Betrayal in Death (18 page)

Then he was up and swaggering out the door. Feeney rolled his eyes and followed. Followed just close enough to smack his detective smartly on the side of the head with the flat of his hand.

"Ow! What the hell?"

"You know what the hell."

"Oh, fine. Great. She can rumba off with some sex-for-hire sleazebag, and nobody says a thing. I have a date and I get blind-sided."

Because he recognized misery when it was staring him in the face, Feeney scowled, drilled a finger into McNab's skinny chest. "I'm not talking about it."

"Neither am I." McNab hunched his shoulders and steamed off in a sulk.

"Peabody." Eve jumped in before her aide had the chance to speak. "Unload and file all discs, book this room for the scheduled time."

"Yes, sir." She had to swallow, hated the fact that the simple act was audible and painful.

"Check in with Monroe, see if he has any more information on Roles. Then stand by in your work area until I contact you."

"Yes, sir."

Eve waited until Peabody had finished gathering what she needed and had moved out of the room like a droid. "This is really going to suck," she decided. "Just listen, he says. A lot he knows about it."

Doing her best to push Peabody out of her mind, Eve sat down and made the call to the federal building.

"Stowe."

"Dallas. I need a meet. Just you and me. Tonight."

"I'm busy, and have no interest in meeting you tonight or anytime. Do you think I'm an idiot? Do you think I couldn't figure out who fed that reporter?"

"She eats just fine on her own." Eve waited a beat. "Winifred C. Gates" was all she said, and watched Stowe go pale.

"What about her?" she returned, with admirable composure. "She's one of Yost's likelies."

"Tonight, Stowe, unless you want me to go into detail over the 'link."

"I can't get away until seven."

"Nineteen-thirty hours, the Blue Squirrel. I'm sure a smart federal agent can find the address."

Stowe lowered her voice, moved closer to the screen. "Just you?"

"That's right. For the moment. Seven-thirty, Agent Stowe. Don't keep me waiting."

She broke transmission, checked her wrist unit and did her best to gauge her time. Feeling slightly less apprehensive than she might have if going in to face a team of chemi-heads armed with laser scalpels, she walked down to the squad room, detoured into her office for her jacket, then out to Peabody's cubicle.

"You tag Charles?"

"Yes, sir. His client met the man purporting to be Roles at a Sotheby's auction last winter. He outbid her on a painting. A Masterfield landscape, circa 2021. She believes it went for two million four."

"Sotheby's. It's after five. They'd be closed. Okay, you're with me." She started out, waited for Peabody to fall in step. "Did she have impressions?"

"Charles said she found Roles impeccably mannered, knowledgeable about art, and elegantly aloof. She admitted she'd tried to wrangle an invitation to see the painting once he had his displayed, but he didn't even nibble. Charles says she's a stunner, a real babe, mid-thirties, and falling-down rich. Since most men would have jumped at the chance, she figured he was into men. But when she tried out the chatter -- you know, who they might know, what club he patronized, and all that -- he evaded and slipped away from her."

"If she's such a babe, why does she need to hire an LC?"

"I guess because Charles is a babe, and there isn't any danger of strings. He'll do whatever she wants during the scheduled time." Peabody sighed as they stepped out into the garage. "People hire or hang with LCs for a lot of reasons. It isn't always about sex."

"Okay, okay. We'll see what we can dig up in Sotheby's tomorrow." That, she thought, might be something to tap Roarke about.

"Yes, sir. Where are we going now?"

"Up to you." Eve opened her car door, stood looking at Peabody over the roof. "Want to go get drunk?"

"Sir?"

"I had a big mess-up with Roarke not that long ago. That was my choice. It's a pretty good temporary cure."

Peabody's eyes filled, not just with tears but with gratitude. "I'd rather have ice cream."

"Yeah, most of the time, given the choice, so would I. Let's go get some ice cream."

Eve stared down at the hot fudge supreme in the dish in front of her with a combination of greed and nausea. She would no doubt eat it all. She would no doubt be ill after.

The things you had to do for a pal.

She dug in for the first spoonful. "Okay, spill it."

"Sir?"

"Let's hear what happened."

Peabody stared, more dazzled now by Eve's statement than by her own banana boat surprise. "You want me to tell you about it?"

"No, I don't want you to tell me about it. I'm telling you to tell me about it because that's how this friendship thing is supposed to work. I hear. So." She dug for more ice cream with one hand, waved a go-ahead with the other.

"That's so nice of you." Peabody got misty again, and soothed herself with non-dairy whipped topping. "We were in one of the maintenance closets, sort of fooling around, and -- "

Mouth full, Eve held up a hand, swallowed. "Excuse me, you and Detective McNab were engaged in some sexual activity on departmental property, while on duty?"

Peabody pokered up. "I'm not going to tell you if you're going to start citing regulations. Anyway, we hadn't gotten to the actual sex part yet. We were fooling around."

"Oh, well then. That's different. Cops are always fooling around in maintenance closets. Jesus, Peabody." She shut her eyes, shoveled in more fudge, breathed out. "Okay, I'm over it. Move on."

"I don't know what it is. There's this thing, this primal sort of thing."

"Oh. Ick."

Maybe it was having kick-ass Dallas say "ick," maybe it was the pained way it was said, but the response made Peabody grin and didn't bruise her feelings a bit. "I would've thought so myself until we did it. The first time was in an elevator."

"Peabody, I'm trying here. But do we have to go back that far and discuss you and McNab doing it? It puts really weird pictures in my head."

"Well, it all sort of goes together. Anyway, it's not like I'm thinking about sex with him all the time, or even the fooling around part, but then something happens and we're just, you know, doing it again. So we were fooling around..." she continued quickly, afraid of losing her audience.

"In the maintenance closet."

"Right, and Charles called on my 'link. About the case. I was getting the information from him and stuff, and when I was finished, McNab got really ugly." She filled her mouth with banana and cream and gooey caramel sauce. "He yelled at me and was like, 'What do you take me for?' And he said nasty things about Charles, who was just doing me a favor, and in an official capacity. Then he grabbed me."

"He got physical with you?"

"Yes. Well, no, not really. But he looked like he wanted to punch me. And you know what he said?" She wagged her spoon, heating up again. "You know what he said?"

"I wasn't there, remember?"

"He said he was sick and tired of playing backup fuck to a hired dick." She stabbed her spoon back into the rapidly dwindling banana boat surprise. "He said that to my face. And how I wasn't going to be popping out of his bed and into Charles's."

"I thought you weren't having sex with Charles."

"I'm not. That's beside the point."

Actually, Eve thought it was the point, then remembered her role. "McNab's an asshole."

"Damn straight."

"I don't suppose you told him you and Charles weren't doing it?"

"Hell no."

Eve nodded. "I don't guess I would have either. I'd have been too pissed off. What did you say?"

"I said how we weren't exclusive and I could see anybody I wanted, and so could he. Then, then, the bastard makes a date with some bimbo."

Since that seemed perfectly reasonable, Eve dug deep for something supportive to say. "Pig."

"I'm never speaking to him again."

"You work together."

"Okay, I'm never speaking to him again except in an official capacity. I hope he gets a suspicious rash on his gonads."

"That's a happy thought."

They pondered it and ate more ice cream.

"Peabody." Eve had a feeling she was going to hate this part of the whole support thing the most. "I'm not good at this relationship business."

"How can you say that? You and Roarke are like, perfect."

"No, nobody's perfect. We're making it work. Actually, he's done most of the work on that, but I'm sort of catching up. He's the only man I've ever had a real relationship with."

Peabody's eyes popped. "No kidding?"

Yep, Eve thought. Quicksand. "Okay, we're not getting into all that, I'm just saying this isn't my field. But if I stand back and look at this like a case, we've got three players. You, McNab, Charles." She outlined a triangle with her spoon in what was left of her sundae. "You're the connection, so each of the other point's reaction to each other springs out of their relationship with you. McNab's jealous."

"Nuh-uh, he was just being a pig."

"His classification as pig is verified. However... Peabody, you're dating Charles, right?"

"Sort of."

"You're having sex with McNab."

"Was."

"McNab assumes you're having sex with Charles." She held up her finger before Peabody could speak. "It's a wrong assumption, and it's probably stupid of him not to just ask you what's up. And even if you were sleeping with Charles you're a free agent, but, this is his assumption. You." She tapped the tip of her spoon on one point of the triangle. "Sex. Both guys. So there you are playing where's the soy sausage in the closet, then you break it off with one guy to talk on the 'link with the other."

"It was police business."

"I bet you weren't in full uniform, but regardless, McNab's there, all hot and worked up and suddenly you're talking to his competition. Knowing Charles, he didn't stick to just giving you data. He flirted. So while you're talking to Charles, McNab's growing fangs. I'm not saying he's not a moron. Obviously, he's a moron. But, well, even moronic pigs have feelings. Probably."

Peabody sat back. "You think it's my fault."

"No, I think it's Roarke's fault." At Peabody's blank look, Eve shook her head. "Never mind that. It's not a fault thing. Look, you start a personal deal with a guy you work with, there's going to be trouble. I don't think he's got any right to tell you who you can see or sleep with or whatever. But I don't think it's real smart to push his face in it either. I figure you both screwed up."

Peabody considered. "But he screwed up more."

"Absolutely."

"Okay. Okay," she repeated after a moment's thought. "I guess you're right about the triangle stuff and the reaction business. But, he's the one who jumped right on some redhead, so if McNab thinks I'm going to get whacked out because he managed to talk some stupid female into going out with him, he's more stupid than he looks."

"That's the spirit."

"Thanks, Dallas. I feel a lot better."

Eve stared into her empty dish, put a hand on her uneasy and overfull stomach. "Glad one of us does."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The one good thing about setting the meet at the Blue Squirrel after an ice-cream binge was Eve wouldn't be tempted to actually eat or drink anything in the club.

Club was a lofty word for a joint like the Squirrel, where the best thing that could be said about the music was that it was there and it was loud. As far as the menu, the only positive recommendation Eve could make was that, as far as she knew, no one had died from eating the food.

There was no reliable data on hospitalizations.

Still, even this early in the evening, the place was jammed. Spool-sized tables were crowded with orders from the after-office crowd who liked to live dangerously. The band consisted of two men wearing neon body paint and towering blue hair who appeared to be howling about bleeding for love while they pounded with long rubber sticks on dueling keyboards.

The crowd howled right back.

That was one of the things Eve loved about the Squirrel.

Since she wanted a table in the back, she pushed her way through, doing a room scan in case Stowe had beat her there. The table she staked out was currently occupied by a couple who were busy seeing who could stick whose tongue farther down whose throat. Eve broke up the contest by slapping her badge down on the table and jerking her thumb.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the group at the table to the left hurriedly stuff their party packs of illegals into all available pockets. Everyone slunk off.

The power of the badge, she thought, and sat down, got comfortable.

In her single days she'd dropped into the club on and off, most often when Mavis had been performing. But her friend had moved on to bigger and better gigs and was now one of the hottest rising singers in the business.

"Hey, hot lips, wanna get down?"

Eve glanced up, eyed the gangly club cruiser with his smirky grin and optimistically bulging crotch. When he saw where her gaze landed, he patted his pride and joy.

"Big Sammy wants to come out and play."

Big Sammy was probably fifty percent padding, minimum, and assisted by a strong dose of Stay-Up. Eve simply took her badge out again, laid it on the table, and said, "Blow."

He blew, and with the badge in full view, she was left alone to enjoy the howling and the color until Stowe came in.

"You're late."

"Couldn't be helped." Stowe squeezed around the table and sat. She nodded toward Eve's badge. "Do you have to advertise?"

"Pays to in here. Keeps the scum from surfacing."

Stowe glanced around. She'd ditched the tie, Eve noted, and had even gone crazy and unbuttoned the collar of her shirt. The federal government's employee's version of casual wear.

"You sure pick interesting spots. Is it safe to drink in here?"

"Alcohol kills off the germs. Their Zoners aren't half-bad."

Stowe ordered one from the automated menu bolted to the side of the table. "How did you find out about Winifred?"

"I'm not here to answer questions, Stowe. You are. You can start by telling me why I shouldn't take your connection to your superiors and get you, and possibly Jacoby, out of my hair."

"Why haven't you done that already?"

"You're asking questions again."

Stowe bit back what Eve imagined was a sarcastic remark. She had to admire the control. "I have to assume you're looking to deal."

"Assume anything you want. We won't get past point one until you convince me I shouldn't make a call to East Washington and the assistant director of the Bureau."

Stowe said nothing, but reached for the glass of pale blue liquid that slid through the serving slot. She studied it, but didn't drink. "I'm an over-achiever. Compulsive/competitive. When I went into college I had one specific goal. To graduate first in my class. Winifred Gates was the obstacle. I studied her as hard as I studied anything else, looking for flaws, weak spots, vulnerabilities. She was pretty, friendly, popular, and brilliant. I hated her guts."

She paused, sipped, then let out an explosive breath. "Holy Jesus Christ!" Shocked, she stared at the drink in her hand. "Is this legal?"

"Just."

Cautious, she set it down again. "She made overtures to me, friendly ones. I rebuffed them. I wasn't going to fraternize with the enemy. We pulled through the first semester, then the second, neck-in-neck. I spent the summer buried in data, studying as if my life depended on it. I learned later she'd spent hers hanging out at the beach and working part-time as an interpreter for her state senator. She was a hell of a linguist. Of course that burned my ass. Anyway, we got through half the semester that way, then one of the professors assigned us both to the same project. A team deal. Now I wasn't just competing with her, I had to work with her. Steamed me."

Something crashed behind them as a table was bumped. Stowe didn't look around, but she began to slide her drink around the table at geometric angles. "I don't know how to explain it. She was irresistible, and everything I wasn't. Warm, open, funny. Oh, God."

Grief, horribly fresh still, spurted through her. Stowe closed her eyes tight, grabbed for control. She took her time now, sipped the potent liquor in her glass. "She made me her friend. I still don't think I had a damn thing to say about it. She just... was. It changed me. She changed me. Opened me up to things. Fun and foolishness. I could talk to her about anything, or not talk at all. She was the turning point in my life, and so much more than that. She was my best friend."

Finally, Stowe lifted her gaze, met Eve's eyes. "My best friend. Do you understand what that means?"

"Yeah, I understand what it means."

Stowe nodded, closed her eyes again, steadied herself. "After graduation, she moved to Paris to work. She wanted to make a difference, and she wanted to experience while she was at it. I visited her there a few times. She had this pretty flat in the city and knew everyone in the building. She had a little goofy-looking dog she called Jacques and a dozen men in love with her. She lived huge, and she worked hard. She loved her job, the glamour, and the politics. Whenever her work brought her to East Washington, we'd get together. We could go months without seeing each other, then when we did, it was like we'd never been apart. Just that easy. We were both doing what we wanted, both moving up in our careers. It was perfect.

"About a week before... before it ended, she called me. I was on a field assignment, and didn't get the message for a few days. She didn't say a lot, just that something was going on. Something odd, and she needed to talk to me. She looked and sounded angry, with a little worry at the edges. Told me not to contact her at work, and not on her home 'link. She gave me a portable number, a new one. I thought that was weird, but I wasn't really concerned. It was late when I got in, so I decided to get back to her the next day, and went to bed. I just went to bed and slept like a goddamn baby. Fuck."

She lifted her glass again, drank deeper this time. "I got an early buzz in the morning, some complication with the case I was handling. I had to go in, and I didn't take the time to get in touch with Winnie before I left. It wasn't until the next day I even remembered about it. I took a minute to call the number she'd given me, but I didn't get a response. And I didn't follow through. I was busy, so I shrugged it off and told myself I'd try later. I never got the chance."

"She was already dead," Eve filled in.

"Yeah. She was already dead. They found her beaten and raped and strangled and dumped on the side of a road outside the city. She died two days after I got her message. Two days when I might have helped her. I never called her back. She would have gotten back to me, no matter what. She would never have been too busy to help me."

"So you accessed her case file and buried your connection to her."

"The Bureau frowns on personal involvement. They'd never have put me on Yost if they'd known why I wanted him."

"Does your partner know?"

"Jacoby's the last person I'd tell. What are you going to do?"

Eve studied Stowe's face. "I have a friend. Met her when I busted her for grifting. I never had a friend before her. If anyone hurt her, I'd hunt them down if it took the rest of my life."

Stowe drew in a shaky breath, had to look away. "Okay," she managed. "Okay."

"But understanding where you're coming from doesn't mean you get off free. Your partner's a jerk and a fuck-up, I'm betting you're not. And I'm betting you're smart enough to have thought it through now and admit that if you hadn't gotten in the way, that son of a bitch Yost would be in a cage now."

It was hard, almost painful to look back and face it. "I know it. And that's on me as much as Jacoby. I wanted to be the one to take him, and I wanted it enough to risk losing him. I won't make the same mistake again."

"Then show me your cards. Your friend worked at the Embassy. What did you find out there?"

"Next to nothing. It's hard enough to dig under the walls of politics and protocol in your own country. Try it as a foreigner. Initially, the French authorities put her death on a lover's quarrel. Like I said, she had a lot of men. But that was a wash. I looked into that myself. When they ran for like crimes, they hit on Yost. But after they looked around, they put it down to copycat."

"Why?"

"First place, she was clean. Squeaky. No connections with anything that would have drawn down a contract on her. And none of the men she'd been involved with could have afforded his fee, and if they could have, they just weren't the type. She didn't leave lovers bleeding, it wasn't Winnie's style. She was upset when she called, and didn't want me contacting her at work, so I tried poking around there."

"And?"

"The best lead I got was that Winnie'd been assigned to interpret for the ambassador's son in some diplomatic deal with the Germans and the Americans on a multinational off planet project. New communications station. It involved a lot of meetings, a lot of travel, and was virtually all she'd been doing for three weeks before she died. I got the names of the main players, but when I tried to slide through and do a deep search I sent up a million flags. These are important, rich, and protected individuals. I had to back off. I push there too hard and I've got no chance to work on the Yost investigation."

"Give me the names."

"I'm telling you, you can't dig there."

"Just give me the names, I'll worry about when and how I dig."

Shrugging, Stowe dug a memo out of her bag and coded the names in. "Jacoby's fixated on you," she said as she handed the e-memo to Eve. "He has been since before we got here. If he can give you a few professional bruises while he brings Yost down, it'll make his life complete."

"Now, you're scaring me," Eve said with a wide smile as she pocketed the memo.

"He's got contacts, he's got sources. Deep ones. You ought to take him seriously."

"I take parasites very seriously. Now, here's the way it's going to be. Whatever data you've got, whatever leads, whatever angles, you send to my home unit. Tonight."

"For Christ's sake -- "

"All of it," Eve said, edging forward. "Hold out on me, and I'll bury you before it's done. You keep me fully apprised of every move made, every source tapped, every thread tied."

"You know, I was actually starting to believe you just wanted him stopped. But it's the kick, isn't it? It's the glory at the end of the bust."

"I haven't finished," Eve said mildly. "You play that straight with me, and if I get to him first, I'll tag you. I'll do everything I can to make sure you're in on the takedown, and that you're the one to bring him in."

Stowe's lips trembled open, then firmed. "Winnie would have liked you." She stretched her arm across the little table, offered her hand. "Deal."

Eve got back in her vehicle, checked the time. It was nearly nine, which meant she couldn't manage to get all the way uptown, change into appropriate clothes for a fancy dinner, get back to midtown, and join Roarke's party by the deadline she'd given herself.

That left her two choices. She could do what she really wanted to do, ditch it, go home, take a hot shower, and wait for whatever data Stowe sent her to come through.

Or she could go to the Top of New York with its silver tables and staggering view of the city in her work clothes, sit with a bunch of people she had nothing much in common with, get home late, potentially cranky, and work until her eyes fell out of her head.

She struggled between desire and guilt, heaved a sigh, and headed to midtown.

At least she could do something with the lag time. She put through a call to Mavis's palm-link.

Noise erupted, floods and spikes of it that had Eve's ears ringing even before she saw Mavis's face on-screen. There was a new temp tattoo decorating Mavis's left cheekbone. It might have been a green cockroach.

"Hey, Dallas! Wait, wait. You in your car? Hold on, and check this out."

"Mavis -- "

But the in-dash screen went blank. A few seconds later, her friend popped onto, or partially into, the passenger's seat.

"Jesus Christ!"

"Iced, huh? I'm in the holo-room at the recording studio. We use it for video effects and stuff." Mavis looked down at herself, noticed her butt was in the seat rather than on it and hooted with laughter. "Hey, I lost my ass."

"And most of your clothes from the looks of it."

Mavis Freestone was a tiny woman, and her designer lover had obviously spared the material when he'd decked her out in what appeared to be three hot pink starbursts. They were placed precisely where the law demanded, and connected with thin silver chains.

"It really rocks, huh? There's another on my ass, but you can't see it since I'm sitting down. You caught me between sets at the studio. What's up? Where are we going?"

"I've got one of Roarke's dinner things midtown. I need a favor."

"Sure."

"I've got video of a large collection of enhancements. Top of the line junk. Can you take a look at it and put me onto the retail sources and possibly wholesale, too, most likely? They're going to need to be replaced."