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She paused a moment. “You were going to be a rich man. Important. That was the goal.”
“It was.”
“But you never buried who you were under that goal.”
“You see the parallels, and wonder. For me, the legal lines were . . . options. More, they were challenges. And I had Summerset, as a kind of compass at a time when I might have taken a much darker path.”
“You wouldn’t have taken it. Too much pride.”
His brow winged up. “Is that so?”
“You always knew it wasn’t just the money. Money’s security, and it’s a symbol. But it’s not the thing. It’s knowing what to do with it. Lots of people have money. They make it or they take it. But not everybody builds something with it. He wouldn’t have. Lino. If he’d gotten the rich, he’d still never have gotten the important. And, for a short time, he stole the important.”
“The priest’s collar.”
“In the world he came back to, that made him important. I bet he liked the taste of it, the power of it. It’s why he could stick it out so long.”
“A little too long, obviously.”
“Yeah.” How much longer had he needed to go? she wondered. How much longer before he’d have collected on those riches and that honor? “Teresa may not be able to confirm the ID—actually, I can’t figure how she could. But it’s Lino Martinez in that steel drawer downtown. Now I just have to figure out who wanted him dead, and why.”
Maybe Joe Inez would have some of the answers. Eve studied the twelve-story apartment building, a tidy, quiet block of concrete and steel with an auto-secured entrance and riot bars on the windows of the first two levels.
She bypassed security with her master and took a scan of the small lobby. It smelled faintly of citrus cleaner and boasted a fake fichus tree in a colorful pot and two chairs arranged together on a speckled white floor.
“He’s 2A.” She eschewed the two skinny elevators and took the stairs with Roarke. Muted sounds leaked from apartments into the corridor—shows on entertainment screens, crying babies, salsa music. But the walls and doors were clean, as the lobby had been. The ceiling lights all gleaming.
From a glance, Inez did his job.
She knocked on 2A. The door opened almost immediately. A boy of around ten with a wedge of hair flopping over his forehead in the current style of airboard fanatics stood slurping on a sports drink. “Yo,” he said.
“Yo,” Eve said. “I’d like to speak to Joe Inez.” She held up her badge.
The badge had him lowering the drink, and his eyes going wide with a combination of surprise and excitement. “Yeah? How come?”
“Because.”
“You got a warrant or anything?” The kid leaned on the open door, took another slurp of his bright orange drink. As if, Eve thought, they were hanging out at the game. “They always ask that on the screen and stuff.”
“Your father do anything illegal?” Eve countered, and the boy phffted out a breath.
“As if. Dad! Hey, Dad, cops are at the door.”
“Mitch, quit screwing around and get back to your homework. Your mom’s gonna . . .” The man who walked in from another room, wiping his hands on his pants, stopped short. Eve saw the cop awareness come into his eyes. “Sorry. Mitch, go finish getting the twins settled in.”
“Aw, come on.”
“Now,” Inez said, and jerked his thumb.
The boy muttered under his breath, hunched his shoulders, but headed in the direction his father indicated.
“Can I help you with something?” Inez asked.
“Joe Inez?”
“That’s right.”
Eve looked, deliberately, at the tattoo on his left forearm. “Soldados.”
