Strangers In Death

“Hello, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah.” Was she supposed to make small talk? Hadn’t she done that enough already? “Well…sorry to interrupt. Maybe you could tell Roarke I’ll meet him at the memorial.”

“If you’d hold a moment, I’ll put you right through to him.”

“But-” Too late, she thought with a roll of her eyes as the calming blue wait screen came on her screen.

And, as advertised, a moment later Roarke’s vivid blue eyes replaced the calm. “Just called to chat?”

“Yeah, it’s just talk, talk, talk with me. Listen, I just wanted to leave a message that I’ll meet you at the memorial. It’s still too early, so I’m going to duck into a cyber-café or something, get a little work done, then cab it over.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m over on Third, heading down to Fifty-fourth. So-”

“Wait there.”

“Listen-” Too late, she thought again, as this time her screen went blank. “Wait there,” she mumbled and jammed the ’link back in her pocket. Wait so he could drive across town to pick her up when she was perfectly capable of getting herself where she needed to go.

She could hardly call any of the women on the list Li

At loose ends, she strode to the corner, swung wide of the throng waiting for the light, and studied them for a while.

Briefcases, shopping bags, baby carts-strollers, she corrected. Three people at the curb tried to out-jockey each other for position while they held up their arms to signal a cab. And the fleet of yellow streamed by, already hauling fares. Up the block a maxibus farted as it lumbered to a stop to disgorge passengers, take on more.

Some guy bopped by eating a slice, and as the scent reached out and beckoned like a lover, Eve remembered she’d not only given her ride to Peabody, but left the crullers in it.

Damn it.

She leaned back against the corner of the building while sky trams cruised overhead, traffic clogged the street, and the subway rumbled under it. Everybody going somewhere, or coming back from somewhere else.

While she waited, a couple of women already loaded like pack mules with shopping bags stopped by the display window beside her. And cooed, Eve thought, with the same over-the-top, slightly lame-brained adoration as Mavis cooing over Belle.

“Those shoes! They’re absolutely beyond.”

“Oh God! And the bag. Do you see the bag, Nellie? It looks positively gooshy!”

Eve tracked her gaze over. They looked like a couple of perfectly normal, perfectly sane women, she noted. And they were about to drool on the display glass over a pair of shoes and a purse. They continued to rhapsodize as they pulled the shop door open. Where, Eve assumed, they would shortly drop many hundreds of dollars for something to cart their junk around in, and many hundreds more for something that made their feet cry like babies.

She glanced away in time to spot some guy in a green army coat come flying across the street, dodging vehicles, clambering over others with a wild, happy grin plastered on his face. Happy, she assumed, because the beat cops in pursuit huffed half a block back, losing ground.

People scattered as people tended to do. Eve continued to lean back against the building, but she rolled to her toes and back as she gauged the timing. Green Coat bugled a hooting call of triumph when his combat-booted feet smacked the pavement. And flicking a glance-and his middle finger-behind him, kicked in for the dash down Fifty-fourth.

Eve simply shot out her foot.

He flew, the green coat rising like wings, and landed with what had to be a skin-scraping slide over the sidewalk. He groaned, grunted, managed a half roll. She helped him the rest of the way to his back with a shove of her boot, which she then planted on his sternum.

“Nice takeoff, bad landing.” She pulled out her badge as much for the people rubbernecking as the guy under her boot.

“Shit, shit! I had it cooked and in the pan.”

“Yeah? Well, now it’s burnt, and so are you.”

He held his hands out to show his cooperation, then used the back of one to swipe blood off his face. “What the hell’re you doing standing around the damn corner?”

“Just waiting for my ride.” She saw it cruise up, the mile-long black limo that actually made her stomach hurt with embarrassment. When Roarke lowered the back window, cocked his head, gri

The beat cops huffed and puffed their way up to her. “We appreciate the assistance, ma’am. If you’d just-Lieutenant,” the cop panted when she badged him in turn. “Lieutenant. Sir. We were in pursuit of this individual as-”

“This individual made your pursuit look like a couple of old ladies hobbling back to their rocking chairs.”

“Fucking-A right,” said the individual.

“Shut up. You’re winded, sweating,” she continued. “And this guy was fresh as a daisy until his face met the sidewalk. This embarrasses me. Now if you’ve got your breath back, wrap him up.”

“Yes, sir. For the report, Lieutenant, the individual-”

“I don’t care. He’s all yours.” She strode toward the limo. “Lay off the crullers,” she called back, then climbed inside the shining black car.

12

“I WONDER,” ROARKE SAID CONVERSATIONALLY, “how the city of New York and its population manage without you personally patrolling its streets.”

She’d have come up with a smart remark, but he distracted her by handing her a cup of coffee. She reminded herself as she settled back that the windows were tinted. Nobody could actually see her stretched out in a limo with white rosebuds in crystal tubes while she drank coffee out of a porcelain cup.

So she did. “Why?” she asked. “Why did you pick me up in this ostentatious street yacht?”

“First, I don’t find it ostentatious, but convenient. And very comfortable. Second, I had a bit of work to polish off on the way over and didn’t want to drive myself. Third, you mentioned work, so if you need to do any, this is more comfortable than a cyber-café.”

“Maybe that’s logical.” She drank more coffee, closed her eyes a moment. And Roarke’s fingers brushed her cheek.

“Did the man sprawled on the sidewalk and under your boot get any licks in?”

“No. He never saw it coming. I’ve just got a lot in my head.”

Now he brought her hand to his lips. “Why don’t you let some of it out.”

She eyed him. “Was there a fourth reason we’re in this boat, and was that so you could put moves on me?”

“Darling, that would be the underlying reason for all my decisions.”

Because she could, she grabbed his lapel, yanked him over, and took his mouth in a kiss full of heat and promise. Then pushed him away again. “That’s all you get.”

“I’d prove differently, but it seems a little crass as we’re biding some time before attending a memorial.”

He could prove differently, she knew. And the hell of it was, she enjoyed when he did. She sat a moment, trying to put her thoughts back in order. “You got any crullers on tap?”

“You want a cruller?”

“No. Damn that Peabody. Anyway-”

Roarke held up a finger, pressed the intercom. “Russ, swing by a bakery, will you, and pick up a half a dozen crullers.”

“Yes, sir.”

No wonder her head was screwed up, Eve thought. A couple of minutes before she’d had her boot on some idiot’s chest while she dressed down a couple of lead-footed uniforms. Now she was gliding around New York drinking outrageously good coffee and getting crullers.

“You were saying?” Roarke prompted.

Might as well go with the flow. She crossed her booted ankles. “I spent the morning conducting interviews. So yeah, it’s been a chatty day.”

She ran it through for him, which never failed to organize her thoughts for herself. She paused only when the driver passed Roarke a bakery box, shiny white this time. She wrapped it up snacking on sugar and fat.