PAUL HAZZARD FOUND DEAD
which was at least to the point. Unfortunately, the picture under the headline was not of Paul Hazzard but of Gregor coming out of the building where Hannah Krekorian had her apartment. Gregor supposed there was a picture of Paul Hazzard somewhere inside the paper. The subhead didn’t bode well either. It said
CHIEF SUSPECT IS CLOSE FRIEND OF GREGOR DEMARKIAN
as if the paper knew something neither he nor the police did. Surely Hannah was only half the chief suspect list? Surely Candida DeWitt was on it too.
Gregor got some change out of his pocket, fed it into the metal newspaper-dispensing machine, and pulled out a paper. He was standing at the corner of Calumet and Trell, half a block south of the bus stop. It was quarter after eight in the morning and he was bitterly cold. He should have taken a cab out from Cavanaugh Street, or waited until later in the day. The world wouldn’t have fallen moribund and dead if he’d had his usual breakfast at the Ararat. The case wouldn’t have solved itself either. He hadn’t been able to face it. Linda Melajian and all the Melajians connected to her, Father Tibor, old George Tekemanian, maybe even Bennis—what would he have said? What could he have said? It was much too early to assure them that everything was going to be all right.
Bob Cheswicki had asked Gregor to meet him at the police station—“first thing in the morning,” which to Bob could mean anywhere between six and nine—on Calumet. It was close enough to Cavanaugh Street so that Gregor might have walked if it had been less cold and less dark. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. He shook his head. Cavanaugh Street was such a model of urban renewal, Gregor sometimes forgot that so much of the rest of Philadelphia looked like this.
The garbage piled up in plastic bags in front of the stoops looked frozen into place. The young man standing in the doorway of the building half a block up looked furtive and faintly dangerous. Gregor wished the sun would come out. Instead, just at that moment he felt a tinge of wetness against his face, the hint of another bout of rain or snow or hail. The streets were full of slush and his feet were wet.
Gregor took one last look at the paper—“Demarkian emerges from murder scene” the caption to the front-page photograph said—and went up the street to the station. As he passed the building where the furtive young man was hiding, the young man seemed to melt into the concrete and stone. Gregor let himself into the station and got a small shock. It was an ordinary police station in many ways. It had a large waiting room with benches in the front. It had a large area of cluttered desks in the back. The two sections were divided by a long wooden counter where a fat police sergeant sat. There were a couple of pay phones on the wall directly opposite the counter. There were a set of doors in one wall of the desk section, marked LOCK-UP, UPSTAIRS, RECORDS, AND REST ROOMS. Gregor didn’t want to ask why the rest rooms were in a place unavailable to the general public. What really worried him was the bulletproof glass. It was everywhere. It made a wall between the desk section and the one with the benches in it, rising from the countertop in a thick sheet no one could hear through. In order to talk to the desk sergeant, you had to use a microphone system like the ones they used in prisons. Bulletproof plastic, not glass, Gregor realized, looking at it more closely. What it reminded him of was numbers joints in downtown Washington, D.C. Things had gotten so bad, even the mob didn’t feel safe. Gregor looked over the benches, which were empty. Maybe it was just too cold for any serious criminality on the streets of Philadelphia today. Gregor had been in rooms like this before. They were usually packed with people, no matter what hour of the day or night.
Gregor went up to the bulletproof wall. A sign above what looked like a telephone handset said PRESS BUZZER FOR ASSISTANCE. Gregor put the receiver to his ear and pressed the buzzer.
On the other side of the counter, the sergeant, an older African American man with white hair and large shoulders, looked up from the paper he was reading. When he saw Gregor, he came to the counter and picked up his half of the speaking mechanism. It really was just like a prison, Gregor thought. It would make him insane to have to work there.
“Yes?” the sergeant said.
“Gregor Demarkian for Bob Cheswicki.”
“Entrance to your right. When you hear the buzzer, push hard, come in. Be quick.”
With all the rest of the security around this place, Gregor would have expected the sergeant to ask for his identification. Gregor wondered if the sergeant hadn’t asked because Gregor was expected or because the sergeant didn’t expect trouble from a middle-aged white man in a good wool coat. If the latter was the case, Gregor could have told the sergeant a thing or two. John Wayne Gacy was a middle-aged white man in a good wool coat. John Wayne Gacy had killed God only knew how many people.