Four Scarpetta Novels

by Patricia Cornwell

  Rocco shrugs. “Instructions.”

  “From whom?”

  “My former client. He has scores to settle.”

  “Jean-Baptiste,” Lucy says. “So the two of you have remained close. That’s touching, because he’s the reason you’re about to die.”

  “I don’t believe you!” Rocco exclaims. “He’d never . . . He needs me.”

  “For what?” Rudy asks.

  “Outside work,” Rocco replies. “I’m still his attorney. He can send me anything he wants. Contact me anytime he wants.”

  “What does he send you?” Rudy asks.

  “Anything. All he’s got to do is mark it Legal Mail, and no one can open it. So if he wants letters or shit sent to somebody who obviously ain’t a lawyer, he sends it through me.”

  “The letter I got from him that ratted you out, Rocco, did he send it through you?” Lucy asks.

  “No. He’s never sent me a letter with your name on it. I never open them. Too risky. If he ever found out.” He pauses, his eyes glassy. “I don’t believe he sent you a letter!”

  “We’re here, aren’t we?” Rudy says. “So how did that happen if Chandonne didn’t send a letter and tell us everything we need to know?”

  Rocco has no answer.

  “Why would he want you to kill your father?” Lucy isn’t about to forget that subject. “Especially now. What scores to settle?”

  “Maybe Jean-Baptiste don’t like him. I guess you could consider it a parting shot.” Rocco briefly looks smug.

  “Mind if I see that for a minute?” Lucy holds out her hand for Rudy’s pistol.

  He drops out the magazine and clears the round from the chamber. The cartridge bounces on the bed. Lucy picks it up and Rudy gives her the Colt. She walks close to Rocco and pushes the loose cartridge into the magazine with her thumb.

  “Your father taught me how to drive,” she tells Rocco in a conversational tone. “You ever seen those huge pickup trucks of his? Well, that’s what I learned in when I was so little I had to sit on a pillow, even with the seat raised.”

  She racks back the slide and aims the pistol between his eyes.

  “He taught me how to shoot, too.”

  She squeezes the trigger.

  Click.

  Rocco jumps violently.

  “Oops.” Lucy smacks the magazine back inside the handle. “Forgot it wasn’t loaded. Get up, Rocco.”

  “You’re cops.” His voice trembles in fear and disbelief. “Cops don’t kill people. They don’t do this!”

  “I’m not a cop,” Rudy says to Lucy. “Are you a cop?”

  “No. I’m not a cop. I don’t see a single cop in this room, do you?”

  “Some CIA paramilitary operatives. Bet they sent you into Iraq, didn’t they? To take out Saddam Hussein. I know what people like you do.”

  “Never been to Iraq, have you?” Lucy says to Rudy.

  “Not recently.”

  ANOTHER WESTERN is playing on the TV.

  Mouths move out of sync as two cowboys dismount their horses, voices dubbed in Polish.

  “One last chance,” Rudy says to Rocco. “Where’s Jay Talley? Don’t lie. I promise I’ll know.”

  “He took a statement analysis course at the FBI Academy,” Lucy says drolly. “Was the star of the class.”

  Rocco slowly shakes his head. It is apparent by now that if he knew, he would tell them. He is a self-serving, sniveling coward, and right now he is more afraid of them than he is of Jay Talley.

  “Here’s the deal. We’re not going to kill you, Rocco.” Lucy tosses the pistol back to Rudy. “You’re going to commit suicide.”

  “No.” He shakes as if he has Parkinson’s disease.

  “You’re history, Rocco,” Rudy says. “A fugitive. A Red Notice. You can’t go anywhere anyway. You’ll be grabbed. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up in prison, probably in Sicily, and I hear that’s not a holiday. But you know better. The Chandonnes will take you out. Instantly. And perhaps not as humanely as you can end your own miserable, stinking life. Right now.”

  Lucy goes to the bed and digs an envelope out of her shoulder bag’s back pocket. Inside it is a folded sheet of paper. She opens it.

  “Here.” She offers it to Rocco.

  He makes no effort to touch it.

  “Take it. A hard copy of your Red Notice. Hot off the press. You must be curious.”

  Rocco doesn’t respond. Even his eyeballs seem to be shaking.

  “Take it,” Lucy tells him.

  Rocco does. The Red Notice shakes violently in his hands as he leaves his fingerprints on the paper, a detail he probably isn’t thinking about.

  “Now read it out loud. I think it’s very important you see what it says. Because I’m confident you’ll decide you have no choice but to kill yourself right here in this lovely hotel room,” Lucy says.

  The single page has Interpol’s crest in the upper right corner, of course in bright red. Prominently displayed is Rocco’s photograph, easily acquired. Egotist that he is, he has never ducked the camera when he’s represented criminals in scandalous trials. The picture on the Red Notice is recent and a very good likeness.

  “Read out loud,” Lucy orders him again. “Story time, Rocco.”

  “Identity particulars.” His voice wavers, and he continues to clear his throat. “Present family name, Rocco Caggiano. Name at birth, Peter Rocco Marino, Junior.”

  He pauses at this, and tears brighten his eyes. He bites his lower lip, then continues, reading on and on, all about himself. When he gets to the judicial information and reads that he is wanted for the murders of the Sicilian and French journalists, he rolls his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Jesus,” he mutters, taking a deep breath.

  “That’s right,” Lucy says. “Arrest warrant number seven-two-six-oh for poor Mr. Guarino. Arrest warrant number seven-two-six-one for poor Monsieur La Fleur. Issued April twenty-fourth, 2003. Two days ago.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “Your faithful client, Jean-Baptiste,” Lucy reminds him.

  “The bastard,” Rocco mutters. “After all I did for the ugly piece of shit.”

  “It’s over, Rocco,” Rudy says.

  He drops the Red Notice on top of the table.

  “I understand the Chandonnes can be pretty creative,” Lucy says. “Torture. Remember how much Jay Talley liked to string people up with rope and eyebolts and burn them with heat guns? Burn them until their skin was charred black. While they were alive and conscious. Remember how he tried to do that to my aunt while his fucking accomplice Bev Kiffin tried to blow me away with a shotgun?”

  Rocco stares off.

  She steps closer to him, the thought of what almost happened to her aunt tempting her to whip open her tactical baton and beat Rocco to death. She glances at it on the bedside table, knows better.

  “Drowning is another pet choice,” she goes on.

  Rocco jerks at this. “No,” he begs.

  “Remember Jean-Baptiste’s cousin Thomas? Drowned. Not a nice way to die.” She gives Rudy a look.

  He carefully wipes off the Colt with a corner of the bedsheet as an extra precaution, his face hard, his eyes gleaming with a detachment and determination that makes it possible for him to block out the sudden wave of empathy he feels for Rocco, no matter how unworthy of life he is.

  Rudy glances at Lucy and briefly their eyes touch like two sparks.

  Sweat rolls down Lucy’s face, wisps of hair plastered to her temples. She is pale, and Rudy knows that each of her attempts at dry humor and harshness are forced as she plays the most terrible role of her life.

  He pulls back the slide, chambering a round, and approaches Rocco.

  “Right-handed, you agree, partner?” Rudy calmly says to Lucy.

  “I agree.”

  She doesn’t take her eyes off Rocco. Her hands have begun to shake, and she wills herself to think of Jay Talley and his evil paramour Bev Kiffin.

  Images.

&nbs
p; Lucy envisions the grief on her aunt’s face as she scattered what she believed were Benton Wesley’s ashes over the water. Lucy’s brain seems to slide inside her skull. She has never been seasick. It must feel something like this.

  “Your choice,” she says to Rocco. “I mean it. You can die now and feel no pain. No torture. No burns. No drowning. The Red Notice is found right where you dropped it, your suicide completely understandable. Or you can walk out of here, never knowing when you’ll breathe your last breath and what nightmare you’ll suffer when the Chandonnes get you. And they will.”

  He nods. Of course they will. It is a given.

  “Put out your right hand,” Rudy tells Rocco.

  Rocco rolls his eyes toward the ceiling again.

  “See? I’m holding the gun, I’m going to help you,” Rudy goes on, lightly, indifferently, as sweat drips on the carpet.

  “Make sure the barrel is pointed up,” Lucy says, thinking of the decapitated Nazi’s head.

  “Come on, Rocco. Do what I say. It won’t hurt. You won’t even know it.”

  Rudy touches the barrel against Rocco’s right temple.

  “Up,” Lucy reminds him again.

  “Your hand goes around the grips, and my hand goes around yours.”

  Rocco closes his eyes, and his hand jumps up and down. He closes his pudgy, short fingers around the grips, and Rudy’s big, strong hand immediately clamps over his.

  “I have to help you because you can’t hold the gun still,” Rudy tells him. “You don’t shoot straight, and that could be ugly. And I can’t let you hold the gun all by yourself, now can I? That would make me stupid.” Rudy’s voice is gentle now. “See, that’s not so hard. Now press the barrel tight against your head.”

  Rocco gags, his chest heaving. He begins to hyperventilate.

  “Pointed up,” Lucy says it one more time, fixated on the decapitated Nazi’s head, trying not to see Rocco’s head.

  He sways in his chair, grabbing shallow breaths, his face livid, his eyes squeezed shut. Rudy’s gloved finger pulls the trigger.

  The gun fires in a loud pop.

  Rocco and his chair fall backward. His head lands on the British newspapers strewn over the carpet, his face turned toward the window. Blood gushing out of his head sounds like running water. Gunsmoke turns the air acrid.

  Rudy squats to tuck Rocco’s limp right arm and the pistol under his chest. Any prints or partial prints recovered on the blue steel Colt will be Rocco’s.

  Lucy opens a window a crack, no more than three inches, and yanks off her gloves as Rudy presses two fingers against Rocco Caggiano’s carotid artery. His pulse beats faintly and stops. Rudy nods at Lucy and stands up. He digs inside a pocket of his jacket and pulls out a German mustard jar. Holes have been punched in the lid, and blow flies crawl along the inside of the glass, feeding on what is left of the rotting meat that yesterday baited them into captivity at a Dumpster crammed with garbage behind a Polish restaurant.

  He opens the jar and shakes it. Several dozen flies lethargically lift off, buzzing to lamps and bouncing against illuminated shades. Sensing pheromones and the plume of an open wound, they greedily drone straight to Rocco’s motionless body. Blow flies, the most common of carrion-feeding insects, alight on his bloody face. Several disappear inside his mouth.

  IT IS ONLY eight p.m. in Boston.

  Pete Marino sits at the US Air gate, eating chocolate-dipped pretzels and listening to another apologetic announcement that promises his flight will depart after another minor delay of only two hours and ten minutes. This is after an earlier delay that has already held him hostage in Logan Airport for an hour and twenty-five minutes beyond his scheduled departure.

  “Shit!” he exclaims, not caring who hears him. “I coulda walked by now!”

  Rarely does he have plenty of time to ponder his life, and he thinks of Benton and diverts his misery and rage by focusing on Benton’s physical conditioning and hard, manly body. He looks even better than he used to, Marino depressingly decides. How can that be possible after six years of what amounts to solitary confinement? Marino can’t comprehend it. He starts on a brownie from the basket of Delicious Desserts of Gainesville that he happened upon in the airport gift shop and wonders what it would be like if he quit working for Lucy, just gave up going after dirtbags. They’re cockroaches. Squash one, and five others take its place. Maybe Marino should go fishing, maybe become a professional bowler (he almost had a perfect score once), find him a nice woman and build a cabin in the woods.

  Once, very long ago, Marino was admired, too, and the mirror did not hate him. Women—and men, he supposes with confusion and disgust—stare at Benton and lust for him. Marino is certain of this. They can’t resist him when added to his good looks are his brain and his big-shot FBI status, or, more accurately, former FBI status. Marino pushes back strings of gray hair and wakes himself up to the fact that people don’t meet Benton anymore and know his real name or admire his former FBI career. He is supposed to be dead or Tom or nobody. That Scarpetta could miss Benton so much causes Marino a sick pain somewhere around his heart and topples him into deeper despair. He hurts deeply for her. He hurts deeply for himself. If he died, she would grieve, but not forever. She has never been in love with him, never will be, and doesn’t want his fat, hairy body in her bed.

  Marino wanders into another gift shop and snatches a fitness magazine off a pile on the floor, an action as foreign to him as Hebrew. Men’s Workout has a handsome young man on the cover who looks as if he’s cut of smooth stone. He must have shaved his entire body except for his head and polished his tanned skin with oil. Marino returns to a nearby sports bar, orders another Budweiser on tap, finds his same table, brushes off pizza crumbs, and sets down the magazine, somewhat afraid of opening it. He finally musters the nerve to pick it up, and its slick cover sticks to the table.

  “Hey!” Marino calls to the bartender. “Anyone ever wipe off a table in this joint?”

  Everyone in the bar stares at Marino.

  “I just paid three-fifty for this watered-down beer, and the table’s so disgusting, my magazine’s sticking to it.”

  Everyone in the bar stares at Marino’s magazine. Several young men nudge one another and smile. The annoyed bartender, who would have to be an octopus to keep up with orders, tosses a wet bar towel to Marino. He wipes off his table and tosses it back, almost hitting an old woman in the head. She sips her white wine, oblivious. Marino starts flipping through his magazine. Maybe it isn’t too late to reclaim his masculine plumage, to have muscles he can flex like a peacock fanning its tail. As a boy in New Jersey, he made himself strong from chin-ups, push-ups and maniacal repetitions with free weights he constructed from cinder blocks and mop or broom handles. He lifted the rear ends of cars to work on his back and biceps, clutched a laundry bag filled with bricks while doing squats or running up and down stairs. He boxed with laundry drying on the clothesline, always on windy days when the clothes and linens fought back.

  “Peter Rocco! You stop fighting with the laundry! You knock it in the dirt and you get to wash it!”

  His mother was a meshed figure behind the screen door, hands on her hips, trying to sound severe as her son’s savage right hook yanked one of his father’s wet undershirts from wooden clothespins and sent it sailing into a nearby bush. As Marino got older, he wrapped his fists in layers of rags and threw wicked punches at an old mattress he kept in the crawl space beneath the house. If it was possible to kill a mattress, this one died a thousand times, propped up against the porch, its ticking finally ripping and its dry-rotted foam rubber disintegrating with each blow. Marino scavenged neighborhood trash piles for discarded mattresses, and he battled his stained obtuse opponents as if he hated them for some unforgivable sin they had committed against him.

  “Who you trying to kill, honey?” his mother asked him one afternoon when he was dripping with sweat and wobbly from exhaustion and flinging open the refrigerator door for the ice water his mother always
kept there. “Don’t drink out of the jug. How many times I gotta tell you? You know what germs are? They’re little ugly bugs crawling out of your mouth right into the jug. Don’t matter if you can’t see ’em. Doesn’t make them any less real, and those very germs are what gives you and everyone else the flu and polio, and you end up in an iron lung and . . .”

  “Dad drinks outta the jug.”

  “Well.”

  “Well what, Mom?”

  “He’s the man of the house.”

  “Well, ain’t that something. Guess he ain’t got little ugly bugs crawling out him like everybody else, since he’s the man of the house. Guess he don’t give a rat’s ass who ends up in an iron lung.”

  “Who you fighting out there when you beat up the mattress? Fight, fight, fight. You’re always fighting.”

  Marino buys another beer and consoles himself with the thought that the male models in the workout magazine are not fighters, because they have the flexibility of a rock. They don’t dance on their feet, boxing. They don’t do anything but lift iron and pose for photographers and poison themselves with steroids. Still, Marino wouldn’t mind having a stomach that looks like moguls in a ski run, and what he wouldn’t give for his hair to come home to his head instead of continuing its relentless migration to other parts of his body. He smokes and drinks to the noise of a basketball dribbling, shoes squeaking and crowds yelling on the big-screen TV. Loudly flipping through a few more pages of his magazine, he begins to notice advertisements for aphrodisiacs, performance enhancements and invitations to skin parties and strip volleyball.

  When he reaches a centerfold of hairless hunks wearing G-strings and fishnet bikini briefs, he slaps the magazine shut. A businessman sitting one table over gets up and moves to the other end of the bar. Marino takes his time finishing his beer and gets up and stretches and yawns. People in the bar watch him as he makes his way toward the businessman and drops the magazine on top of his Wall Street Journal.

  “Call me,” Marino says with a wink as he saunters out of the bar.

  BACK AT THE US AIR GATE, Marino is seized by agitation and impetuosity.