Act of Darkness(33)

“Damned brooch,” Dan Chester muttered to himself. “Damn thing looks like a whorehouse light.” He saw Gregor, but didn’t seem to register who Gregor was. “It was because of the idiot surgery,” he said. “I couldn’t talk her out of it. Mama gave it to her for her twenty-first birthday. Mama was having surgery. Girlie had to wear the brooch. For luck.”

“Surgery?” Gregor said.

“Gallbladder,” Chester told him. “Six months ago. Mostly; Janet won’t be caught dead with that thing. Jesus Christ.”

“Do you like being called Dan or Mr. Chester?”

Dan Chester snapped to attention. He cast a look back over his shoulder, seeming to check out the flags and bunting that had been tacked across the beach, fastened to poles and decking like after-thought decorations on a not-quite birthday cake. Then he shoved his coffee cup out of sight behind the wall he’d been leaning against and held out his hand. He also went into what Gregor automatically labeled “defense mode.” His face went blank. His eyes went blanker. Then he turned around quickly and shut the videotape off with a remote.

“Mr. Demarkian?” he said. “You’re early. I didn’t expect you for another ten minutes.”

Gregor reminded himself not to analyze. Most often, when people made senseless remarks, they were doing nothing more than filling the air with sound. Chester had moved away from the door, so Gregor passed through it, into a room that was a cube made of concrete, with only that one set of windows looking out on the beach. One wall was taken up with the Mondrian of the room’s title. It was as large as a tapestry, and very square, and very angular, and very bright. It reminded Gregor of the kind of quilt that made the cover of Bloomingdale’s catalogs.

Dan Chester shut the door. Then, giving it a little thought, he threw the bolt and glanced guiltily at Gregor. “It’s not that I’m paranoid,” he said. “It’s just that the house is full of—people.”

Gregor supposed he meant the house was full of the wrong people, but he let it go. There was a steel and swung-leather sofa in the center of the room, with its back to the painting. He sat down in that.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying so,” he told Chester, “but it’s interesting to see what you look like. It’s hard to picture someone you’ve met over the phone.”

“You hadn’t seen pictures of me?”

“Yes, I’d seen pictures.”

Chester smiled faintly. “It’s just that in pictures I don’t look like I’m supposed to look. I know. It’s a good thing I never wanted to run for office. I remind people of the kind of kid who gets a football scholarship to a college with a tenth-rate team. Do you want some coffee?”

What had been behind the wall next to the door that had allowed Chester to put down his coffee cup when he shook hands was a built-in desk with a mirror and tall column of built-in shelves above it. It had an array of modernistic coffee things: urn, creamer, sugar bowl, cups, saucers, spoons. Dan’s used cup was on the edge closest to the door. On the far edge was a plain manila file folder, stuffed until it was gaping with computer printout sheets.

Chester picked up his cup, gestured at the rest of the things, and shrugged when Gregor shook his head no. Then he picked up the file folder in his free hand and came to sit down in the chair that flanked the sofa.

“Here,” he said, handing the folder to Gregor. “You were looking at this, I know. I brought it for you. It’s the results of the medical tests we had done on Stephen at UConn Farmington.”

“And?” Gregor said.

Chester shrugged again. “And nothing. It’s the way I told you over the phone. If there is something physically wrong with him, it’s nothing any doctor ever heard of. I had them run every test in the universe—”

“You couldn’t have, Mr. Chester. The tests conflict. It would have taken more than four days.”

“Every test that could possibly be relevant.” Chester sounded impatient. “I’m not worried that Stephen’s got bowel cancer. It wouldn’t fit. I want to know what’s making him—fall over like that.”

Gregor looked down at the folder in his hand. It was heavy enough to make his wrist ache, and he put it down next to him on the sofa. “Mr. Chester, I talked to you on the phone, and I talked to Carl Bettinger—”

“Bettinger’s been very helpful,” Dan Chester said quickly.

“I’m sure he has. He always was a conscientious agent.” He was also behaving in a damned peculiar manner, but Gregor didn’t say that. “What I’m trying to say here is that the impression I got was that Senator Fox hasn’t simply been ‘falling over,’ as you put it. He’s been going into paralytic states—”