“Is that why Perigine was ’round at the Lorenzos’ place?” Alik wondered out loud. “Hunting the Farron woman?” Then he read further down the file Shango had harvested on Delphine Farron. “Oh, this just keeps getting better. Look at this shit; Delphine is Rayner’s second cousin.”
“This can’t be right,” Salovitz said. “If Perigine had whacked the Farron woman in the portalhome, we’d have found her body.”
“Not if they went for a walk in the Antarctic,” I said. “We barely found the next portalhouse room.”
“Perigine and his crew weren’t wearing polar gear.”
“Yeah,” Alik admitted sourly. “Good point. Ask the precinct to get Connexion’s log on Delphine Farron. I want to know where she is.”
They reached the Manhattan Beach Park hub as Alik finished reviewing Riek Patterson’s file. “Change of plan,” he announced. “We’re going to west Brooklyn.”
“For what?”
“Pay our respects to the widow Patterson.”
—
Geographically, Stillwell Avenue wasn’t that far from Dover Street, but status-wise Alik was getting vertigo from the drop. They found the small projects where Riek Patterson rented a few rooms easily enough; nearly half of the building was derelict. The rest of the inhabitants vanished like rats into the cracks as soon as the two of them stepped over the threshold. Alik didn’t think they’d be dumb enough to try to tangle with one of the city’s finest and a fed, but you never knew what kind of weird neurochemical shit their twenty-year-old synthesizers squeezed out and how it affected them.
Colleana Patterson was awake. Ordinarily he’d take that as a sign of guilt—three thirty in the morning is when the baddest of them all come out to play—but the two-month-old cradled in her arm was evidence to the contrary. It looked like she’d been awake for half a year and crying for most of that. She was a complete physical and emotional wreck. The tiny apartment was a cluttered mess that smelled of stale food and toxic diapers.
“What now?” she wailed; she didn’t even bother checking their credentials.
“Did you know Perigine Lexi and his crew were hit tonight?” Alik asked.
She collapsed back into her one big chair in the scabby living room, sobbing. That set the kid off, howling like a small banshee. Alik waited. Sure enough, a neighbor started banging on the wall.
“I need your help,” he said when her misery reached a peak.
“I don’t know anything! How many goddamn times do I have to tell you people?”
“I’m not NYPD, I’m FBI.”
“You’re all the same.”
“Not quite. I have a lot more authority than Detective Salovitz here.”
Salovitz cheerfully gave him the finger.
“I don’t know anything,” she repeated like it was her shiny new mantra, the one that would solve everything in life. Alik could tell she was on the verge of curling up into a fetal position tighter than junior could ever manage, one she might never uncurl from.
“I’ve been looking at Riek’s file,” he said. “He had some insurance. Not much, but it could make a big difference to you and the kid.”
“They won’t pay out, the company’s legal department already said. Bastards. It wasn’t an accident.”
“It could be. I can speak to the coroner; they can officially record it as an accident. Like I said, I have authority.”
She glanced up at Alik, her expression sullen and suspicious. “What do you want?”
“A name. We know Rayner’s people took out Riek because of what he’d just done. It was a retaliation hit.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
“So tell me what it was he did for Javid-Lee? I know you know.”
“Are you serious about the insurance company? You can really do that?”
“I can really do that. But you have to tell me everything.”
“It was some bitch. That’s why he took the job; not everyone would. But we needed the money. Javid-Lee rewards his people for loyalty, he’s good that way.”
“Sure he is. Who was the girl?”
“Samantha Lehito. Javid-Lee wanted a message delivered to her.”
“What for? What had she done?”
“I don’t know. Please, I really don’t. Riek never asked. You don’t. He was a solid soldier for Javid-Lee. He delivered the message like he’d been told. Put that skank in the hospital.”
“She’s alive, then?”
“I dunno. She was when he left her. Her altme was screaming for the paramedics.”
“All right.” Shango was already splashing Lehito’s file across Alik’s lens. She was in Jamaica Hospital on the Van Wyck Greenway, receiving credit-level-three treatment. That confirmed Rayner took care of his people—good politics on his part. But Alik was now very curious what Samantha Lehito had done that would make Javid-Lee send Riek to kick her ass.
“The insurance?” Colleana said desperately. “What about the insurance? I told you what you wanted to know.”
The baby was grizzling again, picking up on mom’s distress. Alik didn’t give a rat’s turd about her, but the kid deserved a chance; it was that damn Southern Baptist conscience of his, which never quit
She burst into tears again.