Festival of Deaths(51)

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

“I haven’t had enough sleep,” he said. “My mind has started to think it’s in a Columbo episode.”

“What?”

The car was pulling away from the curb, into the street, into the fog. Gregor closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Never mind,” he said. “Never mind. I just seem to be going senile.”





2


THE FIRST THING GREGOR Demarkian noticed about the people at the WKMB studio where The Lotte Goldman Show was taping was how tense they were. The next thing he noticed was how many of them had not been born in the United States. Gregor did not jump to that kind of conclusion easily. He understood that children born and brought up in certain Hispanic neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles spoke English with an accent as thick as that of anyone growing up in San Juan. It was getting to be a Stateside regional variation. In spite of being Hispanic, however, the young man who met them at the door of Studio C was definitely not American born and bred. He had the wrong kind of Spanish accent. The older man who was climbing through the beams above their heads hadn’t been born in the United States, either. Gregor could recognize that accent anywhere. It was Russian.

The young woman who had brought them up from the street, Ms. Carmencita Boaz, also had the wrong kind of Spanish accent, but they already knew all about her. She had told them everything she needed to know as she was bringing them up in the elevator.

“People who don’t work for Dr. Goldman don’t realize what a wonderful person she is,” Ms. Boaz had said. “They don’t realize how compassionate and fair she is in every dealing she has. They see her on television and they hear her ask the questions that must be asked—because, of course, she is very professional, Dr. Goldman, that is why she has been so successful—but they hear her on television and they think she is tough.”

Gregor saw Bennis and Tibor shoot glances at each other. He heard Bennis cough.

“All you have to do is look at our staff to see she isn’t like that at all,” Carmencita was going on. “Dr. Goldman is in the business of giving lifetime chances, really. To me. I came from Guatemala. I could have ended up working in a typing pool somewhere. To Itzaak. He had to escape from the Soviet union   back when there was a Soviet union  . His life was nearly destroyed. Even to Maria Gonzalez.”

“Maria Gonzalez?” Gregor said.

“The one who died.” Bennis sounded shocked.

Carmencita Boaz opened the door to Studio C and shrugged. “It is very bad that Maria was killed, yes, but that doesn’t change the way she was hired. Dr. Goldman was an immigrant, you see. She understands immigrants. She looks after us.”

“Only immigrants?” Gregor asked curiously.

A shadow seemed to cross Carmencita Boaz’s face. “There are others, like Sarah Meyer, I suppose. But Sarah is none of my business.”

Gregor was about to ask Carmencita Boaz what she meant by that, when the young man came to the door, hesitated for a moment, and then seemed to stagger. Gregor realized he was carrying a chair on his back. The chair was small enough to be mostly hidden when the young man faced front, but heavy enough to tilt him off balance. As Gregor watched, he dropped the chair and fell down hard on his rear end.

“Ouch,” he said. It was a very Latin ouch.

Carmencita Boaz clucked her tongue. “Look at you, Max, you’ve come all apart again. You’re all over the floor.”

She meant the contents of Max’s pockets were on the floor. Gregor leaned over and retrieved three dollar bills, a green card and a plastic wallet calendar with a picture of a naked woman on one side from the floor. He handed them over to Max and thought that the young man looked more than a little hung over.

“There you go,” he said.

“Is this the detective?” Max said. “The one everybody says is going to investigate the death of Maria Gonzalez?”

“What?” Gregor asked.

Max stuffed the things Gregor had given him back into his pockets. “I could use a detective. I could use a very private detective who worked only for me.”

Carmencita Boaz grabbed Gregor firmly by the arm. “No more of that,” she said. “Max had his pocket picked just before we left New York, and he’s been obsessed with it ever since.”

“No,” Max said. “It’s not about that.”

“Mr. Demarkian is due in makeup,” Carmencita said firmly. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking that chair someplace?”

Max looked at the chair for a minute and then picked it up again. “Shelley wants the blue chairs now. Is this believable? They’re all the way downstairs in the truck.”