“Yeah, she’s pulled a rabbit, or she’s dead.”
Roarke walked around, slid behind the wheel. “She might have managed to score. She could’ve been paid for betraying Pickering. She got high and flopped elsewhere.”
“Not impossible,” she conceded. “Maybe Slice has it right, and it was a hit by one of the rival gangs. They recruited her, she helped with the hit, and now she’s flopping with them. But…”
“Why would a rival gang order a hit on a former Banger?”
“Why would anybody? It makes him more important than he seems.” And that was the puzzle. “I need to know more about the players.”
She pulled out her PPC, started runs.
“She actually did change her name legally. Rita Razowitz to Taffy Pull. Worked the sex clubs—a couple of high-end ones back in the day. A few bumps along the way, but nothing major. About twelve years ago she got into it with one of the other SWs over some dude. The rival set her hair on fire.”
“That’s love for you,” Roarke said.
“It explains the wig, the scars. Spiraled down—a taste for opiates of any description, busted for illegals, for unlicensed solicitation. Blah-blah. She’s been running that place for about four years.
“Can’t think the dude was worth it,” Eve considered. “No marriages, no cohabs, no offspring, and no criminal in the last four that shows.”
“The sad life and times of Rita Razowitz.”
People make their choices, Eve thought. Who knows why?
“She’s not going to lie to cover for a junkie who works on and off. Slice is, legally, Marcus Jones Junior. Looks like Senior, street name Rock, was not only a Banger but a captain. Didn’t cohab with the mother, did some time. Got himself beaten half to death about ten years ago.”
“A job risk for a gangster.”
“That took Jones Senior out. I’m reading severe head trauma, brain damage. He’s in a medical facility for same. The mother spent Jones Junior’s childhood in and out of lockup, so he was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother.”
Roarke glanced over. “So he had something in common with Lyle Pickering.”
“Yeah. Huh. He owns the building, the flop. Or a percentage of it—and the same with Wet Dreams, and a couple other enterprises. Like the tat parlor in the building, a strip joint. Owns them with a Samuel Cohen and an Eldena Vinn.
“Any bells from those two?” she asked.
“Sorry, no. But that’s very interesting.”
“Yeah, it’s got my attention. I’ll look at his partners. Jones has brains, skill, or luck. Maybe all. He’s been pulled in for questioning plenty, but nothing’s stuck to him since he did six months when he was eighteen.”
“Brains would sell that underground pit and put enough change into that apartment building to charge actual rent—which tells me if he does have brains, he’s not using them for more than show.”
“Such as money laundering, the illegals trade, fraud, fencing, and so on.” She continued to work as Roarke wove through traffic. “Okay, his partner, Cohen, was a lawyer.”
“‘Was’?”
“Disbarred, eight years back. Currently lists himself as a consultant. He’s forty-three, also listed as owner of his residence: Lower East, a few blocks—important blocks—from Banger HQ. Working-class area. Cohabs with Eldena Vinn, twenty-five, employed at Bump and Bang—the strip club Jones, Cohen, and Vinn also own. She’s listed her profession as dancer, which reads as stripper.”
Eve sat back as—at long last—Roarke drove through the gates, and the lights of home glinted up ahead.
“How do a gangbanger, a disbarred lawyer, and a stripper become business partners?”
“I have no doubt you’ll find out.”
“Yeah, I will. It may or may not be relevant to Pickering’s murder, but I’ll find out. I smell dirty deeds.”
“It may just be the fragrant remnants of our interesting night on the town. Christ Jesus, I want that shower.”
When they got to the bedroom, he noted Galahad sprawled diagonally across the big bed, all four feet stretched out, belly up.