In Death 19 - Visions in Death

the tube, Peabody gave her a helpful thump on the back. "Joking. Just sort of joking." "You and McNab have a sick, sick relationship." "We do." Peabody beamed. "It makes us very happy."
    Jim's Gym was a hole in the wall down a dingy flight of stairs and through a muscular iron door. Eve assumed if a prospective member couldn't handle the door, he was laughed back up to the sidewalk where he could slink away holding his puny biceps.
    It smelled male, but not in a flattering sense. It was the kind of odor that hit you dead center of the face, like a fist wrapped in a sweaty jock strap.
    Paint was peeling from the walls that had been tuned up to an industrial gray around the time she'd been born. There were rusty splotches in the ceiling from water damage and a grimy beige floor so soaked with sweat and blood the fumes of both rose up like fetid fog.
    She imagined the men who frequented the place breathed it in like perfume.
    The equipment was elemental no frills. Weights and bars, a couple of heavy bags, a couple of speed bags. There were a few clunky machines that looked to have been manufactured in the last century. A single spotted mirror where a man built like a cargo shuttle was doing biceps curls.
    Another was bench-pressing what looked like your average redwood, without a spotter. She imagined the concept of spotters would be spat upon in such facilities.
    A third man pummeled one of the heavy bags like it was an adulterous ex-wife.
    All were stripped down to baggy gray sweatpants and shirts with the arms ripped off. Like a uniform, she thought. All that was missing were the words Bad Ass emblazoned over the chest.
    When Eve and Peabody stepped in, all movement stopped.
    Biceps Curls held his fifty-pounder suspended, Bench Press clanked his redwood in the safety, and Heavy Bag stood, pouring sweat, with his fist laid into the bag.
    In the silence, Eve heard the echoing thuds from the next room, and the encouraging: "Lead with your left, you stupid fuck!" She scanned the faces, then went with Heavy Bag because he was the closest. "Place got a manager?" To her amazement, he flushed scarlet all two hundred twenty-five pounds of him. "Ah, just Jim. He's, um, he owns the place. He's, um. Um, he's got Beaner sparring over in the ring. Ma'am." She started across the room. Bench Press sat up, eyed her with open suspicion and considerable dislike. "Jim, he don't take no females in here." "Jim must be unaware that it's illegal to discriminate due to sex." "Discriminate." He barked a laugh and sneered. "He don't discriminate. He just don't take no females." "A fine distinction. What you got there? Two seventy-five.
    That be about your weight?" He swiped sweat from his wide, cocoa-colored face. "Guy can't bench his weight, he's a girl." With a nod, Eve unlocked the weights, adjusted them.
    "That's my weight." Then she wagged a thumb, inviting him to rise.
    Heavy Bag stepped over as she positioned herself on the bench. "Ma'am. You don't want to hurt yourself." "No, I don't. Spot me, Peabody." "Sure." Eve curled her hands around the bar, set. And did ten slow, steady reps. She replaced the bar, slid off the bench. "I ain't no girl." She nodded to Heavy Bag, who blushed again, then strolled toward the next room.
    "I can't bench my weight yet," Peabody said in an undertone.
    "I guess I'm a girl." "Practice." She stopped to watch the sparring match.
    There was a bruiser in the ring with black skin so glossy it looked oiled. He had tree-trunk legs, abs that looked like ridges of steel. A punishing right, she noted, but he telegraphed it by dropping his left shoulder.
    His opponent was in the Nordic god style, and quick on his feet. When she stepped closer, she made it as a droid.
    The trainer was wrapped in gray sweats and jogged to different spots outside the ring to shout instruction and insult with equal fervor.
    He was about five eight, Eve judged, and on the shady side of fifty. From the looks of it, his nose had had the occasion to meet someone's fist with some regularity. When he peeled back his lips to spew abuse on his fighter, Eve caught the glint of a silver tooth.
    She waited until the end of the round and watched the black guy heavyweight division hang his head as the flyweight berated him from outside the ropes.
    "Sorry to interrupt," Eve began.
    Jim's head whipped around. "I don't like women in my place." He heaved a towel at his fighter, then rolled toward Eve like a small tank. "Out." Eve took out her badge. "Why