“December twenty-ninth between five and six hundred hours.”
“I was home, in bed, alone. Asleep. Alone because the guy I’d been with three years and I split after I got demoted, and the shit hit. My life went down the toilet, okay? Happy? I got this crapper of a job because I’m marked. But I’m not going to stay in the toilet. Once I get some distance and some backing, I’m going to start my own agency. Lay off my ma, goddamn it. You got your pound of flesh already. I was fourth-generation police. I’d’ve made lieutenant in a few years. Now I’m in this shithole.”
“If you were fourth-generation, you sure as hell should’ve known better.”
“Easy for you to say, married to money.”
Before she realized her temper snapped, Eve slapped her hands on the desk, hard enough to make it shudder. “I was ten years on the job before I set eyes on him. You think it’s about money for me? You think it’s about money for any cop worth the badge? You’re a fucking disgrace.”
“You don’t know what it was. You don’t know anything. Everybody did it, a little here and there. It’s right there, and where’s it going? You think, what does it hurt? You think, I risk my life every damn day. You think that because it’s easy. You think I haven’t asked myself every damn day why I didn’t walk away from it? I knew Taj. I knew him.”
Tortelli drew a shuddering breath as she spoke of a dead cop, a good cop. “I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to him. None of that. Just took some here and there. It’s why I only got demoted. I only got demoted because I spilled my guts to IAB after it went down. And I couldn’t live with that, either, so I’m in this shithole.”
Tears wanted to come. Eve could see them fighting behind the anger. “You think I blame you for it? Yeah, on good days I can talk myself into that. On bad days I can barely look at myself in the mirror. I didn’t kill anybody. You’ve got no cause to drag me into this, drag my family through this again.”
“Show me the receipt, from the lobby bar.”
Tortelli opened a file already on the desk, took it out.
“Okay.” Eve handed it back. “You’re clear.”
“It was only five or six thousand over a couple years,” Tortelli said as Eve started out with Peabody. “Six grand tops.”
Eve glanced back. “Your badge should’ve been worth more.” And kept walking before she said something else.
“I feel sorry for her.”
Eve stopped on the steps, the cold snatching at the hem of her coat, to burn a stare back at Peabody.
“Okay, don’t toss me off the stairs. Everything you said to her was right. Everything. And you could’ve said more and worse and been right. But I feel sorry for her because she knows it, and she’s living with it.”
“You’re wasting your sympathy.”
“What I’m saying is she was good enough to get her detective’s shield, to close cases, maybe make a difference. And she tossed it, all of it, for a few thousand dollars.”
“Double that, minimum. She’s still lying, still justifying.”
On the street, Eve jammed her hands in her pockets because she actively wanted to punch something, someone – and her partner didn’t deserve it.
“And it’s not the money, it’s never just the money. It’s the idea you’re entitled to it. Some DB had a wad of cash on him, what’s he going to do with it? Hey, that’s a nice wrist unit, and he’s got no pulse, so I might as well have it. Shit, that was a big illegals bust, and I got a little bloody on it. The department’s just going to light it up, so what’s the harm if I take a chunk, sell it to some mope? I bust my ass, risk my ass, I deserve it. The first time you think that, do that, pocket something from a crime scene, dip into the pockets of a DB, you’re done. You’re finished, and rolling on cops as dirty as you won’t make you clean again.”
“She’ll never be what she wanted to be, could’ve been. She traded that for money. It doesn’t matter if it was ten dollars or ten thousand.” Peabody hunched her shoulders. “She knows it.”
Eve passed the harmonica player again. A jumpy tune now. She didn’t know how he had it in him to play something so insanely cheerful while he huddled in the cold.
She doubled back, dug into her pocket for what she thought of as her bribe cash, pulled out a fifty, crouched so he could see it, her badge, her eyes.
“Get a goddamn meal. If I find out you took this to the liquor store down the block, I’ll kick your ass. Got that? No,” she said when she saw Peabody reach in her own pocket. “This is enough – and you still owe me on payday. Got that?” she repeated to the sidewalk sleeper.
“’Preciate it.” He tucked the fifty into a fold of his coat.
“Get a meal,” she repeated.
Annoyed with herself – why not just light a match and burn the fifty? – she headed to the overpriced lot and her vehicle.
“Now I’m short till payday,” she muttered, and swiped her card, got the receipt for parking for her expense report.
“I’ll spring for lunch, if we get it. As long as it’s cheap.”
With a half laugh Eve stopped at a light. Then just lowered her head to the wheel a moment. “You weren’t wrong – about Tortelli. I can’t feel it, but you’re not wrong to. Fourth-generation cop, and she’s taking vids of some woman diddling her brother-in-law. You think, maybe they were all dirty along the way – that’s what she’s done, that’s the smear on her family legacy, and she knows that, too.”
“You weren’t wrong either. Her badge should’ve been worth more.”
The light changed; Eve drove.
“I can’t remember ever wanting to be anything but a cop. When I woke up in that hospital in Dallas, everything that happened blurry, or too bright to look at, the cops were there. They scared me some – he’d put that in me, how the cops would throw me in a dark hole with spiders. But they were careful with me, and nobody had been. The doctors, the nurses, they were careful, too, but I didn’t think how maybe they’d fix everything the way I thought about the cops. One of them brought me a stuffed bear. I’d forgotten that,” she realized. “How could I have forgotten that? Lost in the blur.”
She shook her head, made a turn. “I can’t remember ever wanting to be anything but a cop,” she repeated. “I’m betting it was the same for Tortelli. Maybe the difference is she thought it was her right, the badge was just her right. So she didn’t value it until she lost it.”
Though it involved another hunt for a street slot, and another overpriced lot, they tracked Hilda Farmer, formerly Officer Farmer out of the Twelfth Precinct, to a basement unit a few blocks from the bail bondsman she worked for.
Eve pressed the buzzer. Moments later, she saw the electronic peep – a costly addition to security – blink. Hearing the distinct eek! through the door, Eve brushed back her coat, laid a hand on the butt of her weapon.
Locks thudded, snicked, clunked, then opened.
The tall, curvy brunette said, “Dallas! Finally! Hey, Peabody, how’s it going? Come on in!”
“Hilda Farmer?” Eve glanced around the small, tidy living space serving as an office. No clunky equipment here. A pair of slick D&C units sat on a central workstation facing a trio of wall screens.
One of the screens displayed the photo and data of one Carlos Montoya, a hard-faced man with a thick mustache and scowling eyes.
“Skip I’m tracing.” Farmer waved a hand at the screen. “Spine breaker. Assault with a deadly. He beat some schmuck half to death with a ball bat because he couldn’t come up with the vig. Should never have made bail, you ask me, but if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be working. Have a seat! I’ll make coffee. I’ve got some of your brand for special occasions.”
“Hold off on that.”
“Sure, whatever you want. Hell of a thing, isn’t it, Bastwick and Ledo – and that attack last night on the photographer. Assholes in the media trying to work an angle that ties you up in it. I’m here to help.”
She patted the seat of a chair, took another for herself. “I don’t have as much of a jump on the research as I’d like, but I’ve been on another job for a couple days. Whatever I have is yours. You got my e-mails. You know I’m more than ready to work for you.”
“You’re not a cop anymore.”
“I admire you – both of you, really – for sticking it out, working against the rampant sexual harassment in the department. I stood up for myself. I mean, even my lieutenant made remarks and overtures. Go out and bust some balls? Is that any way to talk to a female officer? Telling me I needed to clear any OT with him – like I didn’t know he meant I’d have to put out for him to clear it? And he wasn’t even the worst.”
“Imagine that,” Eve mumbled.
“You know what it’s like. I like the work I’m doing. A skip tries anything like that, a kick in the groin takes care of it. You can’t take care of things like that on the job. But I’d come back in a heartbeat under you, Dallas. You don’t have an aide since you made Peabody your partner.
“I’ll give you my résumé,” she continued before Eve could speak. “You can talk to Charlie – Charlie Kent, the bondsman I work for. Charlie’s okay, so far, but I work out of my own place so he doesn’t get the idea he can move in on me.”
“Like everybody does.”
Farmer rolled her eyes, cast them to the ceiling. “I don’t know what’s wrong with people. But back to you and me, I’m willing to work as a civilian aide or we can request I be reinstated. I’m not picky on it. Clearly, the important thing is that we work together. But I’ll thank you not to stare at my breasts. My face is up here.”
With a thin smile, Farmer tapped her cheeks.
As Eve had been looking at her face, and only her face, she just lifted her eyebrows. “Okay. You’ve been researching my current investigation.”
“As always. You’re the reason I joined the force. I requested assignment to Central, to you, but didn’t get it. A lot of jealous people in the department, but I accepted that. Pay the dues, I told myself. But the harassment was so relentless. I actually think it was deliberate, a way to push me out before I could be reassigned to you.
“So! We should have that coffee if you want to discuss the investigation. I’ll bring up my notes.”
“We’ll pass on the coffee,” Eve told her. “Regarding the investigation, I have a couple of questions that should wrap this up.”
“I’m at your disposal. Professionally,” Farmer added, ticking her finger at Eve.
“Since you’ve followed the investigation, I’d like your whereabouts at the time of the two murders and the assault on Hastings.”
“Dallas.” Huffing out a breath, Farmer sat back. “Let me make this very clear. My personal life is personal. However closely we’ll work together, however intimate that relationship is, I won’t allow the line into personal to be crossed. I realize you and Peabody bend those rules, and while I don’t approve of the sexual free-for-all between a detective and her direct superior, I can overlook it.”
Peabody said, “Huh?”
“You don’t have to worry I’ll usurp your… dynamic, we’ll call it in polite company. I’m not interested. There will be no threesomes here.”
“Gosh, I was counting on that. I even had the outfit.”
“Peabody.” Eve’s voice remained firm and flat despite the laugh tickling the back of her throat.