In Death 26 - Strangers in Death

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 four A.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.