“Like the time I formatted your computer while you were gone.” She is laughing hard.
“Ten damn years old and you format my hard drive. I about had a heart attack,” I recall.
“Hey, but I did back up all your files first. I just wanted to give you a bad moment.” She is really enjoying this.
“Well, I almost sent you home.” I wipe the fingertips of my left hand with a dishtowel, careful that my cast doesn’t smell like onions as I experience a wave of sweet sadness. I don’t
really remember why Lucy came to stay with me on her first visit to Richmond, but I was not the child-rearing type and was new in the job and under tremendous pressure. There was some sort of crisis with Dorothy. Maybe she ran off and got married again, or maybe I was a sucker. Lucy adored me and I wasn’t accustomed to being adored. Whenever I would visit her in Miami, she would follow me all over the house, everywhere I went, tenaciously moving with my feet like a soccer ball.
“You weren’t going to send me home.” Lucy is challenging me, but I catch the doubt in her eyes. The fear of not being wanted is based on fact in her life.
“Only because I felt inadequate to take care of you,” I reply, leaning against the sink. “Not because I wasn’t crazy about you, little rat fink that you were.” She laughs again. “But no, I wouldn’t have sent you home. Both of us would have been devastated. I couldn’t.” I shake my head. “Thank God for our little game. It was about the only way I could get to what was going on inside of you or what mischief you had engaged in while I was off somewhere, at work, whatever. So do I need to pour you juice or a glass of wine, or are you going to just go on and tell me what’s happening with you? I wasn’t born yesterday, Lucy. You aren’t staying in a hotel for the heck of it. You’re up to something.”
“I’m not the first woman they’ve run off,” she starts in.
“You would be the best woman they’ve run off,” I answer.
“Remember Teun McGovern?”
“I’ll remember her for the rest of my life.” Teunpronounced Tee-UnMcGovern was Lucy’s ATF supervisor in Philadelphia, an extraordinary woman who was wonderful to me when Benton was killed. “Please don’t tell me something’s happened to Teun,” I worry.
“She quit about six months ago,” Lucy replies. “Seems ATF wanted her to move to L.A. and be the SAC of that field division. The worst assignment on God’s earth. Nobody wants L.A.”
A SAC is a special agent in charge, and very few women in federal law enforcement end up running entire field divisions. Lucy goes on to tell me McGovern’s answer was to resign and start a private investigative business of sorts. “The Last Precinct,” she says, getting more animated by the moment. “Pretty cool name, right? Based in New York. Teun’s round- ing up arson investigators, bomb guys, cops, lawyers, all kinds of people to help out, and in less than six months she’s already got clients. It’s sort of turned into a secret society. There’s a real buzz on the street. When shit hits, call The Last Precinctwhere you go when there’s nowhere left.”
I stir the simmering tomato sauce and taste a little. “Obviously you’ve been keeping up with Teun since you left Philadelphia.” I drip in a few teaspoons of olive oil. “Darn. I guess this will be all right, but not for the salad dressing.” I hold up the bottle and frown. “You press olive oil with the pits still in, it’s like squeezing oranges with the rind still on and you get what you deserve.”
“Why is it I don’t assume Anna is an aficionado of things Italian?” Lucy dryly comments.
“We’ll just have to educate her. Grocery list.” I nod at a notepad and pen by the phone. “First item, extra virgin olive oil Italian integrate stylepitted before pressed. Mission Olives Supremo is a nice one, if you can find it. Not a trace of bitterness.”