“Pretty,” the man says. “The kind both men and women look at around here, dressed all sexy. Nobody wanted her around.”
“Seems to me nobody wants you around, either. You just got your ass kicked out.”
Lucy walks into Deuce without looking, as if Marino and the homeless man are invisible.
“Only reason I didn’t get kicked out that night is because Johnny bought me a drink. We played pool while the girl sat by the jukebox, looking around as if she’d never been taken to such a slop hole in her life. Went in the ladies’ room a couple times and after that it smelled like weed.”
“You make a habit of going into the ladies’ room?”
“I heard a woman at the bar talking. This girl, she looked like trouble.”
“You got any idea what her name is?”
“Sure don’t.”
Marino lights a cigarette. “What makes you think she has anything to do with what happened to Johnny?”
“I didn’t like her. Nobody did. That’s all I know.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t be telling nobody else about this, you got it?”
“No point in it.”
“Point or not, keep your mouth shut. And now you’re going to tell me how the hell you knew I was going to be in here tonight, and why the hell you thought you could talk to me.”
“That’s quite a bike you got.” The homeless man looks across the street. “Kind of hard to miss. A lot of people around here know you used to be a homicide detective and now do private-investigation stuff at some police camp or something north of here.”
“What? Am I the mayor?”
“You’re a regular. I’ve seen you with some of the Harley guys, been watching for you for weeks, hoping for a chance to talk to you. I hang out in the area, do the best I can. Not exactly the high point of my life, but I keep hoping it will get better.”
Marino pulls out his wallet and slips him a fifty-dollar bill.
“You find out more about this girl you saw in here, I’ll make it worth your while,” he says. “Where can I reach you?”
“Different place, different night. Like I said, I do the best I can.”
Marino gives him his cell phone number.
“Want another one?” Rosie asks as Marino returns to the bar.
“Better give me an unleaded. You remember right before Thanksgiving, some good-looking blond doctor coming in here with a girl? He and that guy you just chased out play pool that night?”
She looks thoughtful, wiping down the bar, shakes her head. “A lot of people come in here. That was a long time ago. How long before Thanksgiving?”
Marino watches the door. It is a few minutes before ten. “Maybe the night before.”
“No, not me. I know this is hard to believe,” she says, “but I got a life, don’t work here every damn night. I was out of here at Thanksgiving. InAtlantawith my son.”
“Supposedly there was a girl in here who was trouble, was in here with the doctor I’ve told you about. Was with him the night before he died.”
“Got no idea.”
“Maybe she came in that night with the doctor when you was out of town?”
Rosie keeps wiping down the bar. “I don’t want a problem in here.”
Lucy sits by the window, near the jukebox, Marino at another table on the other side of the bar, his earpiece in and plugged into a receiver that looks like a cell phone. He drinks a nonalcoholic beer and smokes.
The locals on the other side aren’t paying any attention. They never do. Every time Lucy has been in here with Marino, the same losers are sitting on the same stools, smoking menthol cigarettes and drinking lite beer. The only person they talk to outside their deadbeat little club is Rosie, who once told Lucy that the hugely fat woman and her scrawny boyfriend used to live in a nice Miami neighborhood with a guard gate and everything until he got sent to jail for selling crystal meth to an undercover cop. Now the fat lady has to support him on what she makes as a bank teller. The fat man with the goatee is a cook in a diner Lucy will never visit. He comes here every night, gets drunk and somehow manages to drive himself home.
Lucy and Marino ignore each other. No matter how many times they’ve been through this routine during various operations, it always feels awkward and invasive. She doesn’t like being spied on, even if it’s her idea, and no matter the logic in him being here tonight, she resents his presence.
She checks the wireless mic attached to the inside of her leather jacket. She bends over as if tying her shoes so no one in the bar can see her talking. “Nothing so far,” she transmits to Marino.
It is three minutes past ten.
She waits. She sips a nonalcoholic beer, her back to Marino, and she waits.
She glances at her watch. It is eight minutes past ten.
The door opens and two men walk in.
Two more minutes pass and she transmits to Marino, “Something’s wrong. I’m going out to look. Stay here.”
Lucy walks through the Art Deco district alongOcean Drive, looking for Stevie in the crowd.
The later it gets, the louder and drunker the patrons ofSouthBeachbecome, and the street is so crowded with people cruising and looking for parking, traffic barely moves. It’s irrational to look for Stevie. She didn’t show up. She’s probably a million miles from here. But Lucy looks.
She thinks of Stevie claiming to have followed her footprints in the snow, follow them to the Hummer parked behind the Anchor Inn. She wonders how she could have accepted what Stevie said, not really questioned it. While Lucy’s footprints would have been obvious just outside the cottage, they would have gotten mixed in with other footprints along the sidewalk. It’s not as if Lucy was the only person in Ptown that morning. She thinks of the cell phone that belongs to a man named Doug, of the red handprints, of Johnny, and is sickened by how careless she has been, how myopic and self-destructive.
Stevie probably never intended to meet Lucy at Deuce, just teased her, toyed with her the same way she did atLorraine’s that night. Nothing is Stevie’s first time. She’s an expert in her games, her bizarre, sick games.
“You see her anywhere?” Marino’s voice sounds in her ear.
“I’m turning around,” she says. “Stay where you are.”
She cuts over on11th Street, then heads north onWashington Avenuepast the courthouse as a white Chevy Blazer with dark, tinted windows drives past. She walks quickly, uneasily, suddenly not so brave, mindful of the pistol in her ankle holster and breathing hard.
49
Another winter storm coversCambridge, andBentoncan barely make out the houses across the street. Snow falls steeply and thickly, and he watches the whitening of the world around him.
“I can put on more coffee, if you’d like,” Scarpetta says as she walks into the living room.
“I’ve had enough,” he says, his back to her.
“So have I,” she says.
He hears her sit on the hearth, set a coffee mug on it. He feels her eyes on him and turns around, looking at her, not sure what to say. Her hair is wet and she has thrown on a black silk robe and is naked beneath it, and the satiny fabric caresses her body and reveals the deep hollow between her breasts because of the way she sits sideways on the hearth, bending into herself, her strong arms around her knees, her skin unblemished and smooth for her age. Firelight touches her short, blond hair and extremely handsome face, and fire and sunlight love her hair and her face the same way he does. He loves her, all of her, but right now he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to fix it.
Last night she said she was leaving him. She would have packed her suitcase if she’d had one, but she never brings a suitcase. She has belongings here. This is her home, too, and all morning he has listened for the sound of drawers and closet doors, for the sound of her moving out and never coming back.
“You can’t drive,” he says. “I guess you’re stuck.”
Bare trees are delicate pencil strokes against luminous whiteness, and there isn’t a moving car in sight.
“I know how you feel and what you want,” he says, “but you aren’t going anywhere today. Nobody is. Some of the streets inCambridgedon’t always get plowed right away. This is one of them.”