Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(71)
65
BUYING COFFEE ON THE STREET is an old routine that gives Jaime Berger a temporary escape from mayhem.
She takes her change from Raul, thanks him, and he nods, busy, aware of the long line behind her, and asks if she wants butter, even though she has refused butter for all the years she has patronized his kiosk across Centre Street from the District Attorneys office. She walks off with her coffee and usual high-carbohydrate lunch of a bagel-this one poppy-seed-and two packets of Philadelphia cream cheese in a white paper bag with a napkin and a plastic knife. The cell phone on her belt vibrates like a stinging insect.
"Yes," she answers, pausing on the sidewalk across from her granite building downtown, close to Ground Zero, where on September 11, 2001, she was looking out her office window when the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
That empty hole along the Hudson has left an empty hole in her, too. Staring at blank air, at what is no longer there, makes her feel older than her forty-eight years, and with every passing era in her life, she has lost a part of herself that can never be resurrected.
"What are you doing?" Lucy asks. "I hear street chaos, so you're in the midst of cops, lawyers and thugs swarming around the courthouse. How quickly can you get to the Upper East Side, where things are more civilized?"
Typically, Lucy doesn't give Berger an opportunity to get in a word until it is too late for her to say no.
"You're not scheduled for court, are you?"
Berger says that she's not. "I suppose you want me now."
Realistically speaking, now is more like forty-five minutes, due to sluggish traffic. It is close to one p.m. when Berger is keyed up to the twenty-first floor of Lucy's building. The elevator doors open to a mahogany reception area with Infosearch Solutions in brass letters on the wall behind the curved glass desk. There is no area for clients to wait, and the desk is flanked by two opaque glass doors. The left one electronically unlocks as the elevator doors shut, an invisible camera in the chandelier broadcasting Berger and every sound she makes on platinum-screen TVs in every interior office.
"You look like holy hell. But what matters is how I look," she dryly says as Lucy greets her.
"You're very photogenic," Lucy replies with a quip she's used before. "You could have had a brilliant acting career in Hollywood."
Berger is a dark-haired woman with sharp features and pretty teeth. She is always dressed impeccably in power suits accented by expensive accessories, and although she might not think of herself as an actor, any good prosecutor is theatrical during interviews and certainly in the courtroom. Berger looks around at a wall of closed mahogany doors. One opens, and Zach Manham walks out, holding a stack of CDs.
"Step into my parlor," Lucy says to Berger. "A spider's turned up."
"A tarantula," Manham gravely adds. "How'ya doin, Boss?" He shakes Berger's hand.
"Still miss the good ol' days?" Berger smiles at him, but her eyes belie her light demeanor.
Losing Manham from the DA's detective squad, or from her A Team, as she calls it, still hurts, even though it is for the best and she continues to work with him at times such as this one.
Another era passed.
"Step this way," Manham says.
Berger follows him and Lucy inside what is simply referred to as the lab. The room is large and soundproof, like a professional recording studio. Overhead shelves are stacked with sophisticated audio, video and global-positioning and various tracking systems that defy Berger's expertise and never cease to amaze her when she comes to Lucy's office. Everywhere, lights blink and video screens flash from one image to another, some of them the interior of the building, others monitoring locations that make no sense to Berger.
She notices what looks like a bundle of tiny microphones on top of a desk crowded with modems and monitors.
"What's this latest contraption?" she asks.
"Your latest piece of jewelry. An ultramicro transmitter," Lucy replies, picking up the bundle and pulling loose one of the transmitters, no bigger than a quarter and attached to a long, thin cord. "It goes with this." She taps what looks like a black box with jacks and an LCD. "We can disappear this baby in the hem of one of your Armani jackets, and if you get snatched, the quasi-Doppler direction finder can locate your exact position by VHF and UHF signals.
"Frequency range, twenty-seven to five hundred megahertz. Channels selected on a simple keyboard, and this other thing you're looking at"-she pats the black box-"is a tracking system we can use to monitor wherever the hell you are in your car, on your motorcycle, your bicycle. Nothing more than a crystal oscillator powered by a nicad battery. Can monitor up to ten targets at a time, supposing your husbands screwing around on you with multiple women."
Berger doesn't react to a subtlety that is anything but subtle.
"Water-resistant," Lucy goes on. "A nice carrying case with a shoulder strap; could probably get Gurkha or Hermes to design a special one-perhaps in ostrich or kangaroo-just for you. Aircraft antenna available if you want to feel secure when you fly on a Learjet, a Gulf Stream, however you get about, woman-on-the-go that you are."
"Another time," Berger says. "I hope you didn't bring me uptown to show me what happens if I get lost or kidnaped."
"Actually, I didn't."