Chapter 35
JANUARY 13
Scarpetta’s well-known name was not what got her a table at Elaine’s, where it wasn’t possible for anyone to be important enough to earn indulgences or sovereign immunity if the legendary restaurateur didn’t like the person.
When Elaine took up residence every night at one of her tables, an expectation drifted up like cigarette smoke from an earlier day when art was adored, criticized, redefined—anything but ignored—and anybody in any condition might walk through the door. Contained within these walls were echoes of a past that Scarpetta mourned but didn’t miss, having first set foot in here decades earlier, on a weekend getaway with a man she’d fallen in love with at Georgetown Law.
He was gone, and she had Benton, and the décor at Elaine’s hadn’t changed: black except for the red-tile floor, and there were hooks for hanging coats, and pay phones that as far as Scarpetta knew weren’t used anymore. Shelves displayed autographed books that patrons knew not to touch, and photographs of the literati and film stars filled every spare inch of wall all the way to the ceiling.
Scarpetta and Benton paused at Elaine’s table to say hello—a kiss on each cheek, and I haven’t seen you in a while, where have you been? Scarpetta learned she had just missed a former Secretary of State, and last week it was a former Giants quarterback she didn’t like, and tonight, a talk show host she liked even less. Elaine said she had other guests coming, but that wasn’t news, because the grande dame knew everybody expected in her salon on any given night.
Scarpetta’s favorite waiter, Louie, found just the right table.
He said to her as he pulled out her chair, “I shouldn’t bring it up, but I’ve heard everything that’s gone on.” Shaking his head. “I shouldn’t say it—to you of all people. Gambino, Bonanno? It was better back then. You know? They did what they did, but they had their reasons, know what I mean? They didn’t go around whacking people for the hell of it. Especially doing some poor lady like that. A dwarf. And that elderly widow. Then the other woman and the kid. What chance did they have?”
“They didn’t,” Benton said.
“Me? I believe in cement shoes. There’s special situations. You don’t mind me asking, how’s the little . . . you know, the other dwarf doing? I feel like I shouldn’t use that word because a lot of people say it in the pejorative.”
Oscar had contacted the FBI and was fine. A GPS microchip had been removed from his left buttock, and he was taking a rest, as Benton put it, at the private and posh psychiatric unit at McLean called the Pavilion. He was getting therapy and, most of all, was being given the gift of feeling safe until he could sort himself out. Scarpetta and Benton would head back to Belmont in the morning.
“He’s doing okay,” Benton said. “I’ll tell him you asked.”
Louie said, “What can I bring you? Drinks? Calamari?”
“Kay?” Benton said.
“Scotch. Your best single-malt.”
“Make that two.”
Louie said with a wink, “For you? My special stash. A couple new ones for you to try. Anybody driving?”
“Strong,” Scarpetta said, and Louie headed to the bar.
Behind her, at a table by a window overlooking Second Avenue, a big man wearing a white Stetson sat alone, working on what looked like straight vodka or gin with a twist. Now and then he craned his neck to check the score of a basketball game playing silently on the TV above his head, and Scarpetta got a glimpse of his big jaw and thick lips, and long white sideburns. Then he stared at nothing, slowly turning his glass in small circles on the white tablecloth. Something about him was familiar, and she envisioned footage she’d seen on TV and was seized by the shock that she was looking at Jake Loudin.
But it wasn’t possible. He was in custody. This man was small, rather thin. She realized he was an actor, one who wasn’t busy anymore.
Benton studied the menu, his face obscured by a plastic laminated menu with Elaine on the cover.
Scarpetta said to him, “You look like the Pink Panther on a stakeout.”
He closed the menu and placed it on the table, and said, “Anything in particular you want to say to everyone? Since you’ve orchestrated this little gathering for reasons beyond being sociable. I just thought I’d mention it before they show up.”
“Nothing in particular,” Scarpetta said. “Just wanted to air out. I feel everyone should air out before we go home. I wish we weren’t going. It doesn’t seem like we should be there and everyone else is here.”
“Lucy will be absolutely fine.”
Tears touched Scarpetta’s eyes. She couldn’t get over it. A sense of dread held her heart like unwelcome hands, and she was conscious of her near loss, even in her sleep.
“She’s not meant to go anywhere.” Benton pulled his chair closer and took her hand. “If she were, she would have checked out a hell of a long time ago.”
Scarpetta held her napkin to her eyes, then stared up at the silent TV, as if she cared about whoever was playing basketball.
She cleared her throat and said, “But it’s almost impossible.”
“It’s not. Those revolvers? The ones I’m always telling you are such a terrible idea because they’re so lightweight? Well, you see why, only in this case the luck was in our favor. The recoil is unbelievable. Like having your hand kicked by a horse. I think he jerked when he pulled the trigger, and probably Lucy moved, and small-caliber, low-velocity. Plus, she’s meant to be with us. She’s not meant to go anywhere. All of us are fine. We’re more than fine,” Benton said, pressing his lips against her hand, then kissing her on the mouth tenderly.
He didn’t used to be so openly affectionate in public. He didn’t seem to care anymore. If Gotham Gotcha still existed, they would probably be an item in it tomorrow—Scarpetta’s entire dinner party would be.
She had never visited the apartment where the anonymous author wrote her cruel and vindictive columns, and now that she was sure who it was, she felt pity for her. She completely understood why Terri Bridges turned on her. Terri was receiving heartless and belittling e-mails from her hero, or thought she was, and when she’d had enough, she gave her alter ego the assignment to eviscerate Scarpetta publicly. Terri had pulled her own trigger, firing several rounds at a woman whose perceived mistreatments were the last straw in a lifetime of mistreatment.
Lucy had determined that Terri had written the two New Year’s Day columns on December 30, and they had been in a queue and had been automatically sent to Eva Peebles after Terri was already dead. Lucy also discovered that on the afternoon of December 31, just hours before Terri was murdered, she deleted all her e-mails from Scarpetta612, not because she sensed she was about to die, for sure, in Benton’s opinion, but because she had just committed her own crime, anonymously, against a medical examiner whom she would finally meet, in the morgue.
Benton believed Terri had a conscience, a sizable one, and that’s why she’d deleted the hundred-some e-mails she’d thought were between Scarpetta and her. Terri’s anxiety had dictated she should eradicate any evidence that there might be a connection between Gotham Gotcha and Terri Bridges. By deleting the correspondence, she’d also expunged her fallen hero from her life.
That was Benton’s theory. Scarpetta didn’t have a theory except that there would always be theories.