Dear Old Dead(5)

Eamon’s office was right across the hall from Michael’s own. Through his open door, Eamon could see Charles van Straadt making calls on Michael’s phone. Eamon didn’t like Charles van Straadt. He thought the man was dangerous. Eamon especially didn’t like the way Charles sent his grandchildren to volunteer at the center. To Eamon, Charles van Straadt’s grandchildren looked very much like spies.

“We’ve got to start working on some kind of contingency plan,” the Archbishop was saying in Eamon’s ear. “We’ve got to think of a rationale. That is, unless you want us to pull all the nuns out of there, which I don’t.”

“No, Your Eminence. Of course I don’t.”

This Archbishop was also a Cardinal. The Archbishop of New York was always a Cardinal. In Eamon’s experience, there was something about making a man a Cardinal that rendered him incapable of making a short phone call. This call had lasted half an hour so far, and it was beginning to look like a real marathon.

“How’s Michael?” the Archbishop said. “Is he keeping his mind on his work?”

“I don’t think Michael’s noticed the fuss at all, Your Eminence.”

“How could he avoid it?”

“By working.”

“Well, yes, Eamon, of course, by working, but—it’s all over the place. He couldn’t go to the corner for a cup of coffee without finding a newspaper staring him in the face.”

“You don’t go to the corner for a cup of coffee in this neighborhood, Your Eminence. At least, you don’t if you’re Anglo. Michael might be able to get away with it just because he’s Michael, but I don’t think he’d count on it.”

“People must have said things to him. There must have been phone calls.”

“The phone’s been ringing off the hook all day, Your Eminence. Augie—Sister Augustine has one of those Benedictines that came in from Connecticut answering the calls. She’s very polite and very noncommittal and she doesn’t let anything get through to Michael. There have been a few reporters hanging around, too, of course, but fewer than you’d think. This isn’t a neighborhood up here, Your Eminence. This is a war zone. It’s not safe.”

“No. No, Eamon, of course, it’s not safe. But what about Michael himself? What about the arraignment? Is there going to be a trial?”

“Well,” Eamon said drily, “it seems that the New York City Police Department has neglected to file charges—”

“What?”

“Michael hasn’t been charged, Your Eminence, and he’s not going to be. Not for something like this.”

“I see. Yes, Eamon, I see. What about his health? Not just his psychological health. His physical health.”

“I don’t know,” Eamon Donleavy said.

There was a lengthy pause on the other end of the line. Eamon Donleavy could just imagine what the Archbishop was thinking. It was what Eamon himself thought, when he let himself think, about the medical indications of Michael’s periodic bizarre behavior. A glory hole was a hole in the wall of a stall in a gay porno theater. A client entered the stall, paid his quarters for the movie, and then, if the whim took him, either stuck his own private parts into the hole for the man in the next stall to service, or serviced whatever was sticking through the hole in his own stall. The very idea made Eamon Donleavy physically ill. For Michael, in this age of AIDS, it was a death wish. For the Archbishop, it was undoubtedly more incomprehensible than genocide.

There was a cough on the other end of the phone. “Eamon? Are you as worried by all this as I am?”

“I’m worried about Michael, Your Eminence.”

“I’m worried about Michael, too. Will he be able to withstand all this publicity?”

“It depends on what the van Straadt papers do. If they pull out all the stops, he could be in trouble. Maybe not, but he could be.”

“Will they pull out all the stops? Don’t they fund most of the center’s operations?”

“Yes, they do. And the old man professes to like Michael.”

“Only professes?”

“I don’t know, Your Eminence. I don’t seem to know much of anything today.”

“You know as much as you need to know. All right, Eamon. I’d better let you off the phone. We’re getting reports of a full-scale gang war going on up there.”

“Yes, Your Eminence. There’s something like that going on. We have one or two of these every summer.”

“It’s not summer, Eamon. It’s barely spring.”

“Excuse me, Your Eminence.”