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Murder Superior(73)

By:Jane Haddam


The man looked around the restaurant once or twice, found Gregor and Tibor in their booth, squinted in their direction and then looked relieved. He came striding over from the cash register with the air of a man who has finally—finally—reached his destination. He came up to their booth and stopped, his hands deep in the pockets of his short jean jacket. Tibor put down the coffee he was holding and looked polite.

“Well,” the young man said. “Mr. Demarkian. You don’t know how glad I am to have found you.”

“Good morning,” Gregor said.

The young man sighed. “You don’t remember me. I’m not surprised. In all that crap yesterday, you probably wouldn’t remember much of anybody but Jack and we all know how Jack affects the public.”

“Jack,” Gregor repeated. He was fairly sure the young man meant Jack Androcetti, but he couldn’t be sure.

The young man confirmed it for him. “lieutenant Androcetti,” he said patiently, “my supposed boss of the moment. My name is Collins. Rob Collins. I’m a sergeant with—”

“I remember you,” Gregor said. “The intelligent one.”

“Thanks,” Rob Collins said.

“Does Jack Androcetti know you’re here?”

“Of course he doesn’t. I’m looking to get fired. Or something. God. Jack Androcetti doesn’t know his—Never mind. Look, could I talk to you?”

“Does this mean you want me to leave?” Father Tibor asked.

“No,” Gregor said.

“Is he your partner?” Rob Collins asked.

“He’s my priest,” Gregor told him.

Rob Collins said, “Right.”

That was the moment when Linda Melajian came over with a new placemat and a new place setting and pushed Rob Collins toward Tibor’s side of the booth.

“You want one of Mr. Demarkian’s cholesterol specials or would you prefer something healthy?”

“Coffee?” Rob Collins suggested.

“The coffee in this place is not healthy,” Gregor said.

“I’ll get coffee,” Linda said to the world at large.

Rob Collins sat down next to Father Tibor Kasparian. “Mr. Demarkian,” he said, “you’ve got to listen to me. We’re in a lot of trouble.”





2


THE COFFEE IN ARARAT was very definitely not healthy, and Linda brought a pot of it, on the principle that if Gregor was meeting someone at the restaurant for breakfast, that someone had to be there on business. Gregor knew that Linda had already read through the Inquirer. She had probably decided that this had something to do with that. She would be right if she had, of course, but what Gregor worried about was what something she might have decided this had to do with that. The people on Cavanaugh Street had only the vaguest notions of what went on during a murder investigation, and those came chiefly from television. Even Bennis Hannaford, who had actually been present at more than one such project, tended to romanticize the whole business. Father Tibor was better, but nobody really listened to Father Tibor. They treated him as an unworldly and utterly holy local saint with no practical intelligence whatsoever. Gregor always wanted to point out that a man with no practical intelligence whatsoever could never have made his way from a Siberian prison camp to an East German safe house to Jerusalem to Rome to Paris and then to the United States. The sheer logistics of something like that were paralyzing. The people on Cavanaugh Street apparently thought Tibor had been lifted up by an angel and set down on the doorstep of the nearest Bishop of the Armenian Christian Church. They would probably also think that Gregor had a secret deal going with the police investigating the murder of Sister Joan Esther.

Rob Collins thought that what he had going was an unqualified disaster, which was usually what he had going when he got stuck with Jack Androcetti.

“Lot of guys in the department want to say it was racism got Jack his promotion,” Rob said, “but this time I think it was good old-fashioned politics. I mean, they promoted him ahead of two white guys who were ahead of me on the list, if you see what I mean. The name Capeletti mean anything to you?”

“Sure,” Gregor said. “Philadelphia Democratic machine in the forties and fifties. Some kind of party boss.”

“Some kind, yeah. Party chairman for Philadelphia and functional kingpin for the entire Main line. Good old ward politics, buy the votes and rig the voting machines. Capeletti was Jack’s grandfather on his mother’s side. You beginning to get the picture?”

“I take it there are still a lot of Capelettis in politics on the Main line.”

“A lot.”

“Does this mean they had to make him a homicide detective?”