Blow Fly (20 page)

B
EV KIFFIN RUNS HER FINGERS
through a rack of cheap acetate panties and bras.

The women's lingerie section of Wal-Mart is near arts and crafts and directly across from men's athletic shoes, a section of the store she frequently haunts. She is certain, however, that the clerks in their cheap blue vests and name tags don't recognize her. This is the type of business where tired, glazed employees don't pay much attention to common-looking people like Bev who root around for bargains in a discount store that is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

A red, lacy bra captivates her imagination, and she checks sizes, looking for a 38D. Finding one in black, she tucks it up a sleeve of her dark green rain slicker. The bra is followed by two pairs of bikini-cut panties, size large. Stealing lingerie and other items that do not have security sensors is so easy. She wonders why everybody doesn't do it. Bev has no fear of consequences. No frontal-lobe alarm sounds when she contemplates committing a crime, no matter how serious. Opportunities come and go on her radar screen, some bigger and brighter than others, such as the woman who has just wandered into the arts and crafts section, interested in needlepoint.

The thought of such a stupid domestic hobby fills Bev with contempt as she instantly deduces that the attractive blonde dressed in jeans and a light blue jacket is naïve.

A lamb.

Bev continues rummaging through the lingerie rack, the target on her radar flashing brighter with each passing second, her pulse picking up, her palms getting clammy.

The woman drops skeins of colorful floss and a needlepoint pattern of an eagle and a flag into her cart.
So she's patriotic,
Bev thinks. Maybe she has a husband or boyfriend in the military, might be gone, maybe still in Iraq. She's at least thirty-five, maybe close to forty. Could be her man's in the National Guard.

The cart rolls forward, getting closer.

Bev detects cologne. The scent is unfamiliar and probably expensive. The woman's legs are slender, her posture good. She works out in the gym. She's got free time on her hands. If she has children, she must be able to afford having someone take care of them while she's trotting off to the gym or maybe the hair salon.

Bev scans a scrap of paper, a shopping list, feigning that she is unaware of the woman, who pauses in the aisle, looking directly at the rack of lingerie. She wants to keep her man happy.

A lamb.

Good-looking.

An air about her that Bev associates with intelligence.

She can sense when people are smart. They don't have to say one word, because the rest of them is talking. The woman pushes her cart straight to the rack, not even a foot from where Bev is standing, and the perfume crawls up Bev's sinuses, burrowing way up inside her skull, and her focus sharpens to a point as the woman unzips her jacket, picks a sheer red bra off the rack and holds it up to firm, ample breasts.

Hatred and envy electrify every nerve and muscle in Bev's matronly body, her upper lip breaking out in a cold sweat. She wanders in the
direction of men's running shoes as the woman dials a cell phone. It rings somewhere for several seconds.

“Honey?” she sweetly, happily says. “Still here. I know. Such a big place.” She laughs. “I like the Wal-Mart off Acadian better.” She laughs again. “Well, maybe I will if you're sure you don't mind.”

She holds out her left arm, glancing at the watch peeking out of her sleeve, the sort of watch runners wear. Bev expected something fancier.

A
LIGHT, MISTY RAIN DAMPENS
the streets of Szczecin as Lucy nears the Radisson Hotel.

This time she doesn't have to wait for the clerk to leave the front desk. The lobby is deserted. She walks inside, casually but briskly, and heads to the elevators. Her finger is about to make contact with the elevator button when the doors part and a very intoxicated man lurches out, knocking into her.

“ 'Scussssse me!” he says loudly, startling Lucy and jerking her mind out of gear.

What to do? What to do?

“Now, aren't you the prettiest thing I've seen forever!”

His words slur as if his mouth is numb with lidocaine, and he is almost yelling as he leers at her, checking her out from her hair to her cleavage to her satin cowboy boots. He announces that his party is going strong in room 301 and she must come. He goes on and on. My, my, how beautiful and sexy she is, and obviously American, and he was from Chicago, transferred recently to Germany, and is lonely and separated from his wife, who is a bitch.

The desk clerk rushes back to the lobby, and not a minute later a security guard follows and speaks in English to the drunk.

“Perhaps you should go back to your room. It is late, and you should go to sleep,” the guard says stiffly, eyeing Lucy with distaste and suspicion, as if assuming she is the vulgar man's girlfriend, or perhaps a prostitute, and is probably drunk, too.

She stabs at the elevator button, missing it several times, swaying and clutching the drunk man's arm.

“Come on, baby, let's go,” she slurs with a Russian accent, leaning against him.

“Now ain't that sweet . . .” He is about to show besotted surprise and pleasure in her company when she reaches up and kisses him hard on the mouth.

The elevator doors open and she pulls him inside, wrapping herself around him and continuing a long, tongue-groping kiss that tastes like garlic and whiskey. The security guard stares stonily at them as the doors shut.

Mistake.

The guard will remember her face. Lucy's face is hard to forget, and the guard had plenty of time to look at it because Lucy was trapped with the drunk asshole.

Big mistake.

She hits button 2 as the man paws her. He doesn't seem to notice that the elevator is stopping at the wrong floor, but suddenly his new lover is running away, clutching at her clothes. He tries to chase after her, wildly waving his arms, cursing, catching his toe on the carpet and stumbling.

Lucy follows exit signs, turning into another hallway, then into a stairway. She silently makes her way up three flights and waits on the dimly lit landing, holding her breath and listening, sweat rolling down her face and soaking her sexy black blouse. Possibly, it was habit more than instinct
that caused her to pluck up a plastic hotel key from the table in Caggiano's room and tuck it in a pocket of her windbreaker. Whenever she checks out of a hotel, she always keeps a key, if it is a disposable one, in the event she suddenly realizes she has forgotten something. Once, and she doesn't like to remember this, she left her gun in a bedside drawer and didn't realize it until she was climbing into a taxi. Thank God she still had a key.

The
Do Not Disturb
sign hangs ominously from the doorknob of room 511, and Lucy searches the hallway, desperately hoping she is not surprised by anyone else. As she makes her approach, she faintly hears the television inside Rocco's room, and a sick pain stabs her stomach. Fear burns. Recalling what she and Rudy just did is awful, and now she must confront their sin again.

A green light flickers, and she pushes open the door with her elbows because she has no fresh gloves, having raced off without them. She runs into a wall of rank smell from Rocco's last greasy meal and detects his alcohol-saturated blood. It coagulates like pudding under his head, his eyes half open and dull, the chair overturned, the gun under his chest, every detail exactly as she and Rudy had left it. Blow flies buzz around his body, searching for the perfect piece of moist human real estate to appropriate for their eggs. Lucy stares, transfixed, at the frenzied insects.

She focuses on her tactical baton. It, too, is exactly as she left it, on the table to the left of the bed.

“Oh, thank God,” she mutters.

The baton is safely back up her sleeve as she cautiously opens the door, wiping the knob with her blouse. This time she takes the stairs all the way down to the service level, where she hears the murmur of voices, possibly from the kitchen. Along walls are carts loaded with dirty dishes, wilted flowers in bud vases, empty wine bottles and what is left from cocktails and other beverages. Food is hardened on hotel china and stains white cloths and wadded napkins. There are no flies down here. Not one.

She swallows repeatedly, suddenly nauseous as she envisions the blow flies crawling all over Rocco and feeding on his gore. She thinks about what will happen next. Inside his warm room, blow fly eggs will hatch into maggots that, depending on how long he remains undiscovered, will teem over his decomposing body, especially inside his wound and other orifices. Blow flies love deep, dark, moist crevices and passageways.

The intense presence of carrion predators will throw off Rocco's time of death, as intended when Rudy introduced the flies into the room. The forensic pathologist who examines Rocco's body will be confused by the story of when room service delivered his late dinner and the advanced stage of maggot infestation and decomposition. His blood-alcohol level will indicate that Caggiano was intoxicated when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound that penetrated his temple and tore through his brain in a storm of lead shrapnel and the ragged razor-sharp copper edges of a semi-jacketed hollow-point bullet. Prints on the gun will be his.

The warmth of the room will be factored in but should not arouse suspicion. The empty champagne bottle has Caggiano's prints on it, should the police bother to check, although there will be no record of his ordering the champagne or receiving it compliments of the manager. He could have bought it elsewhere. The Red Notice will have his prints on it, should anyone bother to check, and she must assume someone will.

She wishes Rocco had not ordered room service, but she planned for that possibility, realizing that whoever delivered his dinner will recall the tip and not want to reveal that it was American cash. He or she will not want to be implicated in any sort of scandal that involves the police. In addition, if Rocco's time of death, as determined by the forensic pathologist, doesn't jibe at all with what the hotel employee who delivered the room service has to say—assuming the person talks—then it may very well be assumed that the person is mistaken about the time, possibly even the day. Or is lying. No one in that hotel will want to admit to accepting American money and who knows what other favors and
contraband that Rocco, a fugitive, has probably bestowed on them over the many years he has stayed in that hotel.

Who will care that Rocco Caggiano is dead? Perhaps no one except the Chandonne family. They will wonder. Lucy plotted with the expectation that they will press hard to know the facts. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. Suicide will be accepted, and no one will feel grief or even give a damn.

L
UCY SPRINTS THROUGH
the dark, her aching chest not due to physical exertion.

The Mercedes is quiet on the side of the street, and she can't see Rudy through the tinted windows. The locks click free and she opens the driver's door.

“Mission accomplished?” he grimly asks in the dark. “Don't start the car yet.”

She tells him about her encounter with the drunk and the hotel staff and explains the way she handled it. He says nothing. She feels his disapproval and irritation with her.

“Give me some credit. I think we're fine.”

“As fine as you could be under the circumstances,” he has to admit.

“There's no reason for anyone to connect me with Rocco's room, with his death,” she goes on. “I guarantee that hotel staff won't touch his room with that
Do Not Disturb
sign on the door. More flies will come in through the opening in the window. Say he's found in three or four days, maggots will have devoured him to the point he won't be recognizable. And in case you didn't know it, blow flies are attracted to shit, too.

“And his blood alcohol will be high, no reason in the world for
anyone to think anything but suicide, and the hotel will want his rotting body and maggots out of there as quickly as possible. And the medical examiner will think he's been dead longer than room service says—assuming there is an exact time associated with Rocco's dinner order, and there probably won't be. Orders aren't handled by computer. I know that for a fact.”

“For a fact?” Rudy asks. “How the hell can you know that for a fact?”

“What do you think I am, fucking stupid? I called. Days ago. Said I was a Hewlett-Packard rep checking on their computers and that the one the kitchen used for room service needed a software upgrade. And they didn't know what I was talking about, said they didn't use computers for room service, only for inventory. Then I talked about the advantages of using an hp pavilion 753n with an Intel Pentium processor and eighty-gigabyte hard drive and CD-ROM and all the rest for room service orders. .  . . Point is, there is no computer record of what time Rocco ordered dinner, okay?”

Rudy was silent, then said, “They use Hewlett-Packards at that hotel?”

“Easy enough to find out by calling the business office. Yes,” she replied.

“Okay. Good job on that one. So even if the drunk or anyone else paid any attention to you, the way we've staged Rocco's crime scene will make it appear he was dead long before you went off to party with the drunk.”

“That's right, Rudy. We're fine. We're fine. Rocco's already being infested. Masses of maggots will produce heat and speed up decomposition, and it looks like a suicide, anyway—one committed earlier—much earlier—than anyone will imagine.”

She starts the car, laying a hand on his arm. “Now, can we get the hell out of here?”

“We can't make any more mistakes, Lucy,” he says in a defeated way. “We just can't.”

She pulls away from the sidewalk, angry.

“The fact is, at least two people in that hotel think you might be a
drunk conventiongoer or maybe even a prostitute, and you aren't easy to forget, no matter what they think you are. It probably doesn't matter one goddamn bit, but . . .” He doesn't finish.

“But it could have.” Lucy drives carefully, checking her mirrors and the sidewalks, dark with shadows.

“Right. It could have.”

She feels his eyes and the shifting of his moods. He is softening toward her, sorry he was so rough.

“Hey, you-Rudy-you.” She reaches out and affectionately touches his cheek, his stubble reminding her of a cat's tongue. “We're on the go and we're okay.”

She reaches for his hand and holds it tightly.

“This went down bad, Rudy, really bad, but it's going to turn out fine. We're fine,” she says again.

When one or the other or both of them are scared, they never admit it, but they know because they need each other. Each becomes desperate for the other's warm flesh. Lucy lifts his hand to her mouth, resting his arm against her.

“Don't,” he says. “We're both tired, strung-out. Not a good time to . . . to not have both hands on the wheel. Lucy, don't,” he mutters as she deeply kisses his fingers, his knuckles, his palm.

She makes love to one hand and slides the other inside her black linen blouse.

“Lucy, stop . . . oh, Jesus . . . it's not fair.” He unfastens his seat belt. “I don't want to feel this way about you, goddamn it.”

Lucy drives.

“You do feel it for me. At least sometimes, don't you?”

Lucy pets his hair, his neck, slips her hand into his collar and traces the muscles of his upper back. She doesn't look at him as she drives fast.