28 Hearts of Sand Read Online Free Page B

right,” Gregor said. “So you brought it in here. I didn’t think you liked cats.”
    “I don’t mind them,” Bennis said. “And we couldn’t just leave it out there to die. We called the vet, and we’ve given it something to eat, but Donna went to get a cat carrier so that we can get it some medical attention. The vet says it sounds like it might be feral.”
    “Which means?”
    “Cats that have gone back to the wild, who have never lived with people. But if the mother cat had the litter under our front porch, the kittens might not have seen people but the mother cat might have, so—”
    “All right, I can see that.”
    “It is all right, Gregor, I promise you. I don’t intend to stick you with a cat. We’re just going to take it to the vet’s and then when it’s all right medically, we’ll feed it for a while and find somebody to adopt it. Maybe Tibor can adopt it. He likes cats. And the apartment is big enough.”
    “You’ll have to ask Tibor about that,” Gregor said. “And the cat seems to be reemerging.”
    Bennis got up to look. The cat was coming out on very wobbly legs. She picked it up and held it close to her chest, stroking its head. It curled up against her, and its shaking seemed to get less violent.
    “Well,” Gregor said.
    “Oh, I know,” Bennis said. “You think I’ve gone completely out of my mind. But it’s really not anything like that. And I promise you, the house will not take forever.”
    The kitchen door rattled and Donna Moradanyan Donahue burst in, carrying three cat carriers and another pile of blankets, and being trailed by a small boy who looked as if his day had suddenly become not boring.

 
    TWO
    1
    Gregor Demarkian always thought of Patrick Hallihan as living “in Philadelphia.” Technically, however, Patrick lived in a township just past the proper city limits, in a big apartment complex that stretched out across blocks like an upscale housing project. The name of the apartment complex was Drexelbrook, and Gregor tended to think of the entire town by that same name. He had no idea if this was right or not. The cabdrivers knew how to get him to Drexelbrook, and that was all that mattered.
    Of course, a cab all the way out here was enormously expensive, but for some reason Gregor didn’t care this morning. This morning the sky was black and everything looked apocalyptically dismal. Gregor was sure that somewhere, somehow, Cassandra had returned in the flesh to warn the populace about the coming doom.
    The cab left him at the curb. The building was a bit of a walk down a narrow concrete pathway. Gregor wished he’d brought his Windbreaker as well as his umbrella.
    He went down the path and into the foyer. The fresh flowers were really there. The air-conditioning was on much too high. He went to the call board and buzzed Patrick’s apartment, only to get a lilting female voice saying, “If that’s you, prove it.”
    Gregor said, “Good morning, Lillian. I don’t know how to prove it.”
    “Honestly, Gregor,” Lillian said. “You wouldn’t know you’d been in the FBI for twenty years. You wouldn’t know it about Patrick, either. Don’t either of you ever watch television?”
    Gregor made his way across the lobby to the elevators. When the elevator doors opened, he punched the button for the third floor. The lobby itself was absolutely empty, and it had been absolutely empty every single time Gregor was ever in it. In fact, now that he thought of it, every apartment building lobby he had ever been in was empty, except the ones with doormen, and those didn’t count. It made him wonder why there were apartment building lobbies.
    When he came off the elevator, Patrick was standing in the hall waiting for him, holding open the door of his apartment. Gregor shook the water off his shoulders and hurried up a little.
    “I think I’m losing my mind,” he said. “I’m thinking about apartment building lobbies.”
    “What?” Patrick said.
    “And Bennis