Hardscrabble Road(101)

He got a cab outside his apartment, and thought that it was time to change that. He wasn’t going to buy a town house in Rittenhouse Square, but he could do better than this, and there was really no reason to go on putting up with bad plumbing when he didn’t have to. On the other hand, he didn’t want to turn out like Tony Benn, living like the lord he’d been born to be and spouting off about the miserable conditions suffered by the world’s downtrodden poor. He didn’t know what he wanted to be. It seemed impossible, considering how much thought he’d given to it back in Tennessee, but he didn’t actually seem to have figured out his life yet.

The cab deposited him outside the big plate glass windows of a small restaurant, and as soon as he got out onto the sidewalk he could see that it wasn’t much more than one of those hole-in-the-wall diners that dotted the city from one end to the other. Etched gold lettering across the top of the largest window said: ARARAT. Ray Dean looked up and down the street. It was a nice street. The houses were expensive as city houses went, but not as expensive as the kind of thing his father would have bought. Of course, very few people could afford the kind of thing his father would have bought, but it was amazing how many people tried. He saw a small grocery up the street a little. It was a “Middle Eastern” grocery, and he wondered if that meant they would have loukoumia and halva. He could buy packages of both and bring them home when it was time for him to leave. He looked through the big plate glass window at the people at the tables and then realized that the man he was looking for was right there, sitting in the window booth, facing off against a plate of eggs, sausages, and hash browns that would have given a cholesterol-induced heart attack to a fifteen-year-old Olympic athlete.

Ray Dean went into the restaurant and looked around again. There didn’t seem to be a hostess waiting to seat him. He went over to the window booth and looked down at the man he knew to be Gregor Demarkian and the other man with him, a little man, very thin and gnarled, who was making do with buttered toast. For the first time, Ray Dean began to think he should have called in advance. He hadn’t because… because he’d thought of this as going into the police station to make a report. It was ridiculous, but there it was.

The two men were looking up at him now, the smaller one with a look of calm inquiry, Gregor Demarkian with a look that was not so calm. Ray Dean cleared his throat.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Mr. Gregor Demarkian? I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought—I’m sorry. My name is Aldous Ballard, and I run an organization called Philadelphia Sleeps.”

Gregor Demarkian was staring at him. Ray Dean didn’t think he was blinking. Finally, Gregor Demarkian coughed a little and said, “Aldous Ballard. Well, you’re too young to be the original, so that would make you … what? The grandson?”

“The son. But my father doesn’t use Aldous. He uses William.”

“In the papers, he’s always William Aldous Ballard.”

“True enough,” Ray Dean said. “At the coalition, they call me Ray Dean.”

“Why?”

Ray Dean sighed. “Because when I went to work there, it seemed the better part of valor. Can I sit down? I have this thing.” He stuck his hands in the pockets of his coat and came up with a typewritten list. “I have something I thought you ought to see. I didn’t do it to bring it in here. I don’t know why I did it. Because I was pissed off at being jerked around, I think.”

“Sit,” Gregor Demarkian said. “This is Father Tibor Kasparian.”

“How do you do, Father?” Ray Dean sat.

A young woman was at the side of the table instantly, with a cup and a saucer and the coffeepot. Ray Dean allowed her to pour for him, and thanked her, and told her that he didn’t need any breakfast just yet, but it was good of her to ask. He sounded to himself like a decade before, at Parents’ Day at St. Paul’s. That was a blast from the past.

He put the typewritten paper on the table before him and said, “I went to the bank. My father’s bank. The branch of it here, you know. And I got this.”

“What’s this?”

“A list of the people connected to the disappearance of Sherman Markey who have accounts with the Markwell Ballard Bank.”

Gregor Demarkian’s eyebrows rose. “Isn’t that kind of information supposed to be confidential?”

“Absolutely,” Ray Dean said.

Gregor Demarkian cocked his head. “You’re a very interesting man, Mr. Ballard. I assume you’ve got hold of the names on that list through connections.”