by J. D. Robb
“How many flop here?”
“Hard to say. Maybe twenty, twenty-five regulars. But you could have double that before a strike. Their territory’s shrunk, and they’re clinging to what they’ve got, pushing to take back what they lost. A lot of them would die for it. Some do.”
Eve stepped to the opening. Across a wide living area on a ten-foot screen, numerous people in masks engaged in various acts of sex in some sort of fancy ballroom. The music, provided by an onstage band, hit heavy on the bass.
She judged the living space owed its size to the removal of walls to combine a couple of flops into one. Most of the furniture ran to low-rise gel sofas in shiny red and black, and most were currently occupied by couples—or threesomes—trying to mimic the action on-screen.
In the single oversize sleep chair, two women—obviously stoned—pawed and crawled lugubriously over a male. He gave tits and ass absent strokes with one hand, worked his PPC with the other.
Zoner smoke, with a chaser of Erotica, hung in the air like dreamy fog.
A dozen people, Eve counted, with most too naked to conceal any weapon. Still, she kept a hand on her own when she rapped a fist against the jamb.
“NYPSD.”
The few people not completely dazed with drugs or sex, scrambled. The man in the chair just shoved one of the women to the floor, waved away the second. And with a half smile, adjusted his erection back in his pants.
Mixed race, with skin the color of Peabody’s coffee regular, he had hard dark eyes and a long, thin scar down his left cheek, a tat of a blade dripping blood on the other.
He wore his hair in tight black-and-red braids that rained down his back from a band at his nape. The black long-sleeved tee didn’t quite hide another slicing scar down the side of his throat.
She saw one of the naked guys start to reach under the gel couch, then freeze when both air rifles gave their cocking snicks.
“Yo now, everybody just chill it, all right?” Slice spoke in a gravelly baritone, kept that half smile in place. “We got us some company. I know you.” He pointed a long finger, bumpy at the knuckles, at Eve. “Sure I do. Seen you right up there.”
He gestured to the screen and a close-up of swollen genitalia hard at work.
“Y’all bring me a famous cop and her rich man. We need some refreshments! Bulge, get some clothes on and go on down there and pull Toro off the door. Mofo doesn’t have the sense to tell us we got company.”
“Everybody’s fine right where they are,” Eve said. “We’re looking for Dinnie Duff.”
“What you want with that little ho?”
“I’ll talk to her about that.”
“Now, she’s a ho for sure, but she’s my ho. We look after our own, don’t we?” he said to the room at large. “You here to give her trouble?”
“Is she in the house?”
Slice bared his teeth at her, a grin and a challenge all at once. “Got your hard-ass on tonight, do you?”
“It’s always on. Is she worth a raid? There’s enough Zoner hanging in the air for me to haul every one of you in.”
“We be out again in a flash.”
“Yeah, maybe, but considering I’d have probable cause to look for more?” She scanned the room, noted that more than a couple of people in the room knew that flash wouldn’t work for them. “Maybe not. Dinnie Duff.”
“Fuck all.” He shrugged it off, shoved the second woman to the floor. “Likely she’s working under at Wet Dreams. I ain’t seen her.”
“How about we look?”
“How about I see a warrant?”
Now Eve smiled. “I can get one in under five minutes. I doubt that’d give you time to move out all the illegals and weapons, and anybody underage in here. But we can play it out and see.”
“Fuck all and you with it.” No longer smiling, he got to his feet. “Bolt, you’ve been banging that bitch most recently. Where’s she at?”
“Work, she said. She needs the scratch.”
The one called Bolt took his time pulling on pants, scratching his naked belly. The look in his eyes, Eve thought, was fierce despite the lazy movements.
Pissed, Eve thought. This one’s pissed he got caught with his pants down and no weapon in his hand.
He was white with a tough, compact boxer’s build, spiky red hair, his gang tat over his heart. Two lightning-bolt tats jagged down his arms.
“When did you last see her?”
“I don’t keep a leash on that bitch.” As if to prove it, Bolt reached over to squeeze the closest breast. Hard enough that the owner of the breast yelped. “Said how she needed some scratch, had shit to do, and couldn’t party tonight.”
“Which is her flop?”
“Man, she ain’t got her own. Why she needs the scratch, so? She’s been flopping with me for the banging. What the fuck, Slice? We don’t need to put up with this shit. We got rights and shit. You gotta stand up, man, tell this bitch to suck it.”
“I know what I got,” Slice snapped back. “I ain’t taking no shit from cops in our place.”
Eve took out her badge, held it up, and aimed a cold stare at Slice. “You said you know me, then you know I’m a murder cop. Do you think I’m here to roust your ho for off-license sex work, for illegals?”
“Don’t know why the fuck you’re here.”
“I’m here because Dinnie Duff is a person of interest in a murder investigation. You keep up this bullshit, you’ll be one, too. Where is she?”
He laughed, and as if on signal, a few of the others joined in.
“You gotta be smoking something good if you’re looking at that bitch for some murder. She squeaks if she sees a bloody thumb. She ain’t killed nobody.”
“Lyle Pickering would disagree if he could, but he’s dead.”
Slice’s face went stony, and the lingering laughter cut off. “You saying Pick’s dead? You saying he’s dead and Dinnie did him?”
“I’m saying he’s dead, and I need to talk to her. Where is she?”
“How’s he dead?”
“Where is Dinnie Duff?”
“We said she ain’t here. And ain’t no way she’d do something to end Pick. Bangers stick, and that boy was a Banger.” He booted one of the women on the floor. “Loose, you know where she’s at? You say it straight.”
“Must be working, Slice. She said, like Bolt said, she had shit to do, needed scratch. She ain’t paid up her share for flop in a while. You said…”
“Go ahead.”
“You said she had to pay up or find someplace else, ’cause spreading it for Bolt wasn’t enough for her share. She said she had shit to do. That’s all.”
“That’s right, I did.” He nodded slowly, looked back at Eve. “Bitches gotta pay same as anybody, and fucking only pays so far. Pick’s dead, you oughta look at the Dragons. We don’t kill our own.”
“He’d disavowed you.”
“Disavowed’s shit.” Slice’s eyes fired out hate—a violent, frustrated hate. “He wants to live his life like a sack, that’s on him. But once you take the oath, you’re one of us. Even that ho Dinnie knows how it is.”
She considered pushing, but she’d planted the seeds, formed her impressions.
“I will find her. If anything happens to her in the meantime, I’ll be coming for you.”
“Come all you want, bitch. I’ve taken on harder asses than you.”
At that Roarke let out a quick laugh. “Keep thinking that,” he advised, then turned with Eve toward the steps.
Outside, Zutter puffed out his cheeks. “He’ll send some boys to find her. If you want to get to her first, we need to go under. We’re going to need more cops.”
“How well do you know Slice?”
“I watched him fight his way up to top dog,” Norton said. “The gang’s what he’s got.”
“Would he put a hit on her for what I told him?”
Zutter rubbed his chin as he and Norton studied each other. They both shook their heads.
“
He’d want to talk to her, squeeze what she knows out of her.”
“If he ordered the hit on Lyle, he already knows,” Eve pointed out. “And if he did, she followed his orders. Would he take her out now?”
“More get her out,” Norton said. “Maybe he did already. Get her gone somewhere until he figures things settle.”
“So, either way, he’s not going to execute her.” Eve stood in the wind, calculating while the neon on the tat parlor began to buzz like a small swarm of bees. “If he didn’t order the hit, squeezes out she was part of it, does he follow the code, have a trial?”
“That’s how he rolls. He’ll gut her himself if it comes to that, but not before they stand her up, make her blubber first.”
“Okay. Sit on the place, tag me if you see anybody leave and head to the underground. That’s a couple blocks west, right?”
“Affirmative.”
“And where’s Wet Dreams from that entrance?”
Now Zutter pushed back his uniform cap, scratched his head. “First tunnel to the right, next left. It’s not down deep. LT, you shouldn’t oughta go down there without a force.”
“Just getting the lay. Appreciate the assist.”
“It’s what we do in this little piece of heaven on earth, right, Zut?”
“You got it.”
Roarke slid behind the wheel. “A couple blocks west, is it?”
“Yeah, then we’ll take a trip to Wet Dreams.”
“Darling Eve, life with you is a never-ending series of them.”
“Funny.”
She directed him to park in a loading zone, switched on the On Duty sign. From the trunk, she studied her choices, and took out two serrated-edged knives, passed one to Roarke.
“Thank you, darling. It’s just my size.”
She knew him, knew he could handle himself. Knew he’d enjoy it.
“What’re you carrying?”
He opened his coat, took from the inside pocket a police-issue stunner.
“Jesus, I should arrest you.”
“Promise you will when we get home.” He leaned in to kiss her. “You know how it thrills me.”
“Still funny,” she muttered. “Keep it handy.”
“You think he might just order that hit?”
“The minute I went in looking for her, she was in the crosshairs. I lean toward the uniforms’ opinion,” she added. “If she was following his orders on Pickering, he’ll hide her until things cool off. But…”
“You’re thinking of his reaction, weighing whether it was genuine.”
“It felt real, so if she went rogue, she’s finished. But he has his code, so it’s more likely he’ll try to get to her before I do, haul her in for a trial. And whether or not he ordered the hit, he has to make it look like he’s following the code.”
She took the tag from Norton.
“He’s got three of his crew heading out now,” Eve told Roarke, then rolled her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
It smelled of human waste and rot and worse. In the echoing dark, shadows slunk away from the penlight Eve held in her left hand. A few huddled against the wall, too stoned to slink anywhere, eyes glassy with whatever they’d ingested or popped.
She skirted around them, then rammed an elbow into the throat of one who leaped forward. As he dropped, she pivoted in time to see Roarke use nearly the same maneuver—though his elbow struck nose cartilage.
“He had a friend,” Roarke said easily, and smiled.
Yeah, she thought again, he enjoys it.
“Sometimes they pair up close to the entrances, hoping for a quick score.”
She took the left tunnel. In the distance music thumped, and a few lights glimmered. In the faint glint of them a male, pants around his ankles, hairy ass pumping, pinned a female to the wall. His raspy grunts punctuated each frantic thrust.
Rather than appearing appalled or aroused, the woman merely looked bored. But when her gaze skimmed over Eve and Roarke, she bared what was left of her teeth in something approximating a smile.
“Soon’s done here, give ya a double for half.”
“There’s an offer you don’t get every day,” Roarke murmured as they moved on.
“And the STD comes free.” Eve stepped over a fresh splat of vomit, took the next tunnel.
More lights here as the underground clubs popped up, with some retail scattered. Bondage World boasted live models hyping their products.
A woman with enormous man-made breasts exposed by the cutouts in her fake leather skin suit moaned impressively as a second woman with a vibrating strap-on demonstrated the proper way to attach the looping chains of nipple clamps to wall hooks.
A couple of bruisers with full-body tats discouraged any potential customers from attempting to take an active part in the demo.
They passed Bang-O-Rama, a bar where volunteers paid for the privilege of being gangbanged onstage. At the moment, a group of women hooted and cheered on somebody named Coco, who had the stage—and writhed as sex workers penetrated every orifice in her body.
She wore nothing but a tiara proclaiming her as the BRIDE TO BE.
“A whole new meaning to girls’ night out,” Roarke commented.
Farther down the tunnel someone screamed in a way that didn’t translate into pleasure on any level. Just as the laughter that followed didn’t sound of humor.
Ignoring both, Eve aimed for Wet Dreams.
Smaller than most of the others, it amounted to a hole-in-the-wall with bad lighting, smoky air, recorded music. Eve assumed the lighting was an attempt to disguise the fact that the staff consisted of junkies going through the motions to earn enough for the next fix.
Then again, from her scan, a good portion of the clientele ran the same. Some of the glazed looks might have come from ingesting the Zoner smoke hazing the room.
A couple of women on the platform—too small to rate the term stage—pawed each other mechanically while a third attempted a clumsy routine on a pole.
Behind the bar a single male wearing nipple rings, possibly purchased at Bondage World, poured liquid the color of sludge into stingy glasses. The guy on a stool downed one while getting a lap dance from a sex worker so bony Eve could count his ribs.
If he’d seen his eighteenth birthday, she’d eat her badge.
A woman in a red skin suit approached. Pasty flesh sagged out of the open lacing running down both sides while another pair of man-made tits rose improbably high from the snug bodice.
She wore a coal-black wig with a sweep down the left side that didn’t quite hide the puckering burn scars on her cheek.
“Looking for a table or a private room?” She had a voice like the smoke—thick and mildly drugged out.
“Neither. Dinnie Duff.”
“If you’re looking for personal service, I got better.”
Eve pulled out her badge. “Dinnie Duff.”
The woman hissed. “Just put that thing away. Business is bad enough around here. She ain’t working tonight. She ain’t come in for a couple, three nights.”
“Is this your place?”
“Shit no. I run what there is of it.”
“Name.”
“Taffy Pull. I had it changed legal when I was working the stage.”
“Okay, Taffy, Which is it, a couple or three since Duff’s been in?”
“Well, shit.” When the woman scratched her head, the wig shifted. “Monday night’s slow. Hell, most nights is slow, but we do decent on the weekend. I coulda used her over the weekend, but she didn’t show. So I guess she ain’t been in since last … maybe Thursday night she was in and working. Maybe the night before. I figured she musta made enough to hold her over or she got herself busted.”
“She told a couple people she was working here tonight.”
“Well, she ain’t. Look, it’s no skin off mine if you bust her ass. She works, she gets paid.” The shoulder shrug didn’t move the breasts by a fraction. “She don’t work, somebody else gets paid. It’s all the sa
me to me.”
“How long has she worked here?”
“Jesus, I guess about three years. On and off. And plenty of off. You find her, you tell her she’s off for good. I can’t have cops coming around here. Ain’t good for business.”
Eve caught sight of the three Bangers heading down the tunnel, led by Bolt. “If I find out you’re bullshitting me, I’ll shut this place down.”
The woman gave another shrug. “Got no reason to bullshit over some junkie whore too lazy to work. And this place—no big loss, right? You shut it down, there’s always another place.”
Eve left it at that.
Bolt stopped, eyed her up and down. “Bad shit happens to cops underground.”
“Worse shit happens to people who start something with a cop who has a stunner aimed at them.”
“One cop,” Roarke added. “Two stunners.”
This time when he looked down, she had the stunner in her hand, as did Roarke. Bolt smirked at them, but kept walking.
“That one has a very poor attitude,” Roarke commented.
“Yeah, I guess he flunked out of Manners 101. Too bad he’s only about five-seven and doesn’t fit the description of big from the wit’s statement.”
“Well, he appears to make up for his lack of stature by being a flaming fuckhole. But back to our charming hostess. I don’t believe she knows her former employee’s whereabouts.”
“No, neither do I. ‘Flaming fuckhole,’” she repeated. “I’ve got to remember that one.”
She ignored the cheers as another member of the wedding party stumbled up to the stage in Bang-O-Rama. Then the Bondage World demo of the Electric O, which made her think of a battery-operated cattle prod. And the howls of humanity in a chosen hell as they worked their way back through, and up to the street.
“Well now, after this fascinating evening, I could do with a good, long shower.”
“Sick bastards. What kind of sick bastard wants somebody to slap a shock stick across his balls?”
“Don’t look at me.” Roarke opened the car door for her. “So if neither the Banger chief nor the curiously named Taffy Pull is bullshitting, that only leaves a couple of possibilities.”
“Yeah, she’s pulled a rabbit, or she’s dead.”
Roarke walked around, slid behind the wheel. “She might have managed to score. She could’ve been paid for betraying Pickering. She got high and flopped elsewhere.”