Not a Creature Was Stirring(16)

“Spies is one of the things that might explain it. I can think of two others.”

“What?”

“That one of his children is involved in a plot to kill the president. Or that one of his children is involved in major fraud.”

This time it was George who took a long pull on his drink. He looked like he thought he needed it. “Krekor, in your voice I can hear it. You don’t believe any of those things. I don’t believe any of those things, either. They sound like science fiction. Miss Hannaford’s unicorns are for me more real.”

“Well,” Gregor said, “that sort of thing is real enough for me. I’ve spent most of my life living with it in one way or another. What bothers me is that I don’t think any of it is real in this case.”

“Why not?”

Gregor waved a hand in the air. “For serious espionage, you need access. From what I’ve been able to figure out so far, neither Hannaford himself nor any of his children have it. As for the other things—Tibor thinks this man is, I wouldn’t say an agent of the devil, but close. He didn’t like Hannaford at all.”

“Then there’s probably nothing to like,” George said. “Tibor isn’t a practical man, but I would listen to him about people.”

“So would I,” Gregor said. “Tibor thinks Hannaford hates his children. Hates them unreservedly.”

“And?”

“And a man who hates his children doesn’t throw a hundred thousand dollars in cash around to get them out of trouble.”

“Ah,” George said.

“Exactly,” Gregor said. “I thought about the wife, but Tibor says she’s some kind of invalid. Very social and very involved in good works, but basically domestic and too ill to get around and do things. I think she gets written up on the society pages a lot.”

George sighed. “So,” he said. “Here we are. Maybe the man is just crazy in the real way. Maybe he belongs in an institution.”

“I don’t know, George. I just know I don’t like this thing. I don’t like him involving Tibor, and I don’t like—well, what it feels like.”

“Do you know what you’re going to do about it?”

“No.”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do about it, either. Have a little more rum, Krekor. It’s good for the brain.”

Gregor doubted it, but he knew it was good for the nerves. He needed something for those.





2


Half an hour later, Gregor climbed the stairs to the third floor, unlocked the door to his apartment, turned on his foyer light, and found himself staring at Robert Hannaford’s card. The damn thing seemed to have appeared in his hand of its own volition.

He shut the door behind him, threw his coat on the rack, and walked down the narrow hall to his living room. It looked white and dead, but through its windows he could see the decorations on Lida Arkmanian’s town house. Lida had outdone herself—she had a plastic Santa with eight reindeer and Rudolph on the roof; a curtain of red and silver tinsel hanging from the fourth-floor balcony; string after string of colored lights—and it was a good thing. The reflected glory of her facade was all that made Gregor’s bare space look habitable.

Bare walls, bare floor, one couch, two chairs, and a coffee table in a thirty-by-twenty-seven-foot room. It reminded him of the way dance studios looked between classes.

He dropped into a chair, stretched his legs, and turned his body slightly so he could go on looking out the window. They had warned him he would lose the details of her—the way she looked, the way she talked, the way she moved—but it hadn’t happened. In the dark, he could always hear her voice.

In this dark, he could hear her half-singing, half-humming under her breath, the way she had every night while washing dishes. She was in the kitchen, stacking plates away in tall oak cabinets. If he didn’t try to follow her, she would stay.

Gregor closed his eyes. He had started out afraid of this. He had put her pictures in a drawer, put the sweaters she’d made him into storage with their furniture, taped her books into packing boxes. He’d thought he was losing his mind, and every time he’d felt her with him he’d wanted to drink.

Now he hoped only that she’d never leave him. He needed her as much as he ever had, beyond all considerations of pain and comfort. Better to ache for her than to feel nothing at all.

Elizabeth. Elizabeth. Elizabeth.

He opened his eyes again. The apartment was full of her, but for some reason that no longer relaxed him. He was restless and dissatisfied, distracted and tense. Listen, she’d told him once. You need to do what you do. You need it more than you need me. That wasn’t true, of course. Before she died, he hadn’t believed there was pain like that in the universe. But—