"Real people?"
"No sign of their bylines on the Internet, and Lucy's looked."
"If Lucy can't find them, they don't exist," Benton decides.
"Also on Wolfman's guest list," Marino adds, "is none other than Jaime Berger, who would have prosecuted his ass had he gone to trial in New York for the newslady he mauled up there. Berger's a piece of work, has a history with the Doc. They're friends."
Benton knows all this and doesn't react. He takes notes.
"And last and probably least, some guy named Robert Lee."
"His name sounds real enough. By chance is his middle initial E?" Benton wryly comments. "Any correspondence between Jean-Baptiste and this Robert Lee, on the outside chance Mr. Lee didn't die a hundred-some years ago?"
"All I can tell you is he's on the visitors list. Any mail that's privileged, the prison won't talk about, so I got no idea who else Wolfman writes to or gets love notes from."
18
MARINO SMOOTHS OPEN his letter from Jean-Baptiste and begins to read: " 'Bonjour, mon cher ami, Pete…' "
He interrupts himself and looks up, scowling. "Can you believe he calls me Pete? Now that really pisses me off."
"More than being called mon cher ami?" Benton asks dryly.
"I don't like dirtbags calling me by my first name. It's just one of my things."
"Please read," Benton says with a touch of impatience, "and I hope there is nothing more in French for you to mangle. What's the date of this letter?"
"Not even a week ago. I arranged things to get here as quick as I could. To see you… oh, for shit's sake, I'm gonna call you Benton."
"Actually, you're not. Please read."
Marino lights another cigarette, inhales deeply and continues:
Just a note to tell you I am growing my hair. Why? But of course it is because they have given me my date to die. It is May seventh at ten p.m. Not a minute later, so I hope you will be there as my special guest. Before then, mon ami, I have business to conclude, so I make you an offer you can't refuse (as they say in the movies).
You will never catch them without me, Jean-Baptiste. It would be like catching a thousand fish without a very big net. I am the net. There are two conditions. They are simple.
I will admit nothing except to Madame Scarpetta, who has asked my permission to see her and tell her what I know.
No one else can be present.
I have yet another condition that she does not know. She must be the doctor who administers my lethal cocktail, as they say. Madame Scarpetta must kill me. I fully trust if she agrees, she will not break her promise to me. You see how well I know her.
A bientфt,
Jean-Baptiste Chandonne
"And the letter to her?" Benton abruptly asks, unwilling to say Scarpetta's name.
"The same thing. More or less." Marino does not want to read it to him.
"You have it in your hand. Read it."
Marino taps an ash into the water glass, squinting an eye as he blows out smoke. "I'll give you the upshot."
"Don't protect me, Pete," Benton softly says.
"Sure. If you want to hear it, I'll read it. But I don't think it's necessary, and maybe you ought…"
"Please read it." Now Benton sounds weary. His eyes are not as intense, and he leans back in the chair.
Marino clears his throat as he unfolds another plain white sheet of paper. He begins:
Mon chйri amour, Kay…
He glances up at Benton's expressionless face. The color has drained from it, his complexion sallow beneath his tan.
My heart is in great pain because you have not made an appointment to come to see me yet. I do not understand. Of course, you feel as I do. I am your thief in the night, the great lover who came to steal you away, yet you refused. You shunned me and wounded me. Now you must be empty, so bored, languishing for me, Madame Scarpetta.
As for me? I am not bored. You are here with me in my cell, without a will, completely under my spell. You must know it. You must feel it. Let me see, can I count? Is it four, five or fifteen times a day I rip open those very nice suits you wear-the haute couture of Madame Scarpetta, the doctor, the lawyer, the Chief. I tear off everything with my bare hands and bite into those big tits while you shiver and die with delight…
"Is there a point to this?" Benton's voice snaps like a pistol slide racking back. "I'm not interested in his pornographic drivel. What does he want?"
Marino looks hard at him, pauses, then turns over the letter. Sweat beads on his balding head and rolls down his temples. He reads what is on the back of the plain white sheet of paper:
I must see you! You cannot escape unless you do not care if more innocent people die. Not that anyone is innocent. I will tell you all that is necessary. But I must look at you in the flesh as I speak the truth. And then you will kill me.
Marino stops reading. "More shit you don't need to hear…"
"And she knows nothing about this?"
"Well," Marino equivocates, "not really. Like I said, I didn't show it to her. All I told her is I got a letter and Wolfman wants to see her and will exchange information for her visit. And he wants her to be the one who gives him the needle."
"Typically, penitentiaries use free-world doctors, regular physicians from the outside to administer the lethal cocktail," Benton oddly commerits, as if what Marino just said has no impact on him. "Did you use ninhydrin on the letters?" Now he changes the subject. "Obviously I can't tell, since these are photocopies."
The chemical ninhydrin would have reacted to the amino acid in fingerprints, turning portions of the original letters a deep violet.
"Didn't want to damage them," Marino replies.
"What about an alternate light source? Something nondestructive, such as a crime scope?"
When Marino doesn't respond, Benton pierces him with the obvious point.
"You did nothing to prove these letters are from Jean-Baptiste Chan-donne? You just assume? Jesus." Benton rubs his face with his hands. "Jesus Christ. You come here-here-take a risk like that and don't even know for a fact that these letters came from him? And let me guess. You didn't have the backs of the stamps and envelope flaps swabbed for DNA, either. What about postmarks? What about return addresses?"
"There's no return address-not for him, I mean-and no postmark that might tell us where he sent it from," Marino admits, and he is sweating profusely now.
Benton leans forward. "What? He hand-delivered the letters? The return address isn't his? What the hell are you talking about? How could he mail something to you and there's no postmark?"
Marino unfolds another piece of paper and hands it to him. The photocopy is of an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch white envelope, preprinted, U.S. postage paid for the nonprofit organization the National Academy of Justice.
"Well, I guess we've both seen this before," Benton says, looking at the photocopy, "since we've been members of the NAJ for most of our lives. Or at least I used to be. Sorry to say, but I'm not on their mailing list anymore." He pauses, noting that First-class mail has been x-ed through just below the preprinted postage-paid stamp.
"For once, I'm blanking out on any possible explanation," he says.
"This is what came in the mail to me," Marino explains. "The NAJ envelope, and when I opened it, the two letters were inside. One to me, one to the Doc. Sealed, marked Legal Mail, I guess in case someone at the prison was curious about the NAJ envelope and decided to tear into it. Only other thing written on the envelopes was our names."
Both men are silent for a moment. Marino smokes and drinks beer.
"Well, I do have a possibility, the only thing I can think of," Marino then says. "I checked with the NAJ, and from the warden on down, there are fifty-six officers who are members. It wouldn't be unusual to see one of these envelopes lying around somewhere."