“Some of the information had to have come from her.”
It was hard for me to admit. “The bit about the Seven-Eleven clerk, for example. Abby and I were together that night. And she knows about Mark.”
“How?”
Marino looked curiously at me.
“I told her.”
He just shook his head.
Sipping my coffee, I stared out at the rain. Abby had tried to call twice since I’d gotten home from the drugstore. I had stood by my machine listening to her tense voice. I wasn’t ready to talk to her yet. I was afraid of what I might say.
“How’s Mark going to react?”
Marino asked.
“Fortunately, the story didn’t mention his name.”
I felt another wave of anxiety. Typical of FBI agents, especially those who had spent years under deep cover, Mark was secretive about his personal life to the point of paranoia. The paper’s allusion to our relationship would upset him considerably, I feared. I had to call him. Or maybe I shouldn’t. I didn’t know what to do.
“Some of the information, I suspect, came from Morrell,” I went on, thinking aloud.
Marino was silent.
“Vessey must have talked, too. Or at least someone at the Smithsonian did,” I said. “And I don’t know how the hell Ring found out that we went to see Hilda Ozimek.”
Setting down his cup and saucer, Marino leaned forward and met my eyes.
“My turn to give advice.”
I felt like a child about to be scolded.
“It’s like a cement truck with no brakes going down a hill. You ain’t going to stop it, Doc. All you can do is get ‘ out of the way.”
“Would you care to translate?”
I said impatiently.
“Just do your work and forget it. If you get questioned, and I’m sure you will, just say you never talked to Clifford Ring, don’t know nothing about it. Brush it off, in other words. You get into a pissing match with the press and you’re going to end up like Pat Harvey. Looking like an idiot.”
He was right.
“And if you got any sense, don’t talk to Abby anytime soon.”
I nodded.
He stood up. “Meanwhile, I got a few things to run down. If they pan out, I’ll let you know.”
That reminded me. Fetching my pocketbook, I got out the slip of paper with the plate number Abby had taken down.
“Wonder if you could check NCIC. A Lincoln Mark Seven, dark gray. See what comes back.”
“Someone tailing you?”
He tucked the slip of paper in his pocket.
“I don’t know. The driver stopped to ask directions. I don’t think he was really lost.”
“Where?” he asked as I walked him to the door.
“Williamsburg. He was sitting in the car in an empty parking lot. This was around ten-thirty, eleven last night at Merchant’s Square. I was getting into my car when his headlights suddenly went on and he drove over, asked me how to get to Sixty-four.”
“Huh,” Marino said shortly. “Probably some dumb shit detective working under cover, bored, waiting for someone to run a red light or make a U-turn. Might have been trying to hit on you, too. A decent-looking woman out at night alone, climbing into a Mercedes.”
I didn’t offer that Abby had been with me. I didn’t want another lecture.
“I wasn’t aware that many detectives drive new Lincolns,” I said.
“Would you look at the rain. Shit,” he complained as he ran to his car.
Fielding, my deputy chief, was never too preoccupied or busy to glance at any reflective object he happened to pass. This included plate-glass windows, computer screens, and the bulletproof security partitions separating the lobby from our inner offices. When I got off the elevator on the first floor, I spotted him pausing before the morgue’s stainless-steel refrigerator door, smoothing back his hair.
“It’s getting a little long over your ears,” I said.
“And yours is getting a little gray.”
He grinned.
“Ash. Blonds go ash, never gray.”
“Right.”
He absently tightened the drawstring of his surgical greens, biceps bulging like grapefruits. Fielding couldn’t blink without flexing something formidable. Whenever I saw him hunched over his microscope, I was reminded of a steroid version of Rodin’s The Thinker.