by Jane Haddam
“I’m just saying that we get angry and we get upset and some of us even get nuts, but we don’t fall apart. We didn’t even fall apart when we fell apart, so to speak. And now I’m talking like a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, instead of the son of two immigrants from Armenia. Would you go back to Armenia, if you could? It’s free of the Soviet Union now.”
“No, Krekor, I would not go back, not even with the craziness here. And it’s more than just a matter of central heating, although that’s certainly a factor. It’s odd to think, isn’t it, that people can be born out of place and out of time? You’d think that the force of culture alone, of upbringing, would suit you more for the place you were raised than some other place, but it doesn’t always work like that. It didn’t work like that for me.”
They had arrived at the Ararat, and Linda Melajian was just unlocking the plate glass front door. “Come on in,” she said. “I know it’s five minutes early, but I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be and you can’t stay outside in that cold. I keep thinking about that phrase everybody uses. When Hell freezes over. I think it did.”
“That would be interesting in a story,” Tibor said. “A science fiction story, a kind of disaster movie. What happens to the world when Hell freezes over.”
Gregor gave a little shove to the back of Tibor’s coat and propelled him inside to the warm. Along with having apocalyptic thoughts about politics, Tibor seemed to be having a problem getting through doors this morning. Gregor went to the window booth with its long low cushions and slipped inside.
“I’ll get you coffee in a minute,” Linda said. “I’ve got to put out a few more sugar racks before I can say I’m ready.”
Through the big windows that made up the outside wall of the booth, Gregor could see people beginning to appear on the street, wrapped up in coats with the collars pulled high and their faces out of sight under scarves. Most of them had had the sense to wear hats and gloves. All of them were heading for the Ararat, although a few of them stopped to buy the papers at Ohanian’s first. Gregor tried to count up how many mornings he had spent having breakfast in this same booth in the Ararat, but it wasn’t the kind of calculation he was good at. It suddenly occurred to him what was making him so nervous at home: the building was deserted. Grace was away in New York giving concerts with the group she played harpsichord for. Bennis was away on her book tour. Old George Tekemanian was out on the Main Line staying with Martin and Angela, who thought he’d do better if they could be sure he wasn’t going out in this cold at his age, which he would be if he stayed here, because he’d come to breakfast. The building was deserted, and he was surrounded by silence.
“Krekor?” Tibor said. “Are you all right? Linda brought the coffee and you didn’t even say thank you.”
“I’m fine,” Gregor said. Linda had certainly brought the coffee. It was sitting right there in front of him. “I was just thinking. I got a phone call this morning.”
“From Bennis?”
“No, not from Bennis. And don’t nag. She doesn’t call much. And I have no idea if that’s normal or not. This is the first time she’s been away for any significant amount of time since, ah, you know.”
“Yes, Krekor, I know. What was the phone call?”
Gregor took an enormous sip of coffee and looked out the window one more time, just as Lida Arkmanian came out of the front door of her town house to meet Sheila and Hannah on the street. Lida and Sheila had fur coats. Hannah had a cloth coat in red so bright it almost seemed to be pulsing like the bubble on top of a police car. A few doors closer, the Very Old Ladies came out of their building in a tight little knot. They were older than Old George, but they weren’t about to miss their morning at Neighborhood Gossip Central.
“Let me tell you about Chickie George,” Gregor said.
TWO
1
It was exactly seven thirty-one when Chickie George walked through the door of the Ararat, and Gregor Demarkian didn’t recognize him. That was odder than it seemed. Very few people came into the Ararat from out of the neighborhood during breakfast hours. Cavanaugh Street was reasonably central in the sense that it was easy to get from it to where most people had to work, without being actually central, meaning in the middle of the city. People who came from outside the neighborhood to eat at the Ararat almost always came because of restaurant reviews in the Inquirer or profiles of Gregor Demarkian, who had once been caught eating there by a reporter from CNN. The profiles had to be constructed from available sources, since Gregor never gave interviews. Consulting for police departments was the kind of work that was likely to dry up if you spent too much time in front of the cameras. Having worked in the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover, Gregor was used to letting other people get credit for what he had done. On a lot of levels, he even preferred it. There was something to be said for living outside the modern unholy circle of fuss.
Gregor did pay attention when the man he didn’t recognize walked into the Ararat, because a stranger at seven thirty-one was a phenomenon. Then he went back to listening to Tibor moaning on again about politics, or the lack of civility in politics, or something. The stranger in the doorway looked like a partner at one of Philadelphia’s better law firms. He was wearing a black coat over a black suit. Gregor could tell because the coat was open. Tibor was complaining about same-sex marriage.
“Both sides are being very dishonest,” he was saying. “If the side that says it only cares that not every state be required to honor gay marriages, all it needs to do is call for a constitutional amendment saying that no state has to recognize any other state’s same-sex marriages, and that gets rid of the problem with the full faith and credit clause.”
Gregor was only vaguely aware of what the full faith and credit clause was, and then because Tibor had explained it to him. Tibor sometimes made him feel as if he should have gone to law school instead of business school. He’d joined the FBI in the days when every special agent was required to be either a lawyer or a CPA, and he’d thought he was better with numbers than he was ever going to be at the law. He was also fairly sure that the law in all its intricacy would bore him to tears. He understood crime and criminals. He didn’t understand the fascination with the kind of thing Tibor was now railing on about, waving the butter knife in the air while he did it.
“Then there is the side that favors gay marriage,” Tibor said. “They say they are only pursuing a civil rights issue and they don’t want to tell anybody else how to live, but that isn’t true, either. If it was, they’d be in favor of the amendment I mentioned, and of course they’re not. Everybody is looking to change the culture, Krekor, that’s what the problem is. The issue isn’t politics, really, it’s about who the culture will look like and who will feel at home in it. And it’s exacerbated by the fact that the ordinary American doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a state law and a federal law.”
“The oddest young man just walked through the door,” Gregor said. If the coat was open, the man must have been walking around in the cold wind with it open. Gregor had had enough trouble just going without a hat. The man didn’t have a hat, either, although he did have good black leather gloves.
“Pay attention, Krekor,” Tibor said. “The world is going to hell around you and you don’t pay attention. People really don’t know the difference between a state law and a federal law. They think of all law as federal, most of them, or they think that if something happens in one state it has to happen with another. They’re not aware that the states have their own constitutions. When they hear Constitution, they think of the federal one. The ignorance is breathtaking. It makes it impossible to have a decent conversation about anything.”
“Is that what this is about?” Gregor asked him. “Did you go spend the evening with that religious group you belong to—”
“The Philadelphia Coalition of Churches,” Tibor said. “Tcha, Krekor, you’re impossible. It’s not a religious group. It’s a discussion group made up of pastors and rabbis. It use
d to be interesting. Now it’s all fighting, and the Evangelical pastors are talking about leaving, because the rest of us are liberal pilot fish for the Antichrist. Do you know what pilot fish are, Krekor? I had to go look it up.”
The man in the black coat was looking carefully around the restaurant, pausing a little at almost every table and then moving on. He got to the window booth and stopped, nodding a little to himself. Then he started to walk over. Gregor was still vaguely fascinated with the idea that the man must be close to freezing to death, if he’d come any distance at all. Then the man got closer, and held out his hand.
“Mr. Demarkian? I don’t know if you recognize me. I’m Edmund George. Chickie.”
Gregor was struggling to get up from the booth. It was always a struggle to get up from that booth, because it was built low to the ground, so that you had the impression that you were sitting on the floor, the way they really would in Armenia. The young man he was looking at was extremely good-looking, more like an actor than a citizen on the street, but not like any actor Gregor had ever seen. He took the hand and shook it.
Chickie George smiled slightly. “I know. I don’t look the same. Everybody says so. It’s amazing that an act like that can so change people’s perceptions of what you’re like physically. But the act had to go. It didn’t feel right somehow. And the University of Pennsylvania Law School was not going to be happy with it.”
“You’re looking to go to law school?” Gregor said.
“I’m in law school, second year. I started after all that mess with St. Anselm’s and St. Stephen’s. And Margaret Mary went to New York to be a nun. So.”
Gregor was completely lost. He remembered Chickie George, if only slightly. He remembered St. Anselm’s and St. Stephen’s. He didn’t remember Margaret Mary at all. He would have thought she was Chickie’s girlfriend if he didn’t know better. What she was instead, he couldn’t say.
He waved at the booth, and Chickie said, “Thank you,” sliding in next to Father Tibor.
“Tell me,” Father Tibor said. “Do you favor same-sex marriage or oppose it?”
Chickie looked nonplused. “I suppose I favor it. I know I’m supposed to. I’m gay. But mostly, I don’t think about it.”
“There,” Tibor said. “You see? An ordinary citizen off the street, and what does he say? He says he doesn’t think about it. This is the way it is with most citizens off the street. They don’t think about it. This is my point, Krekor. This issue is not politics. It is not what people want to hear, or want resolved, or want to have discussed. This is two fanatics shouting at each other, and taking up all the air.”
Gregor slid back into the booth. “This is Father Tibor Kasparian. He’s a little worked up this morning.”
“About same-sex marriage?” Chickie said.
“About politics, I think,” Gregor told him.
“I am not worked up about politics,” Tibor said. “I am depressed about them, which is different. I do not like the way the world is going. I do not like the issues that are being brought forward for discussion. I do not like the Democrats, and I do not like the Republicans. I do not like Ralph Nader, either.”
“Maybe you ought to throw in Harry Browne and Ross Perot,” Chickie said.
Tibor took a piece of toast off the stack in the middle of the table and started to butter it.
Gregor waved to Linda Melajian. “Let’s get you a cup of coffee or something. You must be freezing. You had your coat open when you walked in here.”
“I only had to get from the door of the cab to the door of the restaurant,” Chickie said, as Linda materialized. “Coffee would be fine, though, thank you. I’m moving at warp speed this morning. I’ve got a contracts class to prep for and then an hour at the Justice Project this evening, and classes in between. Law school sounded like a great idea when I first had it, but it really can be a drain.”
“I’m surprised you find time to volunteer at the Justice Project.”
“I had to volunteer at something,” Chickie said. “I was going crazy. I’ve got nothing against rich people. I don’t even have anything against rich pricks as a matter of principle. It’s just that you wouldn’t believe how many people go to law school with the ambition to make the world safe for corporate polluters.”
“Ah,” Tibor said. “You’re a liberal. Or a Green.”
“That one would be mostly Green, I think,” Chickie said. “But what I am is a skeptical libertarian.”
Linda was back with the coffee. Chickie said thank you as she put it down in front of him and then shrugged off his coat. The black suit was a very good black suit, Gregor noticed. He couldn’t remember if Chickie had been well dressed when he’d met him at the church.
“Well,” Chickie said. “Thank you for seeing me this early in the morning. I’m sorry to be in such a rush. I know your schedule must be packed.”
“My schedule is clear,” Gregor said, “and it’s rarely packed. The Justice Project has something to do with the drug case that Drew Harrigan is involved in, right?”
“Right,” Chickie said, “but not on the side of Drew Harrigan. He’s got his own lawyers for that, and expensive ones, too. And he’s got the ACLU, which ought to embarrass him but doesn’t. Or at least it doesn’t seem to. Nobody’s seen him for a month.”
“He’s disappeared.”
“He’s in rehab,” Tibor said. “Tcha, Krekor, at least watch the television news.”
“I do watch the television news,” Gregor said. “I don’t pay attention to celebrity gossip. I mean, if the man’s in rehab, what business is it of mine?”
“That’s the important thing,” Tibor said. “Learning to mind your own business. Nobody can mind their own business anymore.”
Chickie looked amused. “We represent Sherman Markey,” he said. “Sherman did some handyman work around Harrigan’s apartment for a while. I’ve never been able to pin down what. At any rate, when Harrigan was caught carrying a ton of prescription drug medication, all obtained illegally, he fingered Sherman as the guy who got the drugs for him. You know, not a regular supplier, not a dealer, but the person he’d send out to the pharmacy or over to a new doctor’s office or something when he couldn’t go himself because he’d be too obvious. Most people know Harrigan on sight, or a lot of them do. So he needed a blind, and he said Sherman was it.”
“And you don’t think Mr. Markey was the one?”
Chickie shifted slightly in his seat. “Actually, as far as the Justice Project is concerned, that’s sort of beside the point. The reason we got involved in the beginning was because of the way the case unfolded. They picked up Harrigan. Harrigan fingered Sherman. They arrested Sherman. And then the whole thing sort of exploded. They got Sherman a public defender who was completely useless, but that’s par for the course. What wasn’t par was that Sherman didn’t do what he was supposed to and come right out and confess. He flat out refused. And one day he was being taken back to jail after being questioned for the umpteenth time, and there was a reporter from WB-17 standing out near the sergeant’s desk, and Sherman fell on her and started wailing that they were torturing him to get him to confess to something he didn’t do. And all hell broke loose.”
“I can imagine.”
“So we stepped in,” Chickie said. “We would defend him if he was guilty or not, that isn’t the issue. The issue is competent representation. So we got him out on bail, cleaned him up, got him a room at an SRO—I know, we should have done better, but it was all we could afford—and then we filed a lawsuit for him against Drew Harrigan for defamation. Kate Daniel suggested it about the same time she suggested she come down here and handle this herself. It was a smart move.”
“Kate Daniel is here?” Gregor said. “Handling your defense of Markey?”
“Handling the lawsuit, mostly,” Chickie said. “It really was a smart move. It meant we could be playing offense, which is damned hard to do when your client is a homeless alcoholic and the opposition is a national media star. An
yway, that’s where we were as of two weeks ago. Harrigan was incommunicado in rehab. Sherman was suing. Kate was making life hell for everybody in the office. And then Sherman disappeared.”
“Disappeared,” Gregor repeated. “You mean he took off? He made bail and decided not to hang around and see if he was going to go to jail?”
“You see, that’s it,” Chickie said. “With somebody else, that would have been the first thing I thought of, too. But Sherman isn’t somebody else. You asked me if I thought he was innocent. Well, I do. You’d have to meet him to understand. It’s six of one, half dozen of the other that he’s got the start of cirrhosis of the liver. He can’t think straight from one moment to the next. He forgets things. Hell, he forgets where he is, sometimes. He’s got one thing on his mind and that’s getting enough alcohol to keep himself anesthetized. I can’t see him working out a schedule of pharmacies to go to to make sure he didn’t go to any one so often that he’d be suspected of being an OxyContin addict. And even if you say Harrigan worked out the schedule himself and just sent Sherman, I can’t see the pharmacies serving him. This is not your poster boy for the homeless problem. He drinks, and he not only drinks, he smells. He doesn’t bathe. He doesn’t brush his teeth. He doesn’t use deodorant. It would cost money he’d rather spend on wine.
“You hear all that stuff about the hard-core homeless. Sherman is it. We put him up in an SRO, but we knew he wouldn’t stay. He won’t stay more than a single night in the shelters, either. Those places have rules. They have to. Sherman doesn’t like the rules, because they always mean he can’t drink on the premises. I can’t see Sherman remembering which pharmacy Harrigan told him to go to, not for ten minutes. I can’t see him taking cash—that’s what Harrigan claims, that he gave Sherman cash—and going to a pharmacy and buying drugs. He’d get distracted by a liquor store. I can’t imagine the pharmacist selling him OxyContin, and I can’t imagine a doctor prescribing it for him. The whole scenario is completely bogus. And so is the idea that he would deliberately skip town to avoid the legal hassles. Mr. Demarkian, ten minutes after we got him out of jail, he didn’t remember he had legal hassles. He’s not that mentally coherent.”
