He dropped his briefcase onto the seat beside him, put his head on the backrest and closed his eyes.
If he had any luck, the Cardinal Archbishop would assign a subordinate to shepherd Gregor around, and Gregor would never have to deal with the man in charge at all.
TWO
1
“LOOK FOR A PRIEST CARRYING a copy of the New York Sentinel,” the Cardinal’s secretary had said. It wasn’t until he was arriving at Penn Station that Gregor realized how ludicrous that was. “A priest” could mean a man in a Roman collar. Religious dress was one of the things about which the Cardinal was rumored to be a hidebound traditionalist. The New York Sentinel was something else. Any number of priests could be carrying the New York Sentinel. It was a very popular paper.
Gregor got off the train and looked around. This part of Penn Station was relatively clean and relatively empty. Gregor saw one old woman who might have been a bag lady, but might just as easily have been a tourist from Wilmington struggling home under an unusually large load of packages. He saw a slender young woman in jeans carrying a baby on her back in a sling. The young woman read compulsively through her ticket, frowning. The only male Gregor could see besides the ticket takers was reading a New York Sentinel, but he didn’t look anything like a priest. No Roman collar. No sober black suit. This man was wearing a crumpled tan linen jacket with sleeves pushed up his bare arms to his elbows, over a bright orange T-shirt and a pair of ancient jeans.
The headline on the New York Sentinel read, “FOILED AGAIN” in letters so large Gregor couldn’t imagine their type size. At the bottom of the letters was a small picture of President Clinton looking forlorn. It always surprised Gregor how easily the tabloid press could come up with morose pictures of Bill Clinton, when in real life the man was always smiling. Gregor walked up to the man and cleared his throat.
“Excuse me,” he said. “You don’t happen to be here from—”
The man folded up his paper immediately and tucked it under his arm. “Mr. Demarkian? Excuse me, please. I was daydreaming. About the Mets.”
The Mets were a baseball team. Gregor knew that. He cleared his throat again. “You’re Father—”
“Father Donleavy. Eamon Donleavy. Please let me apologize again. The Mets are winning all of a sudden. Never mind. Let me take your bag.”
Gregor let Eamon Donleavy take his bag. He looked the father over a little more carefully. The loafers were soft calf ones with the distinct look of a custom British shoemaker, but they were old. The watch was plain stainless steel and said “Timex” on its face. Interesting man, Father Donleavy.
“Excuse me,” Gregor said, “but if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t look the way I’d expect the emissary of this particular Cardinal to look. You don’t even look like somebody I’d expect him to tolerate.”
“No?” Eamon Donleavy laughed. “Well, you’re almost right. I’m not the Cardinal’s emissary except in the most peripheral way. I don’t work at the chancery, I work at the Sojourner Truth Health Center. As for the rest of it, the Cardinal baptized not only me but all six of my brothers and sisters, and he’s so glad we all remained in the church, he puts up with us. I have a sister who’s a nun in one of those orders where they wear jumpsuits and picket for world peace. The Cardinal doesn’t know if he should count that as staying in the church or not. There’s a cab stand up around here. I know a couple of the drivers. We’ll be able to get uptown.”
“Uptown?”
“To the Sojourner Truth Health Center. The Cardinal says you’ll do better if you’re right on the spot.”
“Mmm,” Gregor said.
“No?”
“There’s no reason not to be on the spot,” Gregor said, “but if you ask me, your Cardinal is being smart. I take it the Archdiocese is making some attempt to keep my presence here on this errand unpublicized?”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Demarkian. These days, they’re all running around the chancery behaving like extras from a cold war domestic spy movie. The Cardinal probably thinks he’s John Wayne.”
“It might be better for secrecy purposes for me to arrive at the center than at the chancery, you see. It’s less likely I’ll be spotted. That is, assuming that the New York papers still stake the chancery out on a regular basis and don’t stake out the center. With all the trouble up there lately, I might have it all backward.”
“The trouble was two weeks ago,” Eamon Donleavy said. “And the center’s hardly the place you’d expect to be trouble-free. Do you know what was going on up there, the night Charles van Straadt was killed?”