A green light flickers, and she pushes open the door with her elbows because she has no fresh gloves, having raced off without them. She runs into a wall of rank smell from Rocco's last greasy meal and detects his alcohol-saturated blood. It coagulates like pudding under his head, his eyes half open and dull, the chair overturned, the gun under his chest, every detail exactly as she and Rudy had left it. Blow flies buzz around his body, searching for the perfect piece of moist human real estate to appropriate for their eggs. Lucy stares, transfixed, at the frenzied insects.
She focuses on her tactical baton. It, too, is exactly as she left it, on the table to the left of the bed.
"Oh, thank God," she mutters.
The baton is safely back up her sleeve as she cautiously opens the door, wiping the knob with her blouse. This time she takes the stairs all the way down to the service level, where she hears the murmur of voices, possibly from the kitchen. Along walls are carts loaded with dirty dishes, wilted flowers in bud vases, empty wine bottles and what is left from cocktails and other beverages. Food is hardened on hotel china and stains white cloths and wadded napkins. There are no flies down here. Not one.
She swallows repeatedly, suddenly nauseous as she envisions the blow flies crawling all over Rocco and feeding on his gore. She thinks about what will happen next. Inside his warm room, blow fly eggs will hatch into maggots that, depending on how long he remains undiscovered, will teem over his decomposing body, especially inside his wound and other orifices. Blow flies love deep, dark, moist crevices and passageways.
The intense presence of carrion predators will throw off Rocco's time of death, as intended when Rudy introduced the flies into the room. The forensic pathologist who examines Rocco's body will be confused by the story of when room service delivered his late dinner and the advanced stage of maggot infestation and decomposition. His blood-alcohol level will indicate that Caggiano was intoxicated when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound that penetrated his temple and tore through his brain in a storm of lead shrapnel and the ragged razor-sharp copper edges of a semi-jacketed hollow-point bullet. Prints on the gun will be his.
The warmth of the room will be factored in but should not arouse suspicion. The empty champagne bottle has Caggiano's prints on it, should the police bother to check, although there will be no record of his ordering the champagne or receiving it compliments of the manager. He could have bought it elsewhere. The Red Notice will have his prints on it, should anyone bother to check, and she must assume someone will.
She wishes Rocco had not ordered room service, but she planned for that possibility, realizing that whoever delivered his dinner will recall the tip and not want to reveal that it was American cash. He or she will not want to be implicated in any sort of scandal that involves the police. In addition, if Rocco's time of death, as determined by the forensic pathologist, doesn't jibe at all with what the hotel employee who delivered the room service has to say-assuming the person talks-then it may very well be assumed that the person is mistaken about the time, possibly even the day. Or is lying. No one in that hotel will want to admit to accepting American money and who knows what other favors and contraband that Rocco, a fugitive, has probably bestowed on them over the many years he has stayed in that hotel.
Who will care that Rocco Caggiano is dead? Perhaps no one except the Chandonne family. They will wonder. Lucy plotted with the expectation that they will press hard to know the facts. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. Suicide will be accepted, and no one will feel grief or even give a damn.
46
LUCY SPRINTS THROUGH the dark, her aching chest not due to physical exertion.
The Mercedes is quiet on the side of the street, and she can't see Rudy through the tinted windows. The locks click free and she opens the driver's door.
"Mission accomplished?" he grimly asks in the dark. "Don't start the car yet."
She tells him about her encounter with the drunk and the hotel staff and explains the way she handled it. He says nothing. She feels his disapproval and irritation with her.
"Give me some credit. I think we're fine."
"As fine as you could be under the circumstances," he has to admit.
"There's no reason for anyone to connect me with Rocco's room, with his death," she goes on. "I guarantee that hotel staff won't touch his room with that Do Not Disturb sign on the door. More flies will come in through the opening in the window. Say he's found in three or four days, maggots will have devoured him to the point he won't be recognizable. And in case you didn't know it, blow flies are attracted to shit, too.
"And his blood alcohol will be high, no reason in the world for anyone to think anything but suicide, and the hotel will want his rotting body and maggots out of there as quickly as possible. And the medical examiner will think he's been dead longer than room service says-assuming there is an exact time associated with Rocco's dinner order, and there probably won't be. Orders aren't handled by computer. I know that for a fact."
"For a fact?" Rudy asks. "How the hell can you know that for a fact?"
"What do you think I am, fucking stupid? I called. Days ago. Said I was a Hewlett-Packard rep checking on their computers and that the one the kitchen used for room service needed a software upgrade. And they didn't know what I was talking about, said they didn't use computers for room service, only for inventory. Then I talked about the advantages of using an hp pavilion 753n with an Intel Pentium processor and eighty-gigabyte hard drive and CD-ROM and all the rest for room service orders… Point is, there is no computer record of what time Rocco ordered dinner, okay?"
Rudy was silent, then said, "They use Hewlett-Packards at that hotel?"
"Easy enough to find out by calling the business office. Yes," she replied.
"Okay. Good job on that one. So even if the drunk or anyone else paid any attention to you, the way we've staged Rocco's crime scene will make it appear he was dead long before you went off to party with the drunk."
"That's right, Rudy. We're fine. We're fine. Rocco's already being infested. Masses of maggots will produce heat and speed up decomposition, and it looks like a suicide, anyway-one committed earlier-much earlier-than anyone will imagine."
She starts the car, laying a hand on his arm. "Now, can we get the hell out of here?"
"We can't make any more mistakes, Lucy," he says in a defeated way. "We just can't."
She pulls away from the sidewalk, angry.
"The fact is, at least two people in that hotel think you might be a drunk conventiongoer or maybe even a prostitute, and you aren't easy to forget, no matter what they think you are. It probably doesn't matter one goddamn bit, but…" He doesn't finish.
"But it could have." Lucy drives carefully, checking her mirrors and the sidewalks, dark with shadows.
"Right. It could have."
She feels his eyes and the shifting of his moods. He is softening toward her, sorry he was so rough.
"Hey, you-Rudy-you." She reaches out and affectionately touches his cheek, his stubble reminding her of a cat's tongue. "We're on the go and we're okay."
She reaches for his hand and holds it tightly.
"This went down bad, Rudy, really bad, but it's going to turn out fine. We're fine," she says again.
When one or the other or both of them are scared, they never admit it, but they know because they need each other. Each becomes desperate for the other's warm flesh. Lucy lifts his hand to her mouth, resting his arm against her.
"Don't," he says. "We're both tired, strung-out. Not a good time to… to not have both hands on the wheel. Lucy, don't," he mutters as she deeply kisses his fingers, his knuckles, his palm.