Hardscrabble Road(119)

“ ’s’okay,” the receptionist said.

Marla Hildebrande rolled her eyes and waved Gregor through the door to the offices proper. They consisted of an enormous bullpen full of secretaries’ cubicles, all of them separated by glass, and a few offices at the back. One of those offices also had a glass wall that left it open to the bullpen. That was the one Marla Hildebrande took him into.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Frank had the only office you could really close off. I really need to be able to see what’s going on. It’s usually bad news. Will it matter, that they can see us?”

“No. It probably wouldn’t matter if they could hear us, although that makes me a little nervous.”

“I’ll close the door. They won’t be able to hear anything. We’re operating on a full schedule today. We have to be. But it isn’t like we’re a huge corporation. Yet. Frank would always say yet. He wanted to be a huge corporation. But we’re not, not yet, and so everybody has to work.”

She closed the door and waved him onto the couch, which was worn but looked comfortable. He sat down. Marla Hildebrande sat on the edge of the desk.

“So,” she said. “I’m sort of surprised to see you here. Surprised and pleased. I know this is being taken as part of the Drew Harrigan case. I know that. And I know what happens when that happens, when you’re the secondary victim in a celebrity case. Goodness only knows, we report on enough of them. Celebrity cases, I mean. Although it’s usually the celebrity who’s the perpetrator. Listen to me. I’m not making any sense at all, am I?”

“You’re doing fine,” Gregor said. “I just want to ask you a few questions. They’re really the questions I should have asked Frank Sheehy when he was alive.”

“All right.”

“Did he know that Drew Harrigan was addicted to prescription drugs? Did you?”

“Oh, of course we did,” Marla said. “It was an open secret throughout the industry. These things usually are. And of course we had to cover for it, at least potentially. Although I’ll admit, even when he came stoned to work, Drew really could work.”

“Did you know where he was getting his information?”

“Drew, you mean? Well, he wasn’t an investigative reporter, if that’s what you’re thinking. He wasn’t anything like one. The impression I always got was that he got his stuff from informants. It’s a snowball kind of thing. In the beginning it’s hard, but after a while people come to you. People who want to feel important. People with grudges. You have to be careful, of course, because people with grudges can feed you false information and get you sued, but it isn’t the end of the world to get sued in a business like Drew’s.”

“Did you like Drew Harrigan?”

“God, no.”

“Did Frank Sheehy like Drew Harrigan?”

“Frank liked the money Drew made for everybody, and beyond that I don’t think he cared much one way or the other. He was a very practical man when it came to business. We had Drew, but we also have three shock jocks. They’re popular, too. We’re an equal opportunity offender.”

Gregor let that one go, and put it up to the fact that she was…distraught. “Try this,” he said. “Did you know that Frank Sheehy had an account with Markwell Ballard?”

“The investment bank? Really? I’m impressed.”

“But not surprised.”

“No,” Marla said. “Not really. Frank came from a wealthy family, a really large wealthy family, with everybody at prep school and Princeton and that kind of thing. And the business has been successful. I could see him with an account at Markwell Ballard.”

“Did he try to buy the property Drew Harrigan gave to the nuns at Our Lady of Mount Carmel?”

“No, that I know he didn’t do,” Marla said, “because he was pissed about it. He said Drew was going to end up shanghaiing himself into jail by pulling this kind of thing.”

“He thought the sale of the property was something Drew was pulling?”

“That it was a setup, yes, to bulletproof himself from a court judgment in case Sherman Markey won in court. I thought that, too. Didn’t you?”

“I think everybody did. Was Frank Sheehy getting the prescription drugs for Drew Harrigan? Did he know who was?”

For the first time, Marla hesitated. She seemed to be making up her mind about something. “Well,” she said finally. “He’s dead, isn’t he? No, he wasn’t the person getting the drugs for Drew, but he knew who was. He told me once that drug addictions were miraculous things, because they could make two people who were otherwise complete enemies into allies. I think on one level he thought it was funny. Oh, he didn’t think the drug addiction itself was funny. That was making him crazy, because with a guy like Drew, with a show riding on him, people’s jobs riding on him, dysfunction is never funny.”