The Last Precinct

Chapter 20

RIGHTER THINKS YOU'RE A NUT CASE, TOO," MA-rino tells my niece. "The only point we're in agreement on."

"Any chance Rocky's been involved with the Chandonne family?" McGovern looks at Marino. "In the past? You're serious when you say you wondered it?"

"Huh." Marino snorts. "Rocky's been involved with criminals most of his goddamn life. But do I know details about what he does with his fucking time, day to day, month to month? No. I can't honestly swear to that. I just know what he is. Scum. He was born bad. Bad seed. As far as I'm concerned, he ain't my son."

"Well, he is your son," I tell him.

"Not in my book. He took after the wrong side of my family," Marino insists. "In New Jersey, we had good Marines and bad Marines. I had an uncle who was with the mob, another uncle who was a cop. Two brothers different as night and day. And then when I turned fourteen, Uncle Asshole Louie had my other uncle whacked_my other uncle being the cop, also named Pete. I was named after Uncle Pete. Shot down when he was in his own front yard picking up his fucking newspaper. We never could prove Uncle Louie had it done, but everyone in the family believed it. I still believe it."

"Where's your Uncle Louie now?" Lucy asks as Anna returns with Marino's drink.

"I heard he died a couple years back. I didn't keep up with him. Never had nothing to do with him." He takes the glass from Anna. "But Rocky's his spittin' image. Even looked like him when he was growing up, and from day one was bent, warped, just a piece of living shit. Why do you think he took the name Caggiano? Because that's my mother's maiden name, and Rocky knew it would really piss me off if he crapped on my mother's name. There's some people who can't be fixed. There's some just born bad. Don't ask me to explain it, because Doris and I did everything we could for that boy. Even tried sending him off to military school, which was a mistake. He ended up liking it, liked the hazing part, doing really crappy things to the other boys. Nobody picked on him, not even on the first damn day. He was big like me and just so goddamn mean the other kids didn't dare touch a hair on his head."

"This is not right," Anna mutters as she sits back down on the ottoman.

"What's Rocky's motive for taking this case?" I know what Berger said. But I want to hear Marino's slant. "To spite you?"

"He'll get off on the attention. A case like this will create a circus." Marino doesn't want to say the obvious, that just maybe Rocky wants to humiliate, to best his father.

"Does he hate you?" McGovern asks him.

Marino snorts again and his pager vibrates.

"What eventually happened to him?" I ask. "You sent him off to military school, then what?"

"I kicked his ass out. Told him if he couldn't follow the rules of the house, he wasn't living under my roof. That was after his freshman year at the military school. So you know what the little psycho did?" Marino reads the display on his

pager and gets up. "He moves up to Jersey, moves in with Uncle Louie, the fucking Mafia. Then has the balls to come back here for school, including law school, William and Mary, so yeah, he's smart as shit."

"He passed the bar in Virginia?" I ask.

"Here, practices all the hell over the place. I ain't seen Rocky in seventeen years. Anna, you mind if I make a call? Don't look like I want to be using the cell phone on this one." He glances at me as he walks out of the living room. "It's Stanfield."

"What about the ID he called you about earlier?" I ask.

"Hopefully what this is about," Marino says. "Another real strange one, if it's true."

While he is on the phone, Anna vanishes from her own living room. I supposed she was going to the bathroom, but she does not come back and I can only imagine how she feels. In many ways, I am more worried about her than about me. I now know enough about her life to appreciate her intense vulnerability and realize the terribly barren, scarred spots on her emotional landscape. "This isn't fair." I begin to lose my composure. "It's not fair to anyone." Everything that has piled up on me begins to unsettle and slide downhill. "Someone please tell me how this happened? Did I do something wrong in a former life? I don't deserve this. None of us do."

Lucy and McGovern listen to me ventilate. They seem to have their own ideas and plans but are not inclined to offer them right away.

"Well, say something," I tell them. "Go ahead and let it out." Mostly, I say this for my niece's benefit. "My life is wrecked. I haven't handled anything the way I should. I'm sorry." Tears threaten. "Right now I want a cigarette. Does anybody have a cigarette?" Marino does, but he is in the kitchen on the phone, and I'll be damned if I am going to creep in there and interrupt him for a cigarette, as if I need one to begin with. "You know, what hurts me most is to be accused of the very thing I'm so against. I don't abuse power, goddamn it. I would never murder somebody in cold blood." I talk on and on. "I hate death. I hate killing. I hate every goddamn thing I see every goddamn day. And now the world thinks I did something like this? A special grand jury thinks maybe I might have?" I let the questions hang. Neither Lucy nor McGovern responds.

Marino is loud. His voice is muscular and big like he is and tends to shove rather than guide, confront rather than fall in stride. "You sure she's his girlfriend?" he is saying over the telephone. I presume he is speaking to Detective Stanfield. "Versus just friends. Tell me how you know that for a fact. Yeah, yeah. Uh huh. What? Do I get it? Hell no, I don't get it. It don't make a shit's worth of sense, Stanfield." Marino is walking around the kitchen as he talks. He is on the verge of snapping Stanfield's head off. "You know what I tell people like you, Stanfield?" Marino snaps. "I tell them to get out of my fucking way. I don't give a rat's ass who your fucking brother-in-law is, got it? He can kiss my butt and tuck it in bed, tell it a beddy-bye story." Stanfield is obviously trying to get in a word or two, but Marino won't let him.

"Oh boy," McGovern mutters, returning my attention to the living room, to my own mess. "He's the investigator for these two men who were probably tortured and killed? Whoever Marino's talking to?" McGovern inquires.

I give her a strange look as an even stranger sensation ripples through me. "How do you know about the two men who were killed?" I grope for an answer that I must be missing. McGovern has been in New York. I haven't even autopsied the second John Doe yet. Why does everybody seem to be omniscient all of a sudden? I think of Jaime Berger. I think of Governor Mitchell and Representative Dinwiddie and Anna. A strong breath of fear seems to foul the air like Chandonne's body odor, and I imagine 1 smell him again and my central nervous system has an involuntary reaction. I begin to tremble as if I have drunk a pot of strong coffee or half a dozen of those heavily sugared Cuban espressos called coladas. I realize I am more afraid than I have ever been in my life and begin to entertain the unthinkable: Maybe Chandonne was offering a hint of truth when he persisted in his seemingly absurd claim that he is the victim of some huge political conspiracy. I

am paranoid, justifiably. 1 try to reason with myself. I am, after all, being investigated for the murder of a corrupt policewoman who probably was involved with organized crime. I realize Lucy is talking to me. She has gotten up from her spot before the fire and is pulling a chair close to me. She sits and leans over, touching my good arm, as if trying to wake me up. "Aunt Kay?" she says. "You with us, Aunt Kay? Are you listening?"

I focus on her. Marino is telling Stanfield over the phone that they will meet in the morning. It sounds like a threat. "He and I rendezvoused at Phil's for a beer." She glances toward the kitchen and I remember Marino telling me late this morning that he and Lucy were getting together this afternoon because she had news for him. "We know about the guy from the motel." Now she refers to McGovern, who sits very still by the fire, looking at me, waiting to see how I will react when Lucy tells me the rest. "Teun's been here since Saturday," Lucy then says. "When I called you from the Jefferson, remember? Teun was with me. I asked her to get here right away."

"Oh," is all I can think to say. "Well, that's good. It bothered me to think of you alone in a hotel." Tears flood my eyes. I am embarrassed and look away from Lucy and McGovern. I am supposed to be strong. I am the one who has always rescued my niece from trouble, most of it of her own making. I have always been the torchbearer who guided her along the right path. I put her through college. I bought her books, her first computer, sent her to any special course she wanted to attend anywhere in the country. I took her to London with me one summer. I have stood up to anyone who tried to interfere with Lucy, including her mother, who has rewarded my efforts with nothing but abuse. "You're supposed to respect me," I say to my niece as I wipe tears with my palm. "How can you anymore?"

She stands up again and looks down at me. "That's total bullshit," she says with feeling, and now Marino is returning to the living room, another bourbon in hand. "This isn't about my not respecting you," Lucy says. "Jesus Christ. Nobody in

the room has any less respect for you, Aunt Kay. But you

need help. For once, you've got to let other people help you. You sure as hell can't deal with this all by yourself, and maybe you need to sit on your pride a little and let us help, you know? It's not like I'm still ten years old. I'm twenty-eight, okay? I'm not a virgin. I've been an FBI agent, an ATF agent and am fucking rich. I could be any kind of fucking agent I want." Her wounds inflame before my eyes. She does care about being put on administrative leave; of course she cares. "And now I'm being my own agent, doing things my own way," she goes on.

"I resigned tonight," I tell her. A stunned silence follows.

"What did you say?" Marino asks me, standing in front of the fire, drinking. "You did what?"

"I told the governor," I reply, and an inexplicable calm begins to settle over me. It feels good to consider that I did something instead of everything being done to me. Maybe quitting my job makes me less a victim, if I am willing to finally admit that I am a victim. I suppose I am one, and the only comeback is to finish what Chandonne started: end my life as I have known it and start all over. What a weird and stunning thought. I tell Marino, McGovern and Lucy all about my conversation with Mike Mitchell.

"Hold on." Marino is sitting on the hearth. It is getting close to midnight and Anna is so quiet I forgot for a moment that she was in the house. Maybe she has gone to bed. "This mean you can't work cases no more?" Marino says to me.

"Not at all," I reply. "I'll be acting chief until the governor decides otherwise." No one asks me what I plan to do with the rest of my life. It really doesn't make sense to worry about some distant future when the present is shot. I am grateful not to be asked and probably am sending out my usual signals that I don't want to be asked. People sense when to remain silent, or if nothing else, I deflect their interest and they don't even realize I have just manipulated them into not probing for information that I prefer to keep to myself. I became an expert at this maneuver at a very young age when I didn't want my

classmates asking me about my father and if he was still sick

or would ever get better or what it is like to have your father die. I was conditioned not to tell, and I was conditioned not to ask, either. The last three years of my father's life were spent in absolute avoidance by my entire family, including him, especially him. He was a lot like Marino, both of them macho Italian men who seem to assume their bodies will never part company with them, no matter how ill or out of shape. I envision my father as Lucy, Marino and McGovern talk about all they plan to do and are already doing to help me, including background checks already in the works and all sorts of things The Last Precinct has to offer me.

I really am not listening. Their voices may as well be the chatter of crows as I remember the thick Miami grass of my childhood, and dried-out chinch bug husks and the key lime tree in my small backyard. My father taught me how to crack coconuts on the driveway with a hammer and a screwdriver, and I would spend an inordinate amount of time prying the fleshy, sweet white meat from the hard, hairy shell, and he got a lot of amusement from observing my obsessive labors. The coconut meat would go in the squat white refrigerator, and no one, including me, ever ate it. During blistering summer Saturdays, my father would surprise Dorothy and me now and then by bringing home two big blocks of ice from his neighborhood grocery store. We had a small, inflatable pool we filled with the hose, and my sister and I would sit on the ice, getting scorched by the sun while we froze our asses off. We would jump in and out of the pool to thaw, then perch on our frigid, slick thrones again like princesses while my father laughed at us through the living room window, laughed hilariously and tapped on the glass, playing Fats Waller full blast on the hi-fi.

My father was a good man. When he felt halfway decent he was generous, thoughtful and full of humor and fun. He was handsome, of medium height, blond and broad-shouldered when he wasn't wasted by cancer. His full name was Kay Marcellus Scarpetta III, and he insisted that his firstborn take this name, which has been in the family since

Verona. It didn't matter that I happened to arrive first, a girl. Kay is one of those names that can be assigned to either gen- der, but my mother has always called me Katie. In part, according to her, it was confusing to have two Kays in the house. Later, when that was no longer an issue because I was the only Kay left, she still called me Katie, refusing to accept my father's death, to get over it, and she still isn't over it. She won't let him go. My father died more than thirty years ago, when I was twelve, and my mother has never gone out with another man. She still wears her wedding band. She still calls me Katie.

LUCY AND MCGOVERN GO OVER PLANS UNTIL PAST

midnight. They have given up trying to include me in their conversations and no longer even seem to notice that I have slipped away to the Old Country in my mind, staring into the fire, absently massaging my stiff left hand and worming a finger under plaster to scratch my miserable, air-starved flesh. Finally, Marino yawns like a bear and pulls himself to his feet. He is made slightly unsteady by bourbon and smells like stale cigarettes, and regards me with a softness in his eyes that I might call sad love if I were willing to accept his true feelings for me. "Come on," he says to me. "Walk me out to my truck, Doc." This is his way of calling for a treaty between us. Marino is not a brute. He is feeling bad about the way he has been treating me since I was almost murdered, and he has never seen me so distant and strangely quiet.

The night is cold and still, and stars are shy behind vague clouds. From Anna's driveway, I take in the glow of her many candles in the windows and am reminded that tomorrow is Christmas Eve, the last Christmas Eve of the twentieth century. Keys disturb the peace as Marino unlocks his truck and hesitates awkwardly before opening the driver's door. "We got a lot to do. I'll meet you at the morgue early." This is not what he really wants to say. He stares up at the dark sky and sighs.

"Shit, Doc, Look, I've known for a while, okay? By now

you've figured that out. I've known what that son of a bitch Righter was up to and I had to let it run its course."

"When were you going to tell me?" I don't ask this accusingly, simply curiously.

He shrugs. "I'm glad Anna brought it up first. I know you didn't kill Diane Bray, for God's sake. But I wouldn't blame you if you had, truth be told. She was the biggest fucking bitch ever born. In my book, if you'd done her in, it would have been damn self-defense."

"Well, it wouldn't have been." I address the possibility seriously. "It wouldn't have been, Marino. And I didn't kill her." I look closely at his hulking shape in the castoffs of carriage lamps and holiday lights in trees. "You've never really thought…?" I don't finish the question. Maybe I really don't want to know his answer.

"Hell, I'm not sure what I've been thinking lately," he says. "That's the truth. But what am I going to do, Doc?"

"Do? About what?" I don't know what he means.

He shrugs and gets choked up. I can't believe it. Marino is about to cry. "If you quit." His voice rises and he clears his throat and fumbles for his Lucky Strikes. He cups his huge hands around my hand and lights a cigarette for me, his skin rough against mine, the hairs on the back of his wrists whispering against my chin. He smokes, staring off, heartbroken. "Then what? I'm supposed to go down to the fucking morgue and you ain't there anymore? Hell, I wouldn't go down to that stink-hole half as much as I do if it wasn't for you being there, Doc. You're the only damn thing that gives any life to that joint, no kidding."

I hug him. I barely come up to his chest, and his belly separates the beat of our hearts. He has raised his own barriers in this life and I am overwhelmed by an immeasurable compassion and need for him. I pat his broad chest and let him know, "We've been together for a long time, Marino. You're not rid of me yet."