In Death 18 - Divided in Death

cheeks. After some heated debate, they’d agreed that he’d drive to, and she’d drive from. Peabody found it just as much fun to ride pinion with her arms clutched around his waist as it would’ve been to man the controls.
    But as they made their way into the poorer and less hospitable section of the city, she was glad she had her weapon strapped under her summer-weight jacket.
    She saw three illegals transactions in a two-block radius, and spotted a pair of funky-junkies jittering together on a stoop. When a flash all-terrain sportster cruised by, and the driver aimed his dark, dangerous eyes at her, she almost wished she was wearing her uniform.
    Instead, she aimed hers right back, and deliberately, visibly, laid her hand on her weapon.
    “Nasty vibes,” she said into McNab’s ear as the car gunned and slid off down a side street.
    “Oh yeah. Penalties for illegals are stiff as a teenager’s dick down here, but nobody seems to care in this sector.”
    There were sex shops and clubs, and the street LCs who sold the same commodity. But none of them looked particularly alluring. She could hear music pumping out of a few doorways, but the exotic charm of it was lost in the bored and repetitive come-ons of the hookers and the front men.
    Tourists might wander in here, she thought, but unless they were looking for sex, illegals, or a blade in the back, they’d hurry out again quick.
    They parked the scooter in front of the mean little bar, and while McNab used the chain the rental agent had provided to lock it to a lamppost, Peabody looked around.
    “I’m going to try something,” she said. “You might have to back me up.”
    She selected the two young men, one black, one white, sitting on a stoop and smoking Christ knew what out of a black pipe they passed between them. Gearing herself up, she put on her coldest cop face and swaggered up to them. And ignored McNab’s hiss of warning from behind her.
    “See that scooter?”
    The black man smirked, took a long slow drag on the pipe. “Got eyes, bitch.”
    “Yeah, looks like you’ve got a pair each.” She shifted her weight, used her elbow to ease the jacket back so her badge and weapon peeked out. “If you want to keep them in your skulls, you’ll keep them on that scooter. Because if I come back out and it isn’t where I left it, in the same condition I left it, my associate and I are going to hunt you down like sick dogs. While he’s shoving that pipe up your ass,” she said, showing her teeth to the white guy, “I’m going to pop your fellow asshole’s eyes out. With my thumbs.”
    The white guy bared his own teeth. “Hey, fuck you.”
    Her stomach jittered, a little, but she kept the fierce and toothy expression in place. “Now, if you talk like that you’re not going to earn the nice prize I have for you at the end of our contest. The scooter’s there, untouched, when I come back out, I don’t haul your ugly asses into a cage for possession and use, and I give you a nice shiny ten credits.”
    “Five now, five later.”
    She shifted her gaze to the black. “None now, and none later unless I’m happy with you. Hey, McNab, what happens when I’m not happy?”
    “I can’t talk about it. Gives me nightmares.”
    “Do yourselves a favor,” Peabody suggested. “Earn the ten.”
    She turned, sauntered toward the bar. “I’ve got sweat running down my spine,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.
    “Doesn’t show. You even scared me.”
    “Dallas would’ve gotten in their faces more, but I thought that was pretty good.”
    “Frigid, babe.” He yanked open the door, and they were hit by a blast of cold air that smelled of smoke, liquor, and humans who didn’t have a working arrangement with soap and water.
    It wasn’t yet sundown and business was sluggish. Still there were pockets of patrons, such as they were, huddled at tables or slumped at the bar. On a narrow platform that stood as stage, a malfunctioning holographic band played bad reggae. The image of the steel drummer kept winking out, and the looping was just a hair off so that the singer’s lips moved out of synch, reminding McNab of the really poorly dubbed vids his cousin Sheila got such a charge out of.
    His toeless airsneaks made little sucking sounds as he crossed the sticky floor.
    Moore was manning the bar. He looked a little thinner and a lot more harassed than he had in the ID photo they’d studied. He wore his hair in dreadlocks, a kind of