Days ago, I promised Anna I would cook Christmas dinner if she did not mind an Italian in her kitchen who does not go near a turkey or what people stuff in turkeys during the holidays. Anna has made a valiant effort at shopping. She even has cold-pressed olive oil and fresh buffalo mozzarella. I fill a large pot with water and go back to Anna’s bedroom to tell her she can’t go to Hilton Head or anywhere else until she has eaten a little cucina Scarpetta and sampled a little wine. This is a family day, I tell her as she brushes her teeth. I don’t care about special grand juries or prosecutors or anything else until after dinner. Why doesn’t she make something Austrian? At this she almost spits out toothpaste. Never, she says. If both of us were in the kitchen at the same time, we would kill each other.
For a while, the mood seems to lift in Anna’s house. Lucy and McGovern appear around nine and gifts are piled under the tree. I start mixing eggs and flour and work it all together with my fingers on a wooden cutting board. When the dough is the right consistency, I wrap it in plastic and start looking for the hand-cranked pasta machine Anna claims to have somewhere as I jump from thought to thought, barely hearing what Lucy and McGovern are chatting about.
“It’s not that I can’t fly when it’s not VFR conditions.” Lucy is explaining something about her new helicopter, which apparently has been delivered to New York. “I have my instrument rating. But I’m not interested in having an instrument-rated single-engine helicopter because with only one engine, I want to see the ground at all times. So I don’t want to be flying above the clouds on crappy days.”
“Sounds dangerous,” McGovern comments.
“It’s not in the least. The engines never quit in these things, but it pays to always consider the worst-case scenario.”
I begin kneading the dough. It is my favorite part of making pasta, and I always refrain from using food processors because the warmth of the human touch gives a texture to fresh pasta that is unlike anything agitating steel blades can effect. I get into a rhythm, pushing down, folding over, giving half-turns, pressing hard with the heel of my good hand as I, too, think of worst-case scenarios. What might Benton have believed was the worst-case scenario for him? If he was thinking that his metaphorical Last Precinct was where he would end up, what would have been the worst-case scenario? This is when I decide he didn’t mean death when he said he would end up in The Last Precinct. No. Benton of all people knew there are far worse things than death.
“I’ve given her lessons off and on. Talk about a quick study. But people who use their hands have an advantage,” Lucy is saying to McGovern, talking about me.
It is where I will end up. Benton’s words shine my mind.
“Right. Because it takes coordination.”
“Got to be able to use both hands and both feet at the same time. And unlike fixed wing, a helicopter is intrinsically unstable.”
“That’s what I’m saying. They’re dangerous.”
It is where I’ll end up, Anna.
“They aren’t, Teun. You can lose an engine at a thousand feet and fly it right down to the ground. The air keeps the blades turning. Ever heard of autorotating? You land in a parking lot or someone’s yard. You can’t do that with a plane.”
What did you mean, Benton. Goddamn it, what did you mean? I knead and knead, always turning the ball of dough in the same direction, clockwise because I am leading with my right hand, avoiding my cast.
“Thought you said you never lose an engine. I want some eggnog. Is Marino making his famous eggnog this morning?” McGovern says.
“That’s his New Year’s Eve thing.”
“What? It’s against the law on Christmas? I don’t know how she does that.”
“Stubborn, that’s how.”
“No kidding. And we’re just standing here doing nothing.”
“She won’t let you help. No one touches her dough. Trust me. Aunt Kay, isn’t that making your elbow hurt?”
My eyes focus as I look up. I am kneading with my right hand and the fingertips of my left. I glance at the clock over the sink and realize I have lost track of time and have been kneading for almost ten minutes.
“God, what world were you just in?” Lucy’s light spirit turns to lead as she searches my face. “Don’t let all this eat you alive. It’s going to be all right.”
She thinks I am worrying about the special grand jury, when ironically, I am not thinking about that at all this morning.
“Teun and I are going to help you, are helping you. What do you think we’ve been doing these last few days? We’ve got a plan we want to talk to you about.”
“After eggnog,” McGovern says with a kind smile.
“Did Benton ever talk to you about The Last Precinct?” I am out with it, almost accusing in the fierce way I look at both of them, then realizing by their confused expressions they don’t know what I am alluding to at all.
“You mean what we’re doing now?” Lucy frowns. “The office in New York? He couldn’t have known about that unless you mentioned to him you were thinking about going into your own business.” This she says to McGovern.
I divide the dough into smaller parts and begin kneading again.
“I’ve always thought about going private,” McGovern replies. “But I never said anything about it to Benton. We were pretty consumed with the cases up there in Pennsylvania.”
“Understatement of the century,” Lucy adds blackly.
“Right.” McGovern sighs and shakes her head.
“If Benton didn’t have a clue about the private enterprise you planned to start,” I then say, “is it possible he’d heard you mention The Last Precinct—the concept, the thing you say you used to joke about? I’m trying to figure out why he would label a file with that name.”
“What file?” Lucy asks.
“Marino’s bringing it over.” I finish kneading one portion of dough and wrap it tightly in plastic. “It was in Benton’s briefcase in Philadelphia.” I explain to them what Anna told me in her letter and Lucy helps clarify at least one point. She feels certain she mentioned the philosophy of The Last Precinct to Benton. She seems to recall that she was in the car with him one day and was asking him about the private consulting he had begun doing in his retirement. He told her it was going all right but it was difficult handling the logistics of running his own business, that he missed having a secretary and someone else answering the phone, that sort of thing. Lucy wistfully replied that maybe all of us ought to get together and form our own company. That was when she used the term The Last Precinct—sort of “a league of our own,” she says she told him.
I spread clean, dry dish towels over the countertop. “Did he have any idea you might be serious about really doing that some day?” I ask.
“I told him if I ever got enough money, I was going to quit working for the fucking government,” Lucy replies.
“Well.” I fit thinning rollers in the pasta machine and set them at the largest opening. “Anybody who knows you would figure it was only a matter of time before you made money doing something. Benton always said you were too much a maverick to last in a bureaucracy forever. He wouldn’t be the least bit surprised over what’s happening to you now, Lucy.”
“In fact, it had already started happening to you from the start,” McGovern points out to my niece. “Which is why you didn’t last with the FBI.”
Lucy isn’t insulted. She has at least accepted that she made mistakes early on, the worst one being her affair with Carrie Grethen. She no longer blames the FBI for backing away from her until she finally quit. I flatten a piece of dough with my palm and crank it through the machine. “I’m wondering if Benton used your concept as the name of his mysterious file because he somehow knew The Last Precinct—meaning us—would investigate his case some day,” I offer. “That we are where he would end up, because whatever was begun with those harassing letters and all the rest of it wasn’t going to stop, even with his death.” I turn the dough back through the machine again and again until
I have a perfect strip of pasta to lay flat over a towel. “He knew. Somehow he did.”
“Somehow he always knew everything.” Lucy’s face is touched by deep sadness.
Benton is in the kitchen. We feel him as I make Christmas pasta and we talk about the way his mind worked. He was very intuitive. He always thought far ahead of where he was. I can imagine him projecting himself into a future after his death and imagining how we might react to everything, including a file we might find in his briefcase. Benton would know for a fact that if something happened to him—and he clearly feared something would—then I most certainly would go through his briefcase, which I did. What he may not have anticipated was that Marino would go through the briefcase first and remove a file that I would not learn about until now.
By noon, Anna has her car packed for the beach and her kitchen countertops are covered with lasagna noodles. Tomato sauce simmers on the stove. Parmesan reggiano and aged asagio cheeses are grated in bowls and fresh mozzarella rests in a towel and surrenders some of its moisture. The house smells like garlic and wood smoke, and Christmas lights glow while smoke drifts out the chimney, and when Marino arrives with all his typical noise and gaucheness he finds more happiness than he has seen from any of us for a while. He is dressed in jeans and a denim shirt and laden with gifts and a bottle of Virginia Lightning moonshine. I catch the edge of a file folder peeking out from behind wrapped packages in a bag, and my heart skips.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” he bellows. “Merry fucking Christmas!” It is his standard holiday line, but his heart isn’t into it. I have a feeling he didn’t spend the past few hours merely looking for the Tlip file. He has been through it. “I need a drink,” he announces to the house.
CHAPTER 31
IN THE KITCHEN, I set the oven and cook pasta. I mix grated cheeses with ricotta and begin layering it and meat sauce between noodles in a deep dish. Anna stuffs dates with cream cheese and fills a bowl with salted nuts while Marino, Lucy and McGovern pour beer and wine or mix whatever holiday potion they want, which in Marino’s case is a spicy Bloody Mary made with his moonshine.
He is in a weird mood and well on his way to getting drunk. The Tlip file is a black hole, still in the bag of presents, ironically under the Christmas tree. Marino knows what’s in that file, but I don’t ask him. Nobody does. Lucy begins getting out ingredients for chocolate-chip cookies and two pies—one peanut butter, the other key lime—as if we are feeding the entire city. McGovern uncorks a Chambertin Grand Cru red burgundy while Anna sets the table, and the file pulls silently and with great force. It is as if all of us have made an unspoken agreement to at least drink a toast and get dinner going before we start talking about murder.
“Anybody else want a Bloody?” Marino talks loudly and hangs out in the kitchen doing nothing helpful. “Hey, Doc, how ’bout I mix up a pitcher?” He yanks open the refrigerator and grabs a handful of Spicy Hot V8 juices and starts popping open the small cans. I wonder how much Marino had to drink before he got here and the safety comes off my anger. In the first place, I am insulted that he put the file under the tree, as if this is his idea of a tasteless, morbid joke. What is he implying? This is my Christmas present? Or is he so callous it didn’t even occur to him that when he rather unceremoniously stuck the bag under the tree the file was still in it? He bumps past me and starts pressing lemon halves into the electric juicer and tosses the rinds in the sink.
“Well, I guess nobody’s gonna help me so I’ll just help myself,” he mutters. “Hey!” he calls out as if we aren’t in the same room with him. “Anybody think to buy horseradish?”
Anna glances at me. A collective bad mood begins to settle in. The kitchen seems to get darker and chillier, and my anger itches. I am going to fire at Marino any minute, and I am trying so hard to hold back. It is Christmas, I keep telling myself. It is Christmas. Marino grabs a long wooden spoon and makes a big production of stirring his pitcher of Bloody Marys as he slops in an appalling amount of moonshine.
“Gag.” Lucy shakes her head. “At least use Grey Goose.”
“Ain’t a way in hell I’m drinking French vodka.” The spoon clacks as he stirs and then taps it on the lip of the pitcher. “French wine, French vodka. Hey. What happened to things Italian?” He exaggerates a New York–Italian accent. “What happened to the neigh-ba-hood?”
“Nothing Italian about that shit you’re mixing,” Lucy tells him as she gets a beer out of the refrigerator. “You drink all that, Aunt Kay will take you to work with her in the morning. Only you’ll be lying down in a bag.”
Marino chugs a glass of his dangerous concoction. “That reminds me,” he says to no one in particular. “I die, she ain’t cutting on me.” As if I am not standing right there. “That’s the deal.” He pours another glass, and by now, all of us have stopped what we are doing. We stare at him. “That’s been bothering me for ten fucking years now.” Another swallow. “Damn, this stuff will warm your toes. I don’t want her slamming me around on one of those damn steel tables and cutting me up like I’m a fish from the fucking market. Huh. I got a deal with the girls up front.” A reference to my clerks in the front office. “No passing my pictures around. Don’t think I don’t see what goes on up there. They compare dick sizes.” He chugs half a glass and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ve heard ’em do it. Especially Clit-ta.” He makes a lewd play on Cleta’s name.
He starts for the pitcher again and I put out my hand to stop him as my anger rushes forth in an army of harsh words. “That’s enough. What the hell’s gotten into you? How dare you come here drunk and then get drunker. Go sleep it off, Marino. I’m sure Anna can find a spare bed. You’re not driving anywhere and none of us care to be subjected to you right now.”
He gives me a defiant, mocking stare as he lifts his glass again. “Least I’m being honest,” he retorts. “Rest of you can pretend all you want that it’s a good damn day because it’s fucking Christmas. Well, so fucking what? Lucy’s quit her job so she don’t get fired because she’s a smart-ass queer.”
“Don’t, Marino,” Lucy warns him.
“McGovern quit her job, and I dunno what her deal is.” Pokes a thumb at her, insinuating she may be of Lucy’s same persuasion. “Anna’s gotta move outta her own fucking house because you’re here and being investigated for murder, and now you’re quitting your job. No small fucking goddamn wonder, and we’ll just see if the governor keeps you around. A private consultant. Yeah.” He slurs his words and sways in the middle of the kitchen, his face blotchy red. “That’ll be the day. So guess who’s left? Me, myself and I.” He slams the glass down on the counter and walks out of the kitchen, bumping into a wall, knocking a painting crooked, stumbling into the living room.
“My God.” McGovern quietly lets out a big breath.
“Redneck bastard,” Lucy says.
“The file.” Anna stares after him. “That is what is wrong with him.”
MARINO IS IN a drunken coma on the living room couch. Nothing stirs him. He does not move, but his snoring alerts us that he is both alive and not aware of what is going on inside Anna’s house. The lasagna is cooked and staying warm in the oven, and a key lime pie chills inside the refrigerator. Anna has set out on the eight-hour drive to Hilton Head, despite my protests. I did all I could to encourage her to stay, but she felt she should go on. It is midafternoon. Lucy, McGovern and I have been sitting at the dining room table for hours, place settings moved out of the way, gifts still unopened under the tree, the Tlip file spread out before us.
Benton was meticulous. He sealed each item in clear plastic, and purple stains on some of the letters and envelopes indicate ninhydrin was used to process latent fingerprints. The postmarks are Manhattan, all with the same first three digits of a zip code, 100. It is not possible to know which branch posted the letters. All a three-digit prefix indicates is which city and that the mail wasn’t processed through a home or business postage meter machine or at some rural station. In those instances, the post
mark would be five digits.
There is a table of contents in the front of the Tlip file and it lists a total of sixty-three items dating from the spring of 1996 (about six months before Benton wrote the letter he wanted delivered to me after his death) to the fall of 1998 (mere days before Carrie Grethen escaped from Kirby). The first item is labeled Exhibit 1, as if it is physical evidence for a jury to see. It is a letter posted in New York on May 15, 1996, unsigned and computer-printed in an ornate, hard-to-read WordPerfect font that Lucy identifies as “Ransom.”
Dear Benton,
I’m the president of the Ugly Fan Club and you’ve been picked to be an honorary member! Guess what? Members get to be ugly for free! Aren’t you excited? More later . . .
This was followed by five more letters, all within weeks of each other, all making the same references to an Ugly Fan Club and Benton’s becoming the newest member. The paper was plain, same Ransom font, no signature, same New York zip code, clearly the same author for all. And a very clever one until this person mailed the sixth letter and made a mistake, a rather obvious one to the investigative eye, which is why I am baffled that Benton didn’t seem to catch it. On the back of the plain white envelope are writing impressions that are noticeable when I tilt the envelope and catch light at different angles.
I get a pair of latex gloves out of my satchel and put them on as I wander into the kitchen to find a flashlight. Anna keeps one on the counter by the toaster. Back in the dining room, I slip the envelope out of its plastic cover, hold it up by the corners and shine the flashlight on the paper obliquely. I catch the shadow of the indented word Postmaster and it becomes instantly clear to me what the author of this letter did.
“Franklin D.,” I make out more words. “Is there a Franklin D. Roosevelt post office in New York? Because this definitely says N-Y, N-Y.”
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