“Just be careful,” Rose says to Marino. “Whoever did this to that poor little boy knows darn well his body’s here and Dr. Scarpetta’s working on it, and usually when she works on something, she figures it out. He could be stalking her, for all we know.”
Usually Rose doesn’t get this overwrought.
“You’ve been smoking,” Rose then says to Marino.
He takes another big gulp of Diet Pepsi. “Should’ve seen me last night. Had ten cigarettes in my mouth and two in my ass while I was playing the harmonica and getting it on with my new woman.”
“Another edifying evening at that biker bar with some woman whose IQ is the same as my refrigerator. Sub-Zero. Please don’t smoke. I don’t want you to die.” Rose looks troubled as she walks over to the coffeemaker and starts filling the pot with water to make a fresh pot. “Mr. Grant would like coffee,” she says. “And no, Dr. Scarpetta, you can’t have any.”
Kay Scarpetta 15 - Book of the Dead
Chapter 6
B ulrush Ulysses S. Grant has always been called Bull. Without any prompting, he begins the conversation by explaining the origin of his name.
“I ‘spect you’re wondering about the S part of my name. That’s it. Just an S and a period,” he says from a chair near Scarpetta’s shut office door. “My mama knows the S in General Grant’s name is for Simpson. But she was afraid if she stuck Simpson in there, it would be a lot for me to write out. So she left it at S. Explaining it takes longer than writing it out, you ask me.”
He’s neat and clean in freshly pressed gray work clothes, and his sneakers look as if they just came out of the washing machine. A frayed yellow baseball cap with a fish on it is in his lap, his big hands politely folded on top of it. The rest of his appearance is frightening, his face, neck, and scalp savagely slashed with a crisscross of long, pink gashes. If he ever saw a plastic surgeon, it wasn’t a good one. He will be badly disfigured for life, a patchwork of keloid scars that make Scarpetta think of Queequeg in Moby-Dick.
“I know you just moved here not all that long ago,” Bull says, to her surprise. “In that old carriage house that backs up to the alley between Meeting and King.”
“How the hell do you know where she supposedly lives, and what business is it of yours?” Marino aggressively interrupts him.
“I used to work for one of your neighbors.” Bull directs this to Scarpetta. “She passed on a long time back. I guess it would be more accurate to say I worked for her maybe fifteen years, then ‘bout four years ago her husband passed. After that, she got rid of most of her help, I think had money anxiousness, and I had to find me something else. Then she passed, too. What I’m telling you is I know the area where you live like the back of my hand.”