Conspiracy in Death

CHAPTER FIVE

Most people were creatures of habit. Eve figured a second rate chemi-dealer who enjoyed gobbling up his own products would follow the rule. If memory served, Ledo liked to spend his worthless days fleecing suckers at Compu-Pool or Sexcapades at a nasty little joint called Gametown.

She didn't think a few years in a cage would have changed his recreational choices.

In the bowels of downtown, the buildings were slicked with filth, the streets scattered with it. After a recycling crew had been attacked, their bones broken and their truck destroyed, the union had crossed this four-block section off the list. There wasn't a city employee who ventured into what was known as the Square without combat gear and stunners. It was in their contract.

Eve wore a riot vest under her jacket and had ordered Peabody to do the same. It wouldn't keep them from getting their throats slit, but it would stop a knife to the heart.

"Put your stunner on wide range," Eve ordered, and though Peabody exhaled sharply, she said nothing.

Her run on cults that linked any knowns to the type of murder they were investigating had turned up nothing. She'd been relieved. Having dealt with that kind of terror and butchery once, Peabody knew she'd live happily never having to deal with it again.

But as they drove into the Square, she thought she'd take a few bloodthirsty Satan worshipers over the residents of this sector any day of the week.

The streets weren't empty, but they were quiet. Action here waited for dark. The few who loitered in doorways or roamed the sidewalks did so with their eyes sharp and moving, their hands in pockets that held a weapon of choice.

Midway down a block, a Rapid Cab rested on its roof like an upturned turtle. Its windows were smashed, its tires stripped, and several interesting sexual suggestions had already been spray painted over its sides.

"Driver must have been brain damaged to bring a fare down here," Eve muttered as she swung around the abandoned cab.

"What does that make us?" Peabody asked.

"Tough-ass cops." Eve grinned and noted that while the graffiti looked very fresh, there were no signs of blood.

Eve spotted two beat droids in full riot gear making their pass in an armored black and white. She flagged them, holding her badge to the window.

"The driver make it out?"

"We were in the vicinity and dispersed the crowd." The droid in the passenger's seat smiled just a little. Occasionally some E-man programmed a beat droid with a sense of humor. "We secured the driver and transported him to the edge of the sector."

"Cab's a dead loss," she commented, then forgot it. "You know Ledo?"

"Sir." The droid nodded. "Convicted illegals manufacturer and distributor." That faint smile again. "Rehabilitated."

"Yeah, right. He's a pillar of the community now. He still hang down in Gametown?"

"It is his known area of amusement."

"I'm leaving my car here. I want it in one piece when I get back." She activated all anti-theft and vandalism alarms and deterrents, then stepped out and chose her mark.

He was lanky, mean-eyed, and sipping mechanically from a brown brew bottle as he leaned against a scarred steel wall decorated with various suggestions on sexual activities that ran along the same lines as those decorating the overturned cab. Several were misspelled, but the visual aids weren't bad.

As Peabody fought to keep her heart from blocking her throat, Eve strode up to him, leaned into his face. "You see that car?"

His mouth turned up in a sneer. "Looks like a cop-bitch car to me."

"That's right." She caught his free hand by the wrist, twisting it hard before he could reach into his pocket. "And if I come back and see that anybody's messed with it, this cop-bitch is going to kick your balls into your throat, then tie them around your neck and choke you with them. You got that?"

He wasn't sneering now. Color had flooded into his cheeks, rage shined in his eyes. But he nodded.

"Good." She released him, stepped back, then turned and walked away without looking back.

"Jesus, Dallas, Jesus. Why did you do that?"

"Because now he's got an investment in making sure we've got transpo when we leave. That type doesn't mess with cops. He just thinks mean thoughts. Usually," Eve added with a wicked grin as they started down the dirty metal stairs to the underground.

"That's a joke, right? Ha ha?" Peabody's fingers twitched over the weapon strapped to her side.

"Watch your back," Eve said mildly as they plunged into the gloomy, urine-colored light of New York's underbelly.

Slime, Eve mused, had to breed somewhere. This was ripe ground for it. Below the streets, out of the air, into the deep, dank world of unlicensed whores and doomed addicts.

Every few years, the mayor's office made noises about cleaning up the underground. Every few years, the talk channels on-screen debated and condemned. Occasionally, a quick, half-assed police and security sweep was employed, a handful of losers picked up and tossed in cages, some of the worst of the joints shut down for a day or two.

She'd been on one of those sweeps during her days in uniform, and she hadn't forgotten the bowel-loosening terror, the screams, the flash of blades or stink of homemade boomers.

She hadn't forgotten that Feeney had been her trainer then as she was Peabody's now. And he'd gotten her through it whole.

Now she kept her pace brisk while her gaze scanned side to side.

Music echoed: harsh, clashing sounds that battered the walls and the closed doors of the clubs. The tunnels weren't heated, not any longer, and her breath whooshed out in white puffs and vanished into the yellow light.

A used-up whore in a ragged peacoat completed financial transactions with a used-up John. Both eyed her, then Peabody's uniform before slinking away to get to the heart of the deal.

Someone had built a barrel fire in one of the spit-narrow alleyways. Men huddled around it, exchanging credits for little packs of illegals. All movement stopped when she came to the head of the alley, but she kept walking by.

She could have risked broken bones and blood, called for backup, rousted them. And they or others like them would have been dealing death over the smelly fire by nightfall.

She'd learned to accept that not everything could be changed, not everything could be fixed.

She followed the snake of the tunnel, then paused to study the flashing lights of Gametown. The murky reds and blues didn't look celebrational, pumping against the sickly yellow overheads. Somehow they looked both sly and hopeless to her, like the aging whore she'd just passed in the tunnels.

And they reminded her of another garish light, pulsing red against the dirty window of the last dirty room she'd shared with her father. Before he'd raped her that final time.

Before she'd killed him and left that beaten young girl behind.

"Sir?"

"I don't remember her," Eve murmured as the memories threatened to wash over and drown her.

"Who? Lieutenant? Dallas?" Uneasy with the blank look in Eve's eyes, Peabody tried to look everywhere at once. "Who do you see?"

"Nobody." She snapped back, infuriated that her stomach muscles quivered with the memory flash. It happened now and again. Something would trigger those memories and the fear and guilt that swam with them. "Nobody," she said again. "We go in together. You stay with me, follow my moves. If things get sticky, don't worry about procedure. Play dirty."

"Oh, you bet." Swallowing hard, Peabody stepped up to the door, then through, shoulder to shoulder with Eve.

There were games and plenty of them. Blasts, screams, moans, laughter poured out of machines. There were two holo-fields on this level, with one in use as a skinny kid with vacant eyes paid his shot to do battle with his choice of Roman gladiator, Urban War terrorist, or spine cracker. Eve didn't bother to watch the first round.

For live entertainment, there was a wrestling pit where two women with enormous man-made breasts shiny with oil grunted and slithered to the cheers of the crowd.

The walls were alive with screens that flashed action from dozens of sporting events, on and off planet. Bets were laid. Money lost. Fists flew.

She ignored them as well, working her way through the areas, beyond privacy tubes where patrons drank and played their games of chance or skill in greedy solitude, past the bar where others sat sulkily, and into the next area where music played low and dark in an edgy backdrop to more games.

A dozen pool tables were lined up like coffins, the border lights flickering as balls clicked or bumped. Half the tables were empty, but for those in use, the stakes were serious.

A black man with his shining bald head decorated with a gold tattoo of a coiled snake matched his skill against one of the house droids. She was tall, beefy, dressed in a pair of neon green swatches that covered tits and crotch. A knife with a pencil-slim blade was strapped, unsheathed, at her hip.

Eve spotted Ledo at the back table, playing what appeared to be round the clock with three other men. From the smug smile on Ledo's face and the dark expression on the others, it was a safe bet who was winning.

She passed the droid first, watched her finger her sticker in warning or out of habit as the snake tattoo muttered something about cop cunts.

Eve might have made an issue of it, but that would have given Ledo a chance to rabbit. She didn't want to have to hunt him down a second time.

Conversation dropped off table by table, with the murmured suggestions running from vile to annoyed. In the same kind of second-nature gesture as the droid, Eve flicked open her jacket, danced her fingers over her weapon.

Ledo leaned over the table, his custom-designed cue with its silver tip poised against the humming five ball. The challenge light beeped against the left bank. If his aim was true and he popped that, then sank the ball, he'd be up another fifty credits.

He wasn't drunk yet, or smoke hazed. He never touched his products during a match. He was as straight as he ever was, his bony body poised, his pale straw hair slicked back from a milk-white face. Only his eyes had color, and they were a chocolate brown going pink at the rims. He was a few slippery steps away from becoming one of the funky-junkies he served.

If he kept up the habit, his eyes wouldn't stay sharp enough to play the ball.

Eve let him take his shot. His hands were trembling lightly, but he'd adjusted the weight of his cue to compensate. He popped the light, ringing the score bell, then the ball rolled across the table and dropped cleanly into the pocket.

Though he was smart enough not to cheer, the wide grin split his face as he straightened. Then his gaze landed on Eve. He didn't place her right away, but he recognized cop.

"Hey, Ledo. We need to chat."

"I ain't done nothing. I got a game going here."

"Looks like it's time out." She stepped forward, then shifted her gaze slowly to the bulk of muscle that moved into her path.

He had skin the color of copper, and his chest was wide as Utah. A little frisson of anticipation snuck up her spine as she lifted her gaze to his face.

Both eyebrows were pierced and sported gold hoops. His eyeteeth were silver and filed to points that glinted as his lips peeled back. He had a foot on her in height, likely a hundred pounds in weight.

Her first thought was: Good, he's perfect. And she smiled at him.

"Get out of my face." She said it quietly, almost pleasantly.

"We got a game going here." His voice rumbled like thunder over a canyon. "I'm into this fuckface for five hundred. Game's not over until I get my chance to win it back."

"As soon as the fuckface and I have a chat, you can get back to your game."

She wasn't worried about Ledo running now. Not since the two other players had flanked him and were holding his spindly arms. But the slab of meat blocking her gave her a light body shove and showed his fangs again.

"We don't want cops in here." He shoved her again. "We eat cops in here."

"Well, in that case…" She took a step back, watched his eyes glint in triumph. Then, quick as a snake, she snatched up Ledo's prized cue, rammed the point end into the copper-colored gut. And when he grunted, bent forward, she swung it like a pinch hitter in the bottom of the ninth.

It made a satisfactory cracking sound when it connected with the side of his head. He stumbled once, shook his head violently, then with blood in his eye, came at her.

She shot her knee into his balls, watched his face go from gleaming copper to pasty gray as he dropped.

Stepping out of the way, Eve scanned the room. "Now, anybody else want to try to eat this cop?"

"You broke my cue!" Close to tears, Ledo lunged forward and grabbed for his baby. The handle jerked up and caught Eve on the cheekbone. She saw stars, but she didn't blink.

"Ledo, you asshole," she began.

"Hold it." The man who walked in looked like one of the ladder-climbing execs that raced along the streets overhead and several blocks north. He was slim and stylish and clean.

The thin layer of scum that coated everything else didn't seem to touch him.

With one hand restraining Ledo, Eve turned, yanked out her badge. "At the moment," she said evenly, "I've got no problem with you. Do you want that to change?"

"Not at all…" He flicked his silvery blue eyes at her badge, over her face, let them pass over Peabody, who stood at alert. "Lieutenant," he finished. "I'm afraid we rarely have any of New York's finest visit the establishment. My customers were taken by surprise."

He dropped his gaze to the man who still moaned on the floor. "In a number of ways," he added. "I'm Carmine, and this is my place. What can I do for you?"

"Not a thing, Carmine. I just want to chat with one of your… customers."

"I'm sure you'd like to have somewhere quiet to chat. Why don't I show you to one of our privacy rooms?"

"That'll be just dandy, Carmine. Peabody?" Eve wrenched the cue out of Ledo's grip and passed it over. "My aide's going to be walking right behind you, Ledo. If you don't keep up, she's likely to stumble and that precious stick of yours might get rammed right up your butt."

"I didn't do nothing," Ledo claimed in something close to a wail, but he kept pace with Eve as she followed Carmine through a curtained area to a line of doors.

Carmine opened one, gestured. "Anything else I can do for you, Lieutenant?"

"Just keep your customers chilled, Carmine. Neither one of us wants NYPSD to order a sweep on this place."

He acknowledged the warning with a nod, then left them alone as Eve tossed the whining Ledo into the room. "You stand, Peabody. You're cleared to use your weapon if anyone blinks at you."

"Yes, sir." Peabody shifted her grip on the cue, set her free hand on her stunner, and put her back to the wall.

Satisfied, Eve stepped inside, closed the door. As amenities went, it was a zero, with its narrow cot, smudged view screen, and sticky floor. But it was private.

"Well, Ledo." Eve fingered the raw bruise on her cheekbone – not because it stung, though it did. She used the gesture to make Ledo tremble in fear of retribution. "Been awhile."

"I've been clean," he said quickly, and she laughed, keeping the sound low and sharp.

"Don't insult my intelligence. You wouldn't be clean after six days in a decontamination chamber. You know what this does?" She tapped a finger on her facial bruise. "This assaulting an officer deal gives me the right to search you right now, to haul your skinny butt into Central, and to get a warrant to go through your flop."

"Hey, Dallas, hey." He held up both hands, palms up. "It was an accident."

"Maybe I'll let it go at that, Ledo. Maybe I will – if you convince me you're in a cooperative mood."

"Damn straight, Dallas. What d'ya want? Some Jazz, Go Smoke, Ecstasy?" He started to dig in his pockets. "No charge, none whatsoever for you. I don't got it now, I'll get it."

Her eyes turned to bright gold slits. "You take anything out of your pockets but your ugly fingers, Ledo, you're even more stupid than I figured. And I figured you for a brain the size of a walnut."

His hands froze, his thin face went blank. Then he tried a manly chuckle, lifting his empty hands clear. "Like you said, Dallas, been a while. I guess maybe I forgot how you stand on shit. No harm, right?"

She said nothing, simply stared him down until the sweat popped out on his upper lip. She'd see he was back in a cage, she mused, at the first opportunity. But for now, she had bigger fish on the line.

"You – you want info? I ain't your weasel. Never was any cop's weasel, but I'm willing to trade info."

"Trade?" she said, coldly.

"Give." Even his tiny brain began to click in. "You ask, I know, I tell. How's that?"

"That's not bad. Snooks."

"The old man with the flowers?" Ledo shrugged what there was of his shoulders. "Somebody sliced him open, I hear. Took pieces of him. I don't touch that stuff."

"You deal to him."

Ledo did his best to look cagey. "Maybe we had some business, off and on."

"How'd he pay?"

"He'd beg off some credits, or sell some of his flowers and shit. He had the means when he needed a hit of something – which was mostly."

"He ever stiff you or any other dealers?"

"No. You don't give sleepers nothing unless they pay up first. Can't trust 'em. But Snooks, he was okay. No harm. He just minded his own. Nobody was doing for him that I ever heard. Good customer, no hassle."

"You work the area where he camped regularly?"

"Gotta make a living, Dallas." When she pinned him with her stare again, he realized his mistake. "Yeah, I deal there. It's mostly my turf. Couple others slide in and out, but we don't get in each other's way. Free enterprise."

"Did you see anybody who didn't look like they belonged down there lately, anybody asking about Snooks or those like him?"

"Like the suit?"

Eve felt her blood jump, but only leaned back casually against the wall. "What suit?"

"Guy came down one night, duded top to bottom. Frigid threads, man. Looked me up." More comfortable now, Ledo sat on the narrow bed, crossed one stick leg over the other. "Figured at first he didn't want to buy his stuff in his own neighborhood, you know. So he comes slumming. But he wasn't looking for hits."

Eve waited while Ledo entertained himself by picking at his cuticles. "What was he looking for?"

"Snooks, I figure. Dude said what he looked like, but I can't say that meant dick to me. Mostly the sleepers look alike. But he said how this one drew stuff and made flowers, so I copped to Snooks on that."

"And you told him where Snooks kept his crib."

"Sure, why not?" He started to smile, then his tiny little brain began the arduous process of deduction."Man, shit, the suit cut Snooks open? Why'd he do that for? Look, look, Dallas, I'm clean here. Dude asks where the sleeper flops, I tell him. I mean, why not, right? I don't know how he's got in mind to go killing anybody."

Sweat was popping again as he jumped to his feet. "You can't bounce it back on me. I just talked to the bastard is all."

"What did he look like?"

"I don't know. Good." In plea or frustration, Ledo threw out his arms. "A dude. A suit. Clean and shiny."

"Age, race, height, weight," Eve said flatly.

"Man, man." Grabbing hanks of his hair, Ledo began to pace the tiny room. "I don't pay attention. It was a couple, three nights ago. A white dude?" He posed it as a question, tossing Eve a hopeful look. She only watched him. "I think he was, maybe white. I was looking at his coat, you know. Long, black coat. Looked real warm and soft."

Moron, was all Eve could think. "When you talked to him, did you have to look up, or down, or straight on?"

"Ah… up!" He beamed like a child acing a spelling quiz. "Yeah, he was a tall dude. I don't get his face, Dallas. Man, it was dark and we weren't standing in no light or nothing. He had his hat on, his coat all buttoned. It was cold as a dead whore out there."

"You never saw him before? He hasn't come around since?"

"No, just that one time. A couple – no three nights back. Just the once." Ledo swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. "I didn't do nothing."

"You ought to get that tattooed on your forehead, Ledo, then you wouldn't have to say it every five minutes. I'm done for now, but I want to be able to find you, real easy, if I need to talk to you again. If I have to hunt you up, it's going to piss me off."

"I'll be around." His relief was so great, his eyes went shiny with tears. "Everybody knows where to find me."

He started to dash out, then froze like an icicle when Eve clamped a hand on his arm. "If you see the suit again, Ledo, or one like him, you get in touch. You don't say anything to put the suit off, then you get your ass on your 'link and call me." She bared her teeth in a smile that made his bowels loosen. "Everybody knows where to find me, too."

He opened his mouth, then decided that cold look in her eyes meant he shouldn't attempt to negotiate weasel pay. He bobbed his head three times and sprang through the door when she opened it.

The muscles in Peabody's gut didn't unknot until they were back in their vehicle and three blocks east. "Well, that was fun," she said in a bright voice. "Next, let's find some sharks and go swimming."

"You held, Peabody."

The muscles that had just loosened quivered with pleasure. From Eve, it was the staunches! of cop compliments. "I was scared right down to the toes."

"That's because you're not stupid. If you were stupid, you wouldn't be riding with me. Now we know they wanted Snooks in particular," Eve mused. "Not just any sleeper, not just any heart. Him. His. What made him so damn special? Pull up his data again, read it off."

Eve listened to the facts, the steps of a man's life, from birth to waste, and shook her head. "There has to be something there. They didn't pull him out of a damn hat. A family thing maybe…" She let the theory wind through her mind. "One of his kids or grandkids, pissed off about the way he dropped out, left them flat. The heart. Could be symbolic."

"You broke my heart, I'm taking yours?"

"Something like that." Families, all those degrees of love and hate that brewed in them, confused and baffled her. "We'll dig into the family, run with this idea for a bit, mostly just to close it off."

She pulled back up at the scene, scanning the area first. The police sensors were still in place, everything secure. Apparently, there was no one in this neighborhood with the skill or knowledge to bypass them to get to whatever was left in Snooks's crib.

She spotted the pair of glide-cart vendors on the corner, huddling unhappily in the smoke pouring off the grill. Business was not brisk.

A couple of panhandlers wandered aimlessly. Their beggars' licenses hung in clear view around their scrawny necks. And, Eve thought, they were likely forged. Across the street, the homeless and the mad crowded around a barrel fire that appeared to let off more stink than warmth.

"Talk to the vendors," Eve ordered Peabody. "They see more than most. We could get lucky. I want another look at his crib."

"Ah, I bet they'd talk looser if I were to buy a soy-dog."

Eve arched a brow as they climbed out of opposite doors. "You must be desperate if you're willing to risk putting anything that comes from this neighborhood in your mouth."

"Pretty desperate," Peabody agreed and squared her shoulders, strode purposefully toward the grill.

Eve felt eyes on her as she uncoded the sensors long enough to pass through. The eyes burned into her back: anger, resentment, confusion, misery. She could feel all of it, every degree of despair and hope that slithered its way across the littered street to crawl over her skin.

She struggled not to think of it.

Pulling back the ratty blanket, she ducked inside the crib, hissed once through her teeth at the lingering stench of waste and death.

Who were you, Snooks? What were you?

She picked up a small bouquet of paper flowers, coated now with the thin layer of dust the crime team sweepers had left behind. They'd have sucked up hair, fibers, fluids, the dead cells the body sloughs off routinely. There would have been grime and muck and dirt to sift through. A scene as nasty as this one would take time. Separating, analyzing, identifying.

But she didn't think the findings there would lead her to the answers she needed.

"You were careful," she murmured to the killer. "You were neat. You didn't leave any of yourself here. Or so you thought."

Both victim and killer always left something. An imprint, an echo. She knew how to look and listen for it.

They'd come in their fancy car, in the dead of night, in the dead of winter. Dressed warmly, dressed well. They hadn't crept in, hadn't attempted to blend.

Arrogance.

They hadn't rushed, hadn't worried.

Confidence.

Disgust. They would have felt it, mildly, as they drew the curtain back and the smell hit them. But doctors would be used to unpleasant odors, she imagined.

They wore masks. Surgical masks. And their hands would have been encased in gloves or Seal-It. For protection, for routine, for caution.

They'd used antiseptic. Sterilizing? Routine, she mused, just routine as it wouldn't have mattered if the patient had suffered from any contamination.

They would have needed light. Something stronger and cleaner than the wavering glow from the candle stub or battery flash Snooks kept on one of his lopsided shelves.

In the doctor's bag, she imagined. A high-powered minilamp. Microgoggles. Laser scalpel, and other tools of the trade.

Did he wake up then? she wondered. Did he surface from sleep for just a moment when the light flashed? Did he have time to think, wonder, fear before the pressure syringe punched flesh and sent him under?

Then it was all business. But that she couldn't imagine. She knew nothing about the routine of doctors opening bodies. But she thought it would be just that. More routine.

Working quickly, competently, saying little.

How did it feel to hold a man's heart in your hands?

Was that routine as well, or did it shoot a thrill of power, of accomplishment, of glory through the mind? She thought it would. Even if it was only for an instant, he or she felt like a god.

A god proud enough to take the time, to use his talents to do the job well.

And that's what they had left behind, she thought. Pride, arrogance, and cool blood.

Her eyes were still narrowed in concentration when her communicator sounded. Laying the paper flowers aside, she reached for it.

"Dallas."

Feeney's mournful face swam on the miniscreen. "I found another one, Dallas. You better come in and have a look."