Tibor had not seen the papers, and he had not watched the television news, and he found that he didn’t really care. There was another murder out in Bryn Mawr. The church was a mess. His letters were not only old but written with cheap Soviet-manufactured ink, so that the words on them had faded almost to invisibility.
Somehow, this morning had not accomplished what he wanted it to.
THREE
1
Gregor Demarkian had always wondered if John Jackman minded eating at the Ararat, when he was almost always the only African-American there, but if he did he’d never said, and the Ararat certainly seemed to like him. By the time Tibor came in, John was sitting happily in front of a gigantic platter of scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, bacon, and hash browns, as well as coffee and orange juice. Even Gregor didn’t have the guts to eat that way in front of Bennis, who was prone to delivering lectures on short-term increases in blood cholesterol and long-term risk factors for heart disease. Of course, unlike other men entering middle age, John didn’t seem to be thickening in the waist, or anyplace else. He was still a tall, thin, aristocratic man, except for the skin color more WASP-looking than most of the WASPs who lived in the great houses on the Main Line where he had started his career. When Bennis was in one of her better moods, she liked to point out that John might be more of a WASP than some of those people, considering the penchant of husbands for keeping mistresses of any color and of wives for having something on the side with the help. Gregor never knew whether to take her seriously.
By the time Tibor came in, John had pushed all their plates aside to write on a large sheet of scrap paper, actually the back of one of those flyers advertising car washes that appeared on the streets from time to time with no known provenance. The paper was already a mess, full of circles and lines and arrows. It all meant something to John, but no matter how often he tried to explain it, it did not make that much sense to Gregor. Tibor saw them at the table and hesitated. John looked up and saw Tibor there and waved him over.
“Father, Father,” he said, standing up in the way he had been taught to stand up when priests entered the room by the nuns in his very strict Catholic elementary school. “It’s good to see you back. I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I am feeling all right,” Tibor said. Gregor made room for him on the bench. Tibor slid in and shrugged off his coat. “I was never sick. I was only—” He threw his hands in the air.
“In the hospital for observation.” John sat down. “Yes, I know. Code for enough money to stay for a while because somebody is worried about you. Still. You got a good slam in the shoulder, if I remember. It couldn’t have hurt to have a few days rest.”
Tibor looked down at his hands, and then away. Gregor felt himself getting nervous. “Well,” he said. “John was explaining to me the intricacies of conspiracy organizations in the city of Philadelphia.”
“Not just in Philadelphia,” John said. “They’re all over the place. And if you go overseas, you get versions of them with twists. There are Islamic ones. America is the great Satan. There are African ones. There are Russian ones. There aren’t too many Western European ones. Maybe their educational systems are as good as they’re supposed to be.”
Linda Melajian came over and put a coffee cup in front of Tibor. Then she filled it with coffee. Gregor thanked her. Tibor seemed to be a little distracted.
“So,” Gregor said. “We’ve been going over the state of the investigation of who blew up the church.”
“Yes,” Tibor said. “I know. And Bennis says Mr. Jackman comes every morning before work, and you discuss this. It is progress that is being made?”
“Gregor showed me that letter you got,” John said. “I’ll turn it over to the investigating officers when I get in. I wish things fit together the way they should. Did Gregor tell you that a man came to him last night with a story about having been given a gun?”
“A little, yes,” Tibor said. “Late last night, when he got in. Very late.”
“I saw the light in your window when I came home,” Gregor said. “I was worried.”
“Let’s try to make sense of this,” John said. “Of course, it’s way too early to tell. We’re going to have to do checks from one end of the city to the other, and we’re going to do more than that. The detectives don’t like it, but even they’ve had to agree with me after this. We’ve called in the FBI for help.”
“Not every special agent is like Walker Canfield. In fact, most of them aren’t. If they were, the country would collapse.” Gregor shook his head.