“It started about two weeks after she got here. Remember that autoerotic hanging?”
“Yes”.
“She shows up and just walks right into the middle of everything and starts telling people what to do, like she’s the detective. She starts looking through the porno magazines the guy was having fun with when he strung himself up in his leather mask. She starts asking his wife questions.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“So I tell her to leave, that she’s in the way and screwing up everything, and the next day she calls me into her office. I figure she’s going to be tear-ass about what happened, but she doesn’t say a word. Instead, she asks what I think of the detective division.”
He took a gulp of coffee and stirred in two more teaspoons of sugar.
“Thing is, I could tell that really wasn’t what she was interested in;” he went on. “I knew she wanted something. She wasn’t in charge of investigations, so why the hell was she asking me about the detective division?”
I poured myself a glass of wine.
“Then what did she want?” I asked.
“She wanted to talk about you. She started asking me a thousand questions about you, said she knew we had been `partners in crime,’ as she put it, for a long time.”
I checked the dough, then the sauce.
“She was asking me background stuff. What the cops thought of you.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told her you was a doctor-lawyer-Indian chief with an IQ bigger than my paycheck, that the cops was all in love with you, including the women. And let’s see, what else?”
“That was probably quite enough.”
“She asked about Benton and what happened to him and how much it had affected your work.”
Anger heated me up.
“She starting quizzing me about Lucy. About why she left the FBI and if the way she swings is the reason.”
“This woman’s fast sealing her fate with me,” I warned.
“I told her Lucy left the Bureau because NASA asked her to become an astronaut;” Marino kept going. “But when she got into the space program, she decided she liked flying helicopters better and signed on as a pilot for ATE Bray wanted me to tell her next time Lucy was in town, to arrange for- the two of them to meet because Bray might want to recruit her. I said that was sort of like asking Billie Jean King to be a ball girl. End of story? I didn’t tell Bray shit except I ain’t your social secretary. One week later, my ass was back in uniform.”
I reached for my pack and felt like a junkie. We shared an ashtray, smoking in my house, silent and frustrated. I was trying not to feel hateful.
“I think she’s jealous as hell of you, plain and simple, Doe,” Marino finally said. “She’s the big shot moving here from D.C., and all she hears about is the great Dr. Scarpetta. And I think she got a cheap thrill out of busting up the two of us. Gave the bitch a little power rush.”
He smashed the cigarette butt in the ashtray and ground it out.
“This is the first time you and me haven’t worked together since you moved here;’ he said as the doorbell rang for a second time this night.
“Who the hell’s that?” he said. “You invite someone else and not tell me?”
I got up and looked into the video screen of the Aiphone on the kitchen wall. I stared, incredulous, at-the images picked up by the front-door camera.
“I’m dreaming,” I said.
7
Lucy and Jo seemed apparitions, physical presences that could not be flesh and blood. Both of them had been riding the streets of Miami barely eight hours ago. Now they were in my arms.
“I don’t know what to say,” I said at least five times as they dropped duffel bags on the floor.
“What the hell’s going on?” Marino boomed, intercepting us in the great room. “What do you think you’re doing here?” he demanded of Lucy, as if she had done something wrong.
He had never been able to show affection in a normal way. The gruffer and more sarcastic he got, the happier he was to see my niece.