Dear Old Dead(33)

“What difference?”

“On a vice charge, you weren’t corrupting the morals of a minor. Don’t tell me you pulled this entire stunt just to make sure Mr. Demarkian knew I’d been picked up using a glory hole in Times Square.”

Rosalie looked away. He was so damned casual about it. How could he be so damned casual about it? It wasn’t like telling people you were gay. Lots of people were gay. This was more like confessing to a disease.

“You wanted him dead,” Rosalie said, carefully, still looking away. “You know perfectly well you wanted him dead.”

Michael shook his head. “No I didn’t, Rosalie. Why would I have wanted him dead?”

“If he hadn’t died, he would have put all that stuff about you in the Sentinel.”

“So what? It had already been in every newspaper in town. It had already been on the local television news. What difference would a story or two in the Sentinel have made?”

“He would have forced you out of here, out of the center. He would have made you quit.”

“He couldn’t have. He didn’t own this place. I own this place. I’ve got better than fifty-three percent of the stock in the parent corporation. Nobody can force me out of here.”

“He would have withdrawn his money if you didn’t leave. The center would have had to close.”

“The center survived before your grandfather started giving us money. It will survive now that he’s no longer around to give it.”

“It will have to, won’t it?” Rosalie said. “I’m not putting a penny into this place.”

“I didn’t think you would. But Rosalie, dearest, you’ve just scuttled your own case. I couldn’t have murdered your grandfather to stop him from cutting off his funding, because by murdering him I would have cut off his funding.”

“Oh, don’t be so damned logical,” Rosalie snapped. “You’re always so damned logical. How can you do this to me?”

“How can I do this to you?”

“You’re rigging this whole thing,” Rosalie said, appalled to realize that she was very near tears. “You’re switching everything around. You’re doing it on purpose.”

“I’m doing what on purpose, Rosalie?”

But there was no answer to that. Of course there was no answer to that. Rosalie’s head hurt. The muscles in her back and shoulders ached. What had she meant to accomplish by coming down here? What had she done now that she wouldn’t be able to take back?

She eased herself carefully off the desk. She stepped into paper and glass. Everybody around her was dead quiet and watching. Gregor Demarkian hadn’t moved. Rosalie felt as if she were transparent, like one of those jellyfish, an undifferentiated ooze of clear membrane you could see the whole of the ocean through.

“I’m going now,” she said, making herself sound as stubborn as she could. As righteous. “I can see I won’t get anyplace around here. None of you people is going to listen to me.”

“We’ve been listening to you,” Eamon Donleavy said.

Rosalie advanced toward the door, steadily, not altering her pace. People moved away as she came, still silent, still watching. This was impossible. She stopped at the door and turned back to look at them all.

“You won’t be able to go on with this forever, you know. You won’t be able to get away with it. My grandfather was murdered and he was a very rich man. We won’t let you hide his murderer and mess the rest of us up. We won’t let you.”

What was she talking about? The hall behind her was clear. God only knew where all the people had gone. Michael was staring at her, impassive. He was always so damned impassive. Her head was about to explode. She should have eaten something this morning. She wanted to heave and she hated doing that with nothing in her stomach. She wanted to run.

Actually, running was the easy part. The way was clear. The front door was right in her line of sight and temporarily clear of traffic.

Rosalie took one more look at Michael Pride’s face, and then took off.





3


ROBBIE YAGGER WAS STANDING right next to the Sojourner Truth Health Center’s front door when Rosalie van Straadt came running out. As soon as she burst through the doors, he stood up a little straighter and stared, hard. She looked a little familiar, but not familiar enough. And she was nothing at all like that girl he had seen the night it all happened. Robbie had very distinct memories of the night it had all happened, the night of the gang war shoot-out and the newspaper stories about Dr. Pride and the murder of Charles van Straadt. He woke up in the night sometimes, imagining himself walking through the corridors around the emergency room, looking in at bleeding people and wondering what he thought he was doing there. That was when he had seen the girl, or woman, or whatever she was. It was so hard to know what to call female people anymore. It was so hard to know anything.