Black notice (43 page)

"The victim being the guy in the container. Thomas." Talley paused. 'This hair's all over Loup-Garou's body? Then he obviously doesn't shave it:'

"It wouldn't be easy shaving your entire body on a regular basis. Most likely, he shaves only those areas people might see:'

"And there's no effective treatment. No drug or anything."

"Lasers are being used with some success. But he may not know that. Or more likely, his family wasn't going to permit him to show up at a clinic, especially after he started killing."

"Why do you think he exchanged clothes with the man you found in the container? With Thomas."

"If you're going to escape on a ship," I surmised, "you wouldn't want to be in designer clothes, assuming your theory about the hand-me-downs is true. It could also be spite, contempt. Getting in the last word. We could speculate all day long, but there's never a formula, only the damage left behind:'

"Can I get you anything?" he asked.

"An answer," I said. "Why didn't you tell me Dr. Stvan was the one who survived? You and the secretary-general sat there telling me this story when you knew all along it was she you were talking about:'

Talley was silent.

"You were afraid it would scare me off, weren't you?" I said. "The Loup-Garou sees her and tries to kill her, so maybe he would see me and try to kill me, too?"

"Various people involved were doubtful you would go see her if you knew the whole story."

"Well, then these various people don't know me very well," I said. "In fact, I would be more likely to go if I knew something like that. The 'hell with how well you think you know me and can predict this and that after having met Lucy one or two times."

"Kay, it was because of Dr. Stvan's insistence. She wanted to tell you herself for a very good reason. She'd never divulged all of the details to anyone, not even the detective who is her friend. He was only able to supply us with a rough sketch." , "Why?"

"Again, the people protecting the killer. If they somehow found out and thought she might have gotten a good look at him, she was afraid they might do something to her. Or to her husband- or two children. She believed you wouldn't betray her by talking to anyone who might place her in a vulnerable position. But in terms of how much she told you, she said she wanted to make that decision when she was with you."

"In case she didn't trust me after all."

"I knew she would."

"I see. So mission accomplished."

"Why are you so angry with me?" he asked.

"Because you're so presumptuous."

"I don't mean to be," he said. "I just want us to stop this werewolf-freak before he kills and mutilates anybody else. I want to know what makes him tick:"

"Fear and avoidance," I said. "Suffering and rage because he was punished for something that wasn't his fault. He anguished alone. Imagine being intelligent enough to comprehend all that."

"He would hate his mother most," Talley said. "He might even blame her."

Sunlight polished his hair like ebony and caught his eyes at the edge, flecking them with gold. I saw his feelings before he could rush them back into hiding. I got up and looked out the window because I did not want to look at him.

"He would hate women he sees," Talley said. "Women he could never have. Women who would scream in horror if they saw him, saw his body."

"Most of all, he would hate himself," I said.

"I know I would."

"You paid for this trip, didn't you, Jay?"

He got up and leaned against the window frame.

"Not some big corporation after this One-Sixty-Fiver cartel," I went on.

I looked at him.

"You got Dr. Stvan and me together. You facilitated everything. You set all of it up and paid for it," I said as I became more convinced and my incredulity grew. "You could do that because you're very rich. Because your family's very rich: That's why you went into law enforcement, isn't it. To get away from being rich. And then you act rich, look rich, anyway."

For an instant, he was caught.

"You don't like it when you're not the one doing the interrogating, do you?" I said.

"It's true I didn't want to be like my father. Princeton, crewing, marrying into the proper family, kids all proper, everything proper."

We were side by side now, looking down at the street as if something interesting was going on in the world outside our window.

"I don't think you've bucked your father," I said. "I think you fool yourself by being contraire. And certainly getting a badge and carrying a gun and piercing your ear is contraire if you went to Harvard and are a millionaire."

"Why are you saying all this to me?"

He turned to look at me, and we were so close I could smell his cologne and feel his breath.

"Because I don't want to wake up tomorrow and realize I'm part of some contraire script you've spun in your mind. I don't want to believe I've just broken the law and every oath I've ever sworn to because you just happen to be a spoiled rich boy whose idea of being contraire is to encourage someone like me to do something so contraire it could ruin my career. What's left of my career. And maybe land me in some fucking French prison."

"I'd come visit you."

"This isn't funny."

"I'm not spoiled, Kay."

I thought of the do not disturb sign, the chained door. I touched his neck and traced the angle of his strong jaw, lingering on the corner of his mouth. I had not felt a man's beard against my skin in more than a year. I reached up with both hands and pushed my fingers through his thick hair. It was warm from the sun, and his eyes were in mine, waiting to see what I might do with him.

I pulled him to me. I kissed and touched him aggressively, running my hands up and down his hard, perfect body as he fought with my clothes.

"God, you're so beautiful," he said into my mouth. "Christ, you've been driving me insane . . . !" He tore'off a button and bent hooks. "Sitting there in front of the fucking secretary-general and I'm trying not to stare at your breasts."

He gathered them into his hands. I wanted it raw and without limits. I wanted the violence in me to make love to his violence, because I didn't want to be reminded of Benton, who had known how to slowly smooth me like a stone and skip me through erotic waters.

I pulled Talley into the bedroom, and he was no match for me because I had experience and skills he knew nothing of. I controlled him. I dominated. I helped myself to him until we were exhausted and slippery with sweat. Benton wasn't in that room. But had he somehow seen what I just did, he would have understood.

The afternoon moved on and we drank wine and watched shadows change on the ceiling as the sun got weary of the day. When the phone rang, I didn't answer it. When Marino thumped on the door and called out to me, I pretended no one was home. When the phone rang again, I shook my head.

"Marino, Marino," I said.

"Your bodyguard."

"He didn't do a very good job this time;" I said as Talley fit as much of me into his mouth as he could. "I suppose I'll have to fire him."

"I wish you would."

"Tell me I haven't committed yet another felony this day. And that your name, Agent Talley, has nothing to do with keeping score."

"Okay. My name has nothing to do with keeping score. But I don't know about the felony part."

It seemed that Marino gave up on me, and as it got dark, Talley and- I took a shower together. He washed my hair and made a joke about the age difference between us. He said it was another example of his being contraire. I said we should go to dinner.

"What about the Cafe Runtz?" he asked.

"What about it?"

"What the French would call chaleureux, ancien et familial-warm, old, familiar. The Opera-Comique is next door, so there are photographs of opera singers all over the walls."

I thought of Marino. I needed to let him know I was not lost somewhere in Paris.

"It's a nice walk," Talley was saying. "Maybe only fifteen minutes. Twenty at the most."

"I need to find Marino first," I said. "He's probably in the bar."

"Would you like me to look for him and send him up?"

"I'm sure he would be most appreciative," I said facetiously.

Marino found me before Talley found him. I was still drying my hair when Marino showed up at my door, and the look on his face told me he knew why he had not been able to reach me.

"Where the hell you been?" he asked as he walked in.

"The Institut Medico-Legal."

"All day?"

"No, not all day," I said.

Marino looked at the bed. Talley and I had made it, but it didn't look quite the way the housekeepers had left it this morning.

"I'm going out to . . ." I started to say.

"With him," Marino raised his voice. "I goddamn knew this would happen. I can't believe you fell for it. Je-sus Christ. I thought you was above ... ."

"Marino, this is none of your business," I wearily said.

He blocked the door, hands on his hips like a stern nanny. He looked so ridiculous, I had to laugh.

"What's the matter with you?" he exclaimed. "One minute you're looking at Benton's autopsy report and the next you're screwing around with some playboy, snotty, stuck-on-himself kid! You couldn't even wait twenty-four hours, Doc! How could you do that to Benton?"

"Marino, for God's sake keep your voice down. There's been quite enough yelling in this room."

"How could you?" He looked at me with disgust, as if I were a whore. "You just get his letter and have me and Lucy over and then last night you're sitting here crying. And what? None of it happened? You just start all over like nothing happened? With some womanizing punk?"

"Please leave my room." I'd had enough.

"Oh, no." He began to pace, wagging his finger at me. "Oh, no. I ain't going nowhere. You want to fuck around with pretty boy, you can just do it in front of me. 'Cause guess why? I'm not gonna let it happen. Someone's got to do the right thing here, and looks like it's gonna be me."

He paced and paced, getting more livid with each word. "It's not about your letting or not letting something happen." My fury was gathering. "Who the hell do you think you are, Marino? Stay out of my life:"

"Well, poor Benton. A damn good thing he's dead, huh? Shows how much you loved him, all right."

He stopped pacing and jabbed his finger at my face.

"And I thought you was different! What was you doing when Benton wasn't looking? That's what I want to know! And all this time I'm feeling sorry for you!"

"Get out of my room now." My self-control snapped. "You goddamn jealous son of a bitch! How dare you even allude to my relationship with Benton. What do you know? Nothing, Marino. He's dead, Marino. He's been dead for over a year, Marino. And I'm not dead and you're not dead."

"Well, right now I wish you was."

"You sound like Lucy when she was ten."

He stalked out and slammed the door so hard paintings shifted on the wall and the chandelier shook. I picked up the phone and called the front desk.

"Is there a Jay Talley in the lobby?" I asked. "Tall, dark, young. Wearing a beige leather jacket, jeans?"

"Yes, I see him, madame."

Seconds later Talley was on the phone.

"Marino just stormed out of here," I said. "Don't let him see you, Jay. He's crazy."

"Actually, he's just getting off the elevator now. And you're right. He looks a little crazy. Gotta go."

I ran out of my room. I ran as fast as I could through the corridor and down the winding, carpeted steps, ignoring the odd stares I got from well-dressed, civilized people who walked at a leisurely pace and didn't get into fistfights in the Grand Hotel in Paris. I slowed down when I reached the lobby, lungs burning and out of breath, and to my horror watched Marino taking swings at Talley while two bellmen and a valet tried to intervene. A man at the registration desk frantically dialed the phone, probably calling the police.

"Marino, no!" I said loudly and with authority as I hurried over to him. "Marino, no!" I grabbed his arm.

He was glassy-eyed and sweating profusely, and thank God he had no gun because I was afraid he might have used it just then. I kept hold of his arm while Talley talked in French and gestured, assuring everyone there was no problem and not to call the police. I led Marino by the hand through the lobby like a mother about to discipline a very bad little boy. I escorted him past valets and expensive cars and out onto the sidewalk, where I stopped.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" I asked him.

He wiped his face on the back of his hand. He was breathing so hard he was wheezing. It occurred to me he might have a heart attack.

"Marino." I shook his arm. "Listen to me. What you just did in there is unconscionable. Talley has done nothing to you. I've done nothing to you."

"Maybe I'm sticking up for Benton 'cause he ain't here to do it himself," Marino said in a flat, worn-out voice.