Blow Fly

  “We had to.”

  Berger doesn’t want to hear this. She has no choice.

  “We did, I swear.”

  Berger remains silent.

  “He was a Red Notice. He was going to die. The Chandonnes would have taken him out, and not in a nice way.”

  “Now the defense is mercy killing,” Berger finally speaks.

  “How is it different from what our soldiers did in Iraq?”

  “Now the defense is world peace.”

  “Rocco’s life was over, anyway.”

  “Now the defense is he was already dead.”

  “Please don’t make fun of me, Jaime!”

  “I’m supposed to congratulate you?” Berger goes on. “And now you’ve fucked me, too, because I know about it. I know about it.” Berger repeats each word slowly. “Am I stupid or what? Jesus! I sat right there”—she whirls around and jabs a finger at Lucy—“and translated those goddamn reports for you.

  “You may as well have walked into my office and confessed to a murder, and had me say, Don’t worry about it, Lucy. We all make mistakes. Or It happened in Poland, so it’s not my jurisdiction. It doesn’t count. Or Tell me all about it if it will make you feel better. See, I’m not a real district attorney when I’m with you. When we’re alone, when we’re inside my apartment, it’s not professional.”

  THE FLUID WHITE as light and brilliant with sparks. Page forty-seven! Who’s there!”

  “Jesus Christ!” Eyes flash in the barred window, different eyes this time.

  Jean-Baptiste feels the heat of the eyes. They are nothing more than small, weak embers.

  “Chandonne, shut up, goddamn it! Shut up with this page-number shit. Goddamn, I’m sick and tired of this page-number shit. You hiding some book in there?” The eyes dart around the cell like sparks scattered by the wind. “And get your filthy hand out of your pants, Mini-Me Dick!”

  That familiar hateful laughter. “Mini-Dick, Mini-Dick! Mini-Dick, Mini-Dick . . . !” Beast’s is a voice from hell.

  Jean-Baptiste has been within twenty feet of Beast. That’s how far away the barred window in Jean-Baptiste’s door is from the indoor recreation area one floor below him.

  There is nothing to do during the one hour a death row inmate with privileges is allowed to spend on the rectangular wooden floor that is securely enclosed by thick wire mesh, like a cage at the zoo. Shooting hoops is popular, or simply walking a mile, which by Jean-Baptiste’s calculations requires approximately seventy laps that no one but he is motivated to do. If Jean-Baptiste runs the laps, which is his habit during the one hour per week he is allowed recreation, he doesn’t mind the other men on his cell block who leer out at him, their eyes small hot spots from sun shining through a magnifying glass. They make their usual insolent remarks. The recreation hour is the only opportunity inmates have to chat with and see one another from a distance. Many of these conversations are friendly and even funny. Jean-Baptiste is beyond caring that no one is friendly with him, and that all fun is at his expense.

  He is familiar with every detail about Beast, who is not considered a model prisoner but, unlike Jean-Baptiste, has privileges, including daily recreation and, of course, his radio. The first time Jean-Baptiste experienced every detail of Beast’s presence was when two guards escorted Beast to the indoor recreation area, where he directed his diseased energy up to Jean-Baptiste’s cell door.

  Jean-Baptiste’s hairy face looked out the bars of his window. It was time to see. One day, Beast might be useful.

  “Watch this, No Nuts!” Beast yelled at him, pulling off his shirt and flexing bulging muscles that, like his thick forearms, are almost black with tattoos. He dropped to the concrete floor and fell into one-arm push-ups. Jean-Baptiste’s face disappeared from the barred window, but not before he studied Beast carefully. He is smooth-skinned with a blaze of light brown hair that runs from his muscular chest down his belly and disappears into his groin. He is handsome, cruelly so, rather much like a swashbuckler, with a strong jaw, large, bright teeth, a straight nose and intensely cold hazel eyes.

  He keeps his hair shorn close to his scalp, and although he appears quite capable of rough sex and beating his woman, one wouldn’t be likely to suspect that his preference is abducting young girls, torturing them to death and committing acts of necrophilia on their dead bodies, in some instances returning to the shallow graves where he buried them and digging them up for further acts of perversion until they are too decomposed for even him to stand it.

  Beast is called Beast not because he looks like a beast, but because he digs up carrion like a beast and is rumored to have cannibalized some of his victims, too. Necrophilia, cannibalism and pedophilia are transgressions that are repugnant to the typical violent offender on death row, who might have raped, strangled, slashed, dismembered or chained his victims in a basement (to mention but a few examples), but violating children or dead bodies and eating people are serious enough offenses that a number of the inmates on Beast’s cell block would like nothing better than to kill him.

  Jean-Baptiste doesn’t bide his time imagining creative ways to smash Beast’s bones or crush his windpipe—idle fantasies for those who can’t get closer than ten feet to Beast. The necessity of keeping inmates separated is obvious. When people are sentenced to die, they obviously have nothing to lose by killing again, although in Jean-Baptiste’s way of thinking, he has never had anything to lose, and with nothing to lose, there is nothing to gain, and life does not exist. References to those damned at birth are descriptive and dehumanizing and, in Jean-Baptiste’s case, trace back as far as his earliest memories.

  Let’s see.

  He thinks from his magnetizing metal toilet seat. He remembers being three. He remembers his mother roughly ushering him into the bathroom, where he could see the Seine from the window, and inevitably at a very young age connecting the river to bathing. He remembers his mother lathering his frail body with perfumed soap and ordering him to sit as still as a stone while she scraped baby-fine hair from his face, arms, neck, back, legs, feet and on and on with his father’s sterling silver–handled straight razor.

  Sometimes she would scream at Jean-Baptiste if she accidentally nicked his finger or, occasionally, several fingers, as if her clumsiness was his fault. Knuckles, in particular, are very difficult. Madame Chandonne’s tremors and drunken rages put an end to shaving her ugly son when she almost sliced off Jean-Baptiste’s left nipple, and his father had to summon the family physician, Monsieur Raynaud, who coaxed Jean-Baptiste to be un grand garçon as the little boy shrieked each time the needle flashed in and out of bloody flesh, reattaching the pale nipple, which dangled by a thread of tissue from Jean-Baptiste’s downy breast.

  His drunken mother wept and wrung her hands and blamed le petit monstre vilain for not sitting still. A servant mopped up the little monster’s blood while the little monster’s father smoked French cigarettes and complained about the burden of having a son who was born wearing un costume de singe—a monkey suit.

  Monsieur Chandonne could talk, joke and complain freely with Monsieur Raynaud, the only physician allowed contact with Jean-Baptiste when he, the little monster, une espèce d’imbecile, born in a monkey suit, lived in the family hôtel particulier, where his bedroom was in the basement. No medical records, including a birth certificate, exist. Monsieur Raynaud made sure of this and ministered to Jean-Baptiste only in emergencies, which did not include the usual illnesses or injuries, such as severe earaches, high fevers, burns, sprained ankles or wrists, a stepped-on nail and other medical misfortunes that send most children to the family doctor. Now Monsieur Raynaud is an old man. He will not dare speak of Jean-Baptiste, even if the press will pay large fees for secrets about his notorious former patient.

  SHAME AND FEAR overwhelm Lucy.

  She has told Berger in detail what happened in room 511 at the Radisson Hotel, but not who actually shot Rocco.

  “Who pulled the trigger, Lucy?” Berger insists on knowing.

/>   “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Since you won’t answer the question, I’ll assume you did!”

  Lucy says nothing.

  Berger doesn’t move as she looks out at dazzling city lights that give way to the darkness of the Hudson and become the flickering bright urban plains of New Jersey. The space between her and Lucy could not seem more impossible, as if Berger is on the other side of the expansive glass.

  Lucy quietly steps closer, wanting to touch the curve of Berger’s shoulder, terrified that should she dare, Berger might fall from reach forever, as if she is supported by nothing but air forty-five floors above the streets.

  “Marino can’t know. Not ever,” Lucy says. “My aunt can’t know. Not ever.”

  “I should hate you,” Berger says.

  She smells faintly of perfume, a strong scent, lightly applied, and it touches Lucy’s thoughts that Berger didn’t wear perfume for her husband. He isn’t here.

  “Call it what you want,” Berger continues. “You and Rudy committed murder.”

  “Words,” Lucy replies. “The casualties of war. Self-defense. Judicial homicide. Home protection. We have words, legal excuses for committing acts that should be inexcusable, Jaime. I promise you, there was no joy in it, no delicious flavor of revenge. He was a pitiful coward, blubbering and sorry about only one thing in his entire cruel, worthless life: that it was his turn to pay the price. How could Marino have a son like that? What markers in the human genome came together to spew out Rocco?”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Rudy. Now you . . .”

  “Anyone else? Were you given instructions?” Berger presses on.

  Lucy thinks about Benton’s staged murder, about many events and conversations that she can never tell Berger. A tyrant of anguish and rage has ruled Lucy for years.

  “There are others involved, indirectly involved. I can’t talk about it. Really,” Lucy says.

  Berger doesn’t know that Benton isn’t dead.

  “Oh, fuck. What others?”

  “I said indirectly. I can’t tell you anything else. I won’t.”

  “People who give secret orders tend to vanish in the light of exposure. Are these your others? People who have given secret orders?”

  “Not directly about Rocco.” She thinks about Senator Lord, about the Chandonne cartel. “Let me just say that there are people who wanted Rocco dead. I just never had enough information to do anything about it until now. When Chandonne wrote to me, he told me what I needed to know.”

  “I see. And Jean-Baptiste Chandonne is credible. Of course, all psychopaths are. Whoever else is indirectly involved has already vanished. You can count on that.”

  “I don’t know. There are instructions about the Chandonne cartel. Oh, yes. There have been for a long time. Years. I did what I could while I was ATF, down in Miami. But it wasn’t working. Rules.”

  “That’s right. You and rules,” Berger says coldly.

  “Until Rocco, I have been ineffective.”

  “Well, you certainly were effective this time. Tell me something, Lucy. Do you think you’ll get away with it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You and Rudy made mistakes,” Berger says. “You left your tactical baton and had to go back to get it, and you were seen by several people. Never good, never good. And you staged the death scene—quite expertly, quite cleverly. Maybe too expertly, too cleverly. I would wonder about a room, a gun, a champagne bottle, et cetera, so clean that only Rocco’s fingerprints are on them. I would wonder about advanced decomposition that seems to conflict with time of death. And flies, so damn many flies. Blow flies aren’t terribly fond of cool weather.”

  “In Europe, they are more accustomed to cooler weather. As low as forty-eight degrees. The common bluebottle variety, blow fly. Of course, warmer temperatures are better.”

  “You must have learned that from your aunt Kay. She would be proud of you.”

  “You would wonder.” Lucy gets back to mistakes. “You wonder about everything. That’s why you’re who you are.”

  “Don’t underestimate the Polish authorities and medical experts, Lucy. You may not have heard the last of this. And if anything points back to you, I can’t help you. I have to consider this conversation privileged. Right now, I am your lawyer. Not a prosecutor. It’s a lie. But I will somehow live with it.

  “But whoever has given you directives, I don’t care how long ago, will not return your secret phone calls now, won’t even know your name, will frown and shrug in some cabinet meeting or over drinks at the Palm, or worse, laugh it off. The story of some overzealous private investigator.”

  “It won’t happen like that.”

  Berger slowly turns around and grabs Lucy’s wrists. “Are you so goddamn sure of yourself that you’re stupid? How can anyone so smart be so stupid?”

  The blood rises to Lucy’s cheeks.

  “The world is full of users. They’ll seduce you into the most outrageous acts for the sake of liberty and justice for all, and then they dissolve like mist. Prove to be fantasies. You begin to wonder if they were ever real, and as you rot away in a federal prison somewhere or, God forbid, are extradited to a foreign country, you will slowly but surely believe it was all a delusion, because everybody else believes you are delusional, some nutcase who committed murder because she was on some secret mission for the CIA, the FBI, the fucking Pentagon, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the Easter Bunny.”

  “Stop it,” Lucy exclaims. “It’s not like that.”

  Berger’s hands move up to Lucy’s shoulders. “For the first time in your life, listen to someone!”

  Lucy blinks back tears.

  “Who?” Berger demands to know. “Who sent you on this goddamn horrific mission? Is it someone I know?”

  “Please stop it! I can’t and won’t ever tell you! There’s so much . . . Jaime, you’re better off not knowing. Please trust me.”

  “Jesus!” Berger’s grip lightens, but she doesn’t let go of her. “Jesus, Lucy. Look at you. You’re shaking like a leaf.”

  “You can’t do this.” Lucy angrily steps away. “I’m not a child. When you touch me . . .” She steps back some more. “When you touch me, it means something different. It still does. So don’t. Don’t.”

  “I know what it means,” Berger says. “I’m sorry.”

  AT TEN P.M., SCARPETTA climbs out of a taxi in front of Jaime Berger’s building.

  Still unable to reach her niece, Scarpetta is pricked by anxiety that has worsened with each call she has made. Lucy doesn’t answer her apartment or her cell phone. One of her associates at her office said he doesn’t know where she is. Scarpetta begins to think about her reckless, fire-breathing niece and contemplates the worst. Her ambivalence about Lucy’s new career has not abated. Hers is an unregimented, dangerous and highly secretive life that may suit her personality, but it frustrates Scarpetta and frightens her. She can be impossible to get hold of, and Scarpetta rarely knows what Lucy is doing.

  Inside Jaime Berger’s luxurious high-rise, a doorman greets Scarpetta.

  “May I help you, ma’am?”

  “Jaime Berger,” Scarpetta replies. “The penthouse.”

  LUCY IS TEMPTED TO DASH from the building when she realizes that her aunt is headed up in the elevator.

  “Calm down,” Berger says.

  “She doesn’t know I’m here,” Lucy says, upset. “I don’t want her to know I’m here. I can’t see her right now.”

  “You’re going to have to see her at some point. May as well be now.”

  “But she doesn’t know I’m here,” Lucy repeats herself. “What am I going to tell her?”

  Berger gives her an odd look as they hover near the door, waiting for the sound of the elevator.

  “Is the truth such a bad thing?” Berger replies angrily. “You could tell her that. Now and then, telling the truth is very therapeutic.”

  “I’m not a liar,” Lucy says. “That’s one thing I’m not, unless i
t is for the sake of work, especially the undercover work.”

  “The problem is when the boundaries merge,” Berger says as the elevator arrives. “Go sit in the living room.” As if Lucy is a child. “Let me talk to her first.”

  Berger’s foyer is marble, a table centered with fresh flowers across from the spotless brass elevator. She hasn’t seen Scarpetta in several years and is dismayed when she walks out of the elevator. Kay Scarpetta looks exhausted, her suit badly wrinkled, her eyes anxious.

  “Does anybody on Earth answer the phone anymore?” she says first thing. “I’ve tried Marino, Lucy, you. In your case, your line was busy and has been busy for an hour. So at least I assumed someone was home.”

  “I had it off the hook . . . . I wanted no interruptions.”

  This makes no sense to Scarpetta. “I’m so sorry to barge in on you like this. I’m frantic, Jaime.”

  “I can tell. Before you come in, I want you to know that Lucy is here.” She states this matter-of-factly. “I didn’t want to shock you. But I expect you are relieved.”

  “Not entirely. Her office stonewalled me, meaning Lucy did.”

  “Kay, please come in,” Berger says.

  They walk into the living room.

  “Hi.” Lucy hugs her aunt.

  Her response is stiff. “Why are you treating me like this?” she asks, not caring if Berger hears.

  “Treating you like what?” Lucy returns to the living room and sits on the couch. “Come on.” She motions for Scarpetta to join her. “You, too, Jaime.”

  “Not unless you’re going to tell her,” Berger says. “Otherwise, I want no part in the conversation.”

  “Tell me what?” Scarpetta sits next to Lucy. “Tell me what, Lucy?”

  “I guess you’ve heard that Rocco Caggiano allegedly committed suicide in Poland,” Berger tells her.

  “I haven’t heard any news today about anything,” Scarpetta replies. “Was either on the phone or in a plane, then a taxi. Now I’m here. What do you mean allegedly?”