Thankless in Death (In Death 37)

“Vinnie’s, sure. It’s always Vinnie’s.”

“What’s he get—routinely.”

“Ah … Sorry,” he said as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Didn’t get much sleep. Um … pepperoni, onions, mushrooms, green peppers.”

“Okay. Favorite sports teams.”

“Yankees, all the way. We used to go around ’cause I’m a Mets fan, and—”

“Not baseball. Arena Ball, football, basketball. Something in season.”

“Football—Giants. Dug-in Giants fan. He’s not big on Arena or roundball.”

“Okay. Hangouts. Arcades, clubs, delis, whatever.”

“We’d mostly hit Jangles, in Times Square. It’s worth the ride, then maybe grab a brew if we were flush enough at Tap It—it’s right on Broadway between Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth. Jangles has tourneys. Jerry always scraped up the scratch to enter. He nearly won once, too, but Bruno nipped him out. Pissed Jerry off big.”

“Bruno who?”

“Oh.” Mal’s eyes widened, his face paled. “God, I didn’t think of him before. I don’t know his name. Bruno’s his game tag. Big guy, just a kid though. Maybe eighteen. Freaking game wizard.”

“Anything else you can think of? Routines, favorites, usuals.”

“Pistachio float from Gregman’s—a neighborhood place. He’s been hooked on them since we were kids. Oh, and um, Lucille.” He glanced around, lowered his voice. “I didn’t think of her before either. If I so much as think of an LC with Ma in the room, she’ll know it. She’s got that power.”

Having met his mother, Eve didn’t doubt it.

“He frequents an LC named Lucille?”

“Well, see, all of us did. She’d— This is embarrassing.”

“Murder trumps embarrassment.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it does. See, she used to give us a group rate on bjs—me, Jerry, Joe, Dave. Back when we were sixteen, seventeen, like that. Jerry, and look I didn’t know about this until after, but you don’t rat out your friends anyway. He stole some money from his mother, and paid Lucille for a full ride. I think, I’m pretty sure, it was his first. Like when he was around eighteen. I know Joe ragged on him some about being a virgin, and Jerry said how Lucille had done him, all the way.”

“You all still hire her?”

“No. Man.” His ears went a little pink, and he took another wary glance behind him. “I don’t. And Dave doesn’t, not that I know of. But I’m pretty sure Joe and Jerry still see her sometimes.”

“Where’s Lucille?”

“She used to hang around Avenue A, back when she had a street license. But she got her own place, and upped her license. I’m not real sure, but maybe she’s still in Alphabet City. I haven’t seen her, you know, since I was about eighteen. It was just too weird getting—having the same LC do all of us.”

“Okay. Just give me a basic idea on her. How old? Race?”

“Ah, I think she’s not much more than me—like maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Like that. Mixed. I think Black and Asian. She’s really nice looking, or was.”

“Okay, thanks. Anything or anyone else comes to mind, contact me.”

“Sure. Um, Lieutenant? Dave and I—and Jim, Dave’s brother—we did a sweep of the neighborhood last night. We didn’t see him, or talk to anybody who has.”

“Trying to do my job, Mal?”

“No, really, no. Dave and I, we just had to get out of the house for a while. And we stuck together. We’re all sticking together.”

“Keep doing that,” Eve advised.

The conversation nearly took her to Klein’s building. As she navigated the rest of the route, she contacted Charles Monroe.