Connections in Death (In Death 48)

“I’ll arrange that for you tomorrow.”

“Did you ask for Morris?”

Eve nodded at Crack. “Yes. Morris will take care of Lyle.”

“That’s just what he’ll do, Ro. He’ll take care. I’ll go with you.”

“My brothers—Martin and Walter—and our grandmother. I need to tell them. How do I tell them?” She turned her face into Crack’s shoulder for a moment. “But I have to. Face-to-face. We need to be together.”

“We’ll go to Walt’s school. I’ll get us a car and we’ll go get Walt, then we’ll go over to Martin’s.”

“I’ll arrange a car and driver for you,” Roarke said.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s done. You’re family,” he told Crack. “And Rochelle is one of my people now. Lyle is Eve’s. You’ll have a car and driver at your disposal for as long as you need.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Rochelle said. “This doesn’t seem real, then it does, horribly real, then it doesn’t. I have to tell them, even knowing how it’ll hurt them.”

“You won’t be alone.” Crack kissed her hair. “I’ll be right with you.”

As they walked back to the car, Eve dug up the last known address of Dinnie Duff. “Banger turf,” she muttered. “Won’t that be fun?” She slid into the car, keyed in the address. “I’m calling it in, getting backup from a couple of uniforms who work that area.”

“You don’t think we can handle it … skinny white girl?”

“Oh, we could handle it, scary Irish boy, but I’m not looking for a gang fight. They sent three to take out Lyle. That’s not small change, that’s not some petty bullshit. It’s something else, and a whole lot more. Dinnie Duff not only knows the three who killed him, it’s likely she knows who sent them.”

“Would they have a captain?”

“Yeah.” She considered the most probable setup as Roarke took the wheel. “And likely a handful of lieutenants and down the pecking order. But someone in charge, someone overseeing gang business—illegals, finances, sex trade. Then there’s negotiations or hits on rival gangs. There’s the protection racket, and so on.”

“It’s a business,” Roarke commented.

“It’s an excuse to kill, maim, steal, and terrorize. But yeah,” she conceded, “a business. So you don’t put out a hit on a former member because he’s living his life outside. You do that because you’ve got a personal grudge, or because he did something while living his life that messed with gang business.”

“There may be something that at least hints at that in his journal.”

“I’ll be looking. But if Duff was with Lyle back in his gang time, and she’s still with the Bangers, she’ll know something.”

They wound their way into the bowels of the Bowery. While most of the sector had been gentrified and revitalized after the Urbans, this seedy handful of blocks seemed to prefer squalor.

Upscale here meant the obscenities tagged on the walls of buildings were grammatically correct.

Many who worked for a living here earned their pay in the clubs, dives, and hellholes underground. Those with no basic skills and the need for food or a fix tended to sell their bodies there, for individual use or for groups in sex games.

The Bangers ruled this tiny slice of the underground, routinely warring with the Chinatown Dragons in an attempt to expand their territory.

On the streets and sidewalks, they mugged tourists foolish enough to wander onto their turf looking for color, and catered to addicts and the street whores who couldn’t meet the regs for a license.

Shopkeepers who balked at paying out protection money usually found their places of business burned out or their stock destroyed by homemade boomers. Often with the recalcitrant shopkeeper still inside.

As far as Eve knew, the only building off-limits was Most Holy Redeemer Church on East Third. Off-limits not because Bangers respected a house of worship, but because many of their mothers and grandmothers prayed there for the souls of their offspring—souls those offspring had already sold to the lowest bidder.

Eve scanned the streets—windows barred or boarded, steel gates locked tight and tagged, husks of burned-out vehicles.

Given the cold, the wind, most business and entertainment went underground, but a few packs wandered with gang colors—black and red—displayed on hoods, on bandannas snaking out of pockets, on wristbands.