She shoved up, pacing in a robe the color of apricots.
“We broke the backs, of the Bangers at least, because they’re stupid, sloppy, poorly run. A bunch of what you said—barking morons. Why didn’t we break them before? I don’t know. Maybe because their territory had shrunk, maybe timing, maybe because people they preyed on didn’t come to us.
“I don’t know. Don’t know. Maybe they stuck together better before Jones decided to go into business on the side.”
She went back for her wine, took it with her as she paced again. “Most criminals are stupid. Most, I said,” she repeated when Roarke arched his eyebrows. “They act on impulse, or they make mistakes. Some asshole decides to kill his wife, we’re going to figure it out, almost every time. These assholes I’m boxing tomorrow are beyond stupid. They’re—what are those words you use? Eejits, gits. Fuckheads.”
“All of those work,” Roarke replied.
“And still, three people in the morgue. A family of decent people are never going to be the same. A couple of mothers lost children. They’re not insane or diabolical. They’re sure as hell not masterminds. They’re just mean, vicious little bastards. And three people are dead.”
Roarke said nothing because, finally, she was talking to him, finally she was saying what had lodged inside her and put that look in her eyes.
“You know what else?” She gestured with the wine, then gulped some down. “Rehabilitation is mostly a crock. Mostly. You lock somebody up, the odds of him coming out and staying on the straight are slim. Somebody like Pickering? Jesus, abusive father dies in prison, addict mother suicides. A serious gangster, an addict? Odds say he’s going to go back in a cage, die on the street in some fight, or OD. He’s never going to walk the line.
“But he did. He beat the odds, and was making something of himself. Goddamn it!”
Her voice rang with it—sorrow-coated outrage.
“You and I know how hard that is. He did everything right, Roarke. Everything right, and he’s dead because some son of a bitch wanted to push his way to the top of the ranks.
“I told myself before that the system worked. Crime, punishment, rehabilitation. But it didn’t, it didn’t work for Lyle Pickering. The system failed him. We failed him.”
There it was, Roarke thought, the root of the sadness. One he could dig out, and hopefully cast aside.
“On the contrary, you had it right the first time. The system saved him.” He held up a hand before she could speak. “Now it’s time to listen. I’m hardly the biggest fan of what you call the system, and I spent most of my life circumventing it, so I have a different perspective. Mine may be a bit more like Lyle’s.
“Come, sit down. Listen to the perspective of someone who worked around the system instead of for it.”
“He’s dead,” she said flatly, but she sat again.
“And between the time he went into prison—an addict, a violent man whose life appeared to have only one doomed path—and his death, he lived. He made a choice to live, and your system gave him the choice. Who taught him to cook, and to learn the satisfaction of having that skill? Who offered him counseling and help with his addiction? Who listened to him, helped to dig into the issues that sent him down that doomed path? Christ, who locked him up in the first place, forced him to make choices to accept the help and training or reject it?
“He made the choices,” Roarke continued, “your system gave them to him to make. You demean the choices he made, Eve, the effort they took him, by thinking the system failed him.”
He trailed his fingers, lightly, so lightly over her battered face.
And you fought for him, he thought, will fight for others like him. Again and again and again.
“Five people are responsible for his death,” he reminded her, “and two of them have paid with their own lives. You and your system will see to it the other three pay, will demand justice for Lyle, and give solace to his family. A family, Eve, who will remember and cherish the man he began to be in prison, and not the one he was when he went inside.”
“I feel it’s … Do you really believe that?”
“Believe it? I’m proof of it.” He skimmed a hand over her hair, down to the nape of her neck still tight with tension. “Do you think I work with you and the cops only for the entertainment? Not to downplay that value at all, as it’s considerable. But since you—you and your system, no matter how I might push against it from time to time—I’ve seen what it can do and be in the right hands. And having a part in that? It’s shown me that I can make a difference in my way. Maybe offset some of my darker deeds.”
He kissed her bruised face. “I know a failed system, as it failed me as a boy and, Christ, it failed you. But you changed that, for yourself, for others. For me. The system you stand for didn’t fail Lyle, Eve. And it’s not failing him now.”
She drew him closer, rested her head on his shoulder. And realized he’d given her what she hadn’t been able
to find for herself. Peace of mind.
“I’m going to remember all that, everything you just said, when I break them tomorrow.”
“I’ll regret not being there for that, but—”
“Somebody has to buy the next galaxy.”
“Very true. Now, let’s see to the rest of you. Lie down and I’ll see what the bat-wielding, concrete-biceps-on-Zeus Tank has done to my cop.”