J. Robb - Treachery in Death

“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.”

“Father issues? Boo-hoo. Dad was so busy being a cop he didn’t pay enough attention to me, or he was too strict, expected too much. Whatever. So now I’ll take my own badge and smear shit all over it. That’ll teach him.”

“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.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Roarke,” she began, and listed the address. “Date and time stamp on record.”

The building had likely been a small warehouse or factory at some point, and scooped up in the rehab-crazed pre-Urbans. Since, it might have served as sorry shelter for itinerants or a chemi-den—probably both at one time or another.

The rusted and broken chain and padlock drooping from the door proved security measures had been half-assed to begin with, and long since breached.

But the shiny new lock caught her interest.

“Cold weather hole,” Eve said. “Nobody much wants to be inside the dirt and stink in high summer. Still ...” She nodded at the lock. “Somebody put that on recently.” She started forward, digging for her master.

The man who jumped out of the shadows boasted a half acre of wide shoulders. He bared his teeth in an ugly grin that demonstrated dental hygiene wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

Eve imagined it was his six-inch sticker and what he took as a couple of easy marks that put the grin on his face.

“Take care of that, will you?” she asked Roarke.

“Of course, darling.” He gave the man currently jabbing playfully at him with the blade a pleasant smile. “Something I can do for you?”

“Gonna spill your guts all over the street, then I’m gonna fuck your woman. Gimme the wallet, the wrist unit. Ring, too.”

“I’m going to do you a favor, as even if you managed to spill my guts all over the street—and odds are against you—if you tried to touch my woman she’d break your dick off like a twig then stick it up your arse.”

“Gonna bleed.”

When the man lunged, Roarke danced easily to the side, pivoted with an elbow jab to the kidneys. The responding oof! had the ring of surprise, but the assailant spun around with a vicious slice Roarke evaded with another pivot. He followed it by slamming his foot against the big man’s kneecap.

“Stop playing with him,” Eve called out.

“She tends to be strict,” Roarke commented, and when the man—grimacing now—lunged again, he kicked the knife arm, sharp at the elbow. Even thugs can scream, he thought, and caught the knife as it flew out of the man’s quivering hand.

“And here comes the favor.” No longer pleasant, no longer smiling, Roarke’s iced-blues met the man’s pain-filled eyes. “Run.”

As the footsteps slapped down the sidewalk, Eve watched Roarke press the mechanism on the sticker to retract the blade.

“If you’re thinking of keeping that, you’d better dump it in an autoclave first chance. Ready?”

Roarke slipped the knife in his pocket, nodded as he joined her at the door.

She drew her weapon, rested it across her flashlight, angling away so the recording wouldn’t show Roarke doing the same.

They went through the door, swept left, right.

She kicked aside trash to clear a path. Mold laced with stale urine and fresher vomit smeared the air. She judged the main source as a pile of blankets, stiff as cardboard and too hideous to tempt even a sidewalk sleeper.

“Clear the level.”

They moved in, sweeping lights, weapons. Doors, wiring, sections of floorboard and stair treads—anything that could be used or sold—had been torn out, pulled down, and hauled off, leaving raw holes, toothy gaps.

She studied the open elevator shaft. “How the hell did they get the elevator door out of here, and what did they do with it?”

“Mind your step,” Roarke said as she started up the stairs, striding over the wide holes.

On the second level she shined her light over broken syringes, bits of utensils, and pots eaten through by chemicals and heat. She considered the splintered stool, the tiny, scorched table, the shattered glass and starbursts of burns on the floor, the walls.

“Somebody had a little lab accident,” she commented.

She jerked her chin toward the bare mattresses stained by substances she didn’t particularly want to think about. Remnants of fast-food containers lay scattered where she imagined they’d been picked over by vermin of the two- and four-legged varieties.

“Living where they worked, for a while.”

Roarke studied the filth. “I can’t say I love what they’ve done with the place.”