Glass Houses(7)

“Why me? She doesn’t even know me.”

“Exactly,” Gregor said. “And you’re exotic, and sophisticated, and from another country. If I were you, I’d get used to it. There are quite a few people here who feel the same way. You’re our celebrity of the moment.”

Phillipa Lydgate looked around the restaurant. A dozen people were trying to look at her without letting on that that was what they were doing. She reached into her purse and found her lighter.

“Does this restaurant serve all American food?” she asked, pointing to Tibor’s little plates of hash browns and sausages.

“It serves American and Armenian,” Gregor said. “It’s just that most people don’t order Armenian for breakfast. Come back at lunch or dinner though. Especially dinner. Dinner is full of tourists. They’re always eating Armenian food.”

“Be serious, Krekor,” Tibor said. “We’re all eating Armenian food.”

Phillipa Lydgate looked lost in thought. “So people from other neighborhoods come here,” she said. “Is that a problem?”

“Why would it be a problem?” Gregor asked.

“Well, with community feeling. Communities tend to want to defend themselves against outsiders. In some places in the United States, there have been incidents of violence and murder when someone wandered into a neighborhood he didn’t belong in.”

“Have there?” Gregor said.

Phillipa Lydgate looked him up and down. “You used to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, isn’t that right? And you still have something to do with the police force.”

“In the first place,” Gregor said, “the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not the ‘police force.’ It’s a federal agency charged with investigating crimes on federal land and against federal law as it applies under the Commerce Clause. In the second place, I have nothing to do with any ‘police force,’ unless one of them hires me as a consultant. Which some of them sometimes do.”

“Sorry,” Phillipa said. “Let me put that another way. You’ve had a long career in law enforcement, and you still have contact with law enforcement on a regular basis.”

“Yes,” Gregor said.

“So you must know of the kinds of violence I’m speaking of. Crown Heights, in New York City, wasn’t it? Where a group of black youths beat an Hasidic Jewish man to death when he wandered into their neighborhood. And neighborhoods in Los Angeles that belong now to gangs: the Crips and the Bloods. And to wander into the other gang’s territory is to die.”

“Those things absolutely happened,” Gregor said, “although you’ve got the Crown Heights’ story in a truncated version. I’m just not sure what you think they have to do with Cavanaugh Street.”

“Well,” Phillipa said.

Gregor looked at his enormous mound of melon. He didn’t want to eat it anymore. He wished he’d ordered his old fry-up this morning, just to confirm Phillipa Lydgate in her prejudices.

“The boys here couldn’t join gangs,” Tibor said. “Their mothers wouldn’t let them.”

Gregor gave him a long look. It was hard to tell when Tibor was angry or upset. The years in Armenia before he’d been able to come to America had ensured that because he was always liable to arrest just for being a priest. But Gregor knew Tibor, and Tibor was beyond upset. He was close to exploding.

“Look,” Gregor said. “Maybe it would make just a little more sense if you’d hold off deciding you knew what was going on until you actually did know. You’ve been here—how long? Twenty-four hours?”

“Less than fifteen,” Phillipa said, “but it’s not my first trip to America. I’ve been several times.”

“Where?”

“New York. Washington. Los Angeles.”

“Exactly,” Gregor said. “It would be the same if I went to the United Kingdom, visited nothing but Buckingham Palace and Hampton Court, and came back saying I knew what Britain was like. This is a fairly ordinary neighborhood in this city. It’s a little more upmarket than some, and it’s unusual in the number of families with children, because families with children tend to move to the suburbs. But nobody shoots up the landscape here. There are no gangs. I don’t think anybody even owns a gun.”

“Howard Kashinian owns a gun,” Tibor said. “But Sheila took his bullets, so that he would not make a fool of himself.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Howard. Well, Howard is Howard.”

Phillipa Lydgate’s cigarette was collecting a long column of ash. “But this state does have the death penalty, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Bennis’s own sister was executed. And there is at least one town where the school board wants to teach the biblical theory of creation instead of science. And there are murders here. I looked them up.”