Wanting Sheila Dead(113)

In real life, though, con games were absurdly, stupidly obvious, and people fall for them anyway. Bernie Madoff confidently tells his clients that he can get them 17 percent a year on their investments, year after year, good markets and bad—and virtually none of them go, “but that’s impossible, there must be something wrong here.” Then there was all that Nigerian nonsense, and the idiocies with “Australian lotteries” on the Internet. You go to your e-mail. You open one that announces that the writer has heard such wonderful things about you and knows that you are trustworthy, and therefore he’s willing to pay you five million dollars to help him get his money out of Nigeria. All you have to do is send him $2,500 or so to pay the bank fees so that he can get the money out of the country.

The first time Gregor had heard about the Nigerian Internet scam, he’d been dumbfounded that anyone, anywhere had ever fallen for it. Did people really know so little about the way banks worked to think that this thing even began to make sense? And what about the people who fell for the same scam, except it’s presented as the declaration that they’d “won” a lottery? Didn’t it bother them that they’d never entered that lottery? There were lotteries in the United States. Surely, people knew that they didn’t have to fork over money before they were allowed to pick up their prize? Weren’t there enough specials on brand-new lottery winners that demonstrated at least that much? Gregor remembered a man in Pennsylvania only a few years ago, who had bought a lottery ticket with his last dollar. He’d been out of work for months and was living, with his wife and two young children, in his car. It had to be obvious that he hadn’t been required to spend a couple of thousand dollars to get his money. If he’d had a couple of thousand dollars, he’d have had a place to take a shower.

What the psychologists said, when you asked them, was that people believed what they wanted to believe. Most of us would be happy to get five million dollars. Many of us desperately want the money. Then there are the very old, who may not always be thinking straight.

Gregor still thought that the phenomenon was bizarre. No matter how much you wanted to believe, there had to be some part of your brain that was telling you it was all a lot of crap. And that was the word for it. Crap.

He looked around to see where he was, and found he wasn’t sure. It was a nice stretch of city, with a few small restaurants offering pizza and a few shops already closed for the evening. He went into one of the pizza places and looked around. There had to be dozens of places like this across the United States. There were a few, but only a few, wooden booths along one wall. There was a counter with a glass top and two big pizza ovens beyond it. Most of the business seemed to be in takeout and delivery.

Gregor sat down at one of the booths. It had started to rain again when he wasn’t paying attention, and his hair was wet. He took out his cell phone and punched in the number 3, which is where Bennis had placed herself. He still didn’t understand the logic of the numbers she assigned to speed dial. If it had been up to him, he’d have put 911 first and not worried about the rest.

Bennis picked up and asked him where he was.

“Give me a minute,” he said. He went up to the counter and looked at the menu. Then he read off the name of the place and the street address. “They sell slices. I thought I’d get myself some. Unless you haven’t eaten.”

“I’ve been picking all afternoon. I’m fine. Can you get a cab from there?”

“I could,” Gregor said, “but I was hoping you might come get me. I need a ride out to Bryn Mawr.”

“Gregor—”

“I know,” Gregor said. “You don’t go to Engine House anymore. I don’t blame you. But I don’t need a ride out to Engine House. I just need a ride out to Bryn Mawr. If I can set this up the right way, you can take me to the police station. And you can wait for me there if I do have to go out to Engine House. The trick, you see, is that you must always concentrate on what in fact happened.”

“You’re making absolutely no sense,” Bennis said.

“It’s Agatha Christie. I told you that Tibor gave me those books. I read them on our honeymoon. According to Hercule Poirot—”

“And you’re the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot?”

“Don’t be like that. I’ll do something drastic. It’s a good point. What you have to deal with is what actually happened. Not what you think happened, or what you think must be the case because it makes sense. You have to deal with what happened.”

“I thought that was Sherlock Holmes. ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ ”