Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(50)
"Well what, Mom?"
"He's the man of the house."
"Well, ain't that something. Guess he ain't got little ugly bugs crawling out him like everybody else, since he's the man of the house. Guess he don't give a rat's ass who ends up in an iron lung."
"Who you fighting out there when you beat up the mattress? Fight, fight, fight. You're always fighting."
Marino buys another beer and consoles himself with the thought that the male models in the workout magazine are not fighters, because they have the flexibility of a rock. They don't dance on their feet, boxing. They don't do anything but lift iron and pose for photographers and poison themselves with steroids. Still, Marino wouldn't mind having a stomach that looks like moguls in a ski run, and what he wouldn't give for his hair to come home to his head instead of continuing its relentless migration to other parts of his body. He smokes and drinks to the noise of a basketball dribbling, shoes squeaking and crowds yelling on the big-screen TV. Loudly flipping through a few more pages of his magazine, he begins to notice advertisements for aphrodisiacs, performance enhancements and invitations to skin parties and strip volleyball.
When he reaches a centerfold of hairless hunks wearing G-strings and fishnet bikini briefs, he slaps the magazine shut. A businessman sitting one table over gets up and moves to the other end of the bar. Marino takes his time finishing his beer and gets up and stretches and yawns. People in the bar watch him as he makes his way toward the businessman and drops the magazine on top of his Wall Street Journal.
"Call me," Marino says with a wink as he saunters out of the bar.
40
BACK AT THE US AIR GATE, Marino is seized by agitation and impetuosity.
His flight has been delayed another hour due to weather. Suddenly, he doesn't want to go home to Trixie and get up in the morning and realize what happened in Boston. Thinking of his small house with its carport in its blue-collar neighborhood sinks his spirit lower into bitterness and a need to fight back. If only he could identify the enemy. Why he continues to live in Richmond makes no sense. Richmond is the past. Why he allowed Benton to blow him off makes no sense. He should never have walked away from Benton's apartment.
"You know what due to weather means?" Marino asks the young redheaded woman sitting next to him, filing her nails.
Two rude behaviors Marino simply can't tolerate are public farts and the scratching sound of manicures accompanied by drifting nail dust.
The file continues to rapidly scratch-scratch.
"It means they ain't decided whether to fly our asses outta Boston yet. See? There ain't enough passengers to make it worth their while. They lose money, they don't go nowhere and blame it on something else."
The file freezes and the woman looks around at dozens of empty plastic seats.
"You can sit here all night," Marino goes on, "or come find a motel room with me."
After a moment of disbelief, she gets up and walks off in a huff.
"Pig," she says.
Marino smiles, civility restored, his boredom assuaged, if only briefly. He is not going to wait for a flight that probably will never happen, and then he thinks of Benton again. Anger and paranoia ooze into his skull. His feeling of powerlessness and rejection settle more closely around him, choking him with a depression that stalls his thoughts and fatigues him as if he hasn't slept in days. He can't stand it. He won't. He wishes he could call Lucy, but he doesn't know where she is. All she told him was that she had business to take care of that required traveling.
"What business?" Marino asked her.
"Just business."
"Sometimes I wonder why the hell I work for you."
"I don't wonder about it in the least. I never give it a thought," Lucy said over the phone from her office in Manhattan. "You adore me."
Outside Logan Airport, Marino flags down a Cambridge Checker cab, practically stepping in front of it and waving his arms, ignoring the taxi line and the dozens of weary, unhappy people in it.
"The Embankment," he tells the driver. "Near where the band shell is."
41
SCARPETTA DOESN'T KNOW where Lucy is, either. Her niece doesn't answer her home or cell phones and hasn't returned numerous pages. Scarpetta can't reach Marino, and she has no intention of calling Rose and telling her about the letter. Her secretary worries too much already. Scarpetta sits on her bed, thinking. Billy makes his way up the dog ramp and plops down just far enough away to make her reach if she wants to pet him, and she does.
"Why do you always sit so far away from me?" she talks to him as she stretches out to stroke his soft, floppy ears. "Oh, I get it. I'm supposed to reposition myself and move closer to you."
She does.
"You're a very willful dog, you know."
Billy licks her hand.
"I have to go out of town for a few days," she tells him. "But Rose will take good care of you. Maybe you'll stay at her house and she'll take you to the beach. So promise you won't get upset that I'm leaving."
He never does. The only reason he comes running when she heads out on a trip is that he wants a ride in the car. He'd ride around in a car all day, given the choice. Scarpetta dials Lucy's office a second time. Although it is long past closing time, the phone is answered by an alive and awake human being twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Tonight, it is Zach Manham's turn.