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“Do you think women like that are born like that?” Peabody began. “Chief Angelo. I mean, so they pump out hot and sexy with every breath, but in a really classy way?”
“There are probably training courses.”
“Sign me up.”
“If you wouldn’t mind putting your hot and sexy aspirations on hold, we could actually focus on our current investigation. Just for the hell of it.”
“I think everybody has hot and sexy aspirations,” Peabody considered, “except those that already are. But I am totally focused on our current investigation. I assume Lieutenant Oberman sent you the required data.”
“She did.”
“I don’t think she was too happy about it.” Peabody shrugged. “I guess some handlers are pretty territorial about their weasels, even when the weasel’s dead.”
“Maybe even more so. Did the lab ID that lock?”
“I’ve got the make and model. The report says it hadn’t been installed more than a couple of days. It’s actually an interior lockset—cheap and available in pretty much any place that deals in locks. It hadn’t been picked or tampered with,” Peabody continued. “I’ve got the full report.”
“Sweepers, interior?”
“Not in yet. You asked for a second level.”
“Right. How pissed was Renee?” Eve asked when they got in the vehicle.
“I’m going to say controlled fury. She didn’t like getting the nudge, and my take is liked it less getting it from your subordinate. What she really didn’t like was my very courteous—as directed—statement that you had copied and informed the commander.”
“Good.” Perfect, in fact. “She’ll be stewing over that for a while.”
Pleased with the idea, Eve drove through thickening traffic to the ugly slab of a building squatting between a low-rent sex club and a windowless bar.
“Not much better than the hole he died in,” she decided. “And less than three blocks away. Not a bright bulb, our Juicy, even when he was breathing.”
The lock on the entrance of the building was still intact. No point busting it, she thought. Who’d want to break into a place where nobody had anything anyway?
She mastered it open, started up the stairs directly across from the door.
The tags on the walls were all sex or drug related, and the scent hanging in the overheated air reeked of both, with a sticky thread of old garbage weaving through. Someone’s choice of music banged on the walls like hammers against someone else’s choice of a screaming game show. On the second level a rail-thin cat hardly bigger than a rat sprawled.
“Oh, poor little kitty.” Even as Peabody reached out a hand, the cat leaped to its feet, arched its back, bared its teeth with a throaty hiss.
Peabody missed having her hand raked open to the bone by inches.
“Jesus. Vicious little bastard.”
“That’ll teach you to be so soft-hearted and friendly.”
Eve moved up to the third level, down the grimy corridor—taking her time for the benefit of anyone peering through a peep.
“Record on.” She bypassed Keener’s locks.
His flop was a few shaky steps up from his final resting place. But even that was a vast improvement. It stank of sweat, rolled with heat, and carried the added perfume from the mostly empty takeout cartons and boxes.
“Chinese, Thai, pizza, and what I think used to be a gyro. A regular U.N. of disgusting, undiscarded food. Juicy was a pig.” She eyed the unmade daybed. “Still that looks more comfortable than the ratty mattress in his hole, so he definitely made a few sacrifices to hide out.”
Single room, Eve thought, no bigger than her office. No AutoChef, no Friggie, no bathroom attached—which meant the flop and all or most of the others on the level shared one, likely at the end of the hall.
Still he had eight locks and bolts on his door, another set on the single window.
“Okay, let’s toss it.”
