“Nuts,” Bettinger said, and then, “Gregor. Gregor. Hello. I’m sorry. What’s going on around here?”
Gregor Demarkian sighed. Carl Bettinger was ten years his junior. He was, from what Gregor remembered of him, a good agent and (possibly) a good man. That didn’t change the fact that he had no business being here. Whoever was driving the black-and-white had pulled to a stop and cut the motor, but left the lights flashing. Any minute now, he was going to get out of that car, and his partner was going to get out with him, and there was going to be a mess.
“What are you doing here?” Gregor said. “You shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of this place. You know that.”
Bettinger flushed and turned away. “I have an interest in this case.”
The way the case had been described to Gregor, Bettinger couldn’t have an official interest in it. If he did, then somebody wasn’t telling Gregor something. “Even so,” he said. “This is a delicate situation. We have a suspicious death here.”
“I know,” Bettinger said. And then he exploded. “Christ, Gregor, what do you take me for? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be here. I have to be here. You have no idea what’s going on.”
“A sting operation? Domestic espionage? What could possibly—”
“It’s nothing like that.” Bettinger turned slightly. Two men had gotten out of the black-and-white, a uniform and a man who looked liked a western sheriff, but citified. He was wearing a good white shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled above the elbows, and the pants and vest to a first-class three-piece suit. Carl Bettinger stared at him longer than he had to and then looked away again.
“I don’t,” he said, “get involved in that kind of thing. You know I don’t.”
“I know you didn’t,” Gregor said.
“This is just a favor I’m doing somebody, Gregor. I should say this is a favor the Director is doing somebody. Nobody wants Stephen Whistler Fox dead. Not now. Not with that act pending. Dan Chester—”
“You’re squinting, Carl. You used to do that when you spent too much time on the computer.”
Carl Bettinger’s flush bleached to the color of ash. “For God’s sake, Gregor, don’t say things like that. What would I be doing on the computer? The Director is very concerned about Stephen Fox—”
“So you tell me. But Carl, it’s not Stephen Whistler Fox who’s dead.”
Carl Bettinger looked miserable. “Could you just tell me one thing?” he said. “Was it murder? Was it suicide? Was it a heart attack? What’s going on here—”
“Wait,” Gregor told him.
The uniform and the man in the vest had reached the bottom of the steps. They started up, the uniform hanging back a little, like a Chinese wife following her husband to market. Gregor moved away from Bettinger, making space. The portico wasn’t small, but it wasn’t as large as it could have been, given the size of the house. At the moment, even with openness on three sides and the doors wide open to the back, it felt damn near claustrophobic.
From out ahead of them somewhere, maybe on the road and maybe already inside the gate, came the sound of more cars arriving: the techies, the medical vans. Gregor felt the dampness under his collar and loosened his tie. With all the excitement, he’d forgotten to notice how hot it still was beyond the reach of Great Expectations’s air-conditioning. Now his whole body felt as wet as it would have if he’d just stepped out of a bath.
The man in the vest reached the top of the steps and stopped. He was a short man, square and muscular, with an incongruously intelligent face, and although he was at least Gregor’s age he had none of Gregor’s flab. He reminded Gregor of Spencer Tracy playing the Clarence Darrow character in Inherit the Wind, except that he didn’t look even’ minimally Irish.
“My name,” he said pleasantly, “is Henry Berman. What I want to know right now is where I can find a man named Gregor Demarkian.”
“I’m Gregor Demarkian,” Gregor said.
“Good.” Berman turned to his patrolman, who had made it up the steps by then, too, but was hanging back. “This one,” Berman said, pointing to Carl Bettinger, “is a pain in the butt from the federal government. He’s been calling my office all week, trying to get me to run background checks on everybody he’s ever heard of. I don’t care what you do with him, but keep him out of my hair.”
“But,” Carl Bettinger said.
“Mr. Demarkian and I have work to do,” Henry Berman said. He grabbed Gregor by the elbow and began pushing him toward the house. He pushed them both far enough so that they began to feel the cold of the air-conditioning seeping through the doors. Then he gave one more shove, and Gregor found himself stumbling into the foyer, under the light, out of the dark.