Hardscrabble Road(41)
“Mr. Demarkian?” he said. “I’m Dane Marbury. We’ve given up on the car. Mike’s gone to get us a new one. And we’d both like to thank you very much.”
“For what?” Gregor was out and closing the car door behind him. The cold was still wicked. The wind was still stiff.
“For giving us something to do on a long, boring day,” Marbury said. “Don’t mind us. This is the least exciting precinct in the city. We’ve got rich guys. We’ve got hookers. Don’t let anybody ever tell you that rich guys only like high-priced call girls. You wouldn’t believe how many of them like to pick up hookers off the street, skanky hookers, too—”
“Dane, for Christ’s sake. He used to be with the FBI.”
The person who said this was the bulky, compact man Gregor had been imagining in a police uniform jacket, and he came equipped even with the buzz cut. Dane Marbury turned around and shrugged.
“So he was with the FBI,” he said. “What does the FBI know? They’re clueless on the street and you know it.”
“The FBI knows from rich guys being blackmailed by cheap hookers. How do you do, Mr. Demarkian. I’m Mike Giametti.”
“How do you do,” Gregor said.
It really was cold out here. Neither of the young men seemed to notice it.
“I still say we ought to thank him,” Dane Marbury said. “He’s got us out of here for the afternoon, and I’m more than happy to go. I’m not all that interested in rich guys and I’m not all that interested in hookers.”
“No, I’m glad to get out of here, too,” Giametti said. I’ve got us a ride. The nuns are going to be waiting.”
“And it’s cold,” Gregor said.
The two younger men looked at him, seemed confused, and blinked.
2
The precinct that included the Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was supposed to be “not central,” or “out of the way,” but Gregor had never imagined it might actually be out in the country. He kept trying to get his bearings and couldn’t. They were in the city, then the city petered out, then there were miles of strip malls and fast-food restaurants, then there was grass, or as much of it as you could see under the heavy coating of snow that had not disappeared this far out into the country. Except that they couldn’t be in the country, Gregor thought, because they were still within the city limits. If they hadn’t been, then the police who covered Hardscrabble Road would belong to a township, and not Philadelphia.
Mike Giametti looked just as confused as Gregor was. “If the map didn’t fit, I’d think we were lost. You sure this is where we’re supposed to go?”
Dane Marbury nodded. “I checked the maps back at the precinct. This is where we’re supposed to go. You wouldn’t think it was part of the city, would you?”
“I don’t think it’s part of the city,” Giametti said. “I think we’re lost.”
“Next intersection should be Colcannon Street,” Marbury said.
All three of them held their breath as the next intersection came up, but it was Colcannon Street. The problem was that there didn’t seem to be much of anything on Colcannon Street. There were a few low buildings: a hardware store, a pharmacy, a pawnshop, a Laundromat. There were a few vacant lots. The area didn’t look depressed as much as it looked never developed, and Gregor didn’t think there was anywhere in the city of Philadelphia, or even in the greater Metro area, that hadn’t been developed.
“Next intersection is Gwane Street,” Marbury said.
The next intersection was Gwane Street. There was nobody walking around on the pavements at all. The whole thing could have been a stage set for a Twilight Zone episode. Still, Gregor thought, there was that pawnshop. Pawnshops meant poor people, or at least people living close enough to the edge that they needed extra money fast and had no choice but to part with the things they loved to get it. It wasn’t impossible that an area with a pawnshop would also be an area with homeless people.
“I know why it looks so wrong,” Gregor said suddenly. “There aren’t any adult bookstores.”
“There aren’t any adult bookstores in most of the neighborhoods of Philadelphia,” Dane Marbury said. “What do you take us for?”
“In neighborhoods with pawnshops, there are adult bookstores,” Gregor said. “Except here, there aren’t.”
“Maybe they’re afraid of the nuns,” Mike Giametti said.
Gregor shifted uncomfortably in the backseat. This was a squad car, so he was in the compartment usually reserved for people who had been arrested for something or the other. “Tell me about Drew Harrigan,” he said. “Rob Benedetti said—”