He could feel their doubt beginning to overshadow the hope. He began walking around the room as he spoke, letting the Gift touch each of them, letting it push back the darkness. He patted Father Squid's shoulder, hugged Oddity, crouched down beside Quasiman and touched the hunchback's knee.
Stood again looking at Hannah. He sent the Gift deep into her, and she smiled back at him. There was inside her an implicit trust of him, clear and unalloyed now with lingering doubts. Gregg could sense that melding of admiration and faith, and he sent the power down to that crystalline certainty, adding another careful new layer to it. Stop it, Greggie! He ignored the voice and touched Hannah's hand; she gave his fingers a squeeze in return.
"Listen, all of you. We accomplished what we needed to accomplish," Gregg said, looking at Hannah, then back to the others. "We made it safe for Hannah and Father Squid to come out of hiding - at least as safe as anyone in New York can be right now. We have the media digging for the facts, and if my experience is any indication, they'll be much more effective and thorough than we could ever hope to be. We'll let them investigate for us. The Sharks are going to be busy trying to hide their tracks or deny their involvement. If the joker that Battle's turned into is found, we'll start asking about the old burglary charges again. Monroe, Herzenhagen, Rudo - they'll all have the press camped out on their doorsteps for the next week at least."
"Until the next juicy story knocks us off the front page," Oddity commented.
"Furs said it would take a few days for the press to really get going, Evan," Gregg answered. "Let's give it that chance. And we're not done yet ourselves, remember."
"If people come through."
"They'll come through. I'm sure of it."
The use of the power had made him feel tired and old, as if he'd been working physically. He yawned, stretching. His muscles ached, and he suddenly wanted to be alone. Gregg left the room as the discussion continued, going outside.
He put his arms on the railing of the front porch, looking up to where the incomplete framework of the new steeple was etched against the cityglow of the sky. He heard the door open behind him.
"Are you as confident as you sound?" Hannah's voice, soft and low. Gregg could feel the warmth as she came alongside him, and he glanced over to see that her gaze, like his, had gone to the steeple.
Yes, he started to say, but couldn't. He found that he didn't want to lie to her. He didn't need to lie to her. "No."
"I thought so." For an instant, she smiled, still looking up at the steeple.
"I don't see that very often," he said.
"What?"
"You smiling. So why'd it happen?"
"I don't know," she said. She looked at him. In the half-darkness, her hair seemed to glow, and her eyes were only faint lights in the shadow of her face. "Maybe I like hearing you tell me the truth. Maybe it makes me trust you."
"And that makes you smile?"
"Yeah," she said "Despite all the nastiness going on around me, it does. You're a good man, Gregg Hartmann. No matter what happens, I appreciate all you've done."
She smiled again, a flash of teeth, and went back inside. Gregg stayed out in the night for a long, long time.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"The Free Vietnamese government exhumed the reputed body of Dr. Etienne Faneuil two days ago," Gregg said "We have here the documented report from the medical examiner, as well as a set of dental records from the corpse. As you can see, the dental records do not match those of Dr. Faneuil, and the skeletal remains show no evidence of the broken leg Dr. Faneuil is known to have suffered in 1972."
"Any dental records for Dr. Faneuil are extremely old. And, not to be prejudicial but Free Vietnam is not the United States. How can you be certain that the corpse they claim to have exhumed is indeed from Dr. Faneuil's grave, and can you be certain of the competency of the examiner?"
Mike Wallace managed to look smug. Gregg tried to smile into the camera lights. Gregg had been on 60 Minutes once before for a piece on terrorism, and they'd interviewed him regarding his kidnapping in Berlin. Wallace's staff had initially been uninterested when Gregg contacted them regarding the Sharks, but in the wake of Peregrine's show, and with the promise that they'd be the first to reveal the findings of the exhumation, they'd agreed. The cameras and Wallace had arrived at Gregg's apartment that evening.
Hannah leaned forward toward Wallace. "We asked Chancellor Meadows to be certain that every step in the process was documented, and we'll provide you that documentation, Mr. Wallace. The body was taken from the grave in which Dr. Faneuil was reputedly buried. The Vietnamese medical examiner has a degree from Columbia and did his residency in Los Angeles; I don't doubt his credentials."
"But the dental records ..."
"I've depended on dental records for identification many times in my work, Mr. Wallace," she said. "Fires don't leave much else. I'll admit that records for Dr. Faneuil are sketchy. Still, it's much, much easier to prove that records don't match than that they do. You have Dr. Faneuil's records in your hand. Look at the upper right incisor, here. As you can see, Dr. Faneuil had a crown put on that tooth in 1977." Hannah gave Wallace a set of X-ray negatives. "Compare those to this. The Vietnamese corpse doesn't have a crown on that incisor - in fact, the tooth was whole and healthy when the man died. No matter how sketchy the records, no one grows a new adult tooth where there was once a crown. I don't know who this man is. I do know that he is not Etienne Faneuil."
Wallace stared at the two sets of documents for a moment and then set them aside on Gregg's coffee table. "All right," he said. "Let's assume for the moment that you're correct. Dr. Faneuil faked his death and is conceivably still alive out there somewhere. What does that prove?"
"By itself, nothing," Gregg answered. "What's important is the reflection it casts on the rest of Hannah's evidence. Dr. Faneuil's death was the wall the Sharks threw up in Hannah's path when she began this. His death was supposed to end her uncovering of the Card Sharks just as it ended legal pursuit of the doctor in the first place. Hannah insisted that Faneuil was alive - and everyone ridiculed her. Largely because of that, the rest of her evidence was ignored or discounted. Well, Hannah Davis was right and everyone else was wrong."
"And thus she is right about the rest"
"Yes."
"And is Pan Rudo, Director of the World Health Organization, also the head of the Card Sharks?"
"We've not claimed that, Mr. Wallace," Gregg smiled He glanced at Hannah; she nodded back to him. "We're still gathering evidence before we name the person. The rest is speculation on the part of the media. I suggest you ask Dr. Rudo that question, not me."
"We'd like to, but he won't talk to us. Ms. Davis, Senator, let me be candid with the two of you for a moment. I don't want to believe you. I don't want to think that there has been an ugly conspiracy on the part of some very important and influential people to discredit and even kill jokers. I don't want to believe that kind of horror, prejudice, and genocide is possible."
"It's happened before," Hannah said "Not too long ago at all - when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis ruled Germany."
"Yes," Wallace admitted. "That doesn't mean it can happen again. Not here."
"I'd like to believe that, too, Mr. Wallace," Hannah said. "And if you in the media do your job, it won't"
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"... And if you in the media do your job, it won't."
The image of Hannah cut to that of Wallace on the 60 Minutes studio set. "Well, we tried to do just that," he said to the camera. "We looked into several of the allegations made by Ms. Davis, and in each case, we found an alarming trend. Important records had been destroyed, crucial documents had vanished, people with vital pieces of knowledge had moved to parts unknown or had passed away due to accident or illness. Either Ms. Davis and ex-Senator Hartmann have managed to find the right combination of events to make things look suspicious, or there really is something or someone covering up their tracks. The Iranian hostage debacle is a case in point. We petitioned the State Department, the Justice Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House for documents relating to that incident."