there, untouched, when I come back out, I don’t haul your ugly asses into a cage for possession and use, and I give you a nice shiny ten credits.”
“Five now, five later.”
She shifted her gaze to the black. “None now, and none later unless I’m happy with you. Hey, McNab, what happens when I’m not happy?”
“I can’t talk about it. Gives me nightmares.”
“Do yourselves a favor,” Peabody suggested. “Earn the ten.”
She turned, sauntered toward the bar. “I’ve got sweat running down my spine,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.
“Doesn’t show. You even scared me.”
“Dallas would’ve gotten in their faces more, but I thought that was pretty good.”
“Frigid, babe.” He yanked open the door, and they were hit by a blast of cold air that smelled of smoke, liquor, and humans who didn’t have a working arrangement with soap and water.
It wasn’t yet sundown and business was sluggish. Still there were pockets of patrons, such as they were, huddled at tables or slumped at the bar. On a narrow platform that stood as stage, a malfunctioning holographic band played bad reggae. The image of the steel drummer kept winking out, and the looping was just a hair off so that the singer’s lips moved out of synch, reminding McNab of the really poorly dubbed vids his cousin Sheila got such a charge out of.
His toeless airsneaks made little sucking sounds as he crossed the sticky floor.
Moore was manning the bar. He looked a little thinner and a lot more harassed than he had in the ID photo they’d studied. He wore his hair in dreadlocks, a kind of explosion of horsey black tails McNab admired. They suited the mahogany cast of his face, the diamond point of his chin.
There was a necklace of what looked like bird bones around his neck, and his skin was glossy with sweat despite the chilly pump of air.
His eyes, an angry black, skimmed over Peabody and McNab as if they were one unit. He shoved a muddy-looking brown brew into the waiting hands of a customer, then used his dingy bar rag to wipe at the shiny chest exposed by a snug electric-blue tank.
He stepped down the bar, and curled his tattooed lip. “I’m paid up for the month, so if you’ve come in here to shake me down for another deposit go fuck yourselves.”
Peabody opened her mouth, but McNab set his foot over hers to keep her quiet. “We’re not local badges. The locals got a Survivor’s Fund going here, we’re not in that mix. Fact is, we’ll be happy to make a contribution to your personal fund if you have information that merits it.”
Peabody had never heard that cool and faintly bored tone out of McNab before.
“Cop offers to give me money, he usually finds a way to skin me for it.”
McNab took a twenty out of his pocket, palmed it on the bar while keeping his attention on Moore. “In good faith.”
The money was exchanged, slick as a magic trick. “What’re you paying for?”
“Information,” McNab repeated. “Carter Bissel.”
“Asshole son of a bitch.” Somebody hammered a fist on the far end of the bar and called for some goddamn service. “Shut the fuck up,” Moore shouted back. “You find that goddamn Carter, I want a shot at him. He owes me two large, not to mention the ass pain I’ve had running this place solo since he decided to go on fucking holiday.”
“How long did you run the place together?” Peabody asked him.
“Long enough. Look, we had some previous business, you could call it shipping. Decided we’d go into this little enterprise here, and each anted up the rent. Carter, he’s got a good head for business in that asshole brain of his. We did okay. Maybe he’d go on a bender time to time. Guy likes his rum and his Zoner, and you run a place like this you can get ’em. Couple days off and on maybe he’d be no-show. I’m not his fucking mother, so what? He takes off, next time I take off. Works out.”
“But this time,” Peabody prompted.
“This time he’s just gone.” Moore pulled a bottle from under the counter, poured something brown and thick into a short glass, then downed it. “Took two thousand from the operating expenses, which damn near wiped them for the month.”
“No warning?”
“Shit. He talks about a big score. Big score and living high, maybe getting us a class place. Carter, he’s full of that crap. Always going to score big, and ain’t never gonna ’cause he’s small-time. Enough rum, he’d really get rolling on it, and how his brother got all the luck.”
“You ever meet his brother?” Peabody asked.
“Nope. Figured he was making it up till I saw this scrapbook deal Carter kept at his place. Full of media reports and some shit on his brother, the artist.”
“He kept a scrapbook on his brother.”
“Yeah, loaded with shit. Don’t know why ’cause the way he talked Carter hated the son of a bitch just for being.”
“Did he ever talk about going to New York to see him?”
“Shit. Carter, he talked about going everywhere to see everybody. Just talk.”
“Did you ever hear him mention Felicity Kade?”
“Mmm. Slick blonde.” Moore licked his lips. “She’s some number. She came around a couple of times.”
“No offense,” Peabody said pleasantly, “but this doesn’t look like the sort of place a woman like that would spend much time.”
“You never know what’s going on with a fancy piece like that. Why I steer clear of them. Come in one night and made a play for Carter. Didn’t have to play very hard. Didn’t get the nitty-gritty out of him. Usually, he’ll brag on the women he bags. Likes to think he’s king in the sack. But with this one, he buttoned up. Slylike.” Moore shrugged. “No big to me. I get my own action.”
“She spend much time with Carter?”
“How the hell do I know? She come in a couple of times. They went out together. Sometimes he’d take a couple of days. If you’re thinking he went off with that piece of work, your aim’s off. No way she’d take him for more than the quick ride.”
“Did he have any other business, any other women, something along those lines that he might’ve gone off with?”
“Been through all this with the locals. He banged women when he could get them. Didn’t shack with any for long. If he had any side jobs, he didn’t let me in. In or not, likely I’d’ve heard. It’s a small island.”
“Small island,” Peabody agreed after they’d finished with Moore. “Not many places to hide.”
“Not many ways to get off either. You got air, you got water.”
She stepped out, saw with pleasure the scooter was in place, and apparently untouched. “Pay those guys off.”
“Why do I have to pay them?”
“I lined them up.”
McNab grumbled, but he flipped them a ten before unchaining the scooter.
“You handled that business about the shakedown really smooth.” She wanted to pinch his butt in appreciation, but decided it wouldn’t look professional. So it would wait. Instead, she climbed on the scooter. “Just as glad we’re getting out of this sector before dark.”
“You and me both, She-Body.” Apparently he wasn’t as concerned with professional image as she was ’cause he pinched her butt as he slid on behind her. “Let’s ride.”
Carter Bissel lived in a two-room shack that was hardly more than a tent pitched on a mix of sand and crushed shells. It had what Peabody considered a very slight appeal due to its proximity to the beach, but that same proximity made it a handy target for tropical storms.
She could see where patches had been slapped on, just as she could see from the sagging rope hammock that Carter had preferred to spend his free time swinging rather than worrying overmuch about household maintenance.
Scraggly tufts of beach grass poked up through the shells. An ancient and thoroughly rusted scooter was chained to a dead palm.
“A long way from Queens,” McNab
commented as he kicked a broken bottle aside. “He might have beat his brother out on the view, but the rest of the living conditions put him way back on the sib rivalry chart.”
“When you look at this, you can see that he might just walk away.” Peabody took out the key they’d picked up from the local PD. “Everything we’re seeing spells out loser.”
“It doesn’t spell out what Felicity Kade wanted down here.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe they wanted to use him for a setup. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect an HSO branch office or a terrorist cell. And that could’ve been just the point.”
She unlocked the door, creaked it open. Inside, the air was stale and hot. She saw an enormous bug scurry into the shadows and had to bite back a squeal. She was no particular fan of anything that skittered or slithered.
She tried the lights, found them inoperable. Both she and McNab drew out penlights.
“I’ve got a better idea. Hold on a minute.”
She struggled not to cringe when he left her alone. She could almost hear the spiders spinning. She shined her light over the living area.
There was a single couch. One cushion had exploded and left a kind of gray mushroom of filler growing up from the torn fabric. There were no rugs, no art, a lone unshaded lamp on a crate that served as a table. But the entertainment screen was new, top of the line, and, she noted after a quick scan, bolted to the floor.
Not the most trusting of men, she decided. In addition to being a slob and a loser.
The kitchen was along one wall of the living quarters. A counter cluttered with take-out boxes and a blender, a cheap AutoChef and a grimy minifridgie. She’d just opened the fridgie to peruse the contents of home-brew, a withered fuzzy tube that might have once been a pickle, and a golf ball–sized lime when McNab puttered in on the scooter.
The headlight beamed brightly.
“Good thinking,” she decided. “Strange but good.” She opened the lone cupboard and found three glasses, two plates, and an opened bag of soy chips.
“You know, his financials weren’t stellar, but he had enough to live better than this.” She turned around as McNab poked under the cushions of the couch. “And you can bet not all his money was reported.”