one paranoid about this sort of thing. The U.S. government has a number of pilot programs, and a lot of people fear that mandatory chipping is on the horizon.”
“Not me,” Berger said. “I’ll move.”
“You’ll have plenty of company. That’s why some call it Mark of the Beast Six-Six-Six technology.”
“But you didn’t see anything like that in Terri’s x-rays?”
“I’ve been looking,” Scarpetta said. “I have the electronic files of that and everything else, and I’ve been doing nothing but work on all of this since we last spoke. The answer’s no. It’s very important that Dr. Lester get more films, and I want to see them. Especially focusing on the back, the buttocks, the arms. People who have been implanted with microchips usually get them in their arms. Morales would know a lot about microchip technology for the simple reason it’s used to tag animals. He would have seen microchips implanted in pets at the vet’s office. He may have done the implanting himself, a simple procedure that requires nothing more than the chip and an implant gun fitted with a fifteen-gauge needle. I can be there in maybe half an hour.”
“That would be fine.”
Berger reached across Lucy again and ended the call. She returned the handset to its charger. She scribbled more notes and underlined words and phrases. She looked at Lucy for a long moment, and Lucy looked back, and Berger wanted to kiss her again, to resume what had begun when Lucy first appeared at her door and Berger had pulled her by the hand straight up here. Lucy didn’t even have time to take off her coat. Berger didn’t know how she could think about something like that right now, with that hideous image frozen on the big flat screen. Or maybe that was why she was thinking about it. Berger didn’t want to be alone.
“That’s what makes the most sense,” Lucy finally said. “Morales implanting the GPS chip in Oscar while he’s in the dermatologist’s office. Probably thought he was getting a shot of Demerol in his butt. Terri probably had said something to Morales about Oscar, about not knowing if she could trust him, probably when she and Oscar first started dating. And Morales did his thing and acted like her best friend, her confidant.”
“Big question. Who did Terri think Morales was? Juan Amate or Mike Morales?”
“I’m betting Juan Amate. Way too risky if she knew he was an NYPD cop. I think she did call him Juan. I do think that’s what I heard.”
“I think you’re right.”
“If she was screwing around with him, does that compute?” Lucy said. “Morales wouldn’t care if she was seeing someone else?”
“No. As I just said, he acts like your best friend. Women confide in him. Even I have, to an extent.”
“To what extent?”
They had never returned to the subject of the whiskeys in her bar.
“I shouldn’t have to say it,” Berger said. “But Morales and I didn’t have that, and I don’t think you believed we did or you wouldn’t be sitting here. You wouldn’t have come back. The Tavern on the Green rumors. That’s all they are—rumors. And yes, no doubt he started them. He and Greg liked each other.”
“No way.”
“No, no. Not that way,” Berger said. “One thing Greg doesn’t have any ambivalence about is what he likes to fuck, and it definitely isn’t men.”
Scarpetta refilled coffees and carried them out on a tray with a few things to eat. She believed that sleep deprivation was healed by good food.
She set down a platter of fresh buffalo mozzarella, sliced plum tomatoes, and basil dribbled with cold- pressed unfiltered olive oil. In a sweetgrass basket lined with a linen napkin was crusty homemade Italian bread that she urged everyone to pass around, to break it with their hands, to tear off pieces. She told Marino he could start, and he took the basket, and she placed small plates and blue-checked napkins in front of him, then one in front of Bacardi.
Scarpetta set her own place on the coffee table next to Benton’s, and she sat next to him on the couch, leaning forward, because she could stay only a minute.
“Just remember,” Benton said to her, “when she hears about it, and you know she will, you don’t talk about what I’m about to do. Either before or after I’ve done it.”
“Damn right,” Marino cut in. “Her damn phone will start ringing off the hook. I gotta tell you I don’t feel so hot about this. I wish I could think about it some more.”I
“Well, we can’t,” Benton said. “We don’t have the luxury of time to think about much of anything. Oscar’s out there somewhere, and if Morales hasn’t gotten to him already, he will. All he has to do is track him down like a hunted animal.”
“Like he’s been doing,” Bacardi said. “Now a guy like that makes you believe in the death penalty.”
“Much better if we get a chance to study them,” Benton said matter-of-factly. “Killing them serves no useful purpose.”
He was impeccably dressed in one of his hand-tailored suits that he never wore on the ward, a deep blue with a lighter blue pinstripe, a light blue shirt, and silvery blue silk tie. The makeup artist at CNN wouldn’t need more than fifteen minutes with him. There was little Benton needed to improve his appearance, maybe a little powder and a breath of spray on his platinum hair, which needed a trim. To Scarpetta, he looked the same way he always had, and she hoped he was doing the right thing. That both of them were.
“I won’t say anything to Jaime. I’ll stay out of it,” she said, and she realized she had started calling her Jaime about the same time Jaime had started spending so much time with Lucy.
All these years, and she usually referred to her as Berger, which was rather distant and perhaps not particularly respectful.
Scarpetta said to Benton, “I’ll tell her she can take that up with you. It’s not my network and, contrary to popular opinion, I don’t run your life.”
Marino’s cell phone rang. He lifted his PDA and squinted at the display.
“IRS. Must be about all my charitable trusts,” he said, pressing his flashing blue earpiece to answer. “Marino . . . Yup . . . Just hanging out. You? . . . Hold on. I’m going to start writing.”
Everyone got quiet so he could talk. He set down the PDA on the coffee table and placed his notepad on his wide knee. He started scribbling. Upside down or right side up, Marino’s writing looked about the same. Scarpetta had never been able to read it, at least not without tremendous annoyance, because he had his own version of shorthand. No matter the cracks he made, in truth, his writing was far worse than hers.
“I don’t mean to be a smart-ass about it,” Marino said. “But first off, when you said Isle of Man, where the hell is that? I assume it’s one of these Caribbean tax havens or maybe one of those islands near Fiji. . . . Now, that’s something. Never heard of it, and I’ve been there before. I mean to England. . . . I realize it isn’t exactly in England. I know Isle of Man’s a fucking island, but in case you flunked geography, England’s a fucking island.”
Scarpetta leaned close to Benton’s ear and wished him good luck. She felt like telling him she loved him, which was unusual with people around. But for some reason she wanted to say it, but she didn’t. She got up and hesitated, because Marino seemed about to get off the phone.
“No offense, but we knew that. We got that address,” Marino said.
He looked at Bacardi and shook his head as if the IRS agent he was talking to was dumber than a bag of hammers—one of Marino’s favorite expressions.
He said, “That’s right . . . Nope, you must mean One-A. So it’s Terri Bridges. I know it’s an LLC and you don’t got a name yet, but that’s her apartment . . . No. Not Two-D. She’s in One-A.” He frowned. “You sure, I mean damn sure? . . . Wait a minute. That guy’s a Brit, right? Well, he’s Italian but lives in the UK, is a UK citizen . . . Okay. So it fits with the Isle of Man shit, I guess. But you’d better be right, because in maybe half an hour, that fucking door’s getting kicked in.”
Marino touched his earpiece and disconnected the IRS without a thanks or a good-bye.
He said, “ Gotham Gotcha? We don’t have the name of whoever it is, but we know where the person has an apartment. Upstairs from Terri Bridges. Two-D. Unless something’s changed and nobody told us, still nobody home in that building. Tenant’s an Italian financial guy named Cesare Ingicco, domicile is Isle of Man, where his company is actually located, and Isle of Man’s not the Caribbean, just so you know. The LLC renting his apartment is this offshore one that Lucy dug up info about. Guarantee the guy doesn’t actually live there, that it’s someone
