Black Notice

29

Somehow the supplemental part of the attempted burglary offense report made it into the press basket in time for the six o'clock news on Saturday night. Reporters began calling both Rose and me at home with question after question about our being followed I had no doubt Bray was behind that little slip. It was a nice little bit of amusement for her on an otherwise cold, dreary weekend. Of course she didn't give a damn that my sixty-four-year-old secretary lived alone in a community that did not have a guard gate.

Late Sunday afternoon I sat in my great room, a fire burning, as I worked on a long overdue journal article that I had no heart for. The wretched weather continued and my concentration drifted. By now, Jo should have been admitted to MCV and Lucy should be in D.C., I supposed. I didn't know for sure. But of one thing I was certain. Lucy was angry, and whenever she was angry, she cut herself off from me. It could go on for months, even a year.

I had managed to avoid calling my mother or my sister Dorothy, which might have seemed pretty cold of me, but I didn't need one more watt of stress. I finally relented early Sunday evening. Apparently Dorothy wasn't home. I tried my mother next.

"No, Dorothy's not here," my mother said. "She's in Richmond, and maybe you would know that if you ever bothered to call your sister and your mother. Lucy's in a shooting, and you can't be bothered…"

"Dorothy's in Richmond?" I said in disbelief.

"What do you expect? She's her mother."

"So Lucy's in Richmond, too?" The thought sliced through me like a scalpel.

"That's why her mother's going there. Of course Lucy's in Richmond."

I didn't know why I should have been surprised. Dorothy was a narcissistic upstager. Whenever there was drama, she had to be the center of it. If that meant suddenly assuming the role of mother to a child she cared nothing about, Dorothy would.

"She left yesterday and didn't want to bother to ask about staying in your house, since you don't seem to care about your family," my mother said.

"Dorothy never wants to stay in my house."

My sister was quite fond of hotel bars. At my house, there was no possibility of meeting men, at ldast not any I was willing to share with her.

"Where is she staying?" I asked. "And is Lucy staying with her?"

"No one will tell me, all this secrecy business, and here I am, her grandmother..:"

I couldn't stand it anymore.

"Mother, I've got to go," I said.

I practically hung up on her and called the orthopedic department chair, Dr. Graham Worth, at home.

"Graham, you've got to help me out," I told him.

"Don't tell me a patient in my unit died," he wryly said.

"Graham, you know I wouldn't ask for your help unless it was something very important."

Levity gave way to silence.

"You've got a patient under an alias. She's DEA, was shot in Miami. You know who I mean."

He didn't answer me.

"My niece, Lucy, was involved in the same shooting;" I went on.

"I know about the shooting," he replied. "Certainly it's been in the news."

"I'm the one who asked Jo Sanders's DEA supervisor to transfer her to MCV I promised to'personally look after her, Graham."

"Listen, Kay," he said. "I've been instructed that under no circumstances am I allowed to let anyone but immediate family in to see her."

"No one else?" I said in disbelief. "Not even my niece?"

He paused, then said, "It pains me to tell you this, but especially not her."

"Why?That's ridiculous!"

"It's not my call."

I couldn't imagine Lucy's reaction if she was being barred from seeing her lover.

"She's got a shattered, comminuted fracture of the left femur;" he was explaining. "I've had to put in a plate. She's in traction and on morphine, Kay. She fades in and out: Only her parents are seeing her. I'm not even sure she really understands where she is or what happened to her."

"What about the head injury?" I asked.

"Just a grazing wound that opened the flesh."

"Has Lucy been there at all? Maybe waiting outside the room? Her mother might be with her."

"She was there earlier. Alone," Dr. Worth replied. "Sometime this morning. I doubt she's still there."

"At least give me a chance to talk to Jo's parents."

He wouldn't answer me.

"Graham?"

Silence.

"For God's sake. They're comrades. They're best friends."

Silence.

"Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"Damn it, Graham, they love each other. Jo might not even know if Lucy's alive."

"Jo is very well aware your niece is fine. Jo doesn't want to see her," he said.

I got off the phone and stared at it. Somewhere in this goddamn city my sister was checked into a hotel, and she knew where Lucy was. I went through the Yellow Pages, starting with the Omni, the Jefferson, the obvious hotels. I soon found that Dorothy had checked into the Berkeley in the historic area of the city known as Shockhoe Slip.

She didn't answer the phone in her room. There were only so many places in Richmond where she could carouse on a Sunday, and I hurried out of the house and got into my car. The skyline was shrouded in clouds, and I valetparked my car in front of the Berkeley. I knew right away when I walked inside that Dorothy would not be here. The small, elegant hotel had an intimate, dark bar with highbacked leather chairs and a quiet clientele. The bartender wore a white jacket and was very attentive when I went up to him.

"I'm looking for my sister and wonder if she's been in here," I said. I described her andhe shook his head.

I walked back outside and crossed the cobblestone street to the Tobacco Company, an old tobacco warehouse that had been turned into a restaurant with an exposed glass and brass elevator constantly gliding up and down through an atrium of lush plants and exotic flowers. Just inside the front door was a piano bar with a dance floor, and I spotted Dorothy sitting at a table crowded with five men. I walked up to them, clearly on a mission.

People at nearby tables stopped talking, all eyes on me as if I were a gunslinger who had just pushed her way through a saloon's swinging doors.

"Excuse me," I politely said to the man on Dorothy's left. "Do you mind if I sit here for a moment?"

He did mind, but he surrendered his chair and wandered off to the bar. Dorothy's other companions shifted about uncomfortably.

"I've come to get you;" I said to Dorothy, who clearly had been drinking for a while.

"Well, look who's here!" she exclaimed, and she raised her stinger in a toast. "My big sister. Let me introduce you," she said to her companions.

"Be quiet and listen to me," I said in a low voice.

"My legendary big sister."

Dorothy always got mean when she drank. She didn't slur her words or bump into things, but she could sexually tease men into misery and use her tongue like a nettle. I was ashamed of her demeanor and the way she dressed, which sometimes seemed an intended parody of me.

This night she wore the handsome dark blue suit of a professional, but beneath the jacket her tight pink sweater offered her companions more than a hint of nipples. Dorothy had always been obsessed with her small breasts. To have men staring at them somehow reassured her.

"Dorothy;" I said, leaning closer to her ear, almost overwhelmed by Chanel Coco, "you need to come with me. We have to talk."

"Do you know who she is?" she went on as I cringed. "The chief medical examiner of this fine Commonwealth. Can you believe it? I have a big sister who's a coroner."Wow, that's got to be really interesting," one of the men said.

"What can I get you to drink?" said another.

"So what do you think is the truth about the Ramsey case? Think the parents did it?"

"I'd like somebody to prove those were really Amelia Earhart's bones they found:' "Where's the waitress?"

I put my hand on Dorothy's arm and we got up from the table. One thing was true about my sister: She had too much pride to cause a scene that didn't make her look clever and appealing. I escorted her out into a dispirited night of darkened windows and fog.

"I'm not going home with you," she announced, now that there was no one to hear. "And let go of my fucking arm.

She pulled in the direction of her hotel while I tugged her toward my car.

"You're coming with me and we're going to figure out what to do about Lucy."

"I saw her earlier at the hospital," she said.

I put her in the passenger's side.

"She didn't mention anything about you;" my oversensitive sister said.

I got in and locked the doors.

"Jo's parents are very sweet," she added as we drove off. "I was very taken aback that they didn't know the truth about Lucy and Jo's relationship."

"What did you do? Tell them, Dorothy?"

"Not in so many words, but I suppose I implied certain things because I just assumed they knew. You know, it seems so odd to see a skyline like this when you're used to Miami."

I wanted to slap her.

"Anyway, after talking with the Sanderses for a while, I came to realize they're the Jerry Falwell type and weren't about to condone a lesbian relationship."

"I wish you wouldn't use that word:"

"Well, that's what they are. Descended from the Amazon types on the island of Lesbos in tile Aegean Sea, off the coast of Turkey. Turkish women have so much hair. You ever noticed?"

"You ever heard of Sappho?"

"Of course I've heard of him," Dorothy said.

"She was a Lesbian because she lived on Lesbos. She was one of the greatest lyric poets in antiquity."

"Ha. Nothing poetic about some of these body-pierced, stocky hockey players I see. And of course, the Sanderses didn't come right out and say they thought Lucy and Jo were lesbians. Their reasoning was Jo had been horribly traumatized, and to see Lucy would bring it all back. It was too- soon. They were quite emphatic in a very nice way, and when Lucy showed up, they were very kind and sympathetic when they told her."

I passed through the toll plaza.

"Unfortunately, you know how Lucy is. She challenged them. She said she didn't believe them, and got pretty loud and rude. I explained to the Sanderses that she was just very upset after all she'd been through. They were very patient and said they'd pray for her, and next thing I knew a nurse told Lucy she had to leave.

"She stormed out," my sister said. She looked over at me to add, "Of course, mad at you or not, she'll come looking for you, just like she always does."

"How could you do that to her?" I asked. "How could you get between her and Jo? What kind of person are you?”

Dorothy was taken aback. I could feel her bristle.

"You've always been so jealous of me because you're not her mother," she answered.

I turned off on the Meadow Street exit instead of keeping on toward home.

"Why don't we just settle this once and for all," Dorothy and her stingers said. "You're nothing but a machine, a computer, one of those high-tech instruments you love so much. And one has to ask what's wrong with a person who chooses to spend all her time with dead people. Refrigerated, stinky, rotting dead people, most of them low-lifes to begin with."

I got on the Downtown Expressway again, heading back downtown.

"Versus me, I believe in relationships. I spend my time in creative pursuits, in reflection and relationships, and I believe our bodies are our temples and we should take care of them and be proud of them. Look at you." She paused for effect. "You smoke, you drink, you don't even belong to a gym, I bet. Don't ask me why you're not fat and flabby, unless it's cutting through all those ribs and running around crime scenes or being on your feet all day in a goddamn morgue. But let's get to what the worst thing is."

She leaned close to me, her vodka breath an unpleasant vapor.

"Fasten your shoulder harness, Dorothy," I quietly said.

"What you've done to my daughter. My only child. You never had a child because you've always been too busy. So you took mine," she blasted me with her boozy breath. "I should have never, never, ever let her visit you. Where was my brain when I let her stay summers with you?"

She dramatically clutched her head in both hands.

"You filled her with all this guns and ammo and crimesolving shit! You turned her into a fucking little computer nerd by the time she was ten, when little girls should be going to birthday parties and riding 'ponies and making friends!"

I let her rail on, paying attention to the road.

"You exposed her to a big, ugly redneck cop, and let's face it. He's really your only close relationship with a man. I hope like hell you don't sleep with a pig like that. And I have to tell you, as sorry as I am about what happened to Benton, he was weak. Not enough sap in that tree, oh no. No yolk in that egg.

"Huh. You were the man in that relationship, Miss doctor-lawyer-chief. I've told you before and I'll tell you again, you're nothing but a man, with big tits. You fool everybody because you look so elegant in your Ralph Lauren and ritzy-titzy car. You think you're so fucking sexy with those big tits, always making me feel something's wrong with me and making fun of me when I ordered Mark Eden and all those other contraptions. And remember what Mother said?

"She gave me a photograph of a man's hairy hand and said, "That's what makes a woman's breasts get big."' "You're drunk," I said.

"We were teenagers and you made fun of me!"

"I never made fun of you"

"You made me feel stupid and ugly. And you had this blond hair and a chest and all the boys talked about you. Especially since you were smart, too. Oh, you've always thought you're so fucking smart because I couldn't do anything but English."

"Stop it, Dorothy."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't, Dorothy."

"But you don't fool me. Oh, no."

She shook her head from side to side, wagging her finger in my face.

"Oh, no. You can't fool me. I've always suspected the truth about you."

I was parked in front of the Berkeley Hotel, and she didn't even notice. She was screaming, -tears streaming down her face.

"You're a closet diesel dyke," she said hatefully. "And you turned my daughter into one! And now she almost gets killed and she thinks I'm lower than a sewer!"

"Why don't you go inside your hotel and get some sleep," I said to her.

She wiped her eyes and looked out the window, surprised to see her hotel, as if it were a spaceship that had silently landed.

"I'm not dumping you out on the roadside, Dorothy. But right now I think it's best we're not together."

She sniffled, her rage fading like fireworks in the night. "I'll get you to your room," I said.

She shook her head, her hands motionless in her lap, tears sliding down her miserable face.

"She didn't want to see me," she said in a voice as quiet as a breath. "The minute I came off the elevator in that hospital, she looked as if someone had just spat on her food."

A group of people were walking out of the Tobacco Company. I recognized the men who had been at Dorothy's table. They were walking unsteadily and laughing too loudly.

"She's always wanted to be just like you, Kay. Do you have any idea how that feels?" she cried. "I'm a somebody, too. Why can't she want to be like me?"

She suddenly moved over and hugged me. She cried into my neck, sobbing, shaking. I wanted to love her. But I didn't. I never had.

"I want her to adore me, too!" she exclaimed, carried away by emotion and alcohol and her own addiction to drama. "I want her to admire me, too! I want her to brag about me like she does you! I want her to think I'm brilliant and strong, that everyone turns around and looks at me when I walk into a room. I want her to think and say all those things-she thinks and says about you! I want her to ask my advice and want to grow up to be just like me."

I put the car in gear and drove up to the entrance of the hotel.

"Dorothy," I said, "you're the most selfish person I've ever known." 30It was almost nine o'clock by the time I got home, and I worried that I should have brought Dorothy with me instead of leaving her at the hotel. I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if she had gone right back across the street to the bar. Maybe there were a few lonely men left she could amuse.

I checked my telephone messages, annoyed by hangups. There were seven of them, and caller-m read unavailable each time. Reporters didn't like to leave messages, even at my office, because it gave me the option of not calling them back. I heard a car door shut in the driveway and almost wondered if it were Dorothy, but when I checked, a yellow taxi was driving away as Lucy rang the bell.

She was carrying one small suitcase and a tote bag and dropped them in the foyer, shoving the door shut without hugging me. Her left cheek was one dark purple bruise, and several smaller ones were beginning to turn yellow at the edges. I had seen enough injuries like that to know she had been punched.

"I hate her," she started in, glaring at me as if I were to blame. "Who told her to come here? Was it you?"

"You know I would never do something like that:' I said.

"Come on. Let's talk. We have so much talking to do. My God, I was beginning to think I was never going to see you again."

I sat her in front of the fire and tossed in another log. Lucy looked awful. She had dark circles under her eyes, her jeans and sweater were hanging off her, her reddishbrown hair was falling over her face. She propped a foot up on my coffee table. Velcro ripped as she took off her ankle holster and gun.

"You got anything to drink in this house?" she asked. "Some bourbon or something? There was no damn heat in the back of the taxi and the window wouldn't close. I'm frozen. Look at my hands."

She held them out. The nails were blue. I took both of them in mine and held them tight. I moved closer to her on the couch and put my arms around her again. She felt so thin.

"What happened to all that muscle?" I tried to be funny.

"I haven't had much food..:" She stared into the fire.

"They don't have food in Miami?"

She wouldn't smile.

"Why did Mother have to come? Why can't she just leave me alone? All my life she doesn't do a goddamn fucking thing except subject me to all her men, men, men," she said. "Parade herself around with all these dicks fawning over her while I had nobody. Hell, they had nobody, either, and didn't even know it."

"You've always had me."

She shoved her hair out of her eyes and didn't seem to hear me.

"You know what she did at the hospital?"

"How did she know where to find you?" I had to have that question answered first, and Lucy knew why I asked it.

"Because she's my birth mother," she said with singsong sarcasm. "So she's listed on various forms whether I like it or not, and of course she knows who Jo is. So Mom tracks down Jo's parents here in Richmond and finds out everything because she's so manipulative and people always think she's wonderful. The Sanderses tell her where Jo's room'is and Mother shows up at the hospital this morning and I didn't even know she was here until I was sitting there in the waiting area and she walked in like the prima donna she is."

She clenched and unclenched her fists as if her fingers were stiff.

"Then guess what?" she went on. "Mom puts on this big sympathetic act with the Sanderses. Is bringing them coffee, sandwiches, giving them all her little pearls of philosophy. And they're talking and talking, and I'm just sitting there like I don't exist, and then Mom comes over and pats my hand and says, Jo isn't having any visitors today.

"I ask her who the hell she is, telling me that. She says the Sanderses wanted her to tell me because they didn't want to hurt my feelings. So I finally just fucking leave. Mom may still be there for all I know."

"She's not," I said.

Lucy got up and stabbed a log with the poker. Sparks swarmed as if in protest.

"She's gone too far. This time she's done it," my niece said.

"Let's don't talk about her. I want to talk about you. Tell me what happened in Miami:"

She sat on the rug, leaning against the couch, staring into the fire. I got up and went to the bar and poured her a Booker's bourbon.

"Aunt Kay, I've got to see her."

I handed Lucy the drink and sat back down. I massaged her shoulders and she began to loosen up, her voice getting drowsy.

"She's in there and doesn't know I'm waiting for her. Maybe she thinks I can't be bothered."

"Why in the world would she think that, Lucy?"

She didn't answer me, but seemed drawn into smoke and flames. She sipped her drink.

"When we were driving there in my hot little V -twelveBenz," she said in a distant voice, "Jo had this bad feeling and she told me she did. I said it was normal to have a bad feeling when you're about to do a takedown. I even kidded her about it."

She paused, just staring at flames as if she were seeing something else.

"We get to the door of the apartment that these OneSixty-Fiver assholes are using as their clubhouse;' she resumed, "and Jo goes first. There're six of them in there instead of three. Right away we know we're had and I know what they're going to do. One of them grabs Jo and sticks a gun to her head to make her tell them where the Fisher Island place is we'd set up for the hit."

She took a deep breath and was silent, as if she couldn't go on. She sipped the bourbon.

"God, what is this stuff? The vapors alone are knocking me out."

"A hundred and twenty proof. Usually I'm not a pusher, but it wouldn't be such a bad thing for you to be knocked out right now. Stay here with me for a while;" I said.

"ATF and DEA did everything right," she told me.

"These things happen, Lucy."

"I had to think so fast. The only thing I knew to do was act like I didn't care if they blew her brains out or not. Here they are holding a gun to her head and I start acting pissed off at her, which wasn't at all what they were expecting."

She took another swallow of bourbon. It was hitting her hard.

"I walked up to this Moroccan asshole with the gun and get right in his face and tell him to go ahead and waste her, that she's a stupid bitch and I'm sick of her always getting in my way. But if he does her now, all he's going to do is fuck himself and everybody else."

She stared into the fire, eyes wide and unblinking, as if watching it again in her mind.

"I say, You think I didn't expect you would use us and then do this? You think I'm stupid? Well, guess what? I forgot to tell you Mr. Tortora is expecting our company-and I look at my watch-in exactly one hour and sixteen minutes. I thought it would be nice to entertain him before you motherfuckers showed up and blew his guts out and took all his guns and money and fucking cocaine. What happens if we don't show up? You think he won't get nervous?"

I couldn't take my eyes off Lucy. Images flew at me from all directions. I imagined her playing out this dangerous act, and I saw her in battle dress when she was at fire scenes and flying a helicopter and programming computers. I envisioned her as the irritating, irrepressible child I had virtually raised.. Marino was right. Lucy thought she had so much to prove. Her first impulse had always been to fight.

"I didn't think they really believed me," she said. "So I turn to Jo. I'll never forget the look in her eyes, the pistol barrel right against her temple. Her eyes." She paused. "They're so calm as she looks in mine because…"

Her voice shook.

"Because she wants me to know she loves me…" Lucy chokes on sobs. "She loves me! She wants me to know because she believes..:" Her voice went up and stopped. "She believes we're going to die. And that's when I start yelling at her. I call her a stupid fucking bitch and slap her face so hard my hand goes numb.

"And she just looks at me as if I'm all there is, blood trickling out of her nose and the sides of her mouth, a red river down her face, dripping off her chin. She didn't even cry. She's out of the story, lost her role, her training; everything she damn well knows what to do. I grab her. I shove her hard to the ground and get on top of her, swearing and slapping and yelling."

She wiped her eyes and stared straight ahead.

"And what's so awful, Aunt Kay, is part of it's real. I'm so angry with her for quitting on me, for just giving up. She was going to just give up and die, goddamn it!"

"Like Benton did;" I quietly said.

Lucy wiped her face on her shirt. She didn't seem to hear what I'd said.

"I'm so fucking tired of people giving up and leaving me;" she said in a shattered voice. "When I need them and they fucking give up!"

"Benton didn't give up, Lucy."

"I just keep swearing at Jo, screaming and hitting her and telling her I'm going to kill her as I straddle her, shaking her by her hair. It wakes her up, maybe even pisses her off, too, and she starts fighting back. Calls me a Cuban cunt and spits blood in my face, punches me, and by this time the guys are laughing and whistling and grabbing their crotches..: '

She took another long breath and shut her eyes, barely able to sit up. She leaned against my legs, firelight playing on her strong, beautiful face.

"She starts really struggling. My knees are so tight against her sides I'm surprised I didn't break her ribs, and while we're going at each other like that, I tear open her shirt, and this really gets the guys going and they don't see me grab my gun out of my ankle holster. I start firing. I just fire. Fire. Fire. Fire. Fire..:' Her voice trailed off.

I bent over and put my arms around her.

"You know? I'm wearing those wide-legged street jeans to hide my Sig. They say I fired eleven rounds. I don't even remember dropping the empty magazine, putting in a full one. Racking it back. Agents are everywhere and somehow I'm dragging Jo out the door. And she's bleeding heavily from her head."

Lucy's lower lip trembled as she tried to go on, her voice far away. She wasn't here. She was there, living it again.

"Fire. Fire. Fire. Her blood on my hands."

Her voice rose to God.

"I hit her and hit her. I can still feel the sting of her cheek against the palm of my hand."

She looked at her hand as if it should be put to death.

"I felt it. How soft her skin was. And she bled. I made her bleed. The skin I had touched and loved. I drew blood from it. Then the guns, the guns, the guns, and smoke and ringing in my ears and it's a blaze when it happens like that. It's over and never started. I knew she was dead."

She bowed her head and wept quietly, and I stroked her hair.

"You saved her life. And you saved yours;" I finally said. "Jo knows what you did and why you did it, Lucy. She should love you all the more."

"I'm in trouble this time, Aunt Kay," she said.

"You're a hero. That's what you are."

"No. You don't understand. It doesn't matter if it was a good shooting. It doesn't matter ifATF gives me a medal:"

She sat up and got to her feet. She stared down at me with defeat in her eyes and another emotion I didn't recognize. Maybe it was grief. She'd never shown grief when Benton was murdered. All I'd ever seen was rage.

"The bullet they took out of her leg? It's a Hornady Custom Jacketed hollowpoint. Ninety grains. What I had in my gun."

I didn't know what to say.

"I'm the one who shot her, Aunt Kay."

"Even if you did.:."

"What if she never walks again…? What if she's finished in law enforcement because of me?"

"She won't be jumping out of helicopters anytime soon," I said. "But she's going to be fine."

"What if I permanently damaged her face with my fucking fist?"

"Lucy, listen to me," I said. "You saved her life. If you killed two people to do that, then so be it. You had no choice. It's not that you wanted to:' "The hell I didn't;' she said. "I wish I'd killed all of them."

"You don't mean that:' "Maybe I'll just be a mercenary soldier," she bitterly said. "Got any murderers, rapists, carjackers, pedophiles, drug dealers you need to get rid of? Just call one-eighthundred-L-U-C-Y"

"You can't bring Benton back through killing."

Still, it was as if she didn't hear me.

"He wouldn't want you to feel this way," I said.

The telephone rang.

"He didn't abandon you, Lucy. Don't be angry with him because he died."

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.

"Fhank 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.