“I would not—”
Russ Donahue was off the line. There was nothing but dead air in Tibor’s ear.
THREE
1
Gregor Demarkian had always thought that life in the District of Columbia changed people more than life in other places did. It had changed him, when he was with the FBI. He had come to the Bureau thinking he knew something about corruption. He had spent an inordinate amount of time taking courses in the then-new field of forensic accounting, and he had been a witness to the politics of Philadelphia all of his life. Then he’d run into his very first congressman on the take, and he’d never felt the same way about arithmetic again.
The District of Columbia had changed John Jackman, too. At the moment, this was most obvious in the way the man held himself. He looked as if nothing had ever made him feel insecure, ever. He looked as if he had emerged from the womb in complete control of his world and the universe it was in. This was not true, but Gregor was not going to remind him of it.
The meeting turned out to be in Jackman’s constituent office in downtown Philadelphia. It was a small suite of rooms on the ground floor of a building near Independence Hall. It didn’t look as if it were used much. Jackman himself was standing next to a window that looked out on a street that ran along the side of the building. The other man—the Philadelphia commissioner of police, Gregor supposed—was sitting in an armchair near the desk.
“You have the oddest look on your face,” Jackman said, as Gregor walked in.
“I was thinking of what it was like when I first joined the FBI,” Gregor said. “Did you know that in those days, if you wanted to be a special agent, you had to be a lawyer or an accountant? I don’t think they do that anymore.”
“Which were you?” Jackman asked.
“I was an accountant,” Gregor said. “And no, I couldn’t do your taxes. I can’t even do my own.”
The other man had stood up. He was enormous in both height and bulk. The black skin on his head shone as if he’d polished it.
“Gregor Demarkian,” John Jackman said. “This is Michael Washington.”
Michael Washington held out his hand. Gregor shook it.
“You’re an accountant?” Michael Washington said. “I thought John said something about serial killers.”
“The Behavioral Sciences Unit,” Gregor said. “I spent the last ten years of my career setting that up and running it. You had to be a lawyer or an accountant to get hired. That didn’t mean they used you as a lawyer or an accountant.”
“I was telling Mike that the BSU is practically the only part of the FBI that deals with murders,” John said.
“They don’t call it the BSU anymore,” Gregor said. “I think the initials got to them. But, yes, murder is almost always a state crime. The BSU was founded to deal with the reality that serial killers often operate in more than one state. Some of them operate in four or five states. It helps to have something that can connect it all up.”
Michael Washington looked slightly confused, but he didn’t ask any more questions. Instead, he sat back down.
John Jackman waved Gregor to one of the other chairs and came away from the window to sit at the desk.
“I told Mike here that you weren’t going to hold a grudge against the Philadelphia police for arresting Russ Donahue, but he wanted to be sure,” John said. “And I wanted to be sure that we could look into all parts of this situation without letting the cat out of the bag. We need someone who can investigate something without letting anyone know what he’s really investigating.”
“You need to investigate a murder without letting anyone know you’re investigating a murder,” Gregor said.
“It’s not a murder,” Mike Washington said. “At least not yet.”
“And murder or assault, that part of it is secondary,” John said.
“All right,” Gregor said. “Let’s say it’s an assault. What assault?”
“The woman dumped in the garbage bag last night,” John said.
Gregor shook his head. “You realize I wasn’t actually there. Tibor and Tommy were on the scene accidentally and Tibor called me to come hold his hand. I didn’t see the incident. I have no idea what went on.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Mike Washington said. “The thing with the garbage bag is an accident, really. If it wasn’t for the Aldergold, we wouldn’t have thought to connect up the two. But now we’ve got this thing, and we can’t let it go.”
“Do you know who Cary Alder is?” John Jackman asked.
“Sure,” Gregor said. “It’s hard to miss him. Alder Properties. Great big high-rise monstrosities all tricked out in gold paint.”
“Right,” John said. “Except there’s a lot more to Alder Properties than that. They own more than a dozen buildings in Philadelphia, and most of them are not high end. The company was started by Alder’s father, and it was started the way a lot of these things are. You buy the building you’re living in. You put some of the money you make from that aside and buy another building. If you’re good at it and you’re ambitious, you get bigger and bigger buildings in better and better neighborhoods, and eventually you get Alder Tower.”
“And you think Cary Alder has something to do with the woman in the garbage bag?”
“We don’t know,” Michael Washington said.
“We think Cary Alder is bribing the mayor and half the building inspectors in the city,” John said, “but there’s nothing all that odd about that. At least half these guys do it. They see it as part of the price of doing business. What has me here is that we’re pretty sure he’s also paying off his congressman, and nobody knows why.”
Gregor considered this. “That really is a job for the FBI.”
“They’re on it,” John said.
“Then I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“We were kind of hoping you could consult on the case of the woman in the garbage bag,” Michael Washington said. “And, you know, keep your eyes open. For whatever it is. We don’t know what it is. We just know it isn’t drugs.”
John Jackman reached into the pocket of his jacket and came out with a gold coin the size of an Olympic medal. “Ever seen one of those?”
Gregor took the coin. “No. What is it?”
“It’s Aldergold,” John Jackman said. “There are half a dozen places in this city, owned and operated by Alder Properties, where those things are the only legal tender. You can’t go up to the bar and take out your wallet. You have to have those. And you use them just like cash. But first you have to get them. Not everybody can get them. You have to rent one of Alder’s more expensive apartments, or be one of Alder’s big customers in that place he’s got in Atlantic City. There are probably a couple of other ways, or Alder could just give them to you. But the point is, they aren’t easy to get, and not everybody can get them.”
“And this has something to do with the woman in the garbage bag, how?” Gregor asked.
Michael Washington shifted his bulk in the chair.