Patricia Cornwell - Blow Fly

"Did you come here to project your own anger onto me?"

"I just thought while I was in the neighborhood I'd point out, now that I got your attention, that I don't see how dying can be worse than the way you live."

"Be quiet," Benton quietly says with flinty self-control. "We'll talk inside."

IN AN AREA OF BEACON HILL lined with proud old brick homes and graceful trees, Benton Wesley managed to find an address to suit his present, peculiar needs.

His apartment building is ugly beige precast with plastic lawn chairs on balconies and a rusting wrought-iron fence that encloses a front yard, overgrown and depressingly dark. He and Marino take dimly lit stairs that smell of urine and stale cigarette smoke.

"Shit!" Marino gasps for breath. "Couldn'tcha at least find a joint with an elevator? I didn't mean nothing by what I said. About dying. Nobody wants you to die."

On the fifth landing, Benton unlocks the scratched gray metal door to apartment 56.

"Most people already think I did."

"Shit. I can't say anything right." Marino wipes sweat off his face.

"I've got Dos Equis and limes." Benton's voice seems to mimic the flip of the dead-bolt lock. "And, of course, fresh juice."

"No Budweiser?"

"Please make yourself comfortable."

"You got Budweiser, don't you?" Pain sounds in Marino's voice. Benton doesn't remember anything about him.

"Since I knew you were coming, of course I have Budweiser," Benton says from the kitchen. "An entire refrigerator full of it."

Marino looks around and decides on a floral printed couch, not a nice one. The apartment is furnished and bears the dingy patina of many threadbare and careless lives that have come and gone. Benton probably hasn't lived in a decent place since he died and became Tom, and Marino sometimes wonders how the meticulous, refined man stands it. Benton is from a wealthy New England family and has always enjoyed a privileged life, although no amount of money would be enough ransom to free him from the horrors of his career. To see Benton living in an apartment typically occupied by partying college students or the lower middle class-to see him with a shaved head, facial hair, baggy jeans and sweatshirt, and to know he doesn't even own a car-is unimaginable to Marino.

"At least you're in good shape," Marino remarks with a yawn.

"At least, meaning that's the best you can say about me." Benton ducks inside the old white refrigerator and emerges with two beers.

The cold bottles clank together in one hand as he opens a drawer, rooting around for a church key, as Marino calls any gadget that flips the cap off a beer.

"Mind if I smoke?" Marino asks.

"Yes." Benton opens and shuts a cabinet door.

"Okay, so I'll go into fits and swallow my tongue."

"I didn't say you couldn't smoke." Benton walks across the dim, shabby living room and hands Marino a Budweiser. "I said I minded."

He hands him a water glass that will have to do for an ashtray.

"Yeah, so maybe you're in shape and don't smoke and all the rest"- Marino gets back to that as he takes a slug of beer and sighs contentedly- "but your life sucks."

Benton takes a seat across from Marino, the space between them occupied by a scratched Formica-topped coffee table neatly lined with news magazines and the television remote control.

"I don't need you to drop out of the sky to tell me my life sucks," he says. "If that's why you're here, I wish to hell you'd never come. You've violated the program, put me at risk…"

"And put myself at risk," Marino snaps.

"I was about to point that out." Benton's voice heats up, his eyes burning. "We know damn well my being Tom isn't just about me. If it was just about me, I would let them take their best shot."

Marino begins picking at his beer bottle label. "No-Nuts Wolfman has agreed to spill the beans on his family, the great Chandonnes."

Benton reads the papers several times a day, excavating the Internet, sending out queries on search engines to recover pieces of his past life. He knows all about Jean-Baptiste, the deformed, murderous son of Chandonne-the great Monsieur Chandonne, intimate friend of the noblesse in Paris, the head of the largest, most dangerous organized crime cartel in the world. Jean-Baptiste knows enough about his family business and those who carry out its terrible tasks to put everyone who matters behind bars or on a death-chamber gurney.

So far, Jean-Baptiste has bided his time in a maximum-security Texas prison, saying nothing to anyone. It was the Chandonne family and its massive web that Benton tangled with, and now, from thousands of miles away, Monsieur Chandonne sips his fine wines and never doubts that Benton has paid the ultimate price, a terrible price. Monsieur Chandonne was foiled, but in a way, he wasn't. Benton died a fake death to save himself and others from dying real ones. But the price he pays is Promethean. He may as well be chained to rocks. He cannot heal because his guts are torn out daily.

"Wolfman," as Marino usually refers to Jean-Baptiste, "says he'll finger everyone from his daddy on down to the butlers, but only under certain conditions." He hesitates. "He ain't fucking with us, either, Benton. He means it."

"You know that for a fact," Benton blandly says.

"Yeah. A fact."

"How has he communicated this to you?" Benton's eyes take on a familiar intensity as he goes into his mode.

"Letters."

"Do we know who he's been writing, besides you?"

"The Doc. Her letter was sent to me. I haven't given it to her, see no point."

"Who else?" Lucy.

"Hers also sent to you?"

"No. Directly to her office. I got no idea how he got the address or knew the name The Last Precinct, when she doesn't list it. Everybody thinks her business is called Infosearch Solutions."

"Why would he know that people like Lucy and you refer to her business as The Last Precinct? If I logged on to the Internet right now, would I find any mention of The Last Precinct?"

"Not the one we're talking about, you wouldn't."

"Would I find Infosearch Solutions?"

"Sure."

"Is her office phone number listed?" Benton asks.

"Infosearch Solutions is."

"So maybe he also knows the listed name of her business. Called directory assistance and got the address that way. Actually, you can find just about anything on the Internet these days and for less than fifty bucks, even buy unlisted and cell phone numbers."

"I don't think Wolfman has a computer in his death-row cell," Marino says in annoyance.

"Rocco Caggiano could have fed him all kinds of information," Benton reminds him. "At one time he had to have Lucy's business number, since he planned to depose her. Then, of course, Jean-Baptiste pled."

"Sounds like you keep up with the news." Marino tries to divert the conversation away from the subject of Rocco Caggiano.

"Did you read the letter he wrote to Lucy?"

"She told me about it. Didn't want to fax or e-mail it." This bothers Marino, too. Lucy didn't want him to see the letter.

"Any letters to anybody else?"

Marino shrugs, sips his beer. "Not a clue. Obviously, he ain't writing to you." He thinks this is funny.

Benton doesn't smile.

"Because you're dead, right?" Marino assumes Benton doesn't catch the joke. "Well, in prison, if an inmate marks his outgoing letters Legal Mail or Media Mail, it's illegal for officials to open them. So if Wolfman's got any legal and media pen pals, the information's privileged."

He begins picking at the label on his beer bottle, talking on as if Benton knows nothing about the inner workings of penitentiaries, where he has interviewed hundreds of violent criminals during his career.

"The only place to look is his visitors list, since a lot of the people these squirrels write also come visit. Wolfman's got a list. Let's see, the governor of Texas, the president…"