I remembered exchanging hurtful words that turned into desperate lovemaking in London, in a flat near the American Embassy. Maybe Dorothy was right. Maybe sometimes I was too much in my mind and not as open as I wanted to be. But she was wrong about Benton. He had never been weak, and we had never been tepid in bed.
“Dr. Scarpetta?”
A voice grabbed my attention.
“We’re here,” our driver said, eyeing me in the rearview mirror.
I rubbed my face with my hands and stifled a yawn. Winds were stronger here, the temperature lower. At the Air France ticket counter I checked us in because I didn’t trust Marino with tickets or passports or even finding the right gate without being an ass. Flight 2 left in about an hour and a half, and the instant I sat down in the Concorde lounge, I felt exhausted again, my eyes burning. Marino was in awe.
“Look at that, will you?” he whispered too loudly. “They got a full bar. That guy over there’s drinking a beer and it’s seven o’clock in the morning.”
Marino took that as his wake-up call.
“Want anything?” he asked. “How ’bout a newspaper?”
“Right now I don’t give a damn what’s going on in the world.” I wished he would leave me alone.
When he returned, he was carrying two plates piled high with Danish, cheese and crackers. He had a can of Heineken under an arm.
“Guess what,” he said, setting his breakfast snack on the coffee table next to him. “It’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon, French time.”
He popped open the beer.
“They got people mixing champagne and orange juice, you ever heard of that? And I’m pretty sure there’s somebody famous sitting over there. She’s got sunglasses on and everybody’s staring.”
I didn’t care.
“The guy she’s with looks famous, too, sort of like Mel Brooks.”
“Does the woman in sunglasses look like Anne Bancroft?” I muttered.
“Yeah!”
“Then it’s Mel Brooks.”
Other passengers, dressed far more expensively than we were, glanced our way. A man rattled Le Monde and sipped espresso.
“Saw her in The Graduate. You remember that?” Marino went on.
I was awake now and wished I could hide somewhere.
“That was my fantasy. Shit. Like that schoolteacher giving you tutoring after hours. The one who made you cross your legs.”
“You can see the Concorde through the window over there.” I pointed.
“I can’t believe I didn’t bring a camera.”
He swallowed another mouthful of beer.
“Maybe you should go find one,” I suggested.
“You think they’d have those little disposable cameras around here?”
“Only French ones.”
He hesitated for a moment, then gave me a dirty look.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
Of course, he left his ticket and passport in the pocket of the coat draped over his chair, and when the announcement came that we were about to board, I got an urgent text message on my pager that no one would let him back inside the lounge. He was waiting at the desk, face flushed with anger, a security guard beside him.
“Sorry,” I said, handing one of the attendants Marino’s passport and ticket.
“Let’s not begin the trip this way,” I said to him under my breath as we walked back through the lounge, following other passengers to the plane.
“I told them I’d go get it. Bunch of French sons of bitches. If people would speak English like they’re supposed to, this kinda shit wouldn’t happen.”
Our seats were together, but fortunately, the plane wasn’t full, so I moved across the aisle from him. He seemed to take this personally until I gave him half of my chicken with lime sauce, my sponge roll with vanilla mousse, and my chocolates. I had no idea how many beers he drank, but he was up and down a lot, making his way along the narrow aisle while we flew twice the speed of sound. We arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport at 6:20 P.M.
A dark blue Mercedes was waiting for us outside the terminal, and Marino tried to strike up a conversation with the driver, who would neither let him sit in the front seat nor pay any attention to him. Marino sullenly smoked out his window, cold air washing in as he watched abject apartments scarred with graffiti and miles of switchyards draw us into a lit-up skyline of a modern city. The great corporate gods of Hertz, Honda, Technics and Toshiba glittered in the night from their Mount Olympian heights.
“Hell, this may as well be Chicago,” Marino complained. “I feel really weird.”
“Jet lag.”
“I been to the West Coast before and didn’t feel like this.”
“This is worse jet lag,” I said.
“I think it’s got something to do with going that fast,” he went on. “Think about it. You’re looking out this little porthole like you’re in a spaceship, right? You can’t even see the damn horizon. No clouds that high, air’s too thin to breathe, probably a hundred degrees below zero. No birds, no normal planes, no nothing.”
A police officer in a blue and white Citroën with red stripes was pulling a speeder near the Banque de France. Along the Boulevard des Capucines shops turned into designer boutiques for the very rich, and I was reminded that I had failed to find out the exchange rate.
“That’s why I’m hungry again,” Marino continued his scientific explanation. “Your metabolism’s got to pick up when you’re going that fast. Think how many calories that is. I didn’t feel nothing once I got through Customs, did you? Not drunk or stuffed or nothing.”
Not much decorating had been done for Christmas, not even in the heart of the city. Parisians had strung modest lights and swags of evergreen outside their bistros and shops, and so far I had seen not a single Santa except the tall inflatable one in the airport that was flapping his arms as if he were doing calisthenics. The season was celebrated a bit more, with poinsettias and a Christmas tree, in the marble lobby of the Grand Hôtel, where our itinerary let us know we were staying.
“Holy shit,” Marino said, looking around at columns and at a huge chandelier. “What do you think a room in this joint costs?”
The musical trilling of telephones was nonstop, the line at the reception desk depressingly long. Baggage was parked everywhere, and I realized with growing despondency that a tour group was checking in.
“You know what, Doc?” Marino said. “I won’t even be able to afford a beer in this place.”
“If you ever make it to the bar,” I replied. “It looks like we may be here all night.”
Just as I said that, someone touched my arm, and I found a man in a dark suit standing next to me, smiling.
“Madame Scarpetta, Monsieur Marino?” He motioned us out of line. “I’m so sorry, I just now saw you. My name is Ivan. You’re already checked in. Please, I will show you to your rooms.”
I couldn’t place his accent, but it certainly wasn’t French. He led us through the lobby to mirror-polished brass elevators, where he pushed the button for the third floor.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“All over, but I have been in Paris many years.”
We followed him down a long hallway to rooms that were next to each other, but not connected. I was startled and unnerved to find our baggage was already inside them.
“If you need anything, call for me specifically,” Ivan said. “It’s probably best you eat in the café here. There’s a table for you, or of course, there’s room service.”
He briskly walked away before I could tip him. Marino and I both stood in our doorways staring inside our rooms.
“This is weirding me out,” he said. “I don’t like secret squirrel shit like this. How the hell do we know who he is? I bet he don’t even work for this hotel.”
“Marino, let’s not have this conversation in the hall,” I said quietly. I thought if I did not have even a few moments away from him I might become violent.
“So, wh
en you want to eat?”
“How about I call your room,” I said.
“Well, I’m really hungry.”
“Why don’t you go on to the café, Marino?” I suggested, praying he would. “I’ll get something later.”
“No, I think we better stick together, Doc,” he replied.
I walked inside my room and shut the door, astonished to discover my suitcase unpacked, my clothes neatly folded and already in drawers. Slacks, shirts and a suit were hanging in the closet, toiletries lined up on the counter in the bathroom. Instantly, my phone rang. I had no doubt who it was.
“What?” I said.
“They got into my shit and put everything away!” Marino blared like a radio turned up too high. “Now, I’ve about had it. I don’t like nobody digging in my bags. Who the hell they think they are over here? This some French custom or something? You check into a ritzy hotel and they go through your luggage?”
“No, it’s not a French custom,” I said.
“So it must be some Interpol custom,” he retorted.
“I’ll call you later.”
A fruit basket and bottle of wine centered a table, and I sliced a blood orange and poured a glass of merlot. I pulled back heavy drapes and stared out the window at people in evening dress getting into fine cars. Gilt sculptures on the old opera house across the street flaunted their golden, naked beauty before the gods, and chimney pots were dark stubble on miles of roofs. I felt anxious and lonely and intruded upon.
I took a long bath and thought about abandoning Marino for the rest of the night, but decency overruled. He had never been to Europe before, certainly not to Paris, and more to the point, I was afraid of leaving him alone. I dialed his extension and asked if he wanted to have a light dinner sent up. He picked pizza, despite my warning that Paris wasn’t known for it, and he raided my minibar for beer. I ordered oysters on the half shell and nothing more, and turned the lights very low because I’d seen enough for one day.
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” he said after the food had arrived. “I don’t like to bring it up, Doc, but I’m getting a really oddball feeling, odd as hell. I mean, well”—he took a bite of pizza—“I’m just wondering if you’re feeling it, too. If the same thing might be floating in your head, sort of out of nowhere like a UFO.”
I put down my fork. The lights of the city sparkled beyond my windows and even in the dim lighting I could see his fear. I responded in kind.
“I haven’t a clue as to what you’re talking about,” I said, reaching for my wine.
“Okay, I just think we need to consider something for a minute.”
I didn’t want to listen.
“Well, first you get this letter delivered by a United States senator who just happens to be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, meaning he’s got about as much power with federal law enforcement as any other person I can think of. Meaning he’s going to know all kinds of shit going on with Secret Service, ATF, FBI, you name it.”
An alarm began to sound inside me.
“You gotta admit it’s interesting timing that Senator Lord delivers this letter to you from Benton and now all of a sudden we’re over here going to Interpol . . .”
“Let’s don’t do this.” I cut him off as my stomach tightened and my heart began to pound.
“You gotta hear me out, Doc,” he replied. “In the letter Benton’s saying for you to stop grieving, that everything’s all right and he knows what you’re doing right this minute . . .”
“Stop it!” I raised my voice and threw my napkin on the table as emotions began crashing in on all sides.
“We got to face it.” Marino was getting emotional, too. “How do you know . . . I mean, what if the letter really wasn’t written several years ago? What if it was written now. . .?”
“No! How dare you!” I exclaimed as tears filled my eyes.
I pushed back my chair and got up.
“Leave,” I told him. “I won’t be subjected to your goddamn UFO theories. What do you want? To make me live through this hell all over again? So I can hope for something when I’ve worked so hard to accept the truth? Get out of my room.”
Marino pushed back his chair, and it fell over as he jumped to his feet. He snatched his pack of cigarettes off the table.
“What if he’s fucking still alive?” He raised his voice, too. “How do you know for a fact he didn’t have to disappear for a while because of some big thing going on that involves ATF, FBI, Interpol, shit, maybe NASA, for all we know?”
I grabbed my wine, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold it without spilling, my entire existence ripped open again. Marino was stalking the room and gesturing wildly with his cigarette.
“You don’t know it for a fact,” he said again. “All you saw was burned-up bone in a stinking black fire hole. And a Breitling watch like his. So fucking what!”
“You son of a bitch!” I said. “You goddamn son of a bitch! After all I’ve been through, and then you have to . . .”
“You’re not the only one who’s been through it. You know, just because you slept with him doesn’t mean you fucking owned him.”
I took quick steps toward him and caught myself before I slapped him hard across the face.
“Oh, God,” I muttered as I stared into his shocked eyes. “Oh, God.”
I thought of Lucy striking Jo, and I walked away from him. He turned to the window and smoked. The room was overcast with misery and shame, and I leaned my head against the wall and shut my eyes. I’d never come even close to violence with anyone in my life, not anyone like this, not someone I knew and cared about.
“Nietzsche was right,” I muttered in a defeated way. “Be careful who you choose for an enemy because that’s who you become most like.”
“I’m sorry,” Marino barely said.
“Like my first husband, like my idiot sister, like every out-of-control cruel, selfish person I’ve ever known. Here I am. Like them.”
“No, you ain’t.”
My forehead was pressed against the wall, as if I were praying, and I was grateful we were in shadows, my back to him, so he could not see my anguish.
“I didn’t mean what I said, Doc. I swear I didn’t. I don’t even know why I said it.”
“It’s all right.”
“All I’m trying to do is look at everything because there’s pieces that aren’t fitting right.”
He walked over to an ashtray and stabbed out his cigarette.
“I don’t know why we’re here,” he said.
“We’re not here to do this,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know why they couldn’t have exchanged info with us through the computer, over the phone, like they always do. Do you?”
“No,” I whispered as I took a deep breath.
“So it started sneaking into my thoughts that maybe Benton . . . What if there was something going on and he had to be a protected witness for a while. Change his identity and all that. We didn’t always know what he was into. Not even you always knew, because he couldn’t always tell you, and he would never want to hurt us by telling us something we shouldn’t know. Especially not hurt you or make you worry about him all the time.”
I did not answer him.
“I’m not trying to stir anything up. I’m just saying it’s something we should think about,” he lamely added.
“No, it isn’t,” I replied, clearing my throat and aching all over. “It’s not something we should think about. He was identified, Marino, by every possible means. Carrie Grethen didn’t just conveniently kill him so he could disappear for a while. Don’t you see how impossible this is? He’s dead, Marino. He’s dead.”
“Did you go to his autopsy? Did you see his autopsy report?” He wouldn’t let it go.
Benton’s remains had gone to the Philadelphia medical examiner’s office. I had never asked to review his case.
“No, you didn’t go to his autopsy, and if you had, I would have thought you were
the most fucked-up person I’ve ever met,” Marino said. “So you didn’t see nothing. You only know what you’ve been told. I don’t mean to keep hammering you with that, but it’s the truth. And if anyone wanted to cover up that those remains weren’t his, how would you know if you never took a look?”
“Pour me some Scotch,” I said.
32
I turned toward Marino, my back against the wall as if I didn’t have the strength to stand on my own two feet.
“Man, you see how much whiskey costs over here?” Marino commented as he closed the door to the minibar.
“I don’t care.”
“Interpol’s probably paying, anyway,” he decided.
“And I need a cigarette,” I added.
He lit a Marlboro for me and the first hit punched my lungs. He presented me with a tumbler of straight single malt on the rocks in one hand, a Beck’s beer in the other.
“What I’m trying to say,” Marino resumed, “is if Interpol can do all this secret shit with electronic tickets and ritzy hotels and Concordes, and no one ever meets a soul who’s ever talked to whoever these people are, then what makes you think they couldn’t have faked everything else?”
“They couldn’t have faked his being murdered by a psychopath,” I replied.
“Yes, they could have. Maybe that was the perfect timing.” He blew out smoke and gulped down beer. “Point is, Doc, I think anything can be faked, if you think about it.”
“DNA identified . . .”
I couldn’t finish the statement. It brought images before me I had suppressed for so long.
“You can’t say the reports were true.”
“Enough!”
But the beer had crumbled what walls he had, and he would not stop his increasingly fantastic theories and deductions and wishful thoughts. His voice went on and on and began to sound far away and unreal. A shiver crept over me. A splinter of light glinted in that dark, devastated part of me. I desperately wanted to believe that what he was suggesting was true.
When 5:00 A.M. came around, I was still dressed and asleep on the couch. I had a hammering headache. My mouth tasted like stale cigarettes and my breath was alcohol. I showered and stared for a long time at the phone by my bed. The anticipation of what I had decided to do electrified me with panic. I was so confused.
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