From Potter`s Field

10

Lucy had finished her run and showered by the time I returned to the room. Dinner was being served in the cafeteria, but she was at ERF working.

'I'm going back to Richmond tonight,' I said to her on the phone.

'I thought you were spending the night,' she said, and I detected disappointment.

'Marino's coming to get me,' I said.

'When?'

'He's on his way. We could have dinner before I go-'

'Okay. I'd like Jan to come.'

'That's fine,' I said. 'We should include Marino, though. He's already on the road.'

Lucy was silent.

'Why don't you and I visit alone first?' I suggested.

'Over here?'

'Yes. I'm cleared as long as you let me through all those scanners, locked doors, X-ray machines and heat-seeking missiles.'

'Well, I'll have to check with the attorney general. She hates it when I call her at home.'

'I'm on my way.'

The Engineering Research Facility was three concrete-and-glass pods surrounded by trees, and one could not get into the parking lot without stopping at a guard booth that was no more than a hundred feet from the one at the Academy's entrance. ERF was the FBI's most classified division, its employees required to scan their fingerprints into biometric locks before Plexiglas doors would let them in. Lucy was waiting for me in front. It was almost eight p.m.

'Hi,' she said.

'There are at least a dozen cars in the parking lot,' I said. 'Do people usually work this late?'

'They drift in and out at all hours. Most of the time I never see them.'

We walked through a vast space of beige carpet and walls, passing shut doors leading into laboratories where scientists and engineers worked on projects they could not discuss. I had only vague notions of what went on here beyond Lucy's work with CAIN. But I knew the mission was to technically enhance whatever job a special agent might have, whether it was surveillance, or shooting or rappelling from a helicopter, or using a robot in a raid. For Gault to have gotten inside here was the equivalent of him wandering freely through NASA or a nuclear power plant. It was unthinkable.

'Benton told me about the photograph that was in your desk,' I said to Lucy as we boarded an elevator.

She keyed us up to the second floor. 'Gault already knows what you look like, if that's what you're worried about. He's seen you before - at least twice.'

'I don't like that he might now know what you look like,' I said pointedly.

'You're assuming he has the photograph.'

We entered a gray rabbit warren of cubicles with workstations and printers and stacks of paper. CAIN himself was behind glass in an air-conditioned space filled with monitors, modems and miles of cable hidden beneath a raised floor.

'I've got to check something,' she said, scanning her fingerprint to unlock CAIN's door.

I followed her into chilled air tense with the static of invisible traffic moving at incredible speeds. Modem lights blinked red and green, and an eighteen-inch video display announced CAIN in bold bright letters that looped and whorled like the fingerprint of the person who was just scanned in.

'The photograph was in the envelope with the American Express card he apparently now has,' I said. 'Logic would tell you that he may have both.'

'Someone else could have it.' She was intensely watching the modems, then glancing at the time on her screen and making notes. 'It depends on who actually went through my desk.'

We had always assumed it was Carrie alone who had broken in and taken whatever she wanted. Now I was not so sure.

'Carrie may not have been by herself,' I said.

Lucy did not reply.

'In fact, I don't believe Gault could have resisted the opportunity to come in here. I think he was with her.'

'That's awfully risky when you're wanted for murder.'

'Lucy, it's awfully risky to break into here to begin with.'

She continued making notes while CAIN's colors swirled on the screen and lights glowed on and off. CAIN was a space-age squid with tentacles connecting law enforcement entities here and abroad, his head an upright beige box with various buttons and slots. As cold air whirred, I almost wondered if he knew what we were saying.

'What else might have disappeared from your office?' I then said. 'Is there anything else missing?'

She was studying a modem's flashing light, her face perplexed. She glanced up at me. 'It's got to be coming in through one of these modems.'

'What is?' I asked, puzzled.

She sat before a keyboard, struck the space bar and the CAIN screen saver vanished. She logged on and began typing UNIX commands that made no sense to me. Next she pulled up the System Administrator Menu and got into the audit log.

'I've been coming in here routinely and checking the traffic on the modems,' she said, scanning. 'Unless this person is physically located in this building and hardwired into the system, he's got to be dialing in by modem.'

'There's no other way,' I said.

'Well' - she took a deep breath - 'theoretically you could use a receiver to pick up keyboard input via Van Eck radiation. Some Soviet agents were doing that not so long ago.'

'But that wouldn't actually get you inside the system,' I said.

'It could get you passwords and other information that might get you in if you had the dial-in number.'

'Were those changed after the break-in?'

'Of course. I changed everything I could think of, and in fact, the dial-in numbers have been changed again since. Plus we have callback modems. You call CAIN and he calls you back to make certain you're legit.' She looked discouraged and angry.

'If you attached a virus to a program,' I said, trying to help, 'wouldn't it change the size of the file? Couldn't that be a way to find out where the virus is?'

'Yes, it would change the file size,' she said. 'But the problem is that the UNIX program used to scan files for something like that is called checksum, and it's not cryptographically secure. I'm sure who ever did this included a balancing checksum to cause the bytes in the virus program to disappear.'

'So the virus is invisible.'

She nodded, distracted, and I knew she was thinking about Carrie. Then Lucy typed a who command to see what law enforcement agencies were logged on, if any. New York was. So were Charlotte and Richmond, and Lucy pointed out their modems to me. Lights danced across the front of them as data was transmitted over telephone lines.

'We should go eat dinner,' I said gently to my niece.

She typed more commands. 'I'm not hungry now.'

'Lucy, you can't let this take over your life.'

'You're one to talk.'

She was right.

'War has been declared,' she added. 'This is war.'

'This is not Carrie,' I said of the woman who, I suspected, had been more than Lucy's friend.

'It doesn't matter who it is.' She continued typing.

But it did. Carrie Grethen did not murder people and mutilate their bodies. Temple Gault did.

'Was anything else of yours taken during the break-in?' I tried again.

She stopped what she was doing and looked at me, her eyes glinting. 'Yes, if you must know,' she said. 'I had a big manilla envelope that I didn't want to leave in my dorm rooms at UVA or here because of roommates and other people in and out. It was personal. I thought it was safer in my desk up here.'

'What was in this envelope?'

'Letters, notes, different things. Some of them were from you, including the letter with the photograph and charge card. Most were from her.' Her face colored. 'There were a few notes from Grans.'

'Letters from Carrie?' I did not understand. 'Why would she write you? Both of you were here at Quantico and you didn't know each other before last fall.'

'We sort of did,' she said, her face turning a brighter red.

'How?' I asked, baffled.

'We met through a computer bulletin board, through Prodigy over the summer. I saved all the printouts of the notes we sent.'

'Did you deliberately try to arrange it so you could be at ERF together?' I said as my disbelief grew.

'She was already in the process of getting hired by the Bureau,' Lucy answered. 'She encouraged me to try to get an internship here.'

My silence was heavy.

'Look,' she demanded. 'How could I have known?'

'I guess you couldn't have,' I said. 'But she set you up, Lucy. She wanted you here. This was planned long before she met you through Prodigy. She probably had already met Gault in that northern Virginia spy shop, then they decided she should meet you.'

She angrily stared off.

'God,'1 said with a loud sigh. 'You were lured right into it.' I stared off, almost sick. 'It's not just because of how good you are at what you do. It's also because of me.'

'Don't try to turn this into your fault. I hate it when you do that.'

'You are my niece. Gault has probably known that for a while.'

'I am also well known in the computer world.' She looked defiantly at me. 'Other people in the computer world have heard of me. Everything doesn't have to be because of you.'

'Does Benton know how you met Carrie?'

'I told him a long time ago.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'I didn't want to. I feel bad enough. It's personal.' She wouldn't look at me. 'It was between Mr. Wesley and me. And more to the point, I didn't do anything wrong.'

'Are you telling me that this large manilla envelope was missing after the break-in?'

'Yes.'

'Why would someone want it?'

'She would,' she said bitterly. 'It had things in it that she'd written to me.'

'Has she tried to contact you since then?'

'No,' she said as if she hated Carrie Grethen.

'Come on,'1 said in the firm tone of a mother. 'Let's go find Marino.'

He was in the Boardroom, where I tried a Zima and he ordered another beer. Lucy was off to find Janet, and this gave Marino and me a few minutes to talk.

'I don't know how you stand that stuff,' he said, disdainfully eyeing my drink.

'I don't know how I'll stand it either since I've never had one before.' I took a sip. It was actually quite good, and I said so.

'Maybe you should try something before you judge it,' I added.

'I don't drink queer beer. And I don't have to try a lot of things to know they ain't for me.'

'I guess one of the major differences between us, Marino, is I am not constantly worried about whether people think I'm gay.'

'Some people think you are,' he said.

I was amused. 'Well, rest assured nobody thinks you are,' I said. 'The only thing most people assume about you is that you are a bigot.'

Marino yawned without covering his mouth. He was smoking and drinking Budweiser from the bottle. He had dark circles under his eyes, and though he had yet to divulge intimate details about his relationship with Molly, I recognized the symptoms of someone in lust. There were times when he looked as if he had been up and athletic for weeks on end.

'Are you all right?' I inquired.

He set down his bottle and looked around. The Boardroom was busy with new agents and cops drinking beer and eating popcorn while a television blared.

'I'm beat,' he said, and he seemed very distracted.

'I appreciate your coming to get me.'

'Just poke me if I start falling asleep at the wheel,' he said. 'Or you can drive. Those things you're drinking probably don't have any booze in them anyway.'

'They have enough. I won't be driving, and if you're that tired, perhaps we should stay here.'

He got up to get another beer. I followed him with my eyes. Marino was going to be difficult tonight. I could sense his storm fronts better than any meteorologist.

'We got a lab report back from New York that you might find interesting,' he said as he sat back down. 'It's got to do with Gault's hair.'

'The hair found in the fountain?' I asked with interest.

'Yeah. And I don't got the sort of scientific detail I know you want, okay? So you'll have to call up there yourself for that. But the bottom line is they found drugs in his hair. They said he had to be drinking and doing coke for this stuff to have shown up in his hair.'

'They found cocaethylene,' I said.

'I think that's the name. It was all through his hair, from the roots to the ends, meaning he's been drinking and drugging for a while.'

'Actually, we can't be certain how long he's been doing it,' I said.

'The guy I talked to said we're looking at five months of growth,' Marino said.

'Testing hair for drugs is controversial,'1 explained. 'It's not certain that some positive results for cocaine in hair aren't due to external contamination. Say, smoke in crack houses that gets absorbed by the hair just like cigarette smoke does. It's not always easy to distinguish between what has been absorbed and what has been ingested.'

'You mean he could be contaminated.' Marino pondered this.

'Yes, he could be. But that doesn't mean he isn't drinking and drugging, too. In fact, he has to be. Cocaethylene is produced in the liver.'

Marino thoughtfully lit another cigarette. 'What about him dyeing his hair all the time?'

'That can affect test results, too,' I said. 'Some oxidizing agents might destroy some of the drug.'

'Oxidizing?'

'As in peroxides, for example.'

'Then it's possible some of this cocaethylene's been destroyed,' Marino reasoned. 'Meaning it's also possible his drug level was really higher than it looks.'

'It could be.'

'He has to be getting drugs somewhere.' Marino stared off.

'In New York that certainly wouldn't be hard,' I said.

'Hell, it's not hard anywhere.' The expression on his face was getting more tense.

'What are you thinking?' I asked.

'I'll tell you what I'm thinking,' he started in. 'This drug connection ain't working out so hot for Jimmy Davila.'

'Why? Do we know his toxicology results?' I asked.

'They're negative.' He paused. 'Benny's started singing. He's saying Davila dealt.'

'I should think people might consider the source on that one,' I said. 'Benny doesn't exactly strike me as a reliable narrator.'

'I agree with you,' Marino said. 'But some people are trying to paint Davila as a bad cop. There's a rumor they want to pin Jane's murder on him.'

'That's crazy,' I said, surprised. That makes absolutely no sense.'

'You remember the stuff on Jane's hand that glowed in the Luma-Lite?'

'Yes.'

'Cocaine,' he said.

'And her toxicology?'

'Negative. And that's weird.' Marino looked frustrated. 'But the other thing Benny's saying now is that it was Davila who gave the knapsack to him.'

'Oh come on,' I said with irritation.

'I'm just telling you.'

'It wasn't Davila's hair found in the fountain.'

'We can't prove how long that had been there. And we don't know it's Gault's,' he said.

'DNA will verify it's Gault's,' I said with conviction. 'And Davila carried a.380 and a.38. Jane was shot with a Clock.'

'Look' - Marino leaned forward, resting his arms on the table - 'I'm not here to argue with you, Doc. I'm just telling you that things aren't looking good. New York politicians want this case cleared, and a good way to do that is to pin the crime on a dead man. So what do you do? You turn Davila into a dirtbag and nobody feels sorry for him. Nobody cares.'

'And what about what happened to Davila?'

'That dumbshit medical examiner who went to the scene still thinks it's possible he committed suicide.'

I looked at Marino as if he'd lost his mind. 'He kicked himself in the head?' I said. 'Then shot himself between the eyes?'

'He was standing up when he shot himself with his own gun, and when he fell he hit concrete or something.'

'His vital reaction to his injuries shows he received the blow to his head first,' I said, getting angrier. 'And please explain how his revolver ended up so neatly on his chest.'

'It's not your case, Doc.' Marino looked me in the eye. 'That's the bottom line. You and me are both guests. We got invited.'

'Davila did not commit suicide,' I said. 'And Dr. Horowitz is not going to allow such a thing to come out of his office.'

'Maybe he won't. Maybe they'll just say that Davila was a dirtbag who got whacked by another drug dealer. Jane ends up in a pine box in Potter's Field. End of story. Central Park and the subway are safe again.'

I thought of Commander Penn and felt uneasy. I asked Marino about her.

'I don't know what she's got to do with any of this,' he said. 'I've just been talking to some of the guys. But she's jammed. On the one hand, she wouldn't want anyone to think she had a bad cop. On the other, she don't want the public to think there's a crazed serial killer running through the subway.'

'I see,' I said as I thought of the enormous pressure she must be under, for it was her department's mandate to take the subway back from the criminals. New York City had allocated the Transit Police tens of millions of dollars to do that.

'Plus,' he added, 'it was a friggin' reporter who found Jane's body in Central Park. And this guy's relentless as a jackhammer from what I've heard. He wants to win a Nobel Prize.'

'Not likely,' I said irritably.

'You never know,' said Marino, who often made predictions about who would win a Nobel Prize. By now, according to him, I had won several.

'I wish we knew whether Gault is still in New York,' I said.

Marino drained his second beer and looked at his watch. 'Where's Lucy?' he asked.

'Looking for Janet, last I heard.'

'What's she like?'

I knew what he was wondering. 'She's a lovely young woman,' I said. 'Bright but very quiet.'

He was silent.

'Marino, they've put my niece on the security floor.'

He turned toward the counter as if he were thinking about another beer. 'Who did? Benton?'

'Yes.'

'Because of the computer mess?'

'Yes.'

'You want another Zima?'

'No, thank you. And you shouldn't have another beer, since you're driving. In fact, you're probably driving a police car and shouldn't have had the first one.'

I've got my truck tonight.'

I was not at all happy to hear that, and he could tell.

'Look, so it don't have a damn air bag. I'm sorry, okay? But a taxi or limo service wouldn't have had an air bag, either.'

'Marino

'I'm just going to buy you this huge air bag. And you can drag it around with you everywhere you go like your own personal hot-air balloon.'

'A file was stolen from Lucy's desk when ERF was broken into last fall,' I said.

'What sort of file?' he asked.

'A manilla envelope containing personal correspondence,' I told him about Prodigy and how Lucy and Carrie had met.

'They knew each other before Quantico?' he said.

'Yes. And I think Lucy believes it was Carrie who went into her desk drawer.'

Marino glanced around as he restlessly moved his empty beer bottle in small circles on the table.

'She seems obsessed with Carrie and can't see anything else,' I went on. 'I'm worried.'

'Where is Carrie these days?' he asked.

'I have no earthly idea,' I said.

Because it could not be proven that she had broken into ERF or had stolen Bureau property, she had been fired but not prosecuted. Carrie had never been locked up, not even for a day.

Marino thought for a moment. 'Well, that bitch isn't what Lucy should be worried about. It's him.'

'Certainly, I am more concerned about him.'

'You think he's got her envelope?'

'That's what I'm afraid of.' I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around.

'We sitting here or moving on?' Lucy asked, and she had changed into khaki slacks and a denim shirt with the FBI logo embroidered on it. She wore hiking boots and a sturdy leather belt. All that was missing was a cap and a gun.

Marino was more interested in Janet, who could fill a polo shirt in a manner that was riveting. 'So, let's talk about what was in this envelope,' he said to me, unable to shift his eyes from Janet's chest.

'Let's don't do it here,' I said.

Marino's truck was a big blue Ford he kept much cleaner than his police car. His truck had a CB radio and a gun rack, and other than cigarette butts filling the ashtray, there was no trash to be seen. I sat in front, where air fresheners suspended from the rearview mirror gave the darkness a potent scent of pine.

'Tell me exactly what was in the envelope,' Marino said to Lucy, who was in back with her friend.

'I can't tell you exactly,' Lucy said, scooting forward and resting a hand on top of my seat.

Marino crept past the guard booth, then shifted gears as his truck loudly got interested in being alive.

'Think.' He raised his voice.

Janet quietly spoke to Lucy, and for a moment they conversed in murmurs. The narrow road was black, firing ranges unusually still. I had never ridden in Marino's truck, and it struck me as a bold symbol of his male pride.

Lucy started talking. 'I had some letters from Grans, Aunt Kay, and E-mail from Prodigy.'

'From Carrie, you mean,' Marino said.

She hesitated. 'Yes.'

'What else?'

'Birthday cards.'

'From who?' Marino asked.

'The same people.'

'What about your mother?'

'No.'

'What about your dad?'

'I don't have anything from him.'

'Her father died when she was very small,' I reminded Marino.

'When you wrote Lucy did you use a return address?' he asked me.

'Yes. My stationery would have that.'

'A post office box?'

'No. My personal mail is delivered to my house. Everything else goes to the office.' 'What are you trying to find out?' Lucy said with a trace of resentment.

'Okay,' Marino said as he drove through dark countryside, 'let me tell you what your thief knows so far. He knows where you go to school, where your aunt Kay lives in Richmond, where your grandmother in Florida lives. He knows what you look like and when you were born.

'Plus he knows about your friendship with Carrie because of the E-mail thing.' He glanced into the rearview mirror. 'And that's just the minimum of what this toad knows about you. I haven't read the letters and notes to see what else he's found out.'

'She knew most of all that anyway,' Lucy said angrily.

'She?' Marino pointedly asked.

Lucy was silent.

It was Janet who gently spoke. 'Lucy, you've got to get over it. You've got to give it up.'

'What else?' Marino asked my niece. 'Try to remember the smallest thing. What else was in the envelope?'

'A few autographs and a few old coins. Just things from when I was a kid. Things that would have no value to anyone but me. Like a shell from the beach I picked up when I was with Aunt Kay one time when I was little.'

She thought for a moment. 'My passport. And there were a few papers I did in high school.'

The pain in her voice tugged at my heart, and I wanted to hug her. But when Lucy was sad she pushed everyone away. She fought.

'Why did you keep them in the envelope?' Marino was asking.

'I had to keep them somewhere,' she snapped. 'It was my damn stuff, okay? And if I'd left it in Miami my mother probably would have thrown it in the trash.'

'The papers you did in high school,' I said. 'What were they about, Lucy?'

The truck got quiet, filled with no voice but its own. The sound of its engine rose and fell with acceleration and the shifting of gears as Marino drove into the tiny town of Triangle. Roadside diners were lit up, and I suspected many of the cars out were driven by marines.

Lucy said, 'Well, it's sort of ironical now. One of the papers I did back then was a practical tutorial on UNIX security. My focus was basically passwords, you know, what could happen if users chose poor passwords. So I talked about the encryption subroutine in C libraries that-'

'What was the other paper about?' Marino interrupted her. 'Brain surgery?'

'How did you guess?' she said just as snootily.

'What was it on?' I asked.

'Wordsworth,' she said.

We ate at the Globe and Laurel, and as I looked around at Highland plaid, police patches and beer steins hanging over the bar, I thought of my life. Mark and I used to eat here, and then in London a bomb detonated as he walked past. Wesley and I once came here often. Then we began knowing each other too well, and we no longer went out in public much.

Everyone had French onion soup and tenderloin. Janet was typically quiet, and Marino would not stop staring at her and making provocative comments. Lucy was getting increasingly infuriated with him, and I was surprised at his behavior. He was no fool. He knew what he was doing.

'Aunt Kay,' Lucy said, 'I want to spend the weekend with you.'

'In Richmond?' I asked.

'That's where you still live, isn't it?' She did not smile.

I hesitated. 'I think you need to stay where you are right now.'

'I'm not in prison. I can do what I want.'

'Of course you're not in prison,' I said quietly. 'Let me talk to Benton, all right?'

She was silent.

'So tell me what you think of the Sig-nine,' Marino was saying to Janet's bosom.

She boldly looked him in the eye and said, 'I'd rather have a Colt Python with a six-inch barrel. Wouldn't you?'

Dinner continued to deteriorate, and the ride back to the Academy was tensely silent except for Marino's unrelenting attempts to engage Janet in a dialogue. After we let her and Lucy out of the truck, I turned to him and boiled over.

'For God's sake,' I exploded. 'What has gotten into you?'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'You were obnoxious. Absolutely obnoxious, and you know exactly what I'm talking about.'

He sped through the darkness along J. Edgar Hoover Road, heading toward the interstate as he fumbled for a cigarette.

'Janet will probably never want to be around you again,'I went on. 'I wouldn't blame Lucy for avoiding you, either. And that's a shame. The two of you had become friends.'

'Just because I've given her shooting lessons don't mean we're friends,' he said. 'As far as I'm concerned she's a spoiled brat just like she's always been, and a smart-ass. Not to mention, I don't like her type and I sure as hell don't understand why you let her do the things she does.'

'What things!' I said, getting more put out with him.

'Has she ever dated a guy?' He glanced over at me. 'I mean, even once?'

'Her private life is none of your concern,' I replied. 'It is not relevant to how you behaved this evening.'

'Bullshit. If Carrie hadn't been Lucy's girlfriend, ERF probably never would have been broken into, and we wouldn't have Gault running around inside the computer.'

'That's a ridiculous statement not based on a single fact,' I said. 'I suspect Carrie would have completed her mission whether Lucy was part of the scenario or not.'

'I tell you' - he blew smoke toward his slightly opened window - 'queers are ruining this planet.'

'God help us,' I said with disgust. 'You sound like my sister.'

'I think you need to send Lucy someplace. Get her some help.'

'Marino, you simply must stop this. Your opinions are based on ignorance. They are hateful. If my niece prefers women instead of men, please tell me why that is so threatening to you.'

'It don't threaten me in the least. It's just unnatural.' He tossed the cigarette butt out the window, a tiny missile extinguished by the night. 'But hey, it's not that I don't understand it. It's a known fact that a lot of women go for each other because it's the best they can do.'

'I see,' I said. 'A known fact.' I paused. 'So tell me, would that be the case with Lucy and Janet?'

'That's why I recommend them getting help, because there's hope. They could get guys easy. Especially Janet could with the way she's built. If I wasn't so tied up, I'd have half a mind to ask her out.'

'Marino,' I said, and he was making me tired, 'leave them alone. You're just setting yourself up to be disliked and snubbed. You're setting yourself up to look like a damn fool. The Janets of the world are not going to date you.'

'Her loss. If she had the right experience, it might straighten her out. What women do with each other's not what I consider the real thing. They have no idea what they're missing.'

The thought that Marino might consider himself an expert on what women needed in bed was so absurd that I forgot to be annoyed. I laughed.

'I feel protective of Lucy, okay?' he went on. 'I sort of feel like an uncle, and see, the problem is she's never been around men. Her dad died. You're divorced. She's got no brothers and her mother is in and out of bed with goofballs.'

'That much is true,' I said. 'I wish Lucy could have had a positive male influence.'

'I guarantee if she had she wouldn't have turned out queer.'

'That's not a kind word,' I said. 'And we really don't know why people turn out the way they do.'

'Then you tell me.' He glanced my way. 'You explain what went wrong.'

'In the first place, I'm not going to say that anything went wrong. There may be a genetic component to one's sexual orientation. Maybe there isn't. But what's important is that it doesn't matter.'

'So you don't care.'

I thought about this for a minute. 'I care because it is a harder way to live,' I said.

'And that's it?' he said skeptically. 'You mean you wouldn't rather she was with a man?'

Again, I hesitated. 'I guess at this point, I just want her with good people.'

He got quiet as he drove. Then he said, 'I'm sorry about tonight. I know I was a jerk.'

'Thank you for apologizing,' I said.

'Well, the truth is, things aren't going so good for me personally right now. Molly and me were doing fine until about a week ago when Doris called.'

I wasn't terribly surprised. Old spouses and lovers have a way of resurfacing.

'Seems she found out about Molly because Rocky said something. Now all of a sudden she wants to come home. She wants to get back with me.'

When Doris had left, Marino was devastated. But at this stage in my life I somewhat cynically believed that fractured relationships could not be set and healed like bones. He lit another cigarette as a truck bore down on our rear and swung past. A vehicle rushed up behind us, its high beams in our eyes.

'Molly wasn't happy about it,' he went on with difficulty. 'Truth is, we hadn't been getting along so hot since and it's just as well we didn't spend Christmas together. I think she's started going out on me, too. This sergeant she met. Wouldn't you know. I introduced them at the FOP one night.'

'I'm very sorry.' I looked over at his face and thought he might cry. 'Do you still love Doris?' I gently asked.

'Hell, I don't know. I don't know nothing. Women may as well be from another planet. You know? It's just like tonight. Everything I do is wrong.'

'That's not true. You and I have been friends for years. You must be doing something right.'

'You're the only woman friend I got,' he said. 'But you're more like a guy.'

'Why, thank you.'

'I can talk to you like a guy. And you know what you're doing. You didn't get where you are because you're a woman. Goddam it' - he squinted into the rearview mirror, then adjusted it to diminish the glare - 'you got where you are in spite of your being one.'

He glanced again in the mirrors. I turned around. A car was practically touching our bumper, high beams blinding. We were going seventy miles an hour.

'That's weird,' I said. 'He has plenty of room to go around us.'

Traffic on 1-95 was light. There was no reason for anyone to tailgate, and I thought of the accident last fall when Lucy had flipped my Mercedes. Someone had been on her rear bumper, too. Fear ran along my nerves.

'Can you see what kind of car it is?' I asked.

'Looks like a Z. Maybe an old 280 Z, something like that.'

He reached inside his coat and slid a pistol from its holster. He placed the gun in his lap as he continued to watch the mirrors. I turned around again and saw a dark shape of a head that looked male. The driver was staring straight at us.

'All right,' Marino growled. "This is pissing me off.' He firmly tapped the brakes.

The car shot around us with a long, angry blare of the horn. It was a Porsche and the driver was black.

I said to Marino, 'You don't still have that Confederate flag bumper sticker on your truck, do you? The one that glows when headlights hit it?'

'Yeah, I do.' He returned the gun to its holster.

'Maybe you ought to consider removing it.'

The Porsche was tiny taillights far ahead. I thought of Chief Tucker threatening to send Marino to cultural diversity class. Marino could go the rest of his life and I wasn't sure it would cure him.

'Tomorrow's Thursday,' he said. 'I've got to go to First Precinct and see if anyone remembers that I still work for the city.'

'What's happening with Sheriff Santa?'

'He's scheduled for a preliminary hearing next week.'

'He's locked up, I presume,' I said.

'Nope. Out on bond. When do you start jury duty?'

'Monday.'

'Maybe you can get cut loose.'

'I can't ask for that,' I said. 'Somebody would make a big deal of it, and even if they didn't, it would be hypocritical. I'm supposed to care about justice.'

'Do you think I should see Doris?' We were in Richmond now, the downtown skyline in view.

I looked over at his profile, his thinning hair, big ears and face, and the way his huge hands made the steering wheel disappear. He could not remember his life before his wife. Their relationship had long ago left the froth and fire of sex and moved into an orbit of safe but boring stability. I believed they had parted because they were afraid of growing old.

'I think you should see her,' I said to him. 'So I should go up to New Jersey.' 'No,' I said. 'Doris is the one who left. She should come here.'