Leverage in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “The height’s hardly a deterrent with the proper tools. With electronic gloves, booties, it’s simply a matter of choosing your time, then moving steadily up. Again, between the glass to avoid being spotted. I’d have done it after midnight, and when I’d reached the terrace, dealing with those locks is, well, cake as we say. Nothing nearly as complex as the main doors.

  “Go in,” he added, topping off the wine, “do my search. Not sloppily. Why alert the cops the moment they step in the door? Be subtle about it—after all, no one’s going to disturb me, and I’m not meeting the man I intend to kill for some time yet. Take what I need, as well as any cash I find as it’s not traceable. I don’t bother with a painting. Then I take my leave the same way.”

  He toasted her with his wine. “However, if I’d targeted such a place, it would be for the valuables, so I’d take what I came for. The method would be the same.”

  “You’ve actually done that? Climbed up a building?”

  “It’s exhilarating. The dark, the air, the life going on below, and on the other side of the wall. All unaware of you. And unlike you, I enjoy heights.”

  She thought about it as she ate. “They’re not professional thieves. Already knew that, but what you’re saying caps it. They worked out what to do on the fly. It worked, but you’re right. They’re on the board. Along with a couple thousand others, but they’re on the board.”

  “Before they went into that apartment to remove whatever Banks might have that connects them to him, your suspect range was a great deal wider.”

  “That’s a point.” She polished off her stew. “Now I’m going to narrow it.”

  With focused work she eliminated more than two hundred on her board. Deleted names from the other boards through reports from the rest of the team.

  She started a priority list on anyone who’d had military or paramilitary training or had relatives who did.

  Roarke worked along with her, then broke to take a scheduled tag from Hawaii. When he came back, she had her head on the desk.

  Out, he thought, and ordered her machine to continue her work on auto.

  She stirred and mumbled when he lifted her out of her chair. “I’m good.”

  “Good and tired.”

  “I’ve got eighteen on the priority list. There are going to be more.”

  “You’ll get back to that after some sleep.” He carried her to the elevator, ordered their bedroom.

  “I’m closer than I was.”

  “My book says you’ll be closer yet tomorrow.”

  He sat her on the side of the bed—the cat was already sprawled dead center. Pulled off her boots, ordered the fire on.

  “What if a big gust of wind blew you off the side of the building?”

  Back to that, are we? he thought. “I’d have been very annoyed.”

  “I mean . . .” She pulled herself up to strip off her weapon harness. “Did you wear a chute?”

  “That would depend on the job.”

  Groggy, she undressed, pulled on a sleep shirt. “Who’s the one who . . .” She made a whoosh sound, flipped out her fingers, mimed climbing a wall.

  He thought it a wonder he followed her. “Spider-Man.”

  “Yeah, yeah. He’s a good one. Smart-ass kid. At least you didn’t go swinging around buildings on web ropes.”

  Something in his smile had her eyeing him as she crawled into bed. “You didn’t do that. There aren’t really web ropes.”

  “There are cables, pulley systems—and those are stories for another time.”

  He slipped in with her, wrapped an arm around her to tuck her close. “Go to sleep.”

  “You never did that in New York. I’d’ve heard about it.”

  “Not if I did it right.” He kissed the back of her neck as she dropped off. “And I did.”

  * * *

  When she woke in the morning, he sat drinking coffee, watching the financials with the cat stretched out beside him.

  She sat up. “It wasn’t a Spider-Man suit.”

  He glanced over. “Wasn’t it?”

  “It was black—but he has a black one, too, I guess. It’s confusing. But it had an R—for Roarke—instead of the spider deal. And you’re swinging over the damn city and climbing up buildings, and there was a big gust of wind. It scared the shit out of me. Don’t do that again.”

  “I’ll resist. Though you do have the most fascinating dreams.”

  She grabbed coffee, gulping it as she headed for the shower.

  When she came back he had breakfast waiting, more coffee, and had banished the cat to the spot in front of the fire.

  The oatmeal didn’t surprise her—winter couldn’t end soon enough—but at least it was just a cup of it and it came with bacon and eggs.

  “We’re in for a bright, if blustery, day,” he told her.

  She thought of the financials on the screen. “Anything up there these guys would be interested in?”

  “There’s always something, but there’s nothing major coming to boil at the moment.”

  “You’re always buying stuff—companies.”

  “And you’re worried they might try for one of mine. We’ve taken precautions—and all my people are accounted for.”

  “You’ve got a lot of people.”

  “And still, they’re accounted for. Add to it, I don’t have anything brewing in New York right now. A thing or two pending overseas or off-planet, but nothing here.”

  “And you’re not going anywhere, like to oversee one of those pendings?”

  “No travel plans for several days.”

  “If that changes—”

  “I’ll let you know.” He took her hand, kissed it. “Don’t worry. I won’t be tempting any wind gusts.”

  “Okay.” Satisfied, she finished breakfast, got up to dress.

  Since he didn’t comment on her choice—brown trousers and jacket, navy sweater—she figured she’d at least scaled the high bar of his fashion sense.

  “I’ll be at Central through the morning at least. I’ve got off-case work I let go yesterday, and I want to finish as much of the eliminations and priorities as possible before I start interviews.”

  “I’ll be at my own HQ. And if you start looking seriously at any of my people, I’d like to know it.”

  “It’s not going to be one of your people.” She scooped up her pocket debris. “I have to eliminate, but it won’t be. A subcontractor, possibly, but not one of your hotel staff. Your screening’s tougher than the NSA’s.”

  “And still.” He rose, gripped her hips, kissed her. “Take care of my cop.”

  She framed his face, kissed him back. “Don’t climb any buildings.”

  “Only by the stairs.”

  “Good enough.” She started out, glanced back over her shoulder. “You looked good in the suit.”

  She took the flash of his grin with her out into the bright, blustery day.

  Thinking of him as she started the drive to Central, she considered exactly what he’d said.

  If he’d targeted a place like Banks’s, he’d . . . take what he needed, wouldn’t have bothered with a painting.

  Yeah, the painting bugged her. Why take it—then try to hide that fact by waiting until you were in the escape location before taking it out of its frame? He/they didn’t, as Roarke would have, go the subtle route in the search of the apartment, but took the framed painting across the hall before removing it from the frame, discarding the frame.

  Why?

  Because it mattered, she decided. I’d take what I came for, Roarke had said. The painting was something they’d come for. It mattered.

  She tagged Baxter from her wrist unit.

  He said, “Yo.”

  “Pick up the iced artist.”

  His smile spread. “I like a sexy start to the day.”

  “Keep it in your pants, horndog. I need her to go over her own lists again, incomplete or not. Link it up with the record of the artwork—in the main level of the crime scene. One’s m
issing. What is it? Who painted it? Not painted,” she corrected. “Drew. Drew what? When and where did Banks acquire it?”

  “I’ve got a list of what he took from the gallery—officially. She added to that, ones she knows he slipped out of there, but she knows she didn’t catch them all.”

  “I want her to look again anyway. Focus in on the figure-study types. For right now, we don’t care about paintings—landscapes, portraits, whatever. It’s the black and whites, the nakeds or mostly nakeds.”

  “It bugged her,” Baxter commented. “She figured if she’d had the gallery comps, she’d have been able to pin it down, or get closer to pinning it.”

  “That’s the point of taking them out. We’re going to have to rely on her notes, her memory. You and Trueheart work with her to match up what’s on the lists, and what’s not. Whatever they took mattered.”

  “I’ll tag the boy, swing by and get him. We’ll scoop up the icy one, take a trip back uptown.”

  “I need to know as soon as you get anything, even a maybe.”

  She ended transmission and spent the rest of the drive calculating what a drawing of a naked person had to do with murder and money.

  13

  She went straight to her office, made herself ignore her board. With coffee, she spent the thirty minutes she’d given herself before shift to catch up on her department’s caseload—open and closed. She read reports, signed off on requisitions, and dealt with the top skim of the most urgent administrative duties.

  The rest could wait.

  When Eve walked into the bullpen, Peabody stood at her desk unwinding one of her boa constrictor scarfs. A single glance—and the fact that her eyes didn’t start to melt—showed her Jenkinson and his tie, Reineke and his socks weren’t at their desks.

  “They just caught one,” Peabody told her. “Construction crew on Tenth found a DB in their dumpster. You clocked in early.”

  “Paperwork.” She tossed a disc onto Peabody’s desk. “That’s your half of currently viable suspects. Start a second run, see if you can eliminate any, or bump any up the list. Baxter and Trueheart are picking up the art gallery woman.”

  “Suspect?”

  “Not at this time. I want her to look at the artwork again, her records. Why did they take a figure-study deal? Which one did they take? Who drew it?”

  “I figured souvenir. Potentially valuable.”

  “Then why not take it out of the frame on-site? Why take it across the hall to remove it?”

  “Maybe . . . once he got it over there, he realized it would be easier and safer to take the rolled canvas than the whole deal.”

  “Possible,” Eve conceded. “It’s possible he was that stupid and impulsive.”

  “But you think he was buying time.”

  “Why not drop your ass down from Banks’s apartment? Why break into another and go down from there—after removing the artwork from the frame, ditching it in the other apartment?”

  “The empty apartment,” Peabody agreed. “One where the residents aren’t coming back until later today, so it would be a day, potentially, before we realized the artwork was taken.”

  “It’s what plays. I think he took what he’d come for. The electronics, anything that linked him and his partner to Banks. And the artwork.”

  Taking her seat, Peabody spitballed back. “Banks owned a gallery, worked with artists. Maybe one of the killers is an artist, or connected to one. He could be the artist, and wanted his own work back.”

  “Keep that in mind when you work on the list. Detective Carmichael, Santiago, I’ve got Baxter and Trueheart in the field. Next DB’s yours.”

  Eve went back into her office, locked the door. The trouble with working in a small space, she thought as she glanced around, was the limited hidey-holes. But for this project, she’d use that to her advantage.

  She got out the candy bar she’d brought from home, stood on her desk to attach it to the inside of a ceiling tile. An easy find, oh yeah, but . . .

  She fastened a button alarm, carefully, so carefully, to the joint of the tile. Lift that sucker a fraction, and the shrieking whistle should scare the unholy crap out of the thief even as its blue dye exploded all over the fucker’s face.

  Satisfied, looking forward to retribution, she jumped down, unlocked her door.

  Armed with more coffee, she settled down to work on her half of the list.

  She got a solid ninety minutes in, shifting several names to what she considered a secondary list: low probability. And a third list she termed possible.

  That left her with more than sixty as most likely.

  Still too many, but they’d set up interviews and get some face-to-face.

  She reread the tox report on Banks, who’d been flying high on wine, Erotica, and Zoner when he’d wandered like an idiot into Central Park at three in the morning.

  She’d eliminated the delivery girl who’d brought Paul Rogan muffins, his driver (though no car service utilized on the day of the bombing) as connected.

  That left her more than sixty to interview, and a sexy artist chick who might, potentially, identify a missing piece of art.

  She grabbed her ’link when it signaled, saw Harvo on the readout.

  “Give me a name.”

  “Hi back.” Harvo’s hair, currently short, spiked into lethal points and blazing orange threatened to melt the screen.

  “Hi. Give me a name.”

  “Delores Larga Markin. Want the rest?”

  “Whatever you’ve got.”

  “Being me, I got it all.” A heart-shaped blue stone winked on the left side of Harvo’s nose as she turned to read from her own screen. “Female—and a natural redhead—age twenty-eight. Sending you her address and contact info now. She’s the younger of two daughters. Mom’s Carlotta Larga, empress of footwear.”

  “Footwear has an empress?”

  “You’ve probably worn her seeing as you married the sexy rich guy. I’ve got a pair of the knockoffs myself. Anyhoo, the empress has been married to Phillipe Larga for a zillion years. One marriage, only marriage for both. The daughter—our redhead—is also a designer for Larga’s secondary line, Alores, named for both daughters, Alora and Delores. They’re all stupid rich. The redhead’s been married to Hugo Markin, a scion—frosty word scion—of Roger Markin, the casino king for a couple years.”

  “Gambling,” Eve mused aloud.

  “Roll those dice,” Harvo said cheerfully. “Spin that wheel. Obviously if redheaded Delores lost her hair of intimacy in your dead guy’s hair of intimacy, they were having intimacy.”

  “Obviously. Thanks for the quick work.”

  “Hey, this was breezy. Next time give me a challenge.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  She clicked off, started a run on the redhead and the scion. Then picked up another tag, this one from Trueheart.

  “Sir. Baxter’s still with Ms. Kelsi. She can’t be absolutely sure, but she thinks the missing artwork might be from one of three artists.”

  “Three?”

  “She thinks—again, not a hundred percent—Banks took those three off the books. We took her back to Banks’s apartment for another on-site look. None of them are here at the crime scene. She needs to get back to the gallery, check there, but she’s pretty sure it’s one of these three. Angelo Richie, Selma Witt, Simon Fent. All the art in that area of the crime scene are what she calls, ah, figure studies.”

  “Naked people.”

  “Yes, sir. And black-and-white studies, like charcoal or pencil drawings and that sort of thing. She knows these three artists used that, ah, form and medium for some of their work.”

  “Take her back to the gallery, see if she can pinpoint. And get me more data on whoever she pinpoints. All three, if that’s the closest she gets. I want locations and contact info on the artists asap.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Something there, she thought when she clicked off. Something. And she’d pull that line as soon as she finished
pulling the one on the Markins.

  After finishing a run on both, she got up, grabbed her coat. “Peabody,” she said as she swung through the bullpen. “With me.”

  Coat in hand, scarf already winding, Peabody hustled to catch up. “I’ve got ten dropped down to the bottom of the list. I get why you had them on there, but—”

  “That’s on hold. Harvo ID’d the redhead.”

  “The . . . oh, that redhead.”

  “Delores Larga Markin.”

  “Wait, Larga? Shoe Larga’s daughter? Oh, Largas are like art for the feet, like a song, like a poem.”

  “I bet they’re like shoes.”

  “Seriously the ult in footwear.” Peabody jumped into the elevator, struggled into her pink coat. “If I ever have five or six figures to spare, I’d buy a pair. But even the second line’s out of my reach, even on sale. But maybe . . .”

  “Maybe we could also put your shoe fantasies on hold. Second-gen Larga’s married to a Hugo Markin. Daddy owns casinos. A lot of them. They tend to gamble in casinos. Check one. It turns out Markin also has several relatives in or retired from the military. Check two. Since his wife likely lost her pubic hair to Banks at the party before he died, it’s probable Markin knew Banks. Check three.”

  For once, the elevator didn’t fill to capacity, so they rode it straight down to the garage. “The Markins live in the same building as the party hosts. We’ll kill two birds with one arrow and talk to the party people.”

  “And that’s sort of check four.” Peabody climbed into the car. “It’s stone. You kill the two birds with one stone.”

  “Have you ever tossed a rock at a bird?”

  “No!” Appalled in her Free-Ager’s heart, Peabody strapped in. “That’s just mean.”

  “And ineffective, I bet, since birds can fly. An arrow’s got to be quicker than heaving a rock that’s big enough to take out a couple of birds at a time.”

  “But still,” Peabody murmured.

  Eve whipped out of the garage. “Baxter and Trueheart are taking the gallery woman back to the gallery. She’s got three possibilities for the painting.”

  “It’s not a literal rock or actual birds.”

  “What?”