“No matter what we do it doesn’t seem to improve,” Sorenson added as they seated themselves around the table.
“Without backing from neighborhood leaders, you’re wasting your time,” Eve said. “The Eastern Precinct has a reputation for corruption. Why snitch when there’s a good chance nothing will come of it, and an even better chance of retaliation?”
“Why did you come in?”
“Because if we don’t work together, nothing will change,” she said precisely. “And because I take it personally when a drug dealer thinks I’ll be his shell company or whatever.”
From the folder at his side Hawthorn pulled duplicates of the photographs decorating the bulletin board back at the precinct. “These are all individuals who’ve been seen with Murphy since he arrived. About half of them are in the system for one reason or another. We’d like your help with the other half.”
She tucked her leg under her and sifted through the photos Hawthorn handed her. “Well, that’s me,” she said, pointing to the photograph of her with Lyle at Chat Noir.
“Pretty fancy for a dealer,” Sorenson mused.
“Lyle’s always been more uptown than East Side,” Eve said. “His mother, Dolores, grew up poor. Good people who live in poverty often have very rigid definitions of respectable. They want better than they had for their children. She didn’t want Lyle to have anything to do with Victor’s business, and used Victor’s money to make sure Lyle didn’t look like a corner kid. Perfect grammar and elocution, nice clothes. None of it kept Lyle from worshipping his father.”
“Why did he approach you?” Hawthorn asked.
“After what happened yesterday this seems impossible to understand, but we were friends. Caleb wouldn’t have anything to do with Lyle, but Lyle and I, we had things in common.” She stopped, as if she’d said something she regretted, or maybe just choosing her words.
Hawthorn typed. Sorenson preferred the old-fashioned method of pen to paper, although come trial prep half her notes were doodles and oddly drawn little caricatures. Eve looked at the photo, tilting it under the overhead light to reduce the glare before setting it aside.
“What did you have in common?” Matt asked in the silence.
The answer to that question came far less readily, and with a look through her lashes he couldn’t read. She shifted in her chair, putting both feet flat on the floor, then crossing her legs as she chose her words. “Growing up with Caleb was difficult.”
Sorenson gave an amused snort, and Eve cut her a glance.
“Impossible to understand, right? He’s brilliant. You don’t get a full ride to Yale Law without genius IQ brains. He could have played pro basketball, and he’s a firstborn son in a family that’s got some pretty defined gender roles. I wasn’t him, which nobody expected of a girl, but I’m not my mother either. Lyle understood about not fitting in, especially after his father went to prison and his mother got even more religious and strict.”
Her jaw tightened, then she shuffled through the stack of photographs again until she found pictures of a meeting deep in the East Side. “You probably have him in the system, but that’s Travis Jenkins. He was Lyle’s best friend back in the day, always ready to get dirty so Lyle could stay clean. He stayed around after Lyle left, but from what I hear he never made it to the Strykers’ inner circle. He’s a blabbermouth, always trying to look like he’s on the inside by showing off what he knows. But … Travis’s cousin Maria lives with one of the Stryker lieutenants, a guy who used to sing in my dad’s youth choir. Beautiful baritone. Dad was crushed when he lost him to the Strykers but he still baptized both of Maria’s kids eight, maybe ten years ago. Through Maria, Travis is probably Lyle’s source of street information.”
Eve’s memory was nearly perfect, remembering names, relationships, connections forged in gangs or juvenile hall or after-school programs and church. Several hours later, Chinese takeout cartons and empty soda cans littered the table and the sun was setting. They’d identified most of the individuals not in the system, and Eve was sitting cross-legged on a dining room chair, picking through a carton of cashew chicken.
Sorenson sat back and dropped her pen on the legal pad brimming with notes. “It’s a great cover,” she said. “A business owned by a woman, targeting women, and highly visible on every social networking site. Bars don’t take in or deliver a measurable product, so the money’s hard to track.”