Chapter 3: Asunder

Bob Dwight led the woman he knew as Lily Corvino to a door at the back of the casino, which led to the administrative offices.

"I bet the IRS is watching you like a hawk," she commented.

"Yeah, but they're easy enough to deal with. I've got good guys working for me." He waited for her to say something snappy. That was one of the things he'd always liked about Lily: her sarcastic wit. But she only nodded. She seemed so tired, so much more world-weary than she had been before. He supposed marriage could do that to a woman. "So what brought you to Jersey?"

"I just needed a change of scene. I woulda gone further if I had the dough. Some place sunny. I'm lucky I ran into you." She smiled at him.

He smiled back. "This is the city for luck, Lily."

"You have a nice place here," Lily said after an awkward pause.

"I hope you like working here. It's so hard to find people I can trust."

She raised an eyebrow, but didn't inquire if he'd had problems with untrustworthy people in the past.

A wiry man with dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes entered the room. "Can I talk to you?" he asked Dwight quickly.

"What about?"

"Privately."

Dwight smiled lazily. "Victor, I'd like you to meet the newest member of our team. This is Lily Corvino. Lily, this is my right-hand man, Victor."

"Nice to meet you," she said.

Victor nearly glared at her. "I need to talk to you now, Bob."

"Excuse me a minute." Dwight stood, and the two men walked into the next room and closed the door. Eames looked around, then walked to the door. By listening closely she could make out most of their conversation.

"What's the word, Victor?"

"It's Chakur. His guys came around again. I can only think of one reason they'd be scoping your place out."

"Chakur's just a two-bit dealer trying to play with the big boys. I'll deal with him."

"But if the deal goes through..."

"Then we won't have to worry about Chakur anymore."

"But if he tries anything before then?"

"Then I'll make sure we don't have to worry about him anymore."

"We can't afford anything going wrong."

"You don't have to tell me that, Vic."

"Then what's up with the girl?"

"An old friend down on her luck."

"She just happens to show up now?"

"Don't worry about it." Dwight's voice dropped. "When I met her ten years ago, she was a hooker in New York. She's not a cop."

"A lot can change in ten years."

"And a lot can stay the same. Don't worry; we'll keep an eye on her."

Eames heard footsteps and hurried back to the chair she'd been sitting in before the door opened and the two men returned. Victor looked her over distastefully, and then left.

"He seems friendly," Eames remarked wryly.

"He's just under a lot of stress. Later I'll introduce you to the rest of my crew."

"I look forward to it. I really can't thank you enough for giving me a chance."

"Don't do anything to make me regret it." His smile belied the vaguely threatening words, and she decided he was probably joking.

"Harry didn't kill himself. He would never do that," sobbed Donna Yap, the late judge's widow.

"He was found in his locked house with no signs of forced entry. His gun was next to him," said Officer Bonitez, who had been the first on the scene. He directed his comment at Detective Goren, but spoke loud enough for Donna to hear.

"Whoever killed him was trying to make it look like a suicide. Believe me, I would have known if he was suicidal. Harry was happy. He...he wouldn't do this to me."

"Donna," Goren said gently, "Do you know if your husband had any enemies?"

"He was a judge. Every case he presided over, someone lost. I don't know if anyone threatened him, but he didn't like me to worry about him. You believe me, don't you? Someone killed him."

Goren nodded, but said, "It's possible. At this point we don't want to rule anything out."

She nodded. "I just can't believe he's gone. I can't imagine my life without him."

Hadrian King sat on a bench as cold rain dripped down his baseball cap. He had been there for an hour. There was a newspaper on his hands. It was drenched and nearly unreadable, but he kept his eyes on it anyway. It wasn't likely anyone in the cars passing by would give more than a passing, pitying glance to the forlorn figure sitting alone in the rain on a Sunday afternoon.

A taxi pulled over. He glanced up, threw away the newspaper, and got in. "Boardwalk," he told the driver.

"Sorry I didn't get here earlier. I didn't want to look like I was in a hurry to get away," Eames said.

"Of course not. What have you found so far?" He spoke in a low voice that the driver wouldn't overhear.

"Not much. Dwight's not letting me close to anything illegal. So far he just has me doing odd jobs for him around the casino. He's being more careful than he was ten years ago."

"He has a lot more to lose."

"There are five guys he trusts. I see them a lot at the casino, but they never look like they're doing anything."

King nodded. "Jackson Mathers, Denise Everson, Mason Fergus, Victor James, and Louis McNeely."

"He called Victor his right-hand man. I hear them talk about a 'deal' that's going down soon, but they don't mention the details. Victor's worried about a guy named Chakur."

"William Chakur. He invested money in the casino, but Dwight bought him out early on. Now he runs a drug ring on the west side."

"Victor thinks they're trying to move in on Dwight's territory."

"Dwight might be doing million-dollar deals with his casino clients, but he's a thug at heart. If he sees a problem that can be solved with a gun, that's the way he's going to solve it. I wouldn't be surprised if that includes competition from an old friend. We'll look into it." He spoke louder, to the driver. "Can you take the next left?"

Eames continued after a moment. "I haven't heard anyone mention Margo. If one of them killed her, they're not talking about it."

"Don't poke around too much just yet. Right now your job is to gain Dwight's trust. Do you see the brown building coming up on the right?"

She looked out the window. "Yeah."

"It's a public pool. Meet me there at eight a.m. on Wednesday."

"If I live that long," she replied, half joking.

A look at the crime scene hadn't given Goren much. There was no evidence that Judge Harold Yap was murdered. In spite of what the widow claimed, people he worked with said the judge had seemed withdrawn and listless for the past few weeks, but no one knew why.

Goren had asked for the files on the judge's recent rulings, but they wouldn't be delivered until Tuesday. With nothing else to go on yet, he left work early.

The evening air was chilly and unusually fresh. It had been raining all day, but now the sun glowed from low in the city skyline; the lingering stacks of clouds captured its light in translucent shades of brass and silver. Goren admired them as he walked aimlessly through the city streets. With nowhere to go and nothing to occupy him, his thoughts drifted with the sunset clouds, and they took him again and again to Eames.

When he'd started work at Major Case, years ago, he'd been a brilliant, admired, idealistic detective with friends and contacts high and low. He'd had a family-not much of one, but it had been something. And Eames had been the best partner he could have asked for.

So much had changed. He was a pariah in the NYPD, most of his favors had been called in long ago; he'd lost his mother and his brother, his faith in his own abilities, Eames' trust. He'd learned things about himself he'd rather not know. All he had left was his job, and without Eames that would be nothing more than an empty obligation. She was sunlight in an otherwise cold and dark world. Where was she now? Was she in danger?

Would he ever see her again?