“We’ll see how it plays out,” Peabody finished.
Rain blew in as Eve drove the handful of blocks, then another two before she found parking.
Peabody opened the glove box, pulled out a pair of compact umbrellas. She passed one to Eve.
“How did you know they were in there?”
“Factored in Roarke and Summerset, then played the odds. I won!”
As she climbed out, Peabody opened one.
Since it was right there, Eve did the same, then had to admit to a kind of smugness as she watched other pedestrians scramble for cover or hunch against the wet.
“Give me a quick rundown of the artist formerly known as Pecker.”
“Thirty-three, mixed race, currently working nights serving drinks and bar food at Saucy, a sex club.” Peabody paused, pointed. “That one.”
Eve took a glance at the blacked-out window with the currently quiet neon in the shape of an impossibly endowed naked woman.
“It’s a good thing she’s got that pole to hold on to. Otherwise, being that front-loaded, she’d keep falling on her face.”
“I can’t figure how she’d swing on the pole. The boobies would keep smacking into it.”
“Peabody, tits that size are not, in any way, ‘boobies.’ The termboobiesshould be reserved exclusively for what begins to pop out of a twelve-year-old girl.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
After they walked to the middle of the next block, Eve studied Orion’s building. Another post-Urbans toss-up. Eight floors of dingy and poorly secured, with a scatter of tags.
Given the nature of the tags, she deduced those particular artists patronized Saucy—if they managed to get their hands on fake ID.
Street level held a tat and piercing parlor attached to a handy retail space that sold nipple rings, tongue studs, and other accessories she further deduced could be attached to more private parts.
Since the residential door had no lock, they walked right in.
Peabody let out a sigh. “He’s on five. I’m going to have to upgrade my underwear because my pants are going to get so loose, they’ll fall off my ass.”
As expected, Eve ignored the elevator and pushed open the door to the stairwell.
Chapter Five
It smelled like someone’s three-day-old sweet-and-sour shrimp with a side of fresh puke.
“What an odor,” Peabody commented as they started the climb.
“And another one without any kind of decent soundproofing. Why do babies always sound like someone’s carving off their fingers with a dull knife?”
“Ew, but anyway. That’s not an I’m-hurt cry. It’s an I’m-hungry cry.”
Frowning, Eve looked at her partner. “How can you tell?”
“It just sounds hungry, not like there goes my pinkie. You know if Mom had boobies—sorry, tits—like Neon Girl, she could fill that tank for a couple days with one feeding.”
As they climbed, the stairwell echoed with the sounds of an electric keyboard, the wild, celebratory shrieks of the Game Show Channel, the boom and blast of some action flick, and someone shouting for someone to shut the fuck up.
Eve mostly agreed with the last.
When they rounded to four, she heard the bass-heavy, hard-edged shout and stomp of thrash metal at top volume.
