Page 34 of Treachery in Death

Experience told her the coffee here was as lethal as the booze. “Maybe water?”

He snorted, but pulled two bottles from under the bar, then after a moment’s hesitation added a third. “Rats get thirsty, too.”

“Appreciate it.” Eve passed a bottle to Peabody, carried the other two across the room to Webster.

“Too early for entertainment,” he commented.

She glanced toward the stage. In a couple hours a holoband would set the rhythm for the strippers on early shift, and the scatter of customers would insult their deteriorating stomach linings with hard drinks and cheap brew.

By midnight, the place would be ass-to-ass and elbow-to-elbow under swirling lights. Upstairs in the privacy rooms people—many who’d just met—would be humping away at each other like crazed rabbits.

“I could ask Crack to put on a couple virtual strippers, but I think what we’ve got for you is entertaining enough.”

“It better be. How’s it going, Peabody?”

“I guess we’re going to find out.”

“We’re here with the commander’s full knowledge and authorization, and with his directive that, at this time, the information we’re about to give you isn’t reported to anyone else.”

“We’re not lone wolves in IAB, Dallas.”

She figured he had a recorder running. And also figured if he didn’t agree to terms, she’d give him nothing to record.

“Yeah, I get that Bureau is short for bureaucracy, but that’s the directive.”

“My captain—”

“Is not to be apprised at this time.”

He sat back, a good-looking man with cop’s eyes even, Eve thought, if he’d traded the streets for internal sniffing. He’d thought he’d loved her once, which had been an embarrassing and ... fraught situation.

But at the moment he studied her with cold impatience.

“Even the commander can’t dictate IAB procedure.”

“You don’t want to play, Webster, I’ll find somebody who does. There are reasons,” she added, leaning forward. “And if you’d yank the red tape out of your ass, agree, and listen, you’d understand the directive.”

“Try this. I’ll agree, and I’ll listen. Then I’ll make the determination as to whether that directive holds.”

She sat back.

“Dallas, maybe we should just wait until—”

Eve cut Peabody off with a shake of the head. Sometimes, she decided, you had to trust.

Besides, if push met shove, she’d get the recorder off him.

“I’m going to sum it up for you. I have a copy of the record of my partner’s statement, and will have copies of all data pertinent to the homicide which relates. You’ll get those records, Webster, when and if you give your word to adhere to Whitney’s directive. To begin,” she said, and laid it out.

She took him through it dispassionately, watching his reactions. He played a decent hand of poker, she remembered, but she recognized his shock, the calculation.

His gaze tracked to Peabody and back again, but he didn’t interrupt.

“That’s the nutshell,” Eve concluded. “Your ball, Webster.”

“Renee Oberman. Saint Oberman’s baby girl.”

“That’s the one.”

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