IT WAS ALMOST midnight when I slowed at the guard booth in my neighborhood, and the security officer on duty stepped out to stop me. This was highly unusual, and I feared he would tell me that my burglar alarm had been going half the night or yet one more oddball had tried to drive through to see if I was at home. Marino had been dozing for the past hour and a half, and he came to as I rolled down my window.

'Good evening,' I said to the guard. 'How are you doing, Tom?'

'I'm fine, Dr Scarpetta,' he said, leaning close to my car. 'But you've had a few unusual events within the past hour or so, and I figured something wasn't right when I kept trying to reach you and you weren't home.'

'What sort of events?' I asked as I began to imagine any number of threatening things.

'Two pizza delivery guys showed up at almost the same time. Then three taxis came to take you to the airport, one right after the other. And someone tried to deliver a construction Dumpster to your yard. When I couldn't get hold of you, I turned every one of them around. They all said you had called them.'

'Well, I certainly did not,' I said with feeling as my bewilderment grew. 'All this since when?'

'Well, I guess the truck with the Dumpster was here maybe around five this afternoon. Everything else since then.'

Tom was an old man who probably wouldn't have had a clue as to how to defend the neighborhood should true danger ever come around the bend. But he was courteous and considered himself a true officer of the law and in his mind was probably armed and experienced in combat. He was especially protective of me.

'Did you get the names of any of these guys who showed up?' Marino asked loudly from the passenger seat.

'Domino's and Pizza Hut.'

Tom's animated face was shadowed beneath the brim of his baseball cap.

'And the cabs were Colonial, Metro, and Yellow Cab. The construction company was Frick. Now I took the liberty to make a few calls. Every one of 'em had orders in your name, Dr Scarpetta, including the times you called. I got it written down.'

Tom could not hide how pleased he was when he slipped a square of notepaper from a back pocket and handed it to me. His role had been more than the usual this night, and he was almost intoxicated by it. I turned on the interior light and Marino and I scanned the list. The taxi and pizza orders had been placed between ten-ten and eleven, while the Dumpster order had been placed earlier in the afternoon with instructions for a late afternoon delivery.

'I know at least Domino's said it was a woman who called. I talked to the dispatcher myself. A young kid. According to him, you called and said to just bring a large thick crust pizza supreme to the gate and you'd get it from there. I got his name written down, too,' Tom reported with great pride. 'So none of this came from you, Dr Scarpetta?' He wanted to make sure.

'No sir,' I answered. 'And if anything else shows up tonight, I want you to call me right away.'

'Yo, call me, too,' said Marino, and he jotted his home number on a business card. 'I don't give a shit what time it is.'

I handed Marino's card out my window and Tom looked at it carefully, even though Marino had passed through these gates more times than I could guess.

'You got it, Captain,' Tom said with a deep nod. 'Yes sir, anybody else shows up, I'm on the horn, and I can hold 'em till you get here, if you want me to.'

'Don't do that,' Marino said. 'Some kid with a pizza's not going to know a damn thing. And if it's real trouble, I don't want you tangling with whoever it is.'

I knew right then that he was thinking about Carrie.

'I'm pretty spry. But you got it, Captain.'

'You did a great job, Tom,' I complimented him. 'I can't thank you enough.'

'That's what I'm here for.'

He pointed his remote control and raised the arm to let us through.

'I'm listening,' I said to Marino.

'Some asshole harassing you,' he said, his face grim in the intermittent bath of street lamps. 'Trying to upset you, scare you, piss you off. And doing a pretty damn good job, I might add.'

'You don't think Carrie…' I went ahead and started to say.

'I don't know,' Marino cut me off. 'But it wouldn't surprise me. Your neighborhood's been in the news enough times.'

'I guess what would be good to know is if the orders were placed locally,' I said.

'Christ,' he said as I turned into my driveway and parked behind his car. 'I sure as hell hope not. Unless it's someone else who's jerking you around.'

'Take a number and stand in line.'

I cut the engine.

'I can sleep on your couch if you want me to,' Marino said as he opened his door.

'Of course not,' I said. 'I'll be fine. As long as no construction Dumpsters show up. That would be the last straw with my neighbors.'

'I don't know why you live here, anyway.'

'Yes, you do.'

He got out a cigarette and clearly did not want to go anywhere.

'Right. 'The guard booth. Shit, talk about a placebo.'

'If you don't feel okay to drive, I'd be pleased to have you stay on my couch,' I said.

'Who, me?'

He fired his lighter and puffed smoke out the open car door.

'It ain't me I'm worried about, Doc.'

I got out of my car and stood on the driveway, waiting for him. His shape was big and tired in the dark, and I suddenly was overwhelmed by sad affection for him. Marino was alone and probably felt like hell. He couldn't have memories worth much, between violence on the job and bad relationships the rest of the time. I supposed I was the only constant in his life, and although I was usually polite, I wasn't always warm. It simply wasn't possible.

'Come on,' I said. 'I'll fix you a toddy and you can crash here. You're right. Maybe I don't want to be alone and have five more pizza deliveries and cabs show up.'

'That's what I'm thinking,' he said with feigned cool professionalism.

I unlocked my front door and turned off the alarm, and very shortly Marino was on the wrap-around couch in my great room, with a Booker's bourbon on the rocks. I made his nest with sweet-smelling sheets and a baby-soft cotton blanket, and for a while we sat in the dark talking.

'You ever think we might lose in the end?' he muttered sleepily.

'Lose?' I asked.

'You know, good guys always win. How realistic is that? Not so for other people, like that lady that burned up in Sparkes's house. Good guys don't always win. Uh uh, Doc. No fucking way.'

He halfway sat up like a sick man, and took a swallow of bourbon and struggled for breath.

'Carrie thinks she's gonna win, too, in case that thought's never entered your mind,' he added. 'She's had five fucking years at Kirby to think that.'

Whenever Marino was tired or half drunk, he said fuck a lot. In truth, it was a grand word that expressed what one felt by the very act of saying it. But I had explained to him many times before that not everyone could deal with its vulgarity, and for that matter, some perhaps took it all too literally. I personally never thought of fuck as sexual intercourse, but rather of wishing to make a point.

'I can't entertain the thought that people like her will win,' I said quietly as I sipped red burgundy. 'I will never think that.'

'Pie in the sky.'

'No, Marino. Faith.'

'Yo.' He swallowed more bourbon. 'Fucking faith. You know how many guys I've known to drop dead of heart attacks or get killed on the job? How many of them do you think had faith? Probably every goddamn one of them. Nobody thinks they're gonna die, Doc. You and me don't think it, no matter how much we know. My health sucks, okay? You think I don't know I'm taking a bite of a poison cookie everyday? Can I help it? Naw. I'm just an old slob who has to have his steak biscuits and whiskey and beer. I've given up giving a shit about what the doctors say. So soon enough, I'm gonna stoop over in the saddle and be outta here, you know?'