Fighting Chance: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian series Book 29) (33 page)

Gregor made a confirmatory grunt.

George Edelson said, “Yeah, I know,” and went on. “Once we started looking, we found stuff going back just about four years. Mortgages. Trusts. The bribe thing.”

“When they opened the office,” Bennis said. “When he went out on his own.”

“Was it?” Edelson said. “He was smart about it. You have to give him that. He wasn’t buying fancy cars and he wasn’t gambling or doing any of that other stuff. No mistresses. Just steady streams of money. If they were all like this, we wouldn’t catch half of them.”

“He went out on his own,” Bennis said. “He left a big firm to do it. And Donna was always worried that they wouldn’t have enough money to get by, because she was staying home with the children and she wasn’t working. But they never did run short that she could tell. And maybe we should have known, because his partner, that Mac Cafton, he was short all the time.”

“Whatever it was,” Edelson said. “Martha Handling was going to turn herself in and blow the whistle on everybody, and he went to talk to her that day to see if he couldn’t get her to see what he thought of as reason. Martha Handling never saw reason, and she was infuriating on a regular basis, and Donahue just picked up the gavel and smashed her. And, as you said, Father Tibor found them, and the rest was you talking in chambers the day you got shot. What’s more interesting is the phone.”

“I kept trying to tell you about the phone,” Sophie Maldovanian said.

“The phone,” Edelson said, “was the key to the end of it. Donahue and Tibor here made the video, then Donahue was supposed to send it to YouTube and ditch the phone. But the corridor was already full of people, and when he got out there, he couldn’t do anything without somebody noticing. He tried going toward the back, to the back door, and out that way, but he still wasn’t unobserved. Then Dr. Loftus here started screaming, and Russ went back to the chambers, because part of the plan was that Donahue was going to find Tibor in the act. He had the phone in his pocket, and he started hurrying, and it dropped out. It took him a couple of seconds to realize it, but when he turned back to retrieve it, Petrak here was picking it up.”

“It was just lying there on the floor,” Petrak said. “I didn’t even think about it.”

“When Petrak didn’t turn the phone in, and nobody else did, and there wasn’t any sign of it, I think Donahue thought he’d gotten lucky with that one,” Edelson said. “When Mikel Dekanian called up and told him what he’d found at the Hall of Records, the record of the sale, the documents with his forged signature on them, Russ told him to meet up at that alley, and as soon as Mikel got there, he killed him. I don’t think it occurred to Dekanian that Russ was responsible for what he’d found.”

“It didn’t occur to him,” Asha said. “He called me and said to me he knew what the banks had done to hurt us. Then he said he had an appointment with Mr. Donahue, but he did have an appointment with Mr. Donahue. That’s why he went downtown in the first place.”

“He did have an appointment with Donahue,” Edelson said. “It was just later in the afternoon and in Donahue’s office. Anyway, that’s about all you don’t know. Except that Russ Donahue has decided to plead not guilty. And that Tibor has been charged as an accessory after the fact.”

“Idiot,” Gregor said.

“Yes, Krekor,” Tibor said. “I am an idiot. We have established that.”

“Mark Granby,” Gregor said.

“Ah,” Edelson said. “That one’s good. He managed to get out of the country. He turned up in Guatemala and was spotted almost immediately. Then he tried to claim political asylum. Nobody could figure out what he thought he was doing. The Guatemalan government kicked him out in a week.”

“Good,” Gregor said.

“Finished,” Dr. Albright said. “And I do mean finished. Now. This is a mob scene. You’re going to put him back in that coma. I want you all out of here, now. Except for Mrs. Demarkian. You can stay if you behave yourself.”

“I’ll behave myself,” Bennis said. She meant it, but she wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t faint.

Sheree Coleman began shooing everybody out of the room, making little clucking noises. She sounded like a chicken.

Tibor and Ray and Tony and George and the rest of them went more or less quietly, saying good-bye to Gregor and telling them how happy they were.

Only Janice Loftus was recalcitrant. “But you don’t understand!” she insisted. “I have important information. You’re getting the whole case all wrong—”

Sheree Coleman gave her a sharp little shove in the small of her back, and Janice Loftus disappeared, still screeching.

4

Father Tibor came back for just a moment after all the others had left. “I wanted to say that I am glad to see you again,” he said. “And to say that you were right, about Russ.”

“I’m right about you, too,” Gregor said. “The right course of action here is not to fall on your sword. We’ll work this out. There will be a way. Maybe we’ll even get a judge who hasn’t been bribed by Administrative Solutions.”

“Tcha,”
Tibor said.

Then he went back out the door.

Bennis got up and went all the way over to Gregor in bed, something she hadn’t done yet. She sat down on the mattress and stroked his forehead. He didn’t like things like that. At the moment, she didn’t care. She wanted to touch him.

“You should find out when they’re going to let me out of this place,” he said. “It must be costing you a fortune.”

“I’ve got money.”

“Which isn’t the point,” Gregor said.

“What is the point?”

Gregor looked away. Bennis knew that body language. It was the way Gregor was when he had to say something that hurt.

“Donna,” he said finally. “I really was aware of a lot of what was going on. I remember your being here. I remember Tibor being here. I even remember John Jackman once, if I wasn’t dreaming it.”

“You weren’t dreaming it,” Bennis said. “He came out three times that I know of, and every time he was swearing at you. You got a lot of people annoyed.”

“I don’t remember Donna coming out.”

“Ah,” Bennis said.

“I didn’t really expect her to come out,” Gregor said. “Under the circumstances. But I’m worried about how she is. And how Tommy is. I’ve been worried about that since I realized what was going on.”

“Tommy isn’t Russ’s biological son.”

“I know. But he’s the only father Tommy has ever known.”

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Bennis said. “I don’t think she’s angry at you. She certainly isn’t angry at me. She’s just numb, mostly. And she’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“Her parents took her to Corfu for a month, with the children, of course,” Bennis said. “I think they’re going to take her back again when the case finally goes to trial. I think she just wants to be away from it.”

“Has she seen Russ?”

“Once,” Bennis said. “Before she left. And no, I don’t know how the interview went, and neither does anybody else. She went in alone and in tears. She came out alone and in tears. She didn’t want to talk about it.”

“All right,” Gregor said.

“You’re beginning to look exhausted,” Bennis said. “Maybe Dr. Albright is right. Maybe we should stop all this before we put you back in a coma.”

“I don’t think comas work like that,” Gregor said.

Bennis stroked Gregor’s forehead again, and as she did, his eyes closed, and he was immediately deeply and calmly asleep. She didn’t know if comas didn’t work like that, but she knew he wasn’t in a coma now, because the way he was sleeping was different from what she remembered from before.

In a world that was now infinitely dark and far away, Donna Moradanyan Donahue would have known what to say about this.

THE GREGOR DEMARKIAN BOOKS BY JANE HADDAM

Not a Creature Was Stirring

Precious Blood

Act of Darkness

Quoth the Raven

A Great Day for the Deadly

Feast of Murder

A Stillness in Bethlehem

Murder Superior

Dear Old Dead

Festival of Deaths

Bleeding Hearts

Fountain of Death

And One to Die On

Baptism in Blood

Deadly Beloved

Skeleton Key

True Believers

Somebody Else’s Music

Conspiracy Theory

The Headmaster’s Wife

Hardscrabble Road

Glass Houses

Cheating at Solitaire

Living Witness

Wanting Sheila Dead

Flowering Judas

Blood in the Water

Hearts of Sand

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J
ANE
H
ADDAM
is the author of more than thirty novels, but is best known for her books featuring Gregor Demarkian. A finalist for both the Edgar and the Anthony Awards, she lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

FIGHTING CHANCE.
Copyright © 2014 by Jane Haddam. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover art by Doron Ben-ami

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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

ISBN 978-1-250-01235-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4668-4871-9 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781466848719

First Edition: September 2014