Eve sat in the car another moment. “I know it,” she murmured, and got out to get back to the job.
17
Eve went straight to EDD, hoping the e-geeks would give her something solid.
She found the e-lab packed with them.
McNab stood—hips jiving in his neon pants, hoops sparkling around his ear—at a station peering through some sort of scope. Feeney sat in his wrinkled brown suit, his hair standing up as if he’d been electrocuted while he swiped at two screens simultaneously.
The well-endowed Callendar seemed to dance between two stations, shoulders bouncing, which made the well-endowed portion—where for some unknown reason a monkey rode a unicycle across her spangled red shirt—bounce in turn.
Yet another geek Eve only vaguely recognized sat, bopping in his stool with comp guts spread out over his station. He had hair as red as Callendar’s shirt worn in long dreads with tips as bright and yellow as an exploding sun. The tips matched his bibbed baggies.
Eve vaguely wished she had sunshades as she pushed into the lab.
Spotting them, McNab wiggled his eyebrows at Peabody. “Yo, Captain, Dead Squad’s here.”
“We got some something and some nothing,” Feeney told Eve.
“Start with the something.”
“We could scan out the one swipe, and get the code and the ID. Bank was on it. Liberty National Bank of New York was on it. Did a little dance, and we got the branch for you. Whatever he stashed, he stashed it in the Bronx. I was just about to send you the address.”
“Do that. I’ll check it out, and thanks. What’s the nothing?”
“Other swipe. We got the code, no problem. But there’s no handy ID like with the bank box. We’re still working, but the best we can figure is residence. It doesn’t read like a company swipe, a business swipe. Still could be one, but we’re leaning residential.”
“It’s more than I had. What about vic comps?”
“I’m giving what we got from the Mira Institute another full scan, but what I got is all business and political bullshit. Callendar’s on Wymann. Juju’s got Betz.”
“Juju?”
“Cuz, I got it.” Red Dreads grinned at Eve.
She thought it looked as if someone had splattered his round white face with specks of red paint and called them freckles.
“Getting down on the Betz,” he said, tapping the toes of lightning-blue air boots laced to his knees. “Dude’s flush. Be flusher he didn’t ride slow ponies. Got two digs that show, one’s in the Apple, other’s rum and cigars. Pulls it in, doesn’t put much out. Got megs game for skirts for creaky. Lists ’em, flips ’em. Likes wheels, got three, mucho slap for zipping.”
“Just . . . stop.” Eve held up her hand as her head was starting to throb. “Does this guy speak English?”
“Bilingual,” Juju claimed with another happy grin. “American and geek. Like geek better.”
He turned the grin on Callendar. “Fluid?”
“Def. Fizz me cherry.”
“Check it. Black Death, Cap’n?”
“No, go with the sweet. Double Callendar.”
“Yo. McNab?”
“Triple it.”
He stood, showing himself to be well over six feet. An easy six-four, Eve judged, maybe helped a bit by the platform airboots with silver stars over the blue. “You up?”
“No. Whatever it is.”