40

BACK AT THE US AIR GATE, Marino is seized by agitation and impetuosity.

His flight has been delayed another hour due to weather. Suddenly, he doesn't want to go home to Trixie and get up in the morning and realize what happened in Boston. Thinking of his small house with its carport in its blue-collar neighborhood sinks his spirit lower into bitterness and a need to fight back. If only he could identify the enemy. Why he continues to live in Richmond makes no sense. Richmond is the past. Why he allowed Benton to blow him off makes no sense. He should never have walked away from Benton's apartment.

"You know what due to weather means?" Marino asks the young redheaded woman sitting next to him, filing her nails.

Two rude behaviors Marino simply can't tolerate are public farts and the scratching sound of manicures accompanied by drifting nail dust.

The file continues to rapidly scratch-scratch.

"It means they ain't decided whether to fly our asses outta Boston yet. See? There ain't enough passengers to make it worth their while. They lose money, they don't go nowhere and blame it on something else."

The file freezes and the woman looks around at dozens of empty plastic seats.

"You can sit here all night," Marino goes on, "or come find a motel room with me."

After a moment of disbelief, she gets up and walks off in a huff.

"Pig," she says.

Marino smiles, civility restored, his boredom assuaged, if only briefly. He is not going to wait for a flight that probably will never happen, and then he thinks of Benton again. Anger and paranoia ooze into his skull. His feeling of powerlessness and rejection settle more closely around him, choking him with a depression that stalls his thoughts and fatigues him as if he hasn't slept in days. He can't stand it. He won't. He wishes he could call Lucy, but he doesn't know where she is. All she told him was that she had business to take care of that required traveling.

"What business?" Marino asked her.

"Just business."

"Sometimes I wonder why the hell I work for you."

"I don't wonder about it in the least. I never give it a thought," Lucy said over the phone from her office in Manhattan. "You adore me."

Outside Logan Airport, Marino flags down a Cambridge Checker cab, practically stepping in front of it and waving his arms, ignoring the taxi line and the dozens of weary, unhappy people in it.

"The Embankment," he tells the driver. "Near where the band shell is."

41

SCARPETTA DOESN'T KNOW where Lucy is, either. Her niece doesn't answer her home or cell phones and hasn't returned numerous pages. Scarpetta can't reach Marino, and she has no intention of calling Rose and telling her about the letter. Her secretary worries too much already. Scarpetta sits on her bed, thinking. Billy makes his way up the dog ramp and plops down just far enough away to make her reach if she wants to pet him, and she does.

"Why do you always sit so far away from me?" she talks to him as she stretches out to stroke his soft, floppy ears. "Oh, I get it. I'm supposed to reposition myself and move closer to you."

She does.

"You're a very willful dog, you know."

Billy licks her hand.

"I have to go out of town for a few days," she tells him. "But Rose will take good care of you. Maybe you'll stay at her house and she'll take you to the beach. So promise you won't get upset that I'm leaving."

He never does. The only reason he comes running when she heads out on a trip is that he wants a ride in the car. He'd ride around in a car all day, given the choice. Scarpetta dials Lucy's office a second time. Although it is long past closing time, the phone is answered by an alive and awake human being twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Tonight, it is Zach Manham's turn.

"Okay, Zach," she says right off. "It's bad enough you won't tell me where Lucy is…"

"It's not that I won't tell…"

"Of course it is," she cuts him off "You know, but you won't tell me."

"I swear to God I don't know," Manham replies. "Look, if I did, I'd call her on her international cell phone and at least tell her to call you."

"So she has her international cell phone with her. Then she's out of the country?"

"She always carries her international cell phone. You know, the one that takes photographs, videotapes, connects to the Internet. She's got the latest model. It makes pizza."

Nothing is funny to Scarpetta right now.

"I tried her cell phone. She's not answering," she says, "whether she's in this country or some other one. So what about Marino? You holding out on me about him, too?"

"I haven't talked to him in days," Manham says. "No, I don't know where he is. He not answering his cell phone or pages, either?"

"No."

"Want me to take a polygraph, Doc?"

"Yes."

Manham laughs.

"Okay, I quit. I'm too tired to keep this up all night," Scarpetta says as she rubs Billys tummy. "If and when you ever hear from either one of them again, tell them to contact me immediately. It's urgent. Urgent enough that I'm flying to New York tomorrow."

"What? Are you in clanger?" Manham asks, alarmed.

"I don't want to talk about it with you, Zach. No offense intended. Good night."

She locks her bedroom door, sets the alarm and places her pistol on the bedside table.

42

MARINO DOESN'T LIKE the taxi driver and asks him where he's from.

"Kabul."

"Kabul's where, exactly?" Marino asks. "I mean, I know what country" (he doesn't), "but not its exact geographical location."

"Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan."

Marino tries to envision Afghanistan. All that comes to mind are dictators, terrorists and camels.

"And you do what there?"

"I do nothing there. I live here." The driver's dark eyes glance at him in the rearview mirror. "My family worked in the wool mills, and I came here eight years ago. You should go to Kabul. It is very beautiful. Visit the old city. My name is Bдbur. You have questions or need a cab, call my company and ask for me." He smiles, his teeth gleaming white in the dark.

Marino senses the driver is making fun of him, but he doesn't get the joke. The driver's identification card is fastened to the passengers seat visor, and Marino tries to read it, but can't. His vision isn't what it used to be, and he refuses to wear glasses. Despite Scarpetta's urging, he also refuses laser surgery, which he adamanrly claims will make him blind or damage his frontal lobe.

"This way don't look familiar," Marino comments in his usual grumpy tone as unrecognizable buildings flow past his window.

"We take a shortcut along the harbor, past the wharfs and then the causeway. Very pretty sights."

Marino leans forward on the hard bench seat, avoiding a spring that seems determined to work its way out of the vinyl upholstery and uncoil and bite his left buttock.

"You're heading north, you Mohammed scumbag! I may not be from Boston, but I know where the Embankment is, and you ain't even on the right side of the fucking river!"

The cabdriver who calls himself Bдbur completely ignores his passenger and continues along his route, cheerfully pointing out the sights, including the Suffolk County Jail, the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Shriners Burn Center. By the time he drops Marino off on Storrow Drive, close but not too close to Benton Wesley's apartment building, the meter registers $68.35. Marino slings open the door and throws a crumpled one-dollar bill onto the front seat.

"You owe me sixty-seven dollars and thirty-five cents." The taxi driver smooths open the dollar bill on his leg. "I will call the police!"