“It moved. I felt it move.”
“What moved?”
“The baby.” She looked up at Eve, and now her face glowed, as if someone had flicked a switch under her skin. “My baby moved. Like . . . like little wings fluttering.”
Eve felt her own color drain, right down to the bone. “Is it supposed to do that?”
“Uh-huh. My baby moved, Dallas. Inside me. It’s really real.”
“Maybe it’s trying to tell you not to worry so much.”
“Yeah.” Mavis wiped away fresh tears and smiled beautifully through them. “We’re going to be fine. Better than best. I’m glad you were here when it happened. When I felt it. I’m glad it was just you and me and the baby, this one time. I’m not going to screw it up.”
“No, you’re not.”
“And I’ll know what to do.”
“Mavis.” Eve sat beside her again. “Looks to me like you already do.”
12 ROARKE WALKED INTO the house and saw Eve sitting on the steps, head in hands. Alarm twisted through his belly as he hurried to her.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
She blew out a huge breath that hitched on the end. “Mavis.”
“Ah, God. Is it the baby?”
“It’s all about the baby. At least I think. What do I know? She wasn’t even wearing lip dye. What was I supposed to do?”
“I think we’d better start over. I’ll go first. Is everything all right with Mavis and the baby?”
“It must be. It moved.”
“Where?” He caught himself, cast his gaze to heaven. “Now you’ve got me turned around. She felt the baby move, then? Isn’t that a good thing?”
“She thought so, so it must be.”
She sat back, looked at him. He was holding her hand still, studying her face. Waiting.
All so normal, unless you felt, as she felt, that subtle change of rhythm. Things weren’t normal between them right now, and maybe they’d never be again. But they were both willing to pretend otherwise.
The pretense that there was nothing hanging over them was oddly terrifying.
But if it was all she had, she was as willing to hide behind it as he was.
“She was all down and teary when I got back,” Eve continued. “Figured she’d mess up with the kid because she was messed up as a kid, or something. Afraid she wouldn’t know what to do or how to feel. Had herself a serious weep.”
“I’ve heard that’s fairly normal for pregnant women. The weeping. I imagine she’s a bit scared. It must be considerably scary if you think about the whole process.”
“Well, I don’t want to think about it, that’s for sure.”
He’d let go of her hand, and he’d shifted, just the slightest bit away from her. So she knew he felt it, too.
She called herself a coward, but she pushed it out of her mind.
“Anyway, she calmed down mostly, then the baby did whatever it did in there and she got all happy again. She was practically doing handsprings when she left to go tell Leonardo.”
“Well, then, why are you sitting here looking miserable?”
“She’s coming back.”
“That’s good. I’d like to see her.”
“She’s bringing Trina.” Eve’s voice rose nearly an octave as she gripped Roarke’s shirt. “And their instruments of torture.”
“I see.”
“You don’t. They don’t gang up on you and come at you with strange, sharp implements or goop unknown substances all over your face and body. I don’t know what they’re going to do to me, and whatever it is, I don’t want it.”
“It’s hardly as bad as all that, but you could actually have used work as an excuse and put all this off for a while.”
“I couldn’t fight her.” She dropped her head back in her hands. “She had me with that naked face, how often do you see Mavis with a naked face?”
He touched her hair, the lightest stroke. “Never.”
“Exactly. And her eyes are all puffy and red—and shiny. And her belly’s poking out. This little white lump sticking out. What was I supposed to do?”
“Exactly what you did.” He shifted to kiss the top of her head. “You’re a good friend.”
“I’d rather be a bitch. It’s easier, and more satisfying emotionally, to be a bitch.”
“And you’re so good at it. Well, this should be a fine time for me to fire up that barbecue grill again.”
“I can’t believe you’d kick me when I’m down.”
“I’ve a handle on it now. I’ve been practicing on the side. We’ll have burgers. They’re the simplest.”
She could’ve told him she’d had a burger for lunch, but that would have put too glossy a shine on what she’d swallowed at the Blue Squirrel.
“I just want to work,” she complained. But it was for form. It might do them, do everything some good, to have people around. Making noise, taking up energy.
Keeping the illusion all was normal, in place.
“I just want to spend a regular evening working through the insidious and murderous plots of the HSO and foreign techno-terrorists. Is that too much to ask?”
“Of course not, but life will intrude. Would you like me to tell you how Feeney and I did in Queens?”
“Shit. Shit!” She threw out her hands and nearly caught Roarke on the chin with a fist. “See? This has got me so messed up I didn’t even remember what’s going on with my own case. Where’s Feeney?”
“He stayed back in Queens to supervise the removal of some of the sculptures. They’re being impounded. You were dead-on about the bugs.”
Look how you watch me, he thought. Trying to see inside my head, to read what’s there. So we won’t have to talk about it again.
What are we going to do about this? he wondered.
“We found six sculptures—three out and three in—that were bugged.” He smiled. He couldn’t make it reach his eyes, but he smiled. “Very sexy technology, too, from the looks of it. It’ll be fun to take one of the devices apart for analysis once we hack it out of the metal.”
“Eyes or ears?”
“Both. From preliminary study, using a satellite bounce. No question whoever was watching and listening knows we’ve found them.”
“Good.” She pushed to her feet. “If Bissel was spying on his own wife for the HSO, they already know we’re making moves. I had a meet with an assistant director today.”
“Did you?” He said it very softly, very coolly, and sent a chill up her spine.
“Yeah. And if Bissel turned and was working with the other side, though I don’t see a hell of a lot of differences between sides here, they’ll be scrambling. I’m going to handle it,” she said, and let the pretense drop, for a moment. “I’m going to handle it.”
“No doubt. I don’t intend to tell you how to handle it,” he added, very carefully. “Can you say the same?”
“It isn’t the same. It—” She pulled back, like a woman who felt herself sliding over a cliff. “Let’s just table that. Concentrate on what is.”
“Happy to. What is?”
“The investigation. We should take this upstairs, fill each other in.”
“All right.” He touched her face, then leaned in, brushed his lips over hers. “We’ll do what’s most normal for us, for now. Go up and talk about murder, then have a meal with friends. That suit you?”
“Yeah, it does.” She made the effort, kissed him back. Then got to her feet. She rolled her shoulders. “This is better. Briefing and a burger. Keeps my mind off Trina and her scary bag of tricks.”
Because he wanted her to smile, needed her to, he walked his fingers up her arm as they started upstairs. “What flavor skin cream do you suppose Trina will put on you?”
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
This,” McNab said as he took in a gulp of tropical air, “is living.” “We’re not living. We’re investigating. There’ll be no living until we’ve completed the investigative purpose of this trip.?
??
He cocked his head, studied her from behind his fuchsia-tinted sunshades. “You sounded just like Dallas. I find that strangely arousing.”
She elbow-jabbed him, but didn’t put much behind it. “We’re going straight to Waves and interview Diesel Moore regarding Carter Bissel. We’ll go by Bissel’s residence, speak to any neighbors or associates.”
“Now you sound bossy.” He gave her butt, currently covered in thin summer pants, a friendly pat. “I like that, too.”
“You’ve got a grade on me, but I’m Homicide.” And boy, did she love saying that. “So I’m in charge of this hunting party. And I say first we do the job, then we . . . live.”
“I hear that. Still, we gotta rent transpo.”
He slid his gaze to a line of scooters chained outside a hut beside their hotel. They were as colorful and bright as a circus parade, and screamed tourist.
Peabody grinned. “And I hear that.”
Waves was a hole-in-the-wall joint screwed into a clapboard building on one of Kingston’s less welcoming streets. They’d gotten lost twice—or had pretended to get lost as they’d scooted along narrow streets with the island breeze fluttering over their urban cheeks. After some heated debate, they’d agreed that he’d drive to, and she’d drive from. Peabody found it just as much fun to ride pinion with her arms clutched around his waist as it would’ve been to man the controls.
But as they made their way into the poorer and less hospitable section of the city, she was glad she had her weapon strapped under her summer-weight jacket.
She saw three illegals transactions in a two-block radius, and spotted a pair of funky-junkies jittering together on a stoop. When a flash all-terrain sportster cruised by, and the driver aimed his dark, dangerous eyes at her, she almost wished she was wearing her uniform.
Instead, she aimed hers right back, and deliberately, visibly, laid her hand on her weapon.
“Nasty vibes,” she said into McNab’s ear as the car gunned and slid off down a side street.
“Oh yeah. Penalties for illegals are stiff as a teenager’s dick down here, but nobody seems to care in this sector.”
There were sex shops and clubs, and the street LCs who sold the same commodity. But none of them looked particularly alluring. She could hear music pumping out of a few doorways, but the exotic charm of it was lost in the bored and repetitive come-ons of the hookers and the front men.
Tourists might wander in here, she thought, but unless they were looking for sex, illegals, or a blade in the back, they’d hurry out again quick.
They parked the scooter in front of the mean little bar, and while McNab used the chain the rental agent had provided to lock it to a lamppost, Peabody looked around.
“I’m going to try something,” she said. “You might have to back me up.”
She selected the two young men, one black, one white, sitting on a stoop and smoking Christ knew what out of a black pipe they passed between them. Gearing herself up, she put on her coldest cop face and swaggered up to them. And ignored McNab’s hiss of warning from behind her.
“See that scooter?”
The black man smirked, took a long slow drag on the pipe. “Got eyes, bitch.”
“Yeah, looks like you’ve got a pair each.” She shifted her weight, used her elbow to ease the jacket back so her badge and weapon peeked out. “If you want to keep them in your skulls, you’ll keep them on that scooter. Because if I come back out and it isn’t where I left it, in the same condition I left it, my associate and I are going to hunt you down like sick dogs. While he’s shoving that pipe up your ass,” she said, showing her teeth to the white guy, “I’m going to pop your fellow asshole’s eyes out. With my thumbs.”
The white guy bared his own teeth. “Hey, fuck you.”
Her stomach jittered, a little, but she kept the fierce and toothy expression in place. “Now, if you talk like that you’re not going to earn the nice prize I have for you at the end of our contest. The scooter’s there, untouched, when I come back out, I don’t haul your ugly asses into a cage for possession and use, and I give you a nice shiny ten credits.”
“Five now, five later.”
She shifted her gaze to the black. “None now, and none later unless I’m happy with you. Hey, McNab, what happens when I’m not happy?”
“I can’t talk about it. Gives me nightmares.”
“Do yourselves a favor,” Peabody suggested. “Earn the ten.”
She turned, sauntered toward the bar. “I’ve got sweat running down my spine,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.
“Doesn’t show. You even scared me.”
“Dallas would’ve gotten in their faces more, but I thought that was pretty good.”
“Frigid, babe.” He yanked open the door, and they were hit by a blast of cold air that smelled of smoke, liquor, and humans who didn’t have a working arrangement with soap and water.
It wasn’t yet sundown and business was sluggish. Still there were pockets of patrons, such as they were, huddled at tables or slumped at the bar. On a narrow platform that stood as stage, a malfunctioning holographic band played bad reggae. The image of the steel drummer kept winking out, and the looping was just a hair off so that the singer’s lips moved out of synch, reminding McNab of the really poorly dubbed vids his cousin Sheila got such a charge out of.
His toeless airsneaks made little sucking sounds as he crossed the sticky floor.
Moore was manning the bar. He looked a little thinner and a lot more harassed than he had in the ID photo they’d studied. He wore his hair in dreadlocks, a kind of explosion of horsey black tails McNab admired. They suited the mahogany cast of his face, the diamond point of his chin.
There was a necklace of what looked like bird bones around his neck, and his skin was glossy with sweat despite the chilly pump of air.
His eyes, an angry black, skimmed over Peabody and McNab as if they were one unit. He shoved a muddy-looking brown brew into the waiting hands of a customer, then used his dingy bar rag to wipe at the shiny chest exposed by a snug electric-blue tank.
He stepped down the bar, and curled his tattooed lip. “I’m paid up for the month, so if you’ve come in here to shake me down for another deposit go fuck yourselves.”
Peabody opened her mouth, but McNab set his foot over hers to keep her quiet. “We’re not local badges. The locals got a Survivor’s Fund going here, we’re not in that mix. Fact is, we’ll be happy to make a contribution to your personal fund if you have information that merits it.”
Peabody had never heard that cool and faintly bored tone out of McNab before.
“Cop offers to give me money, he usually finds a way to skin me for it.”
McNab took a twenty out of his pocket, palmed it on the bar while keeping his attention on Moore. “In good faith.”
The money was exchanged, slick as a magic trick. “What’re you paying for?”
“Information,” McNab repeated. “Carter Bissel.”
“Asshole son of a bitch.” Somebody hammered a fist on the far end of the bar and called for some goddamn service. “Shut the fuck up,” Moore shouted back. “You find that goddamn Carter, I want a shot at him. He owes me two large, not to mention the ass pain I’ve had running this place solo since he decided to go on fucking holiday.”
“How long did you run the place together?” Peabody asked him.
“Long enough. Look, we had some previous business, you could call it shipping. Decided we’d go into this little enterprise here, and each anted up the rent. Carter, he’s got a good head for business in that asshole brain of his. We did okay. Maybe he’d go on a bender time to time. Guy likes his rum and his Zoner, and you run a place like this you can get ’em. Couple days off and on maybe he’d be no-show. I’m not his fucking mother, so what? He takes off, next time I take off. Works out.”
“But this time,” Peabody prompted.
“This time he’s just gone.” Moore pulled a bottle from under the counter, poured
something brown and thick into a short glass, then downed it. “Took two thousand from the operating expenses, which damn near wiped them for the month.”
“No warning?”
“Shit. He talks about a big score. Big score and living high, maybe getting us a class place. Carter, he’s full of that crap. Always going to score big, and ain’t never gonna ’cause he’s small-time. Enough rum, he’d really get rolling on it, and how his brother got all the luck.”
“You ever meet his brother?” Peabody asked.
“Nope. Figured he was making it up till I saw this scrapbook deal Carter kept at his place. Full of media reports and some shit on his brother, the artist.”
“He kept a scrapbook on his brother.”
“Yeah, loaded with shit. Don’t know why ’cause the way he talked Carter hated the son of a bitch just for being.”
“Did he ever talk about going to New York to see him?”
“Shit. Carter, he talked about going everywhere to see everybody. Just talk.”
“Did you ever hear him mention Felicity Kade?”
“Mmm. Slick blonde.” Moore licked his lips. “She’s some number. She came around a couple of times.”
“No offense,” Peabody said pleasantly, “but this doesn’t look like the sort of place a woman like that would spend much time.”
“You never know what’s going on with a fancy piece like that. Why I steer clear of them. Come in one night and made a play for Carter. Didn’t have to play very hard. Didn’t get the nitty-gritty out of him. Usually, he’ll brag on the women he bags. Likes to think he’s king in the sack. But with this one, he buttoned up. Slylike.” Moore shrugged. “No big to me. I get my own action.”
“She spend much time with Carter?”
“How the hell do I know? She come in a couple of times. They went out together. Sometimes he’d take a couple of days. If you’re thinking he went off with that piece of work, your aim’s off. No way she’d take him for more than the quick ride.”
“Did he have any other business, any other women, something along those lines that he might’ve gone off with?”
“Been through all this with the locals. He banged women when he could get them. Didn’t shack with any for long. If he had any side jobs, he didn’t let me in. In or not, likely I’d’ve heard. It’s a small island.”