Hardscrabble Road (25 page)

“And we’ve got all these guys surrounding him, guns drawn, and what does he do?” Giametti said. “First he starts screaming
that they can’t shoot him, because don’t they know who he is?”

“By then we all did,” Marbury said. “A couple of the guys with the guns even said so out loud: ‘Oh, my God. We’ve arrested
Drew Harrigan.’ ”

“But just when I thought we were going to have to put him in a strait jacket,” Giametti said, “he started singing again. And
that was it. That was all he did for the rest of the night. Sing. He sang every oldies song I’ve ever heard of and a few I
haven’t. ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy.’ ‘Peggy Sue.’ ‘Great Balls of Fire.’ ”

“And we get him in the station,” Marbury said, “and we book him, and we fingerprint him, and we photograph him, and he’s still
singing. He won’t shut up. He won’t answer questions. Forget it. He’s still singing. So we slam him in a room and tell him
he either starts behaving himself or we’ll lock him up for the night, and he demands to see his lawyer. And that was that.”

“That was that?” Gregor asked. “You just let him go?”

Giametti laughed. “He got Neil Savage down here. You know Neil Savage? From Barden, Savage & Deal?”

“I know Barden, Savage & Deal,” Gregor said. “But they’re not a criminal firm, are they? They don’t handle this kind of thing.”

“They handle whatever their clients want them to handle,” Giametti said, “and they’ve got the advantage of being the firm
that represents the Republican Party in Pennsylvania. Plus, of course, a whole truckload of Republican bigwigs and semi-Republican
bigwigs.”

“What do you mean semi?”

“Well,” Marbury said, “you can’t really blame Drew Harrigan on the entire Republican Party, can you? I mean, they didn’t hire
him. They don’t pay him. He’s on his own.”

“He’s just on his own and he only likes Republican politicians,” Giametti said, “but, yeah, Dane has a point. It’s just that
Barden, Savage & Deal represent a lot of the big noises in conservative politics in this state. All the pro-life groups, for
one thing.”

“I’m pro-life,” Marbury said.

“That has nothing to do with anything,” Giametti said. “Anyway, Neil Savage himself came down to the precinct station, told
Harrigan to shut up—which he didn’t really do, since he went on singing—got on the phone, and within half an hour we had a
hearing before a judge and the judge had set bail. Fastest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. You wouldn’t have believed it.
Then Savage got Harrigan out the door, and that was the last we saw of him.
The next morning, we got word that Harrigan had entered a total immersion rehab program and would be incommunicado for the
next sixty days, the whole thing had already been cleared with the judge. And then there was a statement, which Savage read
at a press conference. It was the statement that accused Sherman Markey of being the go-between for all the drugs.”

“This was Bruce Williamson who was the judge?”

“That’s the one.” Marbury sniggered.

“Marvelous,” Gregor said.

“This is going to be it,” Marbury said, leaning closer to the windshield to get a better look at the small sign by the side
of the road. “God, it’s deserted around here. You’ve got to wonder how they stand it. Sherman Markey didn’t get him the drugs.
Did we tell you that?”

“Everybody keeps telling me that,” Gregor said.

“It’s the truth,” Marbury said. “You should have seen Sherman when he was alive. He couldn’t think straight enough to remember
he was on his way to the men’s room when he needed to take a piss. And neither one of us believes that crap about Sherman
doing work around Drew Harrigan’s apartment for spare change. Sherman couldn’t do any work beyond whatever it took to get
the cork out of the wine bottle, and he saved himself the trouble of that most of the time by buying the kind of wine that
has a screw top. Assuming he bought any at all and didn’t just finish open bottles people left on the street.”

“That’s a driveway,” Giametti said. “Look at it.”

“That’s not a driveway, that’s an alley,” Marbury said.

He pulled the squad car up to the curb. There were almost no cars parked anywhere on this street. There were still no people.
Gregor started buttoning his coat again, in anticipation of the wind. It was only anticipation, because he couldn’t let himself
out. There was no way to open the doors back here from the inside.

“I’m glad Rob isn’t interested in letting him off,” Giametti said. “I’m sick of these guys who piss and moan about everybody
else, who want the police to act like the Spanish Inquisition, then they get into some trouble and they expect to walk right
out of it. We ought to stick more of these guys in jail sometime. That would do more than anything else I can think of to
improve the level of public discourse.”

“Mike reads heavy magazines,” Marbury said solemnly.

Then they both got out onto the street and opened up for Gregor at once. The two open doors created a wind tunnel that sent
cold air slamming against Gregor’s face as if he’d just stepped up to a working fan.

“Damn,” he said, and got out himself.

G
regor Demarkian saw the
nun as soon as he walked through the precinct house door, because she was a vision from another time and another place: a
nun in a habit, a real habit, that went all the way down to the floor, that completely covered her head. The only difference
in the picture he was imagining was on the forehead. She had no white band of cloth on the forehead. Instead, her black veil
was draped over a white headdress that ended at her hairline. Black veil, white wimple, brown habit. Gregor wasn’t sure he’d
ever met a Carmelite before. Then he looked down at her feet and realized she was wearing only socks and sandals, not real
shoes.

She was up near the counter, pacing up and down in front of the sergeant on duty as if nothing on the planet could convince
her to stay still. She was very young, and very pretty, tall and slender and erect. Except for Audrey Hepburn, she was the
only person Gregor had ever seen who looked too thin in a traditional nun’s habit. He wondered what it was about the shoes.

“You just can’t keep questioning him over and over again,” she was saying. “He’s not well. He doesn’t have any answers. What
do you think you’re doing?”

“If he wants a lawyer, he can ask for one.”

“I am a lawyer,” the nun said. “If you want my credentials, I’ll call the monastery and have Sister Immaculata bring them
in for me. He’s a tired, sick old man and his only crime was to find that hat and bring it to my attention. I should never
have told you who he was. This is completely ridiculous.”

Gregor, Giametti, and Marbury had reached the counter, and the young nun turned to look at the three of them. She seemed surprised
to see them there—which said something, Gregor thought, about the level of traffic this precinct had had here so far today.

“How can you be a lawyer?” the sergeant asked. “You’re a nun.”

“I’m a lawyer because I went to law school and passed the bar before I ever became a nun,” the nun said, “and besides, I’m
not a nun, I’m a religious sister. And if you don’t let him out of that room and get those two detectives off him, I’m going
to get him to declare me his counsel and I’m going to sue the department back to the Stone Age. You really can’t do this.
It doesn’t make any sense, and it isn’t right, and you know it.”

“What’s the difference between a nun and a religious sister?” Gregor asked.

The religious sister wheeled around to look at him. “Excuse me,” she said.

“My name is Gregor Demarkian,” Gregor said.

She hesitated, then brightened. “Gregor Demarkian. The Armenian-American Hercule Poirot. Are you here about this? Do you actually
think that poor homeless man murdered Sherman Markey? Because if you do, I have to say I don’t think much of—”

“—What’s the difference between a nun and a religious sister?” Gregor asked again.

“A nun takes solemn vows,” the religious sister said. “She’s usually cloistered, in papal enclosure, although there are some
exceptions. A religious sister takes simple vows and works in the world. Most of the people you call nuns aren’t really nuns,
technically. You know, the teaching sisters and the nursing sisters and that kind of thing. They’re religious sisters.”

“I thought the sisters at Our Lady of Mount Carmel were cloistered,” Gregor said.

“Oh, they are,” the sister said. “Most of them. But I’m not, and Sister Immaculata is not. We’re extern sisters. Cloistered
nuns have to have extern sisters to go out into the world and do what needs to be done on a practical level. Like coming here
with the hat. And getting involved in all this idiocy with treating that poor man like he’s some kind of criminal, when all
he tried to do was the right thing. What do we teach people when we punish them for doing the right thing?”

“Nobody is punishing anybody for anything,” the sergeant behind the counter said. “Not yet. And nobody is arresting your guy.”

“Who knows who’s doing what to him?” the sister demanded. “You’ve had him in that room for half an hour, completely cut off
from me or any other possible help, and don’t tell me he waived the right to an attorney. You know as well as I do that he
isn’t competent to make a decision like that. Now, you’re going to go and get him, and let me talk to him, and leave him alone,
or I’m going to find a judge and make you release him. And if you don’t think I can do that, you don’t begin to understand
where I’m coming from.”

“Mr. Demarkian,” the sergeant said, leaning across the counter to hold out his hand, “don’t mind Sister here. We aren’t giving
the old guy the third degree. We’re just trying to find out what happened on the night this Sherman Markey guy died.”

“Are we sure it was Sherman Markey in the hat, then?” Gregor said.

“Not officially, no,” the sergeant said, “but Detective Willis told me to tell you that it’s just a matter of time. We know
where the body is. They’ve just got to get to the pathologist and make him move it. So much for finger print databases, but
that’s just me. Give us a few seconds here and Detective Willis will be right out.”

“Tell Detective Willis that if he isn’t out a lot sooner than that, I’ll have his balls,” the sister said.

The sergeant frowned. “Nuns didn’t talk like that when I was in school.” “You weren’t holding sick old men against their wills
when you were in school.”

A woman appeared from one of the doors behind the counter and called, “Is there a Detective Marbury here? There’s a call for
you from the District Attorney’s Office.”

“That’ll be confirmation,” Marbury said.

He walked back to where the woman was waiting for him, and Gregor went back to contemplating the religious sister. He had
no doubt at all that she would make good on her threat. She had the look of someone who was used to being taken seriously.
The sergeant was ignoring her. Gregor didn’t think that would go on for long.

“Sister?” he said.

“Oh, excuse me,” the sister said. “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Sister Maria Beata of the Incarnation. No, never mind
all that. We never use all that except in official documents. In a way, I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you can bring some sanity
to these proceedings.”

“Maybe,” Gregor said. “Did you see the man who died? The person we think is Sherman Markey?”

“Not really,” Beata said. “Oh, I saw him in passing. He was waiting at the door for the barn to open when I came back to the
monastery from doing some business downtown. And I saw him after he was dead. I can’t give you much information about him.”

“Would any of the other sisters have seen him?”

“Most of the sisters don’t actually leave the enclosure to visit the barn,” Beata said. “They’re not supposed to see outsiders
at all, except from behind the grille. It’s only Immaculata and me who go out there while the men are there. The monastery
used to keep cows, you know, in the old days. Before the city got so built up. It would be against the law now, I suppose.”

Gregor was about to suppose the same thing, when the door at the back swung open again, and Dane Marbury came out, looking
sick.

“Listen,” he said, coming up to them. “We’ve got to get out of here. Mr. Demarkian is wanted at the morgue.”

“They found the body?” Giametti said.

“Sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

Marbury looked at the floor, and the ceiling, and then at his hands. “They found a body,” he said. “But it isn’t Sherman Markey’s
body. They’re pretty sure that what they’ve got is the great Drew Harrigan himself.”

Tuesday, February 11

High 4F, Low –9F

Ours is an era of mass-starvation, deportation and the taking of hostages.

—G
EORGE
S
TEINER

It seems clear to me that the will must in some way be united to God’s will. But it is in the effects and deeds following
afterward that one discerns the true value of prayer….

—S
T
. T
ERESA OF
A
VILA

And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: “Psst!”

—T
ERRY
P
RATCHETT

I
n dreams the people
who should be present are absent, and the people who should be absent…something. The words wouldn’t come. Gregor Demarkian
thought that might be because he didn’t have any words. He had a big bag full of something, but it all seemed to be marshmallow
Peeps, in every possible color, including purple. He looked out over the vast audience in front of them and realized they
were all cynocephali, men with dogs’ heads. He wouldn’t have known what to call them if he hadn’t been talking about it to
Tibor just a day or two ago. Maybe some of them were women with dogs’ heads. He didn’t know how to tell, since they all seemed
to be wearing identical sky blue jumpsuits. They were all carrying parachutes, too. He knew he couldn’t stop talking, because
if he did, one of them would stand up to speak, and assuming he could translate the barks—did cynocephali bark? Tibor hadn’t
said anything about that—all he would hear would be another lecture about politics, and it wouldn’t matter whose side the
cynocephali were on. Maybe one of them was running for something, mayor, president, dogcatcher. Maybe they had an ideology
that told them that if the other side got into office, the world as we know it would be destroyed, all good would be defiled
and outlawed, all evil would be installed and mandated. Maybe they were awaiting the end of civilization and the rise of a
fascist state, where dogs would be forced to wear collars and jailed if they were caught without them, where they would have
no freedom of religion to refuse vaccinations, where they would be required to live with a master or be marked for judicial
death.