Strangers in Death (25 page)

Bebe shut the door. Eve heard the rattle of the chain through it. When it opened, Bebe stood, tired and resentful, in a red shirt, black pants, and serviceable black skids. “You’re going to have to make this fast, and you’re going to have to talk while I work.”

With that, Bebe turned and stalked toward the back of the house.

Neat and tidy, Eve thought as she glanced at the living area. The furniture was cheap, and as serviceable as the black skids, but like the windows, clean. The air smelled fresh, with just a hint of coffee and toasted bread as they approached the kitchen.

On a small metal table sat a white plastic laundry basket. From it, Bebe took a shirt, then folded it with quick, efficient moves.

“You don’t need to sit,” she snapped out. “Say what you have to say.”

“Ava Anders.”

The hands hesitated only a second, then pulled out another shirt. “What about her?”

“You’re acquainted.”

“My boys are in the Anders sports programs.”

“You’ve attended Mrs. Anders’s seminars and mothers’ breaks. Retreats?”

“That’s right.”

“And both your boys are recipients of scholarships through the Anders program.”

“That’s right.” Bebe’s eyes flashed up at that, and some of the fear, some of the anger leaked through. “They earned it. I got smart boys, good boys. They work hard.”

“You must be very proud of them, Ms. Petrelli.” Peabody offered a hint of a smile.

“Of course I am.”

“Their school’s a clip from here,” Eve commented.

“They take the bus. Have to change and take another.”

“Makes a long day, for them and you, I imagine.”

“They’re getting a good education. They’re going to be somebody.”

“You had some rough times in the past.”

Bebe tightened her lips, looked away from Eve and back to her laundry. “Past is past.”

“The DeSalvos still have some money, some influence in certain circles.” Eve glanced around the tiny kitchen. “Your brothers could help you out, you and your boys.”

This time Bebe showed her teeth. “My brothers aren’t getting near my boys. I haven’t said word one to Frank or Vinny in years, or them to me.”

“Why is that?”

“That’s my business. They’re my brothers, aren’t they? It’s not a crime if I don’t want anything to do with my own brothers.”

“Why does Anthony DeSalvo’s only daughter hook up as an LC?”

“As a way to stick it to him, you want to know so bad. Ended up sticking it to myself, didn’t I?”

A lock of graying hair fell over her brow as Bebe yanked out a boy’s sports jersey to fold. “He wanted me to marry who he wanted me to marry, live the way he wanted me to live. Like my mother, looking the other way. Always looking the other way, no matter what was right in her face. So I did what I did, and he didn’t have a daughter anymore.” She shrugged, but the jerkiness of the movement transmitted lingering pain to Eve. “Then they killed him. And I didn’t have a father.”

“You did some time, lost your license.”

“You think I got shit around here, with my boys in the house? You think I’m on the shit?” Bebe shoved at the laundry basket, threw her arms wide. “Go ahead, look around. You don’t need a warrant. Look the hell around.”

Eve studied the flushed face, the bitter eyes. “You know how you strike me, Bebe? You strike me as nervous as you are pissed off. And I don’t think it’s because you’re on anything.”

“You cops, always looking to screw with somebody. Except when it matters. What good did you do when they killed my Luca? Where were you when they killed my Luca?”

“Not in the Bronx,” Eve said evenly. “Who killed him?”

“The fucking Santinis. Who else? Fucking DeSalvos mess with them, they mess with us. Even if Luca and me, we weren’t the
us.
” She gripped the basket now, as if to steady herself. And her knuckles went as white as the plastic. “We had a decent place, a decent life. He was a decent man. We had kids, we had a business. A nice family restaurant, nothing fancy, nothing important. Except to us. We worked so damn hard.”

Bebe’s fingers tightened on, twisted a pint-sized pair of jockies before she tossed them back in the basket. “Luca, he knew where I came from, what I’d done. It didn’t matter. The past’s past, that’s what he always said. You’ve got to make the now and think about tomorrow. So that’s what we did. And we built a decent life and worked hard at it. Then they killed him. They killed a good man for no good reason. Killed him and torched our place because he wouldn’t pay them
protection.
Beat him to death.”

She stopped to press her fingers against her eyes. “What did you cops do about that? Nothing. The past isn’t the past with your kind. Luca got killed because he married a DeSalvo, and that’s that.”

She began to fold clothes again, but her movements were no longer efficient, and the folds no longer neat. “Now my boys don’t have their father, don’t have the decent place to grow up. This is the best I could do, the best of the worst. I don’t own a restaurant, I work in one. I rent out a room and a bath upstairs so I can pay the goddamn rent, and so somebody’s here to watch over my kids when I have to work nights. This is the life I’ve got now. My boys are going to have better.”

“Ava Anders offered you a way to give your boys a better life.”

“They earned their scholarships.”

“There was a lot of competition for those scholarships,” Eve said. “A lot of kids qualified, just like yours. But yours got them. Full freight, too.”

“Don’t you say they didn’t earn what they got.” She lashed toward Eve like a whip. “If you say that to me, you’re going to get out of this house. You get your damn warrant, but you’ll get out of my house.”

“She offered a lot,” Eve continued. “Little vacations, drinks by the pool. Did she single you out, Bebe?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Compliment you on your boys, commiserate with you on your losses. She knew where you came from, too, and what you’d done. One little favor, just one little favor, and she’d set your boys up.”

“She never asked me for a damn thing. Get the hell out of my house.”

“Where were you on March eighteenth from one to fiveA.M. ?”

“What? What? Where I am every blessed night. Here. Do I look like a party girl? Do I look like I spend my nights out on the town?”

“Just one night, Bebe. The night Thomas Anders was murdered.”

She went very white, and her hand lowered to the table to brace her body. “Are you out of your
mind
? Some crazy, hyped up LC killed him. It’s all over the screen. Some…” Now she lowered to the chair. “God, God, you’re looking at me? At me because I used to be in the life? Because I did some time? Because I got DeSalvo blood?”

“I think that’s why Ava looked at you, Bebe. I think that’s why she took a good, hard look. Me, I’d’ve asked for some of the ready, too. Get myself a nicer place, closer to the school. But you were smart not to be too greedy.”

“You think I…How was I supposed to get to their swank place in New York? How was I supposed to get inside?”

“Ava could help you with that.”

“You saying, you’re standing here in my kitchen saying that Ava—Mrs. Anders—
hired
me to do her husband? I’m a goddamn hit man now? Mother of God, I cook for a restaurant, to put food in my boys’ mouths and clothes on their backs. I’m going to do hits for a living, why in hell am I folding laundry?”

“Doing Ava a favor would be a way to get your kids a good education,” Peabody put in. “A way to give them a chance for better.”

“They
earned
it. Do you know what I had to swallow to sign my boys up for the program? To take charity, to let them know they had to take handouts? Dom wanted to play ball so bad, and Paulie wants what Dom wants. I couldn’t afford the fees, the equipment, so I swallowed it and signed them up. They earned the rest. They earned the rest,” she repeated as she got to her feet. “Now I got nothing more to say. You get your warrant to take me in if that’s the way it is. I’m going to call Legal Aid. You get out, ’cause I’ve got nothing more to say.”

S
hook her,” Peabody said when they were back on the sidewalk.

“Yeah, it did. She relaxed some when we veered off into her family. Stayed bitchy, but relaxed. That’s interesting.”

“She didn’t like seeing us at the door either. Most don’t,” Peabody admitted. “But she got the jumps the minute she made us. Guilty conscience, maybe.”

“Maybe. The boys are good levers, excellent buttons to push. Takes half a minute to see she’d do most anything for her sons. Ava would’ve seen that, factored that. Used that.”

“She’d have to get from here to there and back again,” Peabody considered. “I know you said Ava could’ve helped her with that, but I don’t see Ava putting down bread crumbs by hiring personal transpo for her.”

“No, neither do I. Have to be subway or bus. Take the neighbor on the right, I’ll take the one on the left. Let’s see what they say about the comings and goings. Then we’ll go have a talk with her boarder.”

I
mind my own,” Cecil Blink stated the minute Eve stepped inside the musty, overheated row house. “What’s she done?”

There was an avid look in his eye, and the smell of fried meat substitute in the air. “We’re just making inquiries in the neighborhood. Why would you assume Ms. Petrelli had done anything?”

“Keeps to herself. That’s what they say about serial killers, ain’t it?” He nodded knowledgeably, and a thin storm of dandruff trickled from his scalp to the shoulders of his red-checked bathrobe. “And she don’t say three words to nobody if one will get her by. Don’t trust a closed-mouthed female. Used to own a restaurant, before they beat the horseshit and guts out of her husband and tossed him in the river. Mafia, that’s what. She’s connected.”

He said it as if he were giving her hot news, so Eve pasted a look of interest on her face. “You don’t say?”

“I do say, and right out loud. Probably was running illegals outta that restaurant, and they killed him—rival Mafia types. That’s how it’s done.”

“I’m going to look into that, thanks. Meanwhile, did you notice anyone in the neighborhood out very early in the morning on March eighteenth? This past Tuesday. Say fourA.M. ?”

“I mind my own.”

Like hell. “Maybe you were restless that night, or got up for a drink of water. Maybe you noticed activity out on the street. Someone walking, or getting out of a car or cab?”

“Can’t say I did.” Which seemed to disappoint him. “Her next door, she comes home late—midnight maybe—three nights a week. They
say
she cooks for Fortuna’s restaurant. Me, I don’t go to restaurants. They charge an arm and a leg.”

“Any visitors next door?”

“Boys have boys over. Probably up to no good. Woman who lives there with her—Nina Cohen—has some other biddies over every Wednesday night.
Say
they’re playing bridge. Couple of the other neighborhood women got boys her boys fool with, go over now and then.
Her
boys don’t go to school around here. Not good enough for her. They go to
private
school. They
say
on scholarships or some such thing. More likely Mafia money, if you ask me.”

“Okay. Thanks for your time.”

“I’m going to be locking my doors double quick. A closed-mouth woman’s a dangerous woman.”

Unable to resist, Eve gave him a closed-mouthed smile, and left.

T
he boys are well-behaved,” Peabody reported. “She keeps a clean house. Both the neighbor and her husband were sound asleep—bedroom’s at the back—on the night in question during the time line. She gives Petrelli big mother points.” When Eve only nodded, and continued to sit in the car, Peabody looked around. “What are we doing now?”

“Giving Bebe a little more to think about. Unless she’s going to blow off work, she should be coming out soon.” Eve settled back. “You know what would be an even bigger incentive for somebody who earns mother points? You give the kids this big juicy carrot, then you threaten to yank it away. Unless.”

“Get the boys in school, into the camps, give them a good taste of how it can be. Then, it’s the old ‘If you want them to keep this, you have to do this one little thing for me. Nobody’ll ever know.’”

“It could play. There’s something about her though.” Eve studied those hopeful window boxes and tapped her fingers on the wheel. “But there’s also something under the something. So we give her a little more to think about.”

It didn’t take long. Bebe came out of the house wearing a dull brown coat. Don’t notice me, it said to Eve. Just getting through here, just getting by.

Her gaze flashed to the car, to Eve, and her mouth folded into a sharp, thin line. The neighbor might’ve given her points for motherhood, but Eve gave her points for shooting up her middle finger. It took spine to flip off a couple of cops who were dogging you for murder.

Bebe stomped up the block. Giving her a few yards, Eve eased from the curb and slowly followed. Two and a half blocks to the bus stop, Eve thought. Had to be a bitch in the worst of the winter, in the rain, in the wind. Eve slid back to the curb as Bebe stood at the stop, arms folded, eyes straight ahead.

When the bus lumbered up, Bebe stomped on. And Eve pulled out to follow. It chugged to the next stop, then the next, belching its way out of the tattered neighborhood into the next. The houses grew brighter, the sidewalks smoother, the vehicles more plentiful and newer.

“Has to be hard,” Peabody said, “to come out of where you landed to work for somebody else in what you used to have.”

“Slap you in the face every day.” She watched Bebe get out at the next stop, shoot her a furious glare, then hurry down the block to a whitewashed restaurant with a bright yellow awning.

“Peabody, see what precinct covers this area. And let’s see if we can impose on a couple of our brothers from the Bronx to have Italian for lunch.”

“Going to keep the pressure on.”

“Yeah. She’s tough, but she’ll pop.”

“I don’t know. I think making another pair of cops is just going to piss her off, dig her in. Legal Aid lawyer’s going to call us whining about harassment.”