“Oh,” Russ said, “wait. I know that. The woman who manages the building. It’s cut up into tiny apartments apparently; at least they must be tiny, look at the house. Anyway, she went to the basement for something and saw a hand—”
“A hand?”
“Or part of a hand,” Russ said. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess. But she saw something, and she called the police to come look; and they came, and they found a body, and they called everybody in sight; and now we’re down to this.”
“Do you know the woman by sight, the one who called? Is she around here? Do the police have her?”
Russ tried looking around. Gregor could tell he wasn’t finding it easy. “I don’t know,” he said. “She’s a big woman, African American, in a—oh, wait. She’s over there.”
“Where?”
“There.”
Russ was pointing at a little clump of uniformed officers. The big African-American woman was in the middle of them. She did not look under arrest, but she did look like someone the police had every intention of keeping away from the press as long as possible.
There was something, Gregor thought. Where was the press? They listened to the police band. They should be out and around here by now. He patted Russ on the shoulder.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
It was a long walk over to the uniformed police who surrounded the woman he wanted to talk to, and Gregor wouldn’t have made it at all if he hadn’t known at least three other officers on the way. When he got to where he was going, he found Marty Gayle with no problem.
“If that’s the landlady, or the super, or whatever,” Gregor said, “I’d like to talk to her for a moment.”
“And you’re working for Jackman, so I have to let you,” Marty Gayle said. “But I’ve got to tell you, Mr. Demarkian, I don’t like these arrangements. I don’t like bringing in outside consultants, or whatever it is we’re supposed to call them. You’ve never been an actual cop, have you?”
“I was with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“In other words, you’ve never been an actual cop.”
“I have worked with them, Detective Gayle.”
“I know you have,” Marty Gayle said. “You’ve worked with actual Philadelphia cops. I’ve seen the news stories. I’ve heard the gossip in the department. And it’s very good gossip. Cops like you. Everybody thinks you’re competent. Pretty much everybody thinks you’re brilliant as hell. But that isn’t the issue, is it?”
“What is the issue?” Gregor asked.
Marty Gayle looked away, at the front of the house. They were very close. It looked far more chaotic than it had from far away.
“A police force is a delicate thing,” Marty Gayle said. “It’s a balance of a lot of different elements, and it doesn’t take much to get those elements out of balance. I hate the drug war. Do you want to know why? Because not only is the drug war unwinnable in any sense anybody could want to win it, but it upsets the balance of police forces. It’s too much money, and too much temptation, and that line where everybody teeters between being enough of a rebel to have the imagination you need to do good work and going completely over to the dark side. The drug war messes with that like you wouldn’t believe. That’s why I hate the drug war.”
“Fair enough,” Gregor said, “but I don’t see what that has to do with me.” “Nothing, really, except that it’s about upsetting the balance. You upset the balance. You’re the wrong psychology. Bringing you in here from the outside is like holding up a sign that says, we’d better get somebody smart from the outside because the dumb cops can’t handle it. Cops are not dumb; they’re like anybody else. Treat them as if they’re dumb long enough and they’ll start to believe it; and when they’ve believed it long enough, they’ll start to dumb themselves down until they fit the description.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought of cops as dumb,” Gregor said. “An individual cop here and there, but not cops in general or as a class. If I did that, Jackman wouldn’t want me here.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” Marty Gayle said. “It matters what the men think, and I know how they think. It’s a big case, but they’re capable of handling it. I’m capable of handling it all on my own, without the advice of the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot.”
“Do you think Henry Tyder is the Plate Glass Killer?” Gregor asked. Marty Gayle smiled. “The woman you want is named Kathleen Conge. She’s right over there. An African-American Catholic. Philadelphia is full of them. Because of Saint Katherine Drexel. Did you know that?”