The door opened, and Henry, much balder and paunchier and redder-faced than he had been, came out. Gregor reminded himself that he had liked Henry very much once Henry had gotten out of school and joined the Bureau. That was a good thing, because he needed Henry now if he was ever going to be able to help Bennis out. It was interesting to remember, though, how much those things had mattered when both he and Henry had been young: being from the Main Line or not; attending the Assemblies or not; belonging to the country clubs or not. Henry stepped back, and Gregor wiped his shoes on the mat and stepped inside.
“You gave me a very interesting morning,” Henry said. “And I thought I was going to lie around the living room being bored on my day off from work. How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“How’s Bennis?”
“Fairly crazy, about this. I suppose that’s to be expected.” Henry closed the front door and motioned for Gregor to follow him down the long hall that seemed to run the entire length of the house. It ended at a small third flight of steps that led to the kitchen, which was large and overequipped and very newly decorated. Copper pans hung from the high ceiling on a grid held by four coiled metal wires. The grid had been lowered so far, and Gregor was so tall, he worried about hitting his head on a swinging paella pan. The kitchen table was round and large enough for a family of eight Henry and Julia’s three sons were grown and off in law schools in Cambridge and Palo Alto. The table had been set, too, with a blue-and-white-checked tablecloth and matching cloth napkins. Henry waved Gregor in the direction of the empty chairs.
“Interesting setup,” Gregor said.
“Julie’s been decorating again,” Henry told him. “She misses the boys. I think she wishes one of them would settle down and give her grandchildren, but I’d just as soon they waited until they were out of law school and had a hope in hell of making partner somewhere. You should see what she did to the master bedroom. You want coffee?”
“Please.”
Henry got two cups and two saucers and laid them out in the middle of the table. Gregor reached for one and realized that the decorative borders were the same color and pattern as the tablecloth and the napkins. He shook his head slightly and reached for the coffeepot Henry was handing to him. Then he thought about Donna Moradanyan Donahue decorating on Cavanaugh Street and wondered if this was something about women he did not yet understand. Would Bennis start decorating his apartment as soon as she hit the right kind of crisis? Would he be required to know something about how to buy paint?
“I seem to be a little distracted,” he said. “Believe it or not, it’s already been a long morning. Were you able to find out what I needed to know?”
“Absolutely. It helps to be a judge, whether you believe it or not. You would have made a great judge.”
“It helps to have a family from the Main Line. What did you find out?”
Henry poured his cup nearly half-full of cream and put the coffee in on top of it. “You do know, don’t you, that there’s no chance of stopping the execution this time? The governor is not going to commute this sentence. At all. No arguments.”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “I know that. I think even Bennis knows that.”
“She did make an appeal for clemency,” Henry pointed out.
Gregor shrugged. “I think that’s only natural. She would have had to.”
“I suppose. Anyway, with that understood, I’m happy to report that the governor and the prison administration both want to bend over backwards to make sure that Miss Hannaford receives every humanitarian consideration before the execution. To untangle the language, they don’t want to show up on the evening news in a story about how they refused to let a condemned woman see her own family. Tom Ridge has gotten very touchy about the death penalty. You know that group, Seamless Garment?”
“I’ve seen them on the news.”
“Well, between them and the Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia, the governor is not happy. So Anne Marie will get all the visits she wants right up until the last second, and then they’ve issued invitations—”
“I know,” Gregor said. “Bennis got one. So did Dickie van Damm.”
“Isn’t it interesting, the way everybody always calls him Dickie?” Henry reached for the sugar and used it, liberally. Gregor thought that he must have been making something on the order of a coffee milk shake, only hot. “Anyway, anyway, to get back to the point, the kicker in this is the qualifier. Anne Marie can have all the visits she wants. She has to want them.”