True Believers(150)

Not that anybody had constructed an elaborate plot here, of course. This was so simple, he had gone days missing the whole thing.

The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t know what it was talking about when it called him the “Armenian-American Hercule Poirot”





2


In the end, it was Garry Mansfield who came with him. Gregor had the feeling that neither of them wanted to go, and that their reluctance had more to do with their distaste for Roy Phipps than with any work that might be lying around the office, waiting to get done. Garry wanted to cut down the side streets and come up on Phipps’s place from the side, but Gregor insisted on going the long way around, past St. Anselm’s and St. Stephen’s, so that he could see what the situation was. The situation was nonexistent. St. Stephen’s was having its service for the men who had been hurt in the riot later this afternoon. There was a notice to that effect on the sign at the end of its front walk, made of colored cardboard and printed in metallic paint, as if to attract as much attention as possible. Whatever effect Roy Phipps had had on this neighborhood, he had not driven the men of St. Stephen’s into hiding, or even into discretion. Gregor approved of that very much. He looked at St. Anselm’s and noted that there was a short note on its sign, indicating that Masses would be said as usual even now that Father Healy was dead. Gregor who would say them, since the parochial vicar was away. Gregor thought it had all been easier in the day when every parish had had nothing more than a parish priest and the nuns who ran the parochial school.

He turned down the street on the same side as St. Anselm’s and picked up speed. Halfway to where he was going, he reached Edith Lawton’s house and stopped. The house looked shuttered up and dead, but he was sure that somebody was supposed to be inside. Hadn’t Bennis told him that Edith Lawton worked at home? The front window shades were pulled down tight. There were no lights coming from inside, in spite of the fact that the day was gray and dark. Still, if there had ever been mail in the wrought-iron mailbox, it was gone.

“This is what’s-her-name’s house,” Garry said politely. “You know. The pain in the ass. The bitch.”

“Edith Lawton.”

“That once.”

“Why isn’t she home?”

“She probably went out shopping. Do you want to talk to Roy Phipps, or do you want to talk to Edith Lawton?”

“I want to talk to Roy Phipps,” Gregor said, even though he really wanted to talk to both. He turned away from Edith Lawton’s house and went on down the street. He wasn’t in a hurry, at the moment. It seemed to him that now that everything was reasonably clear, he had all the time in the world. He only wished that he could walk into Roy Phipps’s town house and catch the man smoking crack cocaine in the foyer, or something else equally egregious, so that he could do his part to make St. Stephen’s evening service a success. It was the unfortunate truth that people like Roy Phipps almost never did things like that. They were too … focused.

They stopped in front of Roy Phipps’s town house, and Gregor looked in the closer of the two front windows. The shades were open, and the room behind them was empty and conventional: a couch, a couple of chairs, a coffee table. Gregor climbed the stoop and rang the bell. There was a cross screwed into the brick next to the door on one side, and another, smaller one screwed into the doorframe above the button for the bell. They were crosses, not crucifixes, which made Gregor unaccountably grumpy. The Armenian Church used crosses rather than crucifixes. Gregor didn’t like the idea that there was any similarity at all.

Nobody had come to the door. Gregor rang the bell again and stood back a little to look through the windows. That room was still empty. It still looked too clean. Then Gregor heard footsteps coming up to the door, and the sound of panting, somebody out of breath.

The door opened on an overweight man in a suit a size too small for him. He looked as if he were strangling in his shirt collar.

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m Gregor Demarkian,” Gregor said. “This is—”

Garry Mansfield had his badge out, but the man in the tight suit was barely looking at it. “Yes, yes,” he was saying. “We were expecting you. Reverend Phipps asked me to make sure you came right in, as soon as you got here—”

“Excuse me?” Gregor said.

“We want to cooperate with the police,” the man said, gesturing them to come inside. “We want to cooperate fully with all the necessary, uh, things that the, uh, that the police want of us, and—”

“Fred.” The voice sounded oddly preppy, as if some exclusive boys’ school accent had been laid on over the West Virginia twang. Roy Phipps was standing at the back of the long front foyer, dressed in a suit that most definitely fit him perfectly, looking slightly pained. “I think Mr. Demarkian and his friend have taken your point,” he said.