“I can’t go to prison for fifty years.”
Tween began to shake now. Not from fear so much, Eve thought, but the hard cold reality.
“Give me a moment with my client.”
“Dallas and Reo exiting Interview. Record off. Goddamn it, Reo,” Eve began as she went out.
When the door shut, Eve turned. “If I went for girls, and if polygamy was legal in this state, I would fucking marry you.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet. Give me the twenty. I’ll trust you for the wine.”
Eve dug out twenty, slapped it into Reo’s hand. “You’re one hell of a cheap, lazy lawyer.”
“Hey!” Peabody hustled back up the hall. “I was just heading back in. All prepped with a shocked face and data on Cobbe.”
“She got the fifty.”
“Yes!” Peabody offered a fist bump.
“Now we see if he has anything we don’t already know.”
“He had his name,” Peabody pointed out. “It’s a good start.”
“There’s a lot of road between start and finish.” Eve jammed her hands into her pockets. “Cobbe’s the finish. How much Tween actually knows about him? That’s only part of the road.”
“It’s sinking in,” Reo pointed out. “What he’s facing. Fifty years is terrifying, but the alternative’s worse. And he’s got that dangle of knocking it to forty if he’s a good boy inside. Gotte’s making it clear he spills everything he knows or gets the alternative. How sure are you Cobbe will stay in New York?”
“He wants Roarke. It’s not a job, it’s personal.”
“Still, he had to know Roarke had his base in New York, so why now?”
Eve blew out a breath. “He’s Irish. Cobbe’s Irish.”
Reo angled her head. “And?”
“They’re—from my observation, they can be …” Pulling her hands out of her pockets, Eve waggled them in the air. “It’s not just superstitious, it’s—” She broke off again, frustrated. “I don’t have the word for it. But Cobbe takes, as far as we can track, his first job in New York in twenty years—and maybe he took it figuring he’d get a line on Roarke. But when he does, who walks on scene? Roarke. It’s like a sign to him, that’s how I see it. He’s Irish, it’s a sign. Roarke, Roarke’s cop, the successful job. The fucking universe is telling him this is the time and place.”
“That makes an odd sort of sense.”
“Perfect sense, really,” Peabody decided.
Eve pointed at her. “Free-Ager. Sort of the same deal in that area.”
She paused when Gotte opened the Interview door. “My client is ready to continue. He’d like some chilled spring water, flat.”
“Slice of lime with that?”
Gotte merely gave Eve a dour stare.
“I’ll get it. Can I get you something, Ms. Gotte?”
“Thank you, Detective. Green tea, no sweetener.”
While Peabody headed off, Eve and Reo stepped back into Interview.
“Record on. Dallas and Reo reentering Interview with Tween and Gotte.”
As she folded her hands on the table, Gotte’s face stayed dour. “My client appeals to you on behalf of his young child. My client’s son is only four years old. Serving his sentence on-planet will allow this young, innocent boy regular contact with his father.”
“I’m all he has.” Tween’s voice shook. His eyes glimmered as he tried for tears.
“Seems like you should’ve thought of that before you hired Lorcan Cobbe to gut your wife in a public park.”
“Regardless,” Gotte snapped at Eve.
“No regardless. The minor child’s mother’s dead because your client paid to make her dead. I think that disqualifies him for the Father of the Year Award.”
“He remains the child’s father and legal guardian.”
“Wrong. He sticks on the biology, but he is no longer the minor child’s legal guardian. Stefano and Tereza Modesto have legal custody, as is clearly stated in Galla Modesto’s will.”
“We can bring this before family court, of course,” Reo added. “But you know as well as I, that guardianship will stick. The deal stands. Take it or leave it.”
“I’m his father!”
“And she was his mother,” Eve shot back. “You made him a motherless child. Do you really think you’ll get daddy points?”
“She cheated, she lied.”
“And you killed her for it.” Pushing up, Eve braced her hands on the table, leaned forward. “Toss the deal. Please toss it so I can put your greedy, arrogant, murdering ass away for fucking ever. How many times have you poked into the kid’s trust fund, looked at ways to take it over once you eliminated his mother? Do you think we won’t find that, too? Do you think we won’t show he’s just another moneymaker to you?”
She saw the quick flash in his eyes before they cut away. And knew she’d hit the mark.
Gotte saw it, too, and gripped Tween’s arm. “We accept the deal, as outlined on record.”
Peabody announced herself for that record when she came in with water and tea. Tween’s hands shook as he lifted his to drink.
“Lorcan Cobbe,” Eve said and turned to Peabody. “Detective?”
“Lorcan Cobbe, age forty-two, Irish citizen, originally from Dublin. Mother, Morna Cobbe, age sixty-three. Father unknown.”
Peabody glanced up from the scroll on her PPC. “Cobbe has a history of juvenile bad acts that has continued and escalated in adulthood. He is on the lists of multiple international law enforcement agencies. Under his name and a series of aliases, he is a known contract killer operating primarily in Europe. At this time we are compiling data from those agencies. Commander Whitney and Captain Feeney of EDD investigated him for the murder of two adults and their teenage son in a home-invasion case in New York twenty-one years ago but were unable to apprehend him and close the case.”
Eve leaned back. “How’d you find him?”
“She had sex with another man.”
“Established. Known. Move on. How did you find and contact Lorcan Cobbe?”
“Bellacore. It’s Stefano’s fault! He said the name. I wouldn’t have known about Bellacore otherwise.”
“Are you naming Stefano Modesto as a coconspirator?” Eve demanded. “Did he give you the name to aid you in the murder for hire? Lie, and you do the full weight. Remember that.”
“He made a joke. He put it in my head. She was fucking that artist, and whining about going back to Tuscany. We came to New York because it was time for me to be in charge. She whines about missing her home, about wanting another kid, about going back to work part-time. Always what she wanted, and then she wants some third-rate street artist? My career, my life was on the line. I had to defend myself.”
“She ended the affair.”
“Always mooning at that damn painting, and whining, whining. She’d have gone back to him, and then where would I be? Her family would take her side. They always take her side.”
“But they’d support the grieving husband.”
Anger flashed through the fear. “She whored herself! I was the injured party, but they’d have pushed me out, all the years I worked, catering to them, to her, I’d have been out.”