You’re supposed to be older, Gregor thought, but he didn’t say it out loud. Rob was out of the car and marching toward the police line like General Patton on a tear, the effect only mildly spoiled by the fact that the two assistants trailing him were both very petite women in very high heels.
Gregor shoved his hands in his pockets and went to meet Rob Benedetti.
2
It would have been an understatement to say that Marty Gayle was not happy to see Rob Benedetti, but it would have been something on the order of a lie to say he was unhappy to see Cord Leehan. Marty came out to meet Benedetti. When he saw Cord walking up through the ranks of the police line, he took a couple of steps back and swore in what Gregor knew was Latin. Tibor swore like that sometimes, since he couldn’t swear in Armenian on Cavanaugh Street without most of the women knowing what he meant. By then, Gregor was just inside the cordon, hanging back to let Rob do what he wanted to do about Marty. He was startled at the venom and disgust in Marty’s face, as if Cord were a Nazi death camp guard just come to the surface in South Philadelphia. He looked long and hard at Cord Leehan, but he couldn’t see it. The man was thin and tall and muscular, but beyond that he looked like a million other men of the same age. The only thing distinctive about him was the fact that he had red hair.
Gregor moved closer to Tom Celebrese and asked. “So what is it? Is this Cord Leehan a crooked cop, or an informer, or what?”
“What?” Tom looked startled.
“That Marty Gayle should hate the sight of him.”
Tom blushed. “It’s not that. It’s nothing like that.”
“So what is it?”
Tom turned away and looked into the crowd. Gregor thought about pressing him, but decided not to. The crowd had been remarkably well behaved all this time, and most of them were probably asleep on their feet and no danger to anybody; but one or two would surely have been drinking while they watched the parade pass by, and one or two would have been doing something worse. The potential was always there for a bad situation.
It didn’t help, Gregor thought, that most of the faces in this crowd were black, and most of the faces in the police lines were not. He’d thought the Philadelphia police had fixed that problem years ago.
He started to make his way back to where Rob Benedetti was just coming up to Marty Gayle. Cord Leehan was still a good twenty feet away, and he didn’t seem to be moving very quickly. Gregor suddenly realized he hated this. If there was one thing they drilled into new recruits at Quantico, it was that personalities had no place in an investigation. Personalities meant inefficiency, and confusion, and failure. Personalities meant a case about the investigators and not about the investigated. He had the feeling that anything around Marty Gayle was about Marty Gayle, and that was the worst news he’d had since he’d realized that Bennis had taken off for parts unknown.
Rob was unbuttoning his coat. It was what Rob did whenever he was about to deliver a lecture, unbutton his coat or button it. Gregor wondered what he did in the summer. Maybe he buttoned his suit jackets.
“For Christ’s sake,” Rob said.
By then Gregor was right behind him. Marty Gayle was behaving as if Gregor didn’t exist, and neither did anyone else within hearing distance.
“This is a crime scene,” Marty said, gesturing to what was going on behind him. “And you’re not my boss.”
“No, I’m not your boss,” Rob said, “but John Jackman is, and he’s going to be down here in a split second if I tell him you’re not being reasonable. What’s wrong with you? We’ve been over this and over this. Your own captain’s talked to you. John’s talked to you. The God-damned mayor has talked to you. You can’t do this.”
“I can’t refuse to talk to a civilian about an ongoing investigation?”
“If by civilian, you mean Mr. Demarkian here, then he’s not a civilian in any meaningful sense of the term since he’s been hired by the city and the police department as a consultant—”
“He was hired by that scuzzy little shit’s ambulance chaser.”
“No,” Gregor said judiciously, “actually, I wasn’t. I talked to the, uh, defense counsel in question, but that was mostly because he’s a friend of mine.”
“He is on the payroll of this city, and he is a consultant to the police department on this case; and I wasn’t talking about Demarkian and you know it,” Rob said. “You know exactly what this is about.”
“Detectives don’t have to have partners,” Marty said. “I know they usually do, but they don’t have to. Why don’t we just leave it at that.”