Obsession in Death(75)

“Gee, that’s really unfair.” Peabody rolled her eyes.

“She knows I get it, though, and has contacted me a few times with requests to work as my aide. Failing that, given her experience – for the last eight months as a skip tracer – she could be my main CI.”

“She sounds like a real winner. But the sex part doesn’t fit.”

“No, it doesn’t. But the rest does. And still, both the mother and this perennially sexually harassed skip tracer both contacted me through active e-mail accounts.”

“Still have to follow them up.”

“So we are. Mavis is in rehearsal. Mantal and Grommet are on her and Leonardo and Bella.”

“Good hands. We had Delivery Roulette with them a few weeks ago.”

“Delivery Roulette?”

“Yeah.” Though the temperature had risen enough to turn the ice to slush, Peabody kept a choke hold on the chicken stick. “Mavis tagged us, and we were just hanging, so we went down. We play it every couple months I guess – their place or ours. Easy since we’re in the same building. Security was there because she asked them to stay after the gig. What she does is spread out all the delivery menus, then you have to close your eyes, pick one – then pick a number. You have to order from that menu, and that item. It goes down the line. Hilarious when you end up with this mix of Thai, Chinese, Italian, vegan, and whatever. Ben and Steve were good sports about it.”

“Trina,” Eve remembered.

“Sure, she’s been in on it a few times.”

“No, you need to contact her because I’m not putting myself there. I want her to watch her ass while this is going on. Just text her, otherwise the two of you will start on hair or something else that makes me want to punch you.”

While Peabody made the contact, Eve hunted for parking somewhere in the vicinity of the squat, dumpy building that housed Arsenial Investigators. Giving up – the size of the All-Terrain made it next to impossible to find any suitable street parking – she bumped into a potholed lot, squeezed into a viciously overpriced slot.

“Thirty-two-fifty an hour.” She shoved the ticket into her pocket. “Whoever runs this place should be arrested for petty larceny. Make that grand larceny by the end of a single freaking day.”

“At least it stopped raining ice.”

Bright side be damned, Eve thought as they hoofed the two and a half blocks to the building.

Sidewalk sleepers, most with their beggar’s licenses displayed, camped against buildings. One with an explosion of yellow-white hair that made the bony guy look as if he’d been lightning-struck played a mournful tune on a harmonica. A couple of LCs who looked barely old enough to be legal huddled in a doorway in their microskirts and fishnets, shivering.

On the corner a glide-cart smoked. With no takers, the operator leaned against the cart munching a loaded dog.

Eve turned at a skinny flight of stairs, following the helpful pointed finger that announced:



ARSENIAL INVESTIGATORS



THIRD LEVEL



Four Aces, a pawnshop, occupied the storefront, with Madame Curracus, Palm Reader, and Office For Let occupying the second floor.

They climbed to three, buzzed at the old iron door.

At the answering buzz, Eve muscled the door open.

The reception area boasted a spindly desk, with a clunky data and communication center, and the sulky brunette who clunked away on it. The waiting area held a pair of orange plastic chairs and a coin/credit-operated bubbler.

The brunette stopped clunking, looked up with a pout. “You gotta appointment?” she demanded in a voice so nasal she could’ve warned fog-blanketed ships away from rocky shores.

Eve drew her badge. “I do now.”

The brunette shifted, and Eve saw her hand slide under the desk. Cop alert, she assumed.

“Mr. Arsenial is out of the office on an investigation. You can leave your contact information.”

“Mr. Arsenial is back in his office, probably with his feet up on his desk while he scratches his ass. I don’t care. We’re here to see Gina Tortelli.”

The brunette sniffed through her honker of a nose. “And the nature of your business?”

“Isn’t any of yours.”

“Sheesh, why you gotta be so bitchy?”

“It’s the nature of my business. Now if Mr. Arsenial’s that skittish about cops coming by, he’s probably got a reason. I can also make it the nature of my business to find out why and make his life a living hell, or you can produce Gina Tortelli.”

“Why’nt you give me a minute? Sheesh.” She turned to the ’link, punched private, picked up the handheld. “Yo, Gina. A coupla badges out here wanna see you, won’t say why. Yeah, sure. Nuh-uh. ’Kay.” She disengaged. “She’s coming out. You can sit down if you want.”

Eve glanced at the plastic chairs, imagined what kind of asses may have warmed them.

“No, thanks.”

Tortelli came out with attitude. Her data listed her at five-eight, and the laced boots added another couple inches with their thick stubbed heels. She wore her blond-streaked brown hair in short dreads. Eve thought of Hastings’s description of the attacker’s skin tone.

Café au lait, heavy on the lait.

It fit.

Tortelli’s dark eyes narrowed, flattened as recognition flickered over her face.