In Death 15 - Purity in Death

now. Morning's soon enough. Pack it in for the night. Why don't you and Peabody go use the pool or something? Or just get out for a while."
    "Yeah? Taking pity on the recovering crip?"
    "Grab it while you can, pal. It won't last."
    He grinned. "I wouldn't mind a little club action. Some music. Not up to dancing yet. You know what would really do it? Virtual club scene. If we could use the holoroom."
    "If you're going to program in some perverted sexual fantasy, I don't want to hear about it."
    "Mum's the word."
    She went back to her own office and spent the next hour dissecting Nick Greene's life.
    College man, a business major who'd started picking up trouble in his teens. Minor possession fines, criminal trespass, bootlegging vids. Always the entrepreneur, she thought.
    It had paid off for a while. Classy Park Avenue digs, closet full of snazzy designer duds.
    She frowned as she continued through his financials. He'd garaged two high-end vehicles, and had kept a third, and a watercraft, stored at his weekend place in the Hamptons. He had art and jewelry insured in excess of three million.
    "Doesn't add up."
    She went to the 'link and beeped Roarke. "I need you to look at something in my office."
    He came in, looking mildly irritated. "If you want the job done, Lieutenant, you have to let me do it."
    "I need your expert opinion on something else. Look at these assets, reported income, debits. Give me your take."
    She had the numbers on-screen, and paced the office while Roarke studied them.
    "Obviously someone didn't report all their income. That's shocking."
    "Ditch the sarcasm. How much in excess of this could you make from a mid-level illegals business, running a few unlicensed whores, dealing some porn vids, a little sex brokering?"
    "I've decided to be flattered rather than insulted that you assumed I'd know of such matters. Depends, of course, on the overhead. You'd have to buy or cook the illegals before you could sell them, outfit and maintain the prostitutes, generate the vids. Then there's the outlay for bribes, security, employees. If you were good at it, had a steady clientele, you'd pull in two or three million in profit."
    "Still doesn't add up. He kept it small, exclusive. You don't get busted as hard or as often if you keep it low profile. So say you add the three million to what he reported last year. That keeps him under five million. You could live real comfortable on that."
    "Some could. Are we done now?"
    "No. You've got five million to play with. Look at his clothing expenditures last year."
    Stifling impatience, Roarke scanned the data she shot on-screen. "So he wasn't a snappy dresser."
    "But he was. Closet full of designer labels. Had to have a hundred pairs of shoes. Since I live with someone with the same baffling addiction, I can recognize the pricey stuff. There was an easy million in the closet. Probably more."
    "He prefers paying cash then," Roarke said, but he was becoming interested despite himself.
    "Okay, subtract a million from the five. He has art and baubles insured for over three."
    "One rarely buys all their baubles in a single year."
    "Yeah, but there're appraisals for over three-quarters of a million last year. No debit entries. Cash again. Subtract another seventy-five. Vid equipment, insured for one point five mil. Two new cams on the list last year to the tune of half a mil. Two garaged vehicles in the city. Annual for that's what, two, three thousand a month, each. One's a XR-7000Z, new last September. What do they run?"
    "Ah . . . two hundred K, if he got it loaded."
    "Three-bedroom condo on Park. Annual's about the same as the car, right?"
    He was doing the math in his head. "Close enough."
    "Then you add a five-bedroom beach house in the Hamptons, the slip fee for his watercraft. What's that?"
    "Run him near a million."
    "Okay. You add in he goes out dining and debauchering almost nightly. Basic living expenses over that. What do you get?"
    "Either I'm well off on the estimate of his business profit, or he had another source of income."
    "Another source." She hitched a hip onto her desk. "Follow me here. You got an underground business that caters to fairly exclusive clientele. Some of whom might blush if their little hobby came out in the light. You've got expensive taste, and your business does pretty good, but hell, you want better. What do you do?"
    "Blackmail."
    "And we have a winner."
    "All right, so he ran a shakedown on the side. A profitable one by all