Act of Darkness(62)

“No.”

“Unfortunately, Krekor, neither do I. I think it might be the best thing if we found out. I think they are possibly up to something.”

“They’re always up to something.”

“I mean something in particular,” Tibor said. “Do you want to hear what has been happening here this morning?”

“Yes,” Gregor said.

“Good. First, it is seven o’clock. I am asleep on my couch, because I have fallen asleep there in the middle of the night, because I was reading a book. Also, I have had a lot of work lately and I don’t think I’ve been sleeping as much as I should.”

“You never do.”

“It does not matter, Krekor. It is seven o’clock, and I am asleep on the couch, and the bell rings at my door. I get up and answer it, and there is Donna Moradanyan, with the baby.”

“Fine,” Gregor said.

“Donna comes in and asks me if she can leave the baby with me, she has to go out. I say it is too early to go out. She says she knows, but she is too excited to rest, she thinks she will walk. This is a very bad idea, I tell her because beyond this neighborhood there are some very bad places. What will happen to the baby if something happens to her? I used guilt, Krekor.”

“Good idea.”

“Yes. Anyway, she decides to wait, and while she is waiting she stays with me. For a while she talks about nothing, shows me how to change a diaper—I listened, Krekor, but I could not remember—but then after a while she starts to say some very strange things. Do I think people can have sex in their sleep? Do I believe in temporary insanity? Do I think sex can take place—it was like this, Krekor. You see what I mean?”

“They always talk like that.”

“This was different. Donna, she started to ask me a lot of questions about you.”

“About me? About me and sex?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean, ‘not exactly’?”

“It was about you and friendship, Krekor. But she asked about lying, too. If you would think not being told something you should know was the same as being lied to.”

Gregor had his tie and shirt both off and was working at his belt. He had the door to his closet open so that he could see his clean clothes. He stopped everything. “Sex,” he said meditatively.

“I can’t talk about sex any more today, Krekor. Do you know somebody named Darissa Stapleton?”

Gregor winced. Given the turn the conversation had taken, he should have expected Darissa Stapleton. “She was a woman who killed her husband in 1974. In Yellowstone National Park. Except nobody knew he was her husband.”

There was a pause on Tibor’s end and then, “Donna asked me to find a clipping for her. In my file.”

Gregor knew all about Tibor’s “file.”

Tibor coughed. “It didn’t say you had investigated the case, Krekor.”

“I didn’t,” Gregor said. “Darissa Stapleton was a friend of Elizabeth’s. She didn’t tell Elizabeth the man was her husband, either.”

There was another pause on Tibor’s end of the line, another cough, then a sound Gregor thought was probably Tibor’s version of “tsk, tsk, tsk.”

“Krekor,” he said, “I think you know what is going on here.”

“I think I do, yes.”

“I think you are not going to tell me what it is.”

“It’s not mine to tell. Don’t worry about it, Tibor. Donna and Bennis have the wind up over nothing.”

“Over nothing, Donna doesn’t go walking around Philadelphia on no sleep and leave the baby with me. If you’re not going to behave like a Christian, Krekor, I think I am going to hang up the phone.”

“I don’t know that I am a Christian. And don’t hang up the phone.”

“Why not?”

“I need you to look something up for me. Do you have a PDR? A Physician’s Desk Reference?”

“I have one three years old. What—”

“Never mind what, Tibor. Just do me a favor. Go look up curare for me.”

This time the silence, as someone had once said, was deafening. Gregor had a vision of Tibor in his book-crammed living room, mentally confining his best friend Gregor Demarkian to an asylum for the hopelessly insane.

“Fah,” Tibor said. “You are all crazy. You and Bennis and Donna and that Carl Bettinger person, who calls me up twice in one day to find out where you are, when he already knows.”

“Carl Bettinger?” Gregor said.

“Never mind, Krekor. I go now to find out all about curare. After that, you and I will make some blow darts and go to the Amazon.”