Connections in Death (In Death 48)

“I know she, reportedly, told at least two of your crew she intended to go to work, needed the scratch. But she never showed, and hasn’t worked there in days. I know she went to Pickering’s apartment for the specific purpose of aiding his killers with entry.”

“She had the softs for Pick.” He jabbed a finger on the table. “I say bullshit she helped him get dead.”

“Yet that’s exactly what she did, and a few hours later, in fact, about the time you and I had our first conversation, she was being gang-raped—and not onstage for pay—and beaten, kicked, having bones broken and her skull fractured.”

“If she did that to Pick, she earned it. If she did that, she went in with the Dragons, that’s what.”

“Unless you can give me a solid reason why the Dragons would order a hit on Pickering, and Duff would work with them on it, I’m not buying they killed her.”

“Dragons don’t need a reason.” But his tone lacked conviction. Then it turned ugly. “Chinks talking Chink more’n they talk American. Why don’t you go over to Chinktown and bang at that mofo Fan Ho instead of getting on my ass.”

“We’ll table your racism for now. Who had it in for Pick?”

“I said, you talk to Fan Ho about that, ’cause it ain’t none of mine. Now, some maybe don’t like how Pick didn’t come back when he got out, but you don’t kill a brother over that. Now, maybe Dinnie got her ass up seeing he didn’t come back to her, neither. Maybe she got high and got pissed and got some fuckers to do him.”

“You just said she was soft on him, wouldn’t have a part in killing him.”

“Maybe she didn’t mean to.” He shrugged, drank coffee. “Maybe just give him a good taste of what he’d been missing. That boy loved his Go. Maybe she figures she gets him back on it, he comes back to her.” He shrugged again. “How the fuck I know?”

She leaned in, ignoring the waitress who set down his plate—grits as orange as the walls, runny powdered eggs, sausage that smelled like something pigs wallowed in, and toast as thin as paper.

“I the fuck know the men who entered Pickering’s apartment entered with the intent to kill him.”

“Pick?” The waitress squeaked it out, then trotted rather than shuffled away when Jones aimed a hard look at her.

“You don’t know shit about what’s in their heads.”

“They came up behind him, restrained him, jabbed a needle right through his shirt to tranq him. They set him up so it would look, if you didn’t look close, like he pumped himself full of that Go, planted more in his room.

“Duff got that started, and now she’s dead, too. And you know what I’m going to find? I’m going to find the same three who killed Pickering killed Duff. To shut her mouth. I’m going to find those three are three of yours.”

“The fuck you will.”

“Count on it. Who wants a war with the Dragons? Who wants one enough to violate your neutral zone with rape and murder?”

“Ask the Dragons. If they want one, they’ll get one.”

Eve watched his face while he squeezed anemic ketchup on his runny powdered eggs. “There’s a lot of collateral damage in wars. People hunker down at home, don’t go out to eat or shop. They don’t look to move into the area. Wars are bad for business, aren’t they, Slice, and you’ve got considerable business in this sector.”

He began to eat, his eyes on his plate now rather than on her. “My business is my business.”

“Where’d you get the scratch to buy into the building where you flop? And this place? And Wet Dreams?”

“My business”—he scooped up more eggs—“is my business.”

“Banger business mostly runs to illegals, sex work, the protection racket, a little identity theft, a little fraud. You’d pull in a share of that, a top-level share, but it’s hard to see that share spreading out enough to buy into property.”

“We in the security business. We offer up security to locals, help keep the neighborhood safe.”

He gestured to the waitress. “We keep the neighborhood safe around here, Melba?”

She smiled like a woman with a stunner at her throat. “You sure do, Slice.”

“We got licenses for the sex work,” he continued. “We got those who flop at one of our places paying rent for it. If I got business, it don’t mean I ain’t loyal to my crew.”

It wasn’t only temper under his tone, barely controlled, but nerves. He didn’t like her pushing on his outside enterprises.

So she pushed again.