"Oh, God," I cried as the power went out.
Marino's big shape paced the carpet in the dark like a crazed bull about to charge as he fumbled with his portable radio and swore.
"The fucking bastard! The fucking bastard!"
I sent Marino away shortly after the incinerated heap that was left of his beloved new car was hauled off in a flatbed truck. He had insisted on staying the night. I had insisted that the several patrol units staking out my house would suffice. He had insisted I check into a hotel, and I had refused to budge. He had his wreckage to deal with and I had mine. My street and yard were a sooty swamp, the downstairs hazy with vile-smelling smoke. The mailbox at the end of my drive looked like a blackened match-stick, and I had lost at least half a dozen boxwoods and just as many trees. More to the point, though I appreciated Marino's concern, I needed to be alone.
It was well past midnight and I was undressing in candlelight when the telephone rang. Frankie's voice seeped like a noxious vapor into my bedroom, poisoning the air I breathed, fouling the privileged refuge of my home.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I stared blindly at the answering machine as bile crept up my throat and my heart thudded sickly against my ribs.
"… I wish I could have stayed around to watch. Was it impre-pre-pressive, Kay? Wasn't it something? I don't like it when you have other me-me-men in your house. Now you know. Now you know."
The answering machine stopped and the message light began to blink. Shutting my eyes, I took slow, deep breaths as my heart raced, shadows from the candle flame wavering silently on the walls. How could this be happening to me?
I knew what I had to do. It was the same thing Beryl Madison had done. I wondered if I was experiencing the same fear she had felt when fleeing the car wash, the ragged heart scratched on her car door. My hands trembled violently as I opened the drawer in the bedside table and pulled out the Yellow Pages. After I made the reservations, I called Benton Wesley.
"I don't advise that, Kay," he said, instantly wide awake. "No. Under no circumstances. Listen to me, Kay-"
"I have no choice, Benton. I just wanted someone to know. You can inform Marino, if you wish. But don't interfere. Please. The manuscript-"
"Kay-"
"I've got to find it. I think that's where it is."
"Kay! You're not thinking right!"
"Look." My voice rose. "What am I supposed to do? Wait here until the bastard decides to kick in my door or blow up my car? I stay here, I'm dead. Haven't you figured that out yet, Benton?"
"You've got an alarm system. You've got a gun. He can't blow up your car with you in it. Uh, Marino called. He told me what happened. They're pretty sure someone doused a rag with gasoline, stuffed it into the gas tank. They found pry marks. He pried open the-"
"Jesus, Benton. You're not even listening to me."
"Listen. You listen. Please listen to me, Kay. I'll get cover for you, get someone to move in with you, all right? One of our female agents-"
"Good night, Benton."
"Kay!"
I hung up and didn't answer when he immediately called back. I listened numbly to his protests on the machine, blood pounding in my neck as the images rushed back at me, images of Marino's car hissing as flames snarled at arching blasts of water from tumescent fire hoses snaking over my street. When I had discovered the charred little corpse at the end of my driveway, something inside me snapped. The gas tank in Marino's car must have exploded at the very instant Sammy Squirrel was frantically hopping along the power line. Crazily, he leapt for safety. For a split second, his paws simultaneously made contact with the grounded transformer and primary line. Twenty thousand volts of electricity surged through his tiny body, burning him to a crisp and blowing the fuse.
I had scooped him into a shoe box and buried him in my rose garden, the idea of seeing his blackened shape in the light of morning more than I could bear.
The electricity was still out when I finished packing. I went downstairs and nursed brandy and smoked until I stopped shaking, my Ruger on top of the bar glinting in the light of hurricane lanterns. I did not go to bed. I did not look at the wreckage of my yard when I bolted out my door, my suitcase thumping against my leg and filthy water splashing my ankles as I ran to my car. I did not see a single patrol unit as I drove swiftly along my silent street. When I got to the airport shortly after five A.M., I headed straight for the ladies' room and took my handgun out of my pocketbook. Unloading it, I packed it inside my suitcase.
15
Passing through the boarding bridge, I deplaned at noon into the sun-drenched concourse of Miami International Airport.
I stopped to buy the Miami Herald and a cup of coffee. Finding a small table halfway hidden by a potted palm, I took off my winter blazer and pushed up my sleeves. I was soaking wet, perspiration trickling down my sides and back. My eyes burned from lack of sleep, my head ached, and what I discovered when I spread open the paper did nothing to improve my condition. In the lower left-hand comer of the front page was a spectacular photograph of firefighters hosing down Marino's flaming car. Accompanying the dramatic tableau of arching water, billowing smoke, and trees igniting at the edge of my yard was the following caption:
Richmond firefighters work on a city homicide detective's car engulfed in flames on a quiet residential street. The Ford LTD was unoccupied when it exploded last night. There were no injuries. Arson is suspected.
At least there was no reference to whose house Marino's car had been parked in front of or why, thank God. All the same, my mother would see the photograph and she would try to call. "I wish you'd move back to Miami, Kay. Richmond sounds so awful. And the new medical examiner's office is so lovely down here, Kay-looks like something out of the movies," she would say. Oddly, it never seemed to occur to my mother that there were more homicides, shoot-outs, drug busts, race riots, rapes, and robberies in my Spanish-speaking hometown in any given year than in Virginia and the entire British Commonwealth combined.
I would call my mother later. Forgive me, Lord, but I don't have it in me to talk to her now.
Gathering my belongings, I crushed out a cigarette and immersed myself in the tide of tropical clothes, duty-free shopping bags and foreign tongues flowing toward the baggage area, my handbag pressed protectively against my side.
I didn't begin to relax until several hours later as I sped along the Seven Mile Bridge in my rental car. As I drove deeper south, the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the Atlantic on the other, I tried to remember the last time I had been to Key West. Of all the times Tony and I had visited my family in Miami, this was one outing we had never considered. I was fairly certain the last time I had made this drive, I had made it with Mark.
His passion for the beaches and the water and the sun was a devotion returned in kind. If it is possible for nature to favor one creature over another, nature favored Mark. I could scarcely remember the year, much less where we had gone, on the occasion he had spent a week with my family. What I remembered with clarity were his baggy white swim trunks and the firm warmth of his hand in mine during our strolls across cool, wet sand. I remembered the startling whiteness of his teeth against his coppery skin, the health and unsuppressed joy in his eyes as he looked for shark's teeth and shells while I smiled in the shade of a wide-brimmed hat. Most of all, what I could not forget was loving a young man named Mark James more than I had thought it was possible to love anything on this earth.
What had changed him? It was hard for me to fathom that he had crossed over into enemy camps, as Ethridge believed and I had no choice but to accept. Mark was always spoiled. He carried about him a sense of entitlement that comes from being the beautiful son of beautiful people. The fruits of the world were his to enjoy, but he had never been dishonest. He had never been cruel. I couldn't even say that he had ever been condescending to those less fortunate than himself, or manipulative with those vulnerable to his charms. His only real sin was that he had not loved me enough. From the distant perch of my midlife perspective, I could forgive him for that. What I could not forgive him for was his dishonesty. I could not forgive him for deteriorating into a lesser man than the one I had once respected and adored. I could not forgive him for no longer being Mark.