Eve buzzed again, longer.
On the second, she got a “What the fuck do you want?” from the speaker.
“NYPSD.” She held up her badge. “We need to speak with Yola Bloomfield.”
She heard the snick of locks, the rattle of chains, the slide of bolts.
If you dismissed the orange and black hair tied with some sort of rag on top of her head, the woman who opened the door didn’t look like a skank.
She wore a shapeless, paint-splattered shirt over ragged jeans and ratty house skids. Other than the trio of hoops through her right eyebrow, her face was unadorned and unpainted.
She smelled of paint and soap.
“What the hell? I’m clean for four months, just had my regular test two days ago.”
“We’re not here about illegals.”
“Good, because I haven’t had so much as a puff of Zoner for four months. What do you want? I’m working.”
“If we can come in, we’ll tell you, and get out of your way.”
“Fine. Fuck.”
She waved a hand, left the door open as she stalked away into a room she obviously used as her studio.
Rather than a sofa, a chair, a screen, or anything usually found in a living space, she had a long, burly workbench and a big shelf crowded with painting supplies. Easels, canvases, something green and cloudy in a tall, clear cup Eve took for solvent until Yola picked it up, gulped some down.
On the walls paintings and drawings of various forms of violence and misery crowded together. More demons (no rainbows), an enormous bat with the head of a man, a woman in a pool of blood at the feet of a hooded man, a winged woman running a forked tongue down the torso of a screaming woman in chains.
The one on the easel centered at the window still gleamed wet. A variety of crawling, flying, slithering things came out of a wide, jagged chasm in what appeared to be Times Square. The sky swirled red. People ran screaming while others were consumed.
“You can sit on the floor.”
“We’ll stand.”
Yola shrugged, plopped on the single stool in the room. “Look, I’m not so pissed off at the rehab shit. I did my ninety, and I’m not bitching about the unscheduled tests. I’m clean, and I’m working better because I’m clean. Clear mind. I’m drinking veg smoothies. Clean out the toxins, get healthy. I’m chilled.”
“Good for you. We’re here because your name came up during the course of our investigation into two murders.”
“Fuck that!”
“You’re not a suspect, Ms. Bloomfield, but a potential target.”
“Fuck that squared.”
Peabody walked the photo over. “Do you know or have you seen this woman?”
“Can’t see her anyway, and does she look like somebody I’d hook with? I’ve got standards, and she’s below the line.”
“She’s already killed twice.”
“What’s she got against me?”
“She’s delusional, Ms. Bloomfield.”
Eve held back, let Peabody take point.
“She’s reenacting murder scenes from books.”
“No shit? Now that’s iced.” Yola toasted with her veg smoothie. “Serious performance art.”
“You won’t admire the concept if you end up in the morgue.”
“Harsh.” Considering, Yola drank again. “So what’s my scene, what’s my part? Death’s the ultimate, sure, but I’m not going there yet.”
“The killer will be obsessed with your ex.”
“Which ex?”
“Stone Bailey.”
“The Stoner?” Yola let out a hard laugh. “I haven’t bumped uglies with him since I got busted. He’s the reason I did, the asshole. And now that I’m clean, I got the big fuck-off from him. How about I tell this whack job she can have him. Not that she’ll get the chance. He can’t lay off the Zeus, can’t lay off the tits and ass.” She gestured to the bat painting.
“I did that one to remind me. He’s a fucking vampire.”
“In her mind you’re preventing him from reaching his potential as a musician, as a man.”
“Bogus.”
“It won’t matter. The character in the book poisons the victim in a club. She puts cyanide in a martini—a pomtini.”
Yola made gagging noises. “I wouldn’t drink that shit if I was still using and stoned stupid. You’re running the wrong way. I want to get back to work.”
“She won’t look like she does in the picture,” Eve put in. “When she moves on the person she’s chosen to represent the character, she’ll blend into the club scene. She’s white, about five-six. She’ll have red hair with blue side dreads. She’ll have an orange dragon on the inside of her right wrist.”
“I don’t care how she looks, she won’t be looking at me.”
Yola started to drink again, stopped, slowly lowered the glass. “Orange dragon?”
“That’s right. You’ve seen her.”
“Orange dragon. It was fierce. I did some sketches.”
She hopped up, grabbed a couple of sketchbooks, pawed through. “Yeah, yeah. Fierce. See?”
Eve looked down at the sketch of a dragon, keen teeth bared, lethal tail coiled to strike.
“Where did you see her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Hellfire, maybe Screw U. It could’ve been Dive Down. Look, I hit the clubs now and then. I don’t use, and I’ve been keeping it to a couple brews. I go for inspiration, take my sketchbook. Yeah, I connect with people, and I’ve gotten a ram-bam. Nobody said I couldn’t have sex, right? I hit one of the clubs two, three times a week, maybe bounce between. I’m going to say I saw Orange Dragon a couple weeks back, maybe.”
“Did you talk to her, go up to her?”
“No, I just sketched the tat. Only got a quick look, it seems to me. Any hot club’s going to be jammed and canned. It could’ve been Styx. I mostly stick with those four, unless I hear there’s going to be action somewhere else.”
“You’re an artist,” Eve began.
“An Op-X-Artist.”
“Whatever, you notice details, faces, body types.”
“I look at the overview, see? Maybe you zoom in on something—like the tat—but mostly it’s the blur and whirl, and you fill in the details from your mind, your guts.”
“Maybe you zoomed in on her around here, in the neighborhood, on the street.”
“The neighborhood’s a false front.” Dismissing it, Yola flicked a hand at the window. “I need something, I get it delivered. I got no reason to go out there until the sun’s down. That’s when the real world starts to live. I saw the tat. Orange tat, white skin. That’s it.”
“Stay out of the clubs for a few weeks.”
“I tell you, I wouldn’t drink her sick-ass pomtini.”
“She could find another way. Stay clean, stay away from the clubs, stay alive.”
Eve turned toward the door, stopped. “You got a mother?”
“Sure I’ve got a mother. What the fuck?”
“Where’s she stand with you?”
“My mom? Well, she was smart enough to tell me the Stoner was wrong, but hell, why would I listen? We’ve gone at it plenty, but she’s proud I’ve got my four months in. Tags me every damn day. She doesn’t give up.”
“In the book, the dead woman had a mother who didn’t give up. Be smart, Yola. Stay out of the clubs.”
“Do you think she will?” Peabody asked as they walked downstairs.
“She’s clean. She may stay clean, may not, but she’s clean now, so her brain’s clear enough to let her think twice. It all depends on where she ends up after she thinks twice.”
“I’m going to have nightmares for sure now, with all those paintings. She’s good enough to make them really, really disturbing.”
“Death’s the ultimate experience.” Hissing out a breath, Eve walked back into the bitter rain. “What makes some people so damn interested in death?”
“Well, we are.”
Eve frowned as she walked. “You’ve got a point. Look up the clubs she listed. See if any of them are open, or if you can tag a manager, an owner.”
They hit two clubs, three more skanks, one club manager, and two bartenders. They didn’t get a nibble until the second bartender.
Brad Smithers tended bar at Screw U to finance his pursuit of his masters in political science. Twenty-three, buff, and black, he earned extra pay taking deliveries, stocking the shelves, and doing setups three afternoons a week.
“Plus it’s a quiet space until about five and the crew starts rolling in. We open at five-thirty for the happy hour crowd, but things don’t start hopping till after nine, and don’t really heat up until more like eleven most nights.
“Hey, how about I fix you guys a fancy coffee? It’s nasty out there.”
“Black works,” Eve said, but he winced.
“You want to trust me here, you don’t want the java straight, not what we’ve got. But it works fine as a base when I fancy it up.”
“I wouldn’t mind it,” Peabody said. “It is nasty out there.”
“I like to talk while I work anyway.” He went behind the long, stylized U of the bar, began to program an AutoChef.
The lights, on full now, consisted of trios of screws with tips that appeared lethal should they fall and impale a customer.
The walls carried a dull shine and numerous photos of naked or mostly naked people in creative poses of debauchery. Booths and tables crowded in together, some with privacy domes, some with filmy curtains. The dance floor spread, another dull sheen in front of a currently empty stage.
Stairs corkscrewed up to the open second level where Eve could see some lounging sofas, sleep chairs, and doors to what would be the privacy rooms.
“Place shows better at night,” he commented as he took some bottles from under the bar, began to doctor up the coffee. “For what it is. The lights start pumping, music starts grinding. We get some colorful characters, and they’re part of the show.”