By now, the elevator had creaked its way up to the third floor. Now it opened its doors on a hall much more magnificent than the one downstairs, with ceilings twenty feet high and patterns of crosses mosaicked into the marble of the floor. Gregor found himself staring into it, appalled.
“But she’s the Cardinal’s secretary,” he said. “What about the—”
“Phones?” Tom Dolan laughed again. “I, Mr. Demarkian, will answer the Cardinal’s phones. Last year I managed to get Scholastica to loan me a nun. This year, it didn’t work out. There just aren’t enough nuns to go around anymore. Make the turn to your left. The Cardinal’s smack at the end of the hall.”
Gregor made the turn to the left, and even managed to notice the beauty of the architecture around him, but all the time he was thinking the Cardinal deserved to be shot.
[3]
Sitting tilted back in the “executive” swivel chair that sat incongruously behind his highly polished, solid mahogany Victorian desk, the Cardinal almost looked like a man who had been shot. Either the strain of the Tridium weekend or the murder of Andy Walsh had gotten to him. He didn’t look as tired as Father Tom Dolan—nobody could look that tired, Gregor thought; Dolan had that cornered—but he did look worried. Gregor was sure worry was an emotion the Cardinal didn’t often allow to register on his face. He also looked fat and out of shape instead of magnificently solid, as he had yesterday in St. Agnes’s Church. Red robes suited him better than the sweater and baggy pants he wore now outside of working hours.
There was a cigar, in an ashtray in the middle of the green felt desk blotter that covered half the desk, lit and sending streams of smoke into the air like incense. The Cardinal was staring at the smoke when Gregor came in. He didn’t stop staring at it just because his door had opened and Tom Dolan had started on a stream of inanities that was meant to serve as a reintroduction. He waited until Dolan was finished—or had petered out, which was closer to the truth—and on his way out the door again. Then he picked up the cigar, sucked on it until his cheeks were full, and blew a stream of smoke out of each of the corners of his mouth.
It was an impressive performance, so impressive Gregor wanted to applaud. Instead, he sat down in the nearest suitable chair and got comfortable. The chair was very suitable and he got very comfortable. That was one of the advantages of dealing with fat men. They never surrounded themselves with the kind of fashionable furniture that looked like it was made out of matchsticks.
Obviously, the Cardinal was waiting for him to say something. Just as obviously, Gregor had no intention of obliging. He was getting more than a little tired of the Cardinal’s ceaseless efforts to manipulate the smallest details of existence to his advantage.
The Cardinal, being no fool, decided to give in. He sat forward over the desk, dropped his cigar in the ashtray, and said, “Just tell me one tiling. How much shit do you figure we’re in?”
Gregor felt a grin spreading across his face, the kind of grin he used to get when his hunches turned out right and his reasoning turned out impeccable. “I’d say,” he told the Cardinal, “that you’re in enough shit to use a word like shit and expect it to make a difference.”
The Cardinal flushed, started to be angry, and then dropped it. He looked sheepishly at Gregor and picked up his cigar again. “Never mind,” he said. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“I do. I expected you to be more intelligent.”
“Right now I don’t feel intelligent at all.” The Cardinal sighed. “I haven’t had any sleep. I haven’t had any peace. Andy’s dead and I’m beginning to worry Tom’s on the verge of a breakdown. My nun—”
“Father Dolan told me about your nun.”
“Sister is a wonderful woman.” The Cardinal did his best to sound pious. “She’s probably a saint, and she’s not one of these wimps the ‘new’ nuns try to make out the old ones were. She runs my life with admirable efficiency, and I can count on her absolutely, except during these three days of the year.”
“Which, this year, turn out to be the three worst days of any year.”
“It’s hardly Sister’s fault. I don’t know if you realize it, Mr. Demarkian, but for all the nonsense I’ve got to spend my time on playing Cardinal Archbishop, what I’m supposed to be doing here is looking after the spiritual welfare of the people of this Archdiocese. Lately there doesn’t seem to have been much time for that.”
“There might not be, Your Eminence. At least for a while.”