The Last Precinct - Cornwell Patricia (читаем книги онлайн TXT) 📗

It is where I will end up. Benton's words shine my mind.

"Right. Because it takes coordination."

"Got to be able to use both hands and both feet at the same time. And unlike fixed wing, a helicopter is intrinsically unstable."

"That's what I'm saying. They're dangerous."

It is where I'll end up, Anna.

"They aren't, Teun. You can lose an engine at a thousand feet and fly it right down to the ground. The air keeps the blades turning. Ever heard of autorotating?You land in a parking lot or someone's yard. You can't do that with a plane."

What did you mean, Benton. Goddamn it, what did you mean? I knead and knead, always turning the ball of dough in the same direction, clockwise because I am leading with my right hand, avoiding my cast.

"Thought you said you never lose an engine. I want some eggnog. Is Marino making his famous eggnog this morning?" McGovern says.

"That's his New Year's Eve thing."

"What? It's against the law on Christmas? I don't know how she does that."

"Stubborn, that's how."

"No kidding. And we're just standing here doing nothing."

"She won't let you help. No one touches her dough. Trust me. Aunt Kay, isn't that making your elbow hurt?"

My eyes focus as I look up. I am kneading with my right hand and the fingertips of my left. I glance at the clock over the sink and realize I have lost track of time and have been kneading for almost ten minutes.

"God, what world were you just in?" Lucy's light spirit turns to lead as she searches my face. "Don't let all this eat you alive. It's going to be all right."

She thinks I am worrying about the special grand jury, when ironically, I am not thinking about that at all this morning.

'Teun and I are going to help you, are helping you. What do you think we've been doing these last few days? We've got a plan we want to talk to you about."

"After eggnog," McGovern says with a kind smile.

"Did Benton ever talk to you about The Last Precinct?" I am out with it, almost accusing in the fierce way I look at both of them, then realizing by their confused expressions they don't know what I am alluding to at all.

"You mean what we're doing now?" Lucy frowns. "The office in New York? He couldn't have known about that unless you mentioned to him you were thinking about going into your own business." This she says to McGovern.

I divide the dough into smaller parts and begin kneading again.

"I've always thought about going private," McGovern replies. "But I never said anything about it to Benton. We were pretty consumed with the cases up there in Pennsylvania."

"Understatement of the century," Lucy adds blackly.

"Right." McGovern sighs and shakes her head.

"If Benton didn't have a clue about the private enterprise you planned to start," I then say, "is it possible he'd heard you mention The Last Precinct_the concept, the thing you say you used to joke about? I'm trying to figure out why he would label a file with that name."

"What file?" Lucy asks.

"Marino's bringing it over." I finish kneading one portion of dough and wrap it tightly in plastic. "It was in Benton's briefcase in Philadelphia." I explain to them what Anna told me in her letter and Lucy helps clarify at least one point. She feels certain she mentioned the philosophy of The Last Precinct to Benton. She seems to recall that she was in the car with him one day and was asking him about the private consulting he had begun doing in his retirement. He told her it was going all right but it was difficult handling the logistics of running his own business, that he missed having a secretary and someone else answering the phone, that sort of thing. Lucy wistfully replied that maybe all of us ought to get together and form our own company. That was when she used the term The Last Precinct_sort of "a league of our own," she says she told him.

I spread clean, dry dish toweJs over the countertop. "Did he have any idea you might be serious about really doing that some day?" I ask.

"I told him if I ever got enough money, I was going to quit working for the fucking government," Lucy replies.

"Well." I fit thinning rollers in the pasta machine and set them at the largest opening. "Anybody who knows you would figure it was only a matter of time before you made money doing something. Benton always said you were too much a maverick to last in a bureaucracy forever. He wouldn't be the least bit surprised over what's happening to you now, Lucy."

"In fact, it had already started happening to you from the start," McGovern points out to my niece. "Which is why you didn't last with the FBI."

Lucy isn't insulted. She has at least accepted that she made mistakes early on, the worst one being her affair with Carrie Grethen. She no longer blames the FBI for backing away from her until she finally quit. I flatten a piece of dough with my palm and crank it through the machine. "I'm wondering if Benton used your concept as the name of his mysterious file because he somehow knew The Last Precinct_meaning us_ would investigate his case some day," I offer. "That we are where he would end up, because whatever was begun with those harassing letters and all the rest of it wasn't going to stop, even with his death." I turn the dough back through the machine again and again until I have a perfect strip of pasta to lay flat over a towel. "He knew. Somehow he did."

"Somehow he always knew everything." Lucy's face is touched by deep sadness.

Benton is in the kitchen. We feel him as I make Christmas pasta and we talk about the way his mind worked. He was very intuitive. He always thought far ahead of where he was. I can imagine him projecting himself into a future after his

death and imagining how we might react to everything, including a file we might find in his briefcase. Benton would know for a fact that if something happened to him_and he clearly feared something would_then I most certainly would

go through his briefcase, which I did. What he may not have anticipated was that Marino would go through the briefcase first and remove a file that I would not learn about until now.

By noon, Anna has her car packed for the beach and her kitchen countertops are covered with lasagna noodles. Tomato sauce simmers on the stove. Parmesan reggiano and aged asa-gio cheeses are grated in bowls and fresh mozzarella rests in a towel and surrenders some of its moisture. The house smells like garlic and wood smoke, and Christmas lights glow while smoke drifts out the chimney, and when Marino arrives with all his typical noise and gaucheness he finds more happiness, than he has seen from any of us for a while. He is dressed in jeans and a denim shirt and laden with gifts and a bottle of Virginia Lightning moonshine. I catch the edge of a file folder peeking out from behind wrapped packages in a bag, and my heart skips.

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" he bellows. "Merry fucking Christmas!" It is his standard holiday line, but his heart isn't into it. I have a feeling he didn't spend the past few hours merely looking for the Tlip file. He has been through it. "I need a drink," he announces to the house.