Three Fates

himself.
    He’d already come to the same conclusion as Tia, as Malachi. The six of them were going to have to work together as a single entity. He had no problem with team-work, but he wanted to know all there was to know about the team.
    While the data scrolled, he rolled over to the monitors and, telling himself it was best all around if he kept an eye on Rebecca, engaged the cameras he had installed in his own apartment.
    She was in his office, at his computer, and she looked steamed. Curious, he turned on audio.
    “Bugger you, Jack, if you think I can’t get by your bloody passwords and blocks.”
    “If you can, Irish,” he replied, “I’m going to be very impressed.”
    He watched her awhile, noting the rapid streak of her fingers over the keyboard, the curl of her lip as she met another obstacle.
    Most women, in his experience, when left to their own devices in a man’s space would poke in drawers, closets, examine the contents of the medicine cabinet or the kitchen cupboards. But she’d gone straight for the information highway.
    It did his heart good.
    He muted the audio, then busied himself writing a report on Cleo that would convince Anita he was doing her a favor, and offer her nothing helpful.
    “That’ll set you on the boil,” he thought aloud.
    He rolled away again to let it simmer before he read it over one last time and picked up the phone.
    “Detectives Bureau. Detective Robbins.”
    “The man with the badge.”
    “The man with fraudulent ID.”
    “Not me, pal. You must be thinking of someone else. How’s the crime-fighting world?”
    “Same old. How’s it going in Paranoia-ville?”
    “No complaints. Wondered if you wanted to take that twenty I owe you and go double or nothing on the Angels and O’s tonight.”
    “Are you intimating that I, a public servant, gamble?”
    “I’ll take the O’s.”
    “You’re on, sucker. Now that the pleasantries are over, what’re you after?”
    “Now you’ve hurt my feelings. But since you ask, I got some descriptions to run by you. Muscle, probably freelance, certainly local. Thought maybe you could run them through the system for me, see if anything pops.”
    “Maybe. You got names?”
    “No, but I’m working on it. Bachelor Number One. White male, forty to forty-five, brown hair, thinning, no eye color, pale complexion, prominent nose. About five-ten, a hundred and seventy.”
    “Lot of guys fit that, including my brother-in-law. Worthless fuck.”
    “My information is he likes to use his fists and isn’t long on brains.”
    “Yeah, that’s my brother-in-law. Want me to haul his ass in and kick him around?”
    “Up to you. Your brother-in-law take any recent trips to Eastern Europe?”
    “He doesn’t move his white, dimpled butt out of his recliner to go to the corner deli. You looking for a world traveler, Burdett?”
    “I’m looking for an asshole who’s recently back from a little trip to the Czech Republic.”
    “That’s a coincidence. We’ve got a corpse on ice, fits your general description. Had a passport in the pocket of his fancy suit. Had two stamps on it. One Praha. That’s, my erudite friends tell me, Prague, Czech Republic. The other was New York, about ten days old.”
    Bull’s-eye, Jack thought, and swiveled back to a keyboard. “Can you spare the name?”
    “Don’t see why not. Carl Dubrowsky, Bronx boy. Got a pretty yellow sheet on him—mostly assault—and a skate on a Man One. What do you want with our dead guy, Jack?”
    Jack plugged in the name and started a search of his own. “Tell me how he got dead.”
    “It was probably the four holes a twenty-five-caliber put into him. He turned up stiff in an empty warehouse in Jersey. Let’s have a little quid pro quo here.”
    “I’ve got nothing right now, but I’ll hand it to you when I do.” He switched computers, readied to start a second search. “Got an address on that warehouse?”
    “Jesus, why don’t I just fax you the file?”
    “Would ya?”
    At Bob’s rude response, Jack grinned and noted down the address.
    When he’d finished on the phone, he typed up meticulous notes on all the data he’d generated. He was getting to his feet, coffee on his mind, when he glanced at the monitors.
    The maniacal gleam in Rebecca’s eyes had him moving closer, switching the audio back on.
    “Not so smart, are you?” she was muttering. “Not so bloody clever.”
    “You are,” he commented, surprised and, yes, impressed, that she’d