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It was beautiful, exquisite, and probably worth more than the gross national product of a small country. But if she’d had to choose between it and the crap-looking vehicle, the crap would win, hands down.
“I’ve got a sex bar, a game parlor, pizza joint, and the public ball court,” Peabody began. “I could plot a route into the navi that would take us by all of them in the most efficient time frame.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“But? Come on. I give you input when you’re primary.”
“They ran out loaded with junk food, so why go to a pizza joint to hang out, especially when they’re juiced? Sex club, maybe, if they’re after a bang.”
“But?” Peabody repeated.
“They just knocked a couple of old people around. It’s unlikely they know they killed one of them. It’s all fun and games. They didn’t take any money, didn’t snatch the Ochis’ wedding rings, their wrist units, the DB’s wallet.”
“And a sex club costs,” Peabody concluded. “The bang costs more.”
“They scored junk food and proved how frosty they are. When you’re stoned, think you’re frosty, and having such a fucking good time, you want to brag, maybe smack a few more heads.”
“Game parlor or basketball. I get it. We’ll try those first. If we don’t hit, we’ll swing by the others.”
Eve nodded approval. “Better plan.”
Peabody keyed in the locations. “You really think they don’t know Ochi’s dead?”
“They’re stoned, they’re stupid, they’re major assholes. But none of them has a murder under his belt. They ran out laughing, high-fiving. Odds are if they’d known they’d done murder, they’d have finished the wife off, had a conversation, acknowledged the kill. They didn’t.”
They hit the game parlor first, found it packed. Cooler than outside, Eve thought, but the cacophony of bells, whistles, screams, roars, blasts, and the spinning, blinking, flashing lights made her wonder why anyone would want to spend a summer afternoon glued to a machine.
The pudgy, pasty-faced attendant near the entrance took a gander at the ID shots.
“Yeah, true. They game regular. Slash banged high score on Assassins couple days ago. Still standing. Gonna take it down personal when I got space ’cause he’s an asswipe.”
“Have they been in today?” Peabody asked him.
“Untrue. Night gamers mostly. Stone heads when they can get it.” He shrugged. “What do?”
“We need to talk to them.” Peabody pulled out a card. “If they come in, contact me. What’s riding top on Bust It?”
His attention focused. “You game?”
“Solid true G-bitch. Slayed the ace on Bust It.” She held up three fingers. “Triple.”
“Major ups,” he said with respect. “You wanna whirl?”
“On the move, but maybe back around.”
“Take you on,” he said with a grin.
“Set. Taking it out,” she added. “If they whirl, tag me.”
He swiped a finger over his heart and pocketed her card.
“What,” Eve demanded, “was that?”
“Maybe he’d tag us, but odds are against because he didn’t really give a shit, and I thought he might just toss the card. So I got his attention, his respect. Gamer-bop. It’s kind of stupid, but it worked.”
“True,” Eve said and made Peabody laugh.
They wound their way through traffic, past graffiti-laced prefabs tossed up after the Urban Wars where men with nothing better to do sat on crumbling stoops sucking brew and rotgut out of bottles wrapped in brown paper.
