by Jane Haddam
“So,” he said. “The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot has solved another crime.”
“At the moment, the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot is going to go to Baldwin Place and find a cab. Why did you wait for me? You got what you wanted.”
“I was wondering if you knew what was happening to the atheist Edith Lawton. Not murder, unfortunately, but she managed to cause enough damage. Hit her lover over the head and gave him a concussion. Hit her husband over the head and gave him a concussion, too. It’s just wonderful. Silly cow. She’s fifty years old. What made her think some rich man was going to take care of her at her age?”
“It happens.”
“It happens to women much better-looking and much more intelligent than Edith Lawton. She’s a damned fool and always has been. Atheism as enlightenment. Don’t you just love it? These stupid people. They think that all they have to do is declare that God doesn’t exist and it will add fifteen points to their IQ scores.”
“Is that what you came to talk to me about, atheism?”
“I told you what I came to talk to you about.”
They had reached the corner. Gregor turned left again, and felt rather than saw Roy Phipps turn with him. He didn’t usually notice the fact that Phipps was a handsome man, but it was true. He was handsome and photogenic, and he had the kind of high-voltage energy that played well on a television screen. Everybody was always so intent on vilifying Roy’s positions, nobody ever took note of how much charisma he had or what he was really doing with it.
They were now only half a block from the corner where St. Anselm’s and St. Stephen’s faced each other. On their right was the wrought-iron fence that defined St. Anselm’s small compound. Lights were burning in the convent, but not in the rectory.
“You know,” Gregor said, “if I were you, I’d be more careful than I have been. You’re not the only one who can go poking around in other people’s private lives.”
“Aren’t I?”
“Father Tibor had a field day with your deacon. From what I understand, it wasn’t difficult.”
“No,” Roy admitted. “It never is difficult with Fred.”
“It’s too bad there’s nothing about my life that hasn’t already been in the Inquirer. And People magazine. There is, however, quite a bit about your life that has so far appeared nowhere in public.”
“I don’t think so,” Roy said pleasantly. “I don’t think there’s anything to find at all. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. I don’t womanize. I’m clean as a whistle. I’m a crusader, Mr. Demarkian. I’m the hammer of God. This country has turned itself into a haven for perversion, and I’m here to make sure it knows that it’s going to hell. I mean that literally, do you understand that? Going to hell, the place.”
“Then why bother to go after Dan Burdock?”
“Are you joking?”
“Of course I’m not joking,” Gregor said. “If Dan Burdock is gay, it’s an entirely intellectual position. The man has never had a love affair in his life, as far as anyone can tell. And we did check. So I don’t think you’re going after Dan Burdock because he’s gay.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s gay himself. He—facilitates—the homosexual agenda.”
“All right. He facilitates the homosexual agenda. But that’s not what you’re doing here. As I told you, Mr. Phipps—”
“Reverend Phipps.”
“I don’t think so. As I told you, your life may not be public, but it is traceable, and we traced it. Your ordination is bogus, although I doubt that that would matter to your parishioners, who don’t really understand what ordination is. But what’s more interesting to me is the fact that you never had anything to say about the homosexual agenda until exactly seven years ago, after you had moved onto Baldwin Place. In fact, it looks very much like your commitment to the anti-gay rights cause was dictated by your move to Baldwin Place. Before you came here, you did a lot of railing about pornography, and a lot of railing about evolution, but you never had a single word to say about gays.”
“I don’t see where that matters,” Roy said. “I don’t see what you think you’re going to be able to do with that.”
“I don’t intend to do anything with it,” Gregor said. “I do intend to make sure that the Philadelphia police have your record—your whole record, including the information that shows that you have been stalking Dan Burdock for over twenty years. That’s not criminal, as long as he never swore out a complaint, but it is indicative. If I were you, I’d move out of Baldwin Place and take your parishioners with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t want to give up the real estate.”
“That’s up to you. But Mr. Phipps, if one of your thickheaded Bible thumpers does some real damage somewhere to a gay man, it would be possible, knowing what I know now, to charge you as an accessory. You’ve always been able to avoid that up until now. I’m here to tell you you aren’t going to be able to avoid it again. You wanted to ruin Dan Burdock’s life. He ruined it for himself. This vendetta is over. Get out of here.”
“No,” Roy said. “You’re not as good as you think you are. And I’m not finished.”
Gregor looked up and saw the lights at the front of St. Stephen’s. Just a few feet from where he and Roy were standing, the homeless people were going in and out of St. Anselm’s, the way they did every night. He wondered if it had been on television yet, if the parishioners at St. Stephen’s knew that their pastor had been arrested. He hardly thought it mattered.
“I’m better than I think I am,” he told Roy Phipps, “and what’s more, I’ve got a very long memory. Move out of Baldwin Place. If you don’t, I’m going to come after you. And if I do, I’m going to shut you down.”
“You’re not as good as you think you are,” Roy Phipps said again, but for just one moment there was a crease of fear across his face, and a crease of doubt.
There was also a cab coming down the street, and Gregor hailed it. Surely it was as cold tonight as it had ever been this month, but he didn’t feel it. He felt as warm as if he were in his own living room, in spite of the fact that his coat was open and he seemed to be wearing his scarf on his sleeve.
The cab pulled up and he opened the door to get inside it. At the last moment, he turned back to Roy Phipps on the sidewalk and smiled.
“Move out of Baldwin Place, Mr. Phipps. I’m not bluffing.”
Then he got into the cab and told the driver how to get to Cavanaugh Street. The sky about his head was clear. Even in the glare of the streetlamps, he could see stars. He hoped Bennis was home from her dinner and ready to talk—but then, maybe she wouldn’t be, under the circumstances.
All Gregor Demarkian had ever wanted in his life was a world he could make right when it went wrong. Lately, he had been learning to settle for the fact that he could sometimes make a small part of it right for a finite period of time.
The cab pulled away from the curb, and he sat back and closed his eyes, thinking of Cavanaugh Street.
EPILOGUE
.. OF AN INWARD AND SPIRITUAL GRACE.
1
On the day Anne Marie Hannaford was executed for the murder of her father, Gregor Demarkian spent the afternoon in Father Tibor Kasparian’s apartment, looking through the stacks of paperbacks on the kitchen table for something he might actually be able to read. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics wasn’t going to do it, especially since it was in the original Greek. On the other hand, Jackie Collins’s Lucky wasn’t going to do it either. He was a little surprised that Tibor had so few of what had come to be called “serial killer novels,” the kind of thing where dismembered bodies turn up every fifteen pages and the object is to see if the detective can catch the murderer before his haul reaches three figures. In a way, it was rather comforting. There were times when Gregor looked at what was on offer at the movie theaters and thought that Americans had become drunk on blood. What other explanation could there be for the popularity of films that seemed to be about nothing but people get
ting stabbed, often with ice picks? Then again, the movies that weren’t about people getting stabbed with ice picks weren’t very interesting, either. He had taken Bennis to see Titanic, and he couldn’t remember being so bored in his life.
I’m trying to avoid the television, Gregor told himself. That’s what I’m trying to do. The television was in the living room, and he hadn’t been there once since he first came in. For a while, he had had hopes that the murders at St. Stephen’s and St. Anselm’s would knock the execution out of the headlines, but it had been more than a week since Dan Burdock had been arrested. The newspapers were looking for copy again, and, of course, Anne Marie Hannaford was copy. “The Society Slaughterer,” one of them had called her, but it hadn’t stuck. It was too clumsy. These days, they stayed with the conventional angle. No matter what she had done, Anne Marie Hannaford was a woman. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania almost never executed women. Did they really want to start now?
Gregor would have been with Bennis if he could have been, but Bennis had gone off with Christopher right after breakfast. Gregor didn’t know where to. He was sure they hadn’t gone to witness the execution. Father Tibor was sitting at his computer, clicking through a website called Books ‘n’ Bytes, and stopping periodically to type furiously, Gregor didn’t know why. He didn’t understand how Father Tibor could have gotten so addicted to the computer so quickly. He was even in the process of getting his own Web page.
“So,” Gregor said, pulling up a chair and sitting down just behind Tibor’s left shoulder, “what is it you’re doing, exactly?”
“I am at www.booksnbytes.com.”
“You said that.”
“It is a website devoted to mystery novels, Krekor. It is very useful. Vicki, who has put it up, has taste very much like mine. She has descriptions, so I am sure not to buy the things I do not like. Also she has links to Amazon.com.”
“I know about Amazon.com.”
“We must be grateful for even small signs of progress, Krekor.”
Tibor bent over and began to type furiously. Gregor leaned forward and tried to see what he was typing.
“So what’s this?” he said. “You’re writing to this Vicki who owns the web-site?”
“No, Krekor. When I write Vicki, I use e-mail. Except this Christmas I sent her one of Lida and Hannah’s honey cakes that they made for me especially to send, and then I used snail mail. This is a newsgroup.”
“Ah,” Gregor said. “So what are you having a conversation about?”
“The Monophysite heresy,” Tibor said. He had turned around again and was typing furiously.
Gregor nodded. “So, this is a newsgroup whose theme is religion.”
“No, Krekor. This is rec.arts.mystery. It is a newsgroup whose theme is detective novels.”
“You’re having an argument about the Monophysite heresy on a newsgroup dedicated to the discussion of detective novels?”
Tibor stopped typing and turned around. “Find something to do with yourself,” he said. “You are making me crazy. I know you are worried for Bennis, and this is a good thing, but you are not helping her by coming here and being dense about the Internet.”
“Old fart. Dense. You’ve been talking to Tommy Moradanyan.”
“Tommy Donahue. You must remember to call him Tommy Donahue. The adoption went through. We had a party. You were there. This woman is so annoying. She thinks she knows everything. She will not admit she is wrong. It is incredible, what you learn about people on the Internet, Krekor. This woman, when she was shown to be wrong and could not deny it, disappeared for a month instead of apologizing. I could write a book about defensiveness, except that I could not write a book. Why are you still sitting there?”
“I still want to know why you’re having an argument about the Monophysite heresy on a newsgroup dedicated to the discussion of detective novels.”
“It is because this silly woman calls herself a pagan and doesn’t know what a pagan is. Go down to Ohanian’s and buy me some Pringles, Krekor. At least that way you will be useful.”
“What worries me,” Gregor said, “is that she’s going to blame me for it. I mean, in a sense, I am to blame for it. If I hadn’t come along, Anne Marie might never have been caught.”
Tibor stopped typing again and turned all the way around. “If you hadn’t come along, she would have been dead, and Anne Marie would have been caught anyway. The woman was not behaving sanely. It is unfortunate that Pennsylvania uses the death penalty. I do not support the death penalty. But Krekor, there is no question that Anne Marie is a murderer or that she would have gone on murdering if she had been given the opportunity.”
“I know, Tibor. I didn’t say I was being sensible.”
“You would not feel this way in another case,” Tibor said. “You will not feel this way about Father Burdock, if he is executed. This is true even though you do not approve of the death penalty any more than I do.”
“I said I wasn’t being sensible. I know I’m not making any sense. But this thing with Bennis and me is so new, and so fragile—”
“Nonsense. It’s been going on from the very day you met her. You were only not aware of it. She was aware of it, though.”
“When we met, she was living with someone in Boston. And right after she left him, she started going out with one of the Rolling Stones.”
“So this is supposed to mean something? It does not mean something. She moved here into that apartment right over your head. She did not last very long with the rock star. I do not think he was a member of the Rolling Stones, though, Krekor. I think the Rolling Stones are perhaps too out-of-date.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
“There is another thing,” Tibor said. “Bennis is not blaming you, because she is blaming herself. None of you are acting like sensible people at the moment, which is perhaps inevitable. Go to Ohanian’s and get me some Pringles, before they all come back and start worrying about my diet. I have to post a message on the difference between latae sententiae and ferendae sententiae excommunications, because this fool woman thinks that Christian churches excommunicate people right and left and keep it secret. Why is it that people find it so difficult to check their facts before they give their lectures?”
“Are you still on that newsgroup about detective novels?”
“Go to Ohanian’s, Krekor. It will be good for the both of us. I need to e-mail Vicki at Books ‘n’ Bytes about this new writer Karen Sturges. She has written a novel about musical people.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
He meant to say something else, but Tibor was bent over his keyboard, typing away industriously again. Gregor wondered what Vicki was going to say about Karen Sturges—and then he felt like an even bigger fool than he had all morning. Sane people did not take Internet relationships as if they were real.
Or, at least, he didn’t think they did.
2
Half an hour later, Gregor came out of Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store with two large brown paper grocery bags. One of them had not only Pringles, but Marshmallow Fluff, Skippy Superchunk peanut butter, Cheez Whiz, Goldfish crackers, six Slim Jims, two cans of Durkee Fried Onions, and six packages of Twinkies.
“He comes down here for one thing and then he goes home and remembers something he forgot and then he comes back here again and it goes on all day,” Mary Ohanian said. “It’s crazy. Take it all, and that way he’ll be able to pig out in peace. How that man manages to eat like this without gaining a ton of weight, I’ll never know.”
“Fifteen years of starving in Soviet gulags,” Gregor said blandly. “It changed his metabolism.”
“Well, maybe I’ll try that next. Nothing else has ever worked on me.”
“Well,” Gregor said. “You’re a little late. There is no more Soviet Union, so—”
“Bennis told me that the next time I saw you I should make you buy a whole stack of loukoumia so she’d have something to snack on when she couldn’t sleep. Give me a minute and I
’ll package it up. She’d better watch herself, though. I mean, I know it’s usual for people who quit smoking to eat a lot, but she’s—”
“Mary.”
“I’ve got the loukoumia. Also a little of the marble halvah. She likes that, too.”
Now Gregor was standing on Cavanaugh Street, wondering where he ought to go first. The food in the bag meant for his own apartment didn’t need to be refrigerated. On the other hand, Tibor had probably forgotten all about asking for Pringles and called for takeout to the one Kentucky Fried Chicken place that deigned to deliver.
He went down the street as slowly as he could without feeling silly, and as he passed the Ararat he looked into the big plate-glass windows, to see if anybody he knew was there. Nobody was. It was the wrong time of day. People were at work, or at home cooking, or off to some other part of the city to get library books or birthday presents or something else they couldn’t find right on the street. Lately, Gregor had been realizing more and more that work was necessary to him. Without it, he felt too much at loose ends. He didn’t vacation well.
He was just thinking that it would have been easier on his nerves if Pennsylvania had stuck to the practice of holding executions only at midnight, when a cab pulled up in front of his own building a block and a half away and he saw Christopher and Bennis get out. Christopher seemed to be layered into near immobility—he was now, Gregor thought, wearing three sweaters under his sports jacket, and it was a new sports jacket, made of wool. Gregor wondered where he had gotten it—but Bennis barely seemed to be wearing clothes at all. A turtleneck. A single sweater. A pair of jeans. Maybe she was being kept warm by her own anxieties.
Christopher leaned over and paid the cab. Bennis looked up the street and saw Gregor standing there, holding grocery bags. She called over her shoulder to Christopher and headed up the street.
“What have you got?” she asked, when she finally reached him.
Gregor looked into the bag with the loukoumia in it. “Some things for Tibor. And some loukoumia for you. Mary said you wanted it.”
