Feast of Murder(71)

“At the time? Very important. Now? Not important at all.” Bennis shrugged. “When they made the offer, they would have had to have come up with proof that they could make the deal. If they hadn’t, Europabanc wouldn’t have bit, and neither would the governments they had to deal with, one of which I’m pretty sure was Switzerland. The Swiss like guarantees. Then they would have signed a set of preliminary agreements, and after that their cash could have all turned out to be counterfeit and it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Bennis said patiently, “if there was a problem like that, Jon Baird is smart enough to make sure it was covered in the prelims. He’d put himself in a position where all that mattered was that he had the cash when he showed up to close. And he’ll certainly have the cash.”

Gregor turned this over in his mind. “That would be because of Donald McAdam’s junk bonds,” he said. “I seem to remember something about a sale.”

Bennis grinned. “I’m glad Mark Anderwahl wasn’t around to hear you say it like that. It wasn’t just a ‘sale,’ Gregor. It was hundreds of millions of dollars. Which just goes to show. There are junk bonds and junk bonds.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That’s supposed to mean that there are some bonds that are junk because the companies behind them are insolvent, and there are some bonds that are junk because the companies behind them are new and unknown. It’s like junk stock in the old days. My father bought some of that once, in a small company nobody had ever heard of. American Halographic. Paid sixteen dollars a share, spent a hundred and sixty thousand dollars, his banker tried to have him committed. A couple of years later, the company came out with a new product and changed its name to Xerox.”

“Good God.”

“You just have to know what you’re doing,” Bennis said complacently. “Are you going to eat all of that? I could use some bread and butter.”

“Here.” Gregor passed the bread and butter across. “Can I see the file for a moment? There’s something I want to look up.”

“You can keep the file as far as I’m concerned.” Bennis passed it over and concentrated on buttering her bread. “I’m going to go to sleep as soon as I stuff enough into myself to feel tired. Don’t you think we ought to do something about this? About where we sleep, I mean.”

“Do what?”

“Well,” Bennis said slowly, “I’ve been thinking about it. You really can’t take the other bunk, Gregor, and neither can I. No adult human being would fit. So I thought, you know, that maybe what we ought to do is bundle.”

“What do you mean, bundle?”

“It was a form of courting in Colonial New England,” Bennis said, “which seems entirely appropriate to me. Not the courting part, Gregor, the part about Colonial New England. Anyway, what you do is, the woman—it would have been a girl then, seventeen or younger probably—anyway, she gets in bed and gets wrapped up in the sheets like a mummy so she can’t move, and then the man does the same thing, and then they sleep together. No hanky panky. Lots of conversation. It was supposed to be a great way for two people to get to know each other.”

“Get to know each other,” Gregor repeated stupefied. “Bennis, are you out of your mind?”

“According to you, yes.”

“Bennis, listen to me. Do you realize what would happen, if we do what you’re suggesting and it got out on Cavanaugh Street?”

“How would it get out on Cavanaugh Street?”

“You’d tell Donna Moradanyan. Donna Moradanyan would tell her mother. Marie would tell Lida Arkmanian—how do you think it would get out on Cavanaugh Street?”

“Now, Gregor—”

“And you think you’ve got problems now with them trying to match make us together,” Gregor said. “I’d come home from the library one day and find the church decked out with flowers and old George all ready to give you away. They’d probably have you chained to the church door so you couldn’t bolt. What’s the matter with you?”

“Gregor—”

“Never mind,” Gregor said.

He hopped down off the slat, clutching the bag of food to his chest in one arm and the FBI file on Donald McAdam to his side with the other. Then he headed for the cabin door with the sort of determination he usually brought only to making complaints to the heads of government departments.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I know where I can sleep.”