‘I tell you, I wouldn’t want to be starting out these days.’
He shook his head as elevator doors parted.
‘Now back in Jersey when I was just revving up my engines, fifteen hundred could’ve kept me in clover for a year. Crime wasn’t like it is, and people were nicer, even in my bad-ass neighborhood. And here we are, you and yours truly, working on some poor lady who was all cut up and burned in a fire, and after we finish with her, it will be somebody else. It’s like what’s-his-name rolling that big rock up the hill, and every time he gets close, down it rolls again. I swear, I wonder why we bother, Doc.’
‘Because it would be worse if we didn’t,’ I said, stopping before the familiar pale orange door and ringing the bell.
I could hear the deadbolt flip open, and then Janet was letting us in. She was sweating in FBI running shorts and a Grateful Dead T-shirt that looked left over from college.
‘Come in,’ she said with a smile as Annie Lennox played loudly in the background. ‘Something smells good.’
The apartment was two bedrooms and two baths forced into a very tight space that overlooked P Street. Every piece of furniture was stacked with books and layered with clothing, and dozens of boxes were on the floor. Lucy was in the kitchen, rattling around in cupboards and drawers as she gathered silverware and plates, and paper towels for napkins. She cleared a space on the coffee table and took the bags of food from me.
‘You just saved our lives,’ she said to me. ‘I was getting hypoglycemic. And by the way, Pete, nice to see you, too.’
‘Damn, it’s hot in here,’ he said.
‘It’s not so bad,’ Lucy said, and she was sweating, too.
She and Janet filled their plates. They sat on the floor and ate while I propped up on an armrest of the couch and Marino carried in a plastic chair from the balcony. Lucy was in Nike running shorts and a tank top, and dirty from head to heel. Both young women looked exhausted, and I could not imagine what they were feeling. Surely this was an awful time for them. Every emptying of a drawer and taping shut a box had to be another blow to the heart, a death, an end to who you were at that time in your life.
‘The two of you have lived here, what? Three years?’ I asked.
‘Close to it,’ said Janet as she speared a forkful of Greek salad.
‘And you’ll stay in this same apartment,’ I said to Janet.
‘For the time being. There’s really no reason to move, and when Lucy pops in and out, she’ll have some room.’
‘I hate to bring up an unpleasant subject,’ Marino said. ‘But is there any reason Carrie might know where you guys live?’
There was silence for a moment as both women ate. I reached over to the CD player to turn down the volume.
‘Reason?’ Lucy finally spoke. ‘Why would there be a reason for her to know anything about my life these days?’
‘Hopefully there’s no reason at all,’ Marino said. ‘But we got to think about it whether you two birds like it or not. This is the sort of neighborhood she would hang in and fit right in, so I’m asking myself, if I was Carrie and back out on the street, would I want to find where Lucy is?’
No one said a word.
‘And I think we all know what the answer is,’ he went on. ‘Now finding where the doc lives is no big problem. It’s been in the newspapers enough, and if you find her, you find Benton. But you?’
He pointed at Lucy.
‘You’re the challenge, because Carrie’d been locked up for several years by the time you moved here. And now you’re moving to Philly, and Janet’s left here alone. And to be honest, I don’t like that worth a damn, either.’
‘Neither of you is listed in the phone book, right?’ I asked.
‘No way,’ Janet said, and she was listlessly picking at her salad.