Somebody Else's Music(6)

“The only way you could give me a head start is to put me in a time machine and send me back thirty-two years,” Gregor said, sliding into the booth anyway. “Before we do anything at all, Mr. Card, I need to stress that. The possibility that you can actually solve a case that’s over thirty years in the past is virtually nil. It’s been done, but it takes luck, and you can’t plan for luck.”

“I know,” Jimmy Card said. He looked at the ceiling, and at the table, and at the palms of his hands. The light around him seemed to shift, and for a moment he looked like what he would look like in another twenty years, when the hope was gone. The effect was faintly shocking, and it made Gregor far more sympathetic to him than any appeal he might make could have done. Most “celebrities” managed to keep from looking old, not only through diet and exercise and plastic surgery, but through arrogance as well. You didn’t get old when you still believed that you would live forever.

“So,” Gregor said. “If you still want to go through with this, even if you know it’s probably going to fail, I’ll be happy to help you out, for Bennis’s sake, if for no other reason. But I feel dishonest doing it.”

Jimmy Card and Bob Haverton looked at each other. Bob Haverton drew in a deep breath and said, “There are other considerations here, besides finding out who killed Michael Houseman. If you manage to find out who committed the murder, we’ll be ecstatic. But what we really need for you to do is to find out something else—”

“Not find out,” Jimmy said. “We already know.”

“Find the proof of something else,” Bob amended. “So, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to lay this whole thing out for you from the beginning, and then you can tell us what you think.”





3


They waited until they could order, and they each seemed to be intent on ordering as little as possible. The menu was a horror of pretentiousness that included things like “sea bass en croute” and “crepes Madeleine,” both described in flourishes that made the restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine sound like Ernest Hemingway. It was, Gregor thought at one point, the Banana Republic catalogue of restaurant menus. Every offering had a story, and every story had a wry, whimsical, pixie-sophisticated tone to it, like the brightest kid without ambition in an Ivy League freshman class. He asked for something he hoped would turn out to be a steak, and Perrier, because it was obviously going to be impossible to get something as simple as a glass of ginger ale. They did have Diet Coke on the menu, but Gregor never drank Diet Coke. He couldn’t imagine asking for a Cafe’ Creme Virginite, which seemed to be a Kahlua and cream made without Kahlua. The other two men asked for salads, with dressing on the side, probably the safest thing, under the circumstances. If they couldn’t cook it, they couldn’t ruin it.

They all waited, talking about nothing, until the food was served. Gregor’s lunch turned out to have something to do with steak, but only vaguely, as it was covered in grapes and a thick brown sauce that reminded him of the stuff that came with Egg Foo Yung. He ignored it in favor of the green beans, which had nothing more complicated on them than almond slivers and melted butter.

“I warned you,” Jimmy Card said.

“I’m not in the habit of eating at restaurants in central Philadelphia,” Gregor told him.

Bob Haverton picked up his attache’ case, laid it on the clear end of the table, and snapped it open. He had his initials on it in polished brass, and the brass sparkled in the light.

“I’ve had our people put together as complete a dossier on this case as it’s possible to get,” he said. “It is, as you’ve pointed out, over thirty years in the past, but the records are still available, not only police records but newspaper files, the file from the Parks and Recreation Service, a couple of articles that ran in the true crime magazines. It’s not as good as being there at the time, I admit, but it’s something to go on. Would you like to see?”

Gregor took the thick stack of papers Haverton was handing out to him and put it down next to his plate. “I can keep these?”

“If you take the case, yes. I’ve got copies.”

“Have you read them?”

“We both have,” Jimmy Card said. “I’ve read them over and over again. I think, from what Liz told me, well, I hadn’t expected—”

Bob Haverton cleared his throat. “Liz told him they locked her in an outhouse with some snakes. She didn’t tell him that she’d had a phobic reaction and beaten herself bloody on the outhouse door, trying to get out.”