J. Robb: Indulgence in death

Eve started to sit as the music flew out again, but Brian grabbed her, gave her a swing. “I’ll have a dance, Lieutenant darling.”

“I don’t do that. The dance thing.”

“You do tonight.”

Apparently she did. And so did everyone else until the middle of the night, when her legs were rubber and barely carried her to bed.

Where the rooster woke her at dawn.

They said some good-byes over breakfast. Good-byes included a great many hugs, a lot of kissing. Or, in the case of Brian, being lifted right off her feet.

“I’ll come courting the minute you’re done with that one.”

What the hell , she thought, and kissed him back. “Okay, but he’s got some miles in him yet.”

He laughed, turned to slap hands with Roarke. “Lucky bastard. Take care of yourself, and her.”

“The best I can.”

“I’m walking you to the car.” Sinead took Roarke’s hand. “I’m going to miss you.” She smiled at Eve as they walked through misting rain. “Both of you.”

“Come for Thanksgiving.” Roarke squeezed her hand.

“Oh…”

“We’d like all of you to come again, as you did last year. I can make the arrangements.”

“I know you can. I would love it. I think I’d be safe in saying we’d all love it.” She sighed, just leaned into Roarke for a moment. Then she drew back, kissed his cheek. “From your mother,” she murmured, then kissed the other. “From me.” Then laid her lips lightly to his. “And from all of us.”

She repeated the benediction on Eve before blinking her damp eyes.

“Go on now, go enjoy your holiday. Safe journey.” She grabbed Roarke’s hand another moment, spoke in Irish, then backed up, waving them away.

“What did she say?” Eve asked when they got into the car.

“Here’s love, she said, to hold until next we meet and I give you more.”

He watched her in the rearview until they’d turned out of sight.

In the silence Eve stretched out her legs. “I guess you are a pretty lucky bastard.”

It made him smile; he sent her a quick, cocky look. “As they come,” he agreed.

“Eyes on the road, Lucky Bastard.”

She tried not to hold her breath all the way to the airport.

IT WAS GOOD TO BE HOME. DRIVING DOWNTOWN to Cop Central through ugly traffic, blasting horns, hyping ad blimps, belching maxibuses just put her in a cheerful mood.

Vacations were great, but to Eve’s mind New York had it all and a bag of soy chips.

The temperature might have been as brutal as a tax audit, with sweaty waves of heat bouncing off concrete and steel, but she wouldn’t trade her city for any place on or off planet.

She was rested, revved, and ready for work.

She rode the elevator up from the garage, shuffling over as more cops squeezed in on every floor. When she felt the oxygen supply depleting, she pried her way out to take the glides the rest of the way up.

It smelled like home, she thought-cop, criminal, the pissed off, the unhappy, the resigned. Sweat and bad coffee merged together in an aroma she wasn’t sure could be found anywhere but a cop shop.

And that was fine with her.

She listened to a beanpole of a man in restraints mutter his mantra as a pair of uniforms muscled him up the glide.

Fucking cops, fucking cops, fucking cops.

It was music to her ears.

She stepped off, angled toward Homicide, and spotted Jenkinson, one of her detectives, studying the offerings at Vending with a hopeless expression.

“Detective.”

He brightened slightly. “Hey, Lieutenant, good to see you.”

He looked as if he’d slept in his clothes for a couple days.

“You pull a double?”

“Caught one late, me and Reineke.” He settled on something that looked like a cheese Danish if you were blind in one eye. “Just wrapping it up. Vic’s in a titty bar over on Avenue A, getting himself a lap dance. Asshole comes in, starts it up. The titty doing the lap dance is his ex. Gives her a couple smacks. The guy with the hard-on clocks him. Asshole gets hauled out. He goes home, gets his souvenir Yankees baseball bat, lays in wait. Vic comes out, and the asshole jumps him. Beat the holy shit out of him and left his brains on the sidewalk.”

“High price for a lap dance.”

“You’re telling me. Asshole’s stupid, but slippery.” Jenkinson ripped the wrapping off the sad-looking Danish, took a resigned bite. “Leaves the bat and runs. We got wits falling out of our pockets, got his prints, got his name, his address. Slam-fucking-dunk. He doesn’t go home and make our lives easier, but what he does, a couple hours after, is go to the ex’s. Brings her freaking flowers he dug up out of a sidewalk planter deal. Dirt’s still falling off the roots.”

“Classy guy,” Eve observed.

“Oh, yeah.” He downed the rest of the Danish. “She won’t let him in-stripper’s got more sense-but calls it in while he’s crying and banging on the door, and dumping flower dirt all over the hallway. We get there to pick him up, and what does he do? He jumps out the freaking window end of the hall. Four flights up. Still holding the damn flowers and trailing dirt all the way.”

He shifted to order coffee with two hits of fake sugar. “Got the luck of God ’cause he lands on a couple chemi-heads doing a deal down below-killed one of them dead, other’s smashed up good. But they broke his fall.”

Deeply entertained, Eve shook her head. “You can’t make this shit up.”

“Gets better,” Jenkinson told her, slurping coffee. “Now we got to chase his ass. I go down the fire escape-and let me tell you smashed chemi-heads make one hell of a mess-Reineke goes out the front. He spots him. Asshole runs through the kitchen of an all-night Chinese place, and people are yelling and tumbling like dice. This fucker is throwing shit at us, pots and food and Christ knows. Reineke slips on some moo goo something, goes down. Hell no, you can’t make this shit up, LT.”

He grinned now, slurped more coffee. “He heads for this sex joint, but the bouncer sees this freaking blood-covered maniac coming and blocks the door. The bouncer’s built like a tank-so the asshole just bounces off him like a basketball off the rim, goes airborne for a minute and plows right into me. Jesus. Now I’ve got blood and chemi-head brains on me, and Reineke’s hauling ass over, and he’s covered with moo goo. And this asshole starts yelling police brutality. Took some restraint not to give him some.

“Anyway.” He blew out a breath. “We’re wrapping it up.”

Was it any wonder she loved New York?

“Good work. Do you want me to take you off the roll?”

“Nah. We’ll flex a couple hours, grab some sleep up in the crib once the asshole’s processed. You look at the big picture, boss? All that, over a pair of tits.”

“Love screws you up.”

“Fucking A.”

She turned into the bullpen, acknowledged “heys” from cops finishing up the night tour. She walked into her office, left the door open. Detective Sergeant Moynahan had, as she’d expected, left her desk pristine. Everything was exactly as it had been when she’d walked out her office door three weeks before, except cleaner. Even her skinny window sparkled, and the air smelled vaguely-not altogether unpleasantly-like the woods she’d walked through in Ireland.

Minus the dead body.

She programmed coffee from her AutoChef and, with a satisfied sigh, sat at her desk to read over the reports and logs generated during her absence.

Murder hadn’t taken a holiday during hers, she noted, but her division had run pretty smooth. She moved through closed and open cases, requests for leave, overtime, personal time, reimbursements.