Four Scarpetta Novels (117 page)

T
HE CAR IS PARKED AT
a meter on East 114th Street in Harlem, within a block of Rao's.

In Benton's former life, he could get a coveted table at Rao's because he was FBI and had special status with the family who has owned the famous, if not notorious, Italian restaurant for a hundred years. It was a hangout for the mob, and there is no telling who dines there now. Celebrities frequent its few checked cloth–covered tables. Cops love the place. The mayor of New York stays away. Parked on East 114th, in a beat-up black Cadillac that Benton bought for $2,500 cash, is probably as close to Rao's as he will ever get again.

He plugs a cell phone into the cigarette lighter, engine and air-conditioning running, doors locked, his scan never leaving the mirrors as he eyes rough people who have nothing better to do than walk the streets, looking for trouble. The billing address of this phone is the P.O. Box number of a woman in Washington who does not exist. The satellite location of where Benton's call is made is of no consequence, and within two minutes, he hears U.S. Senator Frank Lord talking to a staff member who is unaware that the senator has activated mode two of his
international cell phone and will now receive calls and actually transmit his conversation without any alert that can be detected by anyone other than himself.

While the senator was testifying on live TV, he checked his watch and suddenly called for a break. Without touching the phone clipped on his belt, the caller—in this case, Benton—can hear everything the senator says.

He hears muffled footsteps and voices.

“. . . World's greatest obstructionist body. If that isn't the truth,” says Senator Lord, who is always reserved, but as tough as they come. “Damn Stevens.”

“He's raised filibuster to an art form, that's certain,” another male voice sounds in Benton's earpiece.

When Benton left a text message on the Senator's cell phone with the exact time he would make this call, it was the first time Benton had made any contact with him in almost a year. Senator Lord knows Benton is listening, unless he has forgotten or didn't get the message. Doubts wrestle with Benton's confidence. He tries to envision the senator, dressed as always in a crisp conservative suit, his posture as straight as a four-star general's.

But the remote one-sided meeting must be on track. The senator walked out of a hearing that was probably being aired live on C-SPAN. He wouldn't do that without a good reason, and it would be coincidental, to say the least, if he just happened to step out at the precise time Benton let him know he would call the number in mode two.

Also, it occurs to Benton with relief, the senator obviously has set his phone on mode two. Otherwise, Benton could not overhear his conversation.
Don't be stupid and so damn jumpy,
he silently tells himself.
You are not stupid. Senator Lord is not stupid. Think clearly.

He is reminded of how much he misses seeing his old friends and acquaintances in the flesh. Hearing the voice of Senator Lord, Scarpetta's
trusted friend, a man who would do anything for her, tightens Benton's throat. He clenches his hands, gripping his phone so tightly that his knuckles blanch.

The man, probably a staff member, asks, “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Not now,” Senator Lord says.

Benton notices a muscular, bare-chested youth casually moving closer to his rusting, dented Cadillac, a hunk of junk so caked with Bondo, the car looks as if it has pigment disorder. Benton stares him down, a universal warning, and the youth veers off in another direction.

“He's not going to get appointed, sir,” the staff member replies, oblivious that every word he says is being broadcast to a Nokia cell phone in Harlem.

“I'm always more optimistic than you are, Jeff. Things can turn around, surprise you,” says Senator Lord, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the most powerful politician in federal law enforcement, because he controls funding, and everything is about funding, even solving the most heinous crimes.

“I want you to leave and call Sabat.” Senator Lord refers to Don Sabat, the director of the FBI. “Assure him he'll get what he needs for his new cyber-crime unit.”

“Yes, sir.” The staff member sounds surprised. “Well, you'll make his day.”

“He's done all the right things and needs my help.”

“I'm not sure I agree with you, Chairman, in the sense that we have some other pretty big issues, and this is going to set off a lot of . . .”

“Thank you for taking care of it,” Senator Lord cuts him off. “I've got to get back in there and make these idiots think about people instead of damn political power games.”

“And punishment. There are those who aren't too fond of you.”

The senator laughs. “Means I'm doing something right. Give Sabat my regards, tell him things are moving along well now, are in the works.
Reassure him, I know he's been unsettled. But we've really got to be diligent now, more than ever.”

The line goes dead. Within hours, money will be wired into various accounts at The Bank of New York at Madison and 63rd, and Benton can begin withdrawals with bank cards issued in other fictitious names.

I
NSIDE LUCY'S OFFICE
, a light begins to flash on a computer. The news has hit the wire service. The infamous trial lawyer Rocco Caggiano appears to have committed suicide in a hotel in Poland, his body discovered by a maintenance worker who noticed a foul odor coming from one of the rooms.

“How in the hell . . . ?” Lucy strikes a key to deactivate the flashing light. She clicks the mouse on
Print.

Search engines are her specialty, and a posse of them have been dedicated to finding any information that might be related to Rocco Caggiano. There is plenty. Rocco loved to read about himself, was a news hog, and every time Lucy has scanned some article about him or a client he represented, she has felt an uneasiness she has never experienced before. She can't muster enough self-control to stop imagining Rudy helping Rocco shoot himself in the head.

Pointed up.

The barrel should be pointed up.

A tip she learned from her Aunt Kay, whose reaction Lucy can't imagine were she to find out what her precious niece and Rudy have done.

“Not even forty-eight hours?” Rudy leans over her shoulder, his breath
on her neck smelling like the cinnamon gum he has a habit of smacking away on when he's not in public.

“Sounds like our luck has continued to turn bad in Szczecin. Thanks to a maintenance worker and a stuck drain.” Lucy continues reading an AP report.

Rudy sits next to her and leans an elbow on the desk, his chin in his hand. He reminds her of a boy who has just lost his first Little League baseball game.

“After all that planning. Fuck. Now what? You pulled up the medical examiner's report? Christ, don't tell me it's in Polish.”

“Hold on. Let me jump out of this . . .” She clicks the mouse. “Into something else . . . I
love
Interpol . . .”

The Last Precinct is a very select client, one of those entities considered part of Interpol's massive international web. For the privilege, Lucy must pass security clearance, of course, and pay the same yearly subscription fee as a small country. She executes a search, and Rocco Caggiano's death records are on the screen in seconds. Police and autopsy reports have been translated from Polish into French.

“Oh, no,” Lucy says with a sigh as she swivels around in the chair and looks up at Rudy. “How's your French?”

“You know how my French is. Limited to my tongue.”

“You're so vulgar. Just a single-tasking computer. You boys. One thing on the mind.”

“I don't always think about
only
one thing.”

“You're right. I apologize. You think about the one thing, except you do it two, three, a million times a day.”

“And you,
Mam-ouzelle
Farinelli?”

“Oh, God, your French is bad.”

She glances at her watch, this one a formidable titanium Breitling that includes an Emergency Locator Transmitter, or ELT.

“I thought you weren't supposed to wear that thing unless you're flying.” Rudy taps her watch.

“Don't touch it. You'll set it off,” she teases him.

He holds on to her arm, studying the watch, frowning at the bright blue face, tilting his head this way and that, pretending he's stupid. Lucy starts laughing.

“One of these days I'm gonna unscrew this big knob right here”—he taps her watch again, still holding on to her arm—“and pull the antenna all the way out. And then run like hell . . .”

Lucy's cell phone vibrates, and she slips it out of the case on her belt.

“And laugh my ass off when the Coast Guard, the F-15s come roaring in . . .”

“Yes,” she bluntly answers the phone.

“You have such a sweet manner with people,” Rudy whispers in her ear. “If I die, will you marry me?”

Static on the other end is bad. “Who is this?” she asks, loudly. “I can't hear you.” The static gets worse. Lucy shrugs and ends the call. “Don't recognize the number, do you?”

She holds up her phone, showing Rudy the number that someone just used to call her.

“Nope. Nine-three-six . . . ? What area code is that?”

“Easy enough to find out.”

It doesn't require special search engines or Interpol to type in a telephone number and find out whose it is. Lucy logs on to Google. The name that comes up on the computer screen is the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Polunsky Unit. Included is a map.

“You didn't answer my question,” Rudy says, still flirting but completely cognizant of the importance of a call from Polunsky.

“Why would I marry you if you're dead?” she mutters, scarcely listening to him.

“Because you can't live without me.”

“I can't believe this.” She stares at the screen. “What the hell is going on? Get Zach to call my aunt, make sure she is safe. Have him tell her it's possible Chandonne might be out. Goddamn it! He's fucking with us!”

“Why don't you call her yourself?” Rudy puzzles.

“That piece of shit is fucking with us!” Her eyes blaze.

“Why don't
you
call Scarpetta?” Rudy asks again.

Lucy instantly becomes somber.

“I can't talk to her right now. I just can't.” She looks at him. “How are you doing?”

“Awful,” he says.

B
ENTON DID NOT CALL
on a landline, because he did not want the inaudible conversation taped.

The technical tools that Lucy most likely has and can't live without would not include a cell phone that automatically tapes a live conversation, especially since very few people have her cell phone number, and those who do are not the sort she would secretly tape. This ploy was far simpler than the last one, and there is no risk that Lucy can try voice analysis to decipher what Jean-Baptiste's nonsensical taped voice had to say, which was nothing.

Benton simply spliced fragments of Jean-Baptiste's taped voice with static, to give the impression of an attempt to talk when one is in a very bad cell. Already she will have traced the call—just as she did the last one—to Polunsky. She will have no satellite capabilities, because the garbled call is gone, lost in space—again, because Benton did not call any of her office lines.

She will be angry. When she gets sufficiently irritated, nothing can stop her. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne is fucking with her. This is what she will think, and Benton knows Lucy well enough to be certain she has made the mistake of hating Chandonne. Hate interferes with clear
thinking. She will wonder how Chandonne can be calling her from Polunsky
and
from New York, if her satellite technology is to be trusted.

In the end, Lucy always trusts her technology.

A second call from Polunsky, and now she will begin to believe, seriously believe, that Chandonne must have a phone with a Texas Department of Criminal Justice billing address. She is no more than a breath away from believing that Jean-Baptiste Chandonne has escaped.

Scarpetta will decide she must encounter him face-to-face, behind protective glass, inside the Polunsky Unit. Chandonne will refuse to see anybody else, and that is his right.

Yes, Kay, yes. It's for you, it's for you. Please. Face him before it's too late. Let him talk!

Benton is getting frantic.

Baton Rouge, Lucy!

Chandonne said
Baton Rouge,
Lucy!

Are you listening to me, Lucy?