'You've got to be very careful,' he said almost irritably, as if I had not been careful.
'I'm always very careful,' I said.
6
The next day, the city was at work again, and I took Marino to lunch at Tatou because I thought both of us needed an uplifting atmosphere before we went to Brooklyn Heights to meet Commander Penn.
A young man was playing the harp, and most tables were occupied by attractive, well-dressed men and women who probably knew little about life beyond the publishing houses and high-rise businesses that consumed their days.
I was struck by my sense of alienation. I felt lonely as I looked across the table at Marino's cheap tie and green corduroy jacket, at the nicotine stains on his broad furrowed nails. Although I was glad for his company, I could not share my deeper thoughts with him. He would not understand.
'Looks to me like you could use a glass of wine with lunch, Doc,' Marino said, eyeing me closely. 'Go ahead. I'm driving.'
'No, you're not. We're taking a taxi.'
'Point is, you're not driving so you may as well relax.'
'What you're really saying is that you'd like a glass of wine.'
'Don't mind if I do,' he said as the waitress appeared. 'What you got by the glass that's worth drinking?' he asked her.
She did a good job of not looking offended as she went through an impressive list that left Marino lost. I suggested he try a Beringer reserve cabernet that I knew was good, and then we ordered cups of lentil soup and spaghetti bolognese.
«This dead lady's driving me crazy,' Marino said after the waitress was gone.
I leaned closer to the table's edge and encouraged him to lower his voice.
He leaned closer, too, adding, 'There's a reason he picked her.
He leaned closer, too, adding, 'There's a reason he picked her.'
'He probably picked her because she was there,' I said, pricked by anger. 'His victims are nothing to him.'
'Yeah, well, I think there's more to it than that. And I'd also like to know what brought his ass here to New York City. You think he met up with her in the museum?'
'He might have,' I said. 'Maybe we'll know more when we get there.'
'Don't it cost money to go in there?'
'If you look at the exhibits it does.'
'She may have a lot of gold in her mouth, but it don't look to me like she had much money when she died.'
'I would be surprised if she did. But she and Gault got in the museum somehow. They were seen leaving.'
'So maybe he met her earlier, took her there and paid her way.'
'I'm hoping it will be helpful when we look at what he was looking at,' I said.
'I know what the squirrel was looking at. Sharks.'
The food was wonderful, and it would have been easy to sit for hours. I was tired beyond explanation, as I sometimes got. My disposition was built upon many layers of pain and sadness that had started with my own when I was young. Then over the years, I had added. Every so often I got in moods that were dark, and I was in one now.
I paid the check because when Marino and I were together, if I picked the restaurant, I picked up the bill. Marino really could not afford Tatou. He really could not afford New York. Looking at my MasterCard made me think of my American Express card, and my mood got worse.
To get to the shark exhibit in the Museum of Natural History, we had to pay five dollars each and go up to the third floor. Marino climbed stairs more slowly than I and tried to disguise his labored breathing.
'Damn, you would think they got an elevator in this joint,' he complained.
'They do,' I said. 'But stairs are good for you. Today this may be the only exercise we get.'
We entered the exhibit of reptiles and amphibians, passing a fourteen-foot American crocodile killed a hundred years ago in the Biscayne Bay. Marino couldn't help but linger at each display, and I got an eyeful of lizards, snakes, iguanas and Gila monsters.
'Come on,' I whispered.
'Look at the size of this thing,' Marino marveled before the twenty-three-foot reticulated python remains. 'Can you imagine stepping on that in the jungle?'
Museums always made me cold no matter how much I loved them. I blamed the phenomenon on hard marble floors and high ceilings. But I hated snakes and their pit organs. I despised spitting cobras, frilled lizards and alligators with bared teeth. A guide was giving a tour to a group of young people who were enthralled before a showcase populated with Komodo reptiles of Indonesia and leatherback sea turtles who would never traverse sand or water again.
'I beg of you, when you're at the beach and have plastic, shove it in the trash, because these fellows don't have Ph.D.'s,' the guide was saying with the passion of an evangelist. 'They think it's jellyfish…'
'Marino, let's move on.' I tugged his sleeve.