Fountain of Death(21)

The automatic doors at the front of the motel’s lobby sucked open. Gregor saw a young woman in blue slacks and a blue-and-white sweater with a bulldog appliqued on it walk in. The young woman came directly over to where Gregor stood and thrust out her hand.

“Mr. Demarkian?” she asked. “I’m Connie Hazelwood. From Bulldog Cabs.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. Shortly. And ungraciously. He couldn’t help himself.

Connie Hazelwood tilted her head sideways. “Are you all right, Mr. Demarkian? You look a little flushed.”

“I’m fine,” Gregor said.

“Well, good,” Connie Hazelwood said. “Good. It’s a big thrill for me to be driving somebody as famous as you are. Shall we go?”

“Yes,” Gregor said again.

“Well, good,” Connie Hazelwood said, also again. She had begun to look desperate.

Gregor felt sorry for her, he really did, but for the moment there was nothing he could do to help her. There wasn’t even anything he could think of to do to calm himself down.

Connie Hazelwood walked back out the front doors, leading the way to her cab, and Gregor followed her.

He was still steaming.





FIVE


1


THE NEW HAVEN MEDICAL examiner’s office was in a long, low red brick building that looked like a small factory, set among more of the two- and three-story wood frame houses Gregor had come to think of as “typical” of New Haven. There was Yale. There was Prospect Street. There were a few blocks of churches and stores around the Green. Other than that, the entire city seemed to be made up of these double and triple deckers. Gregor let Connie Hazelwood jockey her cab into a tight parking space at the curb in front of the medical examiner’s building’s doors and considered the neighborhood. He knew his impression had to be wrong. Somewhere in New Haven there would be at least one rich neighborhood and probably several very poor ones. There would be a red-light district and a shopping strip. He just hadn’t happened to run into them. The interesting thing about this neighborhood was that it was not as bad as Gregor had expected it to be. The houses were not noticeably dilapidated. One or two had sagging porches. Several had paint peeling off their sides. Everything looked a little sad and tired, but nothing looked desperate. There was something Gregor had noticed about official municipal buildings over the past few years—police stations, town halls, administration buildings, city hospitals. Such buildings had become a magnet for the derelict and insane. Homeless old women slept on their steps. Drugged and violent men paced back and forth in the gutters in front of them. The houses and stores in the vicinity emptied out. Nobody wanted to live or work near people who could not be counted on to answer a smile with a smile and a good morning with a good morning. Nobody wanted to take the chance of getting knifed or shot because of some demon no one could see inside the head of a person no one could talk to.

Well, Gregor thought, it hadn’t gotten that bad around here. Maybe the wanderers were spooked. The ME’s offices were in the same building as the morgue. Down at the other end of the building, toward the middle of the block, Gregor could see the bays for the morgue ambulances and vans. They were closed. He got his wallet out of his back pocket and asked Connie Hazelwood what he owed her.

“Three dollars even,” she replied.

Gregor assumed it was some kind of set rate. From this part of the city to that part of the city for three dollars even. It surprised him because New Haven was so urban, and set rates were such a small-town thing to do. He took out four dollar bills and passed them into the front seat.

“Thank you very much,” he said, opening his door to get out.

Connie Hazelwood pocketed the money and took out a business card. “Ask for me if you call again,” she said, slipping the card into the breast pocket of his suit jacket through his open coat. “I’m not always free, but I can always try.”

Gregor got a sudden vision of Connie Hazelwood dumping an old lady shopper on an icy sidewalk to free herself up to take his call. He pushed it out of his head.

“Thank you,” he said again. Then he stepped out onto the pavement and looked around.

No Christmas decorations. No holiday door wreaths. No sprightly red-and-white posters announcing commercial New Year’s Eve parties. This neighborhood might not be dilapidated, but it was a little like a college student with a case of clinical depression. It wasn’t engaged with the world, to put it the way Donna Moradanyan would. It wasn’t even engaged with itself. Gregor wanted to throw a little tinsel on the nearest utility pole.

He went up to the building’s front doors and let them slide open in front of him. He found himself in a wide, narrow front room with filthy vinyl on the floor and cork bulletin boards screwed into every wall. The cork bulletin boards were covered with signs that commanded: DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE—HAVE A SAFE NEW YEAR’S EVE. Opposite the front doors, there was a security desk with a guard at it. The guard was old and tired looking and very, very Irish. He was wearing an N.H.P.D. uniform, with the top button of the shirt undone.