Glass Houses(56)

She had turned her back to him, and he could see dirt and stains there, too. Up close, he had no trouble discerning that some of the stains were older than others, and that only some of them could have been made by dirt. Kathleen Conge was not a clean woman. She wasn’t going to turn back to him to allow him to say good-bye, so Gregor abandoned politeness and just went. The wind had picked up, and it was beginning to get more than a little cold.

He made his way through the circle of uniformed police and back into the crowd, looking everywhere for Russ. He did not look for Marty Gayle. He could sit down with Marty Gayle and get that straightened out later. Now was not the time.

Russ was on the other side of the street now, sitting on the bottom step of a stoop with his legs thrust out in front of him. Gregor started walking over, looking back at the house just one more time, as if it would make more sense if he contemplated it from a distance.





3


Russ had stopped trying to get too close to the uniformed officers, but he had not stopped watching, and he was tall enough so that he could see clearly even when he was sitting down. As Gregor approached, he got up, an automatic gesture of politeness Gregor had stopped being used to decades ago.

“I called Donna,” Russ said. “I don’t know why. Maybe I was bored. I keep sort of coming to and being terrified she’s gone off and had the baby when I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Not for a couple of months though,” Gregor said. “At least, that was what Lida told me when I asked.”

“Not for a couple of months,” Russ admitted. “But you know what babies are. They come whenever. Like Bennis, I guess.”

“Bennis isn’t a baby.”

“Not physically, maybe. Anyway, never mind. I’m sorry I brought it up. Donna was trying to get me to pump you.”

“About Bennis?”

“About you and Bennis. Bennis isn’t talking.”

Gregor thought it was a very curious thing indeed, a time when Bennis wasn’t talking to Donna. He let it go. “I just got a very interesting piece of information,” he said. “Did you know that there is a man who lives in this house who was once picked up on suspicion of being the Plate Glass Killer? And that he decorates his walls with pictures of serial killers who are supposed to be his heroes?”

Russ sat down again. “Really? He thinks they’re heroes?”

“Well,” Gregor said, “I don’t know what he thinks, although I’m going to find out eventually, and sooner rather than later. He isn’t here at the moment. I talked to the woman who functions as superintendent for the building.”

“Kathleen Conge,” Russ said. “They wouldn’t let me near her.”

“I’ve got no idea how credible a source she is,” Gregor said, “but most of what she told me would be easy to check. Does the name Bennie Durban mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“You haven’t been through the files on the Plate Glass case? They should have sent you a pile of paper for discovery.”

“Not this soon, they shouldn’t,” Russ said. “And they’ll take their own sweet time about it, too. Anyway, you have to be on your way to trial to get discovery, and then I have to demand it, or a lot of it. But there would be another way to check. If this guy was picked up on suspicion of being the PGK, it would have been in the newspapers.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Absolutely necessarily. The cops have been desperate for months wanting to get something to say they were moving in on this guy. If they were arresting somebody, or even bringing him in for questioning, it would have gotten out.”

“Not necessarily,” Gregor said. “I know of at least one person in that category who got no newspaper publicity at all because I saw to it.”

“Really?” Russ rubbed his hands against his face. He looked cold. “Did you do that with only one person?”

“Only one, yes.”

“Why?”

Gregor shrugged. “He was a friend of Chickie George’s. Chickie asked me to look into it, and I put a clamp on the gossip machine until I could figure it out. But he isn’t the Plate Glass Killer, Russ. He couldn’t be. I checked him out so thoroughly, he could have survived a nomination to the Supreme Court. Marty Gayle just picked him up because he’s gay.”

“Okay,” Russ said. “But here’s the thing. There’s your guy, and this Bennie Turban—”

“Durban.”

“Durban. There were probably more. I wonder how many more. I can’t remember what I’ve seen in the newspapers, but I’ve got to admit that before Henry Tyder entered my life, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the Plate Glass Killer. I wonder what would happen if I ran a search at The Inquirer. I wonder how many people would turn up.”