Connections in Death (In Death #48)(21)

“He was—got his two-year chip, worked the job. And tonight, I have reason to believe Duff gained entrance to his apartment, assisted three unknown males into same. And now he’s dead.”

“Dinnie.” Zutter puffed his cheeks, shook his head. “Dumber than a splintered post and half crazy with it. Too bad about Pick. Too damn bad. Well.” He rolled his shoulders. “Ready, Norton?”

“Born ready,” she said. “Raised to roll.”

They approached the door emblazoned with the Banger fist.





5

Zutter stepped up. “They’ve got a secret knock for the guard inside.”

Eve stared at him. “No joke?”

“No joke.” Zutter banged his fist in a quick one, two, three—pause—one, two—pause—one.

“And an unbreakable code, too.”

Zutter spread his lips in a grin. “Door guards aren’t usually their best and brightest.”

To prove it, the guard who opened the door boasted more fat than muscle, a bull ring in his nose that would cause him serious pain when anyone with sense yanked it in a fight, and a monster matching game still grring on his PPC.

“Don’t need no cops.”

“Slice wants to confab.”

“Slice wants?”

“Smelled some Dragon breath. What the what, Toro, you axe the zombies first. Icepick them crawlers, grab up the torches for frying vamps.”

Toro frowned down at the game. “Zombies first?”

While he puzzled over that, Zutter nudged the bulk of him aside to clear a path for the stairs. “Monster Hunter,” Zutter said as they walked up. “My eight-year-old kid plays it. Like I said, not the brightest.”

Eve heard banging music, throaty moans, exaggerated gasps. It didn’t take seeing the action to recognize a porn vid in play.

The stairs opened into a line of living quarters. Most stood open—a number didn’t have doors to close in the first place.

The one on the left boasted doubles, both open. The bump and grind of porn music rolled out.

“That’s Slice’s flop. He’s top captain,” Norton explained. “Well, the only captain now since recruiting’s way down, busts are up. Second-gen Banger.”

“How many flop here?”

“Hard to say. Maybe twenty, twenty-five regulars. But you could have double that before a strike. Their territory’s shrunk, and they’re clinging to what they’ve got, pushing to take back what they lost. A lot of them would die for it. Some do.”

Eve stepped to the opening. Across a wide living area on a ten-foot screen, numerous people in masks engaged in various acts of sex in some sort of fancy ballroom. The music, provided by an onstage band, hit heavy on the bass.

She judged the living space owed its size to the removal of walls to combine a couple of flops into one. Most of the furniture ran to low-rise gel sofas in shiny red and black, and most were currently occupied by couples—or threesomes—trying to mimic the action on-screen.

In the single oversized sleep chair, two women—obviously stoned—pawed and crawled lugubriously over a male. He gave tits and ass absent strokes with one hand, worked his PPC with the other.

Zoner smoke, with a chaser of Erotica, hung in the air like dreamy fog.

A dozen people, Eve counted, with most too naked to conceal any weapon. Still, she kept a hand on her own when she rapped a fist against the jamb.

“NYPSD.”

The few people not completely dazed with drugs or sex, scrambled. The man in the chair just shoved one of the women to the floor, waved away the second. And with a half-smile, adjusted his erection back in his pants.

Mixed race, with skin the color of Peabody’s coffee regular, he had hard dark eyes and a long, thin scar down his left cheek, a tat of a blade dripping blood on the other.

He wore his hair in tight black-and-red braids that rained down his back from a band at his nape. The black, long-sleeved tee didn’t quite hide another slicing scar down the side of his throat.

She saw one of the naked guys start to reach under the gel couch, then freeze when both air rifles gave their cocking snicks.

“Yo now, everybody just chill it, right?” Slice spoke in a gravelly baritone, kept that half-smile in place. “We got us some company. I know you.” He pointed a long finger, bumpy at the knuckles at Eve. “Sure I do. Seen you right up there.”

He gestured to the screen and a closeup of swollen genitalia hard at work.

“Y’all bring me a famous cop and her rich man. We need some refreshments! Bulge, get some clothes on and go on down there and pull Toro off the door. Mofo doesn’t have the sense to tell us we got company.”

“Everybody’s fine right where they are,” Eve said. “We’re looking for Dinnie Duff.”

“What you want with that little ho?”

“I’ll talk to her about that.”

“Now she’s a ho for sure, but she’s my ho. We look after our own, don’t we?” he said to the room at large. “You here to give her trouble?”

“Is she in the house?”

Slice bared his teeth at her, a grin and a challenge all at once. “Got your hard ass on tonight, do you?”

“It’s always on. Is she worth a raid? There’s enough Zoner hanging in the air for me to haul every one of you in.”