Treachery in Death

Eleven

EVE KEPT HER STONY FACE ON AS SHE TRAVELED back to her division. From the few glances shot her way, the occasional murmur, she was assured the Central grapevine was spreading the gossip.

She needed to close herself off in her office awhile, do some probabilities, and use her instincts to select the next step.

Peabody started to hail her, but Eve shook her head and kept going. She heard the squeal when she was a few short steps from her door.

There was baby Bella decked out like a daffodil with her sunny curls, her chubby body tucked into a bright yellow sundress decorated with pink candy hearts.

The hearts matched her mother’s hair. Mavis Freestone bounced her baby girl and giggled at the squeals of delight. She’d scooped her hair back into a trio of stacked ponytails. What there was of her summer dress exploded with interlacing circles in vivid purple and pink.

Green eyes sparked with laughter in her pretty face as Bella bapped her hands together.

“Applause, applause!” Mavis gurgled, and the baby slapped her hands together again. “Now take your bow!”

On cue—and how the hell did a brain that tiny know—Bella pushed her feet—in shiny pink sandals that were a mini version of her mother’s—and rose up to stand on Mavis’s lap. She lowered her chin to her chest.

“Kisses to the crowd!” Mavis switched her handhold to Bella’s waist so the baby could smack her palm against her lips, then wave it.

Eve had to admit it was a pretty good routine.

“You brought the baby to a cop shop?”

Mother and daughter both turned, and big, happy smiles spread. “She wanted to visit.”

Bella threw out her arms, babbled.

Eve inched back. “What does she want?”

“You. Which is great.” Mavis popped up. “‘Cause I absolutely have to pee. BRB,” she added, and shoved the baby at Eve.

“Hey! Hey!” But Mavis’s shiny pink sandals were already skipping away. “Jesus Christ.”

Bella giggled, patted her drool-dewed hands on Eve’s cheeks, then got a Herculean grip on her hair. She tugged then slurped her wet lips on Eve’s cheek.

“Slooch!”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember.” Smooch, Eve thought, and eyed Bella’s lips—and more drool. “On the mouth?”

“Slooch!” Bella pursed like a guppy and made kissy noises.

“Fine, fine.” Eve gave her a little peck, then stared into her big blue eyes. “Now what?”

Bella widened her eyes, and looked, to Eve’s mind, very serious as she babbled and garbled, head turning side-to-side, little butt bouncing on Eve’s forearm.

“Nobody understands that. Anybody who tells you they do is just stringing you, kid.”

She decided to sit—safer and closer to the floor if the kid wriggled free. Plus maybe she could start on the probabilities. But the minute they were down, Bella pushed up.

“God! I wish you wouldn’t do that. Sit.”

In response Bella pumped her legs and danced on Eve’s knees. She grinned like a maniac and squealed, “Das!”

“Sure, sure.” Eve eyed the mountainous purple bag taking up most of her desk. “Probably something in there to keep you occupied. One of those plugs, something.” Hooking an arm around Bella’s waist, she pulled out things at random—shaking things, beeping things, singing things.

But all the kid wanted to do was dance.

She pulled out a box highlighted with a baby’s cherubic face. Bella danced harder, cried, “Yum!” and made a grab for it.

“Hold it, hold it.” It was a struggle, but Eve managed to hold the box out of reach and peek inside at what appeared to be thick crescents of stale bread.

“Those look disgusting.”

Bella narrowed those big blue eyes, slitting them into what looked suspiciously like a warning. “Yum!”

“Is that a threat? Do you see how much bigger I am than you? Do you really think that’s going to work?”

Now the little mouth quivered, and the big blue eyes filled with tears. “Yum,” she sniffled. A single fat one slid down the rosy cheek.

“Okay, that works.” Eve dug one out. The box wouldn’t have a baby on it if it wasn’t for babies, she reasoned.

Bella clutched it and brought the biscuit and Eve’s hand to her mouth to gnaw. Tears miraculously vanished into a sunny smile.

“Yum!”

“You’re a player, aren’t you? I have to admire that. But turning on the waterworks to get what you want? That’s weak. Effective, but weak.”

Still smiling, Bella pulled the gnawed biscuit from her mouth and shoved it at Eve’s.

“No. Thanks. Oh, God, it is disgusting.”

“Yum,” Bella insisted, then plopped her butt on Eve’s desk and happily gnawed away.

Eve looked around quickly as Mavis bounced in. “If she’s not supposed to have that thing, you shouldn’t have left it here.”

“No big deal, those are her yums.”

“So she told me—I guess.”

Mavis pulled a heart-covered bib out of the bag, whipped it around Bella’s neck. “They’re kinda messy.”

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you? Dumped her in my lap and poofed.”

Mavis giggled, lifted her shoulders. “Busted. But I did pee.”

“Why?”

“Because my bladder asked me to.”

“Mavis.”

“Because she loves you, and because you’ve pretty much stopped holding her at arm’s length like she’s a boomer full of poop.”

“Poop is sometimes involved.”

“True.” Mavis took a quick sniff. “But not now. She can say your name.” To prove it Mavis gave Eve a kiss on the cheek. “Dallas.”

“Das!” Bella squealed and stroked a gooey hand where her mother had kissed.

On a strangled sound, Eve started to swipe the goo off with the heel of her hand, but Mavis pulled a damp wipe out of a packet.

“That’s my name?”

“It’s the closest she can come to Dallas right now. She can’t manage Peabody, but she’s got McNab.”

“Nab!” Bella waved her dripping biscuit in triumph.

“And she’s got Roarke.”

“Ork!”

“Ork.” That tickled a laugh out of Eve, and the sound had the baby sending out a chant.

“Ork! Ork! Ork!” Then damned if the kid didn’t take a bow.

“Jesus, Mavis, she’s you all over.”

“With her daddy’s sweet, sweet heart.” Mavis pulled a rainbow-hued blanket out of the apparently bottomless bag. After spreading it on the floor, she took Bella, plopped her on it.

“Okay if I close the door? In case she starts to motor.”

“Good idea.”

Mavis shut the door, then dropped down in Eve’s visitor’s chair. With the baby at her feet, she crossed her legs. “So, how’d I do?”

“Good job, Candy.”

“Not too OTT? Over the top,” Mavis translated. “I decided to plug in the Brooklyn and the tits when I was putting it together this morning. Just a little jazz.”

“Both were impressive. I barely recognized you myself. You haven’t lost your skills.”

“Felt mag, too, gotta confess. Sliding back in and duping a mark. Temporarily,” she added, “and for a righteous cause.”

“Check.”

“I guess you still can’t tell me what the righteous cause is?”

“Not yet.”

“Doesn’t matter, because I so totally didn’t like the mark. Pushy b-i-t-c-h. Hard a-s-s, and not in a good or frosty way.”

“You’re actually spelling swear words now? The kid’s not even listening.”

“You never know. This Oberman is the b word and the a word and a whole universe of other words I don’t want to say in front of my Bellamina. And, Dallas, she’d like to rip your heart out of your chest with her bare hands.”

“I’ve given her cause. That’s part of it.”

“Just watch your as—a-s-s. I was back in my grifter’s skin, you know, and man, the vibes. Cold and dark. Belle and I want our Das to stay safe, and to kick the b-word’s you-know-what.”

“I plan to do both.”

After Bella waved bye-bye, Eve got coffee, settled down to review the data she’d already accessed on the detectives who’d transferred out of Renee’s squad, crossed that with what Baxter had dug up for her.

She studied their records before, during, and after Renee’s command, their records after transfer, and in one case retirement.

She took a hard look at Detective-Sergeant Samuel Allo. Thirty-five years in before he’d turned in his papers—thirty-one years and five months of that prior to Renee’s command. A full seventeen in Illegals before Renee, and he’d finished up the last of his thirty-five years in Illegals as well, only in the six-eight out of the Bronx.

She juggled him in with a couple others who looked strong to her, ran a variety of probabilities. In the end it satisfied her to see the computer agreed with her gut.

She walked out into the bullpen. Before she could signal Peabody, Carmichael strolled over with a little box. “Got something for you, Lieutenant.”

Noting the cops on desks watched, she opened the box.

“Okay. Why are you giving me a cookie shaped like—is it a dog?”

“Yeah. See, it says Top Dog. My sister works in a bakery, so she made it.”

“Nice. Because?”

“A little token for taking Garnet down a peg. I had a case cross with one of his awhile back,” Carmichael explained. “He’s an asshole.”

“I can confirm that assessment. Why do you say so?”

“Struts,” she said with a little sneer. “I don’t like strutters. Likes pushing his weight around and acting like he’s doing you some big favor for sharing info when you’re working angles on the same case. Doesn’t like getting his pretty suits dirty either. Roasted a rook uniform in front of God and everyone for asking a question, and when I objected he told me to stop being a little girl.”

“How long did he limp?”

Carmichael smiled. “I was tempted to bust his balls, but deemed it more appropriate to secure the scene, preserve evidence. So, in the spirit of what goes around, a token for the Top Dog for busting his balls now.”

“Happy to so bust. Thanks. Peabody, with me.” Eve bit the dog’s head off as she walked out, then glanced back at her men. “Tasty.”

As Eve chewed the dog, Peabody sent her a puppy-dog look.

“Jesus, here.” She broke off a foreleg, handed it over.

“Thanks. It is tasty. Everything chill with the commander?”

“Completely. I want to recanvass the area around the crime scene, try to hook with my weasel, see if he’s got any more I can squeeze out of him.”

Since there was no weasel in this case, Peabody just nodded. “He was pretty rattled about what happened to Keener. He may have gone under for a while.”

“Then we’ll have to dig him up.”

When they were in the vehicle, Peabody asked, “Where are we really going?”

“We’ll take a swing by the scene. Maybe we’ll be able to squeeze out more juice on Juicy. After, we’re going to the Bronx.”

“I guess it won’t be to catch a Yankees game.”

“DS Samuel Allo, retired. All data indicates he was a solid cop. Probability confirms my analysis with a ninety-four-point-seven.”

“I recognize the name. He was with the squad before Renee got promoted. He transferred out.”

“About seven months after she took command,” Eve confirmed. “Out of her squad, and out of Central. He put in another three-plus with Bronx PSD. Did thirty-five. He has a few bumps, and a lot more commendations. One rip—under Renee—for insubordination. Her evals of him over the seven-month period were not stellar. Coasting, she claimed, just riding out his time. Questioning her authority, balking at doing OT when deemed necessary.

“Oddly, his evals and records with the six-eight in the Bronx did not reflect his previous lieutenant’s opinion.”

“She squeezed him out.”

“That’s my take. I’m interested in his.”

Detective-Sergeant Allo had a modest house in a neighborhood of modest houses. And in the short driveway sat a huge boat.

Allo stood on the deck—the bow, Eve thought—polishing the brightwork with a rag. He took a long look when they pulled in, then laid the rag over the rail.

He had a sturdy, broad-shouldered build and carried a little extra weight in the middle. He wore a backward ballcap—Yankee blue—over hair he’d let go gray.

Retired or not, he had a cop’s eyes and gave Eve and Peabody a good once-over as he climbed off the boat, and they stepped out of the car.

“Is there a problem in the neighborhood, Detectives?”

“Not that I’m aware of. Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. Got a minute, Detective-Sergeant?”

“Got a lot of them since I retired. Put a lot of those into this baby here.” He patted the hull affectionately. “I’ve got you now,” he added with a nod. “Out of Central. Homicide. Somebody dead I know?”

“Again, not that I’m aware of. You were assigned to Illegals out of Central for a number of years, and a few months of that under Lieutenant Renee Oberman.”

“That’s a fact.”

“Would you mind telling us why you transferred out, and into the six-eight?”

His eyes stayed on Eve’s. “Can’t say why this should interest Homicide. Our son had his second kid, moved out here. My wife and I decided we wanted to be close, enjoy the grandchildren. We bought ourselves this place. The six-eight’s a lot closer to home than Central.”

“Nice house,” Eve commented. “Big boat.”

He grinned at it, very much like Mavis grinned at Bella. “I always wanted a boat. I’m shining her up. We’re going to take the family out this weekend.”

“Should be a nice one for it. Would it be fair to say, Detective-Sergeant, that you and Lieutenant Oberman didn’t mesh well?”

His face shifted back to neutral. “That would be fair.”

“Lieutenant Oberman notes in your file you had difficulty with her authority, with taking orders from a female superior.”

His jaw tightened. “What cause do you have to check my service records?”

“They’re of interest to me.”

His stance shifted, combative now. “I served thirty-five years, and I’m proud of every day I spent on the job. I don’t like an LT I never met coming to my home and questioning my record.”

“It’s not your record in question.”

His jaw remained tight, but his eyes narrowed in speculation. “You want me to dish some dirt on Lieutenant Oberman? I don’t much like you coming to my home for that either.”

She’d have been disappointed if he’d launched into a series of complaints, and trusted him more when he didn’t.

“I’m asking for your opinion. Thirty-five years on the job, solid record—and a single rip. Under Oberman. I have reasons for coming to your home, reasons for asking you about Lieutenant Oberman.”

“What are they?”

“I’m not free to give you that information at this time, but can tell you we’re on an active investigation.”

“What, do you think she killed somebody?” When Eve said nothing, he blew out a long breath. With his hands on his hips he looked away, just looked away for a space of time. “It’s a hell of a thing,” he murmured. “A hell of a thing. Have a seat on the porch. My wife’s off with some girlfriends. I’ll see what we’ve got cold to drink.”

He had iced tea, cold and sweet. They sat in the shade of the little covered porch and drank.

“I keep in touch,” Allo began. “Talk to or hook up with some of the guys I worked with. And I keep up with what’s going on. I know your rep, Lieutenant. Yours, too, Detective.”

He paused, drank again. “Let’s be clear. I never had a problem working with a female officer, or taking orders from one who outranked me. I served my last three years with a damn good detective, who happened to be female. I’m still pissed about that rip,” he admitted. “All this time, and it still eats at me. Insubordinate, my ass.”

He shifted, angled more directly toward Eve. “I argued with her, sure. But I never disrespected her. She says we all have to wear suits and ties, even on the desk, I put on a suit and tie. She wants us to clear off our personal items, even family photos. I clear them off. It’s her squad. I don’t like it—and I’m not the only one—but it’s her squad.”

He brooded a moment. “Her squad, that’s the thing. When you have a new boss, you expect changes. In how things are done, in the tone. Every boss has a style, and that’s the way it is.”

“You didn’t like hers,” Eve prompted.

“Cold, nitpicky. Not picking nits over an investigation, but your fricking shoe shine, your haircut. She played favorites. If you were down on her list you got the shit assignments. Every time. All-night stakeouts in the middle of the winter because somebody got a tip maybe something was going to go down. But the somebody who’d be one of the favored was too busy with something else to sit and freeze his ass off all night.”

He puffed out his cheeks, released the air. “Maybe all that sounds like picking nits, too.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Every boss has a style,” he commented, and looked at Peabody. “We pick up the style, learn to work with it so everybody gets the job done.”

“That’s how I see it,” Peabody agreed. “The job’s the thing.”

“The job’s the thing.” He nodded. “But she’d question the direction of an investigation, pull you off one and stick you on another. Dump somebody else’s petty case on you. That happened to me twice. I’m this close to making a bust, and she pulls me in, reassigns. When I argue it, she sits there behind her fancy desk and tells me she’s not satisfied with the quality of my work, or with my attitude.”

“That’s not style,” Peabody put in. “That’s not making the job the thing.”

“Sure as hell not.”

“Did you complain up the chain?” Eve asked him, though she had the answer in the file.

“No. I don’t work that way. The boss is the boss, and hell, the squad was closing cases. Plus this is Saint Oberman’s daughter, and when she came on as boss she was the golden girl.”

“And she hung a life-sized portrait of her father in the office, in case any of you forgot.”

Allo smiled at Eve. “You sure as hell couldn’t miss it. Anybody paying attention could see she was weeding out the old, sowing in the new. Handpicking when she could.”

He shrugged. “Boss’s privilege. But it got so I hated going in to work, hated knowing I’d be sitting in that squad room. It wears at you, makes you hard to live with. Hard enough to live with a cop, right?”

“No argument.”

“It wore me down. She wore me down. I knew she wanted me out, and I knew—after the rip—she was going to find a way. I wasn’t going to go out that way. I wasn’t going to have her put another mark on my record. The boss is the boss,” he said again, “but I’ll be damned. I might as well add my wife put her foot down, and I can’t blame her. So I put in for the transfer. I had another three years with a good squad, a good boss. And when I put in my papers, Lieutenant, it was my choice.”

“I’m going to ask you something, Detective-Sergeant.”

“Allo,” he said. “Just Allo.”

“Was she on the take?”

He sat back, shook his head from side-to-side. “I knew this was coming. Goddamn it.” He rubbed a hand over his face, shook his head again. “Did you see the name of my boat?”

“Yes, I did. The Blue Line.”

“Being retired doesn’t shift the line.”

“From where I stand that line breaks for a wrong cop, or it means nothing. For a cop who uses her badge, her authority to fill her own pockets, and worse, the line breaks.”

He kept his gaze hard on her face. “And if I say hell, yeah, you’re going to believe me after everything I just told you?”

“Yes, I am. I came to you because I believe you’re a good cop—fuck retirement, Allo, you’re still a cop. You’ll always be a cop. I came to you because I believe you respect the badge, and because I believe I can take your word, even your opinion, to the bank.”

He took a long drink, let out a long breath. “I’m going to say hell, yeah, but I couldn’t prove it, couldn’t give you one solid piece of evidence. Not then, not now. She liked her closed-door meetings with her chosen few. And I know damn well with a couple of the busts I managed to stick on, somebody skimmed. No way I underestimate junk by the amounts it came back to after weigh-in. My mistake there was going to her on just that. Telling the boss I suspected somebody’d skimmed some off the top. That’s when things got bad for me. Or worse, I guess you’d say.”

He shrugged. “Coincidence? Maybe if you believe in coincidence. I never did.”

“Neither do I. I bet you still have your notebooks. I bet you still have your records of the investigations and busts you took part in under Lieutenant Oberman.”

“You’d win that bet.”

“I’m trusting you, Allo, to keep everything said here to yourself. Not to share it, at this time, with the friends you talk to, hook up with. I’m not going to insult you by saying if you do that, if you trust me with those records I’ll see that rip is expunged from your record. But I will tell you, either way you go, I’m going to look into that.”

“I’m not asking for a favor, but I won’t turn this one down.” He sat another minute. “She’s done murder, too?”

“Her hands are bloody.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, sorry because of her old man. You’re going to take her down.”

It wasn’t a question, but Eve answered anyway. “To the ground.”

He nodded, rose. “I’ll get my books.”

He paused at the door, turned back. “There was an officer—female officer—who went down in the line under Oberman.”

“Detective Gail Devin.”

He nodded. “She was a good cop. She was the daughter of an old friend of mine. My oldest friend. We went to school together in the old neighborhood. She had some concerns about Oberman and came to me with them.”

“What concerns?”

“How Oberman tended to have regular closed-door meets with certain members of the squad. How invoices for confiscated illegals and cash were usually under the estimate. Same as me. I looked into it after it happened, as best I could. It looked clean, but I always wondered. I had this place in me that wondered, and it still does. If you look into that, Lieutenant, if you look into what happened to Gail, you can forget about the rip.”

“I’ll be looking into both.”

Driving back to Manhattan, Eve considered angles, approaches, timing.

“I want you to take the lead on Devin.”

“Take the lead?”

“Approaching it like a cold case, an unsolved. Dig into the files. Have McNab and/or Webster help you if you need to shovel anywhere that might send Renee a flag. She’s not thinking about Devin—that’s old, settled business to her.”

“You think Renee had Detective Devin killed?”

“Fact: Devin wasn’t one of Renee’s handpicks. She was a newly minted detective, and according to our source—DS Allo, who strikes me as very grounded—she was solid. In my scan of her records, her evals were the same. Solid. Until assigned to Renee where they took a dip.”

“And that’s pattern with Renee.”

“Add in Mira’s profile, which says Renee has a problem with females. Conclude with another fact. Less than a year under Renee’s command, Devin goes down in a raid. The only officer to go down.”

“How did she go down?”

“The official report states she got separated from her team during the confusion and was found with her neck broken. Read the file, examine the evidence. Dig. Then I want you to tell me if Renee had Devin killed.”

“It could’ve been me. If they’d found me in that shower stall.”

“And you have to put that to the side and study, access, investigate objectively. If there was a cover-up, you uncover it.”

Eve engaged her ’link and contacted Webster.