Four Scarpetta Novels (108 page)

M
ARINO DOESN'T LIKE
the taxi driver and asks him where he's from.

“Kabul.”

“Kabul's where, exactly?” Marino asks. “I mean, I know what country” (he doesn't), “but not its exact geographical location.”

“Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan.”

Marino tries to envision Afghanistan. All that comes to mind are dictators, terrorists and camels.

“And you do what there?”

“I do nothing there. I live here.” The driver's dark eyes glance at him in the rearview mirror. “My family worked in the wool mills, and I came here eight years ago. You should go to Kabul. It is very beautiful. Visit the old city. My name is B
bur. You have questions or need a cab, call my company and ask for me.” He smiles, his teeth gleaming white in the dark.

Marino senses the driver is making fun of him, but he doesn't get the joke. The driver's identification card is fastened to the passenger's seat visor, and Marino tries to read it, but can't. His vision isn't what it used to be, and he refuses to wear glasses. Despite Scarpetta's urging, he also
refuses laser surgery, which he adamantly claims will make him blind or damage his frontal lobe.

“This way don't look familiar,” Marino comments in his usual grumpy tone as unrecognizable buildings flow past his window.

“We take a shortcut along the harbor, past the wharfs and then the causeway. Very pretty sights.”

Marino leans forward on the hard bench seat, avoiding a spring that seems determined to work its way out of the vinyl upholstery and uncoil and bite his left buttock.

“You're heading north, you Mohammed scumbag! I may not be from Boston, but I know where the Embankment is, and you ain't even on the right side of the fucking river!”

The cabdriver who calls himself B
bur completely ignores his passenger and continues along his route, cheerfully pointing out the sights, including the Suffolk County Jail, the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Shriners Burn Center. By the time he drops Marino off on Storrow Drive, close but not too close to Benton Wesley's apartment building, the meter registers $68.35. Marino slings open the door and throws a crumpled one-dollar bill onto the front seat.

“You owe me sixty-seven dollars and thirty-five cents.” The taxi driver smooths open the dollar bill on his leg. “I will call the police!”

“And I'll beat the shit out of you. And you can't do nothing about it, because you ain't legal, right? Show me your green card, asshole, and guess what, I'm the police and got a pistol strapped under my arm.” He snatches out his wallet and flashes the badge he did not return to the Richmond Police Department after he retired.

He said he lost it.

Tires squeal as the taxi driver speeds off, screaming curses out his open window. Marino heads toward the Longfellow Bridge and veers off southeast, briefly following the same sidewalk he and Benton walked along earlier today. He takes a roundabout way beneath gas lamplight on Pinckney and Revere, constantly listening and checking his surroundings, making
certain he isn't being followed, as is his habit. Marino isn't thinking about the Chandonne cartel. He is on the lookout for the usual street punks and lunatics, although he has seen no evidence of either in this section of Beacon Hill.

When Benton's building comes into view, Marino notices that the windows of unit 56 are dark.

“Shit,” he mutters, tossing his cigarette, not bothering to stamp it out.

Benton must have gone out for a late dinner, or to the gym, or for a jog. But that isn't likely, and Marino's anxieties tighten his chest with his every step. He knows damn well that Benton would leave lights on when he goes out. He isn't the sort to walk into a completely dark house or apartment.

Climbing the stairs to the fifth floor is worse than last time, because adrenaline and beer quicken his straining heart until he can scarcely breathe. When he reaches unit 56, he bangs on the door. Not a sound comes from inside.

He pounds harder and calls out, “Yo, Tom!”

L
UCY STARTS THE MERCEDES
and suddenly stares at Rudy in the pitch dark.

“Oh my God! I can't believe it!” She pounds the steering wheel with her fist, accidentally blaring the horn.

“What!” Rudy jumps, startled and suddenly frantic. “What the hell? What the hell are you doing!”

“My tactical baton. Goddamn son of a bitch! I left it on the night table inside the room. It's going to have my fingerprints on it, Rudy.”

How could she make such a brain-dead mistake? All went according to plan until she made an oversight, a mindless blunder, the very sort of blunder that catches people on the run all the time. The engine rumbles quietly on the side of the dark street, neither Lucy nor Rudy quite sure what to do. They are free. They got away with it. No one near or inside the hotel saw them, and now one of them must go back.

“I'm sorry,” Lucy whispers. “I'm a fucking idiot,” she says. “You stay here.”

“No. I'll take care of it.” Rudy's fear turns to the more manageable emotion of rage, and he resists taking it out on her.

“I fucked it up. I get to fix it.” She swings open the car door.

B
EV KIFFIN RUNS HER FINGERS
through a rack of cheap acetate panties and bras.

The women's lingerie section of Wal-Mart is near arts and crafts and directly across from men's athletic shoes, a section of the store she frequently haunts. She is certain, however, that the clerks in their cheap blue vests and name tags don't recognize her. This is the type of business where tired, glazed employees don't pay much attention to common-looking people like Bev who root around for bargains in a discount store that is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

A red, lacy bra captivates her imagination, and she checks sizes, looking for a 38D. Finding one in black, she tucks it up a sleeve of her dark green rain slicker. The bra is followed by two pairs of bikini-cut panties, size large. Stealing lingerie and other items that do not have security sensors is so easy. She wonders why everybody doesn't do it. Bev has no fear of consequences. No frontal-lobe alarm sounds when she contemplates committing a crime, no matter how serious. Opportunities come and go on her radar screen, some bigger and brighter than others, such as the woman who has just wandered into the arts and crafts section, interested in needlepoint.

The thought of such a stupid domestic hobby fills Bev with contempt as she instantly deduces that the attractive blonde dressed in jeans and a light blue jacket is naïve.

A lamb.

Bev continues rummaging through the lingerie rack, the target on her radar flashing brighter with each passing second, her pulse picking up, her palms getting clammy.

The woman drops skeins of colorful floss and a needlepoint pattern of an eagle and a flag into her cart.
So she's patriotic,
Bev thinks. Maybe she has a husband or boyfriend in the military, might be gone, maybe still in Iraq. She's at least thirty-five, maybe close to forty. Could be her man's in the National Guard.

The cart rolls forward, getting closer.

Bev detects cologne. The scent is unfamiliar and probably expensive. The woman's legs are slender, her posture good. She works out in the gym. She's got free time on her hands. If she has children, she must be able to afford having someone take care of them while she's trotting off to the gym or maybe the hair salon.

Bev scans a scrap of paper, a shopping list, feigning that she is unaware of the woman, who pauses in the aisle, looking directly at the rack of lingerie. She wants to keep her man happy.

A lamb.

Good-looking.

An air about her that Bev associates with intelligence.

She can sense when people are smart. They don't have to say one word, because the rest of them is talking. The woman pushes her cart straight to the rack, not even a foot from where Bev is standing, and the perfume crawls up Bev's sinuses, burrowing way up inside her skull, and her focus sharpens to a point as the woman unzips her jacket, picks a sheer red bra off the rack and holds it up to firm, ample breasts.

Hatred and envy electrify every nerve and muscle in Bev's matronly body, her upper lip breaking out in a cold sweat. She wanders in the
direction of men's running shoes as the woman dials a cell phone. It rings somewhere for several seconds.

“Honey?” she sweetly, happily says. “Still here. I know. Such a big place.” She laughs. “I like the Wal-Mart off Acadian better.” She laughs again. “Well, maybe I will if you're sure you don't mind.”

She holds out her left arm, glancing at the watch peeking out of her sleeve, the sort of watch runners wear. Bev expected something fancier.

A
LIGHT, MISTY RAIN DAMPENS
the streets of Szczecin as Lucy nears the Radisson Hotel.

This time she doesn't have to wait for the clerk to leave the front desk. The lobby is deserted. She walks inside, casually but briskly, and heads to the elevators. Her finger is about to make contact with the elevator button when the doors part and a very intoxicated man lurches out, knocking into her.

“ 'Scussssse me!” he says loudly, startling Lucy and jerking her mind out of gear.

What to do? What to do?

“Now, aren't you the prettiest thing I've seen forever!”

His words slur as if his mouth is numb with lidocaine, and he is almost yelling as he leers at her, checking her out from her hair to her cleavage to her satin cowboy boots. He announces that his party is going strong in room 301 and she must come. He goes on and on. My, my, how beautiful and sexy she is, and obviously American, and he was from Chicago, transferred recently to Germany, and is lonely and separated from his wife, who is a bitch.

The desk clerk rushes back to the lobby, and not a minute later a security guard follows and speaks in English to the drunk.

“Perhaps you should go back to your room. It is late, and you should go to sleep,” the guard says stiffly, eyeing Lucy with distaste and suspicion, as if assuming she is the vulgar man's girlfriend, or perhaps a prostitute, and is probably drunk, too.

She stabs at the elevator button, missing it several times, swaying and clutching the drunk man's arm.

“Come on, baby, let's go,” she slurs with a Russian accent, leaning against him.

“Now ain't that sweet . . .” He is about to show besotted surprise and pleasure in her company when she reaches up and kisses him hard on the mouth.

The elevator doors open and she pulls him inside, wrapping herself around him and continuing a long, tongue-groping kiss that tastes like garlic and whiskey. The security guard stares stonily at them as the doors shut.

Mistake.

The guard will remember her face. Lucy's face is hard to forget, and the guard had plenty of time to look at it because Lucy was trapped with the drunk asshole.

Big mistake.

She hits button 2 as the man paws her. He doesn't seem to notice that the elevator is stopping at the wrong floor, but suddenly his new lover is running away, clutching at her clothes. He tries to chase after her, wildly waving his arms, cursing, catching his toe on the carpet and stumbling.

Lucy follows exit signs, turning into another hallway, then into a stairway. She silently makes her way up three flights and waits on the dimly lit landing, holding her breath and listening, sweat rolling down her face and soaking her sexy black blouse. Possibly, it was habit more than instinct
that caused her to pluck up a plastic hotel key from the table in Caggiano's room and tuck it in a pocket of her windbreaker. Whenever she checks out of a hotel, she always keeps a key, if it is a disposable one, in the event she suddenly realizes she has forgotten something. Once, and she doesn't like to remember this, she left her gun in a bedside drawer and didn't realize it until she was climbing into a taxi. Thank God she still had a key.

The
Do Not Disturb
sign hangs ominously from the doorknob of room 511, and Lucy searches the hallway, desperately hoping she is not surprised by anyone else. As she makes her approach, she faintly hears the television inside Rocco's room, and a sick pain stabs her stomach. Fear burns. Recalling what she and Rudy just did is awful, and now she must confront their sin again.

A green light flickers, and she pushes open the door with her elbows because she has no fresh gloves, having raced off without them. She runs into a wall of rank smell from Rocco's last greasy meal and detects his alcohol-saturated blood. It coagulates like pudding under his head, his eyes half open and dull, the chair overturned, the gun under his chest, every detail exactly as she and Rudy had left it. Blow flies buzz around his body, searching for the perfect piece of moist human real estate to appropriate for their eggs. Lucy stares, transfixed, at the frenzied insects.

She focuses on her tactical baton. It, too, is exactly as she left it, on the table to the left of the bed.

“Oh, thank God,” she mutters.

The baton is safely back up her sleeve as she cautiously opens the door, wiping the knob with her blouse. This time she takes the stairs all the way down to the service level, where she hears the murmur of voices, possibly from the kitchen. Along walls are carts loaded with dirty dishes, wilted flowers in bud vases, empty wine bottles and what is left from cocktails and other beverages. Food is hardened on hotel china and stains white cloths and wadded napkins. There are no flies down here. Not one.

She swallows repeatedly, suddenly nauseous as she envisions the blow flies crawling all over Rocco and feeding on his gore. She thinks about what will happen next. Inside his warm room, blow fly eggs will hatch into maggots that, depending on how long he remains undiscovered, will teem over his decomposing body, especially inside his wound and other orifices. Blow flies love deep, dark, moist crevices and passageways.

The intense presence of carrion predators will throw off Rocco's time of death, as intended when Rudy introduced the flies into the room. The forensic pathologist who examines Rocco's body will be confused by the story of when room service delivered his late dinner and the advanced stage of maggot infestation and decomposition. His blood-alcohol level will indicate that Caggiano was intoxicated when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound that penetrated his temple and tore through his brain in a storm of lead shrapnel and the ragged razor-sharp copper edges of a semi-jacketed hollow-point bullet. Prints on the gun will be his.

The warmth of the room will be factored in but should not arouse suspicion. The empty champagne bottle has Caggiano's prints on it, should the police bother to check, although there will be no record of his ordering the champagne or receiving it compliments of the manager. He could have bought it elsewhere. The Red Notice will have his prints on it, should anyone bother to check, and she must assume someone will.

She wishes Rocco had not ordered room service, but she planned for that possibility, realizing that whoever delivered his dinner will recall the tip and not want to reveal that it was American cash. He or she will not want to be implicated in any sort of scandal that involves the police. In addition, if Rocco's time of death, as determined by the forensic pathologist, doesn't jibe at all with what the hotel employee who delivered the room service has to say—assuming the person talks—then it may very well be assumed that the person is mistaken about the time, possibly even the day. Or is lying. No one in that hotel will want to admit to accepting American money and who knows what other favors and
contraband that Rocco, a fugitive, has probably bestowed on them over the many years he has stayed in that hotel.

Who will care that Rocco Caggiano is dead? Perhaps no one except the Chandonne family. They will wonder. Lucy plotted with the expectation that they will press hard to know the facts. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. Suicide will be accepted, and no one will feel grief or even give a damn.