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 ritual: 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.
“Can you call a number?”
“Ten-four.”
The dispatcher gave him a number, and he wrote it down on a napkin as he drove. A New York number that looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He called it and someone picked up on the first ring.
“Lanier,” a woman said.
“Detective Marino, NYPD. The dispatcher just gave me this number. Someone there looking for me?” He cut over to Canal, heading to Eighth Avenue.
“This is Special Agent Marty Lanier with the FBI,” she said. “Thanks for getting back to me.”
Calling him at almost five a.m.? “What’s up?” he said, realizing why the number seemed familiar.
It was the 384 exchange for the FBI’s New York field office, which he’d dealt with plenty of times, but he didn’t know Marty Lanier or her extension. He’d never heard of her and couldn’t imagine why she was tracking him down so early in the morning. Then he remembered. Petrowski had sent photographs to the FBI, the images from the security camera that showed the man with the tattooed neck. He waited to see what Special Agent Lanier wanted.
She said, “We just got information from RTCC that’s got you listed as the contact for a data search request. The incident on Central Park West.”
It rattled him a little. She was calling about the suspicious package delivered to Central Park West at the very minute he was headed there to pick up Scarpetta.
“Okay,” he said. “You found something?”
“Computer got a hit in one of our databases,” she said.
The tattoo database, he hoped. He couldn’t wait to hear about the asshole in the FedEx cap who’d left the suspicious package for the Doc.
“We can talk about it in person at our field office. Later this morning,” Lanier said.
“Later? You saying you got a hit, but it can wait?”
“It’s going to have to wait until NYPD deals with the item.” She meant the FedEx package. It was locked in the day box at Rod-man’s Neck, and no one knew what was in it yet. “We don’t know if we have a crime reference to One Central Park West,” she added.
“Meaning you might have a crime reference to something else?”
“We’ll talk when we meet.”
“Then why you calling me now like it’s an emergency?” It irritated him considerably that the FBI had to call him right away and then wouldn’t tell him the details and was making him wait until it was convenient for them to pull together a friggin’ meeting
.
“I assumed you were on duty, since we just got the information,” Lanier explained. “The time stamp on the data search. Looks like you’re pulling a midnight.”
Bureau cloak-and-dagger BS, he thought, annoyed. It wasn’t about Marino pulling a midnight shift. It was about Lanier. She was calling from a 384 exchange because obviously she was at the field office, meaning something was important enough for her to have gone in to work at this hour. Something big was going on. She was explaining to him that she would decide who else should be present at the meeting—translated, Marino wasn’t going to know jack shit until he got there, whenever the hell that might be. Much would depend on what the NYPD bomb squad determined about Scarpetta’s package.
“So, what’s your position with the Bureau?” Marino thought he should ask, since she was jerking him around and telling him what to do.
“At the moment I’m working with the Joint Bank Robbery Task Force. And I’m a principal coordinator for the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime,” she answered.
Joint Bank Robbery was a catchall task force, the oldest task force in the United States, comprising NYPD investigators and FBI agents who handled everything from bank robberies, kidnap-pings, and stalking to crimes on the high seas, such as sexual assaults on cruise ships and piracy. Marino wasn’t necessarily surprised the JBR Task Force might be involved in a case that the Feds had an interest in, but the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime? In other words, a coordinator with the Behavioral Analysis Unit. In other words, Quantico. Marino wasn’t expecting that, holy shit. SA Marty Lanier was what he still thought of as a profiler, the same thing Benton used to be. Marino understood a little better why she was being closemouthed over the phone. The FBI was onto something serious.
“You suggesting Quantico’s gotten involved in the Central Park West situation?” Marino pushed his luck.
“I’ll see you later today” was her answer and how she ended the conversation.
Marino was just a few minutes away from Scarpetta’s building, in the low forties on Eighth Avenue, in the heart of Times Square. Illuminated billboards, vinyl banners, signage, and brilliant multicolored data-display screens reminded him of RTCC, and yellow cabs were rolling, but not many people were out, and Marino wondered what the day would bring. Would the public really panic and stay out of taxis because of Carley Crispin and her leak? He seriously doubted it. This was New York. The worst panic he’d ever observed here wasn’t even 9/11, it was the economy. It was what he’d been seeing for months, the terrorism on Wall Street, the disastrous financial losses and a chronic fear that it was only going to get worse. Not having two dimes to rub together was a lot more likely to do you in than some serial killer supposedly cruising around in a yellow cab. If you were friggin’ broke, you couldn’t afford a friggin’ cab and were a hell of a lot more worried about ending up a street person than getting whacked while jogging.
At Columbus Circle, the CNN marquee was on to other news that had nothing to do with Scarpetta and The Crispin Report, something about Pete Townshend and The Who on the ticker, bright red against the night. Maybe the FBI was calling an emergency meeting because Scarpetta supposedly had bashed the Bureau in public, had called profiling antiquated. Someone of her status making a statement like that was taken seriously and not easily dismissed. Even if she really hadn’t said it or had said it off the record but it was out of context and not what she meant.
Marino wondered what she’d really said and meant, then decided whatever the FBI was up to, it probably had not a damn thing to do with Bureau-bashing, which wasn’t new or unusual, anyway. Cops in particular bashed the Bureau all the time. Mostly out of jealousy. If cops really believed the criticisms they slung, they wouldn’t beg, borrow, and steal to get on task forces with the FBI or attend special training courses at Quantico. Something else had happened that was unrelated to bad publicity. He kept coming back to the same thing: It had to do with the tattoo, with the man in the FedEx cap. It was going to make Marino crazy that he had to wait for the details.
He parked behind a yellow SUV taxi, a hybrid, the newest thing, New York going green. He got out of his dirty, gas-guzzling Crown Vic and walked into the lobby, and Scarpetta was sitting on the couch, in a heavy shearling coat and boots, dressed for a morning that she assumed would include the range at Rodman’s Neck, which was on the water and always windy as hell and cold. Over her shoulder was the black nylon kit bag she routinely carried when she was working, a lot of essentials organized inside. Gloves, shoe covers, coveralls, a digital camera, basic medical supplies. Their lives were like that, never knowing where they might end up or what they were going to find and always feeling like they had to be ready. She had a look on her face, distracted, tired, but smiled the way she did when she was appreciative. She was grateful he’d come to help her out, and that made him feel good. She got up and met him at the door and they walked out together, down the steps, to the dark street.
“Where’s Benton?” Marino asked, opening the passenger door. “Be careful of your coat. The car’s dirty as hell. All the salt and crap on the road from the snow, no way to keep on top of it. Not like Florida, South Carolina, Virginia. Try finding a car wash, and what good does it do? One block later, it looks like I drove through a chalk quarry.” He was self-conscious again.
“I told him not to come,” Scarpetta said. “Not that he can help us with my BlackBerry, but not to Rodman’s Neck, either. There’s a lot going on. He’s got things to do.”
Marino didn’t ask her why or what. He didn’t let on how happy he was not to have Benton around, not to be subjected to him and his attitudes. Benton had never been friendly to Marino, not the entire twenty years they’d known each other. They’d never been pals, never socialized, never done a damn thing together. It wasn’t like knowing another cop, never had been. Benton didn’t fish or bowl or give a rat’s ass about motorcycles or trucks; the two of them had never hung out in the bar, trading stories about cases or women, the way guys talk. Truth was, the only thing Marino and Benton had in common was the Doc, and he tried to remember the last time he’d been alone with her. It felt really good to have her to himself. He was going to take care of her problem. Carley Crispin was toast.
Scarpetta said the same thing she always did: “Fasten your seat belt.”
He started the car and pulled on his shoulder harness, as much as he hated to strap himself in. One of those old habits, like smoking and drinking, that he might break but never forget or feel particularly good about. So what if he was better off. He couldn’t stand wearing a seat belt, and that wasn’t going to change, and he just hoped like hell he was never in a situation when he needed to bolt out of his car and oops, oh shit, still had the seat belt on and ended up dead. He wondered if that same special unit was still roaming around doing random checks on cops, out to nail someone’s ass for not having his belt on and get him grounded for six months.
“Come on. You must know of situations where these damn things end up killing someone,” he said to Scarpetta, who would know the honest answer if anyone did.
“What things?” she said as he pulled away from her building.
“Seat belts. You know, these vehicular straitjackets you’re always preaching about, Dr. Worst-Case Scenario. All those years in Richmond? They didn’t have cops-turned-snitches driving around, looking to get the rest of us in trouble for not having our seat belts on. No one cared, and I never wore one. Not once. Not even when you used to get in my car and start your nagging about all the different ways I might get hurt or die if I didn’t watch out.” It put him in a good mood to remember those days, to be driving with her, without Benton. “Remember that time I got in the shoot-out in Gilpin Court? If I hadn’t been able to bail out of the car, guess what would have happened?”
“It wasn’t your reflex to disengage a seat belt because you had a terrible habit,” she said. “And as I recall, you were chasing that particular drug dealer and not the other way arou
nd. I don’t believe your seat belt was a factor, whether it was fastened or not.”
“Historically, cops don’t wear seat belts for a reason,” he replied. “Going back to the beginning of time, cops don’t wear them. You don’t wear your belt and you never have the interior light on. Why? Because the only thing worse than having some drone open fire on you while you’re belted inside your car is to be belted in and have the interior light on so the asshole can see you better.”
“I can give you statistics,” Scarpetta said, looking out her window and kind of quiet. “All the dead people who might have been okay if they’d had their belts on. Not sure I can give you a single example of someone who ended up dead because he did have his belt on.”
“What about if you go off an embankment and end up in the river?”
“You don’t have your belt on, maybe your head hits the windshield. Knocking yourself out isn’t very helpful if you’re submerged in water. Benton just got a phone call from the FBI,” she said. “I don’t guess anybody might tell me what’s going on.”
“Maybe he knows, because I sure as hell don’t.”
“You heard from them?” she asked, and Marino sensed she was sad.
“Not even fifteen minutes ago while I was on my way to pick you up. Did Benton say anything? Was it a profiler named Lanier?” Marino turned onto Park Avenue and was reminded of Hannah Starr.