“Three weeks ago, the Thanksgiving holiday, and you don’t remember.”
“Wait a minute. I was in the city. Then the next day I flew to L.A. I like to fly on holidays, because the airports aren’t crowded. I flew to L.A. Thanksgiving morning.”
Berger wrote it down on her legal pad and said to Lucy, “We’ll check that out.” To Judd, “You remember what airline, what flight you were on?”
“American. Around noon, I don’t remember the flight number. I don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, don’t give a damn about turkey and stuffing and all that. It’s nothing to me, which is why I had to think for a minute.” His leg bounced rapidly. “I know you probably think it’s suspicious.”
“What do I think is suspicious?”
“She disappears and the next day I’m on a plane out of here,” he said.
15
Marino’s Crown Vic was coated with a film of salt, reminding him of his dry, flaky skin this time of year, both him and his car faring similarly during New York winters.
Driving around in a dirty vehicle with scrapes and scuffs on the sides, the cloth seats worn and a small tear in the drooping headliner, had never been his style, and he was chronically self-conscious about it, at times irritated and embarrassed. When he’d seen Scarpetta earlier in front of her building, he’d noticed a big swath of whitish dirt on her jacket from where it had brushed against his passenger door. Now he was about to pick her up, and he wished there was a car wash open along the way.
He’d always been fastidious about what his ride looked like, at least from the outside, whether it was a police car, a truck, a Harley. A man’s war wagon was a projection of who he was and what he thought of himself, the exception being clutter, which didn’t used to bother him as long as certain people couldn’t see it. Admittedly, and he blamed this on his former self-destructive inclinations, he used to be a slob, especially in his Richmond days, the inside of his police car nasty with paperwork, coffee cups, food wrappers, the ashtray so full he couldn’t shut it, clothes piled in the back, and a mess of miscellaneous equipment, bags of evidence, his Winchester Marine shotgun commingled in the trunk. No longer. Marino had changed.
Quitting booze and cigarettes had completely razed his former life to the ground, like an old building torn down. What he’d constructed in its place so far was pretty good, but his internal calendar and clock were off and maybe always would be, not only because of how he did and didn’t spend his time but because he had so much more of it, by his calculation three to five additional hours per day. He’d figured it out on paper, an assignment Nancy, his therapist, had given to him at the treatment center on Massachusetts’ North Shore, June before last. He’d retreated to a lawn chair outside the chapel, where he could smell the sea and hear it crashing against rocks, the air cool, the sun warm on top of his head as he sat there and did the math. He’d never forget his shock. While each smoke supposedly took seven minutes off his life, another two or three minutes were used up just for the rituaclass="underline" where and when to do it, getting out the pack, knocking a cigarette from it, lighting it, taking the first big hit, then the next five or six drags, putting it out, getting rid of the butt. Drinking was a worse time killer, the day pretty much ending when happy hour began.
“Serenity comes from knowing what you can and can’t change,” Nancy the therapist had said when he’d presented his findings. “And what you can’t change, Pete, is that you’ve wasted at least twenty percent of your waking hours for the better part of half a century.”
It was either wisely fill days that were twenty percent longer or return to his bad ways, which wasn’t an option after the trouble they’d caused. He got interested in reading, keeping up with current events, surfing the Net, cleaning, organizing, repairing things, cruising the aisles of Zabar’s and Home Depot, and if he couldn’t sleep, hanging out at the Two, drinking coffee, taking Mac the dog for walks, and borrowing the ESU’s monster garage. He turned his crappy police car into a project, working on it himself with glue and touch-up paint as best he could, and bartering and finagling for a brand-new Code 3 undercover siren and grille and deck lights. He’d sweet-talked the radio repair shop into custom-programming his Motorola P25 mobile radio to scan a wide range of frequencies in addition to SOD, the Special Operations Division. He’d spent his own money on a TruckVault drawer unit that he installed in the trunk to stow equipment and supplies, ranging from batteries and extra ammo to a gear bag packed with his personal Beretta Storm nine-millimeter carbine, a rain suit, field clothes, a soft body armor vest, and an extra pair of Blackhawk zipper boots.
Marino turned on the wipers and squirted a big dose of fluid on the windshield, swiping clean two arches as he drove out of the Frozen Zone, the restricted area of One Police Plaza where only authorized people like him were allowed. Most of the windows in the brown-brick headquarters were dark, especially those on the fourteenth floor, the Executive Command Center, where the Teddy Roosevelt Room and the commissioner’s office were located, nobody home. It was after five a.m., had taken a while to type up the warrant and send it to Berger along with a reminder of why he was unable to show up for the interview of Hap Judd, and had it gone okay, and he was sorry not to be there but he had a real emergency on his hands.
He’d reminded her of the possible bomb left at Scarpetta’s building, and now he was concerned that the security of the OCME and even the NYPD and district attorney’s office might have been breached because the Doc’s BlackBerry had been stolen. On it were communications and privileged information that involved the entire New York criminal-justice community. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but he hadn’t shown up for Berger, his boss. He’d put Scarpetta first. Berger was going to accuse him of having a problem with his priorities, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’d accused him of that. It was the same thing Bacardi accused him of and why they weren’t getting along.
At the intersection of Pearl and Finest, he slowed at the white guard booth, the cop inside it a blurry shape waving at him behind fogged-up glass. Marino thought about calling Bacardi like he used to when it didn’t matter what time it was or what she was doing. At the beginning of their relationship, nothing was inconvenient, and he talked to her whenever he wanted and told her what was going on, got her input, her wisecracks, her constant comments about missing him and when they would get together next. He felt like ringing up Bonnell-L.A., as he now called her-but he sure as hell couldn’t do that yet, and he realized how much he was looking forward to seeing Scarpetta, even if it was work. He’d been surprised, almost didn’t believe it, when it was her on the phone saying she had a problem and needed his help, and it pleased him to be reminded that big-shot Benton had his limitations. Benton couldn’t do a damn thing about Carley Crispin stealing the Doc’s BlackBerry, but Marino could. He would fix her good.
The copper spire of the old Woolworth Building was pointed like a witch’s hat against the night sky above the Brooklyn Bridge, where traffic was light but steady, the noise of it like a surging surf, a distant wind. He turned up the volume on his police radio, listening to dispatchers and cops talking their talk, a unique language of codes and chopped-up communication that made no sense to the outside world. Marino had an ear for it, as if he’d been speaking it his entire life, could recognize his unit number no matter how preoccupied he was.
“… eight-seven-oh-two.”
It had the effect of a dog whistle, and he was suddenly alert. He got a spurt of adrenaline, as if someone had mashed down on the gas, and he grabbed the mike.
“Oh-two on the air, K,” he transmitted, leaving out his complete unit number, 8702, because he preferred a degree of anonymity whenever he could get it.