I stuff empty take-out containers into a trash bag. I cover the pungent mac-and-cheese and tuck it inside the empty refrigerator, and decide that Marino’s right about truffles. I’ve never liked them, either.
“I didn’t know what else to do.” Jaime’s not talking about cleaning up after dinner or her getaway place down here in the Low-country. She’s talking about Lucy. “How do you love a liability?”
“Who are you talking to?”
“You’re her family. It’s not the same. I’m afraid I’m going to have a terrible headache in the morning. I don’t feel so good.”
“Obviously it’s not the same. I love her no matter what, even when it’s not convenient or helpful to my politically correct image.” I return to the couch, grabbing my shoulder bag, so angry I’m afraid of what I might do next. “And who the hell isn’t a liability?”
“It’s like loving an amazing horse that will break your neck someday.”
“And who goaded it?” I walk back into the kitchen. “Who spurred it into acting dangerously?”
“You don’t really think I asked her to do something like that?” She looks at me sleepily.
“Of course not.” I enter Marino’s number into my phone. “I’m sure you didn’t ask her to hack into NYPD’s computer any more than you asked me to come to Savannah.”
14
Marino’s van chugs and backfires somewhere from the dark direction of the river many blocks from here, and I emerge from the deep shadows of a live oak tree, where I’ve been waiting because I couldn’t be with Jaime Berger a moment longer.
“I’m going to have to get off the phone.” So far I’ve managed to keep the anger out of my tone and not sound judgmental as I talk with my niece. “I’ll call you back when I’m in my room in about an hour or so. I want to make a stop first.”
“I can call the hotel phone, if you don’t want to use your cell,” Lucy says.
“I’m already using it. I’ve been using it.” I don’t elaborate on what I think of Jaime and her self-serving ideas of pay phones and FBI eavesdropping.
“You shouldn’t have any of this on your mind at all,” Lucy says. “It’s not about you. It’s not your problem. And I don’t view it as my problem anymore.”
“You don’t get over something like this as if it never happened,” I reply, looking in the direction of Marino, of what there can be no doubt is his van, which isn’t fixed.
On the wooded square across the street, the Owens-Thomas House hulks against the night, pale English stucco with tall white columns and a serpentine-shaped portico. The shapes of old trees stir and iron lamps glow, and for an instant I catch something moving, but as I stare in that direction, I find nothing. My imagination. I’m tired and stressed. I’m unnerved.
“I still worry about who knows or might find out. You’re right about that,” Lucy says, as I step closer to the street, looking up and down it and into the square, seeing no one. “When I first found out about the protective order issued to the CFC, that’s what I thought it was about. They were after me for hacking. I’ve been careful. They’d probably like nothing better than to get me into trouble because of old shit with the FBI, with ATF.”
“Nobody’s after you, Lucy. It’s time you put that out of your mind.”
“It depends on what Jaime’s said to certain people and what she continues saying and how she twists the facts. What she told you isn’t what happened, not exactly. She’s made it a whole lot worse than it was,” she says. “It’s like she’s obsessed with turning me into a bad person so she feels justified in what she did. So everyone will understand why she ended it.”
“Yes, I’d say it’s exactly like that.” I watch for the van, which I can hear but not yet see, on Abercorn now and getting closer as I try to contain my complete disrespect for someone I suspect my niece still loves.
“Which is the real reason why I left New York. I knew there was talk about the security breach even if I wasn’t outright accused. No way I could continue doing forensic computer work there.”
“The way she treated you is what hurt you most and why you left New York, left absolutely everything you’d built for yourself,” I disagree calmly, quietly. “I don’t believe for a minute you started all over again in Boston because of rumors.”
I look back at Jaime’s building, at her windows lit up. I can see her silhouette moving past the drawn draperies in what I assume is the master bedroom.
“I just wish you’d told me. I don’t know why you didn’t,” I add.
“I thought you wouldn’t want me at the CFC. You wouldn’t want me as your IT person or want me around.”
“That I would banish you the way she did?” I say before I can stop myself. “Jaime asked you to commit a violation when she knew how vulnerable you were to her…. Well, I don’t mean to sound like this.”
Lucy doesn’t say anything, and I watch Jaime Berger’s silhouette moving back and forth past the lighted window. It occurs to me she might have a security camera monitor in her bedroom and she’s checking it. She might be watching me, or maybe she’s distressed because I spoke my mind and walked out as if I might never come back. I think of the old saying that people don’t change. But Jaime has. She’s reverted back to an earlier vintage of herself that’s gone bad like wine not properly stored. Living a lie again, but now she’s impossible to take. I find her completely unpalatable.
“Anyway, I know about it now,” I tell Lucy. “And it doesn’t change anything with me.”
“But it’s important you believe it’s not the way she’s described.”
“I don’t care.” Right now, I really don’t.
“All I did was verify a few numbers by looking at electronic records of the original complaints and the way they were coded, but I shouldn’t have.”
No, she shouldn’t have, but what Jaime did was worse. It was calculating and cold. It couldn’t have been more unkind. She abused the power she had over Lucy and betrayed her, and as I get off the phone I wonder who Jaime will manipulate and manage to compromise next. Lucy and Marino, and I suppose I should include myself on the list. I’m in Savannah, immersed in a case I knew virtually nothing about until a few hours ago, and I look up at her apartment again. I watch her silhouette move past the lighted window in back. She seems to be pacing.
It is almost one a.m., and the van gleams ghostly white in uneven lamplight, loudly heading in my direction like some demon-possessed machine out of a horror film, slowing down and speeding up, lurching and shuttering. Obviously Marino didn’t find a mechanic after he left Jaime’s apartment several hours ago, and by now I’m convinced he deliberately left me alone with her for a reason that has nothing to do with anything I might want or need. Brakes screech when he slows to a stop in front of the apartment building, and the passenger door squeaks as I open it, the interior light out because Marino always disables it in any vehicle he’s in so he’s not an easy target or a fish in a barrel,as he describes it. I notice bags on the backseat.
“Do a little shopping?” I ask, and I hear the tenseness in my tone. “I picked up some water and other stuff so we’d have it in our rooms. What happened?”
“Nothing I feel good about. Why did you leave me alone with her? Was that your instruction?”
“I thought I said I’d call you when I got here,” he reminds me. “How long you been standing outside?”
I fasten my shoulder harness, and the door squeaks again as I pull it shut. “I needed to get some air. This thing sounds terrible. In the agonal stages of a drawn-out tortured death. Good Lord.”
“I thought I told you it’s not a good thing to be wandering around by yourself. Especially this time of night.”