“What? Lecture some eleven-year-old who’s been knocked up by her mother’s boyfriend that she’ll burn in hell forever if she terminates her pregnancy? Maybe he could do double-duty by lecturing her mother on how the best thing would be to marry the boyfriend and save his soul by turning into a submissive wife.”
“Oh, Martha, for God’s sake. You’re just so extreme. You can’t listen to reason.”
“Right,” Martha said, glad her coffee was finished. She looked at Robbie and Gregor Demarkian again. Gregor Demarkian was bent over the table, listening intently. Robbie was wolfing down enough food for at least three people. “I don’t think your precious Robbie is lonely now. Just look at him. He’s got a friend in the Cardinal’s detective.”
“Oh, Martha,” Shana said again.
Martha stood up and picked up her empty coffee cup. It was made of that white spongy plastic material that everybody called Styrofoam, but that wasn’t really Styrofoam. Martha could never remember what it was really called. Whatever it was, it was terrible for the environment. The center used it because they didn’t have enough money to hire dishwashers and bus people to look after stoneware and glass.
“I’ve got to go,” Martha said. “Sister Edna is probably having a fit. I’ll see you later.”
“Okay,” Shana said.
“I’m supposed to be on duty at the Afterschool Program.”
Shana looked shocked. Like everybody else at the center—except Martha, who was forced to be here—Shana could no more imagine stepping out for a cup of coffee when she was supposed to be on duty than she could imagine not giving the benefit of the doubt to idiots like Robbie. As far as Martha could tell, Shana didn’t disapprove of the attitude Martha took to her work. Shana didn’t believe it.
Martha went to the doors of the cafeteria and stopped. She turned around and looked back. Gregor Demarkian was still hunched over his table, listening to Robbie the Ridiculous. Maybe Shana was right. Maybe Robbie had seen something the night Charles van Straadt was killed. Maybe he had something very important to say that the police hadn’t bothered to listen to. The police were so stupid. Then there was all that about Robbie actually being inside the Center on the night it had all happened. Yes, there was that.
Sister Edna was probably sitting over in the east building, ready to commit bodily mayhem as soon as Martha walked through the door—but Martha didn’t care. This was too crucial. They had to be so careful about everything these days.
She rummaged through the pockets of her jumper, came up with a quarter, and headed for the phones.
Victor wasn’t much of a solace. He didn’t have the brains to wear a hat in the rain. Still, he was all she had.
And if Robbie the Ridiculous really had seen something, if he really did know something—well, they’d all have to get moving.
2
THE PICTURE WAS A MISHANDLED Polaroid snapshot, made up of colors that were faded in places and overbright in others, taken in light so bright it made all the faces look washed out. According to Eamon Donleavy’s informant, it had been taken the night before at the Getting Bent, an establishment on West Forty-third Street that billed itself as “a multimedia relaxation station.” Eamon Donleavy had never been inside the Getting Bent, but he had heard about it. It wasn’t a fly-by-night operation and it wasn’t low rent. It wasn’t cheap, either. Eamon wondered how Michael had ended up there. Michael might be no saint, as he always insisted—and as pictures like these seemed invented to prove—but he was an obsessive about money. Michael spent enough on himself to stay alive, and that was it. He would never have forked over the fifty-dollar cover for a night in the Getting Bent. Somebody must have forked it over for him.
Eamon Donleavy had received the picture at ten forty-five this morning. He had put it down on his desk next to the Happy Father’s Day poster the children in his First Communion class had made for him. Sister Margarita Rose had insisted on his taking the poster, because he was the children’s “spiritual father” and most of them didn’t have one of the other kind. This gave them a way to participate in the holiday. Eamon wondered wearily why they wanted to. Old Charlie van Straadt had been a father and a grandfather, too, and as far as Eamon could see, all it had gotten him was dead.
That’s not fair, Eamon told himself. You don’t know that one of his grandchildren killed him. You just want to think one of them did.
It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon. Eamon had been down to the station to pick up Gregor Demarkian and back again. He had been sitting at his desk like this since he’d left Michael’s first-floor office after Rosalie van Straadt had her fit. He had not been happy then and he was not happy now. He had taken the picture with him when he left the office to meet Demarkian. He had put it in the back of his very thin wallet and the wallet in the front pocket of his pants. He had only taken the picture out again when he knew he would be able to sit at his desk for a good long time. None of these precautions made sense. If this picture existed, so did others. There was no way around that. He wondered who had the other pictures. He wondered if that person knew what he had. He wondered when the pictures would surface.