But at least it would be sweet.
FOUR
1
GREGOR DEMARKIAN AND TIBOR Kasparian were due for their lunch with Helena and Sofie Oumoudian at one o’clock. What Gregor had intended to do in the hours between the time he got back from breakfast and the time he had to meet Tibor so they could walk to the Oumoudians together was work. “Work” was an elastic concept in Gregor’s life these days. He did not like to define it as doing what he had done before he retired. What else he meant by it he wasn’t sure. Talking to David Goldman about the dreidels was “work” in the sense Gregor used the word now, and so was talking to John Jackman on the phone about the status of the lab reports the city of Philadelphia was running on the blood of Maximillian Dey. He wanted to push all that talk about dreidels to the back of his mind and let it ferment. Maybe it would come to something. He fully intended to call John Jackman today, but he didn’t want to call him yet. It was only eight thirty in the morning when he left the Ararat. John Jackman often got to work that early, but he didn’t arrive at a decent mood until at least noon. Besides, it was highly unlikely that there would be any word on the lab reports until later in the day. The Philadelphia police department was good, and it was being pushed—having a corpse turn up in the middle of a bunch of famous visiting television people from New York was practically the definition of being pushed—but money was tight everywhere, and Philadelphia was no exception.
Gregor Demarkian could remember days when money was not tight and police departments were not understaffed, but they were a long time ago. Agents at the Bureau had a one-word answer for what had gone wrong and why everything was such a mess: cocaine. Gregor Demarkian knew next to nothing about cocaine. There were FBI agents who had enlisted as soldiers in the drug war—along with DEA agents and local police forces and customs agents and military men—but Gregor had never been one of them. The mere thought of drugs made him catatonic. Serial killers were terrible people, but at least they made some kind of sense. Serial killers might be evil, but they were at least logical. To Gregor’s mind, a thirty-year-old investment banker who was blowing his mind out with free base hadn’t needed drugs to make him stupid and a fifteen-year-old motor jockey who thought crack was an amusement to eat up Saturday night had a pair of parents who deserved to be shot. He had never met a single person involved in drugs who could think his way out of a paper bag. Gregor Demarkian preferred to spend his time on what he couldn’t help thinking about as Real Crime, crime with method and motive, crime with passion and purpose, crime with sense.
Gregor left the Ararat right after David Goldman did. David Goldman had appointments, and Gregor didn’t want to watch old George Tekamanian eat yet another plate of hash browns and yet another order of bacon. He didn’t have to worry about how old George would get home. Tibor would see to that. He took a wad of money out of his wallet, threw it on the table, waved good-bye to Linda Melajian, and went back onto Cavanaugh Street. The sidewalk was crowded with children on their way to Holy Trinity Armenian Christian School. Holy Trinity Armenian Christian School only went up to grade eight. If it had gone farther, he wouldn’t have had to worry about Sofie Oumoudian and Joey Ohanian could have gone back to Deerfield. Unfortunately, even the eighth grade was a bit of a stretch. There were only two students in it, and next year there would only be three.
Gregor let himself into his building, checked the mail even though he knew it wouldn’t be there—half the time, it didn’t arrive before four o’clock in the afternoon—and paused to admire Donna Moradanyan’s latest extravaganza, a free-standing papier-mâché menorah at least as tall as he was, painted gold on the base, white on the candles, and hot phosphorescent pink on the candle flames. A note attached to the mock-holder for the mock shammes said,
HOWARD.
THIS GOES AT THE BASE OF THE CHURCH STEPS ON THE LEFT SIDE BETWEEN THE BUSH WITH THE SILVER RIBBON ON IT AND THE ARMENIAN FLAG.
That was good. That meant that Howard Kashinian was supposed to remove this menorah and put it outside in front of the church, where presumably it would cause fewer traffic problems than it was causing in this foyer. Gregor wondered why Donna had asked Howard to do it and not him. Gregor and Howard had been in the same class all the way through grammar school, except for the year Howard had spent in the reformatory. Lida and Hannah had been a year ahead of them and Sheila had been a year behind. And Howard was in no better shape than Gregor was.
Gregor went up the stairs and stopped on the second-floor landing. He could hear no movement going on behind Bennis’s door, but he was fairly sure she was up. She’d been complaining all week about a copy-edited manuscript she was supposed to go over. She wasn’t much of a sleeper, anyway, at least when he wanted her to be. In the middle of murder cases, he usually wanted her to be. He knocked sharply on her door and waited to see what would happen.