“It’s like this,” Marino said as he closed his menu. “Jason Story believes Susan would still be alive if she’d had another job. And he’s probably right. Plus, he’s a loser - one of these self-centered assholes who believes everything is everybody else’s fault. The truth is, he’s probably more to blame for Susan’s death than anyone.”
“You’re not suggesting that he killed her?”
The waitress appeared and we ordered. Grilled chicken and rice for Marino and a kosher chili dog for me, plus two diet sodas.
“I’m not suggesting that Jason shot his wife,” Marino said quietly. “But he set her up for getting involved in whatever it was that precipitated her homicide. Paying the bills was Susan’s responsibility, and she was under big-time financial stress.”
“Unsurprisingly,” I said. “Her husband had just lost his job.”
“It’s too bad he didn’t lose his high dollar taste. We’re talking Polo shirts and Britches of Georgetown slacks and silk ties. A couple weeks after he gets laid off, the jerk goes out and buys seven hundred bucks’ worth of ski equipment and then heads off to Wintergreen for the weekend. Before that it was a two-hundred- dollar leather jacket and a four-hundred- dollar bicycle. So Susan’s down at the morgue working like a dog and then coming home to face-bills her salary won’t put a dew it”
“I had no idea,” I said pained by a sudden vision of Susan sitting at her desk. Her dally ritual was to spend her lunch hour in her office, and on occasion I would join her thereto chat. I remembered her generic-brand corn chips and the sale stickers on her sodas. I don’t think she ever ate or drank anything she had not brought from home.
“Jason’s spending habits,” Marino went on, “leads to the shit he’s causing you. He’s badmouthing you like hell to anybody who will listen because you’re a doctor-lawyer- Indian chief who drives a Mercedes and lives in a big house bi Windsor Farms. I think the dumbass believes if he can somehow blame you for what happened to his wife, maybe he can get a little compensation.”
“He can try until he’s blue in the face.”
“And he will.”
Our diet drinks arrived, and I changed the subject.
“I’m meeting with Downey in the morning.” Marino’s eyes wandered to the television over the bar. “Lucy’s getting started on AFIS. And then I’ve got to do something about Ben Steven,”
“What you ought to do is get rid of him.”
“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to fire a state employee?”
“They say it’s easier to fire Jesus Christ,” Marino said. “Unless the employee is appointed and got a grade off the charts, like you. You still ought to find some way to run the bastard off.”