Patricia Cornwell - Red Mist

“Don’t get pissed again.”

“I’m asking for clarity, not a disagreement or a fight. Had you already rented your apartment in Charleston before Jaime called the CFC two months ago and you took the train to New York to have a secret meeting with her?”

“I’d been thinking about it.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

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.”