by J. D. Robb
“Agreed. She’s precious to me, too.”
Because her eyes stung, Eve pressed her fingers to them. “Don’t pet me,” she said, anticipating him. “I need to hold it together.” Eve dropped her hands. “She’s counting on me to hold it together.”
“So you will.” He petted her anyway, just sleeking a hand down her hair. Then he gripped one of the short strands, gave it a hard tug.
“Hey. Truce.”
“See, you’re a little pissed again. You’ll work better.” He strolled back into the office.
She held it together, and in short order it took no effort. She simply fell into the rhythm of the work.
“We can’t look at their financials, even first-level, without sending up a flag. Much less go digging around for buried accounts and real estate.”
She caught Roarke’s glance, knew he was considering his illegal and unregistered equipment. No flags there. But she sent him a subtle shake of the head. She had to toe every inch of the line on this.
“If we go to IAB with this,” Peabody began, “with what we have, which when I look at it all laid out, isn’t really that much, it could bust open. It could give Renee—I can’t call her Oberman because it makes me think of her father. It could give her and the others time to rabbit, or cover, or ditch. They must have contingency plans, escape routes.”
“I can work that. I’m going to reach out to Webster.” Again she caught Roarke’s glance, the cock of his eyebrow. She supposed it was impossible for Webster’s name to come up in this particular room without both of them seeing Roarke beat the hell out of him.
“I’ll feed this to him, but with conditions,” she continued. “I can work that, especially if Whitney adds his weight. We want to keep this narrow for as long as we can.”
“Keener!” McNab punched a fist in the air, did a little spin in Eve’s chair that had his long, blond ponytail flying. Then he pointed the index fingers of both hands at her computer. “Found him. I did some crosses on some of her closed cases, mixed in others from here and there for cover, skimming wit lists and suspects like a standard search for—”
“Just give me Keener, McNab.”
“Keener, Rickie. Street name Juicy. I can’t dig to see if he’s listed as a weasel without the flag, but he’s got a long sheet. Possession, possession with intent to distribute, other petty shit, and he got busted for selling a primo case of variety packs to a couple of undercovers. One of them, listed as the arresting officer, is our girl Renee.”
“Put the data on-screen,” Eve ordered, and scanned it. “Look there, he gets probation, community service, mandatory counseling. That’s a deal happening there, that’s her turning him weasel as a get-out-of-jail card. With his priors, he should’ve done at least three solid. But he gets time served? Six years ago.”
“That’s how long she said she’d been running the business,” Peabody put in.
“So, this Keener could’ve been her springboard. Her way in.”
She paced in front of the screen. “He knows something. He has more, offers it. Hey, I can give you this and that, but you gotta get me out of this. Alternately, she’s already looking, already getting it off the ground and sees him as an asset. Either way, this is the turn.”
“He’s dead. She was really clear about that,” Peabody added.
“So, we find the body. If ‘her boy’ found him alive, we can find him dead.”
She paced a bit more. “Not in his flop. He was fixing to rabbit, with the money. He had another hole he thought was safe, secret. Take the locations of his busts, his flop, locations of his varied and bullshit employment. According to Peabody’s statement Renee said he hadn’t gotten far. Let’s map out his territory, run some probabilities on most likely locations for his hole.”
“We want to find the body,” Peabody began, “because you think the guy she set on Keener might’ve left some evidence?”
“It’s possible. Unlikely, but possible. We want to find the body, we want to catch this case because Keener’s our weasel now.”
“A con, Peabody,” Roarke told her. “You have the case, you have the controls. And what they’re banking on being an OD becomes a homicide investigation.”
“If I can work it,” Eve agreed. “Either way, she’ll have to come out and ID him as her CI—that’s procedure. If she doesn’t, we can give her a nice slap for it. And we can be bitchy, just by-the-book sticklers and insist on details of their association, information, times, dates—which should all be in her files. Gosh, we’re trying to find out who killed this asshole. A DB’s a DB in my Homicide Division.”
“You want to piss her off.”
“I’m counting on it, and I’m going to enjoy it. Get me the probabilities, McNab, then we’re going on a weasel hunt.”
“You want the body before you go to Whitney and Webster.”
Eve nodded at Peabody. “Now you’re getting it. Keener’s tangible, and dead he’ll be corroborating your statement. With the connection of the arrest to Renee, we’ve got more. She’s a decorated officer. She’s a boss, and a respected, hell, revered, former commander’s daughter. She’s got eighteen years on the force without a blemish.”
“And if I just blow the whistle on her, IAB may end up investigating me.”
“You don’t worry about that,” Eve told her.
“I won’t. I’ve leveled off now, and now I really want to pay her back for every second I was in that freaking shower. I mean, over and above bringing a dirty cop to justice.”
“Naked in the shower,” Eve reminded her.
“With nothing to do but give them an angry towel snap if they slapped open the door.”
“We’ll pay them back,” Eve promised, and looked over to where Roarke and McNab worked together. Roarke in his tailored dress shirt and pants, McNab in pink, multi-pocketed knee shorts and a buttercupyellow tank that sported E-DICK in screaming red letters across his skinny chest.
Geeks were geeks, Eve thought, whatever the wardrobe.
“Your map,” Roarke announced, nodding to the wall screen. “And your most-likelies.”
“Not bad. His type tend to stick to a certain area, to do their business within a handful of blocks where they know the score, the routes, the dodge points.”
“If he was going to rabbit, wouldn’t he move outside his usual turf?”
She shook her head, glanced at McNab. “Look at the time line from the conversation Peabody overheard. The heat’s up, and that says this screwup was fresh. The kill recently ordered and executed. Garnet didn’t even know about it. Add to that, ten thousand on the line. This had to move fast. From Keener’s sheet, he’s not a bright light. Smart enough not to go home, but not, most likely, smart enough to relocate outside his comfort zone. He hadn’t rabbited yet, so he wasn’t finished getting his shit together. We’re going to find him within this area, just like his killer did.”
She studied the map a little longer. “Eliminate anything he’d have to pay for. No tenanted apartments.”
The map adjusted to Roarke’s command.
She knew the area well enough, with its sidewalk sleepers, low-rent street LCs, funky-junkies, ghosts, used-up chemi-heads. Even the gang-bangers had given it up as not worth the trouble.
“I like these five locations. Two-man teams. We’ll get you a vehicle. A nondescript one,” she added when she saw McNab’s face light up.
He shrugged. “I guess it has to be.”
“It does. Roarke and I will take these two, Peabody and McNab these two. If we zero, we’ll converge on location five. We get nothing, we’ll widen the map again. Do either of you have a clutch piece on you?”
At the negative, Eve rolled her eyes. “We’ll get you that, too. There are some people in this sector who just aren’t very nice.
“We’ll seal up. I don’t want to leave any trace we’ve been there. Keep any disturbances to the locations to a minimum, and don’t talk to anybody. Don’t ask questions. Go in, go through, get out.”
&nb
sp; “If we find the body?” Peabody asked.
“Get out, signal me, and get gone. We’ll meet back here where I’ll be getting an annoying anonymous tip about a dead guy. Records on, boys and girls, the whole time, so keep the chatter down, too. Records will be turned over to command and IAB.”
She blew out her breath as she studied McNab. “You’re not going on a covert op in that getup. Roarke, have we got anything we can put on this geek?”
“Actually, you’re more his size.”
Eve closed her eyes. “Jesus. I guess I am.”
She found jeans and a black T-shirt, and after she’d tossed them at McNab, closed the bedroom door so both she and Roarke could change.
“I’m partially sorry,” she said.
“Oh?”
“I’m partially sorry because I did start to tag you about being so late, then got interrupted and forgot. But I almost always remember, so I think I could get a goddamn pass on it.”
“I wasn’t angry, and I’m not angry about you not calling—particularly. I don’t give you grief about that sort of thing, Eve.”
“No, you don’t, but I feel guilty about it because you don’t.”
“Ah, my fault again.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“There goes the truce.”
“You could be partially sorry.”
“But I’m not, not a bit, for enjoying the evening with Summerset and his very interesting friends—who I’d never met before either.”
“You’re better at that than I am. And I’m just saying if I’d known I wouldn’t have come home with this other plan, and then had this to deal with.”
“What other plan?”
“I just ...” She felt stupid about it now, and dragged on her weapon harness. “I just thought we’d have dinner, that you’d have waited for me because that’s what you usually do. And I was going to pick it out and fix it up.”
“Were you?” he murmured.
“We haven’t had much downtime in the last couple weeks, and I had this idea that we’d eat up on the roof terrace—the works, you know? Wine, candles, and just us. Then we could watch one of those old vids you like, except I’d put on sexwear and seduce you.”
“I see.”
“Then I come home and you’re already having wine and candles and dinner on the terrace—not the roof one, but still. And it’s not just us, and I’ve got asphalt crap on my pants, and former criminals in my house—I figured. A couple of people Summerset’s probably already told I suck at the marriage thing, and come home with dirty clothes or trailing blood half the time. And I didn’t want to have to squeeze in and end up being interrogated.”
“First, you don’t suck at the marriage thing, and Summerset never said anything of that kind. In fact, he mentioned to them at dinner, when it was clear you’d be late, that you were the first cop he’d had contact with who worked so tirelessly or cared so much about real justice.”
He crossed to her now, cupped her face. “Second, that was a lovely plan you had, and I’d have enjoyed it, very much. And now, I am partially sorry.”
She touched his wrist. “If we put those together, it would be one all-the-way sorry.”
“It would, and that’s a deal.”
She kissed him to seal it, then stood for a moment, snug in his arms. “It’s a good deal,” she decided. “Now let’s go find a dead junkie.”
Four
EVE GOT BEHIND THE WHEEL SO ROARKE COULD do more research with his PPC.
“Let me ask you this,” he began. “How many dealings have you had with Lieutenant Oberman?”
“None, really. I know of her, but we haven’t had any cases cross so I’ve never worked with her. Illegals has its own unique setup. There’s a lot of undercover work, some of it deep, some of it rotating. You’ve got squads who focus entirely on the big game—import/export, organized crime. Others stick primarily to street deals, others manufacturing and distribution. Like that.”
“There has to be overlap.”
“Yeah, and each squad is set up sort of like—what do they call it—a fiefdom?”
“I see, with its own culture and hierarchy.”
“Like that,” she agreed. “Uniforms and detectives reporting to a lieutenant heading that squad, with those lieutenants reporting to a smaller group of captains.”
“Which means a lot of politics,” Roarke surmised. “And when you have politics, you have corruption.”
“Possibly. Probably,” she corrected. “There are checks and balances, there’s a chain of command. Screening—regular screening not only for burnout but for use and addiction. A lot of the undercovers burn out, get made, or get a little too fond of the merchandise.”
“And would have fairly easy access to the merchandise,” Roarke concluded.
It rubbed her wrong, not the statement but that he seemed to expect and accept cops on the take. She knew it happened. But she didn’t, wouldn’t accept it.
“Cops have access to a lot of things. Stolen merchandise, confiscated funds, weapons. Cops who can’t resist temptation don’t belong on the force.”
“I’d argue there’s a gray area, but once you step into the gray, it’s a short trip to the black. Still, easy access,” he repeated. “A cop busts a street dealer, pockets half the stash. The dealer’s not going to argue about how much weight he was carrying.”
“That’s what the lieutenant’s for. To know her men, to supervise, assess. It’s her job—her duty—to stay on top of it. Instead she’s orchestrating it.”
“She’s betrayed her men, from your view, as well as her badge, the department.”
“In my view, she’s a treacherous bitch.” Eve shrugged it off, but it burned in her belly. “As for confiscated product, there’s an accounting division attached to Illegals that’s supposed to keep track of it, paraphernalia, payloads—as it comes in, as it’s used in trial, as it is subsequently destroyed. They have their own Property Room to handle it.”
“And a clever, ambitious woman like Renee could recruit someone from that accounting division to help her skim. Using that, her own squad, her father’s connections, to pluck the department’s pockets. Resell product listed as destroyed.”
“It’s one way. Another would be to deal directly with suppliers, manufacturers, even street dealers—negotiate a fee to keep their business running smooth.
“Have to pick and choose,” Eve considered. “You’re not going to make rank, even with a daddy boost, if you don’t close cases, don’t lock up some bad guys. She has to keep her percentages up—arrests that lead to conviction.”
She braked at a light. “How would you work it?”
“Well now, I’m not as schooled in the running of a division or squad as you.”
“You run half the industrialized world.”
“Ah, if only. But be that as it may, if I were looking for long-term profit—not the quick grab, but to establish a steady profit-making business in this area, I’d take a bit from each level. Street deals—that’s quick and easy, and with the right pressure and incentives you could establish enough loyalty and fees in the low-level runners to finance and establish the next level. Runners get their junk from somewhere else unless they’re self-reliant. And even most of those have to work within the system—fight for their turf or pay a fee to whoever runs the turf.”
“You’d need soldiers to go out, establish that loyalty and fear. Negotiators to move it up the levels. Six years?” Eve shook her head. “She’s got a network. Cops and crooks. Some lawyers she can flip if one of her crew gets squeezed, probably somebody in the PA’s office, at least one judge.”
“She needs a treasury,” Roarke added. “There would be palms to grease, other expenses.”
“It’s not just the money. It’s hardly ever just the money,” Eve decided. “She has to like it. The kick, the power, the dirt, the edge. She’s twisting and demeaning everything her father stood for. Stands for.”
“That may be part of the point.”
“I suppose you and I have little patience or sympathy for father issues that don’t involve violence or real abuse.” In understanding, he laid a hand over hers briefly. “But it may be part of this, and may be something you can work with.”
“Once I inform the commander and IAB, I may be out of it.”
“In a pig’s eye.”
She had to laugh. “Okay, I intend to fight—hard and dirty if necessary—to have a part in the investigation. I’m going to need Mira,” she mused, thinking of the department’s top shrink. “Her clearance will put her on board, and I want Feeney. We need EDD. McNab’s already in it, but he’ll need Feeney not only to give him the time and the space to work this, but to help.”
She eased along the mean streets now, where streetlights—when they worked—shone on oily piles of garbage, and deals for sex, for drugs thrived in the shadows.
“It’s going to be a fucking mess, Roarke. Not just the investigation, the media fallout when it hits. But the repercussions? They’ll have to review every one of her cases, and the cases of whoever she sucked into this. Retrials or just being straightjacketed into springing bad guys because of the old fruit of a poisoned tree. Taking her and her network down means opening up cages. There’s no way around it. I could kick her ass for that alone—after I strip the skin off it for Peabody.”
She pulled to the curb. Parking wasn’t an issue here. If you didn’t have weight in this sector, your vehicle would either be gone or stripped down to its bones if you left it for five minutes.
“Oh, forgot. The alarm works great,” she told him. “Some mope tried to boost it—when I’m barely fifty feet away. Landed on his ass and limped away without his tools.”
Like her he scanned the shadows, the deep pits of dark. “It’s nice to know we won’t be walking home from here.”
“Seal up.” Eve tossed Roarke the can of sealant, engaged her recorder.