“Except that, just like us, he’s concerned with America on Alert. Everybody is concerned with America on Alert. Have you noticed that? And that idiotic newsletter is everywhere.”
“That idiotic newsletter has been everywhere for months,” John said. “You haven’t noticed it because it’s not the kind of thing you notice, but those things have been floating around forever. And there’s a Web site too, that’s been up for a while. And some of the guys who say the same things have been at it for years. David Icke. A-albionics. In spite of all the hysteria these groups put out about storm troopers and black helicopters, we don’t usually pay much attention to them unless they shoot somebody, and most of them don’t.”
“I’d have noticed if somebody stuck one of those things in my mailbox,” Gregor said, “or if Tibor had them piled up in his apartment. I do pay some attention to my environment. My point isn’t that The Harridan Report hasn’t been around for a while, only that it’s suddenly become far more intrusive into the lives of people who aren’t exactly its target audience. Charlotte Ross had an issue of it in the room she was sitting in right before she went out on the walk and died—and then there’s that. Why did she go out on the walk?”
“I don’t know,” John said. “It’s not my case, remember?”
The food was arriving. The waiter put a large plate of something that looked like fish buried under grapes in front of John Jackman. Gregor seemed to be staring at a gigantic beef rose on a celery stalk. The waiter murmured anxious wishes for their satisfaction, half in French, and then disappeared.
“You’re a sensible man,” Gregor said. “I really don’t understand your attraction for this sort of thing.”
“Maybe it’s scar tissue from a legacy of discrimination and oppression. Maybe, deep down, I need to go to all those places that wouldn’t have served a black man at lunch even if he had a million dollars. Maybe—”
“Can it,” Gregor said.
“The fact remains,” John said, “that it really isn’t my case. There’s nothing I can do about the death of Charlotte Ross. There’s nothing I can do about the death of Tony Ross, either. I can probably get you information, if you think the Lower Merion police are holding out on you, but that’s about as good as it’s going to get.”
“Could you do something else? Could you follow through on that idea of yours and get one of your people to get a good picture of Kathi Mittendorf that we could show to Krystof Andrechev?”
John looked surprised. “Sure. Do you think that’s the explanation for that? I’ve got to tell you that our people are inclined to believe that there was no mysterious woman with a gun, that Andrechev—”
“Is somehow involved with the bombing of the church,” Gregor said. “Yes, I know. And it’s a sensible first impression. But there was no need for Andrechev to come to me with that story. There was no need for him to do anything but sit tight and keep his mouth shut. We might never have noticed him.”
“We would have noticed him eventually,” John said. “The investigators on that case have interviewed most of that neighborhood already. They’ll get to everybody before they’re done.”
“Did they check out the gun?”
“They’re working on it.”
“My guess is that they won’t find anything on it. It’ll be completely clean. New. Never used for anything. Which brings us to the question of why Kathi Mittendorf went all the hell way across town—way, way across—to deliver it to Krystof Andrechev.”
“You’re that sure it was Mittendorf?”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “The description fits. And, I don’t know how to put it, it sort of fits the kind of thing I’d expect her to do, under the right circumstances.”
“What are the right circumstances?”
“Michael Harridan telling her to,” Gregor said.
“Why would he tell her to?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said.
“Look,” John said. “This scenario has the same problems as the one where she just shows up and gives him the gun. There’s no reason why. Especially if the gun is clean. If the gun had been used in a crime, we could say she was trying to ditch a piece of material evidence. But as it is, there’s no reason at all—”
“Don’t you wonder what would have happened if Krystof Andrechev had actually said something?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Gregor said, “they’re all hyperpatriots, aren’t they? America on Alert and all its members. And Andrechev is a Russian. He’s ashamed of his English, so he doesn’t talk much, and he was listening to this woman give him a lecture on how evil foreigners were, so he didn’t talk at all while she was in his store, but—and it’s not a small thing—if he had said something, she would have known immediately that he was an immigrant, and given his accent, she’d have had a fair chance of knowing he was Russian. Maybe she would have taken the gun away without giving it to him.”