“Thank you for taking such good care of her. God bless you,” I said in a voice that didn’t sound like me.
“Look, I know how you feel,” Agent Francisco said. “I promise you I do. I was at Waco.”
“Thank you,” I said again. “What will DEA do with Jo?”
“Transfer her to another hospital a million miles away from here as soon as we can:”
.”What about MCV?” I asked.
“I’m not familiar. . .”
“Her family lives in Richmond, as you may know, but more to the point, MCV is excellent and I’m on the faculty,” I said. “If you get her here, I’ll personally make sure she’s well taken care of.”
He hesitated, then said, “Thank you. I will take that under advisement and discuss it with her supervisor.”
When he hung up, I stood staring at the phone.
“What?” Marino asked.
“The takedown went haywire. Lucy shot two people to death . . ;’ .
“Was it a good shooting?” he cut me off.
“No shooting is good!”
“Goddamn it, Doc, you know what I mean. Was it justified? Don’t tell me she fucking shot two agents by accident!”
“No, of course not. Jo was shot. I’m not sure of her condition.”
“Fuck!” he exclaimed, pounding his fist so hard on the kitchen counter dishes rattled in the drain board. “Lucy just had to go slug it out with somebody, didn’t she? They shouldn’t have even had her in a takedown like this! I coulda told them that! She’s just been waiting to shoot the shit out of someone, to go in like a damn cowboy with pistols blazing to pay back everyone she hates in life . . . !”
“Marino, stop it.”
“You saw what she was like at your house the other night,” he railed on. “She’s been a damn psycho ever since Benson got killed. There’s no payback that’s enough, not even shooting that damn helicopter out of the air and chumming the water with Carrie Grethen’s and Newton Joyce’s pieces and parts.”
‘That’s enough;’ I said, exhausted. “Please, Marino. This isn’t helping anything. Lucy’s a professional, and you know that. ATF would never have given her an assignment like this if she weren’t. They know her story very well and evaluated and counseled. her extensively after what happened to Benton and all the rest of it. In fact, low she handled that entire nightmare only gave them more respect for her as both an agent and a human being:”
He was silent as he opened a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
Then he said, “Well, you and I know she ain’t handling it so well.”
“Lucy has always been able to compartmentalize.”
“Yeah, and how healthy is that?”
“I guess we should ask each other that.”
“But I’m telling you right now, this time she ain’t gonna handle it well, Doc,” he said, splashing bourbon into a glass and dropping in several ice cubes. “She killed two people in the line of duty barely a year ago, and now she’s just done. it again. Most guys go their entire careers and don’t even take a shot at somebody. That’s why I’m trying to make you understand it’s gonna be viewed differently this time. The big guys in Washington are gonna consider that maybe they got a gunslinger on their hands, someone who’s a problem.”
He handed the drink to me.
“I’ve known cops, agents like that,” he said.. “They always have justifiable reasons for judicial homicide, but if you look hard at it, you begin to get the drift that they subconsciously set things up to go bad. They thrive on it.”
“Lucy’s not like that.”
“Yeah, she’s only been pissed off since the day she was born. And by the way, you ain’t going anywhere tonight. You’re staying here with me and Father Christmas.”
He poured himself a bourbon, too, and we went into his shabby, crowded living room with :its crooked lampshades, its dusty, bent Venetian blinds and the sharp-cornered glass coffee table he blamed on me. He dropped into his recliner chair, which was so old he had repaired splits in the brown Naugahyde with duct tape, I remembered the first time I walked into his house. After recovering from the dismay, I realized he was proud of how thoroughly he wore everything out, except for his truck, aboveground pool, and now his Christmas decorations.