‘He was standing up when he shot himself with his own gun, and when he fell he hit concrete or something.’
‘His vital reaction to his injuries shows he received the blow to his head first,’ I said, getting angrier. ‘And please explain how his revolver ended up so neatly on his chest.’
‘It’s not your case, Doc.’ Marino looked me in the eye. ‘That’s the bottom line. You and me are both guests. We got invited.’
‘Davila did not commit suicide,’ I said. ‘And Dr. Horowitz is not going to allow such a thing to come out of his office.’
‘Maybe he won’t. Maybe they’ll just say that Davila was a dirtbag who got whacked by another drug dealer. Jane ends up in a pine box in Potter’s Field. End of story. Central Park and the subway are safe again.’
I thought of Commander Penn and felt uneasy. I asked Marino about her.
‘I don’t know what she’s got to do with any of this,’ he said. ‘I’ve just been talking to some of the guys. But she’s jammed. On the one hand, she wouldn’t want anyone to think she had a bad cop. On the other, she don’t want the public to think there’s a crazed serial killer running through the subway.’
‘I see,’ I said as I thought of the enormous pressure she must be under, for it was her department’s mandate to take the subway back from the criminals. New York City had allocated the Transit Police tens of millions of dollars to do that.
‘Plus,’ he added, ‘it was a friggin’ reporter who found Jane’s body in Central Park. And this guy’s relentless as a jackhammer from what I’ve heard. He wants to win a Nobel Prize.’
‘Not likely,’ I said irritably.
‘You never know,’ said Marino, who often made predictions about who would win a Nobel Prize. By now, according to him, I had won several.
‘I wish we knew whether Gault is still in New York,’ I said.
Marino drained his second beer and looked at his watch. ‘Where’s Lucy?’ he asked.
‘Looking for Janet, last I heard.’
‘What’s she like?’
I knew what he was wondering. ‘She’s a lovely young woman,’ I said. ‘Bright but very quiet.’
He was silent.
‘Marino, they’ve put my niece on the security floor.’
He turned toward the counter as if he were thinking about another beer. ‘Who did? Benton?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because of the computer mess?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want another Zima?’
‘No, thank you. And you shouldn’t have another beer, since you’re driving. In fact, you’re probably driving a police car and shouldn’t have had the first one.’
I’ve got my truck tonight.’
I was not at all happy to hear that, and he could tell.
‘Look, so it don’t have a damn air bag. I’m sorry, okay? But a taxi or limo service wouldn’t have had an air bag, either.’
‘Marino
‘I’m just going to buy you this huge air bag. And you can drag it around with you everywhere you go like your own personal hot-air balloon.’
‘A file was stolen from Lucy’s desk when ERF was broken into last fall,’ I said.
‘What sort of file?’ he asked.
‘A manilla envelope containing personal correspondence,’ I told him about Prodigy and how Lucy and Carrie had met.
‘They knew each other before Quantico?’ he said.
‘Yes. And I think Lucy believes it was Carrie who went into her desk drawer.’
Marino glanced around as he restlessly moved his empty beer bottle in small circles on the table.
‘She seems obsessed with Carrie and can’t see anything else,’ I went on. ‘I’m worried.’
‘Where is Carrie these days?’ he asked.
‘I have no earthly idea,’ I said.
Because it could not be proven that she had broken into ERF or had stolen Bureau property, she had been fired but not prosecuted. Carrie had never been locked up, not even for a day.
Marino thought for a moment. ‘Well, that bitch isn’t what Lucy should be worried about. It’s him.’
‘Certainly, I am more concerned about him.’
‘You think he’s got her envelope?’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’ I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around.