Conspiracy Theory(104)

“And?”

“I don’t know,” Gregor said.

John threw his fork into his plate. “You’re impossible this afternoon, do you know that? Look, you’ve got a problem on the home front. Somebody blew up your church. We’re going at it in the way most likely to find the perpetrators, and the chances are that the bombing has nothing at all to do with what was going on out in Bryn Mawr. Is going on, I should say, since people seem to still be falling like flies. But it just doesn’t make sense to put them together the way you’re doing. What happened out in Bryn Mawr has all the characteristics of a professional job, and you know it. Professional-grade marksmanship, for one thing. Carried out under conditions of tight security—”

Gregor straightened up a little. “Maybe not,” he said.

“What? You told me yourself—”

“Yes, I know, but—” Gregor said. “Sometimes I think we’ve all read too many Tom Clancy novels.”

“I’ve never read a Tom Clancy novel in my life.”

“Seen too many Harrison Ford movies, then,” Gregor said. “Never mind. Did you clear your afternoon the way I asked you to? I want to get out of here.”

“Technically,” John said, “I shouldn’t be going anywhere. I live behind a desk now, and a big desk. So—”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Fine,” Gregor said. “The best instructor I ever had at Quantico used to tell us, nonstop, that the worst enemy we had was the things we thought we knew. And it’s true. Let’s go.”

“I haven’t finished my lunch.”

“That isn’t lunch,” Gregor said. “That’s performance art.”

“Well, it’s performance art made with Dover sole, and I’m fond of it.”





3


By now, Gregor Demarkian had heard so much about Adelphos House—from Father Tibor, from John Jackman, from the newspaper articles Bennis and Donna had taken to leaving for him after the church decided to provide volunteers for Anne Ross Wyler’s project—that he thought of himself as having already been there. As soon as they turned onto the six-block stretch of street that Adelphos House called home, he knew it wasn’t true. There was nothing unusual in the fact of neighborhoods changing quickly in Philadelphia. Turn a corner, and you might go from ethnic Italian to upscale shopping to African-American to something very much like a strip mall. What surprised him was the utter and unrelieved devastation of this place. This was not a rundown street in a city with too many of them. This was not the kind of area urban renewal claimed. This was a burned-out hulk. Better than two-thirds of the buildings he saw were abandoned. Windows were gaping holes without glass. What glass there was was on the streets. The buildings that were inhabited had boards put up over theirs, almost as if they feared that disappearing win-dowpanes were a communicable disease. Bricks were everywhere, along the sidewalks, even in the street. It was a good thing they had John Jackman’s driver to take them where they wanted to go. Gregor didn’t think there was a cab driver in Philadelphia who would be willing to come here, even in broad daylight. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like after dark. The vision he got was from one of those old Twilight Zone episodes that were supposed to take place after a nuclear holocaust. Whatever would hunt you here might not be human. Gregor could see no signs of humans. The abandoned buildings gave every indication of being empty. There were no homeless people pushing carts of clothes and debris along the blocks. There were no empty soda cans or bottles in the gutters. There were no bus shelters. There were no stores. There weren’t even any television antennae. Gregor supposed that these days everybody who had television had cable, but lots of buildings in other parts of the city had antennae on their roofs left over from the days when cable hadn’t yet been heard of, and he didn’t think it was likely that the cable people would be willing to come out here to hook somebody up, even if their agreement with the city said they had to.

“Tell me Adelphos House isn’t really on this street,” Gregor said. “Tell me we’re just driving through on our way to someplace more sane.”

“Nobody drives through this neighborhood,” John Jackman said. “Except the cops. And they’re armed. I wouldn’t come out here myself at night without backup.”

“Well, now I understand something Annie Wyler told me. She said they had two cars at Adelphos House because they had to have cars. I remember thinking at the time that it was a typical rich-girl attitude. Nobody in Philadelphia has to have a car. There’s always public transportation.”