He opened his mouth, then seemed to check whatever he was going to say. “I’ve been thoroughly briefed on these matters. This conversation is a courtesy, due to Ewing’s exemplary service to her country, and the desire of HSO to cooperate, as much as possible, with local authorities. However, it’s only a courtesy. There are details of these matters you are not cleared to know. The charges against Ewing have been dropped.”
“And that smooths it all out? You think you can look and listen and sit back, playing with people, nudging them around like pawns in a chess game?”
She recognized the pressure on her chest, knew she’d need to gulp for air if she let it take over. If she let herself think about that room in Dallas.
So she blocked it out, slammed it down, and thought of a young woman in a frilly bedroom with a purple stuffed bear and a pink rosebud.
“A few get broken along the way, well, that’s a shame. Chloe McCoy is dead. You got a way to smooth that out?”
His tone never changed. “It’s being investigated, Lieutenant. It will be resolved. Responsible parties will be dealt with as appropriate. You need to back off.”
“The way you people backed off in Dallas?” It was out before she could stop it. “The way you sat on your asses gathering intel no matter what the cost to the innocent.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Dallas isn’t a factor in this matter.”
“You look like a smart guy, Assistant Director Sparrow. Look it up, put it together.” She slid off the stool. “And hear this: I don’t back off. Ewing’s not only going to be sprung, she’s going to be publicly exonerated, with or without your cooperation. And whoever killed Chloe McCoy will be dealt with, as the law deems appropriate, not your gang of spooks.”
She didn’t shout, but neither did she trouble to keep her voice low. A few heads turned-and, she knew, more than a few cops’ ears tuned in.
“This time there’s going to be payment. You and your listening posts put that into your data banks and analyze it. You approach me again, be ready to deal. Or we have nothing to say.”
She strode out of the bar. Her breath was starting to come too fast, and her head was going light. She had to bear down. She wasn’t going to think about what had been done to her, but about what she was going to do.
There would be payment, she promised herself. She couldn’t get it for the battered, terrified child in Dallas, she would do everything in her power to ensure Roarke didn’t, but she would, she damn well would get it for Reva Ewing and Chloe McCoy.
She ignored the tension at the base of her skull as she drove out of the garage. She resigned herself to the iron grip of it as she battled traffic.
Ad blimps blasted out their evening siren song of SALES, SALES, SALES. Fall blow-out in EVERY store at The Sky Mall. One hundred lucky customers would receive an In-Touch palm ‘link ABSOLUTELY FREE. While supplies lasted.
The noise of it rolled down over her, punctuated by the whispering clack of traffic copter blades, horns blasting against the pollution codes.
The tension began to sneak its way up, squeeze around her temples. When the headache kicked in full, she knew it would be a bitch.
All through the noise of New York, the throb of its violent heart, she heard the cool, composed voice of Sparrow speaking of disposal.
We are not disposable, she told herself when her hands gripped the wheel like iron. No matter how many bodies she’d stood over, no matter how many she’d ordered bagged, none of them, none of them, none of them were disposable.
She punched through the open gates of home, and prayed for ten minutes of silence, for ten minutes without the noise screaming in her head.
She rushed into the house, hoping to circumvent her nightly confrontation with Summerset, and was halfway up the stairs when she heard her name called.
She looked around and saw Mavis at the bottom of the stairs.
“Hey. Didn’t know you were here.” Absently, she rubbed at the ache in her temple. “I was bolting, hoping to miss my nightly treat of Ugly Guy.”
“I told Summerset I wanted a few minutes. You look like you’re pretty busy, and tired. It’s probably a bad time.”
“No, that’s okay.” A dose of Mavis was a better cure than any blocker.
Just one more reminder of who she was, Eve thought. Of who she was now.
She assumed Mavis was in a conservative mood, as she was wearing nothing that glowed. The fact was, she didn’t know the last time she’d seen Mavis in something as ordinary as jeans and a T-shirt. Even if the T-shirt stopped a couple inches above the waist and was covered with red and yellow fringe, it was pretty tame on the Mavis Freestone scale of fashion.
Her hair was quietly brown, with only one red and yellow tuft poofed at the crown to liven it up.
She looked a little pale, Eve noticed as she started down, then realized Mavis was wearing no lip dye or eye enhancements.
“You been to church or something?” Eve asked.
“No.”
With a frown, Eve took another survey. “Wow, you’re sort of starting to poke out. I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks, and-”
She broke off in horror when Mavis burst into tears.
“Oh shit. Oh damn. What did I say? Am I not supposed to say you’re poking out?” Frantic, she patted Mavis’s shoulder. “I thought you wanted to poke out with the baby and all. Oh boy.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Is something wrong with the… thing? The baby?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s wrong,” she wailed. “Nothing. Everything. Dallas.” On a pathetic sob, she threw herself into Eve’s arms. “I’m so scared.”
“We should call a doctor.” She looked desperately around the foyer as if a medic would magically appear. In her panic, she actually wished, fiercely, for Summerset. “Or something.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Mavis wept on Eve’s shoulder in great, gulping sobs. “I don’t need a doctor.”
“Sitting down’s good. You should sit down.” Lie down? Eve wondered. Be sedated? Oh, help me. “Maybe I should see if Roarke’s back yet.”
“I don’t want Roarke. I don’t want a man. I want you.”
“Okay, okay.” She eased Mavis onto a couch, tried not to be freaked when her friend all but crawled into her lap. “You’ve got me. Um… I was thinking about you today.”
“You were?”
“I had lunch at the Blue Squirrel, and… Oh, Mother of God,” she muttered when Mavis’s sobs increased. “Give me a hint, give me a clue. I don’t know what to do if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I’m so scared.”
“I got that part. Why? Of what? Is somebody bothering you? You got a crazed fan or something?”
“No, the fans are great.” Her shoulders shook as she burrowed into Eve.
“Ah… you and Leonardo have a fight?”
Now her head shook. “No. He’s the most wonderful man in the world. The most perfect human being in the universe. I don’t deserve him.”
“Oh, that’s just crap.”
“It’s not crap. I don’t.” Mavis jerked back, turned her tear-ravaged face up to Eve’s. “I’m stupid.”
“No, you’re not. It’s stupid to say you’re stupid.”
“I never even finished school. I ran away when I was fourteen, and I wasn’t even worth looking for.”
“If your parents were stupid, Mavis, it doesn’t mean you are.”
If mine were monsters, it doesn’t mean I am.
“What was I when you busted me? On the grift. That’s all I knew, cons-short cons, long cons, lifting wallets or playing the beard for some other grifter.”
“Look at you now. You’ve got the most perfect human being in the universe crazy about you, you’ve got a mag career, and this baby thing going. Oh God, oh God, please don’t cry like that anymore,” she begged when Mavis dissolved again.
“I don’t know anything.”
“Yeah, you do. You know… stuff. Music stuff.” Such as it was. “Fashion stuff. And you know about people. Maybe you learned it on the grift, Mavis, but you know about people. How to make them feel good about themselves.”