“Yeah. Should I wake him up?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been tired enough in my life to risk falling asleep on that thing,” Webb said. “Let him rest.”
There was a lot of activity in the Major Crimes office, but very little progress. Captain Holliday passed through on the way to his office, disappeared inside, and dove into an endless stream of telephone conversations. CSU techs kept showing up with new pieces of evidence from the scene, including some cartridge cases, bits of broken glass from the Molotov cocktails, and a blackened nine-millimeter automatic found on the floor near the dead Colombians. The detectives looked everything over as it arrived. The shell casings would be useful if they could match them to a weapon, but Erin was sure the perps had gotten rid of the guns.
Vic wandered out of the break room, rubbing his eyes, a little after nine. He stopped, stared at the window, and blinked.
“It’s morning,” he said, sounding surprised and a little offended.
“You noticed,” Erin said.
“Solve the case yet?”
“We don’t even have a suspect. We’ve just about identified all the victims.”
Vic looked at the whiteboard, which Erin and Webb had updated with their new information. He stared at it for a long time.
“This wasn’t a hit,” he said at last.
Webb and Erin looked at each other, then back at him.
“I think I misheard you,” Webb said. “Explain.”
“The point wasn’t to kill one of these guys,” Vic said.
“It sure looked like it out back,” Erin said.
“I don’t think so,” Vic said. “They want to kill one guy, why have their expert shooter waiting out back? Hell, they don’t even know if he’s gonna run that way. Nah, they wanna pop one guy, they send their ace right through the front door, smoke their target right in the face, use the firebombs to cover the retreat if they wanna torch the joint. The point wasn’t to kill Conti. The point was to kill everyone.”
“Why?” Webb asked.
“The hell do I know?” Vic replied. “Do I look like a hitman?”
“Kind of,” Erin said.
“Not my point,” Vic said.
“You kill one guy, it stops the drug deal,” Erin said. “Temporarily. Wipe out the whole meeting, on both sides, it’s likely to wreck the whole transaction.”
“That makes as much sense as anything,” Webb said. “Which means this could be the first shot in an out-and-out gang war.”
“Or maybe not the first shot,” Erin suggested.
“Good thought, O’Reilly,” Webb said. “Take a look at recent gangland hits, especially anything Mafia-related. Maybe this is a retaliation, not a first strike.”
So Erin scanned homicide case files until a little after 10:30, finding nothing unusual. Then she stood up.
“Going somewhere?” Vic asked.
“I’ve got a CI who might know what’s going down in Little Italy. He said he’d meet me at eleven.”
“Get us something,” Webb said. “I hate organized crime hits. They’re the hardest cases in the world to close.”
“I don’t think that’s true, sir,” she said. “Homicides in minority neighborhoods, especially in the poorer parts of Brooklyn—”
“If I wanted police stats, I’d have kept Jones in the department. I don’t want to hear it, O’Reilly. I just want to solve this case.”
Amsterdam Billiards was a corner lot with a wraparound light-up sign over the door. The joint was just opening when Erin and Rolf arrived. The billiard hall was dimly lit, finished in polished wood with a red carpet of interlocking circles. It was a little early in the day for playing pool, so the place was nearly deserted. Erin took her partner toward the bar, picking a spot where she could see the front door.
“Is that a service animal?” the girl behind the counter asked.
“Not exactly,” Erin said. “Police K-9.”
“Bad ass.”
Rolf sat beside Erin and gave the girl a look as if to say that he was, indeed, a badass.
“Y’know, we don’t have drugs or anything in here,” the girl confided.
Erin raised her eyebrows.
“So there’s nothing for him to sniff out,” the girl explained.
“He’s not a drug dog,” Erin said.
“So, does he bite people?”
“Only the ones I tell him to.”
“Bad ass,” the girl said again.
The door swung open and Carlyle came in. He saw Erin and acknowledged her with a polite tilt of his head.
Behind him, Ian entered and stepped off to one side. The bodyguard swept the room with his eyes. Seeing nothing unusual, he took up a flanking position along the left-hand wall. He stood in an apparently relaxed posture, but Erin could see he wasn’t quite leaning against the wall and was tenser than he looked.
“Morning, darling,” Carlyle said, sliding into a seat next to her. “Have you ordered yet?”
“No, I just got here.”
“Soda water with a dash of lime for me,” he said to the bartender. “And I’ll cover whatever she’s having.”
“Coke,” Erin said. A little extra caffeine certainly couldn’t hurt.
They got their drinks and sipped them. “Your kid over there had a late night,” she observed, cocking an eyebrow Ian’s way.
“Word on the street has it, the lad needn’t sleep,” Carlyle said.
“Like that thing he did in Afghanistan? I read his personnel file. But I don’t believe it. He’s got to sleep sometime.” Erin was thinking of an incident during Ian’s Marine days, in which he’d carried a wounded comrade for five days through hostile country. He’d been awake the whole time, so the story went.
“No fear, darling. He’s sharp enough after one night’s watching.”
“So what about Liam? He going to show, or what?”
“Patience,” Carlyle said. “He’s not one by whom you can set a wristwatch. But he’ll be here.”
They waited.
“You think he knows anything useful?” Erin asked, eventually.
“I’ve no idea,” Carlyle replied.
“How’s Evan feel about us?”
He glanced at her. They hadn’t talked much about her introduction to Evan O’Malley since she’d met Carlyle’s boss about three weeks back.
“As I told you, he’s favorably impressed,” Carlyle said. “He thinks you’re useful.”
“Oh, good. I’m useful
