Red Mist (21 page)

I unwrap a chicken-fried steak, egg, and cheese biscuit, and he takes it in his huge hand and a third of it is gone in one
bite, buttery crumbs snowing down on his napkin-covered lap.

“I’d been looking into it,” he says, as he chews.
“I’d been checking out rentals in the Charleston area for a while, more
of a pipe dream, really, until I talked to Jaime.
She told me about her work in the Lola Daggette case and that she could
use my help, and I’m thinking this is kind of amazing, sort of like it was meant to be.
It’s the same part of the world where
I was just looking for something to rent.
But it
makes sense when you realize that most places with good fishing and motorcycle riding also have the death penalty.
Anyway,
I decided she was right.
It might be smart to become a private contractor.”

“Her suggestion.
Of course.”

“Well, she’s smart as hell, and it made sense.
You know, I can pick and choose my hours a little better, pick and choose where
I want to be, earn a little more money, maybe.”
He takes another bite of his biscuit.
“I told myself it’s now or never.
This
is your chance.
If you don’t try to make things turn out the way you want right now when it’s under your nose, you probably
won’t get asked twice.”

“Did Jaime go into detail about what happened to her in New York?
About why she quit?”
I ask.

“I guess she told you what Lucy did.”

“I thought you said she hadn’t mentioned Lucy to you.”
I open my egg biscuit, and although I usually don’t eat fast food and
certainly don’t share Marino’s addiction to all things fried, suddenly I’m starved.

“She didn’t, exactly,” Marino says, and we are on the Veterans Parkway now, making very good time through long stretches of
forests, the sky huge and a whitish blue that augurs a scorching day.
“All she mentioned was the Real Time Crime Center, that
its security was compromised and Jaime basically got blamed.
No one officially accused her, but she said comments were being
made about how coincidental it was that here she is claiming NYPD is skewing crime stats at the same time their computer system
is broke into and it just so happens she’s in a relationship with a well-known computer hack.”

“That’s not the story Lucy tells,” I reply.
“She says it wasn’t the
Real Time Crime Center.
It was one precinct where they allegedly were bumping down felony grand larcenies to misdemeanors
and changing burglaries to criminal-mischief complaints.”

“That’s bad enough.”

“I don’t know exactly what she got into or how, but yes, it’s bad enough.
And I’m sorry if that’s how Lucy is described, as
a well-known computer hack.
If that’s what people think of her.”

“Well, shit, Doc, she’s always going to do it,” Marino says.
“If she can get into something, she’s going to get into it, and
there isn’t much she can’t get into.
I know you know that by now, so why pretend it’s ever going to change?
Maybe I’d be the
same way if I was like her, do what’s needed to get what you want because you can.
Legal
is just moguls on a black-diamond slope.
Something you go over and around, and the more of them and the more difficult they
are, the more Lucy likes it.”

I look out my open window at tawny marshes and snaking estuaries and creeks, the hot air blowing in the rotten-egg smell of
pluff mud.

“Not that Lucy really gives a shit what anybody thinks of her.”
Paper crinkles as he wads up his biscuit wrapper.

“I’m sure she’d like you to believe she doesn’t give a shit.
She cares about a lot of things more than you might think she
does.
Including Jaime.”
I take a bite of my biscuit.
“I know I’m going to regret it, but this is pretty good.”

“I’d better have another one in case we don’t get lunch.”

“You look like you’ve lost weight, and I don’t know how.”

“I only eat when my body’s hungry instead of when I am,” he
says.
“It took me half my life to figure it out.
It’s like I wait until I’m hungry at a cellular level, if you know what I
mean.”

“I don’t have a clue.”
I hand him another biscuit.

“It really works.
No shit.
The goal is not to think.
When you need food, your cells will let you know, and then you take care
of it.
I don’t think about meals anymore.”
He talks with his mouth full.
“I don’t plan on having this or that or not having
this or that or feel I have to eat at a certain time of day.
I let my cells tell me and go with it.
I’ve lost fifteen pounds
in five weeks, and I’m toying with the idea of writing a book about it.
Don’t Think You’re Fat, Just Eat.
A play on words.
I’m not really telling people not to think they’re fat.
I’m telling them not to think about it at all.
I
believe people would go for it.
I probably could dictate it and get someone to type it up.”

“I’m worried you’re smoking again.”

“I don’t know why the hell you keep saying that.”

“Someone’s been smoking in your van.”

“I think it smells pretty good in here.”

“It didn’t smell pretty good yesterday.”

“A couple fishing buddies of mine.
Something about driving with the windows wide open when it’s hot as hell.
People feel like
lighting up.”

“Maybe you could be a bit more evasive,” I reply.

“What’s all this shit about cigarettes?
Like suddenly you’re the smoking police.”

“You remember what Rose went through.”
I remind him of my secretary Rose’s miserable death from lung cancer.

“Rose didn’t smoke, not even once her whole life.
She didn’t have
any bad habits and still got cancer, and maybe that’s why.
I’ve decided if you try too hard, everything gets worse, so what’s
the point in depriving yourself so you can die prematurely in good health?
I wish she was still around.
It’s not the same.
Damn, I hate missing people.
I still walk in your office and think she’s going to be there with that old IBM typewriter and
an attitude.
Some people should never be gone, and those that should hang around forever.”

“You recently were diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma and had several lesions removed.
The last thing you need is to start
smoking again.”

“Smoking doesn’t cause skin cancer,” he says.

“It triples your chances.”

“Okay.
So now and then I bum a cigarette when someone else is lighting up.
It’s no big deal.”

“
Don’t smoke cigarettes anymore.
Just bum them.
Maybe that’s another book you can write.
People probably would buy that, too.”

“The shit Lucy worries about will never be proved.”
He goes back to that because he doesn’t want to be lectured.
“Nobody’s
been accused or is going to be.
Jaime’s gone for good from the DA’s office, and that’s what people like Farbman wanted, plain
and simple.
He must feel like he won the lottery.”

“Jaime certainly doesn’t feel that way, despite her protests to the contrary.”

“She seems pretty happy with what she’s doing now.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“She just doesn’t like how it happened, because she was forced.
How would you feel if someone ran you off from your career
after all you did to get there?”

“I’d like to believe I wouldn’t entice someone I supposedly love to do something destructive because I wanted out of the relationship,”
I answer.

“Yeah, but breaking up with Lucy doesn’t have anything to do with Jaime getting run out of the DA’s office.”

“It has everything to do with it.
Jaime uncreated herself,” I reply.
“She didn’t like what she saw, and she smashed it, destroyed
it, so she could start all over.
But that doesn’t work.
It never does.
You can’t rebuild yourself on the foundation of a lie.
You helped her with the security and camera system.
Is she carrying a gun now, too?”

“I’ve given her a couple of shooting lessons at an indoor range here.”

“Whose idea?”

“Hers.”

“Most New Yorkers don’t carry guns.
It’s not part of their culture.
It’s not a natural default.
Why does she suddenly think
she needs a gun?”

“Maybe from being down here, where she doesn’t exactly belong, and let’s face it, anything related to Dawn Kincaid is scary.
I think what she’s doing now has spooked her, and she got used to guns from Lucy, who’s always armed.
She probably takes her
Glock into the friggin’ shower.
Maybe Jaime got used to guns because of living with them.”

“Just like she got used to having an LLC called Anna Copper that started out as a somewhat spiteful joke because Lucy was
hurt?
Yes, Groucho Marx, who was heavily invested in Anaconda Copper, a mining company that tanked during the Great Depression
and is blamed for polluting the environment.
You don’t see what’s going on here, do you?”

“I don’t know.
Maybe I do.”

“You invest in something that seems hugely valuable but is toxic, and you lose everything.
It almost does you in.”

“You ever listen to those old radio programs of his?
You Bet Your Life.
You know, what color is the White House or who’s buried in Grant’s tomb, that sort of thing.
He was pretty funny.
You shouldn’t
worry about Jaime’s shit.”

“I should worry about her shit, and so should you.
It’s one thing to offer objective assistance in a case, and it’s another
to be drawn into an agenda, especially a vindictive one, a highly personal one, a dysfunctional one.
Jaime has all the incentive
imaginable to make some big point, to re-create herself with a vengeance.
There are other factors as well.
I think you know
what I’m referring to.”

Marino makes loud crumpling noises as he digs into the Bojangles’ bag, pulling out more napkins, as we cross a bridge that
spans the Little Ogeechee River.

“I just hope you’re careful,” I continue, lecturing him again.
“I’m not going to interfere if you choose to consult with other
people, if you change your professional status with the CFC, but you need to be very cautious when it comes to Jaime.
Do you
understand why it might be difficult for you to be completely clearheaded about her?”

He wipes his mouth and fingers as we pass over Forest River now, where shrimp boats are moored and seagulls are congregated
on a long wooden pier.

“It’s dangerous when people are propelled by powerful motivations they aren’t aware of.
That’s all I need to say.”
I don’t
expect him to understand or to be persuaded.

Jaime feeds his ego in a way I don’t, because I refuse to
manipulate him.
I don’t charm and flatter him into doing what I want.
I’m blunt and honest, and for the most part it annoys
him.

“Listen,” he says.
“I’m not stupid.
I know she’s got other things going on and Lucy complicated everything.
She’s so damn
wide open, and I remember her coming into the DA’s office, acting like what was going on between them not only wasn’t a secret,
it was something to brag about.”

Just ahead is the Savannah Mall, where I ate a seafood lunch with Colin Dengate last time I was here, and I try to remember
when that was.
Maybe three years ago, when I was still in Charleston and he was battling a spate of hate crimes in coastal
Georgia.

“It shouldn’t have needed to be a secret,” I reply.
“In fact, it should have been something to brag about if two people love
each other.”

“Well, let’s be honest,” Marino says.
“Not everybody feels the way you do.
The two of them getting together isn’t the typical
fairy-tale couple.
It’s not like they’re Prince William and Kate.
It’s not like everybody celebrated Jaime and Lucy.
Just
my opinion, but I think Jaime wanted out of it because it was causing her big problems.
All that shit on the Internet, like
suddenly she’d been voted off some reality show.
Dyke DA, Lesbo Law.
It was ugly, and she bailed, and now she’s sorry, even
if she won’t admit it.”