Deadly Beloved(88)
“Not a thing,” old George said. “My grandson Martin has brought me some videotapes. He thinks I will be shocked by them.”
“And are you?”
“No. I am embarrassed by the ones with the sex scenes, Krekor, but Martin doesn’t bring those anymore. I like this one. Did you know Peter Desarian wants Donna to give up Russ and marry him instead?”
“I know. You know. People magazine probably knows by now.”
“It is a very delicate situation, Krekor. I try to talk to Donna about it, but I can tell she isn’t listening. She thinks I am nothing but an old fart.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
“Of course she’s right,” old George said. “I’ve been an old fart for years. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to say worth listening to. Especially about conceited little boys like Peter Desarian.”
“I’ll get you a box of Ring-Dings,” Gregor said. “You can put a bow on them and give them to Martin and Angela for a present.”
“If I gave Angela Ring-Dings, she would put wheat germ on them,” old George said. “Take care of yourself, Krekor. You’re looking very tired these days.”
Gregor left old George sitting in the wing chair and went through the main foyer and out the building onto Cavanaugh Street. The sun was hot and bright even this early in the morning. The sidewalks were wet with the residue of a late night rain. Gregor walked out into the street and raised his hand to hail a taxi.
3.
Twenty minutes later Gregor Demarkian found himself counting out change on a street corner that looked less like the setting for an apartment building than like the sort of place where factories used to be back when big cities had factories. It was a blank, grimy neighborhood that had been going to seed for so long, it had nearly sprouted. It had none of the usual conveniences of city life. There were no dry cleaners or Chinese laundries—maybe they were Korean laundries these days. There were no delis or coffee shops. There were no newsstands. The only way Gregor knew that he was in the right place was that the building just in front of him had a sign that said BEAUDELIEU ARMS APARTMENTS. The building looked like it might be the perfect place to make hubcaps or sun reflectors. God only knew, it didn’t have enough windows to qualify as housing.
Gregor saw several people on the street, none of them reassuring figures. There was a classic wino complete with ragged clothes and clear glass bottle in a brown paper bag. There was a young girl nodding out in a doorway, her eyes blank and her mouth slack. From the sateen short shorts she was wearing, Gregor assumed she was meant to be hooking, but somewhere along the way she had scored some dope, and now she didn’t have the energy. There was a bag lady rooting around in the garbage too, but the garbage wasn’t promising. It consisted of newspapers and empty bottles. The glass bottles were broken and the plastic ones were punctured. The bag lady was talking to herself in a language that was not English and not anything Gregor recognized either. It sounded vaguely Slavic.
Gregor went up to the front door of the Beaudelieu Arms and pulled on the handle. Nothing happened. He saw a buzzer next to the door and pressed it. Nothing happened then either. There didn’t seem to be any other way to get in. He pressed the buzzer again. The day was heating up. Gregor could feel a faint line of sweat along his collar. He had a terrible feeling that the Beaudelieu Arms did not have central air-conditioning.
Gregor pushed the buzzer again. Nothing happened again. He pushed the buzzer one more time, leaning against it long and hard this time. He could hear the sound of it going off inside, the angry whine. He stepped away from the door and tried to see through the tiny window in the top half of it.
What seemed like an eternity later, there were sounds of shuffling and cursing inside the building. Gregor tried the grimy window again and got nothing. The door shuddered under his hand and he stepped back. Then the door swung in, open to blackness, and a man appeared who looked every bit as derelict as the wino Gregor had just decided was much too out of it to talk to.
Gregor cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m looking for a Ms. Liza Verity?”
The man shifted from one foot to the other, blank. Everything about him was blank. Even his clothes were blank.
“Liza Verity,” Gregor repeated. “I believe she lives here. I would like to speak to her, please.”
He might as well have been talking to Hal the Computer—except that it was worse, because Hal the Computer would at least have registered the fact that he was saying something. This man registered nothing. Gregor wondered if he was deaf, or if it was just that he didn’t speak English or had had so much to drink or smoke that he didn’t speak anything. Did he really want to look for explanations in a situation like this?