Act of Darkness(61)

There it was, a small black button just above the mouthpiece, labeled “on/off.” He pressed it.

“Yes?” he said.

He expected to hear a voice he didn’t know, probably a servant’s, or Dan Chester’s. He heard instead a fit of coughing and then the lilt of a familiar accent, singsongy and mild, “Krekor? Is that you? The phone has been ringing and ringing for half an hour.”

There had been a time when Gregor Demarkian had not been sure he should have come back to Cavanaugh Street. He had been born and brought up there, but he had been away for more than thirty years by the time Elizabeth’s death propelled him back. In those years he had lived in places as different from that small Armenian-American neighborhood as the streets of Bangkok were from the beaches of Tahiti. Now he was sure that Cavanaugh Street was where he belonged—except on those rare occasions when its inhabitants shocked him. Actually, those occasions were not so rare. This was one of them.

He pulled the phone away from his ear again and stared at it. What was Tibor calling him for? Had somebody died? Was somebody in trouble?

He lodged the phone between his ear and his shoulder and said, “Tibor?”

“Yes, Krekor. This is Tibor.”

“Are you all right? Is something wrong? If there’s some kind of an emergency I’ll come right back—”

“The only emergency, Krekor, is that I don’t know how to change diapers and this baby needs to be changed. It needs to be changed very badly. I did not realize babies could make this kind of mess. I called Lida Arkmanian—”

“What baby?”

“What baby do you think? What other baby do we have at the moment? There is Hannah Krekorian’s granddaughter, of course, but Hannah’s daughter-in-law lives on the Main Line, so—”

Gregor knew from experience that this could go on forever. There would be daughters and granddaughters without number, cousins and sons-in-law into infinity, and somehow or other it would all end up at the Greek Schism. With Tibor, everything ended up at the Greek Schism.

“Tibor,” Gregor said. “You have Donna Moradanyan’s baby.”

“Lida is on her way over,” Tibor said. “She’s bringing some food and also Hannah. Then the baby will be changed and I will get something to eat.”

“I don’t hear the baby crying, Tibor.”

“The baby is not crying. The baby is spitting up over my shoulder onto my best collar. I had a diaper over my shoulder for it spit up on instead—Donna told me to do that—but the baby took the diaper off.”

They always did, Gregor thought. He remembered that from his nieces. He stood up and took his own jacket off. He had slept in it and it felt wrinkled and foul. Then he went over to the window and looked out at the rain.

“Tibor,” he said finally, “what are you doing with Donna Moradanyan’s baby?”

“I am taking care of it while Donna is out. Didn’t I tell you that?”

“No.”

“Krekor, I know you are very busy. I know you are on government business and—”

“I’m not on government business.”

“You should be proud to be on the business of the American government, Krekor. It makes its mistakes but it’s nothing like what I am used to. I know you don’t have very much time—”

“Tibor.”

“—but there is a problem.”

There, Gregor thought. There it was. A problem. His shirt felt as foul as his jacket had. His tie felt like a noose. He began to pace, holding the phone in his right hand while he undressed with his left. He hated problems on Cavanaugh Street. They frightened him. The idea that something irrevocably awful might happen to one of the people he knew there did more than that.

“All right,” he said. “Start from the beginning. Remember I don’t know anything.”

“I do not now that is true, Krekor. You may know more than I. Do you know that Bennis called Donna Moradanyan?”

“I didn’t know, but I suspected it. We have connecting rooms. I heard her talking to somebody through the wall, but I couldn’t make out the words.”

“Connecting rooms?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tibor.”

“I am never ridiculous,” Tibor said. “Lida Arkmanian, now, she is often ridiculous. I think it would be a good thing—”

“Don’t worry. I have no intention of announcing my present sleeping arrangements to Lida, no matter how innocent. I think you can count on Bennis for that, too.”

“Yes. Bennis is a very intelligent woman, Krekor, but she has enthusiasms. Donna is not such an intelligent woman but she also has enthusiasms. Do you know what they talked about last night?”