Strangers

Is that possible? How? Why?
        Behind her, Pepper said, "Are you okay?"
        Something had driven Alan to suicide.
        What might happen to Marcie?
        

    8.
        

    Saturday, January 11
        
        Boston, Massachusetts.
        The memorial service for Pablo Jackson was held at eleven o'clock Saturday morning, January 11, in a nondenominational chapel on the grounds of the cemetery where he was to be buried. The coroner and police pathologists had not been finished with the body until Thursday, so five days had passed between Pablo's murder and his funeral.
        When the last eulogy was delivered, the mourners adjourned to the grave, where the casket waited. Snow had been cleared around Pablo's plot, but the space was insufficient. Scores of people stood outside the prepared area, some in snow deeper than their boots. Others remained on the sidewalks that crisscrossed the memorial park, watching from a distance. Three hundred had come to pay their last respects to the old magician. The chilly air steamed with the breath of the rich and the poor, the famous and the unknown, Boston socialites, magicians.
        Ginger Weiss and Rita Hannaby stood in the first circle around the gravesite. Since Monday, Ginger had not had much of an appetite and had gotten little sleep. She was pale, nervous, and very tired.
        Both Rita and George had argued against Ginger's attendance at the services. They were concerned that such a wrenchingly emotional experience would trigger a fugue. But the police had encouraged her, hoping she might see Pablo's killer at the services. In self-defense she'd hidden the truth from the cops, leading them to believe that the killer was an ordinary burglar, and sometimes burglars were driven by such sick compulsions. But she knew that he was no mere burglar and that he would not risk arrest by coming to the cemetery.
        Ginger wept during the eulogies, and by the time she walked from the chapel to the grave, her grief was a vise squeezing her heart. But she did not lose control. She was determined not to make a circus of this solemn occasion, determined to pay her respects with dignity.
        Besides, she had come with a second purpose that could not be fulfilled if she spiraled down into a fugue or suffered an emotional collapse. She was sure that Alexander Christophson - former Ambassador to Great Britain, former United States Senator, and former Director of the CIA - would be at the funeral of his old friend, and she wanted very much to speak with him. It was to Christophson, on Christmas Day, that Pablo had turned for advice about Ginger's problems. And it was Alex Christophson who had told him about the Azrael Block. She had an important question to ask Christophson, though she dreaded the answer.
        She had seen him in the chapel, recognized him from his days in public life, when he had been on television and in newspapers. He was a striking figure, tall, thin, white-haired, unmistakable. Now, they stood on opposite sides of the grave, the draped casket between them. He had glanced at her a couple times, though without recognition.
        The minister said a brief final prayer. After a moment, some of the mourners greeted one another, formed small groups to talk. Others, including Christophson, moved away through a forest of headstones, past snow-laden pines and winter-stripped maples, toward the parking lot.
        "I've got to talk to that man," Ginger told Rita. "Be right back."
        Startled, Rita called after her, but Ginger did not pause or offer further explanation. She caught up with Christophson in the jagged shadows cast by the skeletal branches of an immense oak that was all black bark and crusted snow. She called his name, and he turned. He had piercing gray eyes, which widened when she told him who she was.
        "I can't help you," he said, and began to turn away from her.
        "Please," she said, putting a hand on his arm. "If you blame me for what happened to Pablo-"
        "Why should you care what I think, Doctor?"
        She held fast to his arm. "Wait. Please, for God's sake."
        Christophson surveyed the slowly dispersing crowd in the cemetery, and Ginger knew that he was afraid the wrong people - dangerous people - might see him with her and assume he was helping her as Pablo had done. His head twitched slightly, and Ginger thought it was an indication of his nervousness, but then she