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“Not today.”
“You taking those people to jail?”
“The uniforms are taking them. They don’t need the top bitch cop to turn the key,” she said, anticipating him. “Where are your digs, Tiko?”
He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t think I got digs?”
“If you’ve got them, tell me where so I can take you.”
“Round the corner. Apartment on the third floor, above the Greek place. Told you this was my yard.”
“Yeah, you did. Break it down. Let’s go.”
He wasn’t happy about it, she could see, but he did it. “Cost me five easy, quitting this early when I took off to go down and get you.”
“I bought you a fizzy.”
Because his stony stare appealed to her, she dug out some credits. Counted fifty. “That’s ten percent of the five you say you lost. I figure it covers your time and your transportation.”
“Solid.” The credits disappeared into one of several pockets. “You stun any of those people in there?”
“No.” What the hell, Eve thought. She could add some juice to the fifty. “But the woman screamed like a girl and tried to run. I told her to drop, or I’d stun her.”
“Would ya?”
“Damn right. They’d stolen from a lot of people, and they were making dupe cards in the back. Looks like they were lifting IDs, too.”
He shook his head in disgust. “Stealing’s lazy.”
Intrigued, she looked down at him. “Is it?”
“Shit, yeah. Any lazy dumbass can steal. Takes brains and some juice to make money. We up here.” He opened a door next to a tiny gyro place. The closet-sized lobby held an elevator. On it the Out of Order sign looked about a decade old. Eve climbed the stairs with the boy. The place smelled like onions and garlic, not entirely unpleasant. The walls were dingy, the steps stained and steep.
She imagined him climbing up and down them every day, hauling his case. Yeah, it took some juice.
On the third floor, he dug out a set of keys from one of his pockets, unlatched three locks. “You can come in if you want to meet my granny.”
Something was cooking. Eve caught the tomatoey scent when she stepped into the tiny room, which was sparse and lace-curtain tidy.
“That my boy?” someone called through a narrow doorway.
“Yes, ma’am, Granny. I got somebody with me.”
“Who you got?” The woman who stepped out of the doorway held a short-handled wooden spoon. Her hair was a white ball of fluff over a face mapped with wrinkles. But her eyes beamed that same vivid green as the boy’s. She wore a baggy brown sweater and pants over her thin frame.
Fear came into those eyes, and knowledge with it. She might as well have shouted Cop! and thrown her hands in the air like the counterman.
“There’s no trouble here,” Eve said.
“This is my granny. Granny, this is Loo-tenit Dallas. She’s the top…She’s a police.”
“He’s a good boy.” The woman held out a hand so Tiko hurried to her, and she held him tight against her side.
“He’s not in trouble.”
“We got them, Granny, that’s what we did. We got them good.”
“Who? What’s this about?”
