Glass Houses(25)

He was starting to feel like an idiot. He looked around at Bennis’s luggage one more time—she’d been to the Bahamas; there was a big leather tote bag with a zip top and the logo of a hotel she’d once taken him to in Nassau—and then went out of the apartment and back downstairs. She’d almost certainly not spent all this time in Nassau. He wondered where she had been. He wondered what she’d been doing. He wondered if she’d gotten her book in on time. He couldn’t remember seeing her in any of the kinds of magazines where she was used to doing interviews. He didn’t like to admit the fact that he’d checked. His palms were sweaty. The back of his neck was damp.

He came out of his building, jaywalked across the street, and headed up the block to Holy Trinity. The church was brand-new, rebuilt from the ground up after it had been bombed to pieces by one of those faux-patriot conspiracy groups that thought George Washington had been a secret enemy of America because he’d been a Freemason. He went around the little passageway to the back—Tibor and Donna always called it the alley, but it was nicer than an alley; alleys were where victims of the Plate Glass Killer were found—and across the courtyard to ring Tibor’s bell.

Tibor came to the door right away. That was nearly unprecedented. If Tibor was alone in the apartment, he was almost always reading a book. If Tibor was reading a book, he was almost always dead to the world. It didn’t matter what the book was either:Nicomachean Ethics, Valley of the Dolls. Tibor was the only person Gregor had ever known with a hardcover copy of Valley of the Dolls.

Tibor opened up. “It’s you,” he said. “I was expecting you.”

Gregor looked down at Tibor’s hand. The book was Ann Coulter’s Slander. He blinked. “I thought you didn’t like Ann Coulter.”

“I don’t, Krekor. She is offensive only to be offensive. There is no point. Do you want to come in?”

“That was the idea. Unless you know where Bennis is and what she’s up to. Then you can just direct me and I’ll go there.”

Tibor stepped back. “She was here only a short time, Krekor, and then she went out again to be on that television program. I watched the program, but that is not the same, is it?”

“What television program?”

Tibor was retreating into the apartment. Like the old one before the bombing, it was big, meant to serve someday for a priest with a family. Tibor had managed to stack every available surface with books, and most of the available wall space, too. There were books in English and Armenian, Russian and Italian, French and German. There were books in three different kinds of Greek. There were Bibles in every language and of every known edition. There were works of Medieval Trinitarian Theology and best sellers about serial killers who liked to phone the police every other day to give them a few clues to the mystery. Gregor suddenly realized what a wonderful thing it would be if real life were like that. There would be no need for an FBI Department of Behavioral Sciences or for all those seminars the Bureau ran for state and local law enforcement about how to deal with sociopaths. Everybody could just sit back and wait for the killers to come to them.

Of course, some serial killers did leave clues or deliberately taunted the police. Those were the ones who were not so much crazy as just plain stupid.

“Krekor,” Tibor said.

“Sorry,” Gregor said. “I was thinking about serial killers.”

“I thought you were thinking about Bennis.”

“I am thinking about Bennis. I’m always thinking about Bennis. Sometimes my brain just gets tired. Do you know what’s going on here? Does anybody? Does Bennis?”

They had reached Tibor’s kitchen, which was to say they had reached a large room with an oversized table and a lot of shiny new appliances. Gregor was always especially taken by the Sub-Zero refrigerator. It was the size and almost the shape of a double wide, and he’d guess Tibor never had anymore in it than a bottle of milk, a tub of margarine, and whatever food the churchwomen had brought over in the hope of making sure he wouldn’t starve. Of course, Tibor always looked like he was starving, no matter what he ate.

The table was completely covered with books. So were the counters. So was half the stove, which probably was not safe. Tibor pushed a few stacks out of the way on the table and pulled out the closest chair. Gregor sat down. The book on top of the stack nearest to him was Build It! An Amateurs Guide to Building a House from the Foundations Up.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I honestly think you’re addicted to reading the way other people are addicted to alcohol.”