Fighting Chance(74)

“Don’t treat me like an idiot,” Mrs. Vespasian said. “I am not a delicate flower. I was in Yerevan at least once when the Turks came. And I was very small.”

“This is not the Turks,” Tibor said.

“This is not a movie of a murder,” Mrs. Vespasian said. “This is a fake. And I have come to find out what it is you think you’re doing.”

“Tcha,” Tibor said.

“If you do not tell me,” Mrs. Vespasian said, “I will go to Gregor Demarkian and make sure he knows that this movie is a fake.”

“Tcha,” Tibor said again.

“At least it will stop him worrying about this fool man who has run away from his wife,” Mrs. Vespasian said. “I have never heard so much fuss and nonsense in my life. I will go now, Father, and I will show this to Gregor Demarkian, and he will know what to do with the information.”

2

Mark Granby was standing at the window of his office, trying to work out his options, when he saw Gregor Demarkian get out of a cab in front of the building. There was no mistaking what that was going to be about. If everybody else had heard the rumors about Martha Handling’s corruption, Gregor Demarkian must have, too. And Gregor Demarkian was supposed to still have friends in the FBI. It was possible he knew a lot more than anybody else. Rumors sparked investigations. Mark hadn’t seen any sign of these investigations, but ever since Martha Handling died, he’d been thinking about them.

And then there was the other thing. Mark had been thinking about the other thing since it first showed up on his doorstep. He still didn’t know what to make of it.

He heard the wheeze of the elevator in the hallway, even though the door of the office suite was closed. He heard the door of the office suite creak open. Everything was cheap, and everything was just a little bit dangerous. But he’d known that when he first came in.

He’d also known that what he was doing was against the law. It would be really nice to say there was some confusion, but he knew he couldn’t try it without cracking up. They had a lot of euphemisms for bribery at Administrative Solutions, but all of them were transparent.

The girl in the outer office came in and announced that Gregor Demarkian was waiting to see him. She allowed as how Gregor Demarkian didn’t have an appointment. She admitted that she should have told him Mark wasn’t there. She had not done any such thing. Gregor Demarkian was somebody she’d heard of. She was impressed by people she thought of as “celebrities” and thought Mark ought to be impressed by “celebrities,” too.

Did the New York office work this cheap? Did they scrimp on the salaries of secretaries so that they got only half-brained reality TV–addled incompetents with no sense at all? If they did, Mark was in much worse trouble than he’d thought he was in.

The girl came back in with Demarkian in tow. He was a massive man, not fat but ridiculously tall and broad across the shoulders. It was like looking at a superhero on a television show, only older.

The girl went back out and did not close the door behind her. Mark got up and did it himself. Then he gestured Gregor to the single visitor’s chair and sat down behind his desk.

“So,” he said. “I was expecting you.”

Gregor Demarkian cocked his head, looking puzzled. “I came up here thinking you were going to stonewall me,” he said. “But you’re not going to do that. Why not?”

“I’ve got my sources of information just like you have,” Mark said. “Some of my sources may even be better than yours.”

“I doubt it,” Demarkian said.

“Faster, then,” Mark said. “I take it there are investigations into Martha Handling and all her works. And she was a piece of work, let me tell you.”

“You didn’t like her.” It wasn’t a question.

“It was hard to like Martha,” Mark said. “There was good reason her secretaries left her practically as soon as they started. Excuse me, personal assistants. We don’t call them secretaries any longer.”

“She was an unpleasant person,” Demarkian said.

“Not really,” Mark told him. “She could be very pleasant and charming on the right occasion, and she didn’t throw full-throttle tantrums. There’s some kind of bizarre connection between judges who are willing to take bribes and full-throttle tantrums. That wasn’t Martha’s problem. Martha’s problem was that she was a fundamentally dishonest person. She was dishonest about things she didn’t need to be dishonest about. It creeped out everybody who had to spend time with her. She’d even push her assistants to do things, steal office supplies and bring them to her house, all kinds of stupid little things.”