“Please go south,” Lucy begged her, getting up from the bed and facing her with wet eyes and a red nose. “For now. Please. Go back to where you came from and start all over.”
“I’m too old to start over.”
“Shit!” Lucy laughed. “You’re only forty-six, and men and women stare at you everywhere you go. And you don’t even notice. You’re one hell of a package.”
The only time Scarpetta was ever called a package was when she was in worse trouble than usual and required off-duty police for security. On their radios, they referred to her as the package. Scarpetta wasn’t entirely sure what they meant.
She moved south to Delray Beach, not exactly returning to her roots, but to an area near where her mother and sister live, yet safely far away.
Inside her weather-beaten 1950s rented house, her office is piled with paperwork and stiff cardboard slide folders, so much of it stacked on the floor that she has to make an effort not to trip over her work, making it impossible for her to be her usual prepossessed self when she walks in. Bookcases are crammed, some medical and legal tomes are double-shelved, while her rare antique books are protected from the sun and humidity in a tiny room next door that was probably intended to be the nursery.
She picks at Rose’s fresh tuna salad as she goes through her mail, her letter opener a scalpel. She slices open the manila envelope first, apparently from her niece or perhaps someone else in her office, and is baffled to discover another envelope inside, this one plain white and addressed by hand in calligraphy to Madame Kay Scarpetta, LLB.
She drops the manila envelope on the table and hurries out of her office, rushing past Rose without speaking and into the kitchen for freezer paper.
TAXICABS REMIND BENTON OF INSECTS.
And during his exile, he has grown fond of certain insects. Stick bugs look remarkably like twigs. Benton often loses himself in parks and along sidewalks, patiently searching shrubbery for a stick bug or, better yet, a praying mantis, which is extremely rare and a good omen, although he has never experienced a positive change in fortune directly after spotting a praying mantis. Maybe someday he will. Ladybugs are good luck. Everybody knows that. If one ends up wherever he is staying, he gently coaxes it onto his finger and takes it outside, no matter how many flights of stairs, and deposits it on a bush.
One week he did this ten times and enjoyed the thought that it was the same ladybug flirting with him. He believes that all kindnesses will be repaid. He also believes that evil will get its ugly reward, and until he began his nonexistence, he argued about that with Scarpetta often, because he didn’t believe it at all back then. And she did.
We often don’t know the reason for things, Benton. But I believe there is one, always.
He hears Scarpetta’s voice in a remote cavern of his brain as he sits in the dark backseat of a southbound taxi.
How can you say that?
He hears his own voice answering her.
Because I’ve seen enough to say it. What reason can there possibly be for a sister or a daughter or a brother or a son or a parent or a significant other to be raped, tortured and murdered?
Silence. The taxi driver is listening to hip-hop.
“Turn that down, please,” Benton calmly says, this time out loud.
Or what about the old woman struck by lightning because her umbrella frame was metal?
Scarpetta doesn’t answer him.
Okay, then what about the entire family killed by carbon monoxide because no one told them not to cook with charcoal in the fireplace, especially with the windows closed? What reason, Kay?
His sense of her continues to linger like her favorite perfume.
So there’s a reason I was murdered and am gone from your life forever?
The conversation has turned one-sided and won’t stop. What reason has she assigned to what she believes happened to him, he asks, convinced she has come up with a reason, certainly by now.
You’re rationalizing, Kay. You have forgotten our talks about denial.
Benton’s facile mind moves on to another point as he rides in the taxi shortly after dark, en route to Manhattan, the trunk and every other space in the car piled with his belongings. The driver did not disguise his disgust when he realized that his fare came with a substantial pile of baggage. But Benton was clever. He hailed the cab from the street, and the driver didn’t see the pile of luggage in the thick shadows of the sidewalk until he was faced with the choice of speeding off or accepting the lucrative job of driving a fare to New York.
The driver’s name is Robert Leary, a white male with brown hair, brown eyes, approximately five-foot-ten and one hundred and eighty pounds. Those details and others, including the identification number on the photo ID clamped to the visor, are written in a refillable wallet-size leather notebook that Benton carries wherever he goes. As soon as he gets to his hotel room, he will, as is customary for him, transfer the notes to his laptop computer. Since he entered the witness protection program, Benton has recorded his every activity, his every location and every person he has met—especially if it is more than once—and even the weather and where he worked out and what he ate.
Several times now, Robert Leary has attempted to initiate a conversation, but Benton stares out the window and says nothing, the driver, of course, having no idea that the man with the tan, chiseled, bearded face and shaved head is silently making points and examining tactical requirements and possibilities and probabilities from every tilt imaginable. No doubt, the cabbie is thinking it is his sorry luck to have picked up a weirdo, who, based on the shabbiness of his luggage, has fallen on hard times, very hard times.
“You sure you can pay the fare?” he asks, or rather demands, for the third time. “It ain’t gonna be cheap, you know, depending on what route I end up taking, depending on traffic and what streets they got closed off in the city. These days, ya never know what streets the cops will close off. Security. It’s something. Me, I’m not a big fan of machine guns and guys in camouflage.”
“I can pay the fare,” Benton replies.
The headlights of passing cars slash his window, briefly lighting up his somber face. Of this he is certain: Jean-Baptiste Chandonne’s attempted murder of Scarpetta has no point or meaning beyond the remarkable fact that she used her wits and survived. Thank God, thank God. Other schemes to bring about her ruination have no meaning beyond the miracle that they, too, have failed. Benton is well versed in the details, perhaps not all of them, but what he has followed in the news is enough.
Every person involved in his plan is tangentially if not directly connected to the Chandonnes’ evil, intricate network. Benton knows what empowers the Chandonnes and what robs them of their strength. He knows the receptacles, without whom the major conduits between drones and the higher order cannot function. The solution to the situation has always been far too complicated for anyone to work out, but for six years, Benton has had nothing to do but work it out.
The answer, he discovered, is simple: Surgically snip and strip the wires and disconnect, then splice, rewire and reconnect so that the criminals short-circuit and the Chandonne empire implodes. Meanwhile, Benton—the dead Benton—invisibly watches what he has designed and implemented as if it is a video game, and no player in his game has an inkling about what is going on, except that something is, and whatever it is must be instigated by traitors from inside. Main players must die. Other players, many of whom Benton does not know, will be blamed and labeled traitors. They will die.
By this method, Benton will manipulate his enemies and delete them, one by one. By his calculations, the coalition comprised of himself and others who do not even know they have been conscripted into his private army will complete his mission in a few months, perhaps weeks. By his calculations, Rocco Caggiano is already dead or soon will be dead, killed in cold blood, his murder staged, and Lucy and Rudy may know what they are doing or have done, but what they don’t know is the video game. They don’t know that they are in it.
Learning that his son is dead would inevitably result in Marino retracing Rocco’s steps, which would lead Marino and his compatriots to Baton Rouge, where Rocco keeps an apartment and has for many years. The port in Baton Rouge is formidable. The Gulf Coast is gold. All manner of valuable and dangerous materials travels the Mississippi daily. Baton Rouge is yet another Chandonne holding, and Rocco has enjoyed many successes and gratifications there, including sovereign immunity from the police, and intrigues, including protecting Jay Talley and Jean-Baptiste Chandonne as they enjoyed their fair share of fun in the Baton Rouge area.
Jean-Baptiste and Jay were only sixteen the first time they visited Baton Rouge. Jean-Baptiste honed his murderous skills by killing prostitutes after Jay was serviced by them. Those cases have never been linked because the former coroner abdicated his investigative rights to other agencies, and the police didn’t give a damn about prostitutes.
One step would lead to another until Marino discovered Jay Talley and Bev Kiffin in Baton Rouge and eliminated them. That was the plan. Scarpetta was never supposed to be part of it. His pulse beats rapidly in his temples.
He holds his wrist close to his face, unable to read the time on his cheap black plastic watch because the dial isn’t luminescent. By design, it isn’t. He wants nothing that glows in the dark.
“What time should we get there?” he asks in the same clipped tone.
“I dunno exactly,” his driver replies. “Depends if the traffic stays light like this. Maybe another two, two and a half hours.”
A car draws close to them from the rear, its high beams bouncing blinding white light off the taxi’s rearview mirror. The driver curses as a black Porsche 911 passes, its receding red taillights reminding Benton of hell.
SCARPETTA STARES AT THE unopened letter, the warm, damp air moving freely through her open door.
Clouds are black flowers floating low on the horizon, and she senses that rain will come before dawn and she will wake up with all the windows fogged up, which is intolerable. No doubt the neighbors think she’s obsessive and mad when they see her on her balcony with bath towels at seven a.m., vigorously wiping condensation off the outside of the glass. Then, because of her forced and despicable bond with him, she imagines him inside his death-row cell with no view, and her mission of scrubbing clean her dewy, opaque windows becomes all the more urgent.
The unopened letter addressed to Madame Scarpetta, LLB is centered on a square of clean white freezer paper. Female physicians in France are addressed as Madame. In America, referring to a female physician as anything but Doctor is an insult. She is unpleasantly reminded of crafty defense attorneys addressing her in court as Mrs. Scarpetta instead of Dr. Scarpetta, thereby stripping her of her credentials and expertise, in hopes that the jurors and perhaps even the judge would not take her as seriously as they would a Medicinae Doctor whose specialty of pathology and subspecialty of forensic pathology required six additional years of training after medical school.
While it is true that Scarpetta also has a law degree, virtually no one adds the abbreviation for legum baccalaureus after her surname, and for her to do so would be arrogant and misleading because she does not practice law. The three years she spent in law school at Georgetown were for the purpose of facilitating her eventual career in legal medicine, and that was all. To add the abbreviation LLB after her name is mocking in its pretentiousness and condescension.
Jean-Baptiste Chandonne.
She knows the letter is from him.
For an instant, she smells his horrible stench. An olfactory hallucination. The last time she had one was when she visited the Holocaust Museum and smelled death.
“I’ve been out in the yard with Billy. He’s done his business and is very busy chasing lizards,” Rose is saying. “Anything else I can do for you before I leave?”
“No thank you, Rose.”
A pause, then, “Well, did you like my tuna salad?”
“You could open your own restaurant,” Scarpetta says.
She puts on a fresh pair of white cotton examination gloves and picks up the letter and the scalpel, working the tip of the triangular blade into a top corner of the envelope. Stainless steel hisses through the cheap paper.
THE CHAIR ROCCO SITS ON is a padded one.
Two—no, maybe it was three or four—surreal hours ago, he was in this same chair, eating dinner, when room service knocked on his door to bring him a bottle of champagne, a very nice Moët & Chandon, compliments of the management. Rocco, who is streetwise and chronically paranoid, was not the least bit suspicious. He is an important man who stays in the Radisson whenever he is in Szczecin. It is the only decent hotel in the city, and management routinely sends him gifts, including fine cognac and Cuban cigars, because he pays his bills in American cash instead of worthless zloty.
His habit of feeling secure in this hotel is how the intruder with the Colt pistol got inside Rocco’s deluxe room. It happened so fast, he didn’t have time to react to the tall waiter who wasn’t wearing a uniform and shoved his way inside with an empty bottle of champagne on a service tray he obviously had picked up outside another guest’s room. This asshole—whoever he is—grabbed Rocco that easily.
Rocco pushes his plate as far away from him as possible. He worries that next he will vomit. He has soiled himself. The room smells so foul he cannot understand how his captor endures it, but the young, muscular man sitting on the bed doesn’t seem to notice. He stares at Rocco, the stare of a man high on adrenaline and ready to kill. He will not allow Rocco to clean up. He won’t allow Rocco to get out of the chair. He drops his cell phone on the bed after another brief conversation with someone, and goes over to the tray with its empty champagne bottle. Rocco watches the man carefully wipe off the bottle with a napkin. Rocco tries to place him. Maybe he has seen him before, or maybe the explanation is that he has that look—the look of a federal agent.
“Listen,” Rocco says over the noise of the TV, “just tell me who and why, come on. You tell me who and why, maybe we can work something out you’ll like better. You’re an agent, aren’t you? Some kinda agent. That don’t mean we can’t work something out.”
He has said this at least six times since the agent walked in with the empty bottle on its tray, then slammed the door shut with a back kick and pulled his gun. Several times now, he has opened the door and slammed it shut. This makes Rocco increasingly nervous. Although he doesn’t understand the agent’s purpose, it has crossed his mind, even during previous stays, that the doors shut so loudly in this hotel that they sound like gunshots.
“Keep your voice down,” the agent tells him.
He places the champagne bottle on Rocco’s table.
“Pick it up.” The agent nods at it.
Rocco stares at the bottle and swallows hard.
“Pick it up, Rocco.”
“So I’ll ask you again. How come you know my name?” Rocco persists. “Come on. You know me, right? We can work things out . . . .”
“Pick up the bottle.”
He does. The agent wants Rocco’s fingerprints on the bottle. This is not good. The agent wants it to appear as though Rocco ordered or somehow acquired the champagne and drank it. This is very bad. His fears gather in strength as the agent returns to the bed, picks up a jacket and pulls out a leather flask. He unscrews the cap and returns to Rocco’s table, pouring a large amount of vodka in what is left of one of Rocco’
s cocktails.
“Drink up,” the agent says.
Rocco swallows the vodka in several gulps, grateful as it burns its way down, warming him and sending its seductive, dulling agents along his blood and to his head. His confused thoughts float toward the hope that the agent is showing mercy, treating him decently, trying to make him relax. Maybe the agent’s rethinking things, wants to make a deal.
Rocco speculates, but it is a fact that someone sent the man, someone who knows Rocco’s business intimately and is aware that once a month he travels to Szczecin to handle Chandonne affairs at the port. Rocco’s primary responsibility is to deal with police and other officials. This is business as usual. He can do it drunk, nothing more than routine legal finagling and the usual fees and, if necessary, reminders of what a dangerous world it is.
Only an insider would know Rocco’s schedule and where he stays. The hotel staff doesn’t know what he does, only that he is from New York, or so he says. No one cares what he does. He is generous. He is rich. Instead of passing off the usual zloty, he pays and lavishly tips in American cash, which is very hard to come by and very useful on the black market. Everyone likes him. The bartenders double the Chopin vodka in his drinks at the upstairs bar, where he frequently sits in the dark, smoking cigars.
His captor looks about twenty-eight, maybe early thirties. His black hair is short and styled with gel in that spiked look that a lot of young men like these days. Rocco notices the square jaw, straight nose, dark blue eyes, stubble and the veins standing out in the man’s biceps and hands. He probably doesn’t need a weapon to crush someone. Women like him. They probably stare at him, hit on him. Rocco has never been attractive. As a teenager, he was already suffering from pattern baldness, and he couldn’t stay away from pizza and beer, and looked it. Envy possesses him. It always has. Women sleep with him only because he has power and money. Hatred toward his captor flares.
Blow Fly Page 13
