"I hope you'll be happy."

"So do I."

A bit unsettled, she made her way through the maze of Cop Central to her office. She had another favor to call in. Wanting privacy, she closed her door before engaging her tele-link.

"Feeney, Captain Ryan. Electronic Detective Division."

She was relieved when his rumpled face filled her screen. "You're in early, Feeney."

"Shit, didn't even have time for breakfast." He spoke mournfully and through a mouthful of Danish. "One of the terminals springs a leak, and nobody can fix it but me."

"Being indispensable's tough work. Can you fit in a search for me – unofficial?"

"My favorite kind. Shoot."

"Somebody whacked Boomer."

"Sorry to hear it." He took another bite of Danish. "He was a shit, but he usually came through. When?"

"I'm not sure; he was fished out of the East River early this morning. I know he sometimes fed somebody over in Illegals. Can you find out for me?"

"Linking weasels and their trainers is dicey work, Dallas. You got to be real security conscious about that stuff."

"Yes or no, Feeney?"

"I can do it, I can do it," he muttered. "But don't bring this back on me. Cops hate to have their files searched."

"Tell me about it. I appreciate it, Feeney. Whoever did him worked him over hard. If he knew something worth killing him over, I don't think it was one of my ongoings."

"So maybe it was somebody else's. I'll get back to you."

She leaned back from the blank screen and tried to clear her mind. Into it floated Boomer's battered face. A pipe or a bat maybe, she mused. But fists, too. She knew what hard, bare knuckles could do to a face. She knew what they felt like.

Her father had had big hands.

It was one of the things she tried to pretend she didn't remember. But she knew how they'd felt, how the blow would shock even before the brain registered the pain.

What had been worse? The beatings or the rapes? One was so mixed with the other in her mind, in her rears.

That odd angle of Boomer's arm. Broken, she mused, and dislocated. She had a vague, hideous memory of the brittle sound of a bone snapping, the nausea that went above the agony, the high-pitched whine that substituted for a scream when a hand was clamped over your mouth.

The cold sweat, and the bowel-loosening terror of knowing those fists would come back, and come back until you were dead. Until you wished to God Almighty that you were.

The knock at her door had her jolting, had her swallowing a yelp. Through the glass she saw Peabody, uniform pressed, shoulders straight.

Eve ran a hand over her mouth to steady herself. It was time to go to work.

Boomer's flop was better than some. The building had once been a low-rent hourly motel that had catered to hookers on a budget before prostitution had been licensed and legalized. It was four stories, and no one had ever bothered to put in an elevator or glide, but it did boast a dingy lobby and the dubious security of a surly-faced droid.

From the smell, the health department had recently ordered insect and rodent extermination.

The droid had a tick in her right eye from a faulty chip, but she focused her good one on Eve's badge.

"We're up to code," she claimed, standing behind cloudy safety glass. "We have no trouble here."

"Johannsen." Eve tucked her shield away. "Anyone visit him lately?"

The droid's dinky eye hitched and rolled. "I'm not programmed to monitor visitors, only to collect rents and maintain order."

"I can confiscate your memory discs and play them back for myself."

The droid said nothing, but a faint hum indicated she was running her own disc. "Johannsen, room 3C, has not returned in eight hours, twenty-eight minutes. He left alone. He had no visitors in the last two weeks."

"Communications?''

"He does not use our communication system. He has his own."

"We're going to have a look at his room."

"Third floor, second door left. Don't alarm other tenants. We have no trouble here."

"Yeah, it's a paradise." Eve headed up the steps, noting the crumbling wood, well gnawed by rodents. "Record, Peabody."

"Yes, sir." Dutifully, Peabody clipped her recorder to her shirt. "If he was here about eight hours ago, he didn't last long after he left. Probably no more than a couple hours."

"Long enough to get the shit beat out of him." Idly Eve scanned the walls. Several illegal invitations and anatomically doubtful suggestions were inscribed. One of the authors had a spelling deficiency and consistently left the c out of fuck.

Still, the message was clear enough.

"Homey little place, huh?"

"Reminds me of my granny's house."

At the door of 3C, Eve glanced back. "Why, Peabody, I think you made a joke."

While Eve chuckled and took out her master code, Peabody flushed scarlet. She had herself back in line by the time the locks disengaged.

"Bolted himself in, didn't he?" Eve muttered as the last of the three Keligh-500s opened. "And didn't go for cheap. These babies cost about a week of my pay each. For all the good they did him." She let out a breath. "Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, entering victim's residence." She pushed the door open. "Damn, Boomer, you were a pig."

The heat was enormous. Temperature control in the flop consisted of closing the window or opening it. Boomer had opted for closed, and had trapped stifling summer inside.

The room smelled of bad food gone over, stale clothes, and spilled whiskey. Leaving Peabody to do the initial scan, Eve walked into the center of what was little more than a box and shook her head.

The sheets on the narrow bed were stained with substances she wasn't keen to analyze. Boxes of take-out food were piled beside it. From the small mountain of dirty clothes heaped in corners, she assumed laundry hadn't been high on Boomer's list of household chores. Her feet stuck to the floor and made little sucking sounds as she wandered the room.

In self-defense, she fought the single window open. The sounds of air and street traffic poured in like a flood.

"Jesus, what a place. He made decent money weaseling. No way he had to live like this."

"He must have wanted to."

"Yep." Wrinkling her nose, Eve eased open a door and studied the bathroom. There was a stainless steel toilet and sink, a shower stall built for the height disadvantaged. The stench roiled her stomach. "Worse then a three-day corpse." She breathed through her mouth, turned back. "There's where he put his money."

In agreement, Peabody joined Eve at a sturdy counter. On it was a pricey data and communication center. Attached to the wall above was a viewing screen and a shelf overflowing with discs. Eve chose one at random, read the label.

"Boomer was into culture, I see. Bodacious Boobs of Bimbo Bitches."

"That took the Oscar last year."

Eve snorted and tossed the disc back. "Good one, Peabody. You want to keep that sense of humor going, 'cause we're going to have to run all this shit. Box up the discs, record number and labels. We'll scan them back at Cop Central."

Eve engaged the 'link and searched through for any calls Boomer had saved. She zipped through food orders, a session with a video prostitute that had cost him five thousand. There were two calls from a suspected dealer of illegals, but the men had merely chatted about sports, heavy on baseball and arena bash. With some curiosity, she noted that her office number was logged twice in the last thirty hours, but he'd left no message.

"He was trying to get in touch with me," she murmured. "He disengaged without leaving a message. That's not like him." She pulled out the disc and handed it to Peabody to put in evidence.

"There's nothing to indicate he was afraid or worried, Lieutenant."