“I’ve just got my mind on other things,” Gregor said. “I’m sorry. I forget if I’ve discussed things with you or only discussed them with Tony here. Tony was a brilliant choice, even if he does drink pink coffee.”
“It’s red coffee,” Tony said. “It’s got cinnamon hearts in it.”
“Is he right there?” Bennis said.
“Absolutely,” Gregor said. “I’ve got to go do something. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Do that,” Bennis said. “And don’t worry so much, Gregor. If something looks like a crisis, I’ll call you immediately. Tony will drive you back home.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
He put the phone done on the table. The problem, of course, was that with somebody of old George Tekemanian’s age, crises could come up without notice and be over before anybody had a chance to call anybody.
Gregor got up. “Let’s go,” he said. “We might as well go over to the police station and see what happens. I really hate being in situations of this kind.”
Going back, they did not take the scenic route. Tony cut across one small crumbling neighborhood after the other, the houses triple-deckers and close together. Mattatuck looked like any one of a hundred dying industrial towns of the Northeast—but it looked like an industrial town, not like a rural hamlet. They turned onto a slightly wider-than-average two-lane blacktop, and Gregor began to recognize some of the scenery. There was the welfare office. There were the pawnshops. There was the trailer park.
“Wait,” Gregor said.
Tony slowed, but he didn’t park. “You want me to pull over somewhere?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “That’s the trailer park Howard Androcoelho and I were at when I met Chester Morton’s mother. I’m sure of it. I recognize the neighborhood.”
“Okay. Is that important?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “Could you maybe go around back to the trailer park, then turn around and head in this direction again, and go directly to The Feldman Funeral Home? Maybe that’s not what I mean. Let’s go to the trailer park and then go to The Feldman Funeral Home in the most direct way possible. How about that?”
“Okay.”
Tony swung the car around and brought it back to the entrance to the trailer park. It was the same trailer park. Gregor was sure of it. He looked up the road and down again. There was nothing on this stretch that would be of any help to anybody, as far as he could see. He looked into the distance. The main offices of the Morton’s garbage business were supposed to be right there, past the trailers and through the trees. Somebody could walk if they didn’t mind smashing their way through the brambles.
“You want to sit here for a while?” Tony asked.
“No,” Gregor said. “Drive to The Feldman Funeral Home on the most direct route possible. I expect that’s going to be main streets, right?”
“Probably. There isn’t much around here except main streets.”
“I know. Drive to The Feldman Funeral Home. Pull into that parking lot around the back.”
“Fine with me,” Tony said.
They got back out onto the road. They were heading in the direction they had been heading in originally. Gregor had been right about that. He was beginning to get some kind of bearings in this place. They passed a huge strip-mall-like shopping center where more than half the stores seemed to be empty. Then they turned left at an intersection with three different gas stations and a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Then they went under a trestle and they were at the green. Gregor remembered the Civil War monument.
“It’s right over there,” Tony said, pointing across the street. “It’s closer than it seems, but we have to go around the green to get there.”
“Right,” Gregor said.
They pulled around the green, then down the road to The Feldman Funeral Home, then down the side street to the entrance to the parking lot in the back. Tony parked, and waited.
“What would you say?” Gregor asked him. “Starting from here, are we in walking distance to that trailer park?”
“It’s less than a mile,” Tony said. “And it’s on your way from here. Turn right at the end of the little street this parking lot is on and you don’t have to go around the green. You can go straight back to the KFC and then right again and then you’re there.”
“I thought so.”
Gregor got out his cell phone, looked quickly through his notes for the number he wanted, and punched it in. A chipper little voice said, “Morton’s.” Gregor identified himself, asked for Charlene Morton, and waited.