“You mentioned Econo specifically?”
“I did. Yes, I did.”
“Did he ask you more about it?”
“He might have. Yes, of course he did. I was complaining, and someone—a very attractive, charming man—listened to me, sympathized with me.”
“What did you tell him?”
“There wasn’t much to tell, honestly. It was all just getting started. Things like Drew and his father, some others were meeting with Willimina Karson and some of her people. How Drew spent so much time traveling to New York, and in meetings. I resented it, all of it, and maybe because I wasn’t part of it. Honestly, I was stupid and selfish, but there wasn’t enough to tell. There weren’t any real details. If he was involved in this, I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all.”
Eve did, but she let Sybil go. And though it was only for form, spoke with the others.
“Well, shit,” Peabody said when they got back in the car. “Do you think she’ll figure out she got the exploding ball rolling?”
“Maybe. But Banks took that fragment of a ball, rolled it over to Karson and expanded it. Then for ego or profit, he tosses the expanded ball around. Somebody else fields it, weaponized it, and boom.”
“Do you think Banks set up Sybil?”
“No way he could know she’d come to that art opening, and come alone. He saw an opportunity—good-looking woman and wealthy, as the rock she’s wearing on her finger would tell him. Also married, but alone. Strike up a conversation, get a feel. Okay, the lady’s vulnerable, unhappy,” Eve said as she pulled into traffic. “He just exploits that. Probably figuring he can get laid, maybe skin her for a few bucks. Then she drops the seed of the merger in his lap.”
“He does a little research,” Peabody continued, staring out into the rain as she thought it through. “And look here, Willimina Karson—very attractive, unattached, and a good source for more information. Arrange to meet her, charm her, pursue her, attach, and milk her for whatever he can get. I think he probably figured to make some money on the insider trading part of it—or whatever it’s called—and puffed himself up bragging about it. To the wrong people. Now he’s dead, too.”
“It plays,” Eve agreed. “Right down the line. Here’s how I see it: The idiot contacted them, or one of them. He tells them he’s figured it out, and wants a cut. Maybe he threatens to rat them out, maybe he’s that stupid, but the wanting a cut’s enough. Loose end.”
Eve made a fist, twisted it.
“Snap.”
“We’re probably not looking for an inside man,” Eve concluded. “Anyone on the inside wouldn’t need the tidbits Banks could blather about. But he knew them, or at least one of them, well enough to brag, maybe offer the information for a small fee or favor. Well enough he walked into Central Park to meet up.”
“People like Banks? They do so much slithering and sliding they don’t think anything’s ever going to stick to them. He figured he had those two over a barrel.”
“Yeah. Let’s go see what Morris can tell us about Banks falling off the barrel and breaking his neck.”
* * *
By the time Eve walked through the white tunnel of the morgue the rain had eased to a piss-trickle of chilly wet, one that looked and felt as if it would continue to
drip, drip, drip, until somebody came along with a giant wrench and fixed the damn faucet.
The morgue smelled of chemical lemons and death, and through Morris’s double doors, low-down blues played. He wore a protective cape over a suit of forest green with needle-thin gold stripes. He’d paired it with a shirt of dull gold, a deep green tie, and used both colors in cords wound through his long, dark braid.
With sealed hands he lifted the liver from Banks’s splayed torso to weigh. Smiled over at Eve and Peabody.
“A morning made for blues and bed, but since we can’t have both . . .” Still, he ordered the volume on the music to decrease.
“It’s slowing down,” Eve told him. “It’s down to really freaking annoying.”
“Could be worse,” he said, cleaning the blood off his sealed hands. “Could be snowing, and I’ve had enough of that this winter.”
“I’m forcing some narcissus—paper whites—in the kitchen,” Peabody told him. “They get me through the last of the winter.”
“I’ll have to try that myself.”
“The dead guy probably doesn’t care about rain or snow or whatever narcissus is,” Eve pointed out.
“A very pretty and fragrant flower,” Morris told her. “A harbinger of spring. In any case . . . I’m told our dead guy was pulled out of the JKO by a couple of boys too insulated by various substances to worry about the filthy weather or the jump into the drink.”