using when she was about fourteen. Took off whenever she liked, would come back crying, being sorry, making promises, then do it all again. Took up with the Bangers, and the mother laid down the law. If she ran with that type, she couldn’t come home. Anyway, she didn’t know who she ran with, specifically, just the gang, the type.”
And that picture, Eve thought, also came though clear enough. “Okay.”
“On the journal search,” Peabody said as she settled into the car. “There are mentions of Duff, of the gang, Slice and other members, of Strong, his sponsor—but, at a glance, he doesn’t write down about being a CI.”
“Kept it confidential, even from his journal. It wasn’t passcoded, probably to show his sister he had nothing to hide, but he’s careful. Maybe somebody breaks in, takes it, reads it.”
“He didn’t have any trouble writing down his thoughts about Duff. You go back a few months, they’re conflicted. She needs help. Maybe he can help, that sort of thing. But I read an entry he put in just a few days ago where he wrote about deciding he had to cut her off, all the way off and why. What he said to her, what she said.”
“That jibes with the sponsor’s take. What was the why?”
“He finally realized what his sponsor, the prison shrink, his family, his boss, the waitress at work had been telling him all along. He wasn’t helping, but enabling. In the case of his boss, it was a little more direct. She was a junkie whore, and just because he wasn’t doing her didn’t mean she wasn’t screwing him, and he paid her for it.”
“Sounds like his boss had it right. But Lyle still let her into his apartment.”
“From some I skimmed in the journal?” Peabody began. “He had a lot of soft spots. The wit said she was crying, and how she needed help. In the journal, Lyle wrote he told her she could come to him if she was ready to admit she needed help—for her addiction. He’d help her get into Clean House, take her to meetings, ask his sponsor to sponsor her. Otherwise, blow basically. If she kept coming around, high or jonesing to get high, he’d call the cops.”
“So she comes to his place, says she needs help. Maybe says he had it right, she’s ready to ask for help. Please help. He buys it, opens the door. She can spin him a load of bullshit, but she has to get him out of the room long enough for her to let the muscle in. So, can she have some water—crying, shaking. He goes into the kitchen to get it, takes out his ’link. Likely to tag his sponsor. And that’s that.”
As she thought it through, Eve drummed her fingers on the wheel. “But, how does the junkie whore come up with a plan to get into the apartment, when Lyle’s alone, and distract him enough to get all that muscle in there—with the tranq, with the illegals. And why if she set it all up, doesn’t she hang around and watch it go down? If this is her payback for him cutting her off, wouldn’t she want a bigger piece of it?”
She glanced over at Peabody’s thoughtful face. “Don’t you want to stay, make sure it’s done right? And where did she get the illegals, or the money to buy them?”
“All good and valid points,” Peabody conceded, “but we’ve got enough to confirm that’s how it went down.”
“We’ve got enough to confirm she got him to open the door, then she let in the killers. What all this says to me? She’s the bait. Maybe she wanted him dead, too—but then again, why did she leave?”
“She didn’t want to see the rest.”
Eve waved that off. “I’m not giving her the credit of actual feelings. She left, I think, because she’d done what she came to do. What someone with enough punch—and access to illegals—ordered up. Add in, they don’t kill him in a fight, don’t beat the crap out of him in payback or to teach him a lesson. Because it wasn’t so much payback. It was . . . business,” she decided.
“Sloppy, poorly planned, but business. Personal business. With Duff as the bait. And once that business was done, they—what is it—cut off bait.”
“Just cut. Cut bait.”
“Whatever.” Eve pulled up in front of the apartment building on the edges of Tribeca.
“Yeah, and whatever makes sense.” Peabody angled in her seat. “Duff