Connections in Death

“The legalized torture of socializing lined right up with premeditated murder when you added the requirement of fancy shoes.” - Eve, Connections in Death

Connections in Death
Connections in Death US Hardcover
Book Number	48
Release Date	February 5, 2019
Publisher	St. Martin's Press
ISBN	978-1250201577
Publication order
Previous	Leverage in Death
Next	Vendetta in Death

Plot Summary

In this gritty and gripping new novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, Eve Dallas fights to save the innocent―and serve justice to the guilty―on the streets of New York.

Homicide cop Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband, Roarke, are building a brand-new school and youth shelter. They know that the hard life can lead kids toward dangerous crossroads―and with this new project, they hope to nudge a few more of them onto the right path. For expert help, they hire child psychologist Dr. Rochelle Pickering―whose own brother pulled himself out of a spiral of addiction and crime with Rochelle’s support.

Lyle is living with Rochelle while he gets his life together, and he’s thrilled to hear about his sister’s new job offer. But within hours, triumph is followed by tragedy. Returning from a celebratory dinner with her boyfriend, she finds Lyle dead with a syringe in his lap, and Eve’s investigation confirms that this wasn’t just another OD. After all his work to get clean, Lyle’s been pumped full of poison―and a neighbor with a peephole reports seeing a scruffy, pink-haired girl fleeing the scene.

Now Eve and Roarke must venture into the gang territory where Lyle used to run, and the ugly underground world of tattoo parlors and strip joints where everyone has taken a wrong turn somewhere. They both believe in giving people a second chance. Maybe even a third or fourth. But as far as they’re concerned, whoever gave the order on Lyle Pickering’s murder has run out of chances…

Spoiler warning! This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode.

Timeline

Story Date: March, 2061

Day 1 – Saturday

Chapter 1

• Eve begins an inner monologue about the horrors of socializing, featuring the evils of fancy shoes and the tortures she would like to inflict on those who determined their necessity as she and Roarke walk towards Nadine’s swanky penthouse. Whoever invented the cocktail party needs to join the fancy shoe originator in the torture chamber, and who came up with small talk as a social imperative and why is a gift required for every occasion? Roarke asks her if she’s through with her internal monologue. Eve tells him it’s probably the most sensible conversation she’ll have all night, while thinking that Roarke actually enjoyed socializing and was good at it. Roarke takes exception since Nadine’s party will be full of Eve’s friends and they’re smart, interesting people, plus Nadine deserves a party.
• Nadine’s teenage intern, Quilla, greets them at the door, relieving them of their coats and the housewarming present. Nadine brings her to her home office to show her the Oscar. Eve picks it up, thinking it’s a “weird-looking dickless gold dude” and wonders why they didn’t give him pants. She tells Nadine it’s a blunt-force trauma waiting to happen.
• Nadine’s rock star boyfriend, Jake Kincade, appears at the doorway and asks Eve, “If they weren’t going to suit him up, why not give him his works? One or the other.” Roarke mutters “Good God,” realizing that Jake is speaking the words Eve was thinking. Jake asks Eve if she knew Santiago could rock a keyboard (she did not), and says the chick cop (Detective Carmichael)’s got pipes. Also, the dead doc can smoke the sax. The captain of the Electronic Detectives Division, Feeney, is dressed normally – the same rumpled shit-brown suit he’d worn to work. Next to him is Bebe Hewitt, Nadine’s big boss. Quilla comes in with sex-club owner Crack and a woman Eve doesn’t know.
• Jake tells Eve “The Quill” is giving Nadine a run for her money, and campaigned to come, saying she could do a three-minute vid report on the party. He tells Roarke Quilla’s been filling him in on his An Dídean project and he’d like to talk to him about it. Eve’s best friend, Mavis, dances up to give her a hug and asks about the jamming on the terrace, which Jake offers to take her to. Bebe thanks Eve for the work she and her detectives did in the Larinda Mars investigation. Nadine tells Eve Hewitt is taking on too much of the blame because she’s the boss.
• Crack introduces Eve and Roarke to his date, Rochelle Pickering, a child psychologist, who Roarke knows about since he’s considering her for a job at An Dídean. She’s done some consulting at Dóchas, and Roarke says the head counselor there speaks highly of her. Eve thinks Crack is smitten with her, so she finds Dr. Mira, the NYPSD’s top profiler, to get her take. Mira says she likes Jake, and Eve asks her if she knows Rochelle. Mira also volunteers at Dóchas, and she and Rochelle met there briefly a few months ago – Mira says she’s a stable, dedicated, and serious woman. Mr. Mira joins them with his adorably crooked tie and soft, sweet green eyes. Eve’s heart went into meltdown and she thinks “If everyone had a Dennis Mira in their lives, she’d be out of work” since “no one would have another violent thought.”
• Eve’s boss, Commander Whitney, is dancing with Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Cher Reo. Eve’s partner, Detective Delia Peabody, is dancing with her main man, EDD ace McNab. Baxter, aka Detective Horndog, is flirting with the terrifying Trina. Reineke and Jenkinson clicked (clinked?) glasses as they joined in on the chorus of whatever girl duet Detective Carmichael and Mavis belted out. Jenkinson’s tie glowed like the moons that covered it, Trueheart, Baxter’s earnest young partner, sat with his girlfriend and Feeney, and Feeney’s eyes glowed like Jenkinson’s tie as he watched the Avenue A drummer bang and crash the drums.
• Garnet DeWinter, forensic anthropologist, was in conversation with the commander’s wife, Anna Whitney, and EDD Callendar dragged a laughing Charles Monroe onto the dance floor. Since the former LC was occupied, his wife, Dr. Louise Dimatto, hooked an arm through Eve’s, asking her who the stunning woman with Crack is. Nadine’s house was officially warmed.
• On the way home, Eve started a run on Pickering. Roarke told her he already did one because she’s the top contender for the head therapist spot at An Didean now that the current one is moving to East Washington to be with her son. She’s the only daughter and second of four children. Her father did time twice for illegals, her younger brother did time as a juvenile for theft and possession, and belonged to the Bangers, a bad news gang in the Bowery. He’s been out of prison for two years and has turned his life around – he’s clean, no longer affiliated with the Bangers and attends twelve-step meetings regularly. Their father died in a prison incident when Rochelle was fifteen, and their mother self-terminated shortly thereafter. Their maternal grandmother raised them in the roughest part of the Bowery. The oldest brother has a plumbing business, a three-year-old daughter, a child on the way and the youngest is in law school at Columbia on scholarship. Roarke says he’s planning to bring her in for an interview Monday morning and expects to offer her the position.

Day 2 – Sunday

Chapter 2

• No murders, so Eve slept late, banged Roarke like a hammer, ate crepes, ran along a virtual beach, pumped iron, and took a session with the master at the dojo, finishing up with a swim and pool sex and then some target practice. To celebrate no interruptions from dispatch, she let Roarke bang her like a hammer after they watched a vid where a whole lot of stuff blew up.

Day 3 – Monday

Chapter 2 (Continued)

• Eve gets into Central early to catch up with her bullpen and do paperwork. Santiago was jazzed about getting to jam with Avenue A at Nadine’s party, and Carmichael says now she’s sung duets with Mavis and Jake, so big night. Peabody comes in while Eve’s working on the budget, and then her communicator signaled.
• The dead body was crumpled on the second floor of a multitenant building: Stuart Adler, who had bumps for drunk and disorderly and public drunkenness (and smelled like alcohol). His neck was broken, likely from the hard fall he took down the steps. There was also a knife sticking out of his abdomen, but clearly the knife wound came second because there would have been more blood from the gut otherwise. The neighbors all agree he was a loud drunk, and calling the police on him only worked for a few days until he drank again. His next door neighbor soundproofed the shared wall.
• Eve solves the mystery with an apple – Stu was using his pocketknife to peel an apple, trying for one piece, when he fell and after breaking his neck and fracturing his skull, he landed on his open pocketknife.
• Meanwhile at Roarke’s office, he is interviewing Rochelle for the job of head therapist at An Dídean, although she thought she was there so he could talk about her work at Dóchas. He tells her they will have the shelter and school up and running by May. She says she has no interest in going out on her own because she likes being part of a team so you can pull on others’ strengths to help you do better work. She understands An Dídean will do that as well – educate, rehabilitate, provide structure and safety, and provide a community where young people can connect with each other and with adults who want to guide them toward a good, healthy, productive life.
• Roarke says the past few months haven’t only been about rehabbing and remodeling the building, but about gathering a staff who understands the purpose and has the training and dedication to fulfill it. Rochelle thinks he’s asking her to consult at An Dídean the way she does at Dóchas, but he says he wants to hire her for the head therapist position, which has suddenly opened up due to the original person having a family emergency and moving to East Washington. Rochelle says Dr. Po has nearly 30 years of experience in youth psychology and counseling and she has barely ten, so she asks him if the job offer is because of her relationship with Wilson.
• Roarke assures her that she was his second pick out of the five qualified candidates he considered the previous fall, before she was dating Wilson. He said it was an interesting surprise to meet her at Nadine’s party with him, as he had just decided that morning to speak to her about the position. She tells Roarke he must be aware that her addict father died in prison and her mother’s addiction to him and to the substances he introduced her to contributed to her suicide. He tells her that’s a plus – she overcame the brutality of her youth and uses it to help the vulnerable and defenseless. She says she would like to tour the building, which Roarke accommodates, and then she accepts the position.
• Once home, Roarke sits down with Summerset, his father in all but name, and the person who ran the house as efficiently as Caro ran his office and they drink whiskey. He tells him he hired Rochelle, and everything’s on track for An Dídean opening in May. Summerset asks their cat, Galahad, “Will [Eve] have made it through the day without getting bloodied? We’ll hope for it.”

Chapter 3

• Summerset greets Eve when she arrives home, “Neither late nor bleeding. One expects a tympani.” She asks him if he was out that day because that would explain the reports of a flying skeleton. She brings Roarke wine in his office, where he tells her he offered Dr. Pickering the position, but hasn’t sent the signed contract yet in case Eve has objections. She asks where Rochelle met Crack, and Roarke tells her it was at a memorial for a friend of one of her patients. Crack also knew the friend, who had taken her own life just before Christmas. Rochelle saw how her patient related to Crack and asked him to train to be a mentor for disadvantaged and/or troubled youth, which he did. Eve tells Roarke to go ahead and send the contract and they eat dinner.
• Rochelle lets out a wild scream in the apartment she shares with her brother, Lyle, then a whoop, then a dance. He comes in and she tells him about her new job. She is pleased he’s put the weight back on that he’d lost to illegals and prison, and tells him she’s taking Wilson to dinner to celebrate the job offer, but offers to have Wilson come over and order in for the three of them instead since she forgot it was Lyle’s first day off in over a week. He turns her down, saying he wants to go to a meeting and then visit Gram, and he'll bunk there or at their brother Martin’s place.
• When Ro and Crack go to her apartment after their date, they find Lyle slumped in a chair, dead. Crack holds Ro back so she doesn’t contaminate the scene and then calls Dallas. Eve and Roarke arrive, send Ro and Crack away, and study the crime scene. It’s been staged to look like an accidental OD, but Eve sees the tiny mark on Lyle's arm left by a pressure syringe and calls her partner, telling Roarke, “We're going from what looked like murder this morning and turned into accidental, to what looks like accidental OD, but is murder.”

Chapter 4

• A search of the apartment reveals a pair of dime vials (one nearly empty) and a second pressure syringe in the top drawer of Lyle’s dresser, conveniently left on top of underwear and socks. It looks like he let someone in about five minutes after Ro left for her date, went to the kitchen for a glass of water, and then they got him from behind. They jabbed him with a needle to either tranq him or get him high, then they staged the OD. After that they planted the illegals and stole his money. There is some bruising on Lyle: “Couldn’t resist giving him a couple shots before they killed him,” making it personal.
• The tenant across the hall tells Eve she saw the girl who came up to the apartment when she was bringing down her garbage, but she was wearing a hoodie and had her head down; she remembers a thin build and some pink in her hair. She heard her knocking on Lyle’s door, crying and saying she was ready for help. After he let her in, three big guys came up the stairs. The girl let them in, leaving at the same time. Ms. Gregory heard the guys laughing and banging on down the stairs soon after, but she didn’t get up to look.
• Eve and Roarke go to Crack’s apartment, where they tell Ro that whoever killed Lyle staged it to look like an OD. Ro recognized the description of the girl as Dinnie Duff, who lived with Lyle and was a “Banger Bitch.” They figure she came over, played on his sympathy to get inside, and then let the killers in. Roarke arranged for a car and driver so Rochelle can tell her family about Lyle, and Eve and Roarke head to Banger territory to pick up Duff.
• They encounter several members of the Bangers, but Officers Norton and Zutter, who regularly patrol that area, say that bunch are all bullshit and noise, and there’s plenty who are worse. Duff’s last known address is the current Bangers HQ, where she flops. Norton says Duff is “a user, a skank, and useless as bull tits,” but she wouldn’t peg her for murder. Zutter adds that “she’s dumber than a splintered post and half-crazy with it.”

Chapter 5

• Once inside Bangers HQ, the captain, Slice, welcomes Eve and Roarke as the celebs they are. They ask to see Dinnie Duff, who isn’t there, and are given her place of employment, Wet Dreams. When Eve tells them Lyle was murdered, Slice says he wouldn’t do that – once a Banger, always a Banger.
• Eve doesn’t think Jones ordered a hit on Lyle and won’t order one on Duff because he would give her a trial instead of going straight to kill. The officers agree, saying he would follow the code. Eve and Roarke leave them there to watch the house, while they head over to the Underground. She pulls out two serrated-edged knives from her trunk arsenal, one for each of them. Norton tags them to say the Bangers sent three members after them. Eve and Roarke have the obligatory scene of fighting off random thugs, plus an LC hitting on them while she’s fucking a john (“give ya a double for half”).
• Taffy Pull, who runs Wet Dreams, says Duff hasn’t been in since the previous Wednesday or Thursday. Eve sees the three Bangers who followed them. One of them, Bolt, threatens her, saying “bad shit happens to cops underground. Eve tells him “worse shit happens to people who start something with a cop who has a stunner aimed at them” and, after seeing that Roarke also has a stunner aimed at him, he keeps walking. Eve figures Duff is dead.
• Eve runs the Bangers captain, Slice, who is actually Marcus Jones, Jr., second-gen Banger – his father, ‘Rock,’ had been a captain until he was beaten half to death about ten years ago – he’s in a medical facility now with severe head trauma and brain damage. Jones, Jr. owns the HQ building and a few other ventures with two partners – Samuel Cohen, a disbarred lawyer, and his cohab, Eldena Vinn, who dances at a strip joint they own, Bump and Bang. Eve’s question: “How do a gangbanger, a disbarred lawyer, and a stripper become business partners?”
• Once home, Roarke convinces Eve they need to shower off their interesting night on the town, and after sex, Eve confirms that she will never whack his balls with a shock stick to get him off. Roarke expresses his gratitude and Eve continues, “I don’t want you clamping any weird toys on my nipples,” which he also agrees to.

Day 4 – Tuesday

Chapter 6

• On the way to the morgue, Eve sends a memo to Detective Strong in illegals, wondering where Jones got the money to become a landlord and property owner. She thinks Jones was definitely shocked and angry to hear about Lyle’s murder, so who ordered the hit on him? Morris confirmed the sequence of events and Eve’s conclusions on Lyle’s murder – tranq’d while somebody held him still, then staged the OD. Eve’s communicator signals – Duff’s body has been found.
• Eve tells Peabody she’s not surprised because junkies are unreliable – you use one to kill, you get rid of her before she gets picked up for something and blabs, or blabs when she’s high or trying to score. It would have been smarter to kill her at the same time they killed Lyle to make it look like the two partied too hard. In addition to no obvious motive, she thinks Jones is too smart to have ordered such sloppy hits.
• Duff's body was found by a sidewalk sleeper nicknamed Nancy Nuts, who was upset about having a dead girl on the spot where she sings and dances for booze money. Officer Grogan confirms it’s the border between Banger and Dragon territory. Slice would never order a hit that messy (she was beaten and raped), he prefers sharps, and he would never have the body left where it could start a gang war.

Chapter 7

• Peabody has Duff’s shirt, which she got from Nancy for an energy bar and a twenty. Eve and Peabody talk to Slice at a diner he owns. They don’t think he ordered the kills, but they think somebody from the Bangers did, trying to start a turf war. Strong tags Eve back, asking for a meet in her office so they head to Central. Strong tells Eve that Lyle has been a confidential informant (CI) for her for the past ten months.

Chapter 8

• Lyle came to Strong almost a year ago because a waitress at Casa del Sol has a 16-year-old-son who witnessed a couple of Bangers pressuring his 14-year-old cousin about buying drugs. He went over and told his cousin to go home, and the Bangers beat the crap out of the older boy, putting him in the hospital. He didn’t give the cops a description, but did give it to Lyle, who met with Strong to give her the info, saying if she busted them for assault it would come back on the cousins. Strong watched the two Bangers and before long was able to catch them making a deal, with another minor. She busted them on that rather than on the assault – possession and intent to sell to a minor within 50 feet of a school.
• Lyle brought her fancy homemade cupcakes to thank her and he became her CI. Oberman was still in charge so Strong wanted to do something productive, since she couldn’t safely do anything about that situation. She never listed him anywhere or told anybody until Oberman was replaced. A few weeks ago she told her new LT about Lyle because there was a major illegals buy coming up. They busted three Bangers and a couple of flunkies, and now she’s afraid she didn’t shield Lyle well enough. She asks Eve to be in on the investigation and also tells her that she’s dating Lyle’s sponsor, Matt Fenster. She tells Eve the Banger lieutenants are Bolt, Tank, and Riot, and she could see Lyle opening the door for Duff if she said she needed help. Eve figures Duff wanted revenge for tossing her aside instead of partying and sleeping with her.
• Fenster arrives at Central, where Strong breaks the news about Lyle’s murder to him before Eve interviews him, with Strong present. He always discouraged Lyle from giving Duff money, but said he didn’t push too hard because that had to be Lyle’s decision. He thought he was coming around to it, and Matt confronted her a couple of weeks ago when she came to Casa del Sol looking for a handout from Lyle – she offered Matt a bj in exchange since she knew she wouldn’t get anything from Lyle with Matt there. He declined.
• Peabody recapped her notification to Duff’s mother, who was sadly resigned and completely unsurprised to learn that her daughter had come to a bad end. She hadn’t spoken to her in over a year, since Duff had gone home and a couple of days later left with her cash and wall screen, whereupon she changed the locks and asked the neighbors to call the cops if they saw Duff there. Duff didn’t have friends, and starting started using around fourteen, blaming everybody else when things went wrong.
• Lyle’s journal indicated that he was finished helping Duff because he realized he was just enabling her, but Peabody and Eve think if she was crying and saying she was ready to get help, he would have let her into his apartment. Eve wonders why she doesn’t stick around for the kill if this was revenge. She doesn’t think it was payback, but business. Peabody thinks maybe it was dissension in the ranks to cause a gang war.
• At Rochelle’s apartment, Eve re-interviews the neighbor, who remembers that one of the guys had the “jitteries” – couldn’t stop moving, kept snapping his fingers. Ro and the younger brother, Walter, who has read the book and seen the vid, walk through to see what was stolen – a red purse that Gram bought her when she got the last job, her mother’s brooch, the earrings Wilson gave her for V-Day, and a cheap bangle bracelet. She describes the missing items, sending pictures of her wearing some of them. In Lyle’s room, his “Save It!” jar, which was at least half-full is empty, and his good shoes and high-end earbuds are missing.

Chapter 9

• Eve and Peabody talk to Walt in another room while Ro packs to stay at Wilson’s for a few days. Walt was against Lyle moving in with Ro at first, thinking he needed more sober time, but it worked out well for both of them and Lyle was rebuilding relationships with him and the rest of the family (their other brother, Martin, and their grandmother). Duff was a weak spot for Lyle because even though she was already using when they met, he felt like he made it easier for her to get drugs, plus they had so much in common, what with her father smacking her around and raping her when she was sixteen.
• Eve lets him know Duff’s father was in prison long before she turned sixteen and is still there. And btw, her mother was not a drunk who turned tricks and was in lockup half the time so Duff was living on the streets. She played Lyle. Eve has Peabody send the descriptions of the stolen items out to pawnshops and to Officers Norton and Zutter because Eve thinks somebody will be wearing the shoes and/or jewelry and using the earbuds.
• At the Down and Dirty, Crack confirms the diamond and ruby earrings he gave Ro were valuable – he had them insured for ten thousand dollars. He had been planning to ask her to cohab with him, and he says he won’t take no for an answer now. He's frustrated that he can't do anything to help, so Peabody suggests he have food sent to their family so they don’t have to think about that while they’re overwhelmed with grief.

Chapter 10

• At the morgue, Morris sums up Duff’s COD: “They beat the crap out of her, raped the crap out of her, and killed her by beating her head against the ground until her skull cracked like an egg.” Her tox came back positive for Zoner and Funk – since she didn’t habitually use funk, that was to make her compliant, but not too much so she would still be awake and aware and feel the pain and terror.
• Peabody runs Bolt, who grew up privileged, although his father was indicted for fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering. His mother remarried well, and his sister is a staff sergeant in the army. Bolt attacked his mother when he was seventeen, but his sister was there and stopped him. He had quite a long rap sheet by thirteen, only adding to it after being kicked out of military school, but has been out of lockup for four years.
• Eve consulted with Mira, who thinks the hit was ordered by someone who puts the gang first, but is impulsive so the plan isn’t well-thought out. It’s probably someone working to depose Jones. The person hates women, since Duff’s kill was so much more violent and painful than Lyle’s. Harvo comes through with a name – Barry “Fist” Aimes, a seventeen-year-old who left a hair on Duff.

Chapter 11

• Eve, Peabody, and Officers Carmichael and Shelby head over to the mini-mart where Barry stocks shelves. He hasn’t been in for two days, according to the owner, who took him on to stop his woman from nagging him (he’s the nephew of her cousin).
• Next stop, his mother’s apartment, where he lives. The teenager who lives down the hall, Carrie Dru, tells Eve she’s not supposed to open the door to Barry ever, even if her mother is home, because he’s trouble. She doesn’t think he’s been there for a couple of days because when he is the music and screen are too loud for her to be able to do her homework without wearing headphones.
• His mother’s apartment is too tidy for him to be there, his room being the exception, as it had an extra lock and keep out sign, along with six months’ worth of trapped boy-farts and other wonderful smells. When Eve opens his closet she sees Ro’s red purse and a pair of oversize hoop earrings in gaudy fake gold that still have blood and flesh on them from where they were ripped out of Duff’s ears. She cuts Carmichael and Shelby loose, replacing them with Carmichael and Santiago. EDD will try to trace Barry’s 'link, but Eve figures if he’s lucky he’s in the wind, otherwise he’s dead. Norton and Zutter recognize the finger snapping boy but don’t know his name. Eve sends Peabody and McNab to Casa del Sol after work to talk to Lyle’s boss and coworkers.
• Eve tags Roarke to meet her at the disbarred lawyer’s place, wearing his intimidating rich bastard suit (“I have no other kind”). She tries to imagine Mrs. Aimes’s reaction to seeing cops at her door: “Resigned, defensive, weepy? Odds are shocked wouldn’t make the list.” Cohen owns a four-stack – two up, two down and has decent security on all four units. He and his partner have both west side units. The partner, Eldena Vinn, lets them in, thinking it’s her Chinese food delivery. She’s seen the vid and says having Dallas and Roarke visit is even more mag than Red Dragon’s noodles. Eve complains to Roarke about how much worse things have been since the Oscars, and Roarke fake-sympathizes with her: “A brutally heavy cross to bear.”
• It turns out El had no idea about her partial ownership of buildings and businesses, which is why she dances for a living. Sam comes into the living room and she is PISSED.

Chapter 12

• Cohen tries to play it off, tries to dismiss El to get them coffee, and tries to get Eve to talk to him without El (since it’s business). Eve shuts that down, saying her name is on the paperwork, so she stays. El wants to know why she’s stripping five nights a week so they can pay the rent and he tells her it’s complicated and they’ll talk about that later. Eve says his business partner is the current leader of the urban gang known as the Bangers, who are known to traffic in illegals, identity theft, the protection racket, and the unlicensed sex trade. Also, he’s a suspect in two murders.
• Cohen says that has nothing to do with him, he’s not legally culpable in any way for the alleged criminal actions of an individual who has a minor interest in his real estate holdings. Eve asks, “Including the holding where Jones and his gang have their headquarters?” El says she feels sick and Cohen tells her to be quiet, it’s a legal matter so it’s best she doesn’t say anything. When the Chinese food arrives, Roarke walks with Cohen to get the door (“just in case you need to take the air”). El tells Eve she had no idea about any of this, but that makes her stupid for signing paperwork without reading it.
• Eve asks Cohen how he became acquainted with Jones. He tells her through a client, but she says that would be a former client since he’s been disbarred. He tells her he learned Jones had an interest in purchasing the property downtown and he was looking for an investment so they formed a partnership, and it doesn’t matter about his criminal history and gang affiliation. He doesn’t remember the last time he spoke with Jones, which Eve finds incredulous given that they own several millions of dollars of real estate, again news to El. He says that’s on paper, and she doesn’t know how business works.
• He’s only alibied for part of the previous night, since El had to spend hours naked and giving lap dances to assholes because she gets a percentage of the fee. He tells her that’s all going to be over soon, to which Eve says that’s a shame since he and Jones and Ms. Vinn own the club where she works. Roarke says “it’s interesting that someone with a legal background, however nefarious, would enter into multiple partnerships with someone they claim to know nothing about – it would make that person either a fool or a liar.” Eve says maybe both.
• When they walk El to the door, Roarke tells her, “The lieutenant likely feels unable to give you any advice at this time, but I’m not as hampered” and suggests getting a good lawyer, which she is planning to do. Roarke asks Eve to repay his going with her by allowing him to dig into Samuel Cohen and bury him. Thinking Cohen might have added Vinn’s name to the deeds in case he bailed, so she would be stuck with the mortgages, Eve orders surveillance on his building. Roarke found the company Cohen and Jones formed – CoJo Corp – and two buried accounts before they got home.
• Roarke tells Eve he wished he didn’t know that she signs papers without reading them, but she tells him if he fucks her over she knows how to make him pay, and also she loves the right man, unlike El. Eve brings up that, unlike El, Cohen never asked who was killed and how. Officer Trace tags Eve to let her know Cohen left the building with a suitcase and got into a Rapid Cab, which he and his partner are tailing. Eve and Roarke take that to mean Eldena gave him his walking papers and it’s time to get Reo working on a warrant.

Chapter 13

• While Roarke gathers info to send Reo, Eve looks at Jones. She can sort of see him ordering a hit on Lyle for becoming a CI (if he knew about it), but can’t see a hit on Duff. Bolt is more likely – one minute he’s a rich kid with all the perks, hooking school and bullying others, then his father’s in a cage and his mother’s looking for work – no more rich kid. Then he tries to beat his mother up and his sister kicks his ass. His new family is the Bangers, with him working his way up to lieutenant but maybe he wants more status – the captaincy.
• Roarke finished Cohen’s data dig – just under four million dollars in his accounts, plus the equity in his real estate holdings – and suggests a walk until Reo gets the warrant. They walk to where the pond is being put in and Eve asks Roarke what the first place he bought was. He tells her it was a small, seedy hotel in Dublin that he sold a (stolen) three-strand pearl necklace with a small ruby clasp to afford. He didn’t have enough for the rehab, so Summerset took out a loan and in eight months they opened the Green, a small, elegant hotel marketed to tourists looking for personal service. He bought it when he was sixteen, and had enough to repay Summerset a couple of years later, but he wouldn’t take the money and they own it together.
• Looking at the hole for the pond, Eve thinks you could bury a lot of bodies there, and asks what they did with the dirt, which reminds Roarke that the Nebraska project is nearly finished. Her ’link signals with the warrant. She coordinates picking Cohen up at the hotel he’s staying at and Roarke wonders what might have been if he’d met Eve while he was still stealing.

Day 5 – Wednesday

Chapter 13 (Continued)

• Eve wakes up, has a workout, eats breakfast, tags Peabody to meet her at Cohen’s house, and, at Roarke’s suggestion, has a holo conference with Whitney because she wants to interview Cohen before the feds get involved over the tax fraud, plus she wants to review his e-toys before the feds confiscate them. Whitney says he’ll contact the FBI when he gets into work, in about 90 minutes, and then Eve should have another hour or so before they move on Cohen.
• Eve heads for Eldena’s place with her warrant. El has a friend over for moral support, and tells Eve she kicked Cohen out and when he called her after he was arrested she told him to suck it. Peabody and McNab arrive, and after McNab puts his tongue back in his mouth from seeing the two scantily-clad strippers, he starts copying the electronics while Eve and Peabody search the place.

Chapter 14

• Eldena thinks she has enough money to pay the rent, which is due next week, but doesn't know where to send it. Eve lets her know that she doesn’t need to send rent anywhere since she and Cohen own the building – he’d been using her rent money for his personal gain, and her lawyer should be able to get all that straightened out since Cohen used her income to secure and pay the mortgage.
• McNab fills Eve in on Cohen’s e’s. Cohen meets with Jones monthly, and moves illegals for him. Jones skims some of the product, passing the rest to Cohen, who sells it to his contacts, and they split the profit. About nine months ago less product started being passed. Cohen picked up a new client, Bang-Two, about six months ago, that does sex trade as well as illegals. Eve figures this must be another client from the Bangers, trying to undermine Jones.
• Peabody is delighted to learn that there will be no Good Cop when they interview Cohen. When he demands to know who she is, she introduces herself, and adds “also known as your worst nightmare.” After Eve reads him his rights she asks him if he understands them, to which he replies, “I’ve been harassed, my reputation impugned. I spent the night in a holding cell.” Eve says, “Let the record show Mr. Cohen refuses to answer. This interview will be postponed, and the subject returned to holding until such time as a psychiatric evaluation can determine if subject is capable of understanding his constitutional rights.” Eve and Peabody agree that will take two or three days because there’s a logjam. Cohen finally acknowledges that he understands his rights.
• Cohen claims to not know Jones very well, and says it’s not illegal to do business with a questionable character. Eve lists things that are illegal: using money from his former fiancée to finance the partnership when the money is obtained through fraudulent means and creating shell companies and underground accounts to conceal profits, thereby evading taxes and fees. Peabody compliments him on his excellent record-keeping. He says establishing tax shelters is legal, and Eve says using fake names and addresses is not. He tells her there’s no need to involve the federal authorities, he’s sure they can come to an arrangement, he’s willing to compensate her with five percent, which is the second count of attempted bribery since he already offered a bribe to the booking officer.
• Eve reminds him that since he and Jones, and the Bangers, operate as organized crime, that brings in RICO and he stops the interview to try to get an attorney, even though his accounts are frozen. Eve gets tagged with Barry Aimes’s dead body, found in Chinatown, where she apprehends a pickpocket and gets hit in the jaw.

Chapter 15

• Aimes’s body was dumped in the alley behind a family-owned restaurant, with a residence in the apartment above. The family is Fan Ho’s, the leader of the Chinatown Dragons. Barry was killed with a slice across his throat – probably one person held him from behind and the other sliced his throat with a knife. His knuckles were still bruised from beating on Duff, and since his body was on a plastic sheet, Eve figures the transportation belonged to the killer – if they boosted a ride they wouldn’t have worried about keeping blood off the upholstery.
• While Strong is interviewing Fan’s mother, Suzan, and Peabody is interviewing the neighbor, Eve tries to convince Fan that whoever left the body there was asking him to start a gang war, but it would be much smarter to let Eve handle it, and she wonders how long it will be before she has to give his family notification of his death, although surely other cops give notifications.
• Three years ago, Fan’s sister was dating a non-Chinese boy named Hugh Lanigan, who was severely beaten after dropping Fan's sister off one night, breaking his jaw and arm, causing him to lose his football scholarship. He broke up with the sister, is going to college in Miami, and his family moved to South Carolina. Strong contacted him and he’s now ready to talk – Fan had threatened his younger brother and his mother, so he kept quiet before.
• Cohen tried to get a lawyer, but it didn’t work out so, as Reo puts it, “Cohen’s now back to being a fool and representing himself.” She tells Eve the feds went for the deal, which was to keep Eldena out of it other than testifying against Cohen, which she is eager to do, and they are at the Cohen-Vinn house confiscating his electronics and records. Eve tells Reo she would have put Aimes away for the rest of his life but “now he’ll never see eighteen.”
• Cohen tells Eve and Peabody “on further consideration I’ve elected to represent myself in this witch hunt.” Eve tells him he needs to say on the record that he’s waiving his right to an attorney, he says he is an attorney, and Eve just stares at him until he says it. She tells him they’re adding a third charge of accessory to murder, one of the assholes he enlisted to kill Lyle and Duff. He asks for time to think about rolling and Roarke, who’s been in Observation, splits a candy bar between Eve and Peabody.
• Cohen asks for immunity, Eve tells him to stop wasting her time, Peabody whispers in Eve’s ear, saying the words “Witness Protection” loud enough for him to hear, and then leaves the room. Eve makes him say he defrauded Eldena and will give her back all of the money he stole from her. Right on cue, Peabody and Reo join them.

Chapter 16

• Reo tells Cohen she understands he has information on gang activity and wants to deal, he wants immunity, she says that’s not on the table, and also Witness Security (WITSEC) is a federal program. Reo insists on an example, which Cohen provides. The Bangers firebombed a shop that wouldn’t pay an increased protection fee, and the witness’s daughter was abducted until he recanted. Cohen insists he came by that information after the fact, after one of the firebombers was arrested. He says Jones ordered the abduction with instructions to scare but not harm the child.
• Reo brings in Teasdale from the FBI, and they negotiate. Eve storms out to set up a two-pronged operation to take down the Bangers and the Dragons, with Strong taking the lead on the Dragons. Cohen signs a document allowing him to enter the WITSEC program if all his answers are truthful and lead to arrests. Eve asks who ordered the hits on Lyle and Duff and he tells her Jones, but is obviously lying.
• Eve tags Roarke about the op, Feeney to provide EDD help, and Lowenbaum for SWAT. Everybody is in full riot gear, including helmets: “All of them are violent. Some of them are stupid. A lot of them are both.”

Chapter 17

• EDD sets up a van to scan the Bangers HQ building and finds 25 people inside. They get ears on the top room, which has extra filters, where they hear Bolt and a couple of others talking about “taking him the fuck out,” presumably Jones since one of them says “Ain’t no leader. Time for Bangers to bang.” They go in, using a battering ram. One of the Bangers throws a homemade boomer, which Eve catches and throws back, and then in the ensuing chaos and smoke she and the team charge in. She has a huge fight with Tank, who’s built like one, getting some injuries but giving more and taking her down. Detective Carmichael, one eye swollen, cuffs her, and Eve heads for Jones, who decides he will stun her: “You’re done, bitch.”
• Magic coat wins – he had his stunner on full, aimed at her heart, and Eve drops him. It turns out “he’s the bitch who’s done.” Peabody got banged up when one of the naked having-sex guys pulled her down the stairs as she was tackling him, but nothing broken. Five slipped out, with a couple of them thinking the EDD van would make a nice getaway, but that didn’t work out for them. McNab carried Peabody out while Eve got a report from Strong – they tagged them all, with only minor injuries for her team. Eve sees one guy on the floor snapping his fingers, so she knows this is one of Lyle and Duff’s (and Aimes’s) killers. He can’t be more than sixteen and is one of the ones who tried to use the EDD van to get away; Roarke says now he regrets only punching him once, which was all it took to put him down.
• The medi-van is there to treat people, with Dr. Dimatto, of course. Peabody has a jammed shoulder and a brace on her knee, and really good drugs. Before Louise can grab Eve for treatment, she (Eve) spots a woman wearing Rochelle’s bracelet being loaded onto a wagon. Eve threatens to book her on three counts of accessory to murder unless she tells her where she got the bracelet – it was from a new Banger named Ticker in trade for a blow job. Eve takes it into evidence and gets the rest of the info from Yolanda (where and when).
• They need to inventory what they’ve gotten in the two raids, and Eve wants to see what’s in the room where Bolt and his two pals were confabbing before the takedown. Baxter and Trueheart have logged illegals, stickers, saps, and black-market stunners, and Eve sends them on their way to Trueheart’s mother’s place for a home-cooked meal while she and Roarke head upstairs to the third floor.
• Roarke sees that Jones’s room is a little cleaner and neater than the others. He wanders over to the closet, where he notices a seam, and tells Eve there’s a fake wall. The keypad lock is opened with the numeral equivalents of his street name, Slice. Roarke says they’re barking morons and sure enough, his D and C is there, probably with all his records. Eve has Reineke and Jenkinson tag it for EDD and then go home until the 7:30 morning briefing.
• In the shielded room, Carmichael is watching Santiago move a shelf away from the wall. There are setups for making false IDs, and behind the shelf another keypad. Eve guesses Fist for the password since that’s their gang symbol. Inside are illegals, ID supplies, wrapped stacks of cash, electronics, and a cache of weapons and jewelry. Carmichael says they’re going into a cage because they’re not smart enough to cover their assholes. Eve sends the detectives home and Roarke drives her to Central. On the way she checks in with McNab to see how Peabody is doing – banged up some but she’ll be fine, although her pride took a hit.

Chapter 18

• Roarke programs pizza from the AC in Eve’s office and heads upstairs to work with EDD while Eve contacts Reo to give her the totals – 25 Bangers, including the two remaining killers of Lyle, Duff, and Aimes, and the one who set it up, and Strong got nine Dragons. She gives Reo some of the charges – assaulting an officer with a deadly (Tank) and attempted murder of a police officer (Jones – police stunner on full), plus the illegals, fake ID equipment, stolen property, etc. Reo tells her Cohen sang like a bright yellow canary and the Feds raided the building being used as a warehouse – a property owned by Cohen, Jones, and Vinn.
• Officer Shelby stops by to tell Eve that she was helping with processing and the snapping fingers guy is Denby Washington, who goes by Snapper. He had Ro’s earrings on him, along with Lyle’s earbuds. She also helped process Ticker – Burke Chesterfield – who was wearing Lyle’s Lightning high-tops and had Ro’s brooch on his person. Washington wasn’t in the system, but Shelby got him a Coke and sent the empty tube to the lab for DNA and prints. Shelby thanked Eve for pairing her with Officer Carmichael – she says she’s not looking to make detective and she’s learning a lot from him. Eve tells her to keep Washington and Chesterfield away from each other and away from Jones and Jorgenson, and gives her the rest of the pizza.
• Since Chesterfield is 17, Eve sent Reo a memo to have him treated as an adult. She contacts Nadine, who has been covering the two raids, to tell her it was a coordinated operation between the NYPSD and the FBI, dozens of arrests were made, several thousand dollars of illegals have been confiscated, along with weapons, etc.
• In addition, the NYPSD recovered items stolen from Lyle Pickering’s apartment, items taken when he was murdered. They were found on the persons of Denby Washington, age 18, and Burke Chesterfield, age 17, and she will interview them the next day. They’ve also charged a third individual, Kenneth Jorgenson, age 23, all three people charged for the murders of Pickering, Duff, and Aimes, who was in on the first two murders. Also being charged as an accessory before and after the fact: Samuel Cohen. She asks Nadine to report Lyle’s story, the way he turned his life around, risking his personal safety to work with the police. She can’t give Nadine permission to go on air with the story until after the interviews, but wants her to get Lyle’s story ready. Eve also gives her Marcus Jones’s name, not on the murders but he’s going down.
• Eve is exhausted and discouraged, and as Roarke is driving them home, she tells him what started it was Jones being more interested in skimming profits and setting himself up to relocate to Aruba, thus giving an opening for a coup. She thinks Duff was always going to be killed, to blame the Dragons and start a war, that Lyle was just a bonus, to make sure he never came back to the gang and to strike at Jones since they were friends and Jones had offered Lyle second in command if he came back.
• She soaks in the tub and Roarke sees to her injuries. She’s sad because usually rehabilitation doesn’t work, but it did with Lyle – he was doing everything right, making something of himself, and he’s dead because someone wanted to push his way to the top of the ranks. She feels like the system failed him. Roarke tells her the system did work for him: it taught him to cook and offered him counseling and help with his addiction. Of the five people responsible for his death, two paid with their own lives and the other three will pay through the system, giving justice to Lyle and providing solace to his family, allowing them to remember him as he was after prison, after he turned his life around. Some of the burden eases and they have sex to heal her some more.

Day 6 – Thursday

Chapter 19

• Eve plans to start with Snapper, who she thinks will break first, Also, she gets to tell Cohen the bullshit deal he signed is rescinded because he lied about Jones setting up the murders. Then she’ll tackle Ticker, whose DNA will probably match what’s on Duff’s shirt, and finally, Jorgenson, who will go down the hardest. Roarke brings up a picture of Eve’s Nebraska farm on the wall screen and says even though the interior work is still in progress, he’s already had two offers, including one for 20% above the outlay, but he advises waiting until the work is complete. She asks him to dress her to look mean, arrogant, and fearless. Galahad took the opportunity to finish off their breakfast.
• Eve swings by Jacko’s to load up on cinnamon buns and danishes for the team, who each want to thank Roarke: “He’s not the only one who can think of stuff” to Jenkinson and “I got the damn buns, I got the damn coffee. I’m the man” to Reineke’s “Roarke’s the man” comment. Baxter starts to ask where Roarke is but Jenkinson tells him “Ix-nay on the oarke-ray.” Eve asks how she will ever break his diabolical code. Whitney comes in and asks, “Are those from Jacko’s? Roarke doesn’t miss a trick.” Jenkinson says, “We owe the glory of the sticky buns and the real [coffee] to the generosity of Lieutenant Kick-Ass Dallas. She’s the man.”
• Whitney tells them Tibble’s in East Washington attending a convention but he sends his congratulations and appreciation for a job well done, and Whitney adds his own. Also, since no good deed and all that, there will be a media conference that afternoon with Chief Tibble, Agent Teasdale, the prosecuting attorney and Cher Reo, Dallas, Peabody, and Strong, and Captain Feeney. Peabody says her injuries aren’t too bad but she’ll need to wear a knee brace for a few days and do some PT. Eve says she’s on desk duty until Louise clears her.
• Peabody starts as good cop with Washington to lull him. He wants to sue for police brutality because he was just trying to warn the van people shit was going down and dude sucker punched him. Eve asks him if warning them is what he meant when he shouted, “Get the fuck out the van or I kill you motherfuckers?” He said that wasn’t him, and Peabody confirms that it was confusing out there.
• Eve says he was inside and ran outside like the coward he is when shit started going down. He said he ran in to see what was happening and then ran out to warn people, to keep bystanders out of danger. “Bangers don’t take no shit from anybody, don’t take no shit from cops, sure don’t take it from beat-up girl cops.” Cops planted the illegals, and he doesn’t know anything about the ID-making equipment. Residents and shopkeepers paid them to keep them safe because “cops is wheeze.” Peabody helpfully tells him if he was protecting them, they’ll be grateful and say so. He bought the earbuds off the street and doesn’t know any Pickering and he’s never seen the earrings before, except oh yeah, he found them. Eve asks how his prints got inside Pickering’s apartment and he tells her “Didn’t leave no prints. We sealed up” like the barking moron he is.
• He says Bolt told him to take Lyle down because “motherfucker wasn’t better than me. He got no loyalty, he turn his back on his family. Got no reason to live, got no right. Bolt says take him down ‘cause Slice is too weak to do it, we take his ass down.” They killed Duff because Bolt told them she was whining about killing Lyle and it wasn’t rape because she puts out for anybody anytime. Slice didn’t have the balls to take on the Dragons, to take back their turf, so they started the war. Aimes was killed because Bolt said he was stupid and lazy, and that don’t make Bangers.
• He asks Eve “who’s a coward now, bitch?” and she says she thinks he will answer that for himself after a couple of years in a cage on Omega, charging him with three counts of murder in the first.

Chapters 20-21

• Chesterfield was also as dumb as a box of rocks. Eve starts by saying records show he’s not a member of the Bangers and he tells her, “Shows what you know. [Initiation is] coming, soon as I get out of this shithole.” Eve nods and says, “So that’s never.” Then he tells her he doesn’t know Aimes, Eve confirms that he wasn’t well-acquainted with him before they and Washington entered Lyle Pickering’s apartment with the aid of Dinnie Duff and killed him. He’s shocked and says he and Snapper were playing round ball when that dude got down. Peabody, ever helpful, says, “Oh, you were with Mr. Washington.” He tells her that’s what he said, and they can ask him. She tells him they already interviewed him and Chesterfield didn’t mention Kenneth Jorgenson. He tells her, “That’s right. Bolt’s there, too. We played some Horse.” Eve asks Peabody to play back the part of the interview with Washington that related to Mr. Chesterfield’s whereabouts and activities at the time in question.
• He hears Washington give the details, bragging and boasting, and tells them he was lying. Eve asks why Washington wouldn’t have told them he was playing basketball instead of killing Pickering – because “… he wants to spend his life in prison?” Next story is Washington told him to do him a solid and say how he was playing round ball with him, but he wasn’t really. Eve asks why he would implicate Chesterfield after he did him a solid. “Fucker’s crazy. Hates me. Always looking to get me in the shit.” Eve nods, “So, he hates you, gets you in the shit, but you do him a solid over a murder? You’re a very compassionate soul. So compassionate that you pumped Lyle Pickering full of a killing dose of illegals to prove yourself worthy to be a Banger, then stole his shoes.”
• Those are, of course, his shoes, which he bought the previous week. Eve tells Peabody there was a lot of buying of items with Lyle Pickering’s fingerprints going around last week. Chesterfield then says he bought the shoes off Snapper, but actually Snapper gave them to him for doing him the solid. Peabody says the only prints on the shoes are Lyle Pickering’s and his. Eve brings up the gang-rape and murder of Dinnie Duff and then slitting Aimes’s throat. He says they can’t prove it – it’s his word against Snapper’s.
• Eve and Peabody are trying to determine which one is stupider – him or Snapper. He had Rochelle’s brooch and Lyle’s shoes on when they arrested him, and they have a statement from the female who had the bracelet he traded her for sex, also from the Pickering apartment. He says Eve is lying because he doesn’t even know what a brooch is and Yolanda’s a lying whore. Also, they have his DNA on Duff’s body, since no matter how much product he uses to get that vertical lift, it doesn’t affect the DNA on hair. He tells her everybody’s got hair and also they don’t have his DNA on file because his mother was too smart to sign him up for that. Sadly, she didn’t pass along her smarts to him and Eve tells him about the Coke, and also about his knife, which still had Aimes’s blood on the blade and hilt and his bloody shirt in his flop at HQ, none of which are his, of course, because he found them in the street, wait, no, in Snapper’s flop.
• Eve asks him if he wants them to believe he’s a thief but not a murderer, but it turns out he can’t lie fast enough and Snapper’s already rolled on him. He finishes up with “I was just there, I was high, and Bolt says we gotta do it.” Eve and Peabody take a break before they interview Jorgenson.
• Crack and Rochelle are waiting for Eve, who takes them to the lounge. Eve tells Ro they have two of the murderers and the third one is dead. They also have the man who ordered the kills (Jorgenson) and are going to interview him next. There’s a fourth person Eve says is implicated in the ordering of the murders (Cohen). Ro asks if it’s Marcus Jones, and Eve tells her no, it’s not, but she plans to put Jones away for a host of other crimes. Also they’ve recovered the items taken from her apartment and they’ll be returned. The illegals were planted and they have full confessions. Ro is relieved about the illegals, not that she thought Lyle had started using again, but it helps that everyone will know for sure. Eve tells her Lyle had become a CI, and may have saved lives, and definitely aided in taking criminals off the street. “He didn’t just beat the odds, he smashed them to dust. You’re right to be proud of him.”
• Crack asks Eve if she took down the motherfucker who did that to her face, and she tells him yes, and she doesn’t look so pretty either. Crack tells her “Good enough. I know some skinny white girls, but don’t know any prettier than you.”
• Reo, who was waiting in Eve’s office, tells Eve that Donita Haver (Tank) confessed to the attempted murder of a police officer. She coldcocked her public defender with an elbow when he was rattling off how she wasn’t aware Eve was the police and tried to advise her to claim diminished capacity: “Knew that ¢unt was a cop. I’d’ve cracked her fucking head open and had a good taste of her brains if she hadn’t had the fucking helmet. Next time I will.” After her PD left, she confessed to more crimes, including the beating death of an illegals dealer.
• Kyung comes by to tell Eve the media conference is scheduled for 4 p.m., and he doesn’t want her to make this one of the rare occasions where she uses facial enhancements: “Let’s show them what our cops are made of.” Eve tells him he continues to not be an asshole, and he replies, “I do my best to maintain that benchmark.” Eve texts Roarke “Two for two. On deck with number three.” Baxter drops by because he and Trueheart are taking a break – the last one was fourteen and the mother begged them to help her and her son – they began recruiting at the school a couple of years ago. He tried to stay away but his mother came home raped and beaten, which she reported, and they told the boy he needed to work for them or she’d get worse. They made him a mule and his grades took a nose dive. They’re also pulling in girls his age for sex work. Eve tells Baxter to keep him under wraps until they can move his mother and him to Queens or Brooklyn to be with his mom’s sister or parents.
• Time for Jorgenson. His PD, Paul Quentin, refutes the charges because his client can name two witnesses who will verify his whereabouts at the time Lyle Pickering was murdered, apparently not understanding “ordering the murder” is not the same as “carrying out the murder.” Eve says, “We’re aware he doesn’t do his own dirty work.” The PD says his client will give Eve information to help identify the individual who killed Mr. Pickering in exchange for immunity on the lesser charges of assault, illegal possession, possession of… Eve tells him to stop talking: “If your murderous fuck of a client thinks he can try to toss this off on Marcus Jones, you’re wasting my time. And if you actually believe your scum of a client, you’re going to last about six months as a PD.”
• She tells Bolt that Snapper and Ticker “if we’re going to use your lame gang names” rolled on him already. Bolt tells Quentin to tell Eve he knows police can lie during interviews and although he’s barely acquainted with the individuals she named, he did see them briefly at or about the time of Lyle Pickering’s murder when they joined him for a short game of basketball. Eve tells him about the items Aimes, Chesterfield, and Washington stole from the apartment and from Dinnie’s body. “Jesus, Bolt, can’t you find anybody smarter?” She tells him about Chesterfield trading a bracelet for sex and wearing Lyle’s stolen shoes. “Jesus, they had one job. You sent three of them – four if you include Duff – to kill one guy. Get in, do it, plant the illegals, get out. But they had to take some shiny things.” Peabody corrects Eve, “Actually, Lieutenant, he gave them two jobs that day. After Lyle, he ordered them to kill Dinnie Duff.”
• Eve says she had figured Jorgenson for the bright one, but using his cousin’s van to haul Aimes’s body to the alley behind Ho’s family restaurant was dumb. The lawyer says everything’s circumstantial so she and Peabody play the confessions for them. And oh, btw, his cousin installed a security cam over the door a few weeks ago so they have him on it, along with witnesses from the diner where they ate after delivering the body. They take a break.
• Officer Carmichael reports that the cook and waitress from the diner confirmed that all three came in and Jorgenson paid, saying it was for doing what had to be done. They have his prints in the van, along with Aimes’s blood. The cousin said he cut Jorgenson off because he was stealing from him, which is why he installed the camera, and changed the codes, but Jorgenson threatened one of his drivers to get the new code. It would have been smarter for him to do his own killing, but he wanted a following and didn’t think they would flip on him. “He sincerely believed they’d go down for him. They’d never flip. That’s his arrogance, his own sense of self-importance. One flips because he thinks it makes them all heroes, because being a killer is a badge of honor. The second flips because he’s not just stupid, but scared.”
• Reo says Jorgenson lacks leadership qualities. They resume the interview, with Quentin asking for a deal. Jorgenson tells Reo that Snapper and Ticker came to him with blood all over them, saying they were jumped by Dragons and Fan Ho killed Fist. They heard Slice was making a deal with Ho to keep things down after Dinnie and they didn’t like it so they had the idea to leave Fist’s body at Ho’s place, and all he did was drive. Reo confirms that rather than reporting a murder to the police, he helped transport a body from the killing scene to Chinatown.
• Bolt says “Bangers don’t go to cops. We take care of our own.” Reo asked him if it struck him as odd that neither man who survived an attack that killed Aimes had injuries. He says he figures Slice was setting him up because he knows Bolt is smarter, stronger, and going to take over. Eve laughs at him, saying Jones has been skimming off the gang’s pool for over three years and owns the building they pay rent to flop in. She tells Jorgenson Samuel Cohen and Jones have been milking them, Jones has a couple million socked away in addition to the real estate they’ve been buying. Eve says Cohen is trying to cut a deal, including rolling on him.
• Jorgenson says “They’re dead. They’re dead men. Slice, Cohen, Snapper, Ticker. Dead.” Eve tells him that’s big talk from a guy whose sister kicked his ass, and proceeds to tell his lawyer the story. He gets in the rage zone, saying Slice doesn’t have the balls to fight for the territory – if he did, Fan Ho and the rest would be dead. Eve asks why Pickering? Jorgenson tells her it's because Slice let him walk away like he was better than them and told him he’s off-limits - he valued Pickering more than him. He wanted the cops to come sniffing, but Cohen said it had to look like an accident, like he OD’d, which would make Slice look weak.
• Eve buys pizza for the bullpen, who want to know if she’s okay. She sent the interview to Teasdale, who’s going to break Cohen’s heart with the news that he won’t get WITSEC, instead going down for accessory before and after murder, three counts. Eve says she’s going to request on-planet since the others will be off-planet and she wants to give Cohen a good shot at living a long, miserable life.
• Eve gives Nadine the go-ahead for everything but Lyle’s CI status and she calls Crack to tell him he wasn’t killed for that, but as punishment for leaving the gang and to hurt Jones for letting him go. Mira says it’s been an education observing all the interviews, and she’s going to write a paper on it.

Chapter 22

• Jones is waiting for his lawyer. Eve tells him she hopes it’s not Cohen, because he’s currently in federal custody facing a shitload of crimes. Since all his accounts are frozen he’ll need a PD, which is his problem, just like the three charges of murder in the first are his problem. She tells him that Cohen pinned the murders on him, and told them he tried to talk him out of killing Pickering. Jones said he never killed Pick and Cohen’s a liar.
• He confesses to skimming, illegals, using unlicensed sex workers, including minors, extorting money, having explosives, witness intimidation, related murders, and the attempted murder of a police officer., although for the last one he said he was defending himself. Eve points out they had a warrant, informed him, and also that he told her “You’re done, bitch” before he fired his illegal to civilians stunner on full at her. He confessed to everything because he said none of the Bangers did anything without his go – “I run the Bangers, bitch.” Since nothing goes down without his say-so, they charge him with enlisting minors as runners, as recruits, and as bag boys by threatening their families, beating and raping their mothers, forcing minor girls into the sex trade, and more. Eve gets word to Kyung to move the media conference to 5 p.m.
• Roarke comes in and she tells him they gutted two gangs, but he can tell she’s still sad. Strong stops by and Eve tells her Lyle wasn’t killed for being a CI – nobody knew about that, they killed him for walking away and to undermine Jones, to take a personal shot at him. She’s glad, but like Eve is sad that he was killed for nothing. At the media conference, she says it was all kicked off by Lyle Pickering’s murder, a man who had rehabilitated himself and was living a productive life.
• Roarke drives them to Hell’s Kitchen so they can look at An Dídean, reminding Eve of the girls they found, and how Eve found justice for them. He walks her through the building so she can see how much more welcoming it is than a state school. He takes her to the roof where the garden is and where the memorial to the young girls they’d found is, with all the names, even the one they hadn’t been able to identify and had named Angel. The sadness lifted.

Character List

List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book

• Eve Dallas
• Roarke

List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book

• David Baxter
• Detective Carmichael
• Uniform Carmichael
• Ryan Feeney
• Mavis Freestone
• Nadine Furst
• Galahad
• Jenkinson
• Leonardo
• Ian McNab
• Charlotte Mira
• Morris
• Delia Peabody
• Reineke
• Santiago
• Lawrence Summerset
• Troy Trueheart
• Jack Whitney

List of Recurring Characters Appearing in this Book

• Kyung Beaverton
• Dickie Berenski
• Callendar
• Crack
• Garnet DeWinter
• Louise Dimatto
• Harvo
• Jake Kincade
• Lt. Lowenbaum
• Quilla Magnum
• Dennis Mira
• Dr. Rochelle Pickering
• Cher Reo
• Officer Shelby
• Detective Strong
• Agent Miyu Teasdale
• Chief Tibble
• Trina
• Anna Whitney

List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book

• Burke “Ticker” Chesterfield
• Samuel Cohen
• Carrie Dru
• Matthew Fenster
• Stasha-Jean Gregory
• Officer Grogan
• Bebe Hewitt
• Fan Ho né George Ho
• Kent Hoobie
• Marcus Jones, Jr. aka Slice
• Kenneth “Bolt” Jorgenson
• Lisa Killagrew
• Little Easy
• Loose
• Marley
• Melba
• Mildred
• Officer Norton
• Gary Phizer
• Lyle Pickering
• Walter Pickering
• Taffy Pull née Rita Razowitz
• Paul Quentin
• Shake ‘n Bake
• Toro
• Officer Trace
• Eldena Vinn
• Denby “Snapper” Washington
• Yolanda
• Officer Zutter

List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book

• Stuart Adler
• Barry “Fist” Aimes
• Mrs. Aimes
• Bang-Two
• Bulge
• Castor
• Charlie
• Clara
• Coco
• Deborah
• Alicia Dilbert
• Dobber
• Dinnie Duff aka Meanie D
• Staff Sergeant Jessica Grant
• Pauline Grant
• Donita “Tank” Haver
• Hitch
• Suzan Ho
• Mae-Ling Jacobs
• Jimmy
• Marcus Jones, Sr. aka Rock
• Oliver Jorgenson
• Julio
• Hugh Lanigan
• Margo
• Larinda Mars
• Humphrey Merkle
• Rufus Miller
• Ned
• Nicci
• Renee Oberman
• Pete
• Peterby
• Martin Pickering
• Dr. Susann Po
• Officer Quirk
• Renn
• Riot
• Rolo
• Stipper
• Nancy Tobias
• Angel West

Trivia

• Rochelle Pickering was introduced.

Memorable Quotation

• “I don’t know if it’s scientifically possible, but I swear there’s about six months’ worth of trapped boy-farts in this room.” - Peabody about Barry “Fist” Aimes’s room

Other Covers

Additional covers here

YANNIs

• Before Eve found out that Lyle’s black Lightning brand shoes were missing, she made a point of noticing that Marcus Jones, Jr. (Slice) was wearing black high-tops, but not Lightning brand.
• Barry “Fist” Aimes was called Gary Aimes once in Chapter 20.
• Kyung Beaverton changed from mixed-race (Celebrity in Death) to black.