Deadly Beloved

by Jane Haddam

  Gregor evaded the microphone and made his way through the crowd. It went a full block without thinning out and then just disappeared. He was on a mostly empty street with small open stores and the amber glow of lights from apartments. He found a pay phone that hadn’t been vandalized and put in a call to John Jackman’s private number. He got the answering machine.

  “Drop whatever you’re doing,” he told the buzzing tape after the beep. “There’s been another bomb. Meet me at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Bennis broke her arm.”

  That ought to get him, Gregor thought, hanging up. He kept walking toward the lights, looking for a taxi. He didn’t know Philadelphia as well as he should. He had lived so long in Washington, and in the years before that in places as far apart as Encino and Austin. Philadelphia was the home of his childhood, and even then it had been a rather restricted area. Nothing much changes with people, Gregor thought. When he had been growing up the big tensions in Philly had not been between black and white, but between native and “foreign,” with the “foreign” including even those people, like Gregor, who had been born in the United States of parents who had not. In those days, too, the greatest point of tension had to do with young men, because young men are always the most dangerous creatures on earth. Or some of them are. Gregor had been bookish and shy and not very aggressive. He had started hard and gone to the University of Pennsylvania in the days when quotas were meant to keep people like him out. That was why he didn’t know as much as he should about Philadelphia. Those were the days when leaving your home turf meant getting hassled by the cops or even arrested for something minor, anything so that they could pick you up and throw you back in the direction they figured you belonged. Gregor had known a few places in the city well: Cavanaugh Street and the streets around it; the bus route to the University of Pennsylvania campus; the streets immediately around those parts of the campus that he had to go to. Since he had lived at home, he knew nothing about Penn’s dormitories or where they were located. There must be even more of them now, and they could be anywhere. Still, as he walked up the street and looked around, he was fairly certain that they weren’t anywhere near there. He would have to get a map, but he thought he could be safe in assuming that if there was any connection between this pipe bomb and the ones that had gone off in Patsy MacLaren Willis’s Volvo, it wasn’t geographical. Gregor had no idea why it should be. It was just one of those things you had to check out.

  Gregor walked one more block—there were a few Spanish stores, including one that seemed to be selling the accouterments of Santeria—and then began to look seriously for a cab. Sometimes you can go for hours looking for a cab on the streets of Philadelphia at night. This time he was lucky, and a cab pulled up to him less than two minutes after he started looking.

  “St. Elizabeth’s Hospital,” he said, climbing inside.

  The cabdriver shrugged. “Sure. I’m going to take a little extra loop on the way. I’ll turn the meter off.”

  “A little extra loop to where?”

  “To the bombing,” the cabdriver said. “There was another bombing tonight, just like that thing at the garage. It’s terrorists, let me tell you. The world is full of terrorists. It’s all because of that Saddam Hussein.”

  “What?”

  The cabdriver had swung back into the street with the crowd on it. Gregor could see that the paramedics were still at work, taking people out of the town house and putting them in ambulances. There were a lot more police than there had been a few minutes ago too.

  “Saddam Hussein,” the cabdriver said again. “It’s a conspiracy. It’s like, Reagan and Bush, they were paying this guy Saddam Hussein to hassle the Ayatollah, but now he’s gotten out of hand, and Mr. Chickenshit Clinton isn’t going to do anything about him, and it all ties in with the way those Chinese people keep sneaking into the country. You see what I mean?”

  “No.”

  “Nobody ever does,” the cabdriver said glumly. “That’s why the country is going down the tubes. You do agree the country is going down the tubes?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. Good. Talking to some people, it’s like they just came from outer space.”

  3.

  Walking into St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Gregor thought, fifteen minutes later, was like walking into outer space. Did emergency rooms always look like this? Gregor didn’t spend much of his time in them. The only one he could really remember with any detail had belonged to a free clinic called the Sojourner Truth Health Center in Harlem, and he didn’t think that ought to count. That was supposed to be in a war zone. This emergency room looked like an outpost in a war zone too. So many people seemed to be bleeding, and so many of them seemed to be young. So many people seemed to be waiting, and so many of them seemed to be poor. The patients at the Sojourner Truth Health Center had been almost universally African-American. Here, race was less of a factor than exhaustion. Everybody he saw looked hopeless and tired and halfway dead.

  He went up to the woman in the white uniform at the reception window. She had a plate of bulletproof glass in front of her.

  “Name?” she said.

  “I’m not registering,” Gregor told her. “A friend of mine was just brought in here with a broken arm and I think one or two contusions. I’d like to know where she is.”

  “Are you related to her in any way?”

  “Related?”

  “Husband? Father? Brother? Uncle?”

  “No. We’re not related. We were together at this party—”

  “You were together at the party but she came to the emergency room by herself?”

  “She was brought here by the paramedic team—”

  “A paramedic team had to be called to this party?”

  Gregor took a deep breath. “Let’s take this from the beginning,” he said. “My name is Gregor Demarkian.”

  “Oh, my God!” This was a voice from behind the nurse he was talking to. Gregor couldn’t see the speaker.

  “This friend of mine, Bennis Hannaford, and I were at a party in Society Hill given by Congresswoman Julianne Corbett—”

  “Congresswoman.” This was the nurse right behind the glass. She was sitting up very straight in her chair now.

  Gregor was glad to have found out what made her move.

  “Right,” he said. “Congresswoman Corbett. There was some kind of small bomb—”

  “I’ve heard about that. What did you say your name was again?”

  “Gregor Demarkian.”

  “The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot,” hissed the voice behind the nurse. “Don’t you ever read the papers?”

  The nurse ignored the voice. “What was the name of your friend again?”

  “Bennis Hannaford.”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  “You can’t make him sit there and wait,” the voice said, sounding scandalized. “He knows the mayor. We’ll all be in major trouble.”

  The nurse Gregor could see went on ignoring the voice. She stood and walked away, leaving nothing but a blank wall behind her. Now Gregor wondered where the other voice was coming from.

  He turned around in his chair and looked back out on the waiting room, on all the tired people, on all the pain. Was this a good hospital? He didn’t know. He only knew that the waiting room depressed him, the way cities in general had depressed him. He thought of Fox Run Hill with its gates and its guards, and sighed.

  The nurse came back and sat down behind the bulletproof glass again. “That will be fine,” she told him. “You need to go down this corridor to your left all the way to the end and present this pass at the fire doors. Then you go through the fire doors and to the right until you reach Room E143. Do you understand that?”

  “Down here to the left to the fire doors. Present the pass. To the right until Room E143.”

  “That is correct. Are you carrying any firearms on your person?”

  “No.”

  “Are you carrying anything else that might be used as a weapon?�
��

  “I’m not carrying a knife or anything of that kind, if that’s what you mean. I have a comb.”

  “You will be required to pass through metal detectors at the fire doors,” the woman went on, ignoring everything he had said. “The guards there are authorized to confiscate and retain any item you may have that they consider a potential danger to the hospital, its patients, or yourself. Any such item will be returned to you when you leave. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes,” Gregor said. “Yes, I understand it.”

  The woman pushed a bright green paper card through the narrow slot under her window and watched carefully while he took it. Then she looked over his shoulder to see who was next in line.

  Gregor got up and started walking heavily down the wide corridor toward the fire doors. The corridor was deserted and the fire doors were bright polished metal, hard-surfaced and grim.

  He couldn’t imagine spending any time here, or trying to get well in this place. He couldn’t imagine being able to get well in this place.

  He just hoped Bennis was all right, and that she wouldn’t have to spend much time here. He wanted to take her home tonight.

  TWO

  1.

  IF HENRY HADN’T INSISTED on going shopping with her again, Evelyn would never have been wearing her sun hat when the big red Lincoln pulled into the driveway of the brick Federalist that morning. She didn’t like wearing hats in cars, but she didn’t want to take this one off in front of Henry either. It was a hot day and Henry had the Lincoln’s air-conditioning turned up full blast. Cold air streamed up under the thin fabric of her cotton dress and around her massive thighs. The dress was beginning to feel a little tight, and that scared her. It was a size thirty-two. How much longer would this go on? Would she just get fatter and fatter and fatter until she could no longer fit through the door of the house? She thought about that woman they had done the piece on on 60 Minutes, the one who weighed a thousand pounds. Then she felt a sharp stab of hunger in her stomach, and wished Henry away, far away, where he wouldn’t be able to see her eating. When people saw her eating, they said things to her. Even if she had the money, she couldn’t go into McDonald’s or Burger King and sit down and have a hamburger. For one thing, she no longer fit into the seats too well. She didn’t fit into the ones that were bolted to the floor at all. For another thing, people passing by her chair said things to her. “No wonder you’re so gross,” they would say even though they were carrying a couple of Big Macs and a large fries for themselves and she had nothing on her table but a cheeseburger and a Coke. It was as if they thought fat people had no right to eat, ever. It was what Henry thought too.

  The car pulled into the driveway of the brick Federalist. Evelyn adjusted her hat, wishing her head didn’t hurt so much, wishing she weren’t so cold. She had begun to sweat in the way that meant she was going to throw up. She had eaten an entire eight-inch Black Forest cake in the toilet paper aisle while Henry was off at the cold-cut counter, deciding exactly what brand of superlean turkey he wanted to buy. Her hat was a big straw cartwheel that felt tight in just the way her dress did—did your head get bigger when you got fat? Evelyn closed her eyes and prayed to a God she didn’t believe in for salvation.

  “Look,” Henry said, cutting the engine. “They’re back. The police and that detective, Demarkian.”

  Evelyn opened her eyes. She felt a lot better with the air conditioner off.

  “He was on the news this morning,” she said. “Talking about the bomb last night at that party Julianne Corbett gave. Did you vote for Julianne Corbett?”

  “She’s not in this district,” Henry said. “You should know that.”

  “Patsy loved Julianne Corbett. She used to point out pictures of her in the newspapers and say what a wonderful woman she was.”

  “That couldn’t have gone on for too long. Corbett’s barely been a congresswoman at all. She just got elected, for God’s sake.”

  “She was in politics before she ever got to be a congresswoman. She was very active in Causes. She’s a very big feminist.”

  Henry made a face. “Feminism is a phase. I told you that. What it is you see in those women, I’ll never know.”

  “I was talking about Patsy.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re so fat. Maybe it’s feminism. Maybe you’ve decided that being thin is a form of oppression you’re not going to put up with and so you’ve become gross instead.”

  “I was talking about Patsy,” Evelyn said again.

  “Don’t talk to the police,” Henry said, popping open the driver’s side door. “We don’t want to get mixed up in that kind of thing.”

  With the door open, the air from outside rushed in. It was hot and sticky and thick. She opened her own door and got out onto the driveway. From where she stood, she could see Gregor Demarkian and the two policemen. Demarkian was walking up and down the edges of the Willises’ long, curving drive.

  “It’s just like Sherlock Holmes, isn’t it?” Evelyn didn’t want to move into the house. The house had more air-conditioning in it, even better air-conditioning than the Lincoln. Evelyn liked it out in the heat. “It’s just like a detective novel. He ought to have a microscope.”

  “You mean a magnifying glass, Evelyn. For Christ’s sake.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Evelyn said.

  She could be surprisingly fast when she wanted to be. By the time Henry realized what she was doing, she was almost all the way down the drive, in full view of the three men over in the Willises’ driveway. She knew Henry wanted to shout or chase her, but she knew he wouldn’t do either. He would be worried about what the detectives would think. She reached the road and walked even faster. Without gravel to fight, she could move more quickly than most people of average weight. She half jogged along the road, listening for the sound of Henry’s footsteps behind her. She didn’t hear them. He wasn’t following her. He was just going to blow up at her when she got home.

  In the Willises’ driveway, the three men had stopped whatever they were doing and begun watching her. Evelyn carefully blanked out of her mind any speculation as to what they might be thinking—look at that gross fat ugly horrible woman—and when she got to the drive itself she came to a stop and climbed carefully up the slope. Slopes were not like straight-aways. She sometimes blacked out on slopes.

  “Mr. Demarkian?” she said when she got almost to where the three men stood. The older of the two detectives was Dan Exter, who was with the police department here. Evelyn recognized him from the fund-raising drives for the Police Community Contact League. The other one was black, and too good-looking. He was the kind of person who would look Evelyn over and decide that she was too ugly to talk to. But Gregor Demarkian was all right. He could have stood to lose a few pounds himself.

  “Mr. Demarkian,” Evelyn said, holding out her hand. Then she snatched it back. She couldn’t remember if it was the right thing to do. She blushed furiously. “How do you do.”

  “How do you do,” Gregor Demarkian said very politely.

  Evelyn had hardly any air in her lungs. The hat on her head hurt her terribly. She looked at the ground.

  “I’m sorry for what I saw on the news this morning. About your friend. About Miss Hannaford.”

  “Thank you. But she’s all right, you know. She’s just got a broken arm.”

  “They didn’t say on the news. They said some woman tourist from New York was dead.”

  “Caroline Barrens, yes. She wasn’t a tourist though. She was the representative of some kind of PAC. Health care reform. Single payer system. That kind of thing.”

  “Yes,” Evelyn nodded. “Well. I was thinking. That it might make sense, you know. The pipe bomb.”

  “I wish it made sense to me.”

  Gregor Demarkian sounded sincere. Evelyn relaxed a little more. She liked this man’s face. She liked it a great deal. It was lined and soft and gentle. It was much better than Henry’s. Maybe if she left Henry she could marry Gregor Dem
arkian. Maybe this Bennis Hannaford person wouldn’t mind.

  “Well,” Evelyn said. “The thing is. Patsy was a big supporter of Julianne Corbett’s. Did you know that?”

  “I know she’s on the contributors’ lists for Julianne Corbett’s campaign,” Gregor said. “Those are the public lists, you know, the ones you have to publish by law.”

  “I didn’t know about the money,” Evelyn admitted, “but Patsy really admired Julianne Corbett. She had pictures of her all over the house. Did you find the pictures in the house?”

  “No.” Gregor Demarkian was watching her very carefully now. “No, we didn’t.”

  “Well, Patsy had them. And she was always saying that Julianne Corbett was the woman she would be if only she had made different choices in her life. Julianne Corbett was what she would be if she was only at her best. Does that make sense?”

  “I think so.”

  “I wish it made more sense to me. She was very intense about it. And Sarah Lockwood said she didn’t understand it at all, because Julianne Corbett was so low rent, because of all the makeup she wears, you know, and the jewelry and the hats. Does she wear all that stuff in person?”

  “She did last night. Except I don’t think she was wearing a hat. I don’t really remember.”

  “I thought maybe that that stuff was just for the public, you know, a way of creating a personality people will remember and then when they went to vote you might be the only one they’d heard of. Patsy said it didn’t matter to her what Julianne Corbett wore, she was a wonderful woman. And Patsy said that anytime she looked at her, she wanted to change her life. And maybe she did.”

  “Maybe she did,” Gregor Demarkian agreed.

  “But I was thinking of something else,” Evelyn continued. “I was thinking that maybe it wasn’t Patsy who blew up her car. Maybe it was somebody who hated Patsy and everything about her and they blew her up first and now they’ve decided to blow up this woman she idolized. Do you see?”