Trace - Cornwell Patricia. Страница 86

The man keeps glancing at Marino's LAPD baseball cap. He is pale and uneasy. "We don't sell Cuban cigars."

"What?" Marino scowls.

"If that's what this is about. He may have asked, but we don't sell them."

"He came in here asking for Cuban cigars?"

"He was very determined, more so last time he was in here," the man says nervously. "We don't sell Cubans or anything else illegal."

"I ain't accusing you and I ain't ATF or the FDA or the Surgeon General or the goddamn Easter Bunny," Marino says. "I don't give a rat's ass if you sell Cuban shit under the counter."

"I don't. I swear I don't."

"I just want Pogue. Talk to me."

"I remember him," the man says, and now his face is the color of smoke. "Yes, he's asked me for Cubans. For Cohibas, not the Dominicans we sell, but Cubans. I told him we don't sell Cuban cigars. They're illegal. You're not from here, are you? You don't sound as if you're from here."

"I sure as hell ain't from here," Marino replies. "What else did Pogue say? And when was this, when he came in here last?"

The man looks down at the receipt on the counter. "Probably since then. Seems like it might have been in October when he came in last. He came in here maybe once a month. A very strange man. Very strange."

"In October? Okay. What else did he say when he came in?"

"He wanted Cuban cigars, said he would pay what he had to for them, and I told him we don't sell them. He knew that. He'd asked me before when he came in here, but not so insistently, not like he was when he came in last. Strange, that man. He'd asked me before and was asking me again, but very insistent. Seems like he said Cuban tobacco is better for the lungs, some nonsense like that. You can smoke all the Cubans you want and they won't hurt you, in fact they're good for you. They are pure and better for the lungs and actually have a medicinal quality, something silly like that."

"What did you tell him? Don't lie to me. I don't give a shit if you sold him Cubans. I need to find him. If he thinks the shit's good for his screwed-up lungs, he's buying it somewhere. If he's got a thing about it, he's getting it from somewhere."

"He's got a thing about it, at least last time he was here, he was adamant. Don't ask me why," the man says, staring down at the receipt. "There are plenty of good cigars. Why they had to be Cuban, I don't understand, but he wanted them. It reminded me of sick people desperate for some magic herb or marijuana or people with arthritis who want gold injections or whatever. Obviously a superstition of some sort. Very strange. I sent him to a different store, told him not to be asking me about Cubans anymore."

"What store?"

"Well, actually it's a restaurant where I hear they sell things and know where to get things. In the bar they do. Anything you want, I guess.

That's what I've heard. I don't go in there. I don't have anything to do

. i»,, with it.

"Where?"

"Down in the Slip," he says. "Just a few blocks from here."

"You know any places in South Florida that sell Cubans? Maybe you recommended a place in South Florida to him."

"No," the man replies, shaking his gray head. "I don't have anything to do with that. Ask them in the Slip. They probably know."

"Okay. So here's the million-dollar question." Marino tucks the plastic bag back inside his jacket pocket. "You tell Pogue about this place in the Slip so maybe he could find his Cubans?"

"I told him some people buy cigars in the bar there," the man says.

"What's the name of this place in the Slip?"

"Stripes. The name of the bar is Stripes, just down Gary Street. I didn't want him coming back. He was very strange. I always thought he was strange. He'd been coming in here for years, every few months. Never said much of anything," the man says. "But the last time he was in here, in October maybe, he was stranger than usual. He was carrying a baseball bat. I asked him why and he never answered me. He didn't used to be so insistent about wanting Cubans, but he was just bizarre about it. Cohibas, he kept saying. He wanted them."

"Was the bat red, white, and blue?" Marino asks, thinking about Scarpetta and grinders and bone dust and everything else she said when she was leaving Dr. Philpott's office.

"It might have been," the man says with a strange look. "What the hell is this about?" he asks.

56

In the woods around the town homes the shadows are deep and cold around patchy white and gray aspen trees. The trees are bare but thick in the woods. To get through them Lucy and Henri have to duck and push branches and winter-dormant saplings out of the way. Their snowshoes don't stop the snow from coming up to their knees with each step and wherever they look the smooth white surface is unmarked by the tracks of humans.

"This is a crazy thing to do," Henri says, breathing hard smoky breaths. "Why are we doing this?"

"Because we need to get out and do something," Lucy replies as she steps into snow that comes almost up to her thigh. "Wow! Look at this. Unbelievable. It's beautiful."

"I don't think you should have come here," Henri says, pausing and looking at her in deepening shadows that tint the snow blue. "I've gotten through it and had enough and I'm going back to Los Angeles."

"The ' 1'C "

Its your lire.

"I know you don't mean that. Whenever you say flip things like that your nose grows."

"Let's just go a little farther," Lucy says, forging ahead, making sure she doesn't let any branches or tender young trees snap back into Henri's face, although maybe she deserves it. "There's an old fallen tree, I'm pretty sure. I saw it from the path when I was coming up to see you, and we can brush the snow off and sit."

"We'll freeze," Henri says, lunging into a deep step and blowing out a cloud of frozen breath.

"You're not cold now, are you?"

"I'm hot."

"So if we get cold, we'll get up and move again and go home."

Henri doesn't reply. Her stamina is noticeably diminished from what it was before she got the flu and then was attacked. In Los Angeles, where Lucy first set eyes on her, she was in superb physical shape, not big but very strong. She could bench-press her own body weight and do ten hand-over pull-ups unassisted, when most women can't bench-press a third of their weight or do one pull-up. She could run a seven-minute mile. Now she'd be lucky to walk a mile. In less than one month's time, Henri has lost it and she loses more every day because she has lost something else that is more important than her physical conditioning. She has lost her mission. She has no mission. Lucy worries that Henri never had one, only vanity, and the fires of vanity are quick and hot and soon enough gone.

"Just up there," Lucy says. "I see it. See that huge log? There's a little frozen creek beyond it, then the health club is over that-a-way." She motions with a ski pole. "Perfect scenario would be end in the gym and then the steam room."

"I can't breathe," Henri says. "Ever since I got the flu, my lungs feel half the size they were."

"You got pneumonia," Lucy reminds her. "Or maybe you don't remember. You were on antibiotics for a week. You were still on them when it happened."

"Yes. When it happened. Everything is about it. It." She keeps emphasizing the word "it." "I guess we talk in euphemisms now." She steps where Lucy has stepped because she is slowing down and sweating. "My lungs hurt."

"What would you like us to say?" Lucy reaches the fallen tree, and it was once a large tree but is now just a hulk, like what is left of a great ship, and she begins to brush deep snow off it. "What would you call what happened?"

"I'd call it almost being killed."

"Here. Sit." Lucy sits and pats a cleared-off area of log next to her. "It feels good to sit.' Her frozen breath rises like steam and her face is so cold she can barely feel it. "Almost being killed as opposed to almost being murdered?"