Five Scarpetta Novels (126 page)

The phone rang a third time, and she couldn't restrain herself. She grabbed it, unable to hide the hope and fear in her eyes. I couldn't bring myself to tell her what Dr. Worth had told me. Now was not the time.

“Sure, hold on,” she said, and disappointment and more hurt touched her face as she handed me the phone.

“Yes,” I reluctantly answered.

“Is this Dr. Kay Scarpetta?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.

“Who is this?”

“It's important I verify who you are.” The accent was American.

“If you're another reporter . . .”

“I'm going to give you a phone number.”

“I'm going to give you a promise,” I said. “Tell me who you are, or I'm hanging up.”

“Let me give you this number,” and he began reciting it before I could refuse.

I recognized the country code for France.

“It's three o'clock in the morning in France,” I said, as if he didn't know.

“It doesn't matter what time it is. We have been getting information from you and running it through our computer system.”

“Not from me.”

“No, not in the sense that you typed it into the computer, Dr. Scarpetta.”

His voice was baritone and smooth, like fine polished wood.

“I'm at the secretariat in Lyon,” he informed me. “Call the number I gave you and at least get our after-hours voice mail.”

“How much sense does that . . . ?”

“Please.”

I hung up and tried, and a recording of a woman with a heavy French accent said “Bonjour, hello,” and gave the office hours in both languages. I entered the extension he had given me, and the man's voice came back over the line.

“Bonjour, hello?
And that's supposed to identify who you are?” I said. “You could be a restaurant for all I know.”

“Please fax me a sheet of your letterhead. When I see that I'll fill you in.”

He gave me the number. I put him on hold and went back to my study. I faxed a sheet of my stationery to him while Lucy remained in front of the fire, elbow on her knee, chin in her hand, listless.

“My name's Jay Talley, the ATF liaison at Interpol,” he said when I got back with him. “We need you to come here right away. You and Captain Marino.”

“I don't understand,” I said. “You should have my reports. I have nothing more to add to them at this time.”

“We wouldn't ask you if it wasn't important.”

“Marino doesn't have a passport,” I said.

“He went to the Bahamas three years ago.”

I had forgotten that Marino had taken one of his many bad choices in women on a three-day cruise. Their relationship didn't last much longer than that.

“I don't care how important this is,” I said. “There's no way I'm getting on a plane and flying to France when I don't know what . . .”

“Hold on a second,” he cut in, politely but with authority. “Senator Lord? Sir, are you there?”

“I'm here.”

“Frank?” I said in amazement. “Where are you? Are you in France?”

I wondered how long he had been conferenced in and listening.

“Now listen, Kay. This is important,” Senator Lord told me in a voice that reminded me of who he was. “Go and go right away. We need your help.”

“We?”

Then Talley spoke. “You and Marino need to be at the Millionaire private terminal at four-thirty. That's
A
.
M
. your time. Less than six hours from now.”

“I can't leave right now . . .” I started to say as Lucy filled my doorway.

“Don't be late. Your New York connection leaves at eight-thirty,” he told me.

I thought Senator Lord had hung up, but suddenly his voice was there.

“Thank you, Agent Talley,” he said. “I'll talk to her now.”

I could hear Talley get off the line.

“I want to know how you're doing, Kay,” my friend the senator said.

“I've got no idea.”

“I care,” he said. “I won't let anything happen to you. Just trust me. Now tell me how you're feeling.”

“Other than being summoned to France and about to be fired and . . .” I started to add what had happened to Lucy, but she was standing right there.

“Everything's going to be fine,” Senator Lord said.

“Whatever
everything
is,” I replied.

“Trust me.”

I always had.

“You're going to be asked to do things that you're going to resist. Things that will scare you.”

“I don't scare easily, Frank,” I said.

M
arino picked me up at quarter of four. It was a heartless hour of the morning that reminded me of sleepless rotations in hospitals, of early days in my career when I was the one who got the calls for cases nobody else wanted.

“Now you know what it feels like to be on midnight shift,” Marino commented as we cut through icy roads.

“I know all about it anyway,” I replied.

“Yeah, but the difference is, you don't have to. You could send someone else to scenes and stay home. You're the chief.”

“I'm always leaving Lucy when she needs me, Marino.”

“I'm telling you, Doc, she understands. She's probably gonna be heading up to D.C. anyway to deal with all this review board shit.”

I hadn't told him about Dorothy's visit. It would have served no purpose other than to set him off.

“You're on the faculty at MCV. I mean, you're a real doctor.”

“Thank you.”

“Can't you just go talk to the administrator or
something?” he said, punching in the cigarette lighter. “Couldn't you pull some strings so Lucy could go in there?”

“As long as Jo isn't capable of making decisions, her family has complete control over who visits and who doesn't.”

“Fucking religious wackos. Bible-banging Hitlers.”

“There was a time when you were pretty narrow-minded, too, Marino,” I reminded him. “Seems to me you used to talk about queers and fags. I don't even want to repeat some of the words I've heard you use.”

“Yeah. Well, I never meant any of it.”

At the Millionaire jet center the temperature was in the low twenties and hard, icy wind grabbed and shoved me as I collected luggage out of the back of the truck. We were met by two pilots who didn't say much as they opened a gate to lead us across the tarmac, where a Learjet was hooked up to a power cart. A thick manila envelope with my name on it was in one of the seats, and when we took off into the clear, cold night, I turned off cabin lights and slept until we landed in Teterboro, New Jersey.

A dark blue Explorer glided our way as we climbed down the metal steps. It was snowing small flakes that stung my face.

“Cop.” Marino gave the nod as the Explorer stopped close to the plane.

“How do you know?”

“I always know,” he said.

The driver was in jeans and a leather coat and looked as if he'd seen life from every angle and was happy to pick us up. He packed our baggage in the trunk. Marino climbed in front and off they sailed into one comment and story after another because the driver was NYPD and Marino used to be. I floated in and out of their conversation as I dozed.

“. . . Adams in the detective division, he called around eleven. I guess Interpol got him first. I didn't know he had anything to do with them.”

“Oh yeah?” Marino's voice was muted and soporific like bourbon on the rocks. “Some tear-ass I bet . . .”

“Naw. He's okay . . .”

I slept and drifted, city lights touching my eyelids as I began to feel that empty ache again.

“. . . got so shit-faced one night I woke up the next morning and didn't know where my car or creds were. That was my wake-up call . . .”

The only other time I had flown supersonic had been with Benton. I remembered his body against me, the intense heat of my breasts touching him as we sat in those small gray leather seats and drank French wine, staring at jars of caviar we had no intention of eating.

I remembered exchanging hurtful words that turned into desperate lovemaking in London, in a flat near the American Embassy. Maybe Dorothy was right. Maybe sometimes I was too much in my mind and not as open as I wanted to be. But she was wrong about Benton. He had never been weak, and we had never been tepid in bed.

“Dr. Scarpetta?”

A voice grabbed my attention.

“We're here,” our driver said, eyeing me in the rearview mirror.

I rubbed my face with my hands and stifled a yawn. Winds were stronger here, the temperature lower. At the Air France ticket counter I checked us in because I didn't trust Marino with tickets or passports or even finding the right gate without being an ass. Flight 2 left in about an hour and a half, and the instant I sat down in the Concorde lounge, I felt exhausted again, my eyes burning. Marino was in awe.

“Look at that, will you?” he whispered too loudly. “They got a full bar. That guy over there's drinking a beer and it's seven o'clock in the morning.”

Marino took that as his wake-up call.

“Want anything?” he asked. “How 'bout a newspaper?”

“Right now I don't give a damn what's going on in the world.” I wished he would leave me alone.

When he returned, he was carrying two plates piled high with Danish, cheese and crackers. He had a can of Heineken under an arm.

“Guess what,” he said, setting his breakfast snack on the coffee table next to him. “It's almost three o'clock in the afternoon, French time.”

He popped open the beer.

“They got people mixing champagne and orange juice, you ever heard of that? And I'm pretty sure there's somebody famous sitting over there. She's got sunglasses on and everybody's staring.”

I didn't care.

“The guy she's with looks famous, too, sort of like Mel Brooks.”

“Does the woman in sunglasses look like Anne Bancroft?” I muttered.

“Yeah!”

“Then it's Mel Brooks.”

Other passengers, dressed far more expensively than we were, glanced our way. A man rattled
Le Monde
and sipped espresso.

“Saw her in
The Graduate.
You remember that?” Marino went on.

I was awake now and wished I could hide somewhere.

“That was my fantasy. Shit. Like that schoolteacher giving you
tutoring
after hours. The one who made you cross your legs.”

“You can see the Concorde through the window over there.” I pointed.

“I can't believe I didn't bring a camera.”

He swallowed another mouthful of beer.

“Maybe you should go find one,” I suggested.

“You think they'd have those little disposable cameras around here?”

“Only French ones.”

He hesitated for a moment, then gave me a dirty look.

“I'll be back,” he said.

Of course, he left his ticket and passport in the pocket of the coat draped over his chair, and when the announcement came that we were about to board, I got an urgent text message on my pager that no one would let him back inside the lounge. He was waiting at the desk, face flushed with anger, a security guard beside him.

“Sorry,” I said, handing one of the attendants Marino's passport and ticket.

“Let's not begin the trip this way,” I said to him under my breath as we walked back through the lounge, following other passengers to the plane.

“I told them I'd go get it. Bunch of French sons of bitches. If people would speak English like they're supposed to, this kinda shit wouldn't happen.”

Our seats were together, but fortunately, the plane wasn't full, so I moved across the aisle from him. He seemed to take this personally until I gave him half of my chicken with lime sauce, my sponge roll with vanilla mousse, and my chocolates. I had no idea how many beers he drank, but he was up and down a lot, making his way along the narrow aisle while we flew twice the speed of sound. We arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport at 6:20
P
.
M
.

A dark blue Mercedes was waiting for us outside the terminal, and Marino tried to strike up a conversation with the driver, who would neither let him sit in the front seat nor pay any attention to him. Marino sullenly smoked out his window, cold air washing in as he watched abject apartments scarred with graffiti and miles of switchyards draw us into a lit-up skyline of a modern city. The great corporate gods of Hertz, Honda, Technics and Toshiba glittered in the night from their Mount Olympian heights.

“Hell, this may as well be Chicago,” Marino complained. “I feel really weird.”

“Jet lag.”

“I been to the West Coast before and didn't feel like this.”

“This is worse jet lag,” I said.

“I think it's got something to do with going that fast,” he went on. “Think about it. You're looking out this little porthole like you're in a spaceship, right? You can't even see the damn horizon. No clouds that high, air's too thin to breathe, probably a hundred degrees below zero. No birds, no normal planes, no nothing.”

A police officer in a blue and white Citroën with red stripes was pulling a speeder near the Banque de France. Along the Boulevard des Capucines shops turned into designer boutiques for the very rich, and I was reminded that I had failed to find out the exchange rate.

“That's why I'm hungry again,” Marino continued his scientific explanation. “Your metabolism's got to pick up when you're going that fast. Think how many calories that is. I didn't feel nothing once I got through Customs, did you? Not drunk or stuffed or nothing.”

Not much decorating had been done for Christmas, not even in the heart of the city. Parisians had strung modest lights and swags of evergreen outside their bistros and shops, and so far I had seen not a single Santa except the tall inflatable one in the airport that was flapping his arms as if he were doing calisthenics. The season was celebrated a bit more, with poinsettias and a Christmas tree, in the marble lobby of the Grand Hôtel, where our itinerary let us know we were staying.

“Holy shit,” Marino said, looking around at columns and at a huge chandelier. “What do you think a room in this joint costs?”

The musical trilling of telephones was nonstop, the line at the reception desk depressingly long. Baggage was parked everywhere, and I realized with growing despondency that a tour group was checking in.

“You know what, Doc?” Marino said. “I won't even be able to afford a beer in this place.”

“If you ever make it to the bar,” I replied. “It looks like we may be here all night.”

Just as I said that, someone touched my arm, and I found a man in a dark suit standing next to me, smiling.

“Madame Scarpetta, Monsieur Marino?” He motioned us out of line. “I'm so sorry, I just now saw you. My name is Ivan. You're already checked in. Please, I will show you to your rooms.”

I couldn't place his accent, but it certainly wasn't French. He led us through the lobby to mirror-polished brass elevators, where he pushed the button for the third floor.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“All over, but I have been in Paris many years.”

We followed him down a long hallway to rooms that were next to each other, but not connected. I was startled and unnerved to find our baggage was already inside them.

“If you need anything, call for me specifically,” Ivan said. “It's probably best you eat in the café here. There's a table for you, or of course, there's room service.”

He briskly walked away before I could tip him. Marino and I both stood in our doorways staring inside our rooms.

“This is weirding me out,” he said. “I don't like secret squirrel shit like this. How the hell do we know who he is? I bet he don't even work for this hotel.”

“Marino, let's not have this conversation in the hall,” I said quietly. I thought if I did not have even a few moments away from him I might become violent.

“So, when you want to eat?”

“How about I call your room,” I said.

“Well, I'm really hungry.”

“Why don't you go on to the café, Marino?” I suggested, praying he would. “I'll get something later.”

“No, I think we better stick together, Doc,” he replied.

I walked inside my room and shut the door, astonished to discover my suitcase unpacked, my clothes neatly folded and already in drawers. Slacks, shirts and a suit were hanging in the closet, toiletries lined up on the counter in the bathroom. Instantly, my phone rang. I had no doubt who it was.

“What?” I said.

“They got into my shit and put everything away!” Marino blared like a radio turned up too high. “Now, I've about had it. I don't like nobody digging in my bags. Who the hell they think they are over here? This some French custom or something? You check into a ritzy hotel and they go through your luggage?”

“No, it's not a French custom,” I said.

“So it must be some Interpol custom,” he retorted.

“I'll call you later.”

A fruit basket and bottle of wine centered a table, and I sliced a blood orange and poured a glass of merlot. I pulled back heavy drapes and stared out the window at people in evening dress getting into fine cars. Gilt sculptures on the old opera house across the street flaunted their golden, naked beauty before the gods, and chimney pots were dark stubble on miles of roofs. I felt anxious and lonely and intruded upon.