Feast of Murder(21)

Tibor moved away from the base of the pyramid, pointed at boxes as he counted them under his breath, and shook his head.

“Two short,” he said fretfully. “Two short. Where could the two boxes be?”

“Have you tried looking in the back room in the basement?” Gregor asked. He asked in English, because he spoke almost no Armenian. He did understand quite a bit.

Tibor climbed carefully up a pile of boxes to where he could speak to Gregor more naturally and said, “There is nothing in the back room in the basement, Krekor, I know because I have checked. I will tell you what this is. This is Mrs. Krekorian.”

“Hannah?”

“Fussing,” Tibor said solemnly. “I have told her over and over again. These are packages for people who are starving, not gifts to send to your mother-in-law. They do not need to be pretty, only generous.”

“Hannah’s certainly generous,” Gregor said.

“Generous,” old George said from the street. “Hannah stuffs people the way she stuffs turkeys.”

“Mrs. Krekorian,” Tibor said, “makes everything pretty with ribbons. I have seen her, Krekor. I have gone to her house and there are her boxes next to the kitchen table and in the bottom of the boxes are the blankets and each of the blankets is tied up with little bows. You understand, Krekor, there is nothing wrong with bows. I myself very much like bows. Now, however, we do not have very much time, we have people who need food and warm things because the winter is coming and they have nothing. And Mrs. Krekorian gives me bows.”

“What he’s trying to say,” old George said, “is that she fussed so much with the bows, she didn’t get done on time.”

“And I have people to pick up the boxes and take them to the airport at four o’clock,” Tibor said. “Bennis and Donna will drive them and then at the airport there is the plane from the Red Cross that will take these boxes and the Red Cross boxes and the vaccinations we have paid for, and if Mrs. Krekorian’s boxes are not there she might as well give them to her mother-in-law, except I think her mother-in-law is dead.”

“Her mother-in-law is most definitely dead,” Gregor said. “Hannah’s a year older than I am. She was in Lida’s class at school.”

“My son David was in Lida’s class at school,” old George said. “I’m not dead.”

Gregor stretched his long legs and began to climb carefully down from the packing boxes. The packing boxes were made of wooden slats and reinforced with steel corner guards, but although Tibor climbed up and down with impunity, Gregor didn’t dare. Tibor was a small man, short and wiry and fragile of bone. Gregor was over six two and heavy in that solid, Rock of Gibraltar way some Armenian men get in middle age. Bennis always said Gregor reminded her of Harrison Ford with an extra twenty pounds on him, but the description made Gregor uncomfortable. For one thing, he didn’t like to think he was carrying an extra twenty pounds. If he was careful not to look too often into mirrors, he felt good enough to convince himself he was in near perfect shape. For another thing, he could never remember just who Harrison Ford was.

“I take it you want me to go talk to Hannah Krekorian,” Gregor told Tibor. “You should get Lida to do it, you know. Lida would have more effect.”

“I’ve already had Lida do it,” Tibor said. “Maybe a man will be better. For that generation, a man had authority.”

“For Hannah Krekorian, the only human being on earth with authority is Ann Landers. That beats Sheila Kashinian, though. For Sheila Kashinian, the only human being on earth with authority is Shirley MacLaine. Why don’t you go yourself?”

“She will try to feed me, Krekor.”

“She will try to feed me, too. You’ve got to get down if I’m going to go any farther. You’re directly in my way.”

Tibor hopped off his crate into the street, earning an admiring glance from old George and a look of exasperation from Gregor. Old George might not have noticed it—and nobody else might have, either—but Gregor could see that the little priest was something beyond exhausted. The rosy red of his cheeks was fever, not good health, and while Tibor had been close to Gregor on the pyramid of packing boxes Gregor had seen his hands shake. Now Tibor was standing on the pavement, but not standing still. He was hopping back and forth, doing a little shuffle-step pace. Anyone who didn’t know him well might have thought he was getting rid of nervous energy. Gregor thought he was trying to disguise the fact that his legs were shaking, too.

“Hey,” Gregor said, as he got to the pavement himself. “Go home and rest. Get Lida to take over here. You can’t save the entire Republic of Armenia on your own.”