We spot Lucy at the same moment a gang of loud, turbulent boys do. They have the latest funky hair and cargo jeans falling off their tiny loins and do exaggerated double-takes, lusting after my niece, who is wearing black tights, scuffed Army boots and an antique flight jacket she rescued from a vintage clothing shop somewhere. Marino gives her admirers a look that would kill if glaring with hatred in one's heart could penetrate skin and perforate vital organs. The boys weave and bounce, shuffling in huge leather basketball shoes, reminding me of puppies that haven't grown into their paws yet.
"What'd you buy me?" Marino asks Lucy.
"A year's supply of maca root."
"What the hell's maca root?"
"Next time you go bowling with some really hot woman, you'll appreciate my little gift," she says.
"You didn't really get him that." I halfway believe her.
Marino snorts. Lucy laughs, seeming much too jovial for someone about to be fired, millionaire or not. Outside in the parking lot, the air is damp and very cold. Headlights dazzle the dark, and everywhere I look I find cars and people in a hurry. Silver wreaths shimmer from light posts, and drivers circle like sharks, looking for spaces close to mall entrances, as if walking several hundred feet is the worst thing that can happen to a person.
"1 hate this time of year. I wish I were Jewish," Lucy comments, ironically as if she were privy to Marino's earlier allusion to Berger's ethnicity.
"Was Berger a D.A. when you started out in New York?" I ask him as he places my packages inside Lucy's ancient green Suburban.
"Just getting started." He shuts the tailgate. "I never met her."
"What did you hear about her?" I ask.
"Really hot-looking with big tits."
"Marino, you're so highly evolved," Lucy says.
"Hey." He jerks his head in parting. "Don't ask me something if you don't want to know the answer."
I watch his shadowy bulk move through a confusion of headlights and shoppers and shadows. The sky is milky in the light of an imperfect moon, and snow drifts down in slow, small flakes. Lucy backs out of her parking place and eases into a line of cars. Dangling from her key chain is a silver medallion engraved with the logo for Whirly-Girls, a seemingly frivolous name for a very serious international association of female helicopter pilots. Lucy, who joins nothing, is an ardent member, and I am grateful that in spite of everything else gone wrong, at least her Christmas present is safely tucked inside one of my bags. Months ago, I conspired with Schwarzchild's Jewelers to have a Whirly-Girls necklace made for Lucy in gold. The timing is perfect, especially in light of late-breaking revelations about her plans in life. "Just what exactly will you do with your own helicopter? You're really getting one?" I ask. In part, I want to steer the conversation away from New York and Berger. I am still chafed by what Jack had to say over the phone, and a shadow has fallen across my psyche. Something else bothers me and I am not quite sure what.
"A Bell four-oh-seven, yup, I'm getting it." Lucy dips into an endless stream of red taillights flowing sluggishly along Parham Road. "What do I plan to do with it? Fly it, that's what. And use it in the business."
"About this new business, what's next?"
"Well, Teun's living in New York. So that's where my new headquarters will be."
"Tell me more about Teun," I prompt her. "Does she have family? Where will she spend Christmas?"
Lucy stares straight ahead as she drives, always the serious pilot. "Let me go back, give you a little history, Aunt Kay. When she heard about the shootout in Miami, she contacted me. Then I went to New York the other week and had a rather bad time."
How well I remember. Lucy vanished, sending me into a panic. I tracked her down by phone in Greenwich Village, where she was at Rubyfruit on Hudson, a favorite hangout in the Village. Lucy was upset. She was drinking. I thought she was angry and hurt because of problems with Jo. Now the story is changing right before my eyes. Lucy has been financially involved with Teun McGovern since last summer, but it wasn't until this incident in New York last week that Lucy made the decision to change her entire life. "Ann asks me if there's someone she can call," Lucy explains. "I wasn't exactly in a frame of mind to get myself back to my hotel."
"Ann?"
"A former cop. She owns the bar."
"Oh, that's right."
"I admit I was pretty whacked, and I told Ann to try Teun," Lucy says. "Next thing I know, Teun's walking into the bar. She pumped me full of coffee and we stayed up all night talking. Mostly about my personal situation with Jo, with ATF, with everything. I haven't been happy." Lucy glances over at me. "I think I've been ready for a change for a long, long time. That night I made a decision. The decision had already been made even before this other thing happened." This other meaning Chandonne's trying to kill me. "Thank God Teun was there for me." Lucy doesn't mean at the bar. She is talking about McGovern's being there for her in general, and I feel happiness radiating from some space deep within Lucy's core. Common psychology dictates that other people and jobs can't make you happy. You have to make yourself happy. This is not entirely true. McGovern and The Last Precinct seem to make
Lucy happy.
"And you had already been involved in The Last Precinct for some time?" I encourage her to continue the story. "Since last summer? Is that when the idea first came up?"
"It started out as a joke in the old days, in Philly, when Teun and I were driven nuts by bureaucrats with lobotomies, by people getting in the way, by watching how innocent victims get ground up in the system. We came up with this fantasy organization which I dubbed The Last Precinct. We'd say, Where do you go when there's nowhere to go?" Her smile is forced and I sense that all of her upbeat news is about to get questionable shadings. Lucy is going to tell me something I don't want to hear. "You realize this means I need to move to New York," she says. "Soon."
Righter has surrendered the case to New York and now Lucy is moving to New York. I turn up the heat and pull my coat more tightly around me.
"I think Teun's found me an apartment on the Upper East Side. Maybe a five-minute jog from the park. On Sixty-seventh and Lexington," she says.
"That was quick," I comment. "And close to where Susan Pless was murdered," I add, as if this is an ominous sign. "Why that part of town? Is Teun's office near there?"
"A few blocks. She's just a couple doors down from the nineteenth precinct, apparently knows a bunch of NYPD guys who work that tour."
"And Teun had never heard of Susan Pless, of that murder? How strange to think she ended up just several streets from there." Negativity carries me along. I can't help it.
"She knows about the murder because we've discussed what's going on with you," Lucy replies. "Before that, she'd never heard of the case. Neither had I. I guess the preoccupation of our neighborhood is the East Side Rapist, which is something we've gotten involved in, as a matter of fact. They've had these rapes going on for some five years, same guy, likes blondes in their thirties to early forties, usually they've had a few drinks, have just left a bar and he grabs them as they're going into their apartments. New York's first John Doe DNA. We got his DNA but not an identity." All roads seem to lead back to Jaime Berger. The East Side Rapist would most certainly be a high-priority case for her office.
"I'm going to dye my hair blond and start walking home from bars late," Lucy wryly says, and I believe she would do that.
I want to tell Lucy that the direction she has chosen is exciting and I am thrilled for her, but the words won't come. She has lived many places that aren't close to Richmond, but for some reason, this time it feels as if she is finally leaving home for good, that she is grown. Suddenly, I become my mother criticizing, pointing out the downside, the deficits, lifting up the rug to look for that one spot I missed when I cleaned the house, reviewing my report card of straight A's and commenting what a shame it is I have no friends, tasting what I cook and finding it lacking.