“There’s another TV van I just saw it go by,” Lucy said from the dining room, where she stood staring out the window.
“Come on in and eat lunch,” I called out to her from the kitchen. “Your soup is getting cold.”
Silence.
“Aunt Kay?”
She sounded excited.
“What is it?”
‘You’ll never guess who just pulled up.”
From the window over the sink; I watched the white Ford LTD park in front. The driver’s door opened, and Marino climbed out. He hitched up his trousers and adjusted his tie, his eyes taking in everything around him. As I watched him follow the sidewalk to my porch, I was so powerfully touched that it startled me.
“I’m not sure if I should be glad to see you or not,” I said when I opened the door.
“Hey, don’t worry. I’m not here to arrest you, Doc.’
“Please come in.”
“Hi, Pete,” Lucy said cheerfully.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school or something?”
“No.?”
“What? Down there in South America they give you January off?”
“That’s right. Because of the bad weather,” my niece said. “When it drops below seventy degrees, everything shuts down.”
Marino smiled. He looked about the worst I had ever seen him.
Moments later I had built a fire in the living room, and Lucy had left to run errands.
“How have you been?” I asked.
“Are you going to make me smoke outside?”
I slid an ashtray closer to him.
“Marino, you have suitcases under your eyes, your face is flushed, and it’s not warm enough in here for you to be perspiring.”
“I can tell you’ve missed me.”
He pulled a dingy handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his brow. Then he lit a cigarette and stated into the fire. “Patterson’s being an asshole, Doc. He wants to scorch you.”
“Let him try.”
“He will, and you’d better be ready.”
“He has no case against me, Marino.”
“He has a fingerprint found on an envelope inside Susan’s house.”
“I can explain that:” “But you can’t prove it, and then there’s his little trump card. And I swear I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’m going to.
“What trump card?”
“You remember Tom Lucero?”
“1 know who he is,” I said. “I don’t know him.”
“Well, he can be a charmer and he’s a pretty damn good cop, to be honest. Turns out he’s been snooping around Signet Bank and talked up one of the tellers until she slipped him information about you. Now, he wasn’t supposed to ask and she wasn’t supposed to tell. But she told him she remembered you writing a big deck for cash sometime before Thanksgiving. According to her, it was for ten grand.”
I stared stonily at him.
“I mean, you can’t really blame Lucero. He’s just doing his job. But Patterson knows what to look for as he ages through your financial. He’s going to hammer you hard when you get before the special grand jury.”
I did not say a word.
“Doc.” He leaned forward and met my eyes. “Don’t you think you ought to tally about it?”
“No.”
Getting up, he went to the fireplace and nudged the curtain open far enough to flick the cigarette inside.
“Shit, Doc, “ he said quietly. “I don’t want you indicted.”
“I shouldn’t drink coffee and I know you shouldn’t, but I feel like having something. Do you like hot chocolate?”
“I’ll drink some coffee.”
I got up to fix it. My thoughts buzzed sluggishly like a housefly in the fall. My rage had nowhere to go. I made a pot of decaf and hoped Marino would not know the difference.
“How is your blood pressure?” I asked him.
“You want to know the truth? Some days if I was a kettle I’d be whistling.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
He perched on the edge of the hearth. The fire sounded like the wind, and reflected flames danced in brass.
“For one thing,” I went on, “you probably shouldn’t even be here. I don’t want you having any problems.”
“Hey, fuck the CA, the city, the governor, and all of them, ” he said with sudden anger.