“It’s a business,” Roarke commented.
“It’s an excuse to kill, maim, steal, and terrorize. But yeah,” she conceded, “a business. So you don’t put out a hit on a former member because he’s living his life outside. You do that because you’ve got a personal grudge, or because he did something while living his life that messed with gang business.”
“There may be something that at least hints at that in his journal.”
“I’ll be looking. But if Duff was with Lyle back in his gang time, and she’s still with the Bangers, she’ll know something.”
They wound their way into the bowels of the Bowery. While most of the sector had been gentrified and revitalized after the Urbans, this seedy handful of blocks seemed to prefer squalor.
Upscale here meant the obscenities tagged on the walls of buildings were grammatically correct.
Many who worked for a living here earned their pay in the clubs, dives, and hellholes underground. Those with no basic skills and the need for food or a fix tended to sell their bodies there, for individual use or for groups in sex games.
The Bangers ruled this tiny slice of the underground, routinely warring with the Chinatown Dragons in an attempt to expand their territory.
On the streets and sidewalks, they mugged tourists foolish enough to wander onto their turf looking for color, and catered to addicts and the street whores who couldn’t meet the regs for a license.
Shopkeepers who balked at paying out protection money usually found their places of business burned out or their stock destroyed by homemade boomers. Often with the recalcitrant shopkeeper still inside.
As far as Eve knew, the only building off limits was Holy Redeemer Church on East Fourth. Off limits not because Bangers respected a house of worship, but because many of their mothers and grandmothers prayed there for the souls of their offspring—souls those offspring had already sold to the lowest bidder.
Eve scanned the streets—windows barred or boarded, steel gates locked tight and tagged, husks of burned-out vehicles.
Given the cold, the wind, most business and entertainment went underground, but a few packs wandered with gang colors—black and red—displayed on hoods, on bandannas snaking out of pockets, on wristbands.
“You carrying?” Eve asked casually as Roarke pulled over.
“Not to worry.” He gave her hand a pat before they got out on either side.
She saw the looks from the pack—three male, one female—a couple of yards down. And when they switched directions, started to swagger back toward her, she flipped back her coat, put a hand—very overtly—on her weapon.
And smiled, showing her teeth. “Keep moving,” she advised.
The tallest one—skinny as a stick, pasty-white with a scatter of old acne scars—grinned back. “Come on now, baby. Why’n you roll with us? We’ll show you how it’s done.”
When he rubbed his crotch, his companions howled with hilarity. Helped on, Eve noted, as their pupils were big as moons, by the chemicals dancing in their bloodstreams.
“With that little thing?” She cocked her head. “My cat’s got a better package. Keep moving,” she repeated. “Or I’ll haul your brain-dead asses in for use of illegals, possession of same, and interfering with a law officer.”
“Yeah?” This was a big one, massive shoulders, as black as his companion was white. The Bangers did go for diversity. “You and what army, bitch?”
Eve cocked her head again, this time toward Roarke. That brought on more hilarity.
“He’s pretty.” The lone female, mixed race, hair a flying flag of gang colors, licked her lips, wagged her tongue with its silver stud. “I want a taste of that meat.”
Roarke glanced casually at Eve, but the blue of his eyes cut as sharp as the wind. “Are these the Bangers then?”
“Ooooh, he even talks pretty.”
“Where I come from bangers are sausages. That doesn’t seem far off, really. If you’ve more brains than a sausage, you’d use them to move along as the lieutenant suggested. Otherwise, you lot will end up bloodied before you land in a cage.”
“Fuck you, limey prick.” Howling with more hilarity, the third male—squat as a barrel, long bleached-white hair flying, heaved the rock in his pocket at the car.
It ricocheted off the security shield Roarke had engaged and smacked into the grinning face of the female. She dropped like, well, a rock.
“I’m Irish, by the way.” Roarke braced for an assault. Eve drew her weapon.
A black-and-white rolled up with a quick one-two of sirens.
The two cops who got out—one male, one female—made the big Banger look like the runt of the litter.
The female cop shouldered her air rifle. It wouldn’t kill anybody, but a blast from it would hurt like holy hell.
“Causing trouble again, Shake ’n Bake?”
Pasty guy obviously didn’t care for the nickname, and snarled at her. “We’re just walking. We can walk where the fuck we want in a free fucking country.”
“Then pick up Little Easy there and keep doing that. Unless you’d like to assume the position and have us go through your pockets.”
“Fucking cops is wheeze.”
But the big one hauled up the dazed female, and they all kept walking.
The male officer watched them go. “That bunch is mostly just bullshit and noise. Got plenty of worse around here. What’re you after down here, Lieutenant?”
“I’m after Dinnie Duff.” Eve gestured to a four-story building with a street-level tat-and-piercing parlor. It made Rochelle’s apartment building look like a palace. “Last known address.”
“Current Banger HQ. She mostly flops there.” The female frowned at the building. “And some of the worse my astute partner mentioned does, too. She may be working the underground this time of night, but if we’re going down there, we’re going to want more cops.”
“Ten-four,” her partner agreed. “Worst of the worst.”
“We’ll check the flop. She had a busy night, so she may be in.”
“We got your back. What’re you pulling her for?”
“She’s prime suspect on accessory to murder.”
Both uniforms stared. The female found her voice. “Dinnie? She’s a user, a skank, and as useless as bull tits, but I wouldn’t peg her on murder.”
“How long have you worked this sector?” Eve asked.
“Eight years. Zutter here has seven.”
“Do you know Lyle Pickering?”
“Sure. We busted him a time or two. Addict, asshole, had some violence in there, but it was mostly the Go.”
Zutter nodded. “He sure liked his Go. He’s out. Last I heard he was giving the straight way a try. We even had breakfast at Casa de Sol about a month ago, where he cooks. Seemed to be doing okay.”
“He was—got his two-year chip, worked the job. And tonight, I have reason to believe Duff gained entrance to his apartment, assisted three unknown males into same. And now he’s dead.”
“Dinnie.” Zutter puffed his cheeks, shook his head. “Dumber than a splintered post and half crazy with it. Too bad about Pick. Too damn bad. Well.” He rolled his shoulders. “Ready, Norton?”
“Born ready,” she said. “Raised to roll.”
They approached the door emblazoned with the Banger fist.
5
Zutter stepped up. “They’ve got a secret knock for the guard inside.”
Eve stared at him. “No joke?”
“No joke.” Zutter banged his fist in a quick one, two, three—pause—one, two—pause—one.
“And an unbreakable code, too.”
Zutter spread his lips in a grin. “Door guards aren’t usually their best and brightest.”
To prove it, the guard who opened the door boasted more fat than muscle, a bull ring in his nose that would cause him serious pain when anyone with sense yanked it in a fight, and a monster matching game still grring on his PPC.
“Don’t need no cops.”
“Slice wants to confab.”
“Slice wants?”
“Smelled some Dragon breath. What the what, Toro, you axe the zombies first. Icepick them crawlers, grab up the torches for frying vamps.”
Toro frowned down at the game. “Zombies first?”
While he puzzled over that, Zutter nudged the bulk of him aside to clear a path for the stairs. “Monster Hunter,” Zutter said as they walked up. “My eight-year-old kid plays it. Like I said, not the brightest.”
Eve heard banging music, throaty moans, exaggerated gasps. It didn’t take seeing the action to recognize a porn vid in play.
The stairs opened into a line of living quarters. Most stood open—a number didn’t have doors to close in the first place.
The one on the left boasted doubles, both open. The bump and grind of porn music rolled out.
“That’s Slice’s flop. He’s top captain,” Norton explained. “Well, the only captain now since recruiting’s way down, busts are up. Second-gen Banger.”
“How many flop here?”
“Hard to say. Maybe twenty, twenty-five regulars. But you could have double that before a strike. Their territory’s shrunk, and they’re clinging to what they’ve got, pushing to take back what they lost. A lot of them would die for it. Some do.”
Eve stepped to the opening. Across a wide living area on a ten-foot screen, numerous people in masks engaged in various acts of sex in some sort of fancy ballroom. The music, provided by an onstage band, hit heavy on the bass.
She judged the living space owed its size to the removal of walls to combine a couple of flops into one. Most of the furniture ran to low-rise gel sofas in shiny red and black, and most were currently occupied by couples—or threesomes—trying to mimic the action on-screen.
In the single oversized sleep chair, two women—obviously stoned—pawed and crawled lugubriously over a male. He gave tits and ass absent strokes with one hand, worked his PPC with the other.