Bleeding Hearts(51)

It was Hannah Krekorian who was appalled. The Devorkian girls had said their hellos and gone charging across the living room to the table of food set up against the street-side window. They were well padded as it was, and determined to get more so. Hannah was staring over old George Tekemanian’s shoulder and looking shocked. Gregor thought she must just have seen the old ladies.

“Do you figure that bunch behind us are the Furies or the Fates?” Bennis was still whispering in his ear.

“Shhh,” Gregor said.

“They stare at me in church,” Bennis said. “In a group. In concert. They think I’m a scarlet woman. One of them stopped me on the street about six months ago and told me to be careful about you. Promising a man something you never get to the altar to deliver could unhinge his mind.”

“Good God,” Gregor murmured.

“Krekor!” Hannah Krekorian said, sounding worse than desperate. “How good of you to come. I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine. This is Paul Hazzard. Oh, and this is Bennis Hannaford. And George Tekemanian. And—and—” Hannah looked at Bob Cheswicki doubtfully.

Gregor said, “Robert Cheswicki. Bob. The friend I told you about.”

Hannah was so distracted by the old ladies, the information didn’t take. “Bob Cheswicki,” she repeated. Then she turned a little and said in the shrillest voice Gregor had ever heard her use, “Mrs. Manoukian! It’s such an honor! How delightful it is to see you!”

“I’ll bet,” Bennis said, whispering again.

Gregor poked her sharply in the ribs. Paul Hazzard had stepped back slightly and was looking them over. To be precise, he was looking at Gregor. It seemed Bennis had been right. Paul Hazzard hadn’t recognized Bob Cheswicki’s name. He hadn’t noticed much about Bennis Hannaford either, and that was unusual in Gregor’s experience. Old George Tekemanian might as well not have existed. Gregor didn’t think old George’s existence had even registered on Paul Hazzard’s brain. Nothing seemed to be registering on Paul Hazzard’s brain except what he was concentrating on, which was Gregor Demarkian. His concentration was making Gregor very uncomfortable.

“Maybe I should do something to break the spell,” Bennis said. Whispering again. “Maybe I should go up and ask him if he killed his wife.”

“Behave yourself,” Gregor told her.

“I’m going to do nothing of the kind.”

“Come with me,” old George Tekemanian urged her. “There is rum punch. I heard Linda Melajian tell Mary Ohanian this morning.”

Gregor thought Paul Hazzard looked as if he could use some rum punch. Paul had pulled very far back from his original place next to Hannah Krekorian. Somehow he had pulled them with him, so that they were now standing well away from the door and Hannah’s problems with the old ladies. It was a neat trick. Gregor wondered if Hazzard had done it on purpose. If he had, he was a force to be reckoned with.

“Gregor Demarkian.” Paul Hazzard had that odd sort of deliberately, inflected voice Gregor thought of as “TV anchorperson.” He cocked his head. “Gregor Demarkian,” he said again. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“If you read it in the paper,” Gregor told him, “it was probably inaccurate.”

“Very likely,” Paul agreed genially. “But you are something in the way of being a famous man. Especially in the Philadelphia area.”

“That’s interesting,” Gregor said. He meant that the tactic was interesting. He’d used it himself on one or two occasions, but always with psychopaths and street killers—the kind of people who were usually not well-educated enough to know what he was doing. He wondered how Paul Hazzard would go on with it. There should be an attempt to outline the purported difference, to make Gregor look local (and therefore bush league) while Paul himself was made to seem more cosmopolitan in scope. In Gregor’s case that was, of course, difficult to do if you stuck with the facts. The point of a manipulation like this is that facts had nothing to do with it. It was how you made your opponent feel that was the thing.

“I’m always very interested in anything that’s going on in Philadelphia,” Paul Hazzard said. “I’m afraid I don’t always manage it. I’m in New York so much, I find it very difficult to keep up with the news.”

“I never liked New York as a city,” Gregor replied. “Of course, I never liked Washington either, and I spent a great deal of my time there.”

“That’s right.” Paul Hazzard nodded his silky gray head. “You retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I could never retire. I could never stand the way it would limit my scope.”