He hands him a water glass that will have to do for an ashtray.
“Yeah, so maybe you’re in shape and don’t smoke and all the rest”—Marino gets back to that as he takes a slug of beer and sighs contentedly—“but your life sucks.”
Benton takes a seat across from Marino, the space between them occupied by a scratched Formica-topped coffee table neatly lined with news magazines and the television remote control.
“I don’t need you to drop out of the sky to tell me my life sucks,” he says. “If that’s why you’re here, I wish to hell you’d never come. You’ve violated the program, put me at risk . . .”
“And put myself at risk,” Marino snaps.
“I was about to point that out.” Benton’s voice heats up, his eyes burning. “We know damn well my being Tom isn’t just about me. If it was just about me, I would let them take their best shot.”
Marino begins picking at his beer bottle label. “No-Nuts Wolfman has agreed to spill the beans on his family, the great Chandonnes.”
Benton reads the papers several times a day, excavating the Internet, sending out queries on search engines to recover pieces of his past life. He knows all about Jean-Baptiste, the deformed, murderous son of Chandonne—the great Monsieur Chandonne, intimate friend of the noblesse in Paris, the head of the largest, most dangerous organized crime cartel in the world. Jean-Baptiste knows enough about his family business and those who carry out its terrible tasks to put everyone who matters behind bars or on a death-chamber gurney.
So far, Jean-Baptiste has bided his time in a maximum-security Texas prison, saying nothing to anyone. It was the Chandonne family and its massive web that Benton tangled with, and now, from thousands of miles away, Monsieur Chandonne sips his fine wines and never doubts that Benton has paid the ultimate price, a terrible price. Monsieur Chandonne was foiled, but in a way, he wasn’t. Benton died a fake death to save himself and others from dying real ones. But the price he pays is Promethean. He may as well be chained to rocks. He cannot heal because his guts are torn out daily.
“Wolfman,” as Marino usually refers to Jean-Baptiste, “says he’ll finger everyone from his daddy on down to the butlers, but only under certain conditions.” He hesitates. “He ain’t fucking with us, either, Benton. He means it.”
“You know that for a fact,” Benton blandly says.
“Yeah. A fact.”
“How has he communicated this to you?” Benton’s eyes take on a familiar intensity as he goes into his mode.
“Letters.”
“Do we know who he’s been writing, besides you?”
“The Doc. Her letter was sent to me. I haven’t given it to her, see no point.”
“Who else?”
“Lucy.”
“Hers also sent to you?”
“No. Directly to her office. I got no idea how he got the address or knew the name The Last Precinct, when she doesn’t list it. Everybody thinks her business is called Infosearch Solutions.”
“Why would he know that people like Lucy and you refer to her business as The Last Precinct? If I logged on to the Internet right now, would I find any mention of The Last Precinct?”
“Not the one we’re talking about, you wouldn’t.”
“Would I find Infosearch Solutions?”
“Sure.”
“Is her office phone number listed?” Benton asks.
“Infosearch Solutions is.”
“So maybe he also knows the listed name of her business. Called directory assistance and got the address that way. Actually, you can find just about anything on the Internet these days and for less than fifty bucks, even buy unlisted and cell phone numbers.”
“I don’t think Wolfman has a computer in his death-row cell,” Marino says in annoyance.
“Rocco Caggiano could have fed him all kinds of information,” Benton reminds him. “At one time he had to have Lucy’s business number, since he planned to depose her. Then, of course, Jean-Baptiste pled.”
“Sounds like you keep up with the news.” Marino tries to divert the conversation away from the subject of Rocco Caggiano.
“Did you read the letter he wrote to Lucy?”
“She told me about it. Didn’t want to fax or e-mail it.” This bothers Marino, too. Lucy didn’t want him to see the letter.
“Any letters to anybody else?”
Marino shrugs, sips his beer. “Not a clue. Obviously, he ain’t writing to you.” He thinks this is funny.
Benton doesn’t smile.
“Because you’re dead, right?” Marino assumes Benton doesn’t catch the joke. “Well, in prison, if an inmate marks his outgoing letters Legal Mail or Media Mail, it’s illegal for officials to open them. So if Wolfman’s got any legal and media pen pals, the information’s privileged.”
He begins picking at the label on his beer bottle, talking on as if Benton knows nothing about the inner workings of penitentiaries, where he has interviewed hundreds of violent criminals during his career.
“The only place to look is his visitors list, since a lot of the people these squirrels write also come visit. Wolfman’s got a list. Let’s see, the governor of Texas, the president . . .”
“As in president of the United States?” Benton’s trademark is to take all information seriously.
Marino says, “Yup.”
It unnerves him to see gestures and reactions that are the Benton of the past, the Benton he worked with, the Benton who was his friend.
“Who else?” Benton gets up and collects a legal pad and pen from tidy stacks of paperwork and magazines next to the computer on the kitchen table.
He slips on a pair of wire-rim glasses, very small, John Lennon–style, nothing he would have worn in his former life. Sitting back down, he writes the time, date and location on a clean sheet of paper. From where Marino sits, he makes out the word “offender,” but beyond that, he can’t read Benton’s small scrawl, especially upside down.
Marino answers, “His father and mother are on the list. Now that’s a real joke, right?”
Benton’s pen pauses. He glances up. “What about his lawyer? Rocco Caggiano?”
Marino swills beer in the bottom of the bottle.
“Rocco?” Benton says with more emphasis. “You going to tell me?”
Fury and shame dart across Marino’s face. “Just remember, he ain’t mine, didn’t grow up with me, don’t know him, don’t want to know him, would blow his fuckin’ brains out just as easy as any other dirtbag’s.”
“Genetically, he’s your son, whether you like it or not,” Benton replies matter-of-factly.
“I don’t even remember when his birthday is.” Marino dismisses his only child with a wave of a hand and a last slug of Budweiser.
Rocco Marino, who changed his surname to Caggiano, was born bad. He was Marino’s shameful, dirty secret, an abscess he showed to no one until Jean-Baptiste Chandonne loped onto the scene. For most of Marino’s life, he believed that Rocco’s curdled choices were personal—the harshest punishment he could levy on the father he despises. Oddly, Marino found some comfort in that. A personal vendetta was better than the humiliating and painful truth that Rocco is indifferent to Marino. Rocco’s choices have nothing to do with Marino. If anything, Rocco laughs at Marino, his father, and thinks he is a Keystone-Kop loser who dresses like a pig, lives like a pig and is a pig.
Rocco’s reappearance in Marino’s world was a coincidence—“a funny as hell coincidence,” in Rocco’s own words—when he stopped long enough to speak to his father outside the courtroom door after Jean-Baptiste Chandonne’s arraignment. Rocco has been in deep with organized crime since he was old enough to shave. He was a toady, scumbag lawyer for the Chandonnes long before Marino had ever heard of them.
“We know where Rocco’s spending his time these days?” Benton asks.
Marino’s eyes turn as dark and flat as old pennies. “Possibly—very possibly—we will soon enough.”
“Meaning?”
Marino leans back against the couch, as if the conversation pleases him and pumps up his ego. “Meaning he’s got tin cans tied to his ass this time and don’t know it.”
“Meaning?” Benton asks again.
“Interpol’s flagged him as a fugitive, and he ain’t aware of it. Lucy told me. I’m confident we’re going to find him and a lot of other assholes.”
“We?”
Marino shrugs again, tries to take another swallow of beer and gulps air. He belches, thinks about getting up for a refill.
“We is collectively speaking,” he explains. “We as in us good guys. Rocco’s going down because he’s gonna traipse through an airport and his little Red Notice is gonna pop up on a computer and next thing, he’s got a nice pair of shiny handcuffs on and maybe an AR-fifteen pointed at his head.”
“For what crimes? He’s always gotten away with his dirty work. That’s part of his charm.”
“All I know is there are warrants on him in Italy.”
“Says who?”
“Lucy. I’d give anything to be the one who points that AR-fifteen at his head, only I’d pull the trigger for sure,” Marino says, believing he means it, but unable to envision it. The images won’t come.
“He’s your son,” Benton quietly reminds him. “I suggest you get yourself ready for how it will feel if you have anything at all to do with whatever might happen to him. I’m not aware that your pursuit of him or any other Chandonne operatives is your legal jurisdictional right. Or are you now working undercover for the feds?”
A pause. Marino hates the feds. “I won’t feel nothing.” He tries to keep his demeanor flat, but his nerves have begun to fizz with fury and fear. “Besides, I don’t even know where the hell he is. Someone else out there will catch him, and he’ll be extradited to Italy if he lives that long. I got no doubt the Chandonnes will take him out before he has a chance to open his mouth.”
“Who else?” Benton moves on. “Who else is on the list?”
“A couple reporters. Never heard of ’em, and for all I know, they don’t exist. Oh yeah, and here’s a good one. Wolfman’s pretty-boy brother, Jean-Paul Chandonne, aka Jay Talley. Wish the bastard would drop by the prison for a visit so we could arrest his ass and he could join his ugly-ass twin on death row.”
Benton stops writing, a fleeting emotion passing through his eyes at the mention of Jay Talley’s name. “You’re assuming he’s still alive. Do you know that?”
“Got no reason to think otherwise. My guess is his family’s protecting him and he’s living the good life somewhere while he carries on with the family business.”
It occurs to Marino as he says all this that Benton probably knows Talley is a Chandonne who passed himself off as an American, became an ATF agent and managed to get himself assigned as a liaison to Interpol’s headquarters in France. Marino mentally scans everything that has been made public about the Jean-Baptiste case. He’s not sure if there was any mention of Scarpetta’s relationship with Talley when she and half the world believed he was the handsome big-shot agent who spoke dozens of languages and had gone to Harvard. Benton doesn’t need to know what went on between Scarpetta and Talley. Marino hopes like hell Benton never finds out.
“I’ve read about Jay Talley,” Benton says. “He’s very smart, very smooth, extremely sadistic and dangerous. I seriously doubt he’s dead.”
“Uhhhh . . .” Marino’s thoughts scatter like startled birds. “Like what have you read?”
“It’s no secret that he’s Jean-Baptiste’s twin brother. Fraternal twin.” Benton’s face is impassive.
“Weirdest thing I ever heard of.” Marino shakes his head. “Imagine. He and Wolfman born a few minutes apart. Talk about one brother getting the bad luck of the draw, while the other, Talley, gets dealt all aces.”
“He is a violent psychopath,” Benton replies. “I wouldn’t exactly call that aces.”
“Their DNA’s so much alike,” Marino goes on, “you’ve got to use a lot of probes to figure out you’re looking at the DNA of two different people.” Marino pauses, slightly exasperated, as he continues picking at his beer label. “Don’t ask me to explain probes and DNA shit. The Doc figured it all . . .”
“Who else is on the list?” Benton interrupts him.
Marino’s face goes blank.
“The visitors list.”
“The list is garbage. I’m sure no one on it has ever come to see John the Baptist except his lawyer.”
“Your son, Rocco Caggiano.” He won’t let Marino evade that fact. “Anyone else?” Benton persists, taking notes.
“Turns out I am. Isn’t that sweet? And then my new pen pal Wolfman sends me mail. A letter for me, and the one for the Doc that I didn’t give to her.”
Marino gets up to help himself to another beer.
“Need one?”
Benton tells him, “No.”
Retrieving his jacket, Marino digs in one pocket, then another, finding folded pieces of paper.
“I just happen to have them with me. Photocopies, including the envelopes.”
“The list.” Benton won’t stray from that subject. “Certainly you brought a copy of the list with you.”
“I don’t need a copy of that goddamn list.” Marino’s annoyance shows. “What is it about you and that fucking list? I can tell you exactly who’s on it. The people I’ve already mentioned, plus two reporters. Carlos Guarino and Emmanuelle La Fleur.”
His pronunciation is unintelligible and Benton asks him to spell the names.
“Supposedly, they live in Sicily and Paris.”
“Real people?”
“No sign of their bylines on the Internet, and Lucy’s looked.”
“If Lucy can’t find them, they don’t exist,” Benton decides.
“Also on Wolfman’s guest list,” Marino adds, “is none other than Jaime Berger, who would have prosecuted his ass had he gone to trial in New York for the newslady he mauled up there. Berger’s a piece of work, has a history with the Doc. They’re friends.”
Benton knows all this and doesn’t react. He takes notes.
“And last and probably least, some guy named Robert Lee.”
“His name sounds real enough. By chance is his middle initial E?” Benton wryly comments. “Any correspondence between Jean-Baptiste and this Robert Lee, on the outside chance Mr. Lee didn’t die a hundred-some years ago?”
“All I can tell you is he’s on the visitors list. Any mail that’s privileged, the prison won’t talk about, so I got no idea who else Wolfman writes to or gets love notes from.”
MARINO SMOOTHS OPEN his letter from Jean-Baptiste and begins to read: “ ‘Bonjour, mon cher ami, Pete . . .’ ”
He interrupts himself and looks up, scowling. “Can you believe he calls me Pete? Now that really pisses me off.”
“More than being called mon cher ami?” Benton asks dryly.
“I don’t like dirtbags calling me by my first name. It’s just one of my things.”
“Please read,” Benton says with a touch of impatience, “and I hope there is nothing more in French for you to mangle. What’s the date of this letter?”
“Not even a week ago. I arranged things to get here as quick as I could. To see you . . . oh, for shit’s sake, I’m gonna call you Benton.”
“Actually, you’re not. Please read.”
Marino lights another cigarette, inhales deeply and continues:
Just a note to tell you I am growing my hair. Why? But of course it is because they have given me my date to die. It is May seventh at ten p.m. Not a minute later, so I hope you will be there as my special guest. Before then, mon ami, I have business to conclude, so I make you an offer you can’t refuse (as they say in the movies).
You will never catch them without me, Jean-Baptiste. It would be like catching a thousand fish without a very big net. I am the net. There are two conditions. They are simple.
I will admit nothing except to Madame Scarpetta, who has asked my permission to see her and
tell her what I know.
No one else can be present.
I have yet another condition that she does not know. She must be the doctor who administers my lethal cocktail, as they say. Madame Scarpetta must kill me. I fully trust if she agrees, she will not break her promise to me. You see how well I know her.
Á bientôt,
Jean-Baptiste Chandonne
“And the letter to her?” Benton abruptly asks, unwilling to say Scarpetta’s name.
“The same thing. More or less.” Marino does not want to read it to him.
“You have it in your hand. Read it.”
Marino taps an ash into the water glass, squinting an eye as he blows out smoke. “I’ll give you the upshot.”
“Don’t protect me, Pete,” Benton softly says.
“Sure. If you want to hear it, I’ll read it. But I don’t think it’s necessary, and maybe you ought . . .”
“Please read it.” Now Benton sounds weary. His eyes are not as intense, and he leans back in the chair.
Marino clears his throat as he unfolds another plain white sheet of paper. He begins:
Mon chéri amour, Kay . . .
He glances up at Benton’s expressionless face. The color has drained from it, his complexion sallow beneath his tan.
My heart is in great pain because you have not made an appointment to come to see me yet. I do not understand. Of course, you feel as I do. I am your thief in the night, the great lover who came to steal you away, yet you refused. You shunned me and wounded me. Now you must be empty, so bored, languishing for me, Madame Scarpetta.
As for me? I am not bored. You are here with me in my cell, without a will, completely under my spell. You must know it. You must feel it. Let me see, can I count? Is it four, five or fifteen times a day I rip open those very nice suits you wear—the haute couture of Madame Scarpetta, the doctor, the lawyer, the Chief. I tear off everything with my bare hands and bite into those big tits while you shiver and die with delight . . .
“Is there a point to this?” Benton’s voice snaps like a pistol slide racking back. “I’m not interested in his pornographic drivel. What does he want?”