by J. D. Robb
“Party food,” Eve stated. “Expensive cocktail party.”
“The goose liver and the absinthe? He’d have enjoyed that less than an hour prior to his TOD.”
“Left the party, went to the park. The killers may have been at the party,” she speculated as she studied the body. “Or arranged for the meeting after. He knew them, told them I was poking around. So . . .” She twisted her hands in the air. “Snap. Tox?”
“Sent off. We should have the full results fairly quickly. He didn’t just eat and drink at the party,” Morris added.
He picked up a clear sample case from his tray, held it up. Inside, Eve saw the single bright red hair.
“Pubic hair, combed out of his own,” Morris told her. “I’ll send it to Harvo at the lab.”
“It’ll be female. There’s nothing to indicate he was into same-sex play. DNA would be helpful.”
“If the owner’s in the system, our queen of hair and fiber will track her down. I can tell you he’s had a bit of work here and there,” Morris continued as he set the case back on the tray. “Face and body, nothing major. As you can see, he believed in pubic grooming—of the permanent sort.”
Eve glanced at the narrow line of hair. “Made it easy to spot the stray red hair.”
“It did. The evidence indicates he died well-fed, buzzed, and sexually satisfied. I don’t suppose that’s much comfort to him.”
“Or me, since I was looking forward to slapping him in a cage as an accessory. Thanks, Morris.”
“We’re here to serve.”
As they walked out, he ordered the music up again, on a sob of tenor sax.
“Party and sex,” Eve said as they walked out. “Hit those cab companies and private transpos, Peabody. We’ll go by and talk to his money guy, see if we get any buzz there.”
She headed east, and by the time she approached the narrow streets and canyons of the financial district, Peabody got a hit.
“Yeah.” She held up a hand to signal Eve. “Can you patch me through to the driver? No problem. Rapid Cab,” she told Eve. “Logged a pickup on West Ninety-Sixth, two-twenty. Drop-off on West Eighty-Seventh. Yeah, still here.”
Eve listened with half an ear as she negotiated in the shadow of the tall buildings. Some of the Gilded Age buildings with their fancy architecture had survived the Urbans. Others had been built up after the war, so sleek bullets married with high, festooned palaces beyond the bronze bollards, wet with rain, that shielded them from vehicular bombs.
She ruled out double-parking, not because it worried her to piss off civilian drivers, but in order to avoid hiking blocks in the continuing piss-trickle. The street options were simply too narrow.
She found a lot, used her vertical option to squeeze into a stingy second-level slot.
“Confirmed,” Peabody told her. “RC pulled up the ticket. Banks charged the ride, so we have that. The driver remembers him—solo fare. Says the fare was high and tight, talked to somebody on his ’link. Doesn’t know or remember what he said beyond he’d be there in a few minutes. Fare called up a ride for pickup at 743 West Ninety-Six, and came out about a minute or two after the driver tagged his arrival.”
Peabody got out as Eve did, started down the clanging iron steps to ground level.
“Banks paid via his ’link for the charge, got out, walked away.”
“Good. After we talk to the money people, we’ll take a pass through Banks’s apartment. He’ll have an address book, so we’ll find out who he knew at that address. We can talk to the party-goers, and hit his art gallery. We need to check in with Baxter and Trueheart.”
She’d hooked them for notification of Banks’s next of kin.
“I want the family reaction, and we may need to interview them.”
They passed through the barricades, joined the throng of tourists who swarmed the Wall Street district with their cameras and craned necks.
She smelled street coffee from the glide-carts and the first of the steaming soy dogs as the morning eased toward noon. Purposefully, she avoided the diehards who marched or circled with their signs and their earnest, angry faces protesting the evils of capitalism. Others thronged around the Wall Street bull, gleefully posing in front of its snorting charge. To her mind, a bull—metal or flesh—was a cow with a dick. She gave it a wide berth.
And entered the vaulted, gilded lobby on John Street.
Eve badged through security and headed up to the forty-third floor with Peabody.
No gilt, but plenty of plush in the lobby of Buckley and Schultz. And people looking very important as they watched screens full of stock reports or financial news.
One of the three receptionists looked soberly at Eve’s badge. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Schultz is in off-site meetings all day today. He’s not expected in his office here until tomorrow. Should I ask his administrative assistant to make an appointment for you?”
“I’ll talk to the admin.”
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
Three minutes later, the admin came out.
Early thirties, Eve judged, with a kind of Trueheart cut of clean polished by a bankerly patina. Excellent suit, shined shoes, doe eyes in a youthful face.
“Lieutenant, Detective.” He glanced toward the plush, important, and prosperous. “Please come with me. I’m Devin Garrison, Mr. Schultz’s admin.” He led the way by offices where people in suits sat or paced while they talked of money in a language as foreign to her as Greek. Or e-geek.
He turned into another office—a bit larger, good view, well-appointed. Upper-middle strata to Eve’s gauge.
Devin closed the door. “I—Mr. Schultz is out of the office all day. I just . . . I just heard a bulletin about Mr. Banks. Mr. Jordan Banks. I knew him. I can’t believe . . .”
“How well did you know him?”
“Oh. Well, only really via ’link. When he wanted to speak to Mr. Schultz. Or when I arranged a lunch or dinner meeting. I never actually met him in person. He didn’t come to the offices. Mr. Schultz went to him, if necessary.”
“When’s the last time it was necessary?”
“Would you give me a minute to check?”
“Check.”
He went behind the desk, pulled up, Eve noted, a calendar. Mr. Schultz was a busy man with few slots open most workdays.
“It looks like February eighteenth, for their regular monthly lunch meeting. They were scheduled for the next the middle of this month.”
“When did they last speak, that you’re aware of?”
“Yesterday. Mr. Banks contacted the office yesterday morning, first thing. Well, actually . . . Was Mr. Banks really murdered?”
“He was really murdered.”
“I think you should speak with Agatha. Ah, you see, Mr. Schultz was Mr. Banks’s financial adviser of record, but in actuality Agatha Lowell handled the account. The day-to-day.”
“Where is she?”
He led the way out again, and down to smaller offices. In one, a woman—a redhead Eve saw with interest—sat at a desk working her comp with one hand, a ’link with the other. Her wall screen showed the same confusion of symbols as Roarke’s tended to before breakfast.
She glanced over—blue eyes, annoyed and focused.
“I’ve got it. Yes, it’s done. All good. I’ll get back to you.”
She clicked off the ’link. “What is it, Devin?” Her voice, thick with Brooklyn, all but snarled impatience. “I’m more than swamped.”
“These are police. Mr. Banks . . . He was murdered!”
“When?” Her eyebrows drew together, more in deeper annoyance than shock.
“Early this morning,” Eve told her. “Thanks,” she said to Devin. “We’ll find you if we need to speak to you.”
“Okay. Aggie, should I contact Mr. Schultz and tell him?”
“Text him.” She shifted her attention to Eve. “Can we make this quick?” she said even as her ’link buzzed. “I’m really busy.”
“And obviously broken up by
the death of a client.”
“He was Mr. Schultz’s client. I barely knew him. I’m sorry when anybody dies, but people do. I’ve got work.”
“Devin said you handled the day-to-day business for Banks.”
She sighed, blew at her fringe of red bangs. “Hold on.” She picked up her ’link, tapped in a code. “Cheryl, I need to forward my tags for the next few minutes. No, I need to.” She tapped something else, set the ’link down.
“Jordan Banks was a pain in the ass, okay? Senior Mr. Schultz dumped him on Tad, his grandson, and basically Tad dumped him on me, but stayed his adviser of record because Banks figured females were for screwing or looking pretty.”
“Banks wasn’t aware you handled his day-to-day.”
“Anything I dealt with for him I dealt with as Tad Schultz. I met with him a few times, but primarily stayed in the background.”
“Did you have a personal relationship with him?”
“Oh hell no.” At Eve’s arched brows she sighed again, looked longingly at her ’link. “He gave me the rush the first time we met, and I blocked it the way I’ve found is most effective. I told him I was gay even though when I actually have time for sex I prefer men. It’s just easier to block a client or an exec by claiming to play for the other team. Nobody gets insulted.”
“When’s the last time you had contact?”
“Well, yesterday. He tried to get to Senior Mr. Schultz or Tad, but he gets forwarded to me. He thinks—thought—I worked as a kind of admin, or messenger service. Whatever. I dealt with it—via text and e-mail. He wanted to sell his recently acquired Quantum stock after the bombing, which was a stupid move. Emotional. Quantum is solid, and that stock was coming back up—which it did, and which I, in a text as Tad, told him. So I saved the client from losing many thousands of dollars, which I guess doesn’t really matter to him now.”
“Did you have many who wanted to sell?”
“Some, and a few of the some refused to listen to me. They lost money. The ones who listened when I said buy now made money.”
“When did you last see Banks?”
“It has to be three months ago. Tad wanted to dump him on me, so he took me to one of the monthly lunches—which he still does to keep Banks mollified. He told Banks I was an up-and-comer and smart as they came—which is true, but he pushed it because he wanted to pass Banks to me. It was pretty clear Banks considered me just the cutest little thing, and that was enough for both Tad and me to decide the shift wouldn’t work, at least not overtly. I agreed to the covert angle.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m an up-and-comer and smart as they come. I’m working my way up, and handling this account, doing Senior Mr. Schultz and Tad a solid? It’s a step on the ladder. Does that cover it?”
“Almost. Where were you this morning between one and three?”
“In bed—alone—sleeping.”
“Before that?”
“I was here until about seven-thirty. I met a client at eight for a dinner meeting that ran until after ten. I went home where my roommate and I—platonic—bitched to each other about our day, then I went to bed.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Before Eve reached the door, Agatha was on her ’link. “Cheryl, I’m back.”
“Redhead,” Peabody said as they walked out, “but not that redhead.”
“Unlikely. We’ll run her anyway, just cover that angle. Say she did bump uglies with Banks. He feeds her inside information, she uses it to advise clients and work her way up that ladder.”
As Eve drove uptown again through the drip, drip, drip, Peabody did the run.
“Jeez! She’s seriously smart as they come. Yale grad, top of her class. I do mean top as in number one. She speaks four languages including Mandarin. Only child, no marriages or cohabs. Dallas, she’s only twenty-five, and she speaks four languages. No criminal.”
Peabody looked wistfully into the rain. “I wish I spoke four languages.”
“You speak two. Civilian and cop. That’s enough for anybody. She half fits. She’s focused, detail and goal oriented, and being in finance, a gambler. Not strong or tall enough to break Banks’s neck. No military in the family?”
“No. Her mother was ambassador to Italy when she was a kid, so they lived there for three years—Italian’s one of her languages. Father’s a political consultant. They’re based in East Washington, but have a place in New York. No military service there. Grandparents still living, both sides, but none there, either. Wait, wait, she has a cousin who served four years in the Army—but he was a corpsman. And now he’s a doctor—based in Atlanta.”
Eve let the angle go for now, and pulled up in front of Banks’s building. A different doorman strolled over, but with the same deference as the night before.
“Can I help you, Lieutenant? Detective?”
“Access to Jordan Banks’s apartment.”
“Of course. I heard the bulletin. It’s shocking.”
“Has anyone inquired about Mr. Banks this morning?”
“Not to me.”
He let them inside. A different security clerk, a black-suited, sharp-eyed woman—manned the desk.
“Rhoda, Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody need access to the Banks unit.”
“I’ll clear that immediately. We’re all stunned by what happened.”
“Have you cleared anyone else into that unit?”
“No. I did check the log and I see that the night security recorded Mr. Banks requesting a cab at eight-fifty-three. One was ordered, and he departed the building at nine. He wasn’t logged back in. I can contact the cab company and ask for his destination, if it’s helpful.”
“I’ve got it.”
She moved to the elevator, got in with Peabody.
“Roarke’s building?”
Eve scowled, just a little. “Yeah.”
“It’s nice.”
Eve only shrugged, shoved her hands in her pockets.
They got out, walked the same fragrant hallway to Banks’s main door. Eve mastered in.
One glance had her weapon in her hand as she did a low sweep and Peabody did the same high.
“Shit,” she muttered. “Shit, shit.” Knowing the weapons wouldn’t be necessary.
Whoever had searched and trashed the luxury apartment was already long gone.
11
“Let’s clear it,” Eve said, “then go down, get copies of the security discs from nineteen hundred to oh-nine hundred. And I want to talk to whoever was on duty—door and desk during that time frame.”
In a hurry, Eve thought as they cleared the two levels, a room at a time. Rushed work, sloppy work with drawers upended, art pulled from walls on the main level.
“Sloppy,” she said aloud as she holstered her weapon, “but probably thorough. Get the discs. I’ll contact the sweepers.”
“The security on the building’s got to be the ult,” Peabody commented. “It’s Roarke’s.”
“Yeah, but here we are. Grab the field kits while you’re down there.”
Alone, Eve called in the sweepers, then backtracked to the kitchen and the security base directly off it. Banks had two domestic droids—both female. And the drives in both had been removed. So had the drives from the security base.
And she hadn’t seen a single comp or electronic device on her sweep to clear.
She walked back out, studied the locks on the main-level door. Pulled out her ’link.
“Lieutenant.” Roarke’s face filled her screen. “Good timing. I’m just between meetings.”
“Yeah, well, I’m at Banks’s place. Somebody beat me here. Down-and-dirty job’s how it looks, but on a quick pass they scooped up his electronics and security logs.”
Those blue eyes went hard. “Someone compromised the security?”
Eve glanced around the sleek, silvery kitchen where every drawer and cabinet door stood open, and two droids stood blank-eyed.
“Yeah, compromised is one word for it.”
/> “I’m on my way.”
“Figured,” she stated as he cut her off.
She left the kitchen, decided to start on the second level. Master, guest room, home office, linen storage. Frowning at the jumbled sheets and towels, Eve tagged Peabody on her comm.
“Find out if Banks used any outside cleaning service.”
She moved to the master. People, in her experience, often thought of their bedroom as a sanctuary, a kind of safe room. And often tucked things away in odd places.
In the master, Banks had gone for the gold. Gold posts speared up from the four corners of the bed, gold chairs stood in the sitting area, paintings framed in gold crowded the walls, gold drapes flowed at the windows.
The bedding—gold—lay in a heap on the floor while the thick gel mattress sat crookedly in the bed frame. Sculptures and busts stood on tables or pedestals. If a table had a drawer, that drawer hung open.
She found an impressive collection of sex aids and toys still in a nightstand drawer. But no electronics. The master boasted two dressing rooms. One held Banks’s equally impressive collection of clothing—suits with the pockets turned out, shoes jumbled. He’d used the second to store sports equipment. Golf clubs, skis—water and snow—tennis rackets, climbing gear, scuba gear. A shotgun, she noticed, and wondered if he’d had a collector’s license for it.
Too late to fine him now anyway.
She heard the downstairs door, walked out, looked down at Peabody and the woman from the desk. The woman—Rhoda, Eve remembered—looked around the room with wide, distressed eyes.
“Up here,” Eve said, then went back to the master to start in the primary dressing room.
“This is just awful,” Eve heard Rhoda say. “Just shocking and awful. I’ve worked here four years, and we’ve never had a break-in. Not a single break-in.”
Eve took a can of Seal-It from the field kit, sealed up, began to search, one article of clothing at a time. “I need copies of your security feed.”
“I’m having it done right now. Lieutenant, I need to contact Roarke. It’s imperative he—”
“He’s on his way. Cleaning crew?”
“He uses our in-house service, twice weekly. Wednesdays and Saturdays.”