In Death 27 - Salvation in Death

with me in the morning.”
    “Darling Eve, to get me to do that the amount and variety of the sexual favors required are so many and myriad even my imagination boggles.”
    “I don’t think you can exchange sexual favors for Mass attendance. But if I decide to go check it out, and I get the chance, I’ll ask the priest.”
    She went back to her PPC while Roarke battled through the traffic.
     
    By Eve’s calculations, it took about as long to travel from downtown Manhattan to Cobble Hill in Brooklyn as it would to take a shuttle from New York to Rome. The pizzeria stood on the corner of a shopping district on the edge of a neighborhood of old row houses with decorated stoops where residents sat to watch their world go by.
    “She’s on tonight,” Eve told Roarke once they’d parked. “But if for some reason she’s not at work, she lives a few blocks down, two over.”
    “Meaning if she’s not at work, I’ll be whistling for my dinner?”
    “I don’t know about the whistling, but it might be postponed for the time it takes me to track her down and talk to her.”
    She stepped into the restaurant and was immediately surrounded by scents that told her if the best pizza in the five boroughs wasn’t to be had here, it would be damn close.
    Murals of various Italian scenes decorated walls the color of toasted Italian bread. Booths, two-tops, four-tops cheerfully crowded together under iron ceiling fans that whisked those scents everywhere.
    Behind the counter in the open kitchen, a young guy in a stained apron tossed pizza dough high, made the catch, tossed, all to the thrilled giggles of kids wedged into a booth with what she supposed were their parents. The waitstaff wore bright red shirts while they carted trays and weaved and threaded between tables to serve. Music played, and someone sang about “amore” in a rich and liquid baritone.
    At a quick scan, Eve saw babies, kids, teens, and right on up to elderly chowing down, chatting, drinking wine, or studying the old-fashioned paper menus.
    “That’s her.” Eve nodded toward the woman setting heaping bowls of pasta on a table. She laughed as she served, a good-looking woman in her early fifties, trim, graceful at her work. Her dark hair, pinned at the nape, framed her face and set off wide, brown eyes.
    “Doesn’t much look like a woman who recently learned her son had been poisoned,” Eve observed.
    Another woman hurried up, one older than Teresa, rounder, and with a welcoming smile. “Good evening. Would you like a table for two?”
    “We would, yes.” Roarke answered the smile. “That section, there”—he gestured to what he’d calculated comprised Teresa’s station—“would be perfect.”
    “It may take a few minutes. If you’d care to wait in the bar, just over there?”
    “Thank you.”
    “I’ll come for you when we have a table available.”
    The bar lay through an arch, and was as lively as the restaurant. Eve took a stool, angled it to keep an eye on the restaurant while Roarke ordered a bottle of Chianti.
    “Place does a good business,” she commented. “It’s been in this spot for nearly forty years. Brother-in-law’s second generation to run it. She married the owner’s brother about a dozen years ago. Her husband took off—or went missing—when this Lino was about five. He’d be thirty-four now—Lino Martinez. With the records wiped, I can’t find out if he had a record.”
    “Or that he was ever Soldados.”
    “No. I can confirm he’s gone to a lot of trouble over the last half of his life to stay under the radar. Changing locations, identities. If he’s not my Lino, he’s still wrong.”
    “Did you look into her finances?” Roarke asked, and tested the wine the bartender poured into his glass. “Very nice,” he said.
    “As much as I could without legal cause. No bumps or spikes, not on the surface. She lives well within her means, and she works as a waitress, has for a long time.”
    “For the Ortiz family, you said, when she lived on our side of the bridge.”
    “Yeah, and that’s a connection you want to pick up and look over. Got remarried, moved here. She’s got a nine-year-old kid, and went the professional mother route for the first two years of that, then went back to work here. Kid’s in public school—no trouble there—and she has a small savings account. Nothing over the top. Husband’s an MT with no criminal. They’ve got a mortgage, a vehicle payment, the usual. Everything