“Why was it so awful?”
“Because you don’t ask for that sort of thing from a business partner,” Fritzie said. “That isn’t how the world works. That’s the kind of thing you ask from a wife.”
“Was this spare bridge somewhere where his wife could have gotten hold of it? Did Jon Baird keep it in his apartment?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think maybe you’re making too much out of Charlie Shay’s feelings,” Gregor said. “It’s been one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn, but I have learned that not everybody takes offense at the same things I do. There are things I care about desperately that many people don’t care about at all.”
“Do you think it could have been like that?” Fritzie asked. “I don’t. I don’t think there’s a man on earth—and I mean man, not human—who doesn’t think of his pride first, even if he tries not to. I think Charlie must have been only inches away from striking Jon dead.”
“Maybe so,” Gregor said, “but it isn’t Jon Baird who’s dead. Do you think anyone would mind if I brought a couple of these back to my cabin?”
“I don’t think anyone would mind at all.”
Gregor Demarkian picked up a bran muffin and a corn muffin, slathered them both with butter, and gripped them both firmly in one large hand. “Well,” he said, “I think I’ll go off and try to find Bennis Hannaford. I haven’t seen her around today.”
“I’m sure she’s somewhere,” Fritzie said.
“I’m sure she is.”
Gregor left the mess, shutting the door firmly behind him as he went, not bothering to look back to her. As soon as he was gone, Fritzie expelled a great gust of breath and stood bolt upright.
The blueberry muffins were less than a step away from where she stood. She took that step, snatched up a muffin as big as a fist, and stuffed the thing into her mouth, whole.
Then she reached for the knife and the crock of butter.
3
A few doors down the hall, in the dim light cast by the single candle lit at that end of the passage, Bennis Hannaford was returning to her cabin from her “shower.” She was cold and damp and generally disgruntled. In her view it was possible to take authenticity too far, and that shower had been too far. She wanted to wrap her head in a towel and change into something made of flannel. Then she wanted to get something to eat and tell Jon Baird what she thought of him for putting them through all this nonsense. It would have been bad enough if he had really been a nut about authenticity, but he was so haphazard about it. If he had to break his own rules at every turn, he might as well install decent seagoing plumbing.
She had left the cabin door unlocked, so she let herself in without difficulty. She saw Gregor’s dirty clothes lying in a heap on the chair and decided he’d been back to change. Then she went to her suitcase, found a honey cake neither she nor Gregor had devoured the night before, stuffed it into her mouth, and started rooting around for her best Campbell plaid robe. She was just unwinding it from a tangle of shoes and silk blouses when she saw what she thought was the FBI file on the death of Donald McAdam lying in the middle of her bunk. What made her go for it, she would never know. She had read it thoroughly the night before. She had no interest in reading it again. She just walked over to the bunk and picked it up.
She had been holding it in her hands for quite some time when she realized what was wrong. The top page of it was the title page, just as it was supposed to be, but instead of reading “AGENT REPORT: MCADAM, DONALD” as it was supposed to do, it said something Bennis could barely comprehend at all.
It said, “AGENT REPORT: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, BACKGROUND. “GREGOR DEMARKIAN.”
Seven
1
DURING THE LONG COURSE of his career, Gregor Demarkian had known many men who broke the rules and reveled in it. There had been Jack Hartnell in the San Francisco office, who had had about as much use for the exclusionary rule as Santa Claus had for the Grinch who stole Christmas. Jack was always sneaking into hotel rooms and picking people’s pockets—although what good it had done him, Gregor never knew. Jack investigated organized crime and didn’t seem to get very far with it. Then there was Michael DeVere in the Tulsa office, who felt that a talent for cat burglary was necessary for the investigation of interstate fraud. Michael didn’t seem to get very far, either, but Gregor had once seen him go six stories up the side of a building on suction cups. Best of all, there was good old J. Edgar Hoover himself—a man about whom, Gregor was sure, the less said the better. The point was that Gregor had never been like any of these people. He had always followed the rules, and been glad of it. He knew the fine points of evidentiary discovery as well as any lawyer, and he was glad of that, too. The problem was, right at this moment, he would like to shuck the habits and convictions of a lifetime and do the one thing he really wanted to do: search Jon Baird’s cabin whether he had a warrant or not.