Blow Fly (17 page)

S
ZCZECIN'S SKYLINE IS PIERCED
by antennas, the streets quiet, the downtown shabby.

Not one of the stores looks inviting, especially at this late hour, and the few cars out are old and worse for the wear. The Radisson is built of brick, the courtyard gray and red pavers, and a large blue banner out front welcomes a Methods and Models in Automation and Robotics meeting, and that is fortunate.

The more people in the hotel, the better, and Lucy used to program robots and can talk technology with anybody if need be. But it won't be necessary. She has a plan, a very good one in all respects. She finds a spot to park several streets down from a Fila store, just past a
delikatesy.

Flipping down the mirror on the visor, she quickly applies makeup and puts on gold hoop earrings. She yanks off her tennis shoes and pulls on black satin cowboy boots that are disgustingly necessary should someone spot her inside the hotel. She struggles into a black blouse, linen and wrinkled, and tucks her tactical baton up its sleeve. She unbuttons it low enough to show off cleavage. Transformed into a sexy young woman who is staying in the hotel, Lucy is sufficiently disheveled and alluring to pass
for a typical convention attendee who has been out having a good time half the night. Throwing on a windbreaker and cursing her boots, she walks quickly to the hotel beneath the dim auras of streetlights.

This Radisson is
self-service,
as Lucy calls hotels where she carries her own bags, uses her magnetized room key to let herself into the gym and fills her own ice bucket, and where the housekeepers are shocked when left a tip. There is no doorman or bellman at this hour, only a young woman reading a Polish magazine behind the front desk. Lucy stays outside in the dark, glancing around, making certain no one suddenly walks up and sees her. In that unlikely event, she will dig inside the small leather satchel looped over her shoulder, pretending to look for her room key. She waits restlessly for ten minutes before the bored, weary desk clerk gets up and walks off, perhaps to the ladies' room, perhaps to find coffee. Lucy strolls across the lobby and disappears inside the elevator, pushing the button for the fifth floor.

Rudy is in room 511. It is not his room. He got inside the hotel very much the same way Lucy did, only he got a good break, got to walk in with a crowd of businessmen returning from dinner. Fortunately, he was smart enough to wear a suit and tie. Rudy is an odd breed. Former HRT comrades envied his beautiful muscular body and accused him of taking steroids, which he has never touched. Lucy would know, because Rudy may have his flaws, but he is so honest and sincere that she sometimes calls him
girlfriend.
She knows every detail of his diet, vitamin and protein supplements, and grueling workout routines, and his favorite magazines and television shows. She can't remember the last time he read a book. She also understands why he sexually assaulted her in the Tire House and, if anything, feels bad that she broke his nose.

“I thought you were hot for me, too. I swear,” he explained with the most pitiful expression on his face. “I guess I got all excited rolling around between tires and shooting, and you were right there with me with cartridge cases pinging everywhere, both of us dirty and sooty, and you
looked so good I couldn't stand it, so I asked you that question—when I shouldn't have—and then you said you wanted sex whenever you could get it. I thought you meant with me.”

“Right that minute?” Lucy said. “You really thought that?”

“Yeah. That you were hot and bothered too.”

“Now and then you should watch something besides action movies,” Lucy replied. “Walt Disney, maybe?”

They had this conversation inside her room at the FBI Academy, both of them sitting on her bed because she was not afraid of Rudy and never has been. He was the one with stitches below his lip and a broken nose that required the skills of a plastic surgeon.

“Besides, and I know this may sound like bullshit to you, Lucy, but I'd had it with what the other guys were saying. Maybe I wanted to prove something—prove you weren't what they've been saying.”

“I get it. If we had sex, then you could go back and tell them all about it.”

“No! I didn't mean it like that. I wouldn't have told them anything. It's none of their business!”

“Hmmm. Let me sort through this. Having sex in the Tire House would have proven to the other guys that I'm into guys—even though they wouldn't have known about our having sex in the Tire House because you're too honorable to kiss and tell.”

“Ah, fuck.” Rudy stared dejectedly at the floor. “I'm not saying it right. I wouldn't have told them a thing, but next time they bad-mouthed you, accused you of being gay or frigid or whatever, I could have given them a look, done something to indicate they didn't know what they were talking about.”

“I appreciate that your intention was my welfare as you tried to rip off my clothes and rape me,” Lucy replied.

“I wasn't trying to rape you! For Christ's sake, don't use a word like that! I thought you were turned on, too. Shit, Lucy. What do you want me to do?”

“Never try a stunt like that again. Or next time I'll break more than your nose.”

“Fine. I won't ever do anything again unless you start it. Or change your mind.”

He resigned from the Bureau and eventually came to work for her at The Last Precinct. Rudy is a perplexing mix. In some ways, he is the big, handsome dope incapable of making a commitment to any woman he has ever claimed to desperately love (and his choices, as far as Lucy knows, demonstrate appallingly bad judgment). But as a crime fighter, he is as meticulous and skillful as he is as a helicopter pilot. Rudy isn't selfish or narcissistic. He rarely drinks and never touches drugs, not even aspirin.

“One good thing about it.” Rudy looked up at Lucy as they sat on her bed. “When the plastic surgeon was fixing my nose, he went ahead and shaved that little bump off it.” He gently touched the splint on the bridge of his nose. “He says I'll have a perfect Roman nose. That's what he called it, a
Roman nose
.”

He paused, slightly perplexed. “What exactly is a Roman nose?”

L
UCY KNOCKS ON
the door of room 511.

It has a
Do Not Disturb
sign hanging on the knob, and the TV is loud inside, hoofs pounding, guns firing. It sounds like Rudy is watching a Western. But what he's watching is Rocco.

“Yeah.” After a pause, Rudy's voice sounds from inside.

“Down and secure,” she uses helicopter talk and scans the hallway as she pulls latex gloves out of a pocket and works her hands into them.

The door opens wide enough for her to slip through, and she closes it behind her. Rudy is also wearing surgical gloves, and turns the lock and dead bolt. Lucy takes off her windbreaker and stares hard at Rocco Caggiano, at his flabby, fat body and his bloodshot eyes. She takes in every detail of the room. Draped over a chair is his black cashmere overcoat, and in a corner on the carpet are a plastic tray and an empty bottle of champagne next to a stainless-steel ice bucket filled with water. It would have taken hours for the ice to completely melt. The bed is king-size, and directly across from it in front of a window with the drapes drawn are a small glass table and two chairs. On the carpet are several British newspapers. He's recently been in England, maybe. But Rocco has never
bothered to learn a second language. The papers could have come from anywhere along his route here.

Parked between the table and the bed is a room-service cart with nothing on it but four stainless-steel plate covers. Lucy can't help but think of Rocco's estranged father, Pete Marino, as she eyes a gnawed T-bone, the shredded skin of a baked potato, a plate with one pat of butter left (melted), an empty bread basket and a glass goblet filled with wilted lettuce, cocktail sauce, wedges of lemon and shrimp tails. He so completely devoured a slice of chocolate cake, nothing is left but smears made with Rocco's fingers.

“I gotta go.”

“Be my guest.”

She hurries into the bathroom. The stench is horrible.

“He sober?” Lucy asks Rudy when she returns.

“Sober enough.”

“Must be in the genes.”

“What?”

“The way father and son take care of themselves,” she says. “But that's all he and Marino have in common.” This to Rocco: “Drop by Szczecin to check on a few spare firearms? Maybe some ammunition, explosives, electronics, perfumes and designer clothing? How many phony bills of lading are in your briefcase?”

Rocco glares at her, his attention dropping to her cleavage.

“Keep your goddamn eyes to yourself,” Lucy snaps, having forgotten about her appearance. She buttons up and resumes her interrogation. “Probably thousands of them floating around somewhere, right, Rocco?”

He says nothing. Lucy notices vomit on the carpet between his black crocodile loafers.

“ 'Bout time you gagged on your own shit, Rocco.” She sits on the edge of the bed.

“That a pickle up your sleeve, or you just happy to see me,” Rudy says to Lucy without a smile, without taking his eyes off Rocco.

Lucy remembers the tactical baton up the sleeve of her linen blouse, slips it out and sets it on the bedside table. It is warm in the room. She glances at the thermostat, verifying that Rudy turned up the heat to seventy-four degrees. Any higher than that could arouse suspicion. Blowing heat moves the drapes drawn across the window on the other side of the room. The window is large and faces the front of the hotel. Rocco stares at the pistol, his eyes filling with tears.

“My, my,” Lucy remarks, “you're quite a crybaby for someone so mean and tough. And by the way, your father doesn't cry.” She looks at Rudy. “You ever seen Marino cry?”

“Nope.”

“You ever seen him shit in his pants?”

“Nope. Did'cha know that Rocco here had plans to put a bullet in Marino's head on his fishing trip? You know, the one he always takes to Buggs Lake.”

Lucy doesn't comment. A flush creeps up her neck. Hopefully, Marino will never know that she and Rudy came here and probably saved his life. Rocco won't be shooting anyone ever again.

“You could have killed your father years ago. Why this August?” Lucy asks him.

She knows when Marino takes his annual fishing trip.

Rocco shrugs. “Instructions.”

“From whom?”

“My former client. He has scores to settle.”

“Jean-Baptiste,” Lucy says. “So the two of you have remained close. That's touching, because he's the reason you're about to die.”

“I don't believe you!” Rocco exclaims. “He'd never . . . He needs me.”

“For what?” Rudy asks.

“Outside work,” Rocco replies. “I'm still his attorney. He can send me anything he wants. Contact me anytime he wants.”

“What does he send you?” Rudy asks.

“Anything. All he's got to do is mark it
Legal Mail,
and no one can open it. So if he wants letters or shit sent to somebody who obviously ain't a lawyer, he sends it through me.”

“The letter I got from him that ratted you out, Rocco, did he send it through you?” Lucy asks.

“No. He's never sent me a letter with your name on it. I never open them. Too risky. If he ever found out.” He pauses, his eyes glassy. “I don't believe he sent you a letter!”

“We're here, aren't we?” Rudy says. “So how did that happen if Chandonne didn't send a letter and tell us everything we need to know?”

Rocco has no answer.

“Why would he want you to kill your father?” Lucy isn't about to forget that subject. “Especially now. What scores to settle?”

“Maybe Jean-Baptiste don't like him. I guess you could consider it a parting shot.” Rocco briefly looks smug.

“Mind if I see that for a minute?” Lucy holds out her hand for Rudy's pistol.

He drops out the magazine and clears the round from the chamber. The cartridge bounces on the bed. Lucy picks it up and Rudy gives her the Colt. She walks close to Rocco and pushes the loose cartridge into the magazine with her thumb.

“Your father taught me how to drive,” she tells Rocco in a conversational tone. “You ever seen those huge pickup trucks of his? Well, that's what I learned in when I was so little I had to sit on a pillow, even with the seat raised.”

She racks back the slide and aims the pistol between his eyes.

“He taught me how to shoot, too.”

She squeezes the trigger.

Click.

Rocco jumps violently.

“Oops.” Lucy smacks the magazine back inside the handle. “Forgot it wasn't loaded. Get up, Rocco.”

“You're cops.” His voice trembles in fear and disbelief. “Cops don't kill people. They don't do this!”

“I'm not a cop,” Rudy says to Lucy. “Are you a cop?”

“No. I'm not a cop. I don't see a single cop in this room, do you?”

“Some CIA paramilitary operatives. Bet they sent you into Iraq, didn't they? To take out Saddam Hussein. I know what people like you do.”

“Never been to Iraq, have you?” Lucy says to Rudy.

“Not recently.”