Not a Creature Was Stirring (26 page)

It kept coming to him, the worst case scenario, a worse worst case scenario than any he’d imagined in all these months of terror and exhilaration. Hundred dollar bills in the wastebasket. That was good. That was incredible. Who had put them there? If he could only believe it was Myra, he could relax. But Myra wouldn’t do that. If Myra found out what he was up to, and wanted to do something about it, she’d be much more direct. She already knew the combination to this safe. She’d told him she did. If she wanted to scare the shit out of him, she’d just walk in here one day while he was at work and clean the damn thing out.

Somebody knew what he was doing and he didn’t know who. That was the kicker. He didn’t know who.

And because he didn’t know who, he didn’t know what that someone would do.

McAdam’s phone was ringing. It sounded far away and fuzzy, the way everything did on cellular phones. Once the conversation started, it would be like talking through water.

The ringing stopped. Someone had picked up on the other end.

“Hello?” McAdam said.

“Don’t hang up,” Bobby said.

There was a long silence. Then McAdam said, “Jesus H. Christ. Of course I’m going to hang up. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Don’t hang up,” Bobby said again. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Soon.”

“Here?”

“Anywhere you want. But soon.”

“Where are you calling from?”

Bobby put stacks of money onto other stacks, clearing a place for himself on the bed. “I’m on a cellular,” he said. “I’m calling from Engine House. But that’s not the important thing. I’ve got to see you. Not next week. Not next month. Not next Tuesday. I want you to be at the place tomorrow at seven.”

“Seven? In the morning?”

“In the morning.”

“Bobby, there won’t be anybody there at seven in the morning. We’ll stick out like bag ladies at the April-in-Paris Ball.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Bobby—”

“Be there,” Bobby said. He shoved his thumb against the power switch and turned the phone off. It wasn’t as satisfying as really hanging up, but it had something. He shoved the antenna down and threw the phone back into the briefcase.

He had money all over the bed, and he had to put it back.

There was a digital clock on his bedside table, the kind that told the seconds as well as the minutes and the hours. It reminded him of a cliché he’d thought of when he first met McAdam, but hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on since.
It’s only a matter of time.
How true. How true, how true, how true.

And now was the time.

Someone knocked on his door. He stood up and started shoving money back into the safe.

“Who is it?” he said.

“Myra.”

“Just a minute.”

Crap, he thought. Shit shit shit shit crap.

Daddy was dead. Daddy was out of the picture. Once Daddy was out of the picture, everything was supposed to be fine.

And it wasn’t.

Myra knocked on his door again. He took a huge fist full of cash and threw it at the open mouth of the safe. It hit the side and scattered bills everywhere.

Emma was dead, but he didn’t think about it. To Bobby Hannaford, Emma dead seemed like the least important thing in the world.

G
REGOR DEMARKIAN DIDN’T WANT
to go home. He was riding in Jackman’s unmarked police car, at six o’clock in the evening, through the center of Philadelphia—and he felt good. That was what he was trying not to admit to himself. The Hannaford case was like an adrenalated narcotic. The first few doses had energized him, but left him substantially free. Now he was as addicted to it as the monkeys he had heard about, who had become so enamored of being high that they’d chosen cocaine over food. He couldn’t remember the last time his mind had worked so well. Long before Elizabeth had fallen sick, he had fallen shell-shocked. Too many years of too many crazies too mindlessly obsessed with brutality had numbed his brain. There was nothing numb about it now. It was working away, sorting through bits and pieces of information, snagging on inconsistencies, and it felt good, too. Thinking had become a physical pleasure.

If he had been a different kind of man, he would have worried about his insensitivity. That poor girl was dead. From what he’d seen, she’d been as innocent and undeserving of execution as Donna Moradanyan. Somebody should grieve for her. Gregor knew too much about the world to think that someone ought to be him. It was a damn good thing there were people who could think without becoming sentimental, who could divorce themselves from the emotional to concentrate on the objective truth. Without them, the human race would still be living in caves.

Jackman turned onto a side street, taking some shortcut through the rush hour traffic Gregor didn’t want to understand.

“I don’t understand why you don’t like the financial angle,” he said. “I don’t believe Bobby Hannaford is straight. You don’t either. If he’s fooling around, he’s got a real motive. Now that the old man is dead—”

“Hundred-dollar bills are showing up in wastebaskets,” Gregor said. “And you should have found the briefcase.”

“I did, Gregor. It was right where you said it would be.”

“That briefcase started out in Robert Hannaford’s study. He told me it would be there.”

“There’s too damn much manipulation in this case,” Jackman said. “And it’s weird manipulation, too. It’s like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. It’s not real.”

“What’s real—a couple of idiot nineteen year olds blowing each other away with Uzis over a quarter of a pound of crack?”

“That does tend to be more usual.”

“That also has all the reality of a Kafka nightmare.”

Jackman laughed. Gregor went back to looking out the window. They were in a part of Philadelphia he knew, but he didn’t know why he knew. They weren’t near Cavanaugh Street, and they weren’t near the library, either. He stared at the solid, undistinguished office buildings and wondered what they meant to him.

“You okay?” Jackman asked him.

“I’m fine. Where are we?”

“Out behind the Dick Building.”

Gregor sat up a little straighter. Of course. It had been years, but he should have remembered. He checked the numbers on the buildings they were passing and saw they were going in the right direction. Slowly, but in the right direction.

“John,” he said, “not this block coming up, but the one after that. Pull up to the curb in the middle and let me get out for a second.”

“Get out?”

“There’s something I want to see.”

Jackman looked at him like he’d just announced he was going to take LSD, but he slowed the car even further, and in the middle of the block in question pulled up to the pavement. Gregor got out, scanned the building numbers until he found 1227, and went up to its front door.

The front door was two mammoth pieces of plate glass, locked. Through it, Gregor could see the call board, rows of little steel buttons next to white-on-black company names arranged in alphabetical order. The first of those names, at the top of the list, was Aardvark Construction, Inc. The fifth was Federal Bureau of Investigation, Philadelphia Office.

Gregor stepped back. There was a call button on the outside of the building, so that people with late meetings could get far enough into the lobby to buzz up to whoever was waiting for them. Somewhere in the basement there was probably a janitor with access to a television security system. Gregor scanned the door frame and found the camera.

“Fine,” he said, to the snow falling on his head.

He went back to the car, stuck his head in Jackman’s window, and announced, “You can leave me here. I’ve got something I want to do.”

This time, Jackman looked sure Gregor needed a psychiatrist—but he went.

The man at the front desk was a stranger. Gregor had expected that. For one thing, he had been retired long enough for a new crop of recruits to go professional. Those recruits almost always ended up at front desks or on information lines for the first six months or so. For another thing, once he’d made it to the call board and announced himself, it had taken at least three minutes before he was buzzed through the inner doors. That meant the deskman hadn’t known his name. It also meant somebody else had.

That somebody else must have been impressed with him. The deskman nearly leapt to his feet when Gregor came into the office. Then he sat down again, reached for his intercom, and said,

“Mr. Demarkian? Mr. Flanagan will be out right away. Please. Why don’t you just sit down?”

Flanagan. Gregor smiled. He’d been sure there’d be someone he knew up here, even this late at night, but Jim Flanagan was a piece of very good luck. Flanagan had been at Behavioral Sciences for three years, and they’d gotten along. Gregor took off his coat, laid it across one chair, and sat down in another. He felt a little guilty about being so amused. The deskman meant well. He was just too wet behind the ears to realize there was no need to be this formal after normal business hours.

Seconds later, the inner door opened and Jim Flanagan stuck his head out. His face was mottled and mournful. His hair was still bright, electric red. His eyes were a deep, clear blue. He looked so much like the stereotypical Irishman, he could have been invented by a turn-of-the-century anti-Papist.

“Gregor,” he said. “It is you. I thought I was hearing things.”

“I still think I’m seeing things,” Gregor said. “Can’t you afford to get someone in here to paint?”

“No,” Flanagan said. “Dope.”

“Dope?” Gregor said. “Not Miller?”

“I don’t even want to think about Miller,” Flanagan said. “Go in the back there and say Miller, four men will probably try to kill you.”

“Just four?”

“Four is all we’ve got, besides me and Steve here.” Flanagan stepped back. “Come into my office and have some coffee. I’m supposed to be working out the details of a coordinated drug bust. I’m bored stiff.”

Gregor knew all about being bored stiff. He also knew Flanagan’s work wouldn’t suffer for it. He gathered up his coat and followed Flanagan through the inner door.

Flanagan’s office was a cubbyhole oversupplied with paper, file cabinets, and manila folders. It had been painted even less recently than the outer office and in a shade of particularly unattractive green. The only indication that Flanagan was head man here was on the door. There was a placard screwed into that, with Flanagan’s name on it in letters the size of a
National Enquirer
headline.

Flanagan cleared off a chair, reminding Gregor of Tibor that first day in the church. Then he dropped into the chair behind the desk and shoved a Pyrex pot of primal ooze onto the hot plate on the shelf behind him.

“So,” he said, “what brings you here? If you’ve just dropped in for a talk, I won’t mind. I’d do just about anything not to have to think about timetables any more.”

“It’s late,” Gregor said gently. “And you’re not exactly in a prime shopping area.”

“True. But you could have been in the area. I tried to call you, you know, after they did that piece about you in
The Inquirer
. Your number’s unlisted.”

“I unlisted it because of
The Inquirer
piece.”

“Nuts,” Flanagan said wisely. The primal ooze began to bubble, and he took it off the plate. In the harsh light of the fluorescent lamps that lined the ceiling, his face looked even more mottled and more mournful than it had in the outer room. It also looked infinitely tired, with that bone-crushing weariness that comes of digging through slime for centuries without getting any nearer to cleaning up the mess. Gregor felt suddenly very sorry for the man.

“I don’t suppose it’s been much of a picnic around here since I left. I’m sorry I didn’t think about how beat you’d be at this time of day. I saw where I was and I just came in.”

“You
were
in the neighborhood,” Flanagan said.

“I was driving through. Or rather, a friend was driving me through.”

“That’s good. You were never much of a driver.” Flanagan had found his coffee mugs. He put them on the desk and filled them. “But I meant what I said. I’m glad to see you, as long as you’re not involved in some drug thing. I can’t take the drug thing any more. It’s one of those days. Sometimes it doesn’t faze me. Sometimes I get very attracted to the Gordian knot solution. I just want to get hold of an AK-47 of my own and blow these jerks to kingdom come.”

“I’m not involved in any drug thing,” Gregor said. “I never was.”

Flanagan shrugged. “So? You had ax murderers and people who ate their mothers for breakfast. Literally. Also other people’s mothers. It doesn’t sound much better.”

“It wasn’t. But the past tense is important, Jim. I’m retired.”

“Funny,” Flanagan said. “You don’t look retired.”

Gregor took the mug of coffee Flanagan had pushed in his direction and gave it a try. It was worse than his own. Much worse.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I’m glad I came in. I’ve been sitting around the last couple of months, wondering if I’d have felt better if I hadn’t retired. Not that I could have done anything about that. I’m fifty-five. I’ve hit the age limit—”

“I was sorry to hear about Elizabeth, Gregor.”

“I know. You sent a card. I appreciated it, even if I didn’t answer it. But Jim, I’m glad I’m not still in it.”

“I’m fifty-two,” Flanagan said. “Some mornings, I count the time. It’s not the same. Drugs changed everything, Gregor, drugs and this weird attitude they’ve all got now.”

“I know what you mean. They don’t know the difference between fact and opinion. To them, the law of gravitation isn’t even a theory. It’s a biosociologically determined concept.”

“It’s the laws of morality I’m worried about. I don’t care about the sex so much. People have been sleeping with people they shouldn’t be sleeping with forever. But the other things. Catch this, Gregor. We’ve got petty theft problems in the office.”

“Here?”

“Here. Pencils. Pens. Paper clips. Junk. Theft for the sake of theft.”

“I think I liked it better when guilt was in fashion,” Gregor said. “I also think we’re getting old. Listen to us. We’re talking about the young as ‘them.’”