Vendetta in Death (In Death #49) - J. D. Robb Page 0,93
a dive, she concluded, for cheap and serious drinking, fellowship not required.
“We’re not here about your license, Mr. Tiller.”
“Whatever you’re here about better be good enough to roust me out of bed at this hour.”
“Murder good enough for you?”
“Ah, fuck.” He walked away, flipped up the pass-through to go behind the bar. He pulled a bottle from under the bar along with a shot glass. Poured the shot, downed it. “What’s it to me?”
Eve stepped up to the bar, brought Kagen’s ID shot up on her PPC. “Do you know this man?”
“He dead?”
“He is.”
“Yeah, I know him. A regular. Regular asshole.”
“When did you last see or speak to him?”
Tiller jabbed a finger at a stool. “He was sitting there last night, bitching about the ball game on-screen. Doesn’t like baseball, and too fucking bad. I do, and I run the bar.”
“Was he alone?”
“Come in alone, like always.” Tiller pulled out another bottle, a tall glass. Eve didn’t know what he poured, but it smelled like seaweed. He spiked it with another shot.
“What time did he come in?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Ordered a beer, a bump, some grub. His usual. Had another, bitching about the game. I said how he could take off if he didn’t like it. Not like he tips worth a shit anyhow. But he orders another round. I got some regulars watching the game, so I tell him to zip it or I’ll boot him.”
“I bet he zipped it,” Peabody said, trying some flattery.
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?”
He opened his mouth, closed it again. Narrowed his eyes. “Bottom of the fifth. One out, runner on second. Jeraldo takes a ball, then knocks a nice blooper to right field. Runners on the corners. And what does that asshole Murchini do? He hits into a double play, retires