Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(20)

Scarpetta trusts Lucy and Marino more than anyone else in her life. They helped plan Benton's staged murder and disappearance, and that truth is a brain infection, a sickness they battle daily, while Benton lives his life as a nobody named Tom.

"I guess no fishing," Benton goes on in the same light tone.

"They ain't biting." But Marino's anger is. His fury bares its fangs.

"I see. Not a single fish. And bowling? Last I remember, you were second in your league. The Firing Pins. I believe that was the name of your team."

"Last century, yeah. I don't spend time in Virginia. Only when I get dragged back down to Richmond for court. I'm not with their PD anymore. In the process of moving to Florida and signing on with the Hollywood PD, south of Lauderdale."

"If you're in Florida," Benton points out, "when you go to Richmond, it's up to Richmond, not down to Richmond. One thing you've always had is an amazing sense of direction, Pete."

Marino's caught in a lie, and he knows it. He constantly thinks of moving from Richmond. It shames him that he doesn't have the nerve. It is all he knows, even if there is nothing left for him in that city of old battles that continue to rage.

"I didn't come here to bother you with long stories," Marino says.

Benton's dark glasses glance in his direction as the two of them continue their leisurely pace.

"Well, I can tell you've missed me," Benton comments, a splinter of ice in his tone.

"It ain't f*cking fair," Marino hisses, his fists clenched by his sides. "And I can't take it no more, pal. Lucy can't take it no more, pal. I wish you could be a f*cking fly on the wall and see what you done to her. The Doc. Scarpetta. Or maybe you don't remember her, either."

"Did you come here to project your own anger onto me?"

"I just thought while I was in the neighborhood I'd point out, now that I got your attention, that I don't see how dying can be worse than the way you live."

"Be quiet," Benton quietly says with flinty self-control. "We'll talk inside."

17

IN AN AREA OF BEACON HILL lined with proud old brick homes and graceful trees, Benton Wesley managed to find an address to suit his present, peculiar needs.

His apartment building is ugly beige precast with plastic lawn chairs on balconies and a rusting wrought-iron fence that encloses a front yard, overgrown and depressingly dark. He and Marino take dimly lit stairs that smell of urine and stale cigarette smoke.

"Shit!" Marino gasps for breath. "Couldn'tcha at least find a joint with an elevator? I didn't mean nothing by what I said. About dying. Nobody wants you to die."

On the fifth landing, Benton unlocks the scratched gray metal door to apartment 56.

"Most people already think I did."

"Shit. I can't say anything right." Marino wipes sweat off his face.

"I've got Dos Equis and limes." Benton's voice seems to mimic the flip of the dead-bolt lock. "And, of course, fresh juice."

"No Budweiser?"

"Please make yourself comfortable."

"You got Budweiser, don't you?" Pain sounds in Marino's voice. Benton doesn't remember anything about him.

"Since I knew you were coming, of course I have Budweiser," Benton says from the kitchen. "An entire refrigerator full of it."

Marino looks around and decides on a floral printed couch, not a nice one. The apartment is furnished and bears the dingy patina of many threadbare and careless lives that have come and gone. Benton probably hasn't lived in a decent place since he died and became Tom, and Marino sometimes wonders how the meticulous, refined man stands it. Benton is from a wealthy New England family and has always enjoyed a privileged life, although no amount of money would be enough ransom to free him from the horrors of his career. To see Benton living in an apartment typically occupied by partying college students or the lower middle class-to see him with a shaved head, facial hair, baggy jeans and sweatshirt, and to know he doesn't even own a car-is unimaginable to Marino.

"At least you're in good shape," Marino remarks with a yawn.

"At least, meaning that's the best you can say about me." Benton ducks inside the old white refrigerator and emerges with two beers.

The cold bottles clank together in one hand as he opens a drawer, rooting around for a church key, as Marino calls any gadget that flips the cap off a beer.

"Mind if I smoke?" Marino asks.

"Yes." Benton opens and shuts a cabinet door.

"Okay, so I'll go into fits and swallow my tongue."

"I didn't say you couldn't smoke." Benton walks across the dim, shabby living room and hands Marino a Budweiser. "I said I minded."

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..."