“I’m always on time,” Gregor said.
“Yeah, okay, you are, I’m sorry.” Jackman sat down again.
Gregor looked toward the office door. “This Mrs. Hall,” he said. “Is she efficient?”
“If Olivia Hall were running the Defense Department,” Jackman said, “its budget would be half what it is now, we’d have twice as much in the way of hardware and three times as many soldiers, and the food would be good. I’m trying to get her to run for City Council. Don’t tell me I’m not an honorable man. The day she wins a seat and leaves me, I’m going to cut my throat, but I’m encouraging it anyway. Go see Rob. He’ll give you what you need to know.”
2
Downstairs on the street again, with his coat collar pulled up and his hands in his pockets like everybody else, Gregor considered the fact that an hour was a long time to have to go not very far to a place he could reach on foot. He looked around the neighborhood. He had been in this part of town more often than he liked to remember, but he usually arrived in a cab and left in a cab. He didn’t know much about what was here. It looked prosperous enough. Ordinary precinct houses often seemed to have been built on the worst street in the vicinity, or to have become such as people moved out not to be threatened by the parade of felons that went in and out the doors. Maybe not so many felons went in and out here. He walked up to the intersection—he ought to find a place to get some coffee, and there was one; he’d remember it for later—and looked in both directions without finding what he wanted. He went another block and looked down that intersection, and there it was: an outpost of Barnes & Noble. He gave a mental nod to Bennis’s lecture about always using independent bookstores and went on down to it. If there was another bookstore in this neighborhood, he didn’t know where it was, and he wasn’t going to take a cab back to Cavanaugh Street to find one now.
He went into the Barnes & Noble and looked around. He didn’t do much shopping in bookstores. Either Bennis or Tibor tended to pick up his books for him, or he bought them from Amazon because they were easy to find. He looked at the big central display right inside the door and didn’t see what he was looking for, or anything like it. He moved a little farther into the store and promptly got lost. There was a big section of something called “Bargain Books” that seemed to consist entirely of oversized volumes on various artists and their works, and oversized cookbooks. He had a crazy urge to see if he could find something called Picasso’s Guide to Spanish Cooking.
A young woman in good gray flannel slacks and a bright red sweater walked up to him. “Could I help you with something? You look confused.”
“I’m looking for something I’m not sure exists.”
“If it’s a kind of book, it probably exists,” she said reassuringly. “And there’s a good chance we have it. We carry over twenty thousand titles in this store.”
Twenty thousand titles sounded good. The store didn’t look big enough. “Do you know a talk radio host named Drew Harrigan?”
The woman looked wary. “Of course I know him. Well, know of him. We’ve never met. I mean, I don’t think he shops in this part of Philadelphia.”
“Has he written a book?”
Now the woman looked more than wary. “Um, well, yes. Of course he’s written a book. He’s written three. The newest one is a New York Times bestseller.” She looked at him more closely. “Do you really mean to say you didn’t know that?”
“I don’t listen to a lot of radio,” Gregor said. “Except, you know, All Things Considered and this oldies station where they do a lot of Jan and Dean. And I don’t like politics.”
“You don’t like politics and you want a book by Drew Harrigan?”
“I want to know what all the fuss is about.”
“Are you, well, you know, conservative?”
“Conservative how?” Gregor asked.
“Conservative,” the young woman said. “You know, like, Republican.”
“I think I’m registered as an Independent,” Gregor said. “Does that matter?”
“Does that matter how?” she asked.
Gregor was beginning to feel as if he had landed in the middle of a Monty Python skit. Then the woman started, and leaned closer to get a better look at him.
“Oh,” she said. “I know you. You’re that man. The Argentinian-American Hercule Poirot.”
“Armenian,” Gregor said, automatically. “I’m Gregor Demarkian, yes. And I just want to know—I don’t know—how the man thinks, maybe. What he says. What gets people so upset about him.”