Black notice (36 page)

"Leave," I told him. "I won't be subjected to your goddamn UFO theories. What do you want? To make me live through this hell all over again? So I can hope for something when I've worked so hard to accept the truth? Get out of my room."

Marino. pushed back his chair, and it fell over as he jumped to his feet. He snatched his pack of cigarettes off the table.

"What if he's fucking still alive?" He raised his voice, too. "How do you know for a fact he didn't have to disappear for a while because of some big thing going on that involves ATF, FBI, Interpol, shit, maybe NASA, for all we know?"

I grabbed my wine, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold it without spilling, my entire existence ripped open again. Marino was stalking the room and gesturing wildly with his cigarette.

"You don't know it for a fact," he said again. "All you saw was burned-up bone in a stinking black fire hole. And a Breiding watch like his. So fucking what!"

"You son of a bitch!" I said. "You goddamn son of a bitch! After all I've been through; and then you have to . . ."

"You're not the only one who's been through it. You know, just because you slept with him doesn't mean you fucking owned him."

I took quick steps toward him and caught myself before I slapped him hard across the face.

"Oh, God," I muttered as I stared into his shocked eyes. "Oh, God."

I thought of Lucy striking Jo, and I walked away from him. He turned to the window and smoked. The room was overcast with misery and shame, and I leaned my head against the wall and shut my eyes. I'd never come even close to violence with anyone in my life, not anyone like this, not someone I knew and cared about.

"Nietzsche was right;" I muttered in a defeated way. "Be careful who you choose for an enemy because that's who you become most like."

"I'm sorry," Marino barely said.

"Like my first husband, like my idiot sister, like every out-of-control cruel, selfish person I've ever known. Here I am. Like them."

"No, you ain't."

My forehead was pressed against the wall, as if I were praying, and I was grateful we were in shadows, my back to him, so he could not see my anguish.

"I didn't mean what I said, Doc. I swear I didn't. I don't even know why I said it."

"It's all right."

"All I'm trying to do is look at everything because there's pieces that aren't fitting right."

He walked over to an ashtray and stabbed out his cigarette.

"I don't know why we're here," he said.

"We're not here to do this," I said.

"Well, I don't know why they couldn't have exchanged info with us through the computer, over the phone, like they always do. Do you?"

"No," I whispered as I took a deep breath.

"So it started sneaking into my thoughts that maybe Benton . . . What if there was something going on and he had to be a protected witness for a while. Change his identity and all that. We didn't always know what he was into. Not even you always knew, because he couldn't always tell you, and he would never want to hurt us by telling us something we shouldn't know. Especially not hurt you or make you worry about him all the time."

I did not answer him.

"I'm not trying to stir anything up. I'm just saying it's something we should think about," he lamely added.

"No, it isn't," I replied, clearing my throat and aching all over. "It's not something we should think about. He was identified, Marino, by every possible means. Carrie Grethen didn't just conveniently kill him so he could disappear for a while. Don't you see how impossible this is? He's dead, Marino. He's dead:"

"Did you go to his autopsy? Did you see his autopsy report?" He wouldn't let it go.

Benton's remains had gone to the Philadelphia medical examiner's office. I had never asked to review his case.

"No, you didn't go to his autopsy, and if you had, I would have thought you were the most fucked-up person I've ever met," Marino said. "So you didn't see nothing. You only know what you've been -told. I don't mean to keep hammering you with that, but it's the truth. And if anyone wanted to cover up that those remains weren't his, how would you know if you never took a look?"

"Pour me some Scotch," I said.

I turned toward Marino, my back against the wall as if I didn't have the strength to stand on my own two feet.

"Man, you see how much whiskey costs over here?" Marino commented as he closed the door to the minibar.

"I don't care."

"Interpol's probably paying, anyway," he decided.

"And I need a cigarette," I added.

He lit a Marlboro for me and the first hit punched my lungs. He presented me with a tumbler of straight single malt on the rocks in one hand, a Beck's beer in the other.

"What I'm trying to say," Marino resumed, "is if Interpol can do all this secret shit with electronic tickets and ritzy hotels and Concordes, and no one ever meets a soul who's ever talked to whoever these people are, then what makes you think they couldn't have faked everything else?"

"They couldn't have faked his being murdered by a psychopath;" I replied.

"Yes, they could have. Maybe that was the perfect timing." He blew out smoke and gulped down beer. "Point is, Doc, I think anything can be faked, if you think about it."

"DNA identified . . ."

I couldn't finish the statement. It brought images before me I had suppressed for so long.

"You can't say the reports were true."

"Enough!"

But the beer had crumbled what walls he had, and he would not stop his increasingly fantastic theories and deductions and wishful thoughts. His voice went on and on and began to sound far away and unreal. A shiver crept over me. A splinter of light glinted in that dark, devastated part of me. I desperately wanted to believe that what he was suggesting was true.

When 5:00 A. M. came around, I was still dressed- and asleep on the couch. I had a hammering headache. My mouth tasted like stale cigarettes and my breath was alcohol. I showered and stared for a long time at the phone by my bed. The anticipation of what I had decided to do electrified me with panic. I was so confused.

In Philadelphia, it was almost midnight, and I left a message for Dr. Vance Harston, the chief medical examiner. I gave him the number to the fax machine in my room and left the do not disturb sign on the door. Marino met me in the hall, and I said nothing to him but an inaudible good morning.

Downstairs, dishes clattered as the buffet was set up and a man cleaned glass doors with a brush and a cloth. There was no coffee this early, and the only other guest awake was a woman with a mink coat draped over a chair. In front of the hotel, another Mercedes taxi awaited us.

Our driver this day was sullen and in a hurry. I rubbed my temples as motorcycles sped past in lanes of their imagination, weaving between cars and roaring through many narrow tunnels. I was depressed by reminders of the car crash that killed Princess Diana. I remembered waking up and hearing about it on the news, and my first thought was we tended to disbelieve that mundane, random deaths can happen to our gods. There is no glory or nobility in being killed by a drunk driver. Death is the great equalizer. It doesn't give a damn who you are. The sky was dusky blue. Sidewalks were wet from washing and green garbage cans had been set out along the streets. We bumped over cobblestones at the Place de la Concorde and drove along the Seine, which we could not see most of the time because of a wall. A digital clock outside the Gare de Lyon let us know it was seven-twenty, and inside feet shuffled and people hurried into Relais Hachette to buy papers. I waited behind a woman with a poodle at the ticket counter, and a sharp-featured, well-dressed man with silver hair jolted me. He looked like Benton from a distance. I could not help but scan the crowd as if I might find him, my heart throbbing as if it couldn't survive much more of this.

"Coffee," I told Marino.

We sat at a counter inside L'Embarcadere and were served espresso in tiny brown cups.

"What the hell is this?" Marino grumbled. "I just wanted regular coffee. How 'bout handing me some sugar," he said to the woman behind the counter.

She dropped several packs on the counter.

"I think he'd rather have a cafe creme," I told her.

She nodded. He drank four of them and ate two ham baguettes and smoked three cigarettes in less than twenty minutes.

"You know," I said to him as we boarded a train a grande vitesse, or TGV, "I really don't want you to kill yourself."

"Hey, not to worry," he replied, taking a seat across from me. "If I tried to clean up my act, the stress would do me in."

Our car was barely a third full, and those passengers seemed interested only in their newspapers. The silence prompted Marino and me to speak in very low voices, and the bullet train made no sound as it suddenly lurched forward. We glided out of the station, then blue sky and trees were flying by. I felt flushed and very thirsty. I tried to sleep, sunlight flashing over my shut eyes.

I came to when an Englishwoman two rows back began talking on a portable phone. An old man across the aisle was working a crossword puzzle, his mechanical pencil clicking. Air buffeted our car as another train sped by, and near Lyon, the sky turned milky and it began to snow.

Marino's mood was getting increasingly curdled as he stared out the window, and he was rude when we disembarked in the Lyon Part-Dieu. He had nothing to say during our taxi ride, and I got angrier with him as I replayed the words he had recklessly thrown at me last night.

We neared the old part of the city where the Rh8ne and SaOne rivers joined, and apartments and ancient walls built into the hillside reminded me of Rome. I felt awful. My soul was bruised. I felt as alone as I'd ever felt in my life, as if I didn't exist, as if I were part of another person's bad dream.

"I don't hope nothing," Marino finally spoke apropos of nothing. "I might say what if, but I don't hope. There's no point. My wife left me a long time ago and I've still never found anybody that fits. Now I'm suspended and thinking about working for you. I did that? You wouldn't respect me anymore."

"Of course I would."

"Bullshit. Working for someone changes everything and you know it."

He looked dejected and exhausted, his face and slumped posture showing the strain of the life he'd lived. He'd spilled coffee on his rumpled denim shirt, and his khakis were ridiculously baggy. I'd noticed that the bigger he got, the larger the size of the pants he bought, as if he fooled himself or anyone else.

"You know, Marino, it's not very nice to imply that working for me would be the worst thing that ever happened to you."

"Maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing. But pretty close," he said.

Interpol's headquarters stood alone on the Parc de la Tete d'Or. It was a fortress of reflective pools and glass and did not look like what it was. I was certain the subtle signs of what went on inside were missed by virtually all who drove past. The name of the plantanne tree-lined street where it was located wasn't posted, so if you didn't know where you were going, you quite likely would never get there. There was no sign out front announcing Interpol. In fact, there were no signs anywhere.

Satellite dishes, antennas, concrete barricades and cameras were very hard to see, and the razor wire-topped green metal fence was well disguised by landscaping. The secretariat for the only international police organization in the world silently emanated enlightenment and peace, appropriately allowing those who worked inside to look out and no one to look in. On this overcast, cold morning, a small Christmas tree on the roof ironically tipped its hat to the holidays.

I saw no one when I pressed the intercom button on the front gate to say we had arrived. Then a voice asked us to identify ourselves and when we did, a lock clicked free. Marino and I followed a sidewalk to an outbuilding, where another lock released, and we were met by a guard in suit and tie who looked strong enough to snatch up Marino and hurl him back to Paris: Another guard sat behind bulletproof glass and slid out a drawer to exchange our passports for visitor badges.

A belt carried our personal effects through an X-ray machine, and the guard who had greeted us gave us instructions with gestures rather than words to step, one at a time, inside what looked like a floor-to-ceiling transparent pneumatic tube. I complied, halfway expecting to be sucked up somewhere, and a curved Plexiglas door shut. Another one released me on the other side, every molecule of me scanned.

"What the hell is this? Star Trek?" Marino said to me after he'd been scanned, too. "How you know something like that can't give you cancer? Or if you're a man, give you other problems."

"Be quiet," I said.

It seemed we waited a very long time before a man appeared on a breezeway connecting the secure area to the main building, and he was not at all what I expect. He walked with the easy spring of a youthful athlete, and an expensive charcoal flannel suit draped elegantly over what was clearly a sculpted body. He wore a crisp white shirt and a rich Hermes tie in maroon, green and blue, and when he firmly shook our hands I noticed a gold watch, too.