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“It may also be because Peredyne’s listed as an arm of Iris Sommer Memorial.”
“I.S. Clever. Well, you’re more clever since you found it. I need to run it to make sure it’s not—”
“Already doing it,” he told her. “And . . . there’s no listing in New York for either of those companies. It’s a shell within a shell.”
She turned, rushed out to the bullpen. “Baxter.”
“Nice job, Dallas.” He gave her a wink, a salute. “I love going off the roll on the upside.”
“You’re not going off the roll. Conference room, five minutes. Trueheart, with Baxter.”
“But—”
She simply turned and pulled her new communicator out of her pocket as she got moving. “Feeney,” she said. “We found the bastard’s hole. Conference room. Now.”
“I want to play,” Roarke told her.
“You’ve earned it.” She caught herself before she grabbed him, kissed him, right in front of a corridor full of cops. Instead, she sent him a fierce grin. “Get me a tube of Pepsi, will you?”
In under ninety minutes, Eve had the pretty brick town house in the West Village covered. Cops in soft clothes sat at a bistro table outside a tiny restaurant, hunched in vehicles, strolled the sidewalks. Eve bought a soy dog from a glide-cart manned by Jenkinson.
“Some of them give tips,” he said. “I’m keeping the tips.”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Maybe he rabbited, LT.” He handed her the dog.
“No reason to. The son didn’t make a call, hasn’t asked to yet. If he thinks about it, makes the demand, we can stall him. As far as Pauley knows, the fruit of his fucking loins is busy killing an old woman.”
Roarke took the second dog, strolled away with Eve. “I could easily get in the place.”
“Yeah, and that’s what we’ll do if he doesn’t show in another hour. We’ve got our warrant. But since the sensors show the place is empty, I’d rather wait.”
She bit into the dog. “We wait until he comes back, until he’s in that little gated area. Nowhere to run. Jesus, Louise’s place is only a block away. I practically walked by this place a few days ago. I might’ve passed the bastard on the street.”
Roarke took her hand, laced his fingers with hers. “Part of our cover,” he said easily.
“Sure. He’s not home because he’s out somewhere he can be seen, where he can buy something, get a time-stamped receipt. Just in case. It’s always been about covering his own ass.”
A difficult topic for a pretty summer evening, Roarke thought, but she needed to talk it through. “Why mold the boy into a killer?”
“Maybe he didn’t have to mold that much. Hell if I know. That’s for Mira or someone like her. I have to figure, maybe it ate at him some. Maybe it was his way to turn it around, not just so he’d be a hero to Darrin, but so he could believe what he was spewing. Everyone else’s fault, everyone else is to blame. Punish them.”
“Will the reasons matter to you?”
“No. I don’t think they will.”
“Dallas?”
She turned, saw Charles Monroe, groom-to-be, smiling as he hurried toward them. “Shit.”
“What in the world are you two doing around here? I left your place less than an hour ago. I thought there were major plans for the ladies tonight.”
“There are. They should be doing some . . . thing right now.” What the hell, she thought, it was good cover. Just some friends running into each other on the street. “This isn’t your block.”
“No. I’m just out walking off some nerves. Tomorrow’s . . . it.”
“You don’t look a bit nervous to me,” Roarke commented.
