“You have a lot of the shady come in here, and you’re not far out of Banger territory. Maybe you’ve seen someone like that in here.”
“I’d tell you if I had, and I’ll be asking my people to watch. I leave the customers be, unless they get out of line. Then?” He mimed cracking heads together. “We get some Bangers in here now and then.” He shrugged. “They know they cause trouble in my place, I give them more and worse.”
He took a long, slow pull of his brew. “I know you do the job, both of you. And you’re about to say something to me about not doing something I think should be done if I see some Banger snapping his fingers, or some skank wearing my Ro’s earrings. You don’t have to. You took care of the fucker who took my Alicia from me. You’ll take care of those who took Ro’s baby brother from her. Anyway, she wouldn’t like it if I did what I maybe think I should do.
“If I did something, it would piss you off and disappoint her. I ain’t aiming to piss off skinny-ass or fine-ass cops, or disappoint my woman. Especially when I’m going to ask her to cohab with me.”
“Cohab,” Eve echoed, as stunned as Peabody had been about diamonds and rubies.
“I’ve had my share of fine women.” He kicked back in the chair, looking up at the top of the dome as if seeing a parade of those fine women.
“I’m gonna tell you not one of them would say I didn’t treat her good, treat her right. The first time I sat down talking to Rochelle, I knew, right then, she wasn’t a fine woman. No, she wasn’t. She was the fine woman. Not much puts a scare into a head-cracker like me, but knowing that gave me—you call it a pause. Yeah, I had a pause.”
Peabody all but swooned. “That’s so romantic.”
He shot her a grin. “Ain’t it just? After the pause, I thought, Well, that’s gonna be that. I’ve been taking it slow because the fine woman, she’s worth the time. I wanted to ask her to live with me for a while now, but I knew she had to give Lyle all she could. I was thinking I could look into getting a bigger place, and they could both move in, but now … Anyway, she ain’t going back to that apartment.”
He slapped a finger on the table, ran it across the surface. “That’s a line right there. We’ll have a talk about that line, but I won’t be taking no on it. Right now she needs her grieving time, and you need your cop time.”
He took another pull. “I’ll get you that insurance stuff.”
“Okay. One last thing. Did Lyle say anything to you about cutting Duff off? Telling her he’d call the cops if she kept hassling him?”
“No. We got along fine, me and Lyle, but I’m not the one he’d talk to about that. Did he?”
“It looks that way.”
“Now he’s dead, and if that’s the why of it, I’m gonna be more pissed, and I’m running out of pissed room. And still, goddamn it, I’m glad he laid that line. A man’s gotta lay his line. Women, too,” he said with a glittery look. “So don’t get bitchy.”
“Getting bitchy is one of my lines. We’ll be in touch.” Eve gestured at the dome.
When he lifted it, Peabody rose, then hesitated. “I know you’re feeling like there’s nothing much you can do to help. You are helping by being there for Rochelle. If you want something, I don’t know, more tangible … People bring food for death. You could have food sent over to where her family lives so they don’t have to think about it. It would just be there.”
“That’s a fine idea, Peabody. I thank you for it.” They left him brooding into his brew while the holo band banged and the dancers gyrated.
“That was a good thought, Peabody,” Eve said when they walked back to the car. “It gives him something to do.”
“He looked so sad. Pissed, yeah, but sad, too. He loves her—I mean the big L. Jeez, he gave her ten-thousand-dollar earrings for V-Day.” She gave Eve an elbow bump. “What did I say about romance? Spring!”
“V-Day’s in the winter.” Eve returned the jab. “Shiny gifts equal follow-up sex, which equals body he
at for some types. So what did I say?”
“Damn it. No, I’ve got better.” Peabody shot a finger in the air. “Romance knows no season.”
“We’re heading to the morgue. See what that does to romance.”
“It’ll still be spring.”
10
Dinnie Duff wouldn’t see spring, not this one or any other.
She lay on the slab with Morris’s precise Y-cut closed with his equally precise stitches.
He swiveled around from a short counter where he’d been working, rose.
“And here we three meet again, without the thunder, lightning, or the rain.”