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Precious Blood(28)

By:Jane Haddam


His buzzer was still buzzing. He leaned forward, unearthed the box from an untidy stack of papers, and said, “Your Eminence?”

“Oh,” O’Bannion said. “Good. For a minute there, I was afraid you’d gone to bed.”

“I was just about to, Your Eminence.”

“Yes. Well. Put it off for a minute, will you? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Of course, Your Eminence.”

“You sound like you’re getting ready to kill me. Unstarch yourself a little and come down to my office. I won’t keep you long.”

“Yes, Your Eminence. Right away.”

“Right away is good. I think I’m getting an ulcer.”

The intercom went dead. Tom shook his head at it and stood up. The untidy stack of papers was the fallout from a hundred scattered projects. He picked it up and dumped it in the trash. Then he did a couple of waist rotations and some arm stretches, to unkink his muscles. It was good to be out of habit. His branch of the Third Order Regular was so conservative, he usually felt obliged to wear it, but Wednesday of Holy Week was always an exception. The only people who saw him on Wednesday of Holy Week were the Cardinal and the Cardinal’s secretary, and Tom had the feeling the little nun liked him in jeans.

He left his office, walked down the empty hall and across the dark reception lounge, and let himself into the Cardinal’s office without knocking. The Cardinal was stretched out on his couch, looking like an overweight Roman getting ready to banquet.

“There you are,” he said when Tom came in. “Get everything done?”

“Everything I could think of, Your Eminence, yes. Everything Sister could think of, too.”

“If Sister hasn’t thought of it, it doesn’t exist. She’s the soul of efficiency. Sit down.”

Tom sat down. He was glad to. He was so tired, his legs felt like sandbags. “I arranged for a car to take us to St. Agnes’s tomorrow,” he said. “I know you don’t like to be driven around, but I couldn’t think of any other way to fit that visit into your schedule. If we have to run for public transportation, we’re never going to get back here in time for the Mass at eleven-thirty.”

“Did you hire a limousine?”

“Of course I didn’t, Your Eminence. I hired a 1986 Buick. The only real expense will be the driver.”

“I could have driven myself.”

“No, you couldn’t have, Your Eminence. You haven’t driven yourself since you were raised to the See. That’s what? Three years?”

“Four. What about you?”

“I haven’t driven a car in Colchester since I was sixteen. I haven’t driven one at all since I’ve been here. A driver is really the safest solution.”

“I suppose so.” The Cardinal sighed. “But you know what’s going to happen, Tom. That little bastard Barry Field is going to get hold of it, and it’s going to be all over television the day after tomorrow.”

“Barry Field’s Prime-Time Encounter with Jesus?”

The Cardinal sat up. “I wish you wouldn’t find that man so amusing. I know he used to be a friend of yours, but he’s turned into a virulent anti-Catholic in his middle age. Near middle age. Whatever. If I hear myself called a pimp for the Whore of Babylon one more time, I’m going to wring his puffy little neck.”

“It’s just a local television station, Your Eminence. I don’t think he’s got much more than a one-hundred-mile range.”

“He will have soon. There’s some gossip you probably haven’t heard. I got it straight from the Papal Legate. Don’t ask me how he knows, but he always does. Your Barry Field is getting picked up by the Reverend Mark Candor’s All Christian Good News Gospel Network.”

“Whoosh.” Tom was impressed. “That’s the big time, isn’t it?”

“Is that all you can think of?”

“I think Barry’s probably very pleased. He always did want to be a success.”

“A success.” The Cardinal snorted. “When I think of all the time I spent trying to convince him he had a vocation—”

“Barry, too?”

The Cardinal looked embarrassed. “It was his junior year in high school. And he did have a vocation, I’m sure of it. Then he went away for the summer and when he came back, I don’t know, he was changed. Then he ran away from home for a while. It was three months before he came back. I should have expected something like this.”

Tom got up and went to the Cardinal’s desk, where Sister had left three large thermos bottles of coffee and a stack of paper coffee cups. Sometime in the last few minutes, he had crossed the line between tiredness and exhaustion. The room was spinning and his stomach was rolling around under his rib cage like a rogue marble.