Strangers in Death (In Death #26)(75)

“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 f**king 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— hiredme 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.”

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