“This is not right,” Anna mutters as she sits back down on the ottoman.
“What’s Rocky’s motive for taking this case?” I know what Berger said. But I want to hear Marino’s slant. “To spite you?”
“He’ll get off on the attention. A case like this will create a circus.” Marino doesn’t want to say the obvious, that just maybe Rocky wants to humiliate, to best his father.
“Does he hate you?” McGovern asks him.
Marino snorts again and his pager vibrates.
“What eventually happened to him?” I ask. “You sent him off to military school, then what?”
“I kicked his ass out. Told him if he couldn’t follow the rules of the house, he wasn’t living under my roof. That was after his freshman year at the military school. So you know what the little psycho did?” Marino reads the display on his
pager and gets up. “He moves up to Jersey, moves in with Uncle Louie, the fucking Mafia. Then has the balls to come back here for school, including law school, William and Mary, so yeah, he’s smart as shit.”
“He passed the bar in Virginia?” I ask.
“Here, practices all the hell over the place. I ain’t seen Rocky in seventeen years. Anna, you mind if I make a call? Don’t look like I want to be using the cell phone on this one.” He glances at me as he walks out of the living room. “It’s Stanfield.”
“What about the ID he called you about earlier?” I ask.
“Hopefully what this is about,” Marino says. “Another real strange one, if it’s true.”
While he is on the phone, Anna vanishes from her own living room. I supposed she was going to the bathroom, but she does not come back and I can only imagine how she feels. In many ways, I am more worried about her than about me. I now know enough about her life to appreciate her intense vulnerability and realize the terribly barren, scarred spots on her emotional landscape. “This isn’t fair.” I begin to lose my composure. “It’s not fair to anyone.” Everything that has piled up on me begins to unsettle and slide downhill. “Someone please tell me how this happened? Did I do something wrong in a former life? I don’t deserve this. None of us do.”
Lucy and McGovern listen to me ventilate. They seem to have their own ideas and plans but are not inclined to offer them right away.
“Well, say something,” I tell them. “Go ahead and let it out.” Mostly, I say this for my niece’s benefit. “My life is wrecked. I haven’t handled anything the way I should. I’m sorry.” Tears threaten. “Right now I want a cigarette. Does anybody have a cigarette?” Marino does, but he is in the kitchen on the phone, and I’ll be damned if I am going to creep in there and interrupt him for a cigarette, as if I need one to begin with. “You know, what hurts me most is to be accused of the very thing I’m so against. I don’t abuse power, goddamn it. I would never murder somebody in cold blood.” I talk on and on. “I hate death. I hate killing. I hate every goddamn thing I see every goddamn day. And now the world thinks I did something like this? A special grand jury thinks maybe I might have?” I let the questions hang. Neither Lucy nor McGovern responds.
Marino is loud. His voice is muscular and big like he is and tends to shove rather than guide, confront rather than fall in stride. “You sure she’s his girlfriend?” he is saying over the telephone. I presume he is speaking to Detective Stanfield. “Versus just friends. Tell me how you know that for a fact. Yeah, yeah. Uh huh. What? Do I get it? Hell no, I don’t get it. It don’t make a shit’s worth of sense, Stanfield.” Marino is walking around the kitchen as he talks. He is on the verge of snapping Stanfield’s head off. “You know what I tell people like you, Stanfield?” Marino snaps. “I tell them to get out of my fucking way. I don’t give a rat’s ass who your fucking brother-in-law is, got it? He can kiss my butt and tuck it in bed, tell it a beddy-bye story.” Stanfield is obviously trying to get in a word or two, but Marino won’t let him.