Reunion in Death (In Death #14)(85)

...

Meat was not the operative word in meatball sandwich. It consisted of a couple of hunks of tough bread softened up by an ocean of rusty red sauce and between which swam a trio of ball-like substances, which where, perhaps, some distant cousin to the meat family. To disguise this very loose connection, they were coated with a stringy cheese substitute and spiced so generously they set the average mouth on fire, and successfully cleared the sinuses.

They were both disgusting and delicious. The smell woke Eve out of a dead sleep.

"I got the jumbo and had them cut it in half." Peabody was already driving away from the deli in the steady, cautious manner that normally drove Eve insane. "Figured you for a tube of Pepsi this time of day."

"What? Yeah." Her mind was dull as chamber music. "Jeez. How long was I out?"

"About twenty, but you were at rock bottom. I kept waiting for you to snore, but you sleep like a corpse. Got some color back though."

"It's the fumes from the meatballs." Eve broke open the tube, took a huge glug of Pepsi before taking mental inventory. The headache had backed off, and so had the vague other-worldly feeling that had been creeping up on her. "Where are you heading, Peabody, and what century will we be in when we get there at this snail's pace?"

"I'm simply obeying the city traffic laws while showing courtesy and respect for my fellow drivers. But I'm glad you're feeling better, and I figured since we're in midtown and it's a nice day, we could eat these outside at Rockefeller Plaza. Fuel up, sneer at the tourists, and grab some rays."

It didn't sound half-bad. "No shopping of any kind."

"The thought never crossed my mind. For more than a minute."

Peabody eased down the pedestrian walkway off Fiftieth, slid the front wheel onto the curb, parked, and flipped up the on duty sign.

"What was that about obeying city traffic laws?"

"That's driving, this is parking. No point in being obsessive about it."

They got out, wound their way through the pack of tourists, lunchers, messengers, and the street thieves who loved them, and plopped down on a bench in the plaza with the ice rink at their backs.

Peabody divided the tower of napkins and handed Eve her half of the sandwich. And they got down to the serious business of eating.

Eve couldn't remember the last time she'd taken an actual lunch break, one where she'd had what passed for real food somewhere other than at her desk or in the car.

It was noisy and crowded, and the temperature was deciding whether it would settle for really warm or inch up all the way to hot. Sun lasered off the glass fronts of shops and a vender putting along on a mini glide-cart sang some soaring aria from an Italian opera.

"La Traviata." Peabody let out a gusty sigh. "I've been to the opera some with Charles. He really gets off on it. Mostly it's okay, but it sounds better out here. This is the best part of New York. Being able to sit out here and eat this really superior meatball sandwich on a summer afternoon and see all these different kinds of people while some guy hawks soy dogs and sings in Italian."

"Um" was the best Eve could manage with a full mouth as she managed to save her shirt from a wayward gush of sauce.

"Sometimes you forget to look around and notice and appreciate it. You know, the diversity and all. When I first moved here I did a lot of walking and gawking, but that wears off. How long have you been here? In the city?"

"I don't know." Frowning, Eve sucked in another bite. She'd bolted out of foster care, out of the system the second she'd been of legal age. And straight into the Academy, into another section of the system. "About twelve, thirteen years, I guess."

"Long time. You forget to notice stuff."

"Uh-huh." Eve kept eating, but her attention was on a clutch of tourists and the slick-looking airskater who dogged them. He made the snatch clean, dipping skilled fingers into two back pockets without breaking rhythm. The wallets vanished as he did a fancy turn and veered away.

Eve merely shot out her leg, catching his shins and sending him into a short but graceful swan dive. When he rolled, she pressed a booted foot to his throat. She munched on her sandwich until his vision cleared, then waved her badge in front of him and jerked a thumb at the uniformed Peabody.

"You know, ace, I can't figure if you're stupid or cocky, lifting wallets with a couple of cops in the audience. Peabody, you want to confiscate the contents of this moron's pockets?"

"Yes, sir." She hustled up, went through the half-dozen pockets and slits in the baggy trousers, the three in the loose shirt, and came up with ten wallets.

"The two you got out of the right knee slit belong to them." She gestured toward the happily unaware tourists who were taking holo-shots of each other. "Brown-haired guy with sunshades, blonde guy with the Strikers ballcap. Why don't you save them some shock and dismay and return them before you call in a beat cop to deal with the rest."

"Yes, sir. Lieutenant, I never saw the move."

Eve licked sauce off her fingers. "We all notice different kinds of stuff, Peabody."

As her aide rushed off, the street thief decided to try his luck. But as he started to scramble up, Eve bore down, closing off his windpipe for ten warning seconds. "Ah, ah, ah." She wagged a finger at him and polished off her tube of Pepsi.