Vendetta in Death (In Death 49)

Tiller shrugged, downed half of the spiked seaweed. “I booted him before, he knows I’ll do it again.”

“Did he talk with anyone else, interact, leave with anyone?”

“Yeah. Some street snatch walks in, takes a stool, orders a brew. He plays big shot, has me put it on his tab. He runs a weekly, pays up or he don’t get served.”

“What did she look like?” Eve demanded.

“Like a street snatch.”

Eve knew his type. Hard-ass, didn’t like cops, and hoped to shrug them off.

Not going to happen.

“Tiller, would you rather have this conversation in the box at Central?”

“You can get off my case,” he tossed back. “What the fuck do I know? I work the bar, I hold this crap joint together for a shitty paycheck, shittier tips, and the shithole apartment upstairs. Might not even have that much longer, as the dickwads who own the place and don’t put a goddamn dime into it start talking about selling it off. Bad frigging investment. I do my job, you get it? And my job isn’t to pay attention to some pross. I got her a beer, that’s it.”

“Try again. How old was she?”

“Fucking A.” He wasn’t happy, Eve judged, but he knew when he hit up against another hard-ass—and one with a badge. “Old enough to drink. Probably old enough to have a kid old enough to drink.”

“Give me a range.”

“Shit. Maybe forty. She looked used up.”

“Race?”

“Who gives a shit?”

“I do.”

“White probably. I keep the lights down, okay? It’s not like we get high-class in here.”

“Hair color.”

“Fuck me!” He drained the rest of the seaweed, then frowned as if the taste had jogged something. “Purple.”

“You’re sure?” Eve pressed, thinking of the black hair. “Light or dark?”

“Shit, purple-purple, what I know? Like those smelly flowers on the big bushes.”

“Lilacs?” Peabody suggested, and he half toasted her with his empty seaweed glass.

“Yeah, that stuff. Covered half her face now that I think about it. But you could see a scar down her cheek. She wasn’t nothing to get wood over, you ask me, but that don’t matter to Kagen, the asshole.”

“He left with her?”

“Yeah. She left a damn near full beer and takes him off for a bang or BJ. Not my business.”

“What time did she come in? What time did they leave?”

“Jesus!” Muscles and tats rippled when he threw up his hands. “I don’t the fuck know. You can drag my sorry ass to Central, and I still won’t know. I had customers, okay? The cheap-ass owners won’t even pay for a server. I’m on my own, every frigging night, six to two.”

“Did you have the Yankee-Red Sox game on the bar screen?”

He gave Eve his tired sneer. “Shit yeah, what else?”

“What inning was it when she came in?”