“Just remember,” Benton said to her, “when she hears about it, and you know she will, you don’t talk about what I’m about to do. Either before or after I’ve done it.”
“Damn right,” Marino cut in. “Her damn phone will start ringing off the hook. I gotta tell you I don’t feel so hot about this. I wish I could think about it some more.”I
“Well, we can’t,” Benton said. “We don’t have the luxury of time to think about much of anything. Oscar’s out there somewhere, and if Morales hasn’t gotten to him already, he will. All he has to do is track him down like a hunted animal.”
“Like he’s been doing,” Bacardi said. “Now a guy like that makes you believe in the death penalty.”
“Much better if we get a chance to study them,” Benton said matter-of-factly. “Killing them serves no useful purpose.”
He was impeccably dressed in one of his hand-tailored suits that he never wore on the ward, a deep blue with a lighter blue pinstripe, a light blue shirt, and silvery blue silk tie. The makeup artist at CNN wouldn’t need more than fifteen minutes with him. There was little Benton needed to improve his appearance, maybe a little powder and a breath of spray on his platinum hair, which needed a trim. To Scarpetta, he looked the same way he always had, and she hoped he was doing the right thing. That both of them were.
“I won’t say anything to Jaime. I’ll stay out of it,” she said, and she realized she had started calling her Jaime about the same time Jaime had started spending so much time with Lucy.
All these years, and she usually referred to her as Berger, which was rather distant and perhaps not particularly respectful.
Scarpetta said to Benton, “I’ll tell her she can take that up with you. It’s not my network and, contrary to popular opinion, I don’t run your life.”
Marino’s cell phone rang. He lifted his PDA and squinted at the display.
“IRS. Must be about all my charitable trusts,” he said, pressing his flashing blue earpiece to answer. “Marino . . . Yup . . . Just hanging out. You? . . . Hold on. I’m going to start writing.”
Everyone got quiet so he could talk. He set down the PDA on the coffee table and placed his notepad on his wide knee. He started scribbling. Upside down or right side up, Marino’s writing looked about the same. Scarpetta had never been able to read it, at least not without tremendous annoyance, because he had his own version of shorthand. No matter the cracks he made, in truth, his writing was far worse than hers.
“I don’t mean to be a smart-ass about it,” Marino said. “But first off, when you said Isle of Man, where the hell is that? I assume it’s one of these Caribbean tax havens or maybe one of those islands near Fiji. . . . Now, that’s something. Never heard of it, and I’ve been there before. I mean to England. . . . I realize it isn’t exactly in England. I know Isle of Man’s a fucking island, but in case you flunked geography, England’s a fucking island.”
Scarpetta leaned close to Benton’s ear and wished him good luck. She felt like telling him she loved him, which was unusual with people around. But for some reason she wanted to say it, but she didn’t. She got up and hesitated, because Marino seemed about to get off the phone.
“No offense, but we knew that. We got that address,” Marino said.
He looked at Bacardi and shook his head as if the IRS agent he was talking to was dumber than a bag of hammers—one of Marino’s favorite expressions.
He said, “That’s right . . . Nope, you must mean One-A. So it’s Terri Bridges. I know it’s an LLC and you don’t got a name yet, but that’s her apartment . . . No. Not Two-D. She’s in One-A.” He frowned. “You sure, I mean damn sure? . . . Wait a minute. That guy’s a Brit, right? Well, he’s Italian but lives in the UK, is a UK citizen . . . Okay. So it fits with the Isle of Man shit, I guess. But you’d better be right, because in maybe half an hour, that fucking door’s getting kicked in.”
Marino touched his earpiece and disconnected the IRS without a thanks or a good-bye.
He said, “ Gotham Gotcha? We don’t have the name of whoever it is, but we know where the person has an apartment. Upstairs from Terri Bridges. Two-D. Unless something’s changed and nobody told us, still nobody home in that building. Tenant’s an Italian financial guy named Cesare Ingicco, domicile is Isle of Man, where his company is actually located, and Isle of Man’s not the Caribbean, just so you know. The LLC renting his apartment is this offshore one that Lucy dug up info about. Guarantee the guy doesn’t actually live there, that it’s someone else working out of that apartment or maybe no one working out of it. So sounds like we need a warrant and should go in there. Or maybe we go in and then get a warrant. Whatever. We don’t waste time, since Eva Peebles indirectly worked for this Cesare Ingicco guy across the street but probably not the one who actually lives across the street, probably on his island and we’re going to find—you watch—that he dealt with Eva over the phone, long distance. Eva didn’t know shit, whatever the case. How fucked up is that?”
“Why don’t I hook up with some of your guys over there,” Bacardi said. “I think you should hang around this area. When Benton goes live on the air, all hell might break loose.”
“I agree,” Benton said. “Morales is going to know, if he had any doubt at all, that we think he might be after Oscar, and the rest of the world is after him, after Morales.”
“You think there’s any chance at all Oscar and Morales are partners in all this?” Bacardi asked. “Maybe I’m crazy, but how do we know they don’t work as a team, sort of like Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole. And to this day there are plenty of people who think the Son of Sam didn’t act alone, either. You just never know.”
“Extremely unlikely,” Benton said as Scarpetta put on her coat by the door. “Morales is far too narcissistic to work with anyone. He can’t work with anyone else no matter what he’s doing.”
“You got that right,” Marino said.
“But what about Oscar’s shoe prints and fingerprints we found in Eva Peebles’s apartment?” Bacardi made a good point. “I don’t know if we should just ignore them and assume they were doctored or there’s a mistake.”
“Guess who collected the shoeprints and fingerprints?” Marino said. “Fucking Morales. Plus, he has a pair of Oscar’s sneakers, from when he took his clothes the other night.”
“Anybody witness him lifting the prints off the light fixture?” Bacardi went on. “It’s not easy to cheat. I mean, it’s one thing if it’s a pair of sneakers you took from the suspect. But it’s another to take his fingers and leave prints, so to speak. My point is you got to have a pretty clever conspiracy to process prints at a crime scene and have them get a hit in the computer system. In IAFIS.”
“Yeah, well, Morales is a clever guy,” Marino said.
Bacardi got up and said, “I’m going to go on over to Murray Hill. Who’s meeting me?”
“Sit back down.” Marino tugged softly on the back of her belt. “You ain’t taking a damn cab. You’re a homicide detective. I’ll drop you off and head right back here. I got a battering ram in the trunk you can have. I pinched it last night when they brought me one at the Peebles scene, special order. Oops. I forgot to give it back.”
“I’m going,” Scarpetta said. “Everybody be careful, please. Mike Morales is an evil man.”
“Actually?” Berger said to Lucy. “And I’ve never told anybody this before.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Lucy said.