Flesh and Blood (16 page)

“It’s probably going to take Lucy to figure out exactly what that thread is,” I say to Marino as we come to a complete stop again.

“It’s my case and I don’t want anyone asking her to hack,” he answers. “Taking Storrow Drive was a mistake.”

“Driving anywhere today was a mistake.”

In the past ten minutes we’ve gone not even half a mile, and I look out at trees along the river, and ahead of us an endless line of cars, heat rising from them, sunlight blanking out glass.

“I would never ask Lucy to hack.” I don’t add that Marino doesn’t hesitate to help himself to anything she offers as long as no one finds out. “In general I avoid asking people to break the law, especially if they’re family,” I add ironically.

“Would Janet and her go with you?” Marino asks.

“Excuse me?” I look at him and his face is somber. He’s not joking.

“It’s always a good idea if I know what’s going on with you, Doc. If you’re thinking of retiring in Miami, I should know.”

“Retiring?”

“You could. It’s not like you and Benton need the money.”

“I didn’t become a forensic pathologist with a law degree for the money. That’s not my motivation.”

“You and him don’t have to work another day in your lives if you don’t want to. Unlike the rest of us, not including Lucy who’s probably on the Forbes List.”

“I don’t think so but it’s not something I check.”

“I’d like to be rich even for a week. Just to know what it feels like not to worry about which bill to pay or whether I can afford to trade in my bike for a newer one.”

“Fundamental problems are the same for everyone,” I reply as we move ahead again, then stop again. “Life, death, sickness, diets, relationships, bills that need to be paid. And if you need something, Marino, you know you can ask.”

“I don’t need anything. Wanting stuff is another matter. If I had the money for sure I’d have a place in the Keys, get a boat, a trailer for my bike and travel. Take it easy, nothing hanging over my head but an awning on my back porch.”

“You’d be bored in five minutes.”

“Probably.”

“I have no intention of retiring or quitting any time soon if ever,” I tell him. “But thank you for implying I’m nonessential and old. That’s the best birthday present you could give me.”

“What I’m implying is you’ve been doing this for a while and I wouldn’t blame you for being sick of dealing with dead people and dirtbags. Plus Miami’s where you’re from so even if you don’t want to cash it in,” he adds as if I’m dying, “maybe you’d just rather spend your days around palm trees and sunshine.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Plus you’re good pals with the chief in Broward right next door in Lauderdale,” he says. “And you teach forensic investigation classes down there three or four times a year. You like South Florida.”

“I like a lot of places.”

Marino wedges his SUV between two cars, changing lanes as if it will matter. It doesn’t. It just pisses people off.

“Why would you bring up something like that?” I ask.

“Because you never know what people are going to do. One day they’re your best friend. The next they’re a stranger or your enemy. They put you in a situation where there’s no right choice if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“So which is worse?” he asks. “To betray someone or let him get away with something he shouldn’t?”

“Both are worse. Are you talking about me? Did I do something I don’t know about?”

“That’s what I’m saying. You never know about anyone.”

I don’t tell him he’s being irrational, projecting onto me behavior that has to do with someone else. Instead I redirect him. “Bloom usually ends up dealing with Bryce.”

“How many times?”

“When I finally returned his call? Not many. There have been several cases.” I try to think exactly which ones. “Johnny Angiers most recently.”

“How much is the policy for?”

“I have no idea.”

“It’s enough to push Bloom into overdrive. I’m guessing it’s a big chunk of change, a million dollars or something.”

“The murder in Nantucket last summer, Patty Marsico.” I bring that up. “Her husband sued the real estate company she worked for, and Bloom called once or twice asking me about her autopsy, questions that for the most part I refused to answer. I also was deposed.”

“Was he at the deposition?” Marino continues to nudge in and out of lanes, and other drivers blare their horns at him. Some of them mouth obscenities, probably every person on the road around here frustrated and in a foul mood.

“Only lawyers and a court reporter. Before today I had no idea what he looked like.” I assumed he was older and wore ill-fitting cheap suits. “He badgered me about something else several years ago.” I search my memory. “Liberty Wharf,” it comes to me. “The construction worker.”

“The one who fell from the top floor of that office building near the Boston Fish Pier. Got impaled on rebar,” Marino says as if it’s a fond memory. “I had to use a diamond blade saw to cut him loose.”

“The focus was on whether his safety harness failed. Bloom tried to make a case for chronic alcohol abuse.”

“Blame the victim.”

“Whose blood alcohol was negative but he had a fatty liver, CNS lesions, bruising, which I didn’t speculate about,” I reply. “His death was an accident and the insurance company settled. Again, I don’t know how much.”

“Maybe you’ve become an insurance company’s nightmare.”

“Maybe I am.”

“You didn’t used to be.”

“If you say so.”

“What I mean is you used to be more clinical.” His scratched Ray-Bans glance at me as we sit on Storrow Drive, going nowhere again. “When we first started working together? You were sort of cold and impersonal.”

“I’d take that as a compliment if I possibly could.”

“By the book is what I’m saying. You didn’t care about the outcome, remember?”

“I didn’t want to care about it,” I reply.

“Sometimes you didn’t even read the paper or watch the news to see what a jury decided after you testified.” He glances at me again. “You used to say that the way a trial turned out or what insurance companies did wasn’t up to you or even part of your job.”

“It isn’t.”

“Maybe you’re making it your job now.”

“I might be.”

“I’m wondering how come.”

“Being the other way doesn’t feel right anymore,” I reply. “I’ve had enough of people getting away with things.”

“You and me both,” Marino says as if something else is on his mind. “People shouldn’t get away with shit. I don’t care who they are.”

“Cold and impersonal,” I consider as if I’m amused but I’m not.

“I said
sort of.
”

“You’ve waited all this time to tell me that?”

“I’ve said it before including behind your back. You’re different now.”

“I was that bad back then?”

“Yeah and I was an asshole,” he says. “We deserved each other.”

H
E IMPATIENTLY TAPS HIS
thick fingers on the steering wheel as we make progress, inching forward at three miles an hour.

It wasn’t what Marino bargained for when he decided to take a creative route back, now on the Longfellow Bridge, locally known as the Salt and Pepper Bridge, its tall granite towers resembling salt and pepper shakers. Rusting train tracks run down the middle dividing four lanes of east- and westbound traffic.

The century-old steel girder bridge spans the Charles River, connecting Boston’s Beacon Hill to Cambridge, and traffic is still awful. Right now it has nothing to do with Obama. As if detours and delays caused by his motorcade weren’t bad enough, a car is broken down up ahead, the right lane closed. Midway across in the eastbound lanes a twisted wreck is being chained onto a flatbed truck.

A rolling surf of blue and red police lights flash and news helicopters hover like bright dragonflies, three of them rock steady at about a thousand feet. The low sun is glaring and I wonder if that might have contributed to the accident. Maybe the gridlock and road rage caused by a presidential visit did.

“We’ve talked maybe half a dozen times over the past few years.” I’m telling Marino about my conversations with Bloom. “The exchanges are on a par with a number of junkyard lawyers I unfortunately have to deal with. Clearly he’s made it his mission to know as much about me as he can possibly find, including what I look like.”

“Recognizing you isn’t exactly a big surprise,” he says. “You’re in the news and even in Wikipedia, which you need to correct by the way. It has a bunch of stuff wrong including that you and me had an affair when we were working cases in Virginia. I think they mean Benton.”

“Our planned vacation in Florida hasn’t been made public.” I’m not interested in rumors. “The condo Benton rented isn’t. How do you explain that?”

“Lucy might have ideas about it. Some database Bloom got into. Some blog out there you don’t know about. I haven’t heard jack shit from Machado since I saw him at the scene this morning.”

He is sullen for a moment and I let my silence prompt him.

“I thought I knew him,” he says and that’s what his projection is about.

Marino’s anxieties that I might move or abandon him are really about losing his best friend. But a comment he made is digging into me, his question about betrayal and keeping secrets as if a person has done something wrong. That person must be Machado. What did he do and what is Marino hiding?

“I don’t know what’s gone on but I’m sorry.” I’m not going to force the subject. I don’t want to come across as cold or impersonal, not even
sort of
. “I know the two of you were very close and that he did a lot to help you get back into policing.”

“And I guarantee he wishes he hadn’t.” Marino is angry because it’s easier than being hurt. “You encourage somebody and it’s fine until they leave you in the dust. We used to ride Harleys together, hang out at Paddy’s, watch the games and get take-out barbecue, ribs and biscuits from Sweet Cheeks. Sox tickets, Bruins tickets, grab Italian, Pomodoro, Assaggio in the North End.” For an instant he looks sad and just as quickly his face turns stony. “We had each other’s backs.”

“You don’t anymore?”

“He doesn’t have mine and maybe I shouldn’t have his.”

“It’s painful to lose a friend like that.”

“Me in pain?” His laugh sounds more like a snort. “Hell no. Not even a twinge. He’s a traitor. All the times he said how much he wanted me to become a cop again so we could be partners? Well be careful what you wish for. Now he wishes I was fired or dead.”

“Is that what this is about? That you’ve eclipsed him?” I know how to deal with Marino when he’s upset.

But I always thought I did. From the beginning of our relationship I believed in my people management skills.
Cold and impersonal,
and I try to conjure up who I was to him. My psyche wavers like a flame disturbed by a sudden draft.

“Damn right I’ve eclipsed him. It’s the damn truth,” Marino says. “There should be some gum in the glove box.”

I OPEN IT TO
look, nudging the Baggie of polished pennies aside and they quietly clink.

Rand Bloom didn’t leave them on my wall. He didn’t tweet the poem from Morristown last month. He’s too crude and ham-fisted for acts of cryptic symbolism.
Cold and impersonal
. I can’t get it out of my mind. When I was hired as the chief medical examiner of Virginia, my first big job, Marino was a jerk. I was reserved. Maybe I wasn’t warm but I was fair. I was cordial. I thought I was nice while he went out of his way to make life hard for me.

I dig around and find the gum—Clove, that figures. He loves retro and as I open the slim red pack I’m startled by a powerful rush from the past, images and sounds of my father’s grocery in West Flagler, an area of Little Havana that was a safe enclave for immigrants. I hold the pack up to my nose and smell it. Sweetly sharp and spicy, and I remember the hand-painted sign out front,
SCARPETTA’S MARKET
in big blue letters.

Inside it was always cool, a window air conditioner rattling and dripping condensation on the tile floor, and the first thing I’d see was the candy and gum. Clove, Teaberry, Juicy Fruit, SweeTarts, M&M’s, Mallo Cups filled a wire rack, and on top of the wooden counter were gallon jars of Bazooka bubble gum with comics inside and silvery York peppermint patties coated in dark chocolate.

Marino’s phone rings “Hail to the Chief,” a ringtone I’ve heard before but I don’t know who it is. I don’t pay attention as I envision my father’s hands as if they’re in front of me, tan with long slender fingers, placing coins inside the nickel-plated cash register, turn of the century and meticulously restored. For months I watched him work on it, a milk crate of pieces and parts on the kitchen table, which my mother made him cover with layers of the
Miami Herald
. He replaced the mechanical keys, added a brass ringer that clanged when the cash drawer opened.

“What’s up, Boss?” Marino asks and I’m not listening to him.

I’m listening to what my father used to say as he instructed me, advising me how to live because he knew he couldn’t much longer. But I never accepted that until he was gone and maybe not even then. We often spoke Italian in our home and his accent was gentle and lilting, his voice baritone and quiet.
Succedono cose terribili
. He would tell me that terrible things happen and one never knows who’s going to come through the door
. Don’t turn your back and give a thief an opportunity. Life is short, Kay. It’s precious and fragile. There are those who want to take what doesn’t belong to them, so many people like that. Very hurtful people
.

Io non volevo vivere la mia vita con la paura del male
. I would answer him that I didn’t want to live my life fearing evil. I didn’t want to fear anything at all, and he said he was teaching me not to be naïve, to be smart.
Non essere ingenua, devi essere furba,
he said one day as he installed a side lock in the cash register that required a key, flat brass, oddly shaped on a fob with a small folding knife he always kept in a pocket.