Obsession in Death (In Death 40)

“Two people are dead, another was assaulted last night. You fit the description, pretty much down the line.”

Tortelli’s lips parted on a quick, indrawn breath, but she recovered quickly. “That’s bullshit. I saw the sketch you released. It fits half the people in New York.”

“You were on the job long enough to know we don’t release everything to the media. Whereabouts, December twenty-seventh between seventeen hundred and nineteen hundred hours.”

“I’m not telling you dick without a rep.”

“Fine, contact one, have your rep meet us at Central.”

“And I don’t have to go anywhere with you.”

“You want to play it that way, we’ll play. We’ll go talk to your mother.”

“What the fuck!” Tortelli exploded as Eve turned toward the door. “You don’t go near my mother.”

“I can go near her, and I can haul her into Central, put her in a box. I can charge her with threatening a police officer, cyber bullying, and hold her on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Saying nothing, Eve pulled out her PPC, brought up the first e-mail from Tortelli’s mother, held it out.

The combative stance broke a bit as Tortelli read. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Now she twisted a chain around her neck that held a silver cross. “Just spouting off, that’s all, and that was damn near two years ago.”

“There’s more. This is just the first. I talk to you, or I talk to her. Choose.”

“Gina? You want I should get somebody?”

Tortelli glanced at the receptionist as if remembering she was there. “No, no. It’s okay. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. Back here,” she said to Eve, turning away.

She led the way into an office even smaller than Eve’s with a slit of a window. A match to the spindly desk held as creaky a D&C as in reception. But the office was rigorously clean and organized.

“Look, my ma’s got a temper, okay? And I’m her only daughter. I’m going to talk to her about this, tell her to knock it off, but for Christ’s sake, anybody on the job gets a rash of shit from somebody every fricking day.”

“Whereabouts.”

“Couple of days after Christmas.” She turned to the comp, ordered up a calendar. “I’ve been tailing a woman.

Husband thinks she’s cheating, and he ain’t wrong. I was on her from fourteen hundred hours, twenty minutes on the twenty-seventh to nineteen-thirty, when she went back home. Husband tagged me at thirteen-fifty when she said she was going out, and I followed her. I got it right here in my log.”

“Your log, Tortelli.”

“Yeah, my log—and the tags from the client are on my ’link log. Subject exchanged some Christmas stuff, then went straight to the Swan Hotel over on Park. Got on the elevator. Had luck ’cause they’ve got glass ones. She gets off on the fourteenth floor. I go up, look for what rooms have the privacy light on that time of day, and I find it—1408. It’s in the log.”

“Did anyone see you? Did you talk to anybody?”

“The whole point is nobody sees me, and doesn’t remember me. I sat on her for two hours solid, down in the lobby, watching the elevator. She comes out, but not alone. She’s with somebody, and they tickle tonsils on the way down, then she goes one way, he goes the other. I stayed on her until she walked back in her own door. I was on her last night, too. I was just writing the report, because I identified the guy she’s rolling with. It’s her fucking brother-in-law. Her sister’s husband.”

“Classy.”

“Wait!” Tortelli threw up a hand. “I got a receipt from the lobby bar. I nursed two club sodas so I could sit there. I got a receipt for it, and it’s got the date. I got the pictures I took, and we use time stamps. I can prove I was where I say I was.

“Lay off my mother.”

“December twenty-ninth between five and six hundred hours.”

“I was home, in bed, alone. Asleep. Alone because the guy I’d been with three years and I split after I got demoted, and the shit hit. My life went down the toilet, okay? Happy? I got this crapper of a job because I’m marked. But I’m not going to stay in the toilet. Once I get some distance and some backing, I’m going to start my own agency. Lay off my ma, goddamn it. You got your pound of flesh already. I was fourth-generation police. I’d’ve made lieutenant in a few years. Now I’m in this shithole.”

“If you were fourth-generation, you sure as hell should’ve known better.”