Festival of Deaths (17 page)

“What kind of a surprise?”

“He doesn’t know yet that Mr. Shasta is going to be on the program.”

Shelley Feldstein cocked her head and grinned. “You know, Carmencita, I think you’re going to make a world-class talent coordinator.”

“If I don’t get killed between six and noon and tomorrow morning,” Carmencita said. “Can you fix this?”

“I don’t know if I can fix it, but I can certainly help. Here comes the waitress. Think of something that you want to eat.”

Carmencita didn’t really want anything to eat, but she thought it would be impolite not to have something, so she ordered a chef’s salad. Carmencita was the kind of person who ate when she was nervous and wasn’t much interested when she was not, and now that Shelley seemed to be taking this little problem in stride, Carmencita was calmer than she’d been since she climbed into the limousine in New York.

Now if she could only think of some way to resolve all her problems with Itzaak, life would be perfect.

F
OR SARAH MEYER, LIFE
would only be perfect if she woke up one morning and found out she was someone else. Dorothy Hamill. Madam Curie. Michelle Pfeiffer. Her own sister. Sometimes Sarah thought it would be enough to be herself, but transformed. Taller. Thinner. Smarter. Prettier. Something.

Tonight, she thought it would be enough if she could just get through Shelley Feldstein’s door without anyone seeing her do it. It was taking forever when it shouldn’t have taken any time at all. Sarah Meyer had never breached a lock with a credit card in her life. She wouldn’t have known how to go about doing it, and she wouldn’t have bet on her ability to carry it through even if she had known. When she wanted to get into somebody’s room, she did it the easy way. She knocked. She tried the door to see if it was open. She used the key. The keys to the doors in this hotel were the electronic kind, that were programmed by computer and that you put into a slot and then pulled out quickly to get the knob to turn. Sarah had taken Shelley Feldstein’s key out of Shelley Feldstein’s purse’s sidepocket when they were both heading downstairs in the elevator, and then when they reached the lobby Sarah had pretended to have forgotten something in her room and gone back up. Every woman Sarah had ever known carried her hotel key in that outside pocket of her purse if her purse had one, because every woman Sarah had ever known was more worried about being able to reach the safety of her room without delay if she was being followed than she was about someone stealing her key. If Shelley Feldstein had proved to be an exception, Sarah had backup plans.

The problem was, Sarah was no good at using electronic keys, her own or anybody else’s. She pushed them in and pulled them out and grabbed for the knob, but it took her half a dozen tries before she got there in time. The mechanism didn’t give you very long before it froze the door shut again. Sarah put the card in the slot again, pulled it out again, grabbed for the knob again. The little light on the jamb stayed green for a tantalizing few seconds and then switched again to red. The door remained locked.

“Damn,” Sarah said under her breath. “Damn, damn, damn.”

“Do you need some help with that?” someone said from behind her.

Sarah turned around to see a tall Hispanic man in a hotel uniform. She saw the napkin draped over his arm and realized that he must be from room service. DeAnna Kroll getting her shrimp, Sarah thought, and stood away from the door a little.

The man took the key card out of her hand. “Here,” he said. “These are very tricky. A great many of our guests have trouble with them.”

“Why do you use them?”

“It’s cut our burglary rate by forty percent,” the man said simply. “You can’t do better than that.” He shoved the key card in, pulled it out even more quickly, and grabbed the doorknob. It turned easily and the door swung open.

“There,” he said. “You’re in.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said.

“You’ve got to pull the card in and out very fast. Once the light goes green, the mechanism starts counting. Even though the card is still in the slot.”

“Oh.”

“You’ve only got five seconds to get the door open. Five seconds from when the light goes on. Remember.”

“I will,” Sarah said.

“Have a good night,” the man said.

He turned away from her and started hurrying toward the elevators, keeping the arm with the napkin over it at an odd angle to his body. Sarah waited for him to turn the corner and then reached for the light switch just inside Shelley’s door.

Have a good night,
the man had told her.

Well, Shelley thought, she had every intention of having a good night, and with Shelley downstairs talking everything on earth over with Carmencita, she was going to have plenty of time to have a good night in.

And it figured, really, about Shelley and Carmencita.

Shelley had always been on the side of the enemy.

When Sarah had first broached the idea of taking over the job Maria Gonzalez eventually got, Shelley had told her not to be ridiculous.

U
SUALLY, WHEN THE
LOTTE
Goldman Show
wanted to bring a guest to the studio, it sent a limousine with Prescott Holloway driving. In Philadelphia, however, it saved Prescott Holloway to do personal errands for Lotte Goldman and DeAnna Kroll and sent a local driver. On this day, Carmencita had forgotten to make arrangements with local drivers—she really should still have been an assistant, in spite of her instincts—and Prescott had to go out after all. Gregor Demarkian didn’t know anything about any of this. He knew only that it was five o’clock in the morning, that the weather was even more awful than it usually was at this time of year in Philadelphia, and that the neon menorah in Lida Arkmanian’s ground-floor parlor window was blinking on and off. It was blinking on and off with a regularity that suggested it was supposed to blink on and off. It reminded Gregor of those churches in northern Florida, carved out of cinder-block ranch houses or nestled into the hollow shells of what had once been low-rent bars, topped by neon crosses that flashed like the signs of Las Vegas casinos. Churches like that had always made Gregor vaguely ashamed of Christianity. It had been his impression that Judaism was allowed to keep much more of its dignity.

Bennis was standing next to him in the foyer of their building when the limousine drove up. When it was safely parked at the curb, she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out on the stoop.

“Let’s go,” she said, “before you lose your nerve.”

“Where’s Tibor?”

“He’ll be here in a minute.”

From the stoop, Gregor could see down Cavanaugh Street to Holy Trinity Church fairly clearly, in spite of the fact that there was a slight fog. As he watched, Tibor came out of the alley at the church’s side that led to the rectory apartment at the back and came toward them at a brisk trot, the hem of his cassock waving. Gregor wondered what he was going to make the viewing public think of when the camera panned
The Lotte Goldman Show
studio audience. Of course, Tibor wasn’t going to be the only clergyman present or even the only one in uniform. Gregor had laid down a few rules about this television appearance of his. One of them was that there had to be a reasonable number of people in the audience who were on his side. Rabbi David Goldman had promised to be there (in mufti). So had Father Ryan (in a Roman collar) and Father Yorgos Stephanopoulos (in full Greek Orthodox regalia). Gregor harbored the secret hope that all Lotte Goldman’s planning would come to naught, the show he was supposed to be on would collapse, and what they would tape today would be a full hour of Lotte asking the priests about the sexual repercussions of wearing funny clothes.

The driver got out of the limousine just as Tibor reached it. The driver looked first at Tibor and then at Gregor and then walked up to the stoop where Bennis was standing.

“How do you do,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Prescott Holloway.”

“Bennis Hannaford,” Bennis said.

“Father Tibor Kasparian,” Tibor said.

“I’m Gregor Demarkian,” Gregor said, and men wondered if it was customary in New York for limousine drivers to shake hands with the people they drove. Prescott Holloway looked like one of those men of whom it is said that they have “once seen better days.” Maybe he was just trying to maintain his old sense of self-respect in the day-to-day grind of a job that had to be very difficult on the ego.

Prescott Holloway was opening the street-side passenger door of his limousine and helping Bennis in.

Father Tibor climbed into the car after Bennis. Gregor followed Father Tibor, waving away Prescott Holloway’s offer of help.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve gotten in and out of these things before.”

“There’s a television in this one,” Father Tibor said, as Gregor settled himself into the rumble seat, “but not a VCR as there was in the one Bennis rented last year. Do you think there is a difference because of that, in the amount of money the car costs to rent?”

Prescott Holloway was just sliding in behind the wheel. “Actually, this car isn’t rented. It belongs to
The Lotte Goldman Show.
We brought it down from New York.”

“Does the show usually bring its own limousine when it travels?” Gregor asked.

“It depends on where it’s traveling to,” Prescott Holloway told him. “We brought two down here to Philadelphia, because Dr. Goldman would rather drive than take a train and she hates small planes. And, of course, if we drive we can do anything we want to the schedule, we don’t have to depend on somebody else’s departure times.”

“It still sounds expensive,” Bennis said.

“It’s only to cities that are close. Philadelphia, of course. And Boston when we go there. And places in New Jersey and Connecticut. After we leave Philadelphia this year, everybody but me is going to get on a plane. Next stop, Kansas City.”

“It’s too bad that you don’t get to go,” Bennis said.

Prescott Holloway shrugged. “I got as much travel as I ever wanted when I was in the army. When the show goes on the road like this, I get to play backup driver for Mr. Bart Gradon himself, which means I get paid a great deal of money to do practically no work. It’s a living.”

“I suppose it is,” Bennis said.

“Look at this,” Father Tibor said. “In the window of Lida Arkmanian’s front parlor. They are watching us.”

Bennis took out a cigarette and lit up. “Of course they’re watching us,” she said. “They’re all watching us. They probably set their alarm clocks to make sure they didn’t miss us when we went. I wish we’d go.”

“We’ll go,” Prescott Holloway said, shifting the limousine into gear.

That was the first Gregor realized that the car had not been turned off while it stood at the curb. Prescott Holloway had gotten out and handed his passengers in with the motor humming every minute. Surely that couldn’t be safe? Bennis took a long drag on her cigarette and tapped her ash into the little silver cup imbedded in the armrest.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“I haven’t had enough sleep,” he said. “My mind has started to think it’s in a
Columbo
episode.”

“What?”

The car was pulling away from the curb, into the street, into the fog. Gregor closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Never mind,” he said. “Never mind. I just seem to be going senile.”

T
HE FIRST THING GREGOR
Demarkian noticed about the people at the WKMB studio where
The Lotte Goldman Show
was taping was how tense they were. The next thing he noticed was how many of them had not been born in the United States. Gregor did not jump to that kind of conclusion easily. He understood that children born and brought up in certain Hispanic neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles spoke English with an accent as thick as that of anyone growing up in San Juan. It was getting to be a Stateside regional variation. In spite of being Hispanic, however, the young man who met them at the door of Studio C was definitely not American born and bred. He had the wrong kind of Spanish accent. The older man who was climbing through the beams above their heads hadn’t been born in the United States, either. Gregor could recognize that accent anywhere. It was Russian.

The young woman who had brought them up from the street, Ms. Carmencita Boaz, also had the wrong kind of Spanish accent, but they already knew all about her. She had told them everything she needed to know as she was bringing them up in the elevator.

“People who don’t work for Dr. Goldman don’t realize what a wonderful person she is,” Ms. Boaz had said. “They don’t realize how compassionate and fair she is in every dealing she has. They see her on television and they hear her ask the questions that must be asked—because, of course, she is very professional, Dr. Goldman, that is why she has been so successful—but they hear her on television and they think she is tough.”

Gregor saw Bennis and Tibor shoot glances at each other. He heard Bennis cough.

“All you have to do is look at our staff to see she isn’t like that at all,” Carmencita was going on. “Dr. Goldman is in the business of giving lifetime chances, really. To me. I came from Guatemala. I could have ended up working in a typing pool somewhere. To Itzaak. He had to escape from the Soviet Union back when there was a Soviet Union. His life was nearly destroyed. Even to Maria Gonzalez.”

“Maria Gonzalez?” Gregor said.

“The one who died.” Bennis sounded shocked.

Carmencita Boaz opened the door to Studio C and shrugged. “It is very bad that Maria was killed, yes, but that doesn’t change the way she was hired. Dr. Goldman was an immigrant, you see. She understands immigrants. She looks after us.”

“Only immigrants?” Gregor asked curiously.

A shadow seemed to cross Carmencita Boaz’s face. “There are others, like Sarah Meyer, I suppose. But Sarah is none of my business.”

Gregor was about to ask Carmencita Boaz what she meant by that, when the young man came to the door, hesitated for a moment, and then seemed to stagger. Gregor realized he was carrying a chair on his back. The chair was small enough to be mostly hidden when the young man faced front, but heavy enough to tilt him off balance. As Gregor watched, he dropped the chair and fell down hard on his rear end.