Connections in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel Page 6

  “We appreciate that, Ms. Gregory. Do you think you’d recognize the female again, if you saw her picture? Or, failing that, work with a police artist?”

  Now she puffed out her cheeks. “Never wanted much to do with the police, but I’ll look at the pictures and whatnot. For young Lyle and Rochelle.”

  “Thank you. Peabody, why don’t you go inside with Ms. Gregory, get a description. McNab, you can start knocking on doors. Maybe we’ll get lucky again.”

  “They killed that boy, that’s what they did, then they walked away laughing like it was one big joke.” Ms. Gregory shook her head again, gestured Peabody inside.

  * * *

  By the time Eve knocked on Crack’s door, she had the broad strokes of what she believed happened. She’d sent Peabody to Central to write up a preliminary. She had a vague description of the female from Ms. Gregory, and might need to pull in Yancy for a sketch.

  But if Lyle knew the woman, odds were Rochelle did, too. She’d go there first.

  Crack answered wearing the same conservative dinner-date black sweater and pants. No feathers, no beads, no tats on view.

  The Down and Dirty pulled them in, and Crack—or Wilson—was nobody’s fool of a businessman. So his apartment climbed several steep flights over Rochelle’s.

  Rochelle sat in his living room with its bold African art and the oversize furniture to suit the size of the man. She popped to her feet, her eyes rimmed with red, her face sallow with stress.

  “He wouldn’t have done this. Whatever you say, I know he wasn’t using again. And he’d never bring illegals into our home.”

  “You’re right. Or, my conclusion at this stage of the investigation lines up with yours.”

  “He—” The fists at Rochelle’s sides unballed. She lowered shakily into the chair again. “What happened to my brother?”

  “Y’all sit down. I don’t have any of that coffee you like around, but I got Pepsi.” As he spoke, Crack stroked his hand over Rochelle’s curly wedge of hair. “That’s your cold drink, right?”

  “That’d be great.”

  “Roarke?”

  “I’m fine with that, thanks.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rochelle pressed a fist to her lips, fought to steady herself. “I haven’t even thanked you for coming so quickly, for helping. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Eve sat so she and Rochelle were eye-to-eye. “Rochelle, Lyle had a jar on his dresser.”

  “His Save It fund. He’d toss loose change in there every night after work.”

  “How much would you say he had in it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I guess it was about half-full, maybe a little more.”

  “It was empty.”

  “No, that’s not right. I saw it just tonight. His door was open—he keeps it open to show me he’s got nothing to hide. I saw it when I went in to change for dinner with Wilson. It was loaded up at least halfway.”

  “It was empty,” Eve repeated, “and in his top drawer we found a second pressure syringe, and two vials of what appear to be illegals, one nearly empty.”

  Those heavy-lidded eyes hardened like granite. “I don’t believe you. Not for one minute.”

  “You should because I believe whoever emptied that jar planted the syringe and illegals. Whoever did that killed your brother and attempted to stage it like an overdose.”

  “Killed him. Killed him. Killed—”

  “You breathe, Ro.” Crack hurried in with the drinks. “You take your breaths.” After setting the glasses down, he plucked her out of the chair, then sat and cradled her in his lap.

  “I knew he didn’t—but to hear … Murder. Somebody murdered Lyle. I can’t think. I need a second. Hold on to me, Wilson.”

  “Don’t you worry. I’ve got you.”

  Eve picked up the glass, took a welcome infusion of caffeine while she waited for Rochelle to steady herself again.

  “He was so happy,” she murmured. “He’d found himself again, found the real Lyle again. I have to be grateful for that, that he had this time to be himself. I said, when I left tonight, ‘I love you,’ and he said, ‘Back at you squared.’ We said that to each other, the last thing. I have to be grateful for that. Oh God, if I’d insisted on staying home, making that celebration meal—”

  “They’d have come another time,” Eve finished. “It reads like they waited for you to leave. It’s likely they knew his schedule well enough to know he had the night off. Who’d want to hurt him, Rochelle?”

  “I swear I don’t know. If you’d asked me a couple years ago, I could’ve named a dozen. But he’s been out of that life, and he’s stayed away. He goes to work, to meetings, to see our brothers and Gram. He’s not even dating yet. He just got his two-year chip for sobriety.”

  “We have a witness who saw a female go to your apartment door shortly after you left. She wore a hoodie, baggies, boots. All dark. The witness believes Caucasian, middle twenties, small build. Very thin. She described her—and she only caught a glimpse—as having a thin, hard face. Pink in her hair.”

  “It sounds like Dinnie.”

  “Dinnie?”

  “Dinnie Duff. They lived together in that flop. She’s one of the Banger Bitches. That’s what they call themselves. He was with her before he got arrested. She’s done time, too. He wouldn’t have started seeing her again. He’d violate his parole.”

  “We think he let her in tonight.”

  “God.”

  “The wit believes she was crying, said she needed or wanted help.”

  “That would do it,” Rochelle confirmed. “He might have opened the door if she asked him for help. I think he did care about her, even when he was at his worst. She killed Lyle.”

  “I think she was sent in so she could let the ones who did into the apartment. She left as she let them in.”

  The fierceness flashed back. “She’s just as guilty.”

  “Yes, she is. I’m going to pick her up when I leave here, and expect to charge her with accessory to murder.”

  Rochelle closed her eyes, let her head rest on Crack’s shoulder. “I don’t mean to keep snapping at you.”

  “Skinny white girl don’t worry ’bout no snaps,” Crack told her.

  “If I did, I’d be in another line of work. I also expect, during interrogation, to get the names of the three men she let into your apartment.”

  “What did they look like? I might have seen them before. I might know.”

  “The witness didn’t see their faces. That doesn’t mean I won’t find them. I will. In the meantime, your apartment’s sealed. You should stay here tonight. I’m going to contact you tomorrow. I want you to go through your apartment with me, tell me if anything’s missing or out of place. Anything at all.”

  “Yes, whenever you want. But I need to see Lyle. You were right, Wilson, you were right to stop me from going to him. But now, I have to see him.”

  “I’ll arrange that for you tomorrow.”

  “Did you ask for Morris?”

  Eve nodded at Crack. “Yes. Morris will take care of Lyle.”

  “That’s just what he’ll do, Ro. He’ll take care. I’ll go with you.”

  “My brothers—Martin and Walter—and our grandmother. I need to tell them. How do I tell them?” She turned her face into Crack’s shoulder for a moment. “But I have to. Face-to-face. We need to be together.”

  “We’ll go to Walt’s school. I’ll get us a car and we’ll go get Walt, then we’ll go over to Martin’s.”

  “I’ll arrange a car and driver for you,” Roarke said.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “It’s done. You’re family,” he told Crack. “And Rochelle is one of my people now. Lyle is Eve’s. You’ll have a car and driver at your disposal for as long as you need.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Rochelle said. “This doesn’t seem real, then it does, horribly real, then it doesn’t. I have to tell them, even knowing how it’ll hurt them.”
<
br />   “You won’t be alone.” Crack kissed her hair. “I’ll be right with you.”

  As they walked back to the car, Eve dug up the last known address of Dinnie Duff. “Banger turf,” she muttered. “Won’t that be fun?” She slid into the car, keyed in the address. “I’m calling it in, getting backup from a couple of uniforms who work that area.”

  “You don’t think we can handle it … skinny white girl?”

  “Oh, we could handle it, scary Irish boy, but I’m not looking for a gang fight. They sent three to take out Lyle. That’s not small change, that’s not some petty bullshit. It’s something else, and a whole lot more. Dinnie Duff not only knows the three who killed him, it’s likely she knows who sent them.”

  “Would they have a captain?”

  “Yeah.” She considered the most probable setup as Roarke took the wheel. “And likely a handful of lieutenants and down the pecking order. But someone in charge, someone overseeing gang business—illegals, finances, sex trade. Then there’s negotiations or hits on rival gangs. There’s the protection racket, and so on.”

  “It’s a business,” Roarke commented.

  “It’s an excuse to kill, maim, steal, and terrorize. But yeah,” she conceded, “a business. So you don’t put out a hit on a former member because he’s living his life outside. You do that because you’ve got a personal grudge, or because he did something while living his life that messed with gang business.”

  “There may be something that at least hints at that in his journal.”

  “I’ll be looking. But if Duff was with Lyle back in his gang time, and she’s still with the Bangers, she’ll know something.”

  They wound their way into the bowels of the Bowery. While most of the sector had been gentrified and revitalized after the Urbans, this seedy handful of blocks seemed to prefer squalor.

  Upscale here meant the obscenities tagged on the walls of buildings were grammatically correct.

  Many who worked for a living here earned their pay in the clubs, dives, and hellholes underground. Those with no basic skills and the need for food or a fix tended to sell their bodies there, for individual use or for groups in sex games.

  The Bangers ruled this tiny slice of the underground, routinely warring with the Chinatown Dragons in an attempt to expand their territory.

  On the streets and sidewalks, they mugged tourists foolish enough to wander onto their turf looking for color, and catered to addicts and the street whores who couldn’t meet the regs for a license.

  Shopkeepers who balked at paying out protection money usually found their places of business burned out or their stock destroyed by homemade boomers. Often with the recalcitrant shopkeeper still inside.

  As far as Eve knew, the only building off-limits was Most Holy Redeemer Church on East Third. Off-limits not because Bangers respected a house of worship, but because many of their mothers and grandmothers prayed there for the souls of their offspring—souls those offspring had already sold to the lowest bidder.

  Eve scanned the streets—windows barred or boarded, steel gates locked tight and tagged, husks of burned-out vehicles.

  Given the cold, the wind, most business and entertainment went underground, but a few packs wandered with gang colors—black and red—displayed on hoods, on bandannas snaking out of pockets, on wristbands.

  “You carrying?” Eve asked casually as Roarke pulled over.

  “Not to worry.” He gave her hand a pat before they got out on either side.

  She saw the looks from the pack—three male, one female—a couple of yards down. And when they switched directions, started to swagger back toward her, she flipped back her coat, put a hand—very overtly—on her weapon.

  And smiled, showing her teeth. “Keep moving,” she advised.

  The tallest one—skinny as a stick, pasty white with a scatter of old acne scars—grinned back. “Come on now, baby. Why’n you roll with us? We’ll show you how it’s done.”

  When he rubbed his crotch, his companions howled with hilarity. Egged on, Eve noted, as their pupils were big as moons, by the chemicals dancing in their bloodstreams.

  “With that little thing?” She cocked her head. “My cat’s got a better package. Keep moving,” she repeated. “Or I’ll haul your brain-dead asses in for use of illegals, possession of same, and interfering with a law officer.”

  “Yeah?” This was a big one, massive shoulders, as black as his companion was white. The Bangers did go for diversity. “You and what army, bitch?”

  Eve cocked her head again, this time toward Roarke. That brought on more hilarity.

  “He’s pretty.” The lone female, mixed race, hair a flying flag of gang colors, licked her lips, wagged her tongue with its silver stud. “I want a taste of that meat.”

  Roarke glanced casually at Eve, but the blue of his eyes cut as sharp as the wind. “Are these the Bangers then?”

  “Ooooh, he even talks pretty.”

  “Where I come from bangers are sausages. That doesn’t seem far off, really. If you’ve more brains than a sausage, you’d use them to move along as the lieutenant suggested. Otherwise, you lot will end up bloodied before you land in a cage.”

  “Fuck you, limey prick.” Howling with more hilarity, the third male—squat as a barrel, long bleached-white hair flying—heaved the rock in his pocket at the car.

  It ricocheted off the security shield Roarke had engaged and smacked into the grinning face of the female. She dropped like, well, a rock.

  “I’m Irish, by the way.” Roarke braced for an assault. Eve drew her weapon.

  A black-and-white rolled up with a quick one-two of sirens.

  The two cops who got out—one male, one female—made the big Banger look like the runt of the litter.

  The female cop shouldered her air rifle. It wouldn’t kill anybody, but a blast from it would hurt like holy hell.

  “Causing trouble again, Shake ’n Bake?”

  Pasty Guy obviously didn’t care for the nickname, and snarled at her. “We’re just walking. We can walk where the fuck we want in a free fucking country.”

  “Then pick up Little Easy there and keep doing that. Unless you’d like to assume the position and have us go through your pockets.”

  “Fucking cops is wheeze.”

  But the big one hauled up the dazed female, and they all kept walking.

  The male officer watched them go. “That bunch is mostly just bullshit and noise. Got plenty of worse around here. What’re you after down here, Lieutenant?”

  “I’m after Dinnie Duff.” Eve gestured to a four-story building with a street-level tat-and-piercing parlor. It made Rochelle’s apartment building look like a palace. “Last known address.”

  “Current Banger HQ. She mostly flops there.” The female frowned at the building. “And some of the worse my astute partner mentioned does, too. She may be working the underground this time of night, but if we’re going down there, we’re going to want more cops.”

  “Ten-four,” her partner agreed. “Worst of the worst.”

  “We’ll check the flop. She had a busy night, so she may be in.”

  “We got your back. What’re you pulling her for?”

  “She’s a prime suspect on accessory to murder.”

  Both uniforms stared. The female found her voice. “Dinnie? She’s a user, a skank, and as useless as bull tits, but I wouldn’t peg her on murder.”

  “How long have you worked this sector?” Eve asked.

  “Eight years. Zutter here has seven.”

  “Do you know Lyle Pickering?”

  “Sure. We busted him a time or two. Addict, asshole, had some violence in there, but it was mostly the Go.”

  Zutter nodded. “He sure liked his Go. He’s out. Last I heard he was giving the straight way a try. We even had breakfast at Casa del Sol about a month ago, where he cooks. Seemed to be doing okay.”

  “He was—got his two-year chip, worked the job. And tonight, I have reason to believe Duff gained entra
nce to his apartment, assisted three unknown males into same. And now he’s dead.”

  “Dinnie.” Zutter puffed his cheeks, shook his head. “Dumber than a splintered post and half-crazy with it. Too bad about Pick. Too damn bad. Well.” He rolled his shoulders. “Ready, Norton?”

  “Born ready,” she said. “Raised to roll.”

  They approached the door emblazoned with the Banger fist.

  5

  Zutter stepped up. “They’ve got a secret knock for the guard inside.”

  Eve stared at him. “No joke?”

  “No joke.” Zutter banged his fist in a quick one, two, three—pause—one, two—pause—one.

  “And an unbreakable code, too.”

  Zutter spread his lips in a grin. “Door guards aren’t usually their best and brightest.”

  To prove it, the guard who opened the door boasted more fat than muscle, a bull ring in his nose that would cause him serious pain when anyone with sense yanked it in a fight, and a monster matching game still grring on his PPC.

  “Don’t need no cops.”

  “Slice wants to confab.”

  “Slice wants?”

  “Smelled some Dragon breath. What the what, Toro, you axe the zombies first. Ice pick them crawlers, grab up the torches for frying vamps.”

  Toro frowned down at the game. “Zombies first?”

  While he puzzled over that, Zutter nudged the bulk of him aside to clear a path for the stairs. “Monster Hunter,” Zutter said as they walked up. “My eight-year-old kid plays it. Like I said, not the brightest.”

  Eve heard banging music, throaty moans, exaggerated gasps. It didn’t take seeing the action to recognize a porn vid in play.

  The stairs opened into a line of living quarters. Most stood open—a number didn’t have doors to close in the first place.

  The one on the left boasted doubles, both open. The bump and grind of porn music rolled out.

  “That’s Slice’s flop. He’s top captain,” Norton explained. “Well, the only captain now, since recruiting’s way down, busts are up. Second-gen Banger.”