“If it can be got, Roarke’ll get it. The timing of all three payments is going to choke the bastard. And I can guarantee the search team’s going to find more. He’s an arrogant son of a bitch. He honestly doesn’t think anybody’s going to look. After all, he was in bed with a headache. Here’s where I won’t be surprised: if we find payments to a PI somewhere along the line. He could’ve buried that in a business account, charged it to Modesto. Roarke’s got enough going, but if it’s there, the team’s going to find it.
“I’ll break him. Then you deal.”
Reo flicked imaginary lint off her pin-striped skirt. “You want me to deal?”
“I want Cobbe.”
“So do half the law enforcement agencies on-planet—I did some research.”
“And won’t it be sweet if the APA of New York City has a part in bringing down an international assassin?”
Reo sipped coffee, smiled. “It wouldn’t hurt my feelings. Concurrent sentences, possibility of parole in fifty.”
“Thirty. He needs incentive, needs to believe he can have a life outside.”
“It’s sure interesting being on the other side of this argument. “Thirty-five. Dallas, he had his wife, the mother of his young son, gutted in a public park. I can’t go lower.”
“Thirty-five,” Eve agreed. “He won’t get out in thirty-five. He’s an asshole. He’ll screw up. And I can promise in thirty-five when and if he’s up, Galla’s family will speak at his parole hearing. He’ll do forty—and then he’ll do more on other charges. He used international banking to buy the hit.”
“Aren’t you the clever one?”
“That’s why I make the crappy bucks. If he ever gets out, he’ll get out broke and broken. Galla’s son will be raised by family, by good people in the home she loved. We get Cobbe, we’ll have gotten her justice, and that’s the job.”
“That’s the job. Let me do some work here, and we’ll take him after he’s booked and lawyered up.”
“Take the room. I need to brief the search team.”
It didn’t surprise her to find the captain of EDD in her bullpen along with McNab.
“Whitney’s working his way through red tape,” Feeney told her. “Better him than me. He said he’d have some data for you by end of shift.”
“Good. I need you and McNab to do as much as you can on the e’s in the residence. Financial data—hoping for a payment to a PI or an investigative firm. He’ll have his own safe—that’s his type. Get it open. If he didn’t contact Cobbe with his personal ’links, he’ll have a clone in a safe. Who’s handling his office e’s?”
“I got two on that. Callendar and Rosco.”
“Make sure they check financials, and any clones. Santiago, both Carmichaels, Shelby, front and center.”
While she briefed her team, her ’link signaled. “Hold on,” she ordered when she read the display. “Dallas.”
“Lieutenant Dallas! They have arrested Signore Tween! The police, they come to the door. They—”
“I know, Ms. Rinaldi. I sent them.”
“Oh! What should I do? He shouts at me, he orders me to contact his lawyer, Mr. Milton Barkley.”
“Go ahead and do that. You can tell the lawyer Mr. Tween is being booked at Cop Central. Where’s the boy, ah, Angelo?”
“He has a nap. He is upstairs with his nanny. He doesn’t understand where his mother has gone, why his nanny and I must leave.”
“Do you have Stefano Modesto’s contact number?”
“Yes. Yes, of course, but—”
“Contact him, tell him the situation. He can take Angelo with him to his hotel in New York.”
“Oh! Grazie a Dio!”
“The police are coming with a search warrant. Let them in when they get there. After the minor child is with his guardian, you and the nanny are free to leave.”
“I will tell Sofia, the nanny. We will pack for Angelo. So many thanks to you, Lieutenant Dallas.”
“It’s my job. I’ll get back to you.” She clicked off. “Peabody, let Child Services know Tween’s in custody and the minor child will be with his legal guardian. Any questions?” she asked the team.
“We’ve got it,” Santiago told her.
“Move out.”
She walked back to her office, barked at Reo, “He got a lawyer on tap. Milton Barkley.”
“Give me a minute.” Reo toggled over to search on her PPC. “Hmm. Prestigious, but corporate. Not criminal. Which says Tween doesn’t have or know a criminal attorney. Barkley will bring one with him.”
“I need my desk.”
“I’m about done anyway. I’m cleared to deal to the thirty-five. I know how to work it,” Reo added. “And I know how to play it with you and Peabody. I expect you’ll fling some impressive insults my way for my bullshit lawyering.”
“It’s so easy to insult lawyers.”
Reo tapped a finger in the air at her, rose. “I’ll find a desk in the bullpen.”
At her desk, Eve added to the file she’d take into Interview. As she reviewed its contents, Roarke came in.
“Hey. Didn’t expect to see you.”
“I have some business nearby, but have a window right now.” He moved to her AutoChef. “Coffee?”
“Is that an actual question?”
He programmed two. “Galla Modesto owned a farmhouse in the Chianti region of Tuscany. A few acres, working gardens, a small vineyard, a custodian’s cottage, a lovely view. He has it listed for sale.”
“He really is an asshole.”
“He’s also given the custodians three weeks to vacate.”
He wandered to her skinny window, looked out while he drank his coffee. “He’s also listed her flat in Florence. She has a young cousin, an art student, currently living there. She was given a month to vacate.”
“We can and will block all that.”
“You will,” he murmured, still looking out the window. “Aye, you will. Money and property, they were desperate needs of mine. Now it’s business, and it’s pleasure, and the game of it. But at one time it was survival, and that desperate need. But there’s a difference between need and greed, isn’t there?”
“Yeah.” Because he needed it, she rose, went to him, wrapped her arms around him from the back. “I’ve got him, Roarke. Trust me.”
“Oh, I do.” He closed a hand over hers.
“And I’ll get Cobbe. We’ll get Cobbe,” she corrected.
“For him, it’s business and it’s pleasure and the game of it as well.”
She could feel it in him, that tension, that anger, that grief all swollen together.
“That doesn’t make him anything like you.”
“We sprang from the same alleys and slums, had our lives dominated as children by the same man. And for a time, we ran on parallel paths.”
“Bollocks to that. Did you ever kill for money?”
“No. That I can say, that at least, was never in me.”
He turned, pressed his lips to her brow, then moved away. “I can confirm Cobbe in Amsterdam three weeks ago. A businessman with interest in an upscale bordello, a popular sex club, and other enterprises of that nature died in what police are calling a bungled break-in. Under that public stance, Cobbe is the prime suspect.”