Blow Fly

46

LUCY SPRINTS THROUGH the dark, her aching chest not due to physical exertion.

The Mercedes is quiet on the side of the street, and she can't see Rudy through the tinted windows. The locks click free and she opens the driver's door.

"Mission accomplished?" he grimly asks in the dark. "Don't start the car yet."

She tells him about her encounter with the drunk and the hotel staff and explains the way she handled it. He says nothing. She feels his disapproval and irritation with her.

"Give me some credit. I think we're fine."

"As fine as you could be under the circumstances," he has to admit.

"There's no reason for anyone to connect me with Rocco's room, with his death," she goes on. "I guarantee that hotel staff won't touch his room with that Do Not Disturb sign on the door. More flies will come in through the opening in the window. Say he's found in three or four days, maggots will have devoured him to the point he won't be recognizable. And in case you didn't know it, blow flies are attracted to shit, too.

"And his blood alcohol will be high, no reason in the world for anyone to think anything but suicide, and the hotel will want his rotting body and maggots out of there as quickly as possible. And the medical examiner will think he's been dead longer than room service says-assuming there is an exact time associated with Rocco's dinner order, and there probably won't be. Orders aren't handled by computer. I know that for a fact."

"For a fact?" Rudy asks. "How the hell can you know that for a fact?"

"What do you think I am, fucking stupid? I called. Days ago. Said I was a Hewlett-Packard rep checking on their computers and that the one the kitchen used for room service needed a software upgrade. And they didn't know what I was talking about, said they didn't use computers for room service, only for inventory. Then I talked about the advantages of using an hp pavilion 753n with an Intel Pentium processor and eighty-gigabyte hard drive and CD-ROM and all the rest for room service orders… Point is, there is no computer record of what time Rocco ordered dinner, okay?"

Rudy was silent, then said, "They use Hewlett-Packards at that hotel?"

"Easy enough to find out by calling the business office. Yes," she replied.

"Okay. Good job on that one. So even if the drunk or anyone else paid any attention to you, the way we've staged Rocco's crime scene will make it appear he was dead long before you went off to party with the drunk."

"That's right, Rudy. We're fine. We're fine. Rocco's already being infested. Masses of maggots will produce heat and speed up decomposition, and it looks like a suicide, anyway-one committed earlier-much earlier-than anyone will imagine."

She starts the car, laying a hand on his arm. "Now, can we get the hell out of here?"

"We can't make any more mistakes, Lucy," he says in a defeated way. "We just can't."

She pulls away from the sidewalk, angry.

"The fact is, at least two people in that hotel think you might be a drunk conventiongoer or maybe even a prostitute, and you aren't easy to forget, no matter what they think you are. It probably doesn't matter one goddamn bit, but…" He doesn't finish.

"But it could have." Lucy drives carefully, checking her mirrors and the sidewalks, dark with shadows.

"Right. It could have."

She feels his eyes and the shifting of his moods. He is softening toward her, sorry he was so rough.

"Hey, you-Rudy-you." She reaches out and affectionately touches his cheek, his stubble reminding her of a cat's tongue. "We're on the go and we're okay."

She reaches for his hand and holds it tightly.

"This went down bad, Rudy, really bad, but it's going to turn out fine. We're fine," she says again.

When one or the other or both of them are scared, they never admit it, but they know because they need each other. Each becomes desperate for the other's warm flesh. Lucy lifts his hand to her mouth, resting his arm against her.

"Don't," he says. "We're both tired, strung-out. Not a good time to… to not have both hands on the wheel. Lucy, don't," he mutters as she deeply kisses his fingers, his knuckles, his palm.

She makes love to one hand and slides the other inside her black linen blouse.

"Lucy, stop… oh, Jesus… it's not fair." He unfastens his seat belt. "I don't want to feel this way about you, goddamn it."

Lucy drives.

"You do feel it for me. At least sometimes, don't you?"

Lucy pets his hair, his neck, slips her hand into his collar and traces the muscles of his upper back. She doesn't look at him as she drives fast.