Conspiracy Theory(23)

“It doesn’t work, you know,” he told her. “I try it all the time. We never could see Holy Trinity very well from here, even when it was standing.”

“It’s still standing,” Bennis said. “All except one wall of it. Yes. I know. You don’t have to bring it up again. It will have to come down.”

“It was an old building, and it was built by people who didn’t have the kind of resources you need to put up something solid for the ages to begin with. It would have had to come down anyway, eventually. Tibor’s said so, more than once.”

“I don’t think this is what he meant, do you? Although I’ve got to admit, it’s going to put a crimp into Howard Kashinian’s lectures about how the church is solid as a rock and it would just be a waste of money to build a new one. I gave a little money to the rebuilding fund, did I tell you?”

“No. Everybody else on the street told me. That was a rather dramatic gesture.”

“Yes, well. I make all this money and I never spend any of it. I mean, let’s face it. I don’t like jewelry. I don’t take elaborate vacations. I do have the car, but at the rate I drive it I’m still going to have it in the third millennium. Does it make me a bad person that I’m not more upset about Tony Ross?”

“I don’t think so,” Gregor said. “Are you coming down to the Ararat with me? I know you don’t like talking to John Jackman, but in this case you might—”

“No,” Bennis said. “That’s all right. I don’t mind talking to John anymore. All emotions wear out. Did I ever tell you that my sister Myra tried to marry Tony once? This was back the year she was coming out. Tony was, I think, a year older than she was, still at Yale or wherever, but you could see even then that he was going to be something extraordinary. And Myra being Myra, she was determined to marry something extraordinary. But Tony didn’t seem to be interested.”

“From what you’ve told me about your sister Myra, that might not be surprising.”

“It wasn’t.” Bennis stopped twisting in the window. “You really can’t see it. I never noticed that before. Maybe I never tried to see it before. God, what a mess. Tibor’s coming home from the hospital today. Did I tell you that? Donna and I are going to go pick him up.”

“Yes, you told me that. He’s all right, you know, Bennis, he wasn’t really hurt. It was mostly shock and precaution.”

“I was thinking we could put him in my apartment. I never use it these days anyway, and he can’t go back to his place. It’s still standing, but it isn’t safe. God, what’s he going to do about all the books? He won’t let them get plowed under. You know how he feels about books.”

“I know how he feels about books.”

“Of course, it will mean he won’t be able to pretend not to know we’re living in sin, or whatever it is we’re doing. Do you think he thinks that, that we’re living in sin?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. Tibor doesn’t usually think things like that.”

“I don’t really know how Tibor thinks,” Bennis said. “We treat him like a pet, or at least I do. We find him endearing. But that isn’t what he’s about at all, I don’t think. It really was a bomb, wasn’t it, Gregor? I mean, the bomb squad couldn’t be mistaken. It couldn’t have been a gas explosion or something like that.”

“The church has electric heat. And no, I don’t think the bomb squad was mistaken, although we’ve still only got a preliminary report.”

“It just seems so awful to me that anybody would deliberately try to bomb Holy Trinity Church. Awful and ridiculous. Does that make sense to you? It makes sense to me that somebody might want to kill Tony Ross. He was rich as hell and he was the head of a big investment bank and he made decisions all the time that affected people’s lives. But this is Holy Trinity Church. It’s a little Armenian church on a side street in Philadelphia that isn’t important to anybody at all except the people who live here. It isn’t even in one of those categories that the hate groups go after. It’s not a black church. It’s not a synagogue. Tibor doesn’t mix in politics except for voting in every election. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It will when we find whoever did it. Probably.”

“Probably?”

“Let’s just say it will make sense of a kind, no matter what,” Gregor said. “Sometimes the rationale for these things is not necessarily contaminated with linear thought. Get your shoes on and come to the Ararat with me. John may not have anything to report, but he’ll be good to talk to. And you can see everybody and commiserate with them. Again.”