Dear Old Dead(44)

“You just lose control of your common sense.” Eamon waved the picture in the air. “I don’t think Gregor Demarkian would put up with it, by the way. If you were guilty. He’d find a way to hang you.”

“We have capital punishment in New York State, but it’s functionally inoperative. Governor Cuomo pardons everybody.”

“You know what I mean, Michael. He’s a dangerous man, Gregor Demarkian. I’d be careful at that dinner of yours.”

“Don’t worry. I will be. Do you think he’ll end up solving the crime, finding out who did it?”

“If they give him half a chance, yes,” Eamon said. “They could get in his way to the point where it would be impossible.”

“Who could?”

“The police. The Cardinal. Mostly the police. I think he could get around an ordinary person.”

“What about the family? They were barely cooperating with the police, the last I heard. I can’t see them cooperating with some private detective hired by the Cardinal.”

“I don’t think they will.” Eamon shook his head. “He’s good, this Demarkian. I looked him up. He was the one who solved the McAdam case. And the murder of that psychotherapist or whatever he was out in Philadelphia. I don’t think he needs a lot of cooperation, from the family or anybody else.”

Michael tilted his head. “What about you, Eamon? Do you want this murder solved?”

“It depends.”

“On what? Who did it?”

“Yes,” Eamon said, feeling defiant. “On who did it. I wouldn’t want it to be solved if the murderer was you—”

“I told you—”

“—I know you did. I want it to be one of the family. Good old grand patricide. I don’t want it to be any of us.”

“The rumor around the center is that the murderer is Robbie Yagger. Do you know who I’m talking about? The little man who carries the sign accusing us of being a death camp for performing abortions.”

Eamon shook his head. “I think that’s ridiculous and so do you. He isn’t the type. And why would he want to kill Charlie van Straadt?”

Michael smiled. “Get rid of the head Satan and all the little Satans will wither on the vine.”

“Ridiculous,” Eamon said again. “You don’t really believe that, do you, Michael? Who do you think did it?”

“I don’t think anybody did it,” Michael said firmly. “I spend my time convincing myself nobody could have done it, providing alibis for people, providing excuses. Don’t ask me why.”

“You’re very good-natured.”

“I don’t have a good nature. And I’ve got other things on my mind. If you know what I mean. Eamon?”

All of a sudden, Eamon Donleavy didn’t want to talk anymore. He didn’t want to talk at all. He wanted to walk right out of Michael Pride’s office and across the hall. He wanted to go down the stairs and out the front doors and into the city. He wanted to get as far away from here as fast as he could.

Because he knew what was coming. He had been expecting it for weeks now, waiting for it, feeling it just on the edges of things, like a phantom pain in a missing limb. Eamon was sure he wasn’t the only one. Augie down there in the emergency room had probably been feeling it too. It was the cliché at the end of the second act, and there was no way to avoid it.

“Eamon,” Michael said, very quietly, very steadily. “Eamon, what makes you think I’m not sick?”





SIX


1


THE ONLY OTHER TIME Gregor Demarkian had been to the Four Seasons, Bennis Hannaford had taken him. “Taken” was the right way to put it. Bennis had her American Express Gold Card in one hand and her latest contracts in the other. She had been steaming, and incomprehensible to Gregor. What Gregor remembered most was feeling out of place—big shaggy ethnic-looking men did not seem to be who this place had been made for—and the fact that his menu had no prices on it. He had no idea why he had suggested the place to Michael Pride. The Cardinal had reserved Gregor a room at the Hilton. Maybe Gregor was making some kind of subliminal connection. Seeing Michael Pride come in in his battered tweed sports jacket and a tie that looked old enough to have done service in the Eisenhower administration, Gregor thought he’d done the right thing. Michael Pride looked right here somehow, more right than Gregor looked himself.

The woman at the desk smiled at them and took them to a table in the “Pool Room.” It could have been a table in any room at all, because the restaurant was nearly empty. Gregor supposed the rooms had status rankings among Manhattan regulars who kept track of that sort of thing. Because he couldn’t hold on to information of that kind even when he wanted to, he didn’t worry about it. The table he and Michael were seated at was on a raised platform looking out over a sea of other tables, all empty. Gregor ordered a bottle of wine and Michael ordered a Perrier water.