Dear Old Dead(19)

“That’s Catholic, that bit about St. Joseph the Foster Father,” Gregor told Bennis Hannaford as he threw balled pairs of black socks into his suitcase. “And it’s all my fault, too. I had that little booklet Sister Scholastica gave me after the mess in Maryville and I gave it to Sheila Kashinian. That was all it took.”

“It never takes much of anything with Sheila Kashinian,” Bennis said.

Bennis Hannaford was sitting cross-legged on Gregor’s bedspread, looking curiously into his suitcase without offering to help. She had an ashtray in her lap and one of her standard Benson & Hedges Menthols in her right hand. Her thick black hair was pinned to the top of her head with scrunched-looking amber metal things that looked ready to fall to the floor. Gregor knew she had to be nearly forty, but she didn’t look it. Bennis had the second-floor floor-through apartment in this building. Gregor often felt sandwiched between her and Donna Moradanyan, cream cheese filling between slices of date nut bread. Any minute now, somebody was going to come along and squash him flat.

Socks, ties, shirts folded around cardboard from the laundry: Gregor had no idea how to pack a suitcase. When his wife, Elizabeth, had been alive, Elizabeth had packed his suitcases for him. When Elizabeth hadn’t been around to help, he had usually had an assistant. That was all gone now, of course. For the twenty long years of his professional life, Gregor Demarkian had been an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For the last ten of those years, he had been the founding head of the Behavioral Sciences Department, the arm of the Bureau that helped track the interstate progress of serial killers. That had amounted to being an Important Personage, as government bureaucrats go. That had meant getting his name in Time and Newsweek and being asked to explain the interior motivations of psychopaths on network television. It was odd, Gregor thought. Since he’d left the Bureau, he’d become much more famous than he’d ever been while he was in it. He spent much more of his time seeing his picture in magazines and being asked to show up for talk shows and generally being hounded by the press. He still couldn’t get anyone to pack for him. It was as if packing were the worst job on earth, worse than cleaning toilets. He had a cleaning lady who came in and cleaned his toilet every week. Either that, or the people on Cavanaugh Street didn’t like to see him go away.

Bennis dropped her cigarette butt in the ashtray, got another cigarette from her pack, and lit up again.

“So how long do you expect to be gone?” she asked. “I’ve promised Donna a dozen times that you’ll be back before the twentieth, but I was making it up. For all I know you’re going to be away for months.”

“I take it the twentieth is Father’s Day.”

“That’s right.”

“Unfortunately, I should be back home in plenty of time. This isn’t a major project, Bennis. It isn’t even a case. The New York City Police Department is neither willing nor able to be helped by me.”

“Some people would say the New York City Police Department is neither willing nor able to be helped by anybody.”

“I’m not even going to consult with the police department,” Gregor went on, ignoring her. “It’s the Archbishop I’m supposed to see. It’s the church I’m dealing with.”

“The Cardinal Archbishop of New York called the Cardinal Archbishop of Colchester. The Cardinal Archbishop of Colchester called his friend Father Tibor Kasparian. Father Tibor Kasparian called you.”

“Something like that.”

“Father Tibor isn’t Catholic, either. This is always the explanation you give me when these people get hold of you, Gregor. It never makes any sense to me.”

“You come along when you’re asked.”

“That’s different.”

Gregor’s two pairs of casual slacks were hanging folded over the bottom bars of wooden hangers suspended from the top of his bedroom door. He got them down and tossed them into the suitcase with everything else. He knew he ought to hang them up in a suit bag and put his shirts in the suit bag, too. He hated suit bags with a passion. Running through airports and train stations, they slapped heavily against his legs and made his knees ache.

Gregor flipped the top of the suitcase over and zipped the case shut. This suitcase was of the very soft leather variety, a black shiny expensive amoeba that allowed itself to be molded by the clothes inside it. He went to his bureau and found a thick wool V-neck sweater to wear over his shirt and under the jacket of his coat. He got himself put together and looked into the mirror. Gregor didn’t like looking into the mirror. He couldn’t help feeling that he was supposed to see something significant there, and he never did.