Immortal in Death (40 page)

“Cockroach. Not much to know. Dealer, fairly slick, fairly stupid. It’s amazing how many of them are both. Stuck to his own turf. Liked a quick, easy profit.”

“Was he a weasel, too? Like Boomer?”

“Usta weasel. His trainer retired last year.”

“What happens when a trainer retires?”

“Another one takes on the weasel, or he’s let go. Didn’t find any new trainer for Cockroach.”

Roarke started to shrug it off, but it kept niggling. “The cop who retired? Did he work with anybody?”

“What d’you think? I got memory chips in my head?”

“Yes.”

Flattered, Feeney preened. “Well, as a matter of fact, I recall he was partnered with an old pal of mine. Danny Riley. That was back in, oh, forty-one. Seems like he cruised with Mari Dirscolli for a few years to about forty-eight. Might be forty-nine.”

“Never mind,” Roarke muttered.

“Then he teamed with Casto a couple years.”

Roarke’s attention snapped back. “Casto? Was he partnered with Casto while he was Cockroach’s trainer?”

“Sure, but only one leg of a team works as trainer. ‘Course,” Feeney murmured as his brow furrowed. “Usual procedure is to take over your partner’s contacts. No record Casto did. He had his own weasels.”

Roarke told himself it was his own prejudice, his own ridiculous knee-jerk jealousy. He didn’t give a damn. “Not everything’s locked into record. You don’t find it coincidental that two weasels who worked close to Casto got hit, both of them with connections to Immortality?”

“We aren’t saying Casto had Cockroach. And it’s not that coincidental. You’re dealing with illegals here, you got overlaps.”

“What other connection have you found that links Cockroach to the other murders, other than Casto?”

“Jesus, Roarke.” He ran a hand over his face. “You’re as bad as Dallas. Look, a lot of Illegals cops end up with abuse problems. Caste’s clean to the bone. Never had a trace in any of his testing. He’s got a good rep, he’s coming up for captaincy, and it’s no secret he wants it. He’s not going to go messing around with this kind of shit.”

“Sometimes a man is just a little bit tempted, Feeney, and sometimes he gives in. You want to tell me it would be the first time an Illegals cop made a few credits on the side?”

“No.” Feeney sighed again. He was sobering up with this kind of talk. And he didn’t like it. “There’s nothing to pin on him, Roarke. Dallas was working with him. If he was a wrong cop, she’d have smelled it. She’s like that.”

“She’s been distracted. Off stride,” Roarke murmured, remembering her own words. “Think it through, Feeney, no matter how fast she moved on this, she always seemed to be one step off. If someone had known her moves, they might have anticipated her. Especially someone who thinks like a cop.”

“You don’t like him because he’s almost as pretty as you,” Feeney said sourly.

Roarke let that pass. “How much can you dig up on him tonight?”

“Tonight? Jesus, you want me to dig shit up on another cop, go into personal records, because he had a couple of weasels knocked? And you want me to do it tonight?”

Roarke put a hand on Feeney’s shoulder. “We can use my unit.”

“You’ll make a good pair,” Feeney muttered as Roarke steered him through the crowd. “Both a couple of sharks.”

Eve’s vision wavered as if she’d suddenly stepped over her head into a tankful of water. Through the ripple, she saw Casto, could smell the faint scent of soap and sweat on his skin. But she couldn’t home in on what he was doing there.

“What’s going on, Casto? We get a call?” Blankly, she looked around for Peabody, saw the shimmering red drapes that were supposed to add sensuality to a room designed for quick, cheap sex. “Wait a minute.”

“Just relax.” He didn’t want to give her another dose, not in addition to what she’d been drinking at her hen party. “The door’s locked, Eve, so you can’t go anywhere. You’ve got a nice buzz on to make it easier all around.” He pushed a satin-edged pillow behind his back. “It would have been easier still if you’d just let go. But you didn’t. You won’t. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you put the hammer on Lilligas.”

“Who — what?”

“The florist on Vegas II. That’s cutting it too damn close. I’ve been using the bastard myself.”

Her stomach tilted nastily. When she tasted bile at the back of her throat, she leaned forward, stuck her head between her knees and concentrated on breathing in and out.

“Downloads make some people nauseous. We’ll go with something else next time.”

“I missed you.” She tried to focus on keeping the heavy, greasy food she’d celebrated with instead of liquor from spewing back up. “I fucking missed you.”

“Yeah.” He knew she wasn’t speaking out of sentiment. “You weren’t looking for another cop. Hey, why should you? And you had your own worries. Broke the rules, Eve. You know the primary is never, ever supposed to get personally involved. You were too worried about your friend. I admire that, really, even if it is stupid.”

He took her by the hair, dragged her head back. After a quick check of her pupils, he decided the initial dose would hold her for a while. He didn’t want to risk overdosing her. Not until he’d finished.

“And I do admire you, Eve.”

“You sonofabitch.” Her voice slurred over her thickened tongue. “You killed them.”

“Each and every one.” Relaxed, he crossed his feet at the ankles. “It’s been hard to hold it all back, I’ve got to admit. Rough on the ego not to be able to show a woman like you what a smart man can accomplish. You know, Eve, I was a little worried when I learned you were in charge of Boomer.” He reached out, ran a fingertip from her chin down between her breasts. “I thought I could charm you. Gotta admit you were attracted.”

“Get your hand off me.” She slapped out at it, missed by several inches.

“Your depth perception’s off.” He chuckled. “Drugs mess you up, Eve. Take it from me. I see it every shitty day on the streets. Got sick of seeing it. That’s how it started. All those fancy dudes making their fancy profits and never getting their manicures sticky. Why not me?”

“For money.”

“What else is there? I fell into the Immortality connection a couple years back. It was like kismet. Early days then, took my time, did my homework, used a source on the Eden Colony to slip me a sample. Poor old Boomer ferreted it out — my connection from the Eden Colony.”

“Boomer told you.”

“Sure he did. He had something in the Illegals market, he came to me. Didn’t know I was already in on it, not then. I kept it under wraps. I didn’t know Boomer had a copy of the fucking formula. Didn’t know he was holding out, hoping for a nice big chunk.”

“You killed him. You broke him to pieces.”

“Not until it was necessary. I never do anything until it’s necessary. It was Pandora, you see, that beautiful bitch.”

Eve listened, righting to bring her brain and motor skills back into mesh while Casto spun her a tale of sex, power, and profit.

Pandora had spotted him at the club. Or they’d spotted each other. She’d liked the idea that he was a cop, and the kind of cop he was. He’d be able to get his hands on lots of goodies, wouldn’t he? And for her, he’d been happy to do so. He’d been enchanted with her, obsessed, and yes, addicted. No harm in admitting that now. His mistake had been to share his information about Immortality with her, to listen to her ideas for cashing in. Huge profits, she’d predicted. More money than they could spend in three lifetimes. And youth, beauty, great sex. She’d become addicted to the drug quickly, always hungered for more, and she had used him to get it.

But she had been useful, too. Her career, her fame, had made it easy for her to travel, to carry more of what was then being manufactured exclusively on Starlight Station in a little private lab.

Then he’d discovered she’d brought Redford in on the deal. He’d been furious with her, but she’d been able to string him along with sex and promises. And the money, of course.

But things had started to go wrong. Boomer had pushed for money, had pocketed a bag of the drug in powder form.

“I should have been able to handle him. Little wart. Trailed him here. He was flying, running his mouth, tossing the credits I’d given him to keep him quiet around like candy. I couldn’t know what he’d said to that damn whore.” Casto shrugged. “You figured that out yourself. Right scenario, Eve, wrong person. I had to take her out. I was in too deep for mistakes by then. She was just a whore.”

Eve leaned her head back against the wall. Her head had nearly stopped spinning now. She thanked God the dose had been light. Casto was on a roll. She could keep him talking. If she couldn’t get the hell out on her own, someone was going to come looking for her soon.

“Then you went after Boomer.”

“I couldn’t go to his flop and drag him out. My face is too well known around there. I gave him a little time, then I contacted him. Told him we’d be able to deal. We needed him in on our side. He was stupid enough to buy it. Then I had him.”

“You messed him up first. You didn’t kill him quick.”

“I had to find out how much he’d let out, who he might have talked to. He didn’t deal well with pain, our Boomer. Spilled his guts. I found out about the formula. Really pissed me off. I wasn’t going to mess up his face like the hooker’s, but I lost it. Plain and simple. Got emotionally involved, you could say.”

“You’re a cold bastard,” Eve muttered, making her voice weak and blurry.

“Now that’s just not true, Eve. You ask Peabody.” He grinned, gave her breast a quick tweak that sent fury and rage cycling to her gut. “I went for DeeDee when I realized you weren’t going to take a nibble. Too wrapped up in that rich Irish bastard to take a look at a real man. And DeeDee, bless her, was ripe for plucking. Never could get much out of her on what you were up to, though. DeeDee’s got good cop all over her. Slip a little help into her wine, though, she gets more cooperative.”

“You drugged Peabody?”

“Now and then, just to pump her for any details you might have left out of your official report. And to keep her sleeping pretty when I had to go out at night. She was an airtight alibi. Anyway, you know about Pandora. That went pretty much as you had figured, too. Only I was staking out her place that night. Scooped her up the minute she came storming out. She wanted to go to that designer’s. We’d pretty much finished up our sexual relationship by then. Just business now. I figured why not take her? I knew she was working to cut me out of the whole deal. She wanted it all. She didn’t think she needed some street cop hanging on, even if he was the one to give her the damn stuff to begin with. She knew about Boomer, too. But that didn’t bother her. What did she care about some dirty alley croucher? And she never thought, never considered that I’d hurt her.”

“But you did.”

“I took her where she wanted to go. I’m not really sure if I was going to do it then, but when I saw the security camera smashed, it seemed like a sign. Then the place was empty. Just her and me. They’d hang it on the dressmaker, right? Or on the little lady she’d had a fight with. So I hit her. The first strike took her down, but she was up again. That shit made her strong and mean. I had to keep hitting her, and hitting her. Fucking blood flying. Then she was down for good. Your little friend came in, and you know the rest.”

“Yeah, I know the rest. You went back and took the box with the tabs. Why did you take her palm ‘link?”

“She always used it to call me. She might’ve recorded the numbers.”

“Cockroach?”

“Just something extra in the mix. To confuse things. Cockroach was always willing to sample a new product. You were hammering away, and I wanted a hit where I was well alibied, just in case. So I had DeeDee.”

“You got to Jerry, too, didn’t you?”

“Easy as a walk on the beach. Get one of the VT’s stirred up with a quick buzz, wait for the chaos. I had a reviver for Jerry, brought her around and had her out of there before she knew what was happening. I promised her a fix, and she cried like a baby. Morphine first so she wouldn’t get any idea about not cooperating. Then Immortality, then a dash of Zeus. She died happy, Eve. Thanking me.”

“You’re a humanitarian, Casto.”

“No, Eve, I’m a selfish man looking out for number one. And I’m not ashamed of it. I’ve got twelve years on the streets, wading through blood, vomit, and come. I’ve paid my dues. This drug’s going to give me everything I’ve ever wanted. I’ll take my captaincy, and with that kind of connection, I’ll feed profits from the drug into a nice numbered account for four or five years, then I’ll retire to a tropical island and sip mai tais.”

He was winding down now, she could tell it from the tone of his voice. The excitement, the arrogance had cooled to practicality. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

“I know that, Eve. It’s a damn shame. I all but handed you Fitzgerald, but you just wouldn’t let it be.” With what might have been affection, he brushed a hand over her hair. “I’m going to make it easy on you. I’ve got something here that’ll take you down gently. You won’t feel anything.”

“That’s damn considerate of you, Casto.”

“I owe you that much, honey. Cop to cop. If you’d let it lay, after your friend got off, but you wouldn’t. I wish things had been different, Eve. I had a real taste for you.” He leaned close, so close she felt his breath waft over her lips as though he were indeed about to taste her.