For Morris, yes, she thought. But not only.
“My father worked for Ricker. Your father worked for him, and we’ve established before that they met, and were working on the same job before the night in Dallas. Before I killed my father.”
“Before you, an eight-year-old girl, stopped him from raping you again.”
“Okay.” Truth could still dry the throat and chill the blood. “The fact is, he’s still dead. So’s your father. And your father pulled a double-cross, on Ricker, on a weapons deal. About twenty-four years ago.”
“In Atlanta.”
“Yeah. In Atlanta. Down the line, you worked for Ricker.”
Roarke’s tone turned very cool. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Were associated with him. Jump further down the line, Ricker shows up in New York, and he’s hell-bent on destroying you.”
“And you.”
“Three years ago, when Ricker was probably dreaming about eating your liver, Coltraine connects with Ricker’s son. In Atlanta. Between that point and this point, we brought Max Ricker down. One year ago. And a couple months after that Coltraine requests a transfer to New York. She gets cozy with the chief medical examiner. A man I have a close work relationship with, and who we both consider a friend. Alex Ricker comes to New York; she dies. I think when you’ve got that many intersections, you have to take a real hard look at the road.”
“And how will this be, for you, if this somehow tracks back to your father and mine?”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to find out.” She took a breath. “I don’t know how it’ll be for either of us, but we need to find out.”
“We do, yes.”
“The killer sent her weapons, her badge back to me. Personally. Maybe he’s got a mole in Dispatch, and arranged for me to be assigned. But the fact is, it doesn’t take a brain trust to figure out that even if someone else had caught this case, I’d have been involved. Because of Morris. That package was always going to come to me.”
“Then we’re on the same page. And the note inside the package becomes more a threat than bravado.”
“Possibly. She wasn’t a street cop, Roarke. She was a puzzle solver, a detail chaser. But she wasn’t street, sure as hell wasn’t New York street. Nobody’s going to take me with my own weapon. Damn if I’ll have that in my jacket at the end of the day.”
He nearly smiled. “So pride will keep you safe?”
“Among other things. If I’m a target, why take her down? Why put every cop in the city on alert, then go for me?” She faced Roarke over the wink of jeweled lights. “I’m better than she was. That’s not bragging, that’s just fact. So it’s smarter to try to take me out cold than to try it when I’m already looking for a cop killer. And when, within the first twenty-four hours, I’ll find Alex Ricker in her files.”
“Logical. And somewhat comforting.”
“In any case, that’s all speculation. We need data.”
“It’ll take some time, to get under the layers.”
“I’ll use the auxiliary and keep going through her case files.”
Roarke sat, and began to peel at the first layers.
Ricker, he thought. The name was like a virus in his life, springing out, spreading, then crawling back into hiding only to slither out again. And again.
He had reason to wonder if Ricker had been responsible for jamming the knife in Patrick Roarke’s throat in that alley in Dublin years ago. And that, Roarke admitted, was the single thing he’d have to be grateful to Ricker for.
Not true, he corrected, not entirely true.
He could be grateful for what he’d learned during his association with Ricker. He’d learned how far he would go, and where he wouldn’t go. He knew it had both amused and annoyed Max Ricker that he wouldn’t deal in the sex trade when it involved minors or the unwilling. That he wouldn’t kill on command, or for the sake of spilling blood.
He’d taken lives in his time, Roarke admitted. He’d spilled blood. But always for purpose. Never for profit. Never for sport.
He supposed, in some oddly twisted way, he’d learned more of his own lines, his own moralities from Max Ricker than he had from his own unlamented father.
What, he wondered, had Alex Ricker learned from his father?
German boarding schools, Roarke noted. Military type. Very strict, very costly. Private tutors on holidays, then private university. Studied in business, finance, languages, politics, and international law. Played football—soccer to the Yanks.
Covering many bases there.
No marriages, no children on record.
Alex Maximum Ricker, age thirty-three, residences in Atlanta, Berlin, Paris, and most recently, New York. Financier and entrepreneur listed as occupations of record.
Also covering a lot of bases. Current net worth: 18.3 million.
Oh, no, there’ll be more than that. So, Roarke thought. Let’s get down to it.
He worked steadily for an hour, ordering multiple runs and chipping away manually.
“Covering asses, too, aren’t you now?” Roarke mumbled to himself when he hit a block, shoved and tunneled around and under it. “Not so quick to toot your own horn as your father was. Smarter. All that posturing and preening helped bring him down, didn’t it? Ah, now, there’s a start.”
“What? What have you got?”
“Hmmm?”
“I’ve got nothing.” Eve swiveled around to him. “Zip. You’ve got something. What?”
“Apparently, it’s not coffee,” he said with a glance at his empty mug.
“What am I, a domestic droid?”
“If so, why aren’t you wearing your frilly white apron and little white cap, and nothing else?”
She sent him a pained look of sincere bafflement. “Why do men think that kind of getup is sexy?”
“Hmm, let me think. Mostly naked women wearing only symbols of servitude. No, I can’t understand it myself.”
“Perverts, your entire species. What have you got?”
“Besides a very clear picture of you in my head wearing a frilly white apron and little white cap?”
“Jesus, I’ll get the damn coffee if you’ll cut it out.”
“What I’ve found is the reason Alex Ricker hasn’t blipped on my radar, not that I’ve given him much thought. But from a purely business standpoint, why he hasn’t blipped.”
“Why?”
Roarke gestured to the wall screen when he ordered data to transfer there. “He’s scattered and spread himself out, with numerous small to mid-size companies. None of them with holdings that cross the line into interesting.”
“What’s the line where they become interesting?”
“Oh, for me? Eight to ten million, unless I’m looking to acquire small, individual properties or businesses.”
“Oh yeah, anything under ten mil’s boring.” She rose to get the coffee. “Is he laundering or hiding income?”
“Not that I’ve found so far. He’s bought or established companies. Some he owns outright, others a controlling interest. Still others a small percentage. Some of his companies are arms of his other companies.”
He took the coffee she brought him, patted his knee in invitation, and laughed at her sour look. “Some of his companies own property—homes in Athens, Tokyo, Tuscany. He holds some of these interests through an Atlanta-based operation called—logically enough—Varied Interests. Others are held by the Morandi Corporation, which was his mother’s name.”
“Dead mother, as I remember.”
“Very dead. He was six when she ingested an unhealthy number of tranqs and supposedly fell or leaped from her bedroom window, twenty-two stories above the streets of Rome.”
“Where was Max Ricker?”
“Excellent question. According to statements in the very thin police file on her death, he was in Amsterdam when she jumped, or fell. Alex also has a company he called Maximum Exports, which owns—among other things—the antique store in Atlanta that was hit. There’s no criminal on him. He’s been questioned on various accounts by various authorities on various continents. But never charged.