by J. D. Robb
“You got that right. You can inform your client, Canarde, that all he’s done here is piss me off. I work harder when I’m pissed off.”
Canarde gave her another of his snakelike smiles. “My client, Lieutenant, is beyond caring. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must do my duty by the tragic Mr. Lewis. I believe he had an ex-wife and a brother. I’ll offer them my condolences. And, if by some quirk of fate, you happen to be correct about Mr. Lewis being helped into the grave, I will advise his family to sue the NYPSD for negligence and wrongful death. It would be a great personal pleasure to represent them in the civil case.”
“I bet he doesn’t even have to pay you, Canarde. He just tosses you the fish, and you jump up, squeal, and dive into the muck to get it back.”
The amusement faded from his eyes, though his mouth continued to smile. He got to his feet, nodded, then left the room.
“I should have anticipated it,” Eve told her commander. “I should have figured Ricker had sources in the department and in the PA’s office.”
“You covered yourself.” A low, burning anger simmered inside Whitney. He would use it like fuel. “Only necessary personnel were informed of the plans to grant immunity.”
“Still, it leaked. And with Lewis taken out this way, I’ll never turn any of the others on Ricker. I can’t even assure myself they’ll do the maximum time. I need a lever, Commander. I got under his skin once, and I can do it again. But I need something, no matter how minor, to justify bringing him in to Interview.”
“That won’t be easy. He’s too well insulated. Mills,” Whitney said. “You have no doubt he was taking.”
“No, sir. I don’t. But as to connecting the funds back to Ricker, I don’t know. Feeney’s on it, and I have several different angles I’m going to pursue.”
“From this point on in this investigation, I want daily reports of every step you and your team makes. Every step, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want the names of every cop you’re looking at, the ones you’ve cleared to your satisfaction, and the ones you haven’t.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you believe the involvement in the department goes beyond Mills and Kohli, IAB will have to be informed.”
They watched each other a moment, treading a line.
“Sir, I would hesitate to inform Internal Affairs until such time as I have evidence substantiating what, at this point in the investigation, is only a suspicion of further involvement.”
“And how much time do you estimate your hesitation will encompass?”
“If I could have twenty-four hours, Commander.”
“One day, Dallas,” he said with a nod. “Neither of us can afford to dance around it longer than that.”
She didn’t waste time but tracked down Martinez, contacted her, and requested a meeting. Off police territory, Eve thought, would make it easier all around.
She met Martinez at a small coffee shop between both their bases. Far enough away from each location to insure it wasn’t a cop hangout.
Martinez arrived a few minutes late, giving Eve the opportunity to observe, to judge. Going by body language, it was clear Martinez’s defenses were up.
“I had to take personal time for this.” Her shoulders as stiff as her voice, Martinez slid into the booth across from Eve. “And I don’t have a lot of it.”
“Fine. My clock’s ticking, too. You want coffee?”
“I don’t drink it.”
“How do you live?”
Martinez gave a sour smile, signaled the serving droid, and ordered water. “And don’t pour it from the tap,” she warned. “I’ll know and fry your circuits. Let’s just cut through the crap,” Martinez continued, turning back to Eve. “You’re looking for me to hang something on Kohli and Mills, and it ain’t gonna happen. You’re looking to dig up dirt, doing scut work for IAB. That turns my stomach.”
Eve picked up her coffee and watched Martinez placidly over the rim. “Well, that covers that. Now, just where do you get all this information?”
“Word gets around when one cop’s hunting others. It’s all over the One two-eight. We’ve got two dead cops. It seems to me you’d be more interested in finding out who did them than in turning up muck before they’re even in the fucking ground.”
That kind of temper, while Eve respected it, wasn’t going to help Martinez work her way up the chain in rank. “Whatever you’ve heard, whatever you think, finding out who did them is my priority.”
“Yeah, right. Your priority is covering your husband’s ass.”
“Excuse me?”
“He owns Purgatory. I figure maybe something was up there, and Kohli tuned into it. They didn’t know he was a cop, so maybe they weren’t careful. And when he got too close, they took him out.”
“And Mills?”
Martinez shrugged. “You’re the one saying they’re connected.”
“You know, Martinez, when I first met you and Mills, I figured he was the moron of the pair. Now, here you are, seriously damaging my self-esteem by showing me my character judgment stinks.”
“You’re not my commanding officer.” Martinez had dark eyes. Now they fired like black suns. “I don’t have to take crap from you.”
“Then take some advice from someone who’s been on the job longer. Learn when to jab and when to wait. You’ve been here under five minutes and told me more than I’ve asked.”
“I haven’t told you dick.”
“You told me that someone’s starting talk at your precinct. That word’s already out—likely through that source—that there’s reason to believe Kohli and Mills were taking. Ask yourself where that came from? Who’d want to put cops on their guard and looking sideways at me? Think, Detective.”
To give her a minute to do so, Eve sipped at her coffee. “I don’t have to cover for Roarke. He’s been handling himself for a long time. Nobody but someone who’d have something to worry about has cause to suspect or know that part of my investigation is turning up dirt on the two victims.”
“Word gets out,” Martinez said, but her tone wasn’t quite so confident. She reached for her water the minute it was on the table.
“Yeah, especially when someone wants it to. You think I arranged to put over three million dollars in Kohli’s and Mills’s accounts to cover my husband’s ass? You think I’ve maybe been funneling it there for months to try to create a scandal involving fellow cops?”
“You’re the one saying the money was there.”
“That’s right. I’m saying it.”
Martinez said nothing for a moment, just staring back into Eve’s eyes. Then she closed her own. “Hell. Oh, hell. I’m not turning on another cop. I’m fifth generation. There’s been a cop in my family for over a hundred years. That means something to me. We have to stand up for each other.”
“I’m not asking you to judge. I’m asking you to think. Not every one of us respects the badge. Two of the men on your task force are dead. Both of them had more money stashed away than most cops can save in a lifetime on the job. Now they’re dead. Somebody got close enough to them to take them out before they could blink. Are you ready to be next?”
“Next? You see me as a target?” The fire came back into Martinez’s eyes. “You think I’ve been taking.”
“I haven’t seen anything to make me think that. And I’ve looked.”
“Goddamn bitch. I worked my ass off to make detective. Now you’re going to toss me to IAB?”
“I’m not tossing you anywhere. But if you’re not straight with me, you’re going to hang yourself. One way or another. Who’s at the core of this?” Eve demanded, leaning forward. “Be a detective, for Christ’s sake, and figure it. Who connects Kohli and Mills and has the money to turn a cop into a weasel?”
“Ricker.” Martinez’s fingers curled on the table until her fist ran white across the knuckles. “Goddamn it.”
“You had him, didn’t you? You went into that bust knowing you had everythin
g you needed for an arrest, an indictment, and a conviction. You were careful.”
“It took me months to set it up. I lived with that case twenty-four/seven. I made sure I didn’t miss anything. Didn’t rush it. Then to have it all fall apart. I couldn’t figure it. I kept telling myself the son of a bitch was just too slick, too well covered. But still . . . Part of me knew he had to have somebody inside. Had to. But I didn’t want to look there. I still don’t.”
“But now you will.”
Martinez lifted her glass, drank water as though her throat was scorched. “Why am I being tagged?”
“Spotted the surveillance, did you?”
“Yeah, I spotted it. I figured you were going after me next.”
“If I find out you’re in bed with Ricker, I will. Right now, the tag’s for your protection.”
“I want it off. If I’m going to throw in with you, I need to move without somebody breathing down my neck. I have a personal copy of all the data, all my notes, every step leading up to Ricker’s bust. After the case fell apart, I looked over them, but my heart wasn’t in it. It will be now.”
“I’d like a copy.”
“It’s my work.”
“And when we take him down, I’ll see to it you get the collar.”
“It means something to me. The job means something to me. This case . . . the captain said I’d lost my objectivity. She was right,” Martinez added with a twist of her lips. “I did. I ate that case for breakfast every morning and I slept with it every night. If I’d kept the right distance, I might have seen all this coming. I might have seen how Mills insinuated himself into it until he was calling shots. I just took it as his usual macho bullshit.”
“We’re supposed to stand for each other. You had no reason to look his way.”
“Kohli’s memorial’s scheduled for day after tomorrow. It comes to me, without doubt, that he was looped with Ricker, I’ll spit on his grave. My grandfather went down in the line of duty during the Urban Wars. He saved two kids. They’re somewhat older than I am, and they write my grandmother every year at Christmas, and again on the anniversary of the day it happened. They never forget. It’s not just about the collar, Dallas. It’s about being a cop.”
Eve nodded, and after a moment’s hesitation, leaned in again. “Martinez, I worked on one of Ricker’s spine crackers, had him ready to roll. The deal was going through the PA’s office for immunity. He had a hearing this morning. Walking down the hall in the courtyard, between two cops, he got hit. He’s dead. Just like that. There are leaks, and I don’t know where to begin to plug them. I want you to know before you start on this that I may not be able to keep a lid on it. I may not be able to keep your name out of the mix. And that could put you in the crosshairs.”
Martinez pushed her empty glass aside. “Like I said. It’s about being a cop.”
Eve spent the rest of the day backtracking, reading data until her eyes stung. She went back to Patsy Kohli under the pretext of a follow-up. After twenty minutes, she was convinced the grieving widow had known nothing.
That’s what her gut told her, Eve thought as she got into her car again. She just wasn’t sure she could trust her gut anymore.
She had a new list working in her brain, the one McNab was shooting her every few hours. A line of cops he’d cleared, another line of those who remained suspect.
Because Central was closer, she slipped back to her office there and ran a series of probabilities using the new data and the new list of names.
No matter how she juggled it, she found nothing conclusive. And would find nothing, she thought, until she dug deeper. They would have to pick the lives of these cops apart, like crows on fleshy bones. Every time they cleared one, it would put more weight on the rest.
She knew what it was to undergo an internal investigation, to have the hounds of IAB sniffing at her heels. Being clean didn’t make it less nasty. Being clean didn’t wash the vile aftertaste out of your throat.
She couldn’t go deeper without sending up flags. Unless she made use of Roarke’s unregistered and illegal equipment. She couldn’t make use of it without his help. She didn’t have the skill to peel those layers away on her own.
And she couldn’t ask him for help when she’d made such a big damn deal about wanting him uninvolved.
She put her head in her hands, unsurprised, in fact almost pleased that it was throbbing. A good, solid headache would give her something else to be unhappy about.
She decided to head home. And on the way passed Mavis’s billboard. Before she could think about it, she’d engaged her ’link and tried Mavis at home, without any real hope of catching her there.
“Hello. Hey! Hey, Dallas!”
“Guess what I’m looking at?”
“A naked, one-armed pygmy.”
“Damn. Okay, you’re too good at this. Talk to you later.”
“Wait, wait.” Giggling, Mavis shifted in front of her own ’link as if that would somehow give her the angle of Eve’s view. “What is it really?”
“You. About a million times bigger than life over Times fucking Square.”
“Oh! Is that iced, or what? Is that beyond Arctic? I keep finding excuses to go down and look at it. I want to give your husband a big, wet, sloppy kiss. Leonardo says it’s all right with him, under the circumstances, but I thought I should clear it with you.”
“I don’t tell Roarke who he can kiss.”
Mavis’s eyebrows, currently a neon magenta, rose straight up into her blueberry-colored hair. “Oh oh. Are you having a fight?”
“No. Yes. No. I don’t know what the hell we’re having. He’s barely speaking to me. Are you—never mind.”
“Am I what?” She put a hand over her screen, made Eve roll her eyes while she had a whispered conversation with someone else in the room. “Sorry. Leonardo’s trying out a new stage costume. Hey, why don’t you come by?”
“No. You’re busy.”
“Uh-uh. Come on, Dallas, you never come by the old place. If you’re in Times Square, you can be here in a heartbeat. I was just thinking I was going to make a big batch of screamers. So I’ll see you in a few.”
“No—I—” She hissed a breath at the blank screen, nearly called back and made excuses. Then she shrugged, felt her back go up when she remembered that coolly distant tone Roarke had used on her that morning. “What the hell,” she muttered. “Just for a few minutes.”
chapter ten
Mavis Freestone and her lover Leonardo cohabited in Eve’s old apartment.
What a difference a year made.
Eve had lived in the single-bedroom unit contentedly enough with a few basic pieces of furniture, no decor to speak of, and an AutoChef that was empty more often than stocked. She’d preferred to think of her lifestyle as simple rather than bland.
Then again, compared to Mavis, a surf on Saturn’s outer rings in a comet buster was bland.
The minute Mavis opened the door, Eve was struck with color. Blasts of it. Every hue and tone on the palette was turned up to scream level, in patterns and textures that boggled the eye.
And that was just Mavis.
The living area of the apartment was draped with miles of fabrics. Some, she supposed, were art of some kind; others, Leonardo’s designs in progress. The rather lumpy sofa Eve had left behind when she’d moved in with Roarke was covered now with a bright and nervy pink material that shimmered like polished glass. If that wasn’t enough, it was heaped with pillows and throws of clashing colors that seemed to drip onto the floor where more cloths were cleverly tossed in lieu of rugs.
Beads and spangles and ribbons, and God knew what, rained down the walls, tinkled gaily from the ceiling, which had been painted a high-sheen silver studded with crimson stars.
Even the tables were fabric, arty lumps of shape that could be called in for seating in a pinch. Eve didn’t think there was a hard surface or a right angle left in the place.
And while she was vaguely concerned that staying there for
any length of time might bring on a stroke, it was a frame that suited the picture of her oldest friend perfectly.
The effect was something like a storm-edged sunrise. On Venus.
“I’m so glad you came by.” Mavis dragged Eve into the psychodelia, then turned a stylish circle. “What do you think?”
“Of what, exactly?”
“Of the new gear?”
Tiny, slim, and bright as a fairy wand, Mavis turned again, showing off a short-skirted . . . you couldn’t call it a dress, Eve decided. A costume, she supposed, of crossed diagonal stripes that ran from deep purple to neon pink and back again. The bodice scooped low, just tucking the nipples under and left Mavis’s shoulders—adorned now with twin pansy tattoos—bare.
Sleeves—they had to be sleeves because as far as Eve knew, gloves had hands—skimmed down her arms. Needle-heeled boots, in the same dizzy stripes, rode up her legs to just under crotch level.
“It’s—” She had no idea. “Amazing.”
“Yeah, isn’t it? TTT. Too totally terrific. Trina’s going to do my hair to match. Leonardo’s a complete genius. Leonardo, Dallas is here. He’s making a batch of screamers,” she told Eve. “You came by at the exact moment. I hate drinking alone, and you know how Leonardo can’t.”
She kept up the chatter, pulling Eve toward the pink couch. She wasn’t giving her friend a chance to escape until she knew what was going on.
“Here he is.” Her voice went to coo, her eyes went gooey. “Thanks, honey love.”
Leonardo, a giant of a man with long, glossy braids, gold eyes, and the smooth copper skin of a mixed-race heritage, swirled into the room. He moved with uncanny grace for a man topping six-five and wearing a hooded ankle duster of Atlantic blue. He beamed at Mavis, and the ruby studs beside his mouth and just under his left eyebrow winked flirtatiously.
He cooed right back at her. “You’re welcome, turtledove. Hello, Dallas. I put together a little snack, in case you haven’t had dinner.”
