Conspiracy Theory(106)

“That’s why it’s good to know an honest policeman,” Lucinda said. “Too bad they’re not all like you.”

Gregor cocked an eyebrow. Jackman shrugged. “Some of the men on the force have been known to, ah—”

“You know you’ve got men on your force who are visiting child prostitutes?” Gregor said.

“No,” John Jackman said sourly. “Once I know who they are, I find a way to get rid of them. But I know there are always some. Christ, Gregor. How do you think that strip keeps operating?”

Lucinda Watkins had retreated into Adelphos House’s front hallway and left the door open. John Jackman followed her and Gregor followed John Jackman. Inside, the ceilings were high, but the house itself was not impressive, and never had been. This had not started out as a fashionable neighborhood, the way so many poor neighborhoods did. The people who had lived here had not always been poor, but they had never been the kind of people to go regularly to the opera or the art museums. If Gregor had had to peg it, he’d have said turn-of-the-century and mostly in the possession of Catholic immigrants, Italians and Poles. There was a discolored place on the wall of the front hallway in the shape of a cross. Gregor had no problem imagining a crucifix hanging there, with a shallow cup of holy water underneath it.

Lucinda scuttled behind him and shut the door. “I’ll go get Annie. She’s having a nap. She’s up all night with that stuff, and then she’s up early in the morning. It’s insane. She runs herself down. She gets a dozen colds every winter. And she won’t let anybody help.”

“I thought you were getting some volunteers,” John Jackman said.

“Oh, she’ll let people help with that sort of thing,” Lucinda said. “It’s the trawling the strip I’m talking about. She’s out there every night, rain or shine, it doesn’t matter what the weather is. She won’t let me go because she says I’ll be too conspicuous. I am very conspicuous, I know that. I know what I look like when I look in the mirror. Last time I had a physical, I weighed three hundred pounds. But still. I’m fast. You’ve got to admit I’m fast. And nobody would pay any attention to me out there. Nobody ever pays attention to middle-aged fat women. They pay attention to her.”

A door along the hallway popped open, and a young woman dressed in jeans and a heavy cotton sweater came out. Lucinda looked up and smiled.

“Melissa,” she said. She turned to Gregor and John Jackman. “This is Melissa Polk, one of our volunteers from Bryn Mawr College. Bryn Mawr provides us with a lot of valuable help during the school year. Melissa, listen, this is Mr. Jackman and Mr. Demarkian. Mr. Jackman is the commissioner of police. Mr. Demarkian—”

“Is the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot,” Melissa said politely.

Gregor winced. Lucinda ignored it. “Would you mind running up and telling Annie they’re here?” she said. “She’s lying down for a while. I’ll take them in to the living room.”

“No problem,” Melissa said.

Lucinda began shooing them toward a door. Gregor had forgotten how houses used to have all their rooms walled off from all the others, with doors that shut. He allowed himself to be pushed through this door into the smallish living room. He walked over to the bay window and looked out on the abandoned street.

“I’m surprised nobody’s ever broken this,” he said. “I’d think it would be the perfect target for a certain sort of person in a certain kind of mood.”

“What sort of person in what sort of mood?” Lucinda Watkins said. “There isn’t much of anybody on this street anymore. What little population there is is junkies, bad junkies, the nearly dead ones. They can’t work up the energy to throw rocks, not even when they’re out of dope. They just collapse.”

“Somebody broke the other windows,” Gregor pointed out.

“Years ago,” Lucinda said. “When this neighborhood was disintegrating, but before it actually died. When you had buildings full of angry young men with nowhere to go. You’ve got to wonder why they threw rocks at the houses in their own neighborhoods. If I was in their position, I’d go out to Society Hill or Chestnut Hill or the Main Line—”

“It’s not so easy to get out to those houses on the Main Line,” John Jack-man pointed out.

“There are trains,” Lucinda said. “There are cars to steal. It wouldn’t take so much. I’ve driven out there myself a few times. It’s not that complicated. You have to wonder—”

“What?” Gregor said.