It wasn't true, as Bennis liked to claim, that Gregor Demarkian had a prejudice against celebrities. For almost twenty years of his life, he had worked with them more often than not, although they had been the high-government-official type of celebrity rather than the been-seen-on-TV-a-lot kind. There was less of a difference than he had expected there to be. All of the ones he could remember, including the presidents of the United States, had been vain, in that anxious, uncertain, panicky way that indicated that, deep down, they didn't much like what they really looked like. They were people who had placed their trust in the illusions they were able to create. If they were really good at it, like Bill Clinton, they could do anything they wanted to do and get away with it. If they were really bad at it, like Richard Nixon, they might as well never have gotten out of bed. Gregor had been a fairly senior agent in the FBI during Richard Nixon's last year in office. He could remember watching the man on TV, the jerky movements,
the paranoia so palpable it glistened on his skin like sweat. Gregor had never been able to understand it. Usually, a man that badly fitted for celebrity never got near to public office, except maybe on the most local level, where it was possible for personal loyalties to outweigh appearances. The miracle of Richard Nixon was that he'd managed to last as long as he had in national office. Gregor didn't think it could be done anymore, when everything was television, and the only people who got their news from newspapers were fussy academics in the more progressive colleges who thought even PBS was dangerous to the mental health of our nation's youth. Except, Gregor thought vaguely, as he got out of the cab in front of Le Cirque Blanc, they wouldn't say “our nation's youth” these days. They'd say “young people” or “the young” or maybe even “teenagers.” It was like Hillary Clinton's vast right-wing conspiracy. It was everywhere, and it changed the words on you, just when you thought you knew what to say.
Le Cirque Blanc was the closest thing Philadelphia had to a “celebrity” restaurant, and Gregor had not been surprised when Jimmy Card had asked to meet him there. It was not Philadelphia's best restaurant, or the one most famous for its food, but like certain places in New York it had a couple of curtained-off back rooms that could be reached by a side entrance and a staff that understood what privacy didâand did notâmean. In New York, such a place would be full of people like Madonna and Harrison Ford, people so famous that they really had had enough of having their privacy invaded every time they went out for a drink or a little light dinner. In Philadelphia, Gregor got the impression that the place was full of members of the city government who didn't want their dinner meetings to show up on the six o'clock news and Main Line society women who wanted to have flings that wouldn't do them credit with their friends. Most of the time, both these groups of people tried to be as public as possible, on the theory that well-known people were more important than the less well-known kind. Some of the Main Line society women
must have known this wasn't true, since they were probably married to men so important that their entire lives revolved around staying strictly out of sight.
Le Cirque Blanc had an awning that reminded Gregor of the ones on Manhattan apartment buildings, and a doorman who reminded him of Manhattan apartment buildings, too. The doorman wore a uniform and a cap, like a chauffeur. What really bothered Gregor about “celebrities” was that they reminded him, so much, of the serial killers he had spent the last half of his career chasing. The Ted Bundys, the Jeffrey Dahmers, the John Wayne Gacys, all had that hard streak of vanity and that desperation, as if in some way they weren't really alive unless other people said they were. When the Bureau had first been putting together the composite psychological profile that later became the basis for the entire Behavioral Sciences Unit, Gregor had wanted to put that in, but none of them could think of a way to phrase it so that somebody who had never encountered it could understand it. Gregor had always thought that the most obvious case of it had beenâstill wasâCharles Manson, a man who lived entirely by the effect he had on other people, so much so that he hadn't even had to do his own serial killing. It was an open question as to whether or not that quirk of personality, and the charisma that went with it, had survived all the years in prison. Gregor made it a point to watch Manson's parole hearings when they were shown on Court TV, but it was hard to tell. He was cleaned up now, and subdued, but that could be for the benefit of the parole board, which wasn't going to release him in any case. It was too bad that monsters didn't stay monsters in real life, that growing old meant growing weak for even the most dedicated of them. For some reason, watching a Charles Manson turn into an old man made Gregor far more aware of his own mortality than the death of someone like Princess Diana did. Maybe that was because he had never been able to think of Princess Diana as really being real.
“Mr. Demarkian,” the man on the front desk said. He was dressed in a white tie and tails, in spite of the fact that
it was barely noon. The restaurant lobby and the restaurant behind him were both dark, as if nobody could eat unless it was the middle of the night. The man himself was just slightly overweight, in that smug, self-satisfied way that some people equated with high social status, even though these days, everybody who really did have high social status was bone thin. Gregor decided he must have been hired for effect, like a stock actor hired to play a stock character, the point being that nothing mattered except keeping the ambiance unbroken, whatever the ambiance was supposed to be.
“If you follow me, I'll take you back myself,” the man said.
Gregor nodded toward him, half afraid to speak.
That
would break the ambiance soon enough. Part of him wanted to jump up and down or shout or do something equally ridiculous, because this place was so false, so uncomfortable, so strained, that even the air felt oddly synthetic. He looked from left to right as they walked through the large main dining room, empty except for two elderly women in a booth along the west wall, drinking cocktails with paper umbrellas in them. You could buy those little paper umbrellas in party stores for $6.95 a hundred.
At the back of the main dining room, the man in the tails paused and felt along the wall. The door that opened there had been papered to look as if it wasn't a door at all, and it didn't, unless you knew what to look for. Then the outline was painfully obvious andâlike so much about this placeâcompletely unnecessary.
“Normally, I'd take you around to the back,” the man in the tails said, “but under the circumstances ⦔ He nodded toward the two elderly women, who were paying no attention to them at all. “They wouldn't notice if a train went through here, once they'd had their third round. If we begin to fill up while you're at lunch, I'll take you out the other way. We do try to accommodate our patrons' need for discretion.”
Gregor didn't comment on the man's use of the word
“discretion”âwhich, in its obviousness, was even worse than the “secret” door. He just went through into the back room and let the man come in behind him. The room was smaller than the dining room outside and had nothing in it but booths, each fitted into the wall behind heavy velvet curtains that could be drawn on shiny corded ropes. All of these curtains were now open, and all the booths but one were empty. A tall man, not Jimmy Card, stood up in the one occupied booth and then slid out into the room. A second later, Jimmy Card followed him, as if he'd been waiting for the signal that would tell him nobody was coming in he didn't want to see.
“Very good,” the man in the tails said. “I'll send your waiter in a moment. I hope you have an enjoyable meal, gentlemen.”
They all murmured incoherent things, and the man in tails bobbed solemnly and “withdrew,” walking backward all the way until he reached the “secret” door, as if he were dealing with royalty and in a distinctly outdated fashion.
Gregor waited until the door was firmly shut and they were alone and then said, “When I was in the army, I went to a place like this in New Orleans. Rich men would bring high-class call girls there for dinner, and they'd have the curtains so that they'd be safely out of sight if their wives came looking for them.”
“Ha,” Jimmy Card said.
“Why didn't the wives just draw back the curtains?” the tall man said.
“Maybe they did. Or maybe they just had sense enough to stay home. I never saw a run-in with a wife.” Gregor looked Jimmy Card up and down, but he looked no different in person than he did on television: a short, dark, trim man just beginning to flesh out with middle age, the kind of man who worked out to stay in shape, but didn't work out enough to stay in perfect shape. For some reason, Gregor found that comforting.
“I'm Gregor Demarkian,” he said.
“We recognized you from
People
,” the tall man said. “Or at least, I didâ”
“Of course I recognized him,” Jimmy Card said. “What do you take me for?”
“You say you never read
People
,” the tall man said.
“I watch the news. I read the papers. Give me a break.”
“I'm Bob Haverton,” the tall man said. “I'm Jimmy's lawyer. It used to be a full-time job.”
“Used to be?” Gregor said.
“Bob's of the opinion that Liz has mellowed me out,” Jimmy Card said. “I keep telling him he's got it backward. It's not that Liz mellowed me out. It's that I mellowed out and that got me together with Liz.”
“At least she isn't likely to try to use the divorce courts to turn you into a financial basket case. Jimmy used to have that short ethnic guy's insecurity thing with women. He could only marry tall upper-middle-class WASP blondes. He just couldn't get it through his head that they always marry for money.”
“Oh,” Gregor said.
“You're going to make Mr. Demarkian think you're a bigot,” Jimmy said.
“I'm a realist,” Bob Haverton said. “My own sister is a tall upper-middle-class WASP blonde, although hardly in the same league with either of Jimmy's wives. One of the perks of being a pop star is that you get to marry the kind of women who show up on the cover of the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit edition. And Jimmy did. Twice.”
“Right now, I'd like to marry a short brunette,” Jimmy said, “except that she keeps saying no and now she's trying to go off and commit suicide, which is why we're here. We do have a reason why we're here. Maybe we should all sit down and discuss it.”
“Maybe we should find another restaurant,” Bob said. “You know the food in this place is going to be god-awful.”
“If we find another restaurant, we'll be photographed,” Jimmy said. He looked around. The room really was awful. The food really would probably be worse. “At least let's
sit down and discuss this and see if we can come to some kind of arrangement. It will all come out eventually. I'm just hoping to give Mr. Demarkian a head start. Sit.”
“The only way you could give me a head start is to put me in a time machine and send me back thirty-two years,” Gregor said, sliding into the booth anyway. “Before we do anything at all, Mr. Card, I need to stress that. The possibility that you can actually solve a case that's over thirty years in the past is virtually nil. It's been done, but it takes luck, and you can't plan for luck.”
“I know,” Jimmy Card said. He looked at the ceiling, and at the table, and at the palms of his hands. The light around him seemed to shift, and for a moment he looked like what he would look like in another twenty years, when the hope was gone. The effect was faintly shocking, and it made Gregor far more sympathetic to him than any appeal he might make could have done. Most “celebrities” managed to keep from looking old, not only through diet and exercise and plastic surgery, but through arrogance as well. You didn't get old when you still believed that you would live forever.
“So,” Gregor said. “If you still want to go through with this, even if you know it's probably going to fail, I'll be happy to help you out, for Bennis's sake, if for no other reason. But I feel dishonest doing it.”
Jimmy Card and Bob Haverton looked at each other. Bob Haverton drew in a deep breath and said, “There are other considerations here, besides finding out who killed Michael Houseman. If you manage to find out who committed the murder, we'll be ecstatic. But what we really need for you to do is to find out something elseâ”
“Not find out,” Jimmy said. “We already know.”
“Find the proof of something else,” Bob amended. “So, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to lay this whole thing out for you from the beginning, and then you can tell us what you think.”