“Motherfucker!”
My heart drills my ribs.
“I’m going to sue you, motherfucker!”
More flashes and I shut my coat in the door and have to open it again and shut it again while Marino shoves my bags in back and jumps into the driver’s seat, the engine turning
over and rumbling like a yacht. The photographer is trying to
get up, and it occurs to me I ought to make sure she isn’t injured. “We should see if she’s hurt,” I say, staring out the side window.
“Hell no. Fuck no.” The truck lurches onto the street, fishtails and accelerates.
“Who are they?” Adrenaline pumps. Blue dots float before my eyes.
“Assholes. That’s who.” He snatches up the hand mike. “Unit nine,” he announces over the air.
“Unit nine,” the dispatcher comes back.
“I don’t need pictures of me, my house…” I raise my voice. Every cell in my body lights up to protest the unfairness of it all.
‘Ten-five unit three-twenty, ask him to call me on my portable.” Marino holds the mike against his mouth. Unit three-twenty gets back to him right away, the portable phone vibrating like a huge insect. Marino flips it open and talks. “Somehow the media’s gotten in the neighborhood. Photographers. I’m thinking they parked somewhere in Windsor Farms, came in on foot over the fence, through that open grassy area behind the guard booth. Send units to look for any cars parked where they shouldn’t be and tow ’em. They step foot on the Doc’s property, arrest ’em.” He ends the call, flipping the phone shut as if he is Captain Kirk and has just ordered the Enterprise to attack.
We slow down at the guard booth and Joe steps out. He is an old man who has always been proud to wear his brown Pinkerton’s uniform, and he is very nice, polite and protective, but I would not want to depend on him or his colleagues for more than nuisance control. It shouldn’t surprise me a bit that Chandonne got inside my neighborhood or that now the media has. Joe’s slack, wrinkled face turns uneasy when he notices me sitting inside the truck.
“Hey, man,” Marino gruffly says through the open window, “how’d the photographers get in here?”
“What?” Joe instantly goes into protect mode, eyes narrowing as he stares down the slick, empty street, sodium vapor lights casting yellow auras high up on poles.
“In front of the Doc’s house. At least three of ’em.” “They didn’t come through here,” Joe declares. He ducks back inside the booth and grabs the phone.
We drive off. “We can do but so much, Doc,” Marino says to me. “You may as well duck your head in the sand because there’s gonna be pictures and shit all over the place.”
I stare out the window at lovely Georgian homes glowing with holiday festivity.
“Bad news is, your security risk just went up another mile.” He is preaching to me, telling me what I already know and have no interest in dwelling on right now. “Because now half the world’s gonna see your big fancy house and know exactly where you live. Problem is, and what worries the hell out of me, is stuff like this brings out other squirrels. Gives ’em ideas. They start imagining you as a victim and get off on it, like those assholes who go to the courthouse, cruising for rape cases to sit in on.”
He eases to a stop at the intersection of Canterbury Road and West Gary Street, and headlights sweep over us as a compact dark-colored sedan turns in and slows. I recognize the narrow, insipid face of Buford Righter looking over at Marino’s truck. Righter and Marino roll down their windows.
“You leaving… ?” Righter starts to say when his eyes shoot past Marino and land on me in surprise. I have the unnerving sense that I am the last person he wants to see. “Sorry for your trouble,” Righter weirdly says to me, as if what is happening in my life is nothing more than trouble, an inconvenience, an unpleasantness.
“Yeah, heading out.” Marino sucks on the cigarette, not the least bit helpful. He has already expressed his opinion about Righter’s showing up at my house. It is unnecessary, and even if he truly thinks it is so important to eyeball the crime scene himself, why didn’t he do it earlier when I was at the hospital?