“I’ll bet he isn’t even in the phone book,” Liza said.
The phone book was on a little stand with the phone next to the couch in the living room. The living room and the dining room and the kitchen were really just one big room arranged in a U. Liza got the phone book out and looked up Demarkian, Gregor. There was a phone number there, but no address. She wondered why he had bothered to have his address left out. Everybody knew what his address was. It was in the papers all the time that he lived on Cavanaugh Street.
“I’m just being ridiculous,” Liza said out loud again. “He probably wouldn’t pay any attention to me. He probably has hundreds of people trying to give him information every day.”
She should stop talking to herself, Liza decided. She should have called Gregor Demarkian the other day, after she talked to Shirley at the hospital. It was just that she got to a phone, and then the whole thing seemed ridiculous, and then—
“Jerk,” Liza said.
She picked up the phone, punched in the number next to Gregor Demarkian’s name in the book, and listened to the ring. The next thing she knew, a tape machine was bleeding its message into her ear. She hated tape machines. She hung up on tape machines. She almost hung up on this one, but then she decided she shouldn’t.
“My name is Liza Verity,” Liza said into the phone after she heard the beep. Then she heard another beep and realized she was going to have to start again. She hated answering machines. She hated everything to do with answering machines. She even hated her own answering machine.
“My name is Liza Verity,” she said, starting again.
And then she crossed her fingers and told herself she wasn’t going to give up this time, no matter what, because this whole thing was beginning to get bizarre beyond belief.
SIX
1.
GREGOR FOUND THE MESSAGE on his answering machine when he came in after having dinner with Tibor, but it was so garbled, he couldn’t make out what it said. Gregor didn’t work well with answering machines, or machines of any kind. He could make the VCR go on the blink just by looking at it. In the Behavioral Science Department at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, everything had depended on computers, but he’d never used one. He’d found someone who was good with machines to do all that and bring him the raw data on long folding sheets of paper so that he could read it overnight and be ready for briefings in the morning. The man who had taken over from him when he retired was supposed to be very good with computers. It was one of the requirements the Bureau had made for any new person seeking the job. Gregor was sitting in his old neighborhood in Philadelphia, doing terrible things to a phone answering machine.
The one thing that did come through loud and clear was the name and address. Gregor wrote those down, listened to the tape again, and decided that the message had something to do with the case of Patsy MacLaren Willis. Everything in his life these days had something to do with the case of Patsy MacLaren Willis. Even Tibor had been talking about it, although that might have been a ploy to stay off the subject of Donna Moradanyan. Tibor was all ready to have a wedding, and this new business with Donna’s old friend Peter had thrown him off. Tibor certainly didn’t want to have a wedding for Donna and Peter. Tibor hadn’t liked Peter even in the days when Peter was living in Philadelphia and seeing Donna on a regular basis.
“In the old days, a priest would have hoped for the normalization of relations,” Tibor had said at dinner. “Donna and Peter have had a child together. Donna and Peter should recognize their responsibilities before God together. Donna and Peter should end up married. Now I think I would cut my own throat before I could officiate at the ceremony. Do you think he will come to Philadelphia himself to bother us?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said.
“You’ll have to do something about it if he does. We really can’t have him here, Krekor. It just isn’t right. Russell is such a very nice man.”
“I know Russell is a nice man.”
“And a lawyer, Krekor. It will be good for Donna. And for Tommy. What does Peter do for a living?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said again.
“I will bet anything that he is still in school. That boy is the kind to be in school forever. One degree here. One degree there. Never getting anywhere.”
“I thought you approved of education for education’s sake.”
“We are not talking here about education for education’s sake, Krekor. We are talking about a boy who does not want to grow up. We are talking here about a boy who does not know how to live outside a fraternity house, where nobody ever cleans.”