"You weren't going to send me home." Lucy is challenging me, but I catch the doubt in her eyes. The fear of not being wanted is based on fact in her life.
"Only because I felt inadequate to take care of you," I reply, leaning against the sink. "Not because I wasn't crazy about you, little rat fink that you were." She laughs again. "But no, I wouldn't have sent you home. Both of us would have been devastated. I couldn't." I shake my head. "Thank God for our little game. It was about the only way I could get to what was going on inside of you or what mischief you had engaged in while I was off somewhere, at work, whatever. So do I need to pour you juice or a glass of wine, or are you going to just go on and tell me what's happening with you? I wasn't born yesterday, Lucy. You aren't staying in a hotel for the heck of it. You're up to something."
"I'm not the first woman they've run off," she starts in.
"You would be the best woman they've run off," I answer.
"Remember Teun McGovern?"
"I'll remember her for the rest of my life." Teun_pronounced Tee-Un_McGovern was Lucy's ATF supervisor in Philadelphia, an extraordinary woman who was wonderful to me when Benton was killed. "Please don't tell me something's happened to Teun," I worry.
"She quit about six months ago," Lucy replies. "Seems ATF wanted her to move to L.A. and be the SAC of that field division. The worst assignment on God's earth. Nobody wants L.A."
A SAC is a special agent in charge, and very few women in federal law enforcement end up running entire field divisions. Lucy goes on to tell me McGovern's answer was to resign and start a private investigative business of sorts. "The Last Precinct," she says, getting more animated by the moment. "Pretty cool name, right? Based in New York. Teun's round- ing up arson investigators, bomb guys, cops, lawyers, all kinds of people to help out, and in less than six months she's already got clients. It's sort of turned into a secret society. There's a real buzz on the street. When shit hits, call The Last Precinct_where you go when there's nowhere left."
I stir the simmering tomato sauce and taste a little. "Obviously you've been keeping up with Teun since you left Philadelphia." I drip in a few teaspoons of olive oil. "Darn. I guess this will be all right, but not for the salad dressing." I hold up the bottle and frown. "You press olive oil with the pits still in, it's like squeezing oranges with the rind still on and you get what you deserve."
"Why is it I don't assume Anna is an aficionado of things Italian?" Lucy dryly comments.
"We'll just have to educate her. Grocery list." I nod at a notepad and pen by the phone. "First item, extra virgin olive oil Italian integrate style_pitted before pressed. Mission Olives Supremo is a nice one, if you can find it. Not a trace of bitterness."
Lucy makes notes. "Teun and I have stayed in touch," she informs me.
"You're somehow involved in what she's doing?" I know this is where the conversation is headed.
"You could say that."
"Crushed garlic. In the refrigerated section, in little jars. I'm going to be lazy." I pick up a bowl of lean ground beef that I have thoroughly cooked and patted free of grease. "Not a good time for me to crush garlic myself." I stir the beef into the sauce. "How involved?" I go into the refrigerator and open drawers. Anna doesn't have fresh herbs, of course.
Lucy sighs. "God, Aunt Kay. I'm not sure you want to hear it."
Until very recently, my niece and I have talked little and not in depth. We have seen each other seldom over the past year. She moved to Miami, and both of us retreated behind bunkers after Benton's death. I try to read the stories hiding in Lucy's eyes and instantly begin to entertain possibilities. I am suspicious about her relationship with McGovern and was last
74 year when all of us were called out to a catastrophic arson scene in Warrenton, Virginia, a homicide disguised by fire that turned out to be the first of several masterminded by Carrie Grethen.
"Fresh oregano, basil and parsley," I dictate the grocery list. "And a small wedge of Parmesan Reggiano. Lucy, just tell me the truth." I look for spices. McGovern is about my age and single_or at least she was single last time I saw her. I shut a cupboard door and face my niece. "Are you and Teun involved?"
"We weren't that way."
"Weren't?"
"Actually, you're one to talk," Lucy says without rancor. "What about you and Jay?"
"He doesn't work for me," I reply. "I certainly don't work for him. I don't want to talk about him, either. We're talking about you."
"I hate it when you dismiss me, Aunt Kay," she quietly says.
"I'm not dismissing you," I offer as an apology. "I just worry when people who work together get too personal. I believe in boundaries."
"You worked with Benton." She points out another of my exceptions to my own rules.
I tap the spoon on the side of the pot. "I've done a lot of things in life that I tell you not to do. I tell you not to do them because I made the mistake first."
"Did you ever moonlight?" Lucy stretches her lower back and rolls her shoulders.
I frown. "Moonlight? Not that I recall."
"Okay. Truth serum time. I'm a felonious moonlighter and Teun's biggest backer_the major stockholder for The Last Precinct. There. The whole truth. You're going to hear it."
"Let's go sit." I direct us to the table and we pull out chairs.
"It all began accidentally," Lucy begins. "A couple years ago, I created a search engine for my own use. Meanwhile, all I was hearing about was the fortunes people were making on Internet technology. So I said what the hell and sold the search engine for three quarters of a million dollars."
I am not shocked. Lucy's earning possibilities have been limited only by the profession she chose.
"Then I got another idea when we seized a bunch of computers during a raid," she continues. "I was helping restore deleted e-mail and it got me thinking about how vulnerable all of us are to having the ghosts of our electronic communications conjured up to haunt us. So I figured out a way to scramble e-mail. Shred it, figuratively speaking. Now there are a number of software packages for that sort of thing. I made a hell of a lot of money off that brainstorm."
There is nothing diplomatic about my next question. Does ATF know she invented technology that might foil law enforcement efforts to restore the e-mail of the bad guys? Lucy replies that someone was going to come up with the technology, and the privacy of law-abiding people needs to be protected, too. ATF doesn't know about her entrepreneurial activities or that she has been investing in Internet inventions and stocks. Until this moment, only her financial adviser and Teun McGovern are privy to the fact that Lucy is a multimillionaire who has her own helicopter on order.
"So that's how Teun was able to start up her own business in a prohibitively expensive city like New York," I figure.
"Exactly," Lucy says. "And it's why I'm not going to fight ATF, or at least one good reason. If I do battle with them, then the truth about what I've been up to on my own time would probably come out. Internal Affairs, the Inspector General's Office, everyone would dig. They'd find more nails to drive into my reputation as they hang me on their bureaucratic, bullshit cross. Why the hell would I want to do that to myself?"
"If you don't fight injustice, others will suffer from it, Lucy. And maybe those people won't have millions of dollars, a helicopter and a company in New York to fall back on as
they try to start a new life."
"That's exactly what The Last Precinct is all about," she replies. "Fighting injustice. I'll fight it in my own way."