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“About what?”
“Tell it from the beginning,” McNab suggested. “You won’t jump around so much. Just start at the top.”
“Yeah, okay. I—ah—Okay. After I finished the paperwork, I decided I’d do an hour in the gym, work on my hand-to-hand. You said it was a weak spot. I went down to the second-level facilities.”
“Jesus, why? It’s a pit.”
“Yeah.” As she’d hoped, the comment had Peabody taking a breath. “It really is, so nobody much uses it, and my gear’s old and ugly, and I just didn’t want to sweat and stuff with the hard bodies in the new space. I put in an hour, overdid it.”
Peabody raked a hand through the hair she hadn’t bothered to brush. “I was toasted, you know. Went in for a shower. I had my things stuffed in a couple of the lockers. I’d just finished, started drying off in the stall when the locker room door bangs open, and two people come in, arguing.”
“Here.” Roarke pushed a glass of wine in her hand. “Sip a bit.”
“Oh boy, thanks,” she said as he offered McNab the e-man’s favored beer. Peabody sipped, breathed. “Female, seriously pissed. I started to call out so they’d know I was in there, so they’d take the fight elsewhere, then the other one goes off. Male. I’m in the damn stall with nothing but a towel that wouldn’t cover a teacup poodle, so I sort of squeeze back into the corner, and hope they go away. But they didn’t, and I hear them talking about the operation she runs, how he fucked up and cost them ten K. God.”
“Slow down a little, Dee.” McNab murmured it while he rubbed a hand on her thigh.
“Okay. Yeah. So they keep at each other, and I realize they’re not talking about a police op, but a side one. A long-running one, Dallas. I’ve got a couple of dirty cops right outside the shower door, talking about product and profit, about houses in the islands. And murder.
“I’m naked, and trapped, and my weapon’s in the locker. So’s my’link, and they’re slamming the shower doors open—one I’d’ve been in if there’d been any damn soap in there.”
Roarke stood behind her and, reaching down, laid his hands on her shoulders and began to rub. Taking another breath, she leaned back.
“I’ve been scared before. You’ve got to be scared going into some situations or you’re just stupid. But this . . . When the fight burns out, and they’re back in control, she, like, pats my shower door, and, Jesus, it opens a little. I can see her arm, her dress, her shoes. All she has to do is shift an inch, and I’m made—back in the corner of the stall with nothing.”
Beside her, McNab continued to rub her thigh, but his pretty, narrow face hardened like stone.
“I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t risk it because I know if they see me, I’m dead. No way around it. But they leave, they never saw me. I got out, got McNab to get a cab and meet me so I could come here. So I could tell you.”
“Names?” Eve demanded, and Peabody shuddered out another breath.
“Garnet—she called the male Garnet. He called her Renee. Oberman. Renee Oberman. She was in charge.”
“Renee Oberman and Garnet. Description?”
“I didn’t get any sort of look at him, but she’s blond, between five-four and five-five, I think. She was wearing heels, but that’s about right. Caucasian. Strong voice—at least when she’s pissed.”
“Did they ever use their ranks?”
“No, but she said when she made captain, they were going to expand the business. She referred to it as a business several times. And they used to be lovers.”
“Did you run the names?” she asked McNab.
“Not yet. Peabody was pretty shaken.”
“She had somebody named Keener killed—said she had their boy take care of it, and that it would look like
an OD. Keener’s a chemi-head, and one of their tools, contacts. He tried to rabbit on them, with this ten K. Garnet was supposed to have him on a leash, but he slipped. That’s what they were fighting about. They got the ten K, too—she let Garnet know that after she’d raked him down. And she was taking ten percent of his cut as a bonus for the boy, the killer. It was a business meeting.”
“Did you get the impression they used that space often for meetings?”
“No. No, the opposite. She was really peeved he’d yanked her in there, let him know there’d be no more meets there. Six years,” Peabody remembered. “She said she’d been running the business for six years. And the way she talked about ‘the boy,’ it was clear this Keener wasn’t the first kill she’d put him on.”
“Did anyone see you enter or leave that facility?”
“No.” Peabody paused, thought it through. “No, I really don’t think so. It’s like a tomb down there.”
“Okay.”
