Page 78 of Random in Death

“Watch the kids while I’m gone.”

“As always.”

Peabody waited until they were out of earshot. “I actually like today’s tie.”

“Don’t make me hurt you,” Eve warned, and took the glides down.

Chapter Eleven

Eve weighed the four-block walk against the morning traffic and parking issue.

“We’re walking. It’s only four blocks.”

“Okay, sure, but it’s raining.”

“Oh, rain! In that case, we’re walking. We’ll be talking to Hank Kajinski and Devin Spruce, both seventeen, both working at the Corner Deli.”

“I know that place. They make incredible cheese blintzes, and their matzo ball soup’s seriously mag.”

“We’re not going there for lunch, Peabody.”

When they reached the main lobby, Eve headed for the doors, and the rain.

A slow, steady sky drip that turned the city into a sauna.

People huddled under umbrellas—some, Eve thought, bought hastily from a street vendor who sold them at a premium at the first drip. Others, shoulders hunched, trudged along scowling like the wet equaled a personal affront.

She watched a woman, legs scissoring despite the heels, dashing up the sidewalk with a shopping bag over her head.

And vehicular traffic, as she’d predicted, crept inch by inch with horns blasting.

“You’d think a little rain ranked as one of those biblical plagues, like, what is it, locusts.”

“Or water turning to blood.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Wasn’t it? “That’s a plague?”

“It’s a popular one. One of Egypt’s ten, and one of the seven predicted in Revelation.”

“How do you know this stuff?”

“Oh, just things you pick up.”

“I’d put them right down again,” Eve decided. “We have to deal with enough blood without worrying about it spurting out of the shower.”

“Okay, that’s guaranteed to give me daymares the next time I take one.” Peabody jerked her head right. “The guy across the street’s selling fold-up umbrellas for fifty bucks.”

“Yeah, I saw him. Anybody stupid enough to pay that deserves to get hosed. Plus, he’d make us before we crossed the street, and I’m damned if I’m chasing him. And we’re here.”

The Corner Deli actually stood on the corner. Most of the breakfast or bagel-and-schmear-to-go crowd had come and gone, but a few lingered on stools at the spotless white counter, or waited out the rain (good luck with that) over coffee and one of Peabody’s blintzes at an equally spotless postage-stamp-sized table.

The place smelled of baked bread, of pickles and onions and boiled eggs. And somehow it all combined into a single, appealing aroma.

Hank Kajinski was working the display counter and currently boxing up a round of rye for a waiting customer.

Eve judged him as six-one, with youthful vid-star looks, the kind that would cast him as the high school quarterback. Thick blond hair under his clear cap, bright blue eyes, just the hint of a summer tan, square-jawed, and lankily built.

Eve waited until he’d rung up the customer and turned with a flashing smile.

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