He returns to the kitchen and snatches open a cupboard where a few minutes earlier he noticed a neat, tidy stack of small paper grocery bags. Shaking one open, he drops the envelope inside it.
“What the hell are you talking about? Are you just fucking with me, you son of a bitch?”
Frustration tightens his chest as he thinks of the way Benton treated him, as if the two of them hadn’t been lifelong friends, buddies, almost like brothers, sharing the same woman but in entirely different ways. In a fantastic and secret part of Marino’s mind, he and Benton were married to Scarpetta—at the same time. Now Marino has exclusive rights to her. But she doesn’t long for him, and that repressed anguish adds to his volatility, his upset. A flutter of panic stirs in his stomach and floats up his throat.
Outside in the dark without a cab in sight, Marino lights a cigarette and weakly sits on a brick wall, breathing hard, his heart pounding violently against his ribs like a boxer pounding him, battering him, knocking the wind out of him. Pain shoots through the left side of his chest, terrifying him, and he takes slow, deep, sharp breaths but can’t get enough air.
An empty taxicab drives by, seems to drift by, as sweat drips from Marino’s face while he sits perfectly still on the wall, eyes wide, hands on his knees. The cigarette drops from his clamped fingers and rolls on cobblestones, stopping in a crack.
BEV CAN’T STOP thinking about her.
She should stay far away from that lamb who just gave her five dollars in the Wal-Mart parking lot. But she can’t. Bev can’t control the compulsion, and although her reaction defies any rational explanation, there is a cause and effect in her black, ugly thoughts. The lamb spurned her. The woman backed away from Bev as if she was repulsive and then dared to degrade her further by giving her money.
Inside Wal-Mart, Bev lingers near a display of insect repellents, picking up bottles, pretending to read the labels as she watches the parking lot through the plate glass. To her surprise, the lamb isn’t driving a new car, but an old forest-green Explorer that for some reason doesn’t seem in character for a spoiled, rich housewife or girlfriend. More interesting yet, she’s sitting inside the SUV with the engine running and the headlights off. Bev is in and out of a dressing room in five minutes, outfitted in a loud Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts—none of it paid for and the sensors cut off with her buck knife. Her rain slicker is inside out and draped over her arm, a cheap plastic rain bonnet over her hair, even though the night is clear. If people notice her at all, they will assume she is either crazy or processing her hair.
The Explorer hasn’t moved. Bev walks directly to Jay’s beat-up, filthy white SUV, confident the lamb doesn’t notice her or at least doesn’t connect her with the woman she encountered and gave money to not even half an hour ago. Driving off, Bev turns left onto Perkins, then crosses Acadian and parks in a small parking lot filled with cars because Caterie is a popular restaurant, especially with university students. She turns off her engine and headlights, waiting, her desire burning hotter the longer the lamb sits in the forest-green Explorer in the Wal-Mart parking lot across the street.
Maybe she is on the phone. Maybe this time she is fighting with her man instead of sounding so disgustingly sweet. Bev is an expert at tailing people. She does it regularly when she is driving Jay’s Cherokee. Before she began biding her time as a fugitive at a fishing camp, she followed people, depending on what needed to be done or just for the hell of it. But in those days, her activities had a purpose, or at least were a means directed toward a useful end. Whatever Bev did, she was following orders.
To some extent, she is following Jay’s orders now, but methods and emotions change when one is asked repeatedly to perform the same task. Bev has begun to indulge herself, entertain her own fantasies and have her own fun. It’s her right.
The Explorer heads into the heart of the Old Garden District. The pretty blonde driver has no idea that the woman with the bad knee is not far behind. This amuses Bev. She smiles as the Explorer slows down and makes a right turn into a dark driveway bordered by tall shrubs. Bev drives past, pulls off the road and gets out. She quickly covers herself in her dark rain slicker and backtracks to the white brick house just in time to see its front door close, the woman safely inside. Bev returns to her Cherokee, writes down the address and cuts across a side road so she doesn’t pass the house again. She waits.
MORE THAN ANYTHING, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne wants a dipole antenna, but he is not allowed commissary privileges, and the commissary is where the antennas are sold.
Inmates who enjoy favored status can buy dipole antennas, headphones, portable radios, an AM/FM booster and a religious medal with a chain. At least some inmates can. Beast, in particular, loves to boast about his portable radio, but he does not own a dipole antenna because inmates are allowed only one item from a special list of the Big Ten, as they call it. On death row, privileges are limited out of fear of inmates fashioning weapons.
Jean-Baptiste does not care about a weapon. His body is his weapon, should he ever decide to uncoil it. Uncoiling it is of no interest, not now. When he is led in restraints to the shower, he has no need to attack officers, which he could most assuredly do because of his magnetism, which is only enhanced when he is led past multiple metal doors with iron bars. His power builds. It throbs in his groin and lifts the top of his skull to a hover above his head. He leaves a visible trail of sparks. The corrections officers never understand what he smiles about, and his demeanor greatly annoys them.
Lights-out was at nine. The officer in the control booth enjoys flipping every switch and throwing the inmates into complete darkness in the pod. Jean-Baptiste has overheard officers comment that darkness gives the “dirtbags” time to think hard about their impending executions, the punishment for what they did when they were on the outside, free and able to satisfy their love. Those who do not kill do not understand that the ultimate union with a woman is to release her, to hear her scream and moan, to cover himself with her blood as he ravishes her body and then poses her, that all people might see, and therefore share in her ecstasy and the marriage of her magnetism to him for all eternity.
He lies on his bunk, sweat soaking through the sheets, his odor filling his small, airless cell, the stainless-steel toilet a toadstool shape against the right side of the back wall. The condemned inmates are quiet, with the exception of Beast. He talks quietly to himself, almost whispers, not realizing that Jean-Baptiste can hear without ears. Beast is transformed at night into the powerless, weak entity that he really is. He will be so much better off when the cocktail settles him to sleep and he no longer needs his weak, flawed flesh.
“. . . Hold still. It’s nice, isn’t it? Feels so nice. Stop it, please stop it. Stop it! That hurts! Don’t cry. This feels good. Don’t you understand, you little bitch. It feels good! I want my mommy! So do I. But she’s a whore. Now you quit crying, you hear me! You scream one more time . . .”
“Who’s there?” Jean-Baptiste asks the foul-smelling air.
“Shut up. Shut the fuck up. It’s your fault. You had to scream, didn’t you. When I told you not to. Well, no more chewing gum for you. Cinnamon. Dropping the wrapper by the swingset so I know what flavor you like. Stupid little cunt. You stay right here in the shade, okay? I’ve gotta run, gotta run. How’s that for a good one, I gotta run, gotta run, gotta run.” He begins to softly sing. “Gotta run, gotta run, gotta run-run-run . . .”
“Who’s there?”
“Knock, knock, who’s there?” Beast calls back in a searing, mocking tone. “Hairy, hairy, quite contrary, how does your dickie grow? With little nuts hiding in your butt and a weenie smaller than your nose.” Softly, softly singing, but loud enough. “I’m a poet, don’cha know it? You know that, dickless wonder? A real sensitive guy, I am, I am. Green eggs and ham. Cat in the hat. I like ’em meaty but not too fat. A drumroll please.”
“Who’s there?” Jean-Baptiste bares his widely spaced, tiny, pointed teeth. He licks them hard and tastes t
he salty metallic flavor of his own blood.
“Just me, Hair Ball. Your best pal in the world. Your only pal in the world. You got nobody but me, you know that? You must. Who else talks to you and sends little love notes door to door to door until it’s slid under yours, all dirty and read by everybody?”
Jean-Baptiste listens, sucking blood out of his tongue.
“You got this pow-er-ful family. I heard all about it on my radio. More’an once I heard it.”
Silence. Jean-Baptiste’s ears are satellite dishes.
“Con-nec-tions. Where are those fucking guards when you need ’em?” he mocks the darkness.
His hateful voice flies like tiny bats through the iron bars in Jean-Baptiste’s door. Words flutter around him, and he waves them off with sweeps of his hairy hands.
“Did ya know ya get crazy in here, Hair Ball? If you don’t get out, you’re crazy as a cat with M40s up its ass. You know that, Hair Ball?”
“Je ne comprends pas,” Jean-Baptiste whispers, a drop of blood running down his chin and disappearing in his baby-fine hair.
He feels for the blood and licks his finger.
“Oh, you comprendez vous, all right. Maybe they stick something up your ass, huh? And kaboom!” Beast softly laughs. “See, once they get you over there in that cage, they can do whatever the fuck they like, and who’s gonna know? You snitch and they hurt you more and say you did it to yourself.”
“Who’s there?”
“I’m so fucking sick of you saying that, knock-knock-shit, Mini-Me Dick! You know damn well who’s there. ’Tis me. Your bud-dy.”
Jean-Baptiste hears Beast breathing. His air travels past two cells and Jean-Baptiste smells garlic and red Burgundy, a young Clos des Mouches, what he calls a stupid wine because it has not slept long enough in dark, damp places to become brilliant and wise. In the dark, Jean-Baptiste’s death-row cell is his cave.
“But here’s the thing, my special pal, your only pal. They gotta transport me in this van to where they do me. Huntsville. What a name. Hunted and a villain, right? Takes an hour, the ride. What if something happens between point A and B?”
At Place Dauphine, chestnut trees, azaleas and roses are blossoming and blooming. Jean-Baptiste does not need to see, only to smell to know where he is: Bar du Caveau and Restaurant Paul, which is a good one. People are disconnected from him, eating and drinking behind glass, smiling and laughing or intensely leaning into candlelight. Some of them will leave and make love, not knowing they are watched. Jean-Baptiste glides through the night to the tip of the Ile St.-Louis, and the lights of Paris are caught in the current of the Seine and shimmer like fine hair. In but a few minutes, he is a mile or so from the morgue.
“Now I ain’t got the wherewithal to do nothing. Bet you do, though. You get that van stopped when I’m on my way to the needle, and I’ll come back for you, Hair Ball. My time’s up. Three days. You hear that? Three goddamn days. I know you can figure out a way. You can arrange it, save my ass and then we’ll be partners.”
Inside a brasserie on the Ile St.-Louis, he sat in a corner and stared out at a balcony crowded with flowerpots, and a woman stepped out to look, perhaps at the blue sky and the river. She was very beautiful, and her windows were open to the fresh, fall air. He remembered that she smelled like lavender. He thought she did.
“You can have her when I’m done,” Jay said as he sipped a Clos de Bèze of the Domaine Prieuré Roch. The wine hinted of smoked almonds.
He slowly swirled the red Burgundy, and it licked around the wide bowl of the glass like a warm tongue slowly licking in circles.
“I know you want some.” Jay lifted the glass and laughed at the double entendre. “But you know how you get, mon frère.”
“You listening, Hair Ball? Three fucking days, just a week before you, I’ll make sure you got all the bitches you want out there. I’ll bring ’em to you, long as you don’t mind if I have my piece of ’em first. Since you can’t, right? So why shouldn’t you share?” A pause, and Beast’s voice turns sinister. “You listening to me, Hair Ball? Free as a bird!”
“So here we go,” Jay said with a wink.
He set down his wineglass and said he’d be right back. Jean-Baptiste, clean-shaven with a cap pulled low over his face, was not to speak to anyone while Jay . . . He can’t call him Jay. Jean-Paul, Jean-Paul was gone. Through the window, Jean-Baptiste watched his beautiful brother call up to the woman on the balcony. He was motioning, pointing, as if in need of directions, and she smiled and began to laugh at his antics. Instantly, she was overcome by his spell and disappeared back inside her apartment.
Then his blessed brother was magically sitting in the booth again. “Leave,” he commanded Jean-Baptiste. “Her apartment is on the third floor.” He nodded toward it. “You see where it is. Hide while she and I have a drink. She will be simple enough. You know what to do. Now get out of here and don’t frighten anyone.”
“You fucking ugly piece of hairy shit.” Beast’s hideous whisper drifts inside Jean-Baptiste’s cell. “You don’t want to die, do ya? Nobody wants to die except the people we do, when they can’t take no more and start begging, right? Free as a bird. Just think of that. Free as a bird.”
Jean-Baptiste envisions the woman doctor named Scarpetta. She will fall asleep in his arms, his eyes never leaving her, and she will be with him always. He strokes the letter she sent him, typed and brief, begging to come see him, asking for his help. He wishes she had written it by hand so he could study every curve and contour of her sensual penmanship. Jean-Baptiste imagines her naked and sucks his tongue.
THUNDER SOUNDS LIKE kettledrums in the distance, and clouds roll past the waning moon.
Bev will not head back to Dutch Bayou until the storm passes if it moves this far southeast, and the forecast on the car radio doesn’t call for that. But she isn’t ready to return to the boat landing. The lamb in the forest-green Ford Explorer has followed an interesting route for the past two hours, and Bev can’t figure it out. She—whoever she is—has cruised streets and especially parking lots for no reason that Bev can tell.
Her guess is that the lamb had a fight with her man and refuses to go home right now, probably to worry him sick, one of those little games. Bev has been careful to keep her distance, to turn up side streets, to pull off in gas stations along Highway 19, then speed up. Several times, Bev has passed the Explorer in the left lane, going ahead at least ten miles, pulling off the highway and waiting for her prey to get ahead of her again. Soon enough, they pass through Baker, a tiny town with businesses that have strange names: Raif’s Po-Boy, Money Flash Cash, Crawfish Depot.
The town vanishes like a mirage, and the stretch of highway becomes pitch dark. There is nothing out here, no lights, only trees, and a billboard that reads: You Need Jesus.
GATOR EYES REMIND BEV OF periscopes fixing her in their sights before vanishing under water the color of weak coffee.
Jay told her gators won’t bother her unless she bothers them. He says the same about cottonmouths.
“Did you ask them their opinion? And if it’s the truth, then how come cottonmouths come crashing out of the trees, trying to get in the boat? And remember that movie we watched? Oh, what was it called . . . ?”
“Faces of Death,” he replied, on this occasion amused instead of annoyed by her questions.
“Remember that game warden who fell in the lake and right there on camera, this huge gator got him?”
“Cottonmouths don’t fall into the boat unless you startle them,” Jay explained. “And the gator got the game warden because the game warden was trying to get him.”
That sounded reasonable enough, and Bev felt slightly reassured until Jay smiled that cruel smile of his and did a complete about-face and explained how she can tell if an animal or reptile is a predator, and therefore an aggressor, and therefore the fearless hunter.
“It’s all in the eyes, baby,” he said. “The eyes of predators are in front of the head, like mine.” He pointed
to his beautiful blue eyes. “Like a gator’s, like a cottonmouth’s, like a tiger’s. Us predators are going to look straight-on for something to attack. The eyes of non-predators are more on the sides of the head, because how the hell is a rabbit going to defend itself against a gator, right? So the little bunny needs peripheral vision to see what’s coming and run like hell.”
“I’ve got predator eyes,” Bev said, pleased to know it but not at all happy to hear that gators and cottonmouths are predators.
Eyes like that, she realized, meant something’s on the prowl, looking to hurt or kill. Predators, especially reptiles, aren’t afraid of people. Shit! As far as Bev’s concerned, she’s no match for a gator or a snake. If she falls in the water or steps on a cottonmouth, who’s going to win? Not her.
“Humans are the ultimate predator,” Jay said. “But we’re complicated. A gator is always a gator. A snake’s always a snake. A human can be a wolf or a lamb.”
Bev is a wolf.
She feels her wolfish hot blood stirring as she glides past cypress knees jutting from the bayou like the ridges of a sea monster’s back. The pretty blonde woman hog-tied on the floor of the boat squints in intermittent early morning sunlight. Wherever cypress roots break the surface, the water isn’t deep, and Bev is vigilant as she motors slowly toward the fishing shack. Now and then her prisoner tries to shift her position to ease the terrible pain in her joints, and her labored breathing flares her nostrils, the gag around her mouth wetly sucking in and out.
Bev doesn’t know her name and warned her not to say it. This was hours ago, inside the Cherokee, after the lamb realized she couldn’t get out the passenger door, and if she tried to climb over the seat, Bev was going to shoot her. Then the lamb got chatty, trying to be friendly, trying to make Bev like her, going so far as to politely ask Bev’s name. They all do that, and Bev always says the same thing: “My name is none of your fucking business, and I don’t want to know yours or a damn thing about you.”
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