I did not answer him.
“I’m not trying to stir anything up. I’m just saying it’s something we should think about,” he lamely added.
“No, it isn’t,” I replied, clearing my throat and aching all over. “It’s not something we should think about. He was identified, Marino, by every possible means. Carrie Grethen didn’t just conveniently kill him so he could disappear for a while. Don’t you see how impossible this is? He’s dead, Marino. He’s dead:”
“Did you go to his autopsy? Did you see his autopsy report?” He wouldn’t let it go.
Benton’s remains had gone to the Philadelphia medical examiner’s office. I had never asked to review his case.
“No, you didn’t go to his autopsy, and if you had, I would have thought you were the most fucked-up person I’ve ever met,” Marino said. “So you didn’t see nothing. You only know what you’ve been -told. I don’t mean to keep hammering you with that, but it’s the truth. And if anyone wanted to cover up that those remains weren’t his, how would you know if you never took a look?”
“Pour me some Scotch,” I said.
32
I turned toward Marino, my back against the wall as if I didn’t have the strength to stand on my own two feet.
“Man, you see how much whiskey costs over here?” Marino commented as he closed the door to the minibar.
“I don’t care.”
“Interpol’s probably paying, anyway,” he decided.
“And I need a cigarette,” I added.
He lit a Marlboro for me and the first hit punched my lungs. He presented me with a tumbler of straight single malt on the rocks in one hand, a Beck’s beer in the other.
“What I’m trying to say,” Marino resumed, “is if Interpol can do all this secret shit with electronic tickets and ritzy hotels and Concordes, and no one ever meets a soul who’s ever talked to whoever these people are, then what makes you think they couldn’t have faked everything else?”
“They couldn’t have faked his being murdered by a psychopath;” I replied.
“Yes, they could have. Maybe that was the perfect timing.” He blew out smoke and gulped down beer. “Point is, Doc, I think anything can be faked, if you think about it.”
“DNA identified . . .”
I couldn’t finish the statement. It brought images before me I had suppressed for so long.
“You can’t say the reports were true.”
“Enough!”
But the beer had crumbled what walls he had, and he would not stop his increasingly fantastic theories and deductions and wishful thoughts. His voice went on and on and began to sound far away and unreal. A shiver crept over me. A splinter of light glinted in that dark, devastated part of me. I desperately wanted to believe that what he was suggesting was true.
When 5:00 A.M. came around, I was still dressed- and asleep on the couch. I had a hammering headache. My mouth tasted like stale cigarettes and my breath was alcohol. I showered and stared for a long time at the phone by my bed. The anticipation of what I had decided to do electrified me with panic. I was so confused.
In Philadelphia, it was almost midnight, and I left a message for Dr. Vance Harston, the chief medical examiner. I gave him the number to the fax machine in my room and left the do not disturb sign on the door. Marino met me in the hall, and I said nothing to him but an inaudible good morning.
Downstairs, dishes clattered as the buffet was set up and a man cleaned glass doors with a brush and a cloth. There was no coffee this early, and the only other guest awake was a woman with a mink coat draped over a chair. In front of the hotel, another Mercedes taxi awaited us.
Our driver this day was sullen and in a hurry. I rubbed my temples as motorcycles sped past in lanes of their imagination, weaving between cars and roaring through many narrow tunnels. I was depressed by reminders of the car crash that killed Princess Diana.I remembered waking up and hearing about it on the news, and my first thought was we tended to disbelieve that mundane, random deaths can happen to our gods.There is no glory or nobility in being killed by a drunk driver. Death is the great equalizer. It doesn’t give a damn who you are.The sky was dusky blue. Sidewalks were wet from washing and green garbage cans had been set out along the streets. We bumped over cobblestones at the Place de la Concorde and drove along the Seine, which we could not see most of the time because of a wall. A digital clock outside the Gare de Lyon let us know it was seven-twenty, and inside feet shuffled and people hurried into Relais Hachette to buy papers. I waited behind a woman with a poodle at the ticket counter, and a sharp-featured, well-dressed man with silver hair jolted me. He looked like Benton from a distance. I could not help but scan the crowd as if I might find him, my heart throbbing as if it couldn’t survive much more of this.