“And they left, just like that?” Marilee asked. “Didn’t even say anything?”
“Not to anyone. The police investigated me for over a year. They were sure that Phil and Sonny were having an affair and that I killed them. There was credit-card evidence of them staying in a Midtown hotel.”
“Oh my God. Did they arrest you?”
“Not formally, but I was called down to the local station six times. Once they questioned me for over eight hours.”
“Did you get a lawyer?”
“No. I knew I hadn’t killed them, and so I just continued with my work.”
“You don’t sound like you were very broken up over their betrayal.”
“There was a kind of a, of an unconscious trade-off,” Martin said, frowning and allowing his head to tilt to the side.
“A trade-off?”
“Phil was in research,” the plastic surgeon explained. “The intestines of all living beings are rife with various kinds of parasites. Many of these creatures, these parasites, are symbiotic. They live in harmony with the systems they inhabit. You gotta love that Darwin.”
“What does that have to do with your wife running off with your friend?” Marilee asked.
“Phil wasn’t really my friend. I paid him to consult with me about the more exotic intestinal parasites. That’s where I learned about the hydra-monotubular-tridacteri.”
“The what?”
Martin repeated the name and said, “It’s a microscopic parasite that can be bred and altered in a fairly simple controlled environment. You can suppress its reproductive cycles and implant it with differing forms of DNA, which it, in turn, blends into the host system. Those traits make it one of the greatest possible biological and genetic delivery systems.”
“And the man that gave this to you was fucking your wife.”
“Painful,” Martin admitted. “But in the grand scheme of things a minor indiscretion.”
“Minor? A woman does that to you and you aren’t devastated?”
“No, no,” Martin said, though he wasn’t really denying her implied accusation. “I mean, I felt bad, but three days before they went off, Phil brought me a rare specimen that I dubbed hydra-monotubular-tridacteri-1.”
Unable to think of a response or even a question, Marilee sat up too.
“It’s what they call a microsite, almost exactly the same as the original HMT but mutated, with a slightly different DNA count,” Martin Hull continued. “I realized that by crossbreeding the species, you could, theoretically, create an HMT hinny.”
“A what?”
“It’s like a mule. A creature that exists but cannot reproduce, making it a perfect biological delivery system, because after it does its job it dies.”
There was now a kind of ecstasy in Martin’s smile. Marilee felt moved by a deep passion, even if she didn’t understand the ramifications. Years later, after Martin had been sentenced to 117 years in prison, she was still aroused by the memory of his fervor.
She reached out with both hands and pinched his nipples — hard.
Martin bent sideways and tipped over, pretzel-like, in the bed.
“You like that, don’t you, Mr. Mad Scientist?” Marilee asked on a heavy breath.
Martin tried to say yes but couldn’t manage the word.
Marilee kissed and nipped, rubbed and tickled her new friend, and so their talk about lost wives and barren parasites came to an end.
3
Through the summer months, Marilee and Martin got together every couple of weeks or so. Martin discontinued his subscription to the dating service; Marilee did not. Twice every other week, Marilee went on PFP-provided dates; every week between, she saw Martin once and went on one PFP date. She didn’t feel guilty because Martin was preoccupied with his research and charitable and profit-making surgeries. He was often out of town, in Detroit, Tijuana, or Oakland, doing facial reconstructions, scar and tattoo removals, and more delicate operations. He never asked what Marilee did when they weren’t together; neither did he talk about love, long-term commitment, or children.
Marilee was grateful for Martin’s detachment. She didn’t want to marry him, live with him, or get any deeper into his life. He was extraordinarily knowledgeable and a surprisingly skillful lover. And when they were together, he listened to her every word and remembered everything.
But her other lovers were better-looking, better-heeled, and, well, more normal.
By the first of August, she was thinking that it was time for the relationship with Martin to end. She said to herself that it was because of the mosquito bites she got whenever he stayed over. Martin liked fresh air and was always opening some window. That very morning she decided to send Martin a text saying that she thought they should end it.
Maybe an hour after her decision, Odell Wade came to visit her at Rehnquist, Bartleby, and Rowe.
“Miss Frith-DeGeorgio,” the receptionist, Viola Wright, said over the intercom.
“Yes, Viola?”
“A Detective Wade of the NYPD is here to see you.”
Marilee gasped involuntarily and felt a sudden chill.
“What does he want?”
“He says he needs to ask you some questions about a friend of yours.”
“Tell him that I’ll be right down.”
She spent the next three minutes trying to think whether there was any reason the police would be after her. She had a small stash of marijuana in her medicine cabinet at home, and she’d declared herself as a private business on her tax forms, using her yearly sale of poorly constructed pottery at a street fair as the proof. When her mother died, she discovered a secret bank account of twenty-six thousand dollars that she’d cashed out without telling her siblings... Maybe that was it. Maybe the NYPD was going to arrest her for bank fraud.
She thought about running. RBR was on the thirty-seventh floor of a Midtown office building, but there was an emergency stairway. Who could she turn to? Certainly not her brother, Will, or her sister, Angelique — one of them might have turned her in. Her friends wouldn’t shield her from arrest.
Finally she realized that Martin Hull was the only person she knew who might help. He liked her and would probably drive her to another state if she asked.
The idea that Martin was the only person she knew to turn to was sobering. He was the closest person to her, and she was already planning to break off that relationship. What did that mean?
This dose of inexplicable reality somehow steeled Marilee. She decided to go to reception and face the music.
Odell Wade was sitting on one of the three rose-colored sofas across from Viola’s desk in the kidney-shaped room with walls of blue-tinted glass.
“Detective Wade?”
“Miss Frith-DeGeorgio?”
The policeman stood up. Marilee’s first impression was that he was devastatingly handsome. Tall and tan, with sandy hair and auburn eyes; his straw-colored suit hung very well on his lean and probably powerful frame. His smile seemed genuine.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
The policeman glanced over at the dark-skinned, wary-eyed receptionist and said, “Is there someplace where we can talk privately?”
Marilee’s office looked out over Central Park. It was a balmy August day, and they could see all the way to Yonkers.
“What do you do here?” Wade asked, sitting next to her in one of the two chairs designated for clients and visitors. Marilee was appreciating his lips, which formed into the shape of a partly flattened Valentine’s heart.