“Who?” Frank said.
“Tony Ross’s sister,” Gregor said. “She runs an outreach program for young prostitutes in central Philadelphia—”
“I know her.” Marty straightened up. “Annie Wyler. She’s famous. Especially with cops. She keeps trying to get them to arrest the johns, and you know they’re not going to do that in Philadelphia, not when the john’s in a Lexus or a Mercedes. She takes pictures and sends them to the newspapers. Sometimes they get printed in one of those alternative press things. She’s Tony Ross’s sister?”
“She is,” Gregor said. “It might be a good idea to check into her background too. If she has any money of her own. If she needs any. What her relationship with her brother and sister-in-law was. Ask the same questions about David Alden back there, especially about his relationship with his boss. Was he secure in his job? Had something happened recently that might make it likely that he’d get fired? Has there ever been any hint of embezzlement, or recklessness? Look into both of the Rosses’ close personal friends. Find out if any of them are in the will. Find out if any of them have money problems. Find out if any of them had reason to think that the death of one or both of these people would be an advantage to them. Most of the time, it comes down to money.”
“Yeah.” Frank looked relieved. “I can handle money. I understand money. This other stuff—” His body shook and he looked away. “I don’t like nuts,” he said. “They’re wild cards. They’re too unpredictable. You can’t get inside their heads.”
Gregor grunted, which might have been agreement, or might not have. On one level, he didn’t think the nuts were hard to understand at all. They were like a record with only one song on it. The song played over and over again. There was no room for deviation. The problem was that the song didn’t follow any of the accepted rules of composition, so that if you didn’t know what was coming next, you couldn’t necessarily figure it out. Still, there was this about nuts—they were relentlessly, unswervingly logical. A was followed by B was followed by C. Neither emotion nor self-interest was allowed to interfere. Unfortunately, reason wasn’t allowed to interfere either. A could be that Martians were kidnapping eggplants from farmers’ gardens from one end of the country to the other—and that was the one thing they would not question, and that they would not allow you to question, either.
It was too cold to be standing outside like this. The wind was too harsh. Gregor snapped up the collar of his coat and put his hands in his pockets.
He wanted to make copies of all the Harridan newsletters and read them in as close to chronological order as he could get them. He wanted to do that tonight.
TWO
1
There were police everywhere. Kathi Mittendorf had seen them, or the traces of them, tucked out of sight in the bushes that marked the edge of the little park at the end of the street, slipping into bathrooms in the small branch of the public library where she went to get her romance books. She had been very careful, since the death of Anthony van Wyck Ross, not to look too dedicated to the cause of America on Alert. She knew the way the Illuminati could make the sanest, most ordinary citizen look like a “fanatic.” She was even a little proud of herself. She had always wondered what would happen to her if the Illuminati began to put the pressure on. She hadn’t really imagined that she would ever be important enough for them to bother with. America on Alert was dangerous to the Illuminati and their plans for a One World Government. Michael was dangerous to them. Kathi saw herself as a foot soldier for the movement, one of those absolutely necessary people who filled the ranks behind the leaders who knew what the score was and how to negotiate it. Her newfound importance had come on her very suddenly. It was the result of a combination of factors, no one of them individually significant: that she lived in the house where they stored the weapons; that she was the one who had picked up the phone when Michael needed to talk; that she had been the only one to be really friendly with Steve. Things came together and you used them. You used every advantage you could find. They were few and far between. Kathi didn’t care that she was an accident. Sometimes she found herself stopping in the middle of the day, caught and startled by the way her life had changed, and it was almost like being drunk—almost, because Kathi didn’t get drunk. She’d tried it once back in high school and ended up sick and embarrassed in the back of somebody’s pickup truck. She wondered what would happen to her now that she had become the focal point of an entire operation. She did not expect to live through it, or to become somebody like Michael. She couldn’t see herself as a seasoned leader with a history of operations to her credit. What she hoped for, in the long run, was what Timothy McVeigh had accomplished—not the bombing, but the martyrdom. She’d be smarter about it than McVeigh had been, though. She wouldn’t keep her mouth shut. She’d talk to every reporter who asked for an interview. She’d tell them everything she knew about the Illuminati, and the way the world’s secret power elite was manipulating events behind the scenes to destroy the freedoms Americans had won for themselves in the Constitution and to bring the American government and the American people under the control of the United Nations. She’d tell them the truth about Timothy McVeigh and the World Trade Center bombing. She’d expose the CIA and the Bildebergers and the Trilateral Commission and the Rhodes Scholarship program and the way they were all run by the same people and working together to accomplish the same thing. It didn’t matter that not many people would believe her, some would. It didn’t matter that the press would make her sound like a psychiatric case, the way they had with David Koresh and Randy Weaver. There were people out there who didn’t know the truth but expected it. There were other people who only knew that things were terribly wrong and they were terribly unhappy. Those people would hear her in a way the brainwashed people wouldn’t. That was the way it worked. When the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms destroyed Koresh and the Branch Davidians, and the footage was played on television for the world to see, some people began to realize that it was not paranoid to believe that America was run by a secret government that hated the Bill of Rights. It was only sensible. When the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms killed Randy Weaver’s wife and son with high-powered rifles because the Weavers wouldn’t let the evil agents of the illegitimate secret government onto their private land, some people began to wonder if the things they’d heard about the FBI—those un-corruptable agents of law and order—were nothing but propaganda. What kind of a government engaged in propagandizing its own citizens? It was like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. Until you’d fit at least some of the pieces together, it made no sense at all. Kathi had seen the puzzle almost complete. That was what Michael Harridan had done for her, and she would never be able to thank him enough.