Fighting Chance(27)

“By which I suppose you mean not all that often,” Bennis said.

“There are bureaucracies,” Gregor said. “There are also computers.”

Bennis had arranged the little squares of omelet into a circle around the edge of her plate. “You might want to rethink talking to Russ,” she said. “Donna called right before we went to bed last night. He really isn’t in good shape.”

“It’s not surprising,” Gregor said, “but the world won’t stop for anybody, and the notices are already up at the Dekanian house. You must have seen them yesterday.”

“I did.”

“So we’ll all have to get to work today, whether we want to or not,” Gregor said.

“Donna says he feels responsible for it all,” Bennis said. “And I get that in a way, but I don’t in a way, and it’s one of those things. I look at it and look at it and I don’t know what to do.”

“Today,” Gregor promised, “we’ll think of things to do.”

The phone on the wall went off with a ring so loud, it made Gregor jump in his chair. His fork hit the floor. His plate tipped sideways and then righted itself, the untouched wedge of omelet never budging.

“Okay,” Gregor said. “I may be a little on edge.”

Bennis got up and got the phone. It was a faux-antique black and gold one, made to look like the kind of thing that had been fashionable in the early days of telephones, but mounted on the wall.

“Hello,” Bennis said. And then, “John? What time is it? And you’re in your office? Now? I mean—okay, yes, I understand. You didn’t have anything to worry about, we weren’t going out anyway. I was a little too worried—okay, yes, just a minute. He’s right here.”

Bennis held out the phone. “It’s John Jackman. He’s in his office. He wants to talk to you right away.”

“What time is it?” Gregor asked.

“Six ten.”

Gregor got up. “For God’s sake,” he said.

2

The place John Jackman had decided would be a good one to meet Gregor Demarkian was not the office of the mayor, but it might as well have been. Gregor thought it was close to certain that there was no place in the City of Philadelphia where he could meet with the mayor without the news getting out. He thought it was almost as close to certain that there was no place in the country where he could do it.

It was hard to tell which stories would “go viral,” as Tommy Moradanyan liked to put it, but Gregor was very familiar with stories that did just that, and he knew there was no stopping them. The best anybody could do in cases like this was to let them run their course. If you were lucky, they ran it fast. If you weren’t, you would find yourself staring at headlines months down the line, with everybody stoked and ready to roll at the first hint of a development. There were no cases in which these circuses were of any benefit at all to legitimate law enforcement. Reporters liked to imagine that all the publicity helped to mobilize the public to catch perpetrators. It certainly mobilized the public. It didn’t help to catch anything but innocent bystanders, and not even those very often.

The place John Jackman wanted to meet was in City Hall. Bennis called Gregor a cab. Gregor left the house only when it was waiting at the door. He looked up and down the street and saw nobody he wouldn’t expect to see. He knew that didn’t mean there were no reporters there. He got into the back of the car and tried to force himself to stop worrying about it. There was a reporter in the street or there wasn’t. If there was, the reporter would follow him. If there wasn’t, somebody in City Hall would leak the meeting. One way or the other, it would get out.

It was too early in the morning for City Hall, but the city was pumping into rush hour. The streets were full of traffic. It moved with reasonable fluidity. It was just about light out.

When the cab got to where it was going, Gregor got out, thinking there was no one around and that he’d have to search for whatever door he was supposed to enter by himself. Then, just as the cab pulled away, a woman emerged from the darkness near the side of the steps.

“Mr. Demarkian?” she said. “If you’ll come with me.”

The woman was African American, and very young, and almost blindingly pretty. Gregor supposed she was one of the horde of young women who always seemed to overrun John Jackman’s offices. They were always supervised by John’s longtime confidential secretary, Ophelia. Ophelia was also African American, and she could have held off a Russian invasion with a good stare and the tapping of her foot.

Ophelia was waiting for him when he got in the back door and up the back stairs to the second floor. She was neither glaring nor stamping her foot, but she was not happy.