The Scarpetta Factor

11

Lucy hovered the Bell 407 helicopter at the hold line on taxiway Kilo, the wind shoving her around like huge hands as she waited for the tower to clear her to land.

“Not again,” she said to Berger, in the left seat, the copilot’s seat, because she wasn’t the sort to ride in back when given the choice. “I don’t believe where they put the damn dolly.”

Westchester County Airport ’s west ramp was crowded with parked planes, ranging from single-engine and experimental home-built on up to the super-midsize Challenger and ultra-long-range Boeing business jet. Lucy willed herself to stay calm, agitation and flying a dangerous combination, but it didn’t take much to set her off. She was volatile, couldn’t settle down, and she hated it, but hating something didn’t make it go away, and she couldn’t get rid of the anger. After all her efforts to manage it and some good things happening, happy things, which had made it easier, now the anger was back out of its bag, maybe more volatile than ever after too much time unattended and ignored. Not gone. She’d just thought it was. “Nobody more intelligent or physically gifted than you or more loved,” her Aunt Kay liked to say. “Why are you so aggravated all the time?” Now Berger was saying it. Berger and Scarpetta sounding the same. The same language, the same logic, as if their communications were broadcast over the same frequency.

Lucy calculated the best approach to her dolly, the small wooden platform on wheels parked too close to other aircraft, the tow bar pointed the wrong way. Best plan was a high hover altitude between the wingtips of the Learjet and the King Air at ten o’clock. They’d handle her rotorwash better than the little guys. Then directly over her dolly, a steeper angle of descent than she liked, and she’d have to land with a twenty-eight-knot wind gusting up the tail, assuming the air traffic controller ever got back to her. That much wind blowing up her ass and she had to worry about settling with power, setting down ugly and hard, and exhaust fumes were going to back up into the cabin. Berger would complain about the fumes, get one of her headaches, wouldn’t want to fly with Lucy again anytime soon. One more thing they wouldn’t do together.

“This is deliberate,” Lucy said over the intercom, her arms and legs tense, hands and feet firm on the controls, working the helicopter hard so it basically did nothing but hold its position some thirty feet above ground level. “I’m getting his name and number.”

“Tower has nothing to do with where dollies are parked.” Berger’s voice in Lucy’s headset.

“You heard him.” Lucy’s attention was outside the windscreen. She scanned the dark shapes of aircraft, a thick herd of them, noticing tie-down ropes anchored in the pavement, loosely coiled, frayed ends fluttering in her twenty-million-candlepower NightSun spotlight. “Told me to take the Echo Route. Exactly what I did, sure as hell didn’t disregard his instructions. He’s jerking me around.”

“Tower’s got bigger things to worry about than where dollies are parked.”

“He can do what he wants.”

“Let it go. Not worth it.” The rich timbre of Berger’s firm voice like fine hardwood. Rain-forest ironwood, mahogany, teak. Beautiful but unyielding, bruising.

“Whenever he’s on duty, it’s something. It’s personal.” Lucy hovered, looking out, careful not to drift.

“Doesn’t matter. Let it go.” Berger the lawyer.

Lucy felt unfairly accused, of what she wasn’t sure. She felt controlled and judged and wasn’t sure why. The same way her aunt made her feel. The way everybody made her feel. Even when Scarpetta said she wasn’t being controlling or judgmental, she had always made Lucy feel controlled and judged. Scarpetta and Berger weren’t separated by many years, almost the same age, of an entirely different generation, a full layer of civilization between Lucy and them. She hadn’t thought it was a problem, had believed quite the opposite. At last she’d found someone who commanded her respect, someone powerful and accomplished and never boring.

Jaime Berger was compelling, with short, dark brown hair and beautiful features, a genetic thoroughbred who had taken good care of herself and was stunning, really, and wickedly smart. Lucy loved the way Berger looked and moved and expressed herself, loved the way she dressed, her suits or soft corduroys and denim, her politically incorrect fucking fur coat. Lucy still found it hard to believe she’d finally gotten what she’d always wanted, always imagined. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t close to perfect, and she didn’t understand what had happened. They’d been together not quite a year. The last few weeks had been horrid.

Pressing the transmit button on the cyclic, she said over the radio, “Helicopter niner-lima-foxtrot still holding.”

After a long pause, the officious voice came back, “Helicopter calling, you were stepped on. Repeat request.”

“Helicopter niner-lima-foxtrot still holding,” Lucy repeated curtly, and releasing the transmit button, she said to Berger over the intercom, “I wasn’t stepped on. You hear any other traffic right this second?”

Berger didn’t answer, and Lucy didn’t look at her, didn’t look anywhere except out the windscreen. One good thing about flying, she didn’t have to look at someone if she was angry or hurt. No good deed goes unpunished. How many times had Marino said that to her, only he used the word favor, not deed. No favor goes unpunished, what he’d been saying since she was a kid and on his nerves something awful. Right about now it felt as if he was her only friend. Unbelievable. It wasn’t long ago she wanted to put a bullet in his head just like she’d done to his piece-of-shit son, a fugitive, an Interpol Red Notice, wanted for murder, sitting in a chair, room 511, the Radisson in Szczecin, Poland. Sometimes out of nowhere Rocco Junior was in her mind, sweating and shaking and bug-eyed, dirty food trays everywhere, the air foul from him soiling himself. Begging. And when that didn’t work, bribing. After all he’d done to innocent people, pleading for a second chance, for mercy, or trying to buy his way out.

No good deed goes unpunished, and Lucy hadn’t done a good deed, wasn’t about to, because had she been charitable and let Rocco live, he would have killed his cop father, a hit, payback. Peter Rocco Marino Junior had changed his name to Caggiano, he hated his own father that much, and little Rocco the bad seed had orders, had a precise cold-blooded plan to take out his old man Marino while he was on his yearly fishing trip, minding his own business in his cabin at Buggs Lake. Make it look like a home invasion gone bad. Well, think again, little Rocco. When Lucy walked out of that hotel, her ears ringing from the gunshot, all she felt was relief-well, not exactly all. It was something she and Marino didn’t talk about. She’d killed his son, a judicious execution that looked like a suicide, black ops, her job, the right thing. But still, it was Marino’s son, his only offspring, the last branch on his family tree as far as she knew.

The controller got back to her. “Niner-lima-foxtrot standby.”

Fucking loser. Lucy imagined him sitting inside the dark control room, smirking as he looked down on her from the top of his tower.

“Niner-lima-foxtrot,” she acknowledged, then to Berger, “Same thing he did last time. Messing with me.”

“Don’t get worked up.”

“I should get his phone number. I’m going to find out who the fuck he is.”

“You’re getting worked up.”

“They better not have lost my car or fucked with it.”

“Tower has nothing to do with parking.”

“Hope you’ve got clout with state troopers; I’m going to speed,” Lucy said. “We can’t be late.”

“This was a bad idea. We should have done it another time.”

“Another time wouldn’t have been your birthday,” Lucy said.

She wasn’t going to allow herself to feel the sting, not when she was pulling in almost ninety percent torque, a crosswind slamming her tail boom, trying to swing it around while she held it steady with the pedals, making tiny corrections with the cyclic and collective. Berger was admitting it, telling the truth: She hadn’t wanted to go to Vermont for her birthday. Not that Lucy needed to be told, good Christ. Alone in front of the fire, looking out at the lights of Stowe, looking out at the snow, and Berger may as well have been in Mexico, she was so distant, so preoccupied. As the head of the New York County DA ’s Sex Crimes Unit, she supervised what always turned out to be the most heinous cases in the five boroughs, and it was assumed within hours of Hannah Starr’s disappearance that she was the victim of foul play, possibly a sex crime. After three weeks of digging, Berger had a very different theory-thanks to Lucy and her forensic computer skills. Lucy’s reward? Berger could think of little else. Then the jogger had to die. A surprise getaway Lucy had planned for months, fucked. Another good deed punished.

Lucy, on the other hand, with her own prepossessions and emotions, had been able to sip a grand cru Chablis by the hearth while she undetectably entertained her own shadowed thoughts, very dark shadowed thoughts, fearful thoughts about mistakes she’d made-specifically, the mistake she’d made with Hannah Starr. Lucy couldn’t forgive it and couldn’t get out from under it, so furious and full of hate it was like being sick, like chronic fatigue or myoneuralgia, always there making her miserable. But she revealed nothing. Berger didn’t know, couldn’t possibly fathom, what was inside Lucy. Years of deep undercover with the FBI, ATF, and paramilitary and private investigations, and she controlled what she gave away and what she kept to herself, had to be impeccably controlled when the slightest facial tic or gesture could blow a case or get her killed.

Objectively, ethically, she shouldn’t have agreed to do the forensic computer analysis in the Hannah Starr case, and she sure as hell should recuse herself now but wasn’t about to, knowing what Hannah deliberately did. Of all people, Lucy should be the one to take care of such a travesty. She had her own history with Hannah Starr, a far more devastating one than she’d imagined before she’d started searching and restoring the entitled pampered bitch’s electronic files and e-mail accounts and sat around day after day looking at e-mails her lover boy husband, Bobby, still sent. The more Lucy discovered, the more contempt she had, the more righteous rage. She wouldn’t quit now, and no one could make her.

She hovered over the yellow-painted hold line, listening to the controller vector some poor Hawker pilot all the hell over the place. What was wrong with people? When the economy had begun its free fall, the world seeming to disintegrate, Lucy had assumed people might behave better, like they did after 9/11. If nothing else, you get scared and survival mode kicks in. Chances for survival are better if you’re civilized and don’t go out of your way to piss everybody off unless there’s something tangible to be gained by it. There was nothing tangible to be gained by what the asshole air traffic controller was doing to Lucy, to other pilots, and he was doing it because he was anonymous up there in his tower, the goddamn coward. She was tempted to confront him, walk over to the tower and press the intercom button by the locked outer door. Someone would let her in. The people in the tower knew damn well who she was. Good Christ, she told herself. Calm down. For one thing, there wasn’t time.

Once she shut down, she wouldn’t refuel. She wasn’t going to wait for the fuel truck. It would take forever, might never get to her, the way things were going. She’d lock up the helicopter and grab her car and race to Manhattan. Barring any further delays, they should be in the Village, in her loft, by half past one. That was cutting it close for a two a.m. interview they’d never get again-an interview that might lead to Hannah Starr, whose disappearance had captured the public’s morbid imagination since the day before Thanksgiving, when she was allegedly last seen getting into that yellow cab on Barrow Street. Ironically, just blocks from where Lucy lived, Berger had pointed out more than once. “And you were home that night. Too damn bad you didn’t see anything.”

“Helicopter niner-lima-foxtrot,” the controller said over the air. “You can proceed to the ramp. Landing is at your own risk. If you’re unfamiliar with the airport, you need to inform us.”

“Niner-lima-foxtrot,” Lucy said with no inflection, the way she sounded before she offed someone or threatened it. She nudged the helicopter forward.

She hover-taxied to the edge of the ramp, made a vertical descent, and set down on her dolly, situated between a Robinson helicopter that reminded her of a dragonfly and a Gulfstream jet that reminded her of Hannah Starr. The wind grabbed the tail boom, and exhaust fumes filled the cabin.

“Unfamiliar?” Lucy chopped the throttle to flight idle and turned off the low-RPM warning horn. “I’m unfamiliar? You hear that? He’s trying to make me look like a crappy pilot.”

Berger was silent, the smell of fumes strong.

“He does it every damn time now.” Lucy reached up and flipped off overhead switches. “Sorry about the exhaust. You okay? Hang in there for two minutes. Really sorry.” She should confront the controller. She shouldn’t let him get away with it.

Berger took off her headset and opened her window, moving her face as close to it as she could.

“Opening the window makes it worse,” Lucy reminded her. She should walk over to the tower and take the elevator up to the top and let him have it inside the control room right in front of his colleagues.

She watched seconds tick by on the digital clock, fifty-something to go, and her anxiety and anger grew. She would find out the name of that damn air traffic controller and would get him. What had she ever done to him or anybody who worked here except act respectfully and mind her own business and tip well and pay her fees? Thirty-one seconds to go. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know him. She’d never been anything but professional over the air, no matter how rude he was, and he was always rude to everyone. Fine. If he wanted a fight, he’d get one. Jesus Christ. He had no idea who he was tangling with.

Lucy radioed the tower, and the same controller answered her.

“Requesting your supervisor’s phone number,” Lucy said.

He gave it to her because he had no choice. FAA regs. She wrote it down on her kneeboard. Let him worry. Let him sweat. She radioed the FBO and asked to have her car brought out and her helicopter towed into the hangar. She wondered if her next unpleasant surprise was going to be damage to her Ferrari. Maybe the controller had seen to that, too. She cut the throttle and silenced the warning horn one last time. She took off her headset, hung it on a hook.

“I’m getting out,” Berger said inside the dark, stinking cockpit. “You don’t need to pick a fight with anyone.”

Lucy reached up for the rotor brake, pulled it down. “Hold on until I stop the blades. Remember, we’re on the dolly, not the ground. Don’t forget that when you step down. Just a few more seconds.”

Berger unfastened her four-point harness as Lucy finished the shutdown. Making sure the NG was zero, she flipped off the battery switch. They climbed out, Lucy grabbing their bags and locking up. Berger didn’t wait, headed to the FBO, walking fast between aircraft, stepping around tie-downs and dodging a fuel truck, her slender figure in her long mink coat receding and gone. Lucy knew the routine. Berger would dash into the ladies’ room, gulp down four Advil or a Zomig, and splash her face with cold water. Under different circumstances, she wouldn’t get into the car right now but would give herself a chance to recover, walk around for a while in the fresh air. But there wasn’t time.

If they weren’t back in Lucy’s loft by two a.m., Hap Judd would get spooked, would leave and never contact Berger again. He wasn’t the type to tolerate excuses of any sort, would assume an excuse was a ruse. He was being set up, the paparazzi were around the corner, that’s exactly what he would think, because he was paranoid as hell and guilty as hell. He’d blow them off. He’d get himself a lawyer, and even the dumbest lawyer would tell him not to talk, and the most promising lead would be lost. Hannah Starr wouldn’t be found, soon or ever, and she deserved to be found, for the sake of truth and justice-not her justice. She didn’t deserve something she’d denied everybody else. What a joke. The public had no hint. The whole fucking world felt sorry for her.

Lucy never had felt sorry for her but hadn’t realized until three weeks ago exactly what she did feel for her. By the time Hannah was reported missing, Lucy was keenly aware of the damage the woman could do and in fact had done, just hadn’t recognized it was deliberate. Chalked it up to bad luck, the market, the collapsing economy, and a superficial person’s superficial advice, a favor that got punished but nothing premeditated and malevolent. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Hannah Starr was diabolical; she was evil. If only Lucy had given more weight to her instincts, because the gut feeling she’d gotten the first time she and Hannah had met alone in Florida wasn’t good, wasn’t close to good, she realized that now. While Hannah was polite and nice, almost flirting, there was something else. Lucy realized that now because she hadn’t wanted to realize it then. Maybe it was the way Hannah kept looking at the high-performance boats going by, obnoxiously loud below her glitzy North Miami Beach apartment balcony, so loud Lucy could barely hear herself talk. Greed, unabashed greed. And competitiveness.

“Bet you have one of those tucked away somewhere.” Hannah’s voice, husky, lusty as a 46 Rider XP, triple-stepped hull, inboards at least nine-fifty HP each, headed out to sea, sounding like a Harley full-throttle if your head was next to the Screamin’ Eagle pipes.

“I’m not into go-fast boats.” Lucy hated them, truth be told.

“No way. You and all your machines? I remember the way you used to drool all over my father’s cars. You were the only one he ever let drive his Enzo. I couldn’t believe it. You were just a kid. I should think a cigarette boat would be right up your alley.”

“Not at all.”

“And I thought I knew you.”

“They wouldn’t get me anywhere I need to go unless I have a secret life of running drugs or errands for the Russian Mafia.”

“Secret life? Do tell,” Hannah had said.

“I don’t have one.”

“God, look at it go.” Another one leaving a wide swath of lacy white wake, thundering into the inlet from the Intracoastal, under the causeway, toward the Atlantic. “Yet one more of my ambitions. To have one someday. Not a secret life but a boat like that.”

“If you have one, better not let me find out. I’m not talking about boats.”

“Not me, hon. My life’s an open book.” Hannah’s art deco diamond ring flashed in the sunlight when she placed her hands on the balcony rail, gazing at the aqua water and the powder-blue sky and the long strip of bone-colored beach scattered with furled umbrellas that looked like candy swizzle sticks and feathery palms that were yellowing at the edges of their fronds.

Lucy remembered thinking Hannah could have stepped out of an ad for a five-star resort in her ready-to-wear silk Ungaro, beautiful and blond, with just enough weight to be sexy and just enough years to be credible as a high-level financier. Forty and perfect, one of those precious people untouched by commonness, by hardship, by anything ugly, someone Lucy always avoided at the lavish dinners and parties hosted by Rupe Starr, her father. Hannah had seemed incapable of crime, if for no other reason than she didn’t need to bother with anything as untidy as living a lie and stealing people blind. Lucy had misread Hannah’s open book, all right, misread it enough to incur incalculable damage. She’d taken a nine-figure hit because of Hannah’s little favor. One lie leads to another, and now Lucy was living one, although she had her own definition of lying. It wasn’t literally a lie if the end result was truth.

She paused halfway across the ramp, tried Marino on her BlackBerry. Right about now he should be doing surveillance, checking on Hap Judd’s whereabouts, making sure he hadn’t decided to boogie after his bullshit tap dance about meeting during the wee hours of the morning because he didn’t want to be recognized. Didn’t want anything ending up on Page Six of the Post or all over the Internet. Maybe he should have thought about that before he’d blown off the likes of Jaime Berger the first time she tried to reach him three weeks ago. Maybe he should have thought, period, before running his mouth to a stranger who, what do you know, happened to be a friend of Lucy’s, a snitch.

“That you?” Marino’s voice in her wireless jawbone. “Was getting worried you’d decided to visit John Denver.”

Lucy didn’t laugh, not even a smile. She never joked about people who’d been killed in crashes. Planes, helicopters, motorcycles, cars, the space shuttle. Not funny.

“I e-mailed you a MapQuest,” Marino said as she resumed walking across the tarmac, hauling luggage over her shoulders. “I know that race car of yours ain’t got a GPS.”

“Why the hell would I need a GPS to find my way home?”

“Roads being shut down, traffic diverted, because of a little situation that I didn’t want to get into while you were flying that death trap of yours. Plus, you got the package with you.” He meant Berger, his boss. “You get lost or hung up and are late for your two a.m., guess who gets blamed? She’s already going to be pissed when I’m a no-show.”

“A no-show? Even better,” Lucy said.

All she’d asked was for him to take his time, be maybe thirty or forty minutes late so she could have her chance with Hap Judd. If Marino was sitting there from the get-go, she wouldn’t be able to maneuver the interview the way she wanted, and what she wanted was a deconstruction. Lucy had a special talent for interrogation, and she intended to find out what she needed to know so she could take care of things.

“You been keeping up with the news?” Marino said.

“At fuel stops. We know what’s all over the Internet about the yellow-cab connection, the stuff about Hannah and the jogger.” She assumed that was what he was referencing.

“Guess you haven’t been monitoring OEM.”

“No way. No time. I got diverted twice. One airport was out of Jet-A, another hadn’t been plowed. What’s going on?”

“A FedEx box left at your aunt’s building. She’s fine, but you should call her.”

“A FedEx box? What are you talking about?” Lucy stopped walking.

“We don’t know what’s in it. May have something to do with a patient of Benton ’s. Some whack job who left the Doc a Christmas present. Santa’s sleigh had to transport it to Rodman’s Neck. Not even an hour ago, headed right at you, to the Cross Bronx Express-way, which you’d be crossing out of White Plains, and why I sent you a map. I routed you way east of the Bronx just in case.”

“Shit. Who’d you deal with from the bomb squad? I’ll talk to whoever it was.” Sixth Precinct, where the bomb squad was headquartered, was in the Village, close to Lucy’s loft. She knew a few of the techs.

“Thanks, Special Agent ATF, but it’s handled. NYPD will somehow manage without you. I’m doing what needs to be done, not to worry. The Doc will tell you about it. She’s fine. This same nut job of Benton ’s might have a connection with Hollywood.” Marino’s sarcastic nickname for Hap Judd. “I’m going to check it out at RTCC. But maybe the subject should come up. Her name’s Dodie Hodge. A mental patient at McLean ’s.”

“Why would she know him?” Lucy started walking again.

“Might be more of her make-believe, a hallucination, right? But seeing as how there was this incident at your aunt’s apartment building, maybe you should ask Hollywood about her. I’ll be at RTCC probably all night. Explain it to the boss.” He meant Berger. “I don’t want her pissed at me. But this is important. I’m going to get to the bottom of it before something worse happens.”

“So, where are you? In TriBeCa?” Lucy wove between jet wings, careful of tip extensions sticking up like dorsal fins and communications antennas that could put a person’s eye out. She’d once watched a pilot walk into his trailing edge Junker flap while he was drinking coffee and on the phone, gashed his head wide open.

“Cruised by Hollywood ’s place a few minutes ago, on my way downtown. Looks like he’s home. That’s good news. Maybe he’ll show up,” Marino said.

“You should stake him out, make sure he does. That was our deal.” Lucy couldn’t stand depending on other people to get the job done. The damn weather. If she’d gotten here earlier, she would have tailed Hap Judd herself and made sure he didn’t miss their meeting.

“I got more important things to do right now than bird-dog some pervert who thinks he’s the next James Dean. Call if you get detoured and end up lost, Amelia Earhart.”

Lucy got off the phone and picked up her pace, thought about checking on her aunt, and then thought about the number she’d written down on her kneeboard. Maybe she should call the supervisor before she left the airport. Maybe it would be better to wait until tomorrow and call the ATC manager or, better yet, complain to the FAA and get the guy sent to refresher training. She was seething as she thought about what he’d broadcast over the tower’s frequency, making sure everybody on it heard him accuse her of being an incompetent pilot, accuse her of not knowing her way into an airport she flew in and out of several times a week.

She hangared her helicopter and Citation X jet here, for God’s sake. Maybe that was his motivation. To bring her down a notch or two, to rub it in because he’d heard the rumors or was making assumptions about what had happened to her during what everyone was calling the worst financial meltdown since the thirties. Only it wasn’t the crash of Wall Street that had done the real damage. Hannah Starr had. A favor, a gift her father, Rupe, would have wanted Lucy to have. A parting gesture. When Hannah was dating Bobby, that’s all she heard. Lucy this and Lucy that.

“He thought you were Einstein. A pretty Einstein but a tomboy. He adored you,” Hannah had said to Lucy not even six months ago.

Seductive or making fun, Lucy couldn’t tell what Hannah meant or knew or supposed. Rupe had known the facts of Lucy’s life, for damn sure. Thin gold-rimmed glasses, fuzzy white hair, and smoky blue eyes, a tiny man in tidy suits and as honest as he was smart. Didn’t give a shit who was in Lucy’s pants as long as they stayed out of her pockets, as long as it didn’t cost her in any way that counted. He understood why women loved women since he loved them, too, said he might very well be a lesbian because if he were a woman, he’d want women. So, what was anybody, anyway? It’s what’s in your heart, he used to say. Always smiling. A kind, decent man. The father Lucy never had. When he died last May during a business trip to Georgia, from a strain of salmonella infection that ran him down like a cement truck, Lucy had been disbelieving, devastated. How could someone like Rupe be done in by a jalapeño pepper? Was existence contingent on nothing more than the fucking decision to order nachos?

“We miss him terribly. He was my mentor and best buddy.” This past June. Hannah on her balcony, watching million-dollar boats roar by. “You did well with him. You can do even better with me.”

Lucy told her thanks but no thanks, told her more than once. She wasn’t comfortable turning over her entire portfolio to Hannah Starr. No fucking way, Lucy had politely said. At least she’d listened to her gut on that one, but she should have paid attention to what she felt about the favor. Don’t do it. But Lucy did. Maybe it was her need to impress Hannah because Lucy sensed a competition. Maybe it was her wound, the one Hannah stuck her finger in because she was cunning enough to recognize it. As a child Lucy had been abandoned by her father and as an adult didn’t want to be abandoned by Rupe. He had managed her finances from day one and had never been anything but honorable, and he’d cared about her. He was her friend. He would have wanted her to have something special on his way out of this life because she was so special to him.

“A tip he would have given you had he lived long enough,” said Hannah, brushing Lucy’s fingers as she handed her a business card, her practiced lavish scrawl on the back: Bay Bridge Finance and a phone number.

“You were like a daughter to him, and he made me promise to take care of you,” Hannah had said.

How could he have promised any such thing? Lucy realized that too late. He’d gotten sick so fast, Hannah never saw him or spoke to him before he died in Atlanta. Lucy hadn’t asked that question until nine figures later, and now was certain there had been more to it than the considerable kickback Hannah must have gotten for herding rich people to the slaughter. She’d wanted to hurt Lucy for the sake of hurting her, to maim her, to make her weak.

The air traffic controller couldn’t possibly know anything about what had happened to Lucy’s net worth, couldn’t have the slightest knowledge of her damage and degradation. She was being overly anxious, hypervigilant, and irrational, what Berger called pathological, in a foul mood because a surprise weekend she’d planned for months had been a flop and Berger had been distant and irritable, had rebuffed her in every way that mattered. Berger had ignored her in the town house and on Lucy’s way out the door, and onboard the helicopter it hadn’t gotten any better. She hadn’t talked about anything personal the first half of the flight, then spent the second half sending text messages from the helicopter’s cell phone because of Carley Crispin and yellow cabs and who knows what, every slight indirectly leading back to the same damn thing: Hannah. She had taken over Berger’s life and taken something else from Lucy, this time something priceless.

Lucy glanced at the control tower, the glass-enclosed top of it blazing like a lighthouse, and imagined the controller, the enemy sitting in front of a radar screen, staring at targets and beacon codes that represented real human beings in real aircraft, everybody doing the best they could to get where they were going safely, while he barked commands and insults. Piece of shit. She should confront him. She was going to confront someone.

“So, who towed my dolly out and turned it downwind?” she asked the first line crewman she saw inside the FBO.

“You sure?” He was a skinny, pimply kid in oversized insulated coveralls, marshalling wands in the pockets of his Dickies work coat. He wouldn’t look her in the eye.

“Am I sure?” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him right.

“You wanna ask my supervisor?”

“No, I don’t wanna ask your supervisor. This is the third time I’ve landed in a tailwind here in the past two weeks, F. J. Reed.” She read his name tag. “You know what that means? It means whoever’s towing my dolly out of the hangar orients it on the ramp with the tow bar pointed exactly the wrong way-directly downwind, so I land in a tailwind.”

“Not me. I would never orientate something downwind.”

“There’s no tate.”

“Huh?”

“Orient. As in the Far East,” Lucy said. “You know anything about aerodynamics, F. J. Reed? Airplanes, and that includes helicopters, land and take off into the wind, not with the wind on their ass. Crosswinds suck, too. Why? Because wind speed equals airspeed minus ground speed, and the direction of the wind changes the flight trajectory, fucks with the angle of attack. When you’re not into the wind on takeoff, it’s harder to reach translational lift. When you’re landing, you can settle with power, fucking crash. Who’s the controller I was talking to? You know the guys in the tower, right, F. J. Reed?”

“I donno anybody in the tower really.”

“Really?”

“Yes, ma’am. You’re the black chopper with the FLIR and the NightSun. Sort of looks like Homeland Security. But I’d know if you were. We know who comes in and out of here.”

Lucy was sure of it. He was the moron who had towed her dolly out and deliberately turned it downwind because the jerk in the control tower had instructed him or at the very least encouraged him to pick on her, to make a fool of her, to humiliate and belittle her.

“Appreciate it. You told me what I need to know,” she said.

She stalked off as Berger emerged from the ladies’ room, buttoning her mink coat. Lucy could tell she had washed her face, splashed a lot of cold water on it. It didn’t take much for Berger to get what she called “sick headaches” and Lucy called migraines. The two of them left the FBO and got into the 599GTB, the twelve-cylinder engine grumbling loudly as Lucy ran her Surefire flashlight along the gleaming Rosso Barchetta paint, the deep red of a fine red wine, looking for the slightest flaw, the faintest sign that there had been any misadventure or mischief with her 611-horsepower supercoupe. She checked the run-flat tires and looked inside the boot, arranging luggage. She tucked herself behind the carbon-fiber steering wheel and scanned the instrument panel, taking note of the mileage, checking the radio station, it’d better be what she’d left it on, making sure nobody took the Ferrari for a joyride during the time she and Berger were away or, as Berger put it, “stuck in Stowe.” Lucy thought of the e-mail Marino had sent but didn’t look for it. She didn’t need his help with navigation, no matter what traffic might have been diverted or roads closed. She should call her aunt.

“I didn’t get him,” Berger said, her profile clean and lovely in the near dark.

“He’d better hope I don’t get him,” Lucy said, shifting into first.

“I meant a tip. I didn’t tip the valet.”

“No tips. Something’s not right. Until I figure it out, I’m not nice anymore. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“Marino says someone, a former psychiatric patient of Benton ’s, left a package at my aunt’s building. The bomb squad had to be called. The package is at Rodman’s Neck,” Lucy said.

“This is why I never take vacations. I go away and look what happens.”

“Name’s Dodie Hodge, and Marino says she might have some connection with Hap Judd and he’s going to run her through RTCC.”

“You come across anything about her?” Berger asked. “All the data searches you’ve done, I would think you might have if there’s anything.”

“Not familiar,” Lucy said. “We should ask Hap about her, find out how he knows her or if he does. I’m really not liking it that now it appears this asshole is connected to someone who might have just left a package for my aunt.”

“It’s premature to make any such connection.”

“Marino’s up to his ears in alligators. He told me to tell you that.”

“Implying what?”

“He just said to tell you he’s got a lot of stuff to run down. He sounded pretty frantic,” Lucy said.

She downshifted back to third after hitting sixty in three seconds flat. Easy goes it on the access road, and hold your horses on Route 120. You can cruise half asleep at a hundred on the Parkway. She wasn’t going to tell Berger that Marino wasn’t going to make it to the interview.

“Slow down,” Berger objected.

“Dammit. I’ve told Aunt Kay about being on live TV.” Taking corners as if she intended to powerslide through them, the manet tino controller set to race mode, the power assist shut off. “Same thing you worry about. If you’re on live TV, people know where you are. It was obvious she was in the city tonight, and there are plenty of ways we can make it harder for people to do shit like this to her. She should make it hard as hell for people to do shit like this to her.”

“Let’s don’t blame the victim. It’s not Kay’s fault.”

“I’ve told her repeatedly to stay away from Carley Crispin, for fuck’s sake.” Lucy flicked her high beams at some fool creeping in front of her, gunned around him, kicking grit in his eyes.

“It’s not her fault. She thinks she’s helping,” Berger said. “God knows there’s so much garbage out there. Juries, especially. Everybody’s an expert. Slowly but surely, smart people like Kay have to set the record straight. We all do.”

“Helping Carley. That’s probably the only person Aunt Kay is helping. And you don’t set the record straight with somebody like that. Obviously. Look what just happened. We’ll see how many people are still taking taxis in the morning.”

“Why are you so hard on her?”

Lucy drove fast and didn’t answer.

“Maybe the same reason you’re so hard on me,” Berger said, looking straight ahead.

“What reason might that be? I see you, what? Two nights a week? I’m sorry you hated your birthday.”

“Every one of them,” Berger said, the way she sounded when she was trying to ease the tension. “Wait until you’re past forty. You’ll hate your birthdays, too.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

Lucy drove faster.

“I’m assuming Marino’s on his way to your loft?” Berger asked.

“He said he might be a little late.” One of those lies that wasn’t quite one.

“I don’t feel good about this.” Berger was thinking about Hannah Starr, about Hap Judd. Preoccupied, obsessed, but not with Lucy. No matter how much Berger reassured her or apologized, things had changed.

Lucy tried to remember exactly when. Summer, maybe, when the city started announcing budget cuts and the planet began wobbling on its axis. Then, in the past few weeks, forget it. And now? Gone. It was feeling gone. It was feeling over. It couldn’t be. Lucy wasn’t going to let it go. Somehow she had to stop it from leaving her.

“I’ll say it again. It’s all about the outcome.” Lucy reached for Berger’s hand, pulled it close, and stroked it with her thumb. “Hap Judd will talk because he’s an arrogant sociopath, because he’s got nothing but self-interest, and he believes it’s in his self-interest.”

“Doesn’t mean I feel comfortable,” Berger said, lacing her fingers in Lucy’s. “About a shade away from entrapment. Maybe not even a shade away.”

“Here we go again. We’re fine. Don’t worry. Eric had an eighth of White Widow on him for pain management. Nothing wrong with medical marijuana. As for where he got it? Maybe from Hap. Hap’s a pothead.”

“Remember who you’re talking to. I don’t want to know anything about where Eric-or you-get your so-called medical marijuana, and I’m assuming you don’t have any, have never had any.” Berger had said this before, repeatedly. “I’d better not find out you’re growing it indoors somewhere.”

“I’m not. I don’t do stuff like that anymore. Haven’t lit up in years. I promise.” Lucy smiled, downshifting onto the exit ramp for I-684 South, Berger’s touch reassuring her, bolstering her confidence. “Eric had a few J’s. Just happened to be enjoying himself when he just happened to run into Hap, who just happens to frequent the same places, is a creature of habit. Not smart. Makes you easy to find and befriend.”

“Yes, so you’ve said. And I continue to say the following: What if Eric decides to talk to somebody he shouldn’t? Like Hap’s lawyer, because he’ll get one. After I’m done with him, he will.”

“Eric likes me and I give him work.”

“Exactly. You trust a handyman.”

“A stoner with a record,” Lucy said. “Not credible, no one would believe him if it came down to that. Nothing for you to worry about, I promise.”

“There’s plenty for me to worry about. You induced a famous actor…”

“Not exactly Christian Bale, for Christ’s sake,” Lucy said. “You never even heard of Hap Judd before all this.”

“I’ve heard of him now, and he’s famous enough. More to the point, you encouraged him to break the law, to use a controlled substance, and you did it on behalf of a public servant so you could gain evidence against him.”

“Wasn’t there, not even in New York,” Lucy said. “You and I were in Vermont Monday night when Hap and my handyman had so much fun.”

“So, that’s really why you wanted to steal me away during a workweek.”

“I didn’t decide your birthday was December seventeenth, and it wasn’t my intention for us to get snowed in.” Stung again. “But yes, it made sense to have Eric cruise various bars while we were out of town. Especially while you were out of town.”

“You didn’t just ask him to cruise various bars, you supplied the illegal substance.”

“Nope. Eric bought the stuff.”

“Where’d he get the money?” Berger said.

“We’ve been through all this. You’re making yourself crazy.”

“The defense will claim entrapment, outrageous government conduct.”

“And you’ll say Hap was predisposed to do what he did.”

“Now you’re coaching me?” Berger laughed ruefully. “Don’t know why I bothered going to law school. In summary, let’s be honest, you had ideas implanted in Hap’s mind that could get him indicted for something we can never prove. You basically got him stoned and had your snitch handyman lure him into a conversation about Park General Hospital, which you got suspicious about because you hacked into Hap’s e-mail account and God knows what else. Probably the goddamn hospital’s, too. Jesus God.”

“I got their info fair and square.”

“Please.”

“Besides, we don’t need to prove it,” Lucy said. “Isn’t that the point? To scare the shit out of Mr. Hollywood so he’ll do what’s right?”

“I don’t know why I listen to you,” Berger said, holding Lucy’s hand tighter and tucking it against her.

“He could have been honorable. He could have been helpful. He could have been a normal law-abiding citizen, but guess what, he’s not,” Lucy said. “He’s brought this upon himself.”