Forgotten in Death(77)

“You should’ve thought of that part before you screwed with your uncle, before you murdered two people to cover that up,” Eve said flatly. “You heard the deal. Take it or leave it. Either way, you’re spending the rest of your life in a cage. How long a life, and where that cage is, that’s up to you.”

“I did it for my children. I want the best for my children. The best costs. My uncle, he knows about the oldest in Corfu. He was very angry. Nadia is his goddaughter. He said he would keep this secret as not to hurt her. I would continue to support the child and her mother. It would never happen again. If it happened again, I would no longer be welcomed in his home, I would no longer be part of his family, in any way.”

“But it happened again.”

“This is my business, not his. It’s my private business. I take his orders. He wants me to be an engineer, so I study to become an engineer. He wants to … persuade someone to fall in line. I persuade them. He wants me to marry Nadia, I marry Nadia. I give her a good life. But I have my life, too. He wants to control me, and all the while I see him get weaker, draw back from what made him great. From the man I respected. So I took what I wanted. I took what I needed.”

Disgust covered his face. “The man I respected? It wouldn’t have been so easy to take from him as I did. He plays with his flowers, his trees. But he still holds the wheel, and won’t give it to me. So I took more. What I wanted, what I needed. What I deserved after all the years of doing what he said to do.”

“Did he order you to kill?”

He sneered at Eve. “I don’t give you that now. Fuck you for that now.”

“Move on then. Alva Quirk.”

“Crazy old woman with her book and paper flowers. She’s nothing. A little mouse in her hole, nothing more. We have business, me and Delgato. To move some material out—we have a buyer, we have the invoices marked as we need. A small shipment, so it’s very quick for the buyer to remove and pay and take away.”

“Who’s the buyer?”

“Fuck you.”

“Fine. The invoices and your records tell that tale anyway. What then?”

“We talk, me and Delgato, and arrange for the next shipment, and there she is at the fence with her book. She’s sorry, but she has to report us. We broke rules. Delgato goes over, talking to her, talking about how we’re just doing our job. He’s wasting time, convincing this mouse. I have the crowbar we had to check the shipment, to open the box. I use it.”

“You struck her with it?”

“I did what had to be done.”

“You struck her with it,” Eve repeated. “How many times?”

“Once—no, twice. To be sure. Delgato loses his mind. I think he might faint, he’s so weak. I slap him to calm him down. He cries, like a baby, but he does what I say. He gets the plastic and we roll her up, carry her to the dumpster. I take her book—that was before we rolled her in the plastic. I think it should be a day, maybe two, before she’s found. And who will care?”

He shrugged that off. Even now, Eve thought, he shrugged off the murder of Alva Quirk like it was only a small inconvenience.

“You were wrong there, on both counts. When did you decide to kill Delgato?”

“Then, but it’s not the time, the place, the way. I’m not stupid. He’s a miserable man, a weak man, a crying man. I have a source for the Dex—and fuck you on that. I know he’ll break. He’ll tell his wife, or maybe go to the police, claim he saw it happen, but wasn’t part. So I took care of it.”

“How?”

“You said how. I took the drill, the syringe, the hook, the rope. His window lock is flimsy.”

He flicked a hand in the air. Dismissing it all, Eve decided. Because it had been just another job.

Born to kill.

“He lives in a dump because he’s weak and tosses his money away on horse races. I put the hook in the ceiling, make the noose. He’s a failure of a man. They will say he killed himself. The Dex only lasts a few hours at most. No one will find him before it’s gone. No one should have.”

“You’ve had a real run of bad luck,” Peabody commented.

Tovinski ignored her. “When he comes in, I push the syringe to his throat. The bruises should cover the mark.”

“You’ve done this before,” Eve said.

“Fuck you on that. His eyes are so wide—he can fear. He knows. I make it quick, and I leave. No one should have found him so soon.”

“Okay, let’s go over a few details.” Eve paged through her file. “Before that, I have another question. Singer, not long after you arrived in the U.S., owned a second site, had started construction. Also Hudson Yards—they called it South-West. It’s about a block from the site where you killed Alva Quirk. Did you ever visit or work on that site?”

“My uncle was invested, but he wanted me to get my education, to study the business, yes. But on Bardov projects. We were only invested.”

“You never went there?”

He looked genuinely puzzled. “Why would I? If someone there had to be persuaded, or needed a lesson, maybe he would have sent me—like an apprentice. But it wasn’t a Bardov project.”

“All right. Let’s go back over the night you killed Alva Quirk.”