Conspiracy Theory(61)

“Yes. Well, Krekor, psychologically I am tired. And we have the Sunday coming up. We need to celebrate the liturgy. I do not like the idea of this neighborhood going to another church on Sundays. It might give the bishop the idea that we don’t need a church here.”

“If you don’t want them to go, they won’t go,” Gregor said.

Tibor nodded. He did not ask Gregor why Gregor had not been at the apartment to meet him. He did not make an effort to see what was going on in Lida’s living room, or on the street. He just sat, and the longer he sat, the more alarmed Gregor became.

“You know,” he said. “It doesn’t make much sense to brood on it. The world is full of nuts. It really is. There’s not much any of us can do about it. Oh, I know, every time there’s a disaster people start insisting on precautions. Look at what happened after September eleventh. Half the country was willing to shred the Bill of Rights to be safe from terrorists. You can’t make them understand that nothing will ever make us safe from terrorists. Or from nuts of any kind. Even the Israelis aren’t completely safe from terrorists, and they take the best and most sensible precautions on the planet—”

“No,” Tibor said. “There’s something else.”

Gregor took a deep breath. “What?”

Tibor glanced at Grace. She had her back to them, fussing with something on the occasional table that sat against the narrow piece of wall between the foyer and the living room’s entry to the kitchen. Maybe there was food there.

“Grace,” Gregor said. “Do me a favor, will you?” He reached into the pocket of his pants and got his keys. “Run up to my place and get my copy of Anderson’s Guide to Forensic Pathology. It’s lying on the desk in my room, under some other things. To the left of the computer. Look around and you’ll find it.”

“Oh, all right,” Grace said. She took the keys. “Are you sure I’ll need the keys? I never lock up anymore except when I’m leaving the building.”

“I’ve got the door on automatic lock,” Gregor said.

“Why do we need this book about pathology?” Tibor asked, as Grace rushed through the foyer and out onto the landing. They both heard the door snick shut behind her. “I do not much like forensics in any form, Krekor. It makes me ill.”

“It gets her out of the apartment for a good five minutes, which is what it’s going to take to unearth that thing,” Gregor said. “So tell me what’s wrong.”

Tibor reached into his suit jacket and came out with an envelope. It was an ordinary white envelope, “business”-sized as they used to call it when Gregor was in school. Tibor put it down on the coffee table between them, balancing it against a big bowl of tiny meatballs with toothpicks in them.

“There was this that came the day the explosion happened,” he said. “It is not the first one. I threw the other ones out.”

Gregor picked up the envelope and took the letter from it. It was a very short letter, typed on a computer, a little smeared by a printer that seemed to be malfunctioning.

Priest of Satan, the letter said. Don’t think we don’t know what you are. Don’t think we don’t know what you’re doing. We’ve seen the bodies of the infants you killed. We know you cremate them in the basement of that hellhole you call a church. We know that you fuck children there night after night, stick your filthy prick up their anuses until they scream. We’ve heard their screams. We won’t let them go unre-venged.

Gregor stopped reading. “What the hell?” he said.

Tibor shrugged. “They came for three weeks. At first a few days apart. Then almost every day.”

“And you didn’t tell anybody?”

Tibor slammed his palms on the arms of his chair. “I do not want to sound like a fool,” he said. “It’s not the first time. We have had such letters before, Krekor, they come on and off, people don’t understand what we are. They don’t know about the Orthodox churches. They know only about Protestants and Catholics. So they get confused.”

Gregor looked down at the letter again. Don’t think you’re going to get away with it forever. We’re watching you. We know how to put an end to the evil you’ve brought to this city and this country. We know how to put a stop to you, and we aren’ttoo timid—or too cowed by the law that you’ve got in your own Satanic pocket—to take the measures we need to take to stop you. We are coming.”

“This,” Gregor said, “is a threat. It’s an immediate threat of imminent physical violence.”