The In Death Collection Books 6-10 - J. D. Robb [140]
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. You fat son of a bitch.” She scowled over as she braked for a light. She’d never had to worry about the holiday before. It had just been a matter of finding something ridiculous for Mavis, maybe something edible for Feeney.
There’d been no one else in her life to wrap gifts for.
And what the hell did she buy for a man who not only had everything, but owned most of the plants and factories that made it? For a woman who’d prefer a blow with a blunt instrument to shopping for an afternoon, it was a serious dilemma.
Christmas, she decided, as Santa began to tout the variety of stores and selections in the Big Apple Sky Mall, was a pain in the ass.
Still, her mood lifted as she hit the predictably snared traffic on Broadway. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, there was a party going on. The people glides were jammed with pedestrians, most of whom were drunk, stoned, or both. Glide-cart operators shivered in the cold while their grills smoked. If a vender had a spot on this street, he held it in a tight, ready fist.
She cracked her window a sliver, caught the scent of roasting chestnuts, soy dogs, smoke, and humanity. Someone was singing out in a strident monotone about the end of the world. A cabbie blasted his horn well over noise pollution laws as pedestrians flowed into the street on his light. Overhead the early airbuses farted cheerfully, and the first advertising blimps began to hawk the city’s wares.
She watched a fistfight break out between two women. Street LCs, Eve mused. Licensed companions had to guard their turf here as fiercely as the vendors of food and drink. She considered getting out and breaking it up, but the little blonde decked the big redhead, then darted off into the crowd like a rabbit.
Good thinking, Eve thought approvingly, as the redhead was already on her feet, shaking her head clear and shouting inventive obscenities.
This, Eve thought with affection, was her New York.
With some regret, she bumped over to the relative quiet of Seventh, then headed downtown. She needed to get back into action, she thought. The weeks of disability had made her feel edgy and useless. Weak. She’d ditched the recommended last week off, had insisted on taking the required physical.
And, she knew, had passed it by the skin of her teeth.
But she’d passed, and was back on the job. Now if she could just convince her commander to get her off desk duty, she’d be a happy woman.
When her radio sounded, she tuned in with half an ear. She wasn’t even on call for another three hours.
Any units in the vicinity, a 1222 reported at 6843 Seventh Avenue, apartment 18B. No confirmation available. See the man in apartment 2A. Any units in the vicinity . . .
Eve clicked on before Dispatch could repeat the signal. “Dispatch, this is Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. I’m two minutes from the Seventh Avenue location. Am responding.”
Received, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Please report status upon arrival.
“Affirmative. Dallas out.”
She glided to the curb, flicked a glance up at the steel-gray building. A few lights glimmered through windows, but she saw only darkness on the eighteenth floor. A 1222 meant there’d been an anonymous call reporting a domestic dispute.
Eve stepped out of her vehicle, and slid an absent hand over her side where her weapon sat snug. She didn’t mind starting out the day with trouble, but there wasn’t a cop alive or dead who didn’t dread a domestic.
There seemed to be nothing a husband, wife, or same sex spouse enjoyed more than turning on the poor bastard who tried to keep them from killing each other over the rent money.
The fact that she’d volunteered to take it was a reflection of her dissatisfaction with her current assignments.
Eve jogged up the short flight of stairs and looked up the man in 2A.
She flashed her badge when he spoke through the security peep, shoved it into his beady little eyes when he opened the door a stingy crack. “You got trouble here?”
“I dunno. Cops called me. I’m the manager.