Then you say how about you, and I say—Never mind,” she finished when Jones opened the door. “Minute’s DOA. I’ll tag you back.”
He stood in black baggies, bare chested and barefooted, with annoyance simmering in sleep-clouded eyes.
“The fuck you want now?”
“Dinnie Duff’s dead. We can talk about that out here, in there, or down at Central. Pick, and now.”
“How’s she dead?”
“Pick,” Eve repeated. “Now.”
“Shit.” He rubbed a hand hard over his face. “Gimme five.”
When he shut the door, Eve glanced at her wrist unit. “If he goes over five, tag Reo back, get her started on the warrants.”
“You know he’s probably having illegal substances, weapons and other questionable items scooped and moved out the back.”
“If he has brains he did at least some of that last night after our conversation. Right now, he needs to get dressed because he doesn’t want to talk about Duff inside, or out on the street. He sure as hell doesn’t want me to pin his ass in Central.”
“What’s his other choice?”
“We’ll see.”
“Okay.” Peabody waited a beat. “So, how’s it going?”
Eve couldn’t stop the quick laugh. “Better way to kill the five, dig into Duff, find out next of kin for notification. Movement at a couple windows on the second level—third’s boarded, but we’ve got a couple people awake enough to watch us out here.”
“Slice works out. He’s got a mag bod going. I don’t think much of the one-armed tat sleeve personally.”
“This is why small talk is useless and annoying.”
“Not entirely. I also noted his gang tat’s the same design and in the same place as the one Pickering was having removed—even while admiring his six-pack abs.”
“Okay, that earns you a point.”
“Duff has a mother in Jersey City, age forty-eight, domestic worker. And a father in Attica, a lifer. They didn’t make it legal. One sib, male, age twenty-six with an Atlanta address—employed at a construction firm, same father listed.”
“We’ll go with the mother.”
“No criminal there. Father’s a bad seed, in and out, and now in for good this time for aggravated assault. Looks like the brother had some issues as a juvenile, got straightened out. He’s been in Georgia for eight years, employed at the same firm for the last five. No recent bumps.
“Duff on the other hand.”
“Yeah, I skimmed hers. Illegals, possession, possession with intent to distribute, unlicensed solicitation. A long line of petty shit. No real violent crimes on her sheet.”
“Now she’s dead, and if she wasn’t dead, she’d be looking at charges of accessory to murder.”
Jones made it out in about three, red hoodie, black pants, scarred high-tops.
Black, Eve noted, but not Lightning brand.
“I want some breakfast.”
Since he kept walking, Eve signaled Peabody, fell into step with him.
“I have to hand it to you. I don’t know if I’d have an appetite if I had the cops coming around asking about the murders of two people I’m connected to.”
“I ain’t worried about it.”
He turned into a grease trap called 24 Hour Eats.
It smelled like overcooked onions, tremendously bad coffee and fake meat sopped in that grease.
The decor ran to walls painted screaming orange, decorated with blissfully optimistic pictures of food. The yellowing white of the counter had scorch scars, and the handful of backless stools carried strips of duct tape along the seats.
The line of booths looked no more promising, but Jones swaggered back to the last, a corner, slid in, tapped a hand on the scarred laminate of the table like he owned the place.
Which he did, Eve thought. At least a share thereof.
A waitress, somewhere in her forties, Eve gauged, with a lot of tits straining against an atomic-yellow uniform, shuffled right over with a coffeepot.
“How’s it going, Slice?”
She poured what pretended to be coffee into the brown mug he turned over. Eve waved a hand in a no signal over hers. Peabody shook her head.
“Get me the cheese grits, Melba, and three eggs scrambled soft, sausage and toast.”
“I’ll put that right in for you.”
She shuffled off, pausing to fill the mugs of a couple of men who looked more like they were ending the night than starting the morning.
The counter waitress slapped a plate in front of a solo female Eve tagged as street level.
Jones added three containers of nondairy creamer and three packets of fake sugar to his coffee.
“How’d Dinnie get herself dead?”
“Probably by letting three murdering goons into Lyle Pickering’s apartment. She finished that up getting beaten to death, raped repeatedly, choked, and stomped on. Her assailants stole her shoes, her coat, her ’link if