“Gotcha,” Fred said.
“The best thing would be to find him on the record with something completely discrediting,” Roy said. “Or at least something we could use to charge bias. Some anti-Christian statement. Some atheist organization. Something.”
“You mean like the ACLU?”
“Not really,” Roy said. “The police department isn’t going to fire him just because he belongs to the ACLU. If he does. I was thinking of something like American Atheists, or the Council for Secular Humanism. The chances are he doesn’t belong to either, though. He used to be with the FBI. He’d know better than to join organizations that could compromise him.”
“Right,” Fred said.
Now they were coming up on St. Anselm’s by the side. Roy looked into the parking lot and saw that it was nearly empty. The noon Mass had to be over. He picked up speed and turned left at the corner, down their own long and almost-pristine-again street.
There was a lot of activity going on at St. Stephen’s, people going in and out. Roy stopped and looked at the bulletin board, but it was too far away for him to read. Underneath it, though, there was a sign made of red letters on white posterboard that said: PRAY FOR TOLERANCE. 6 PM.
“What’s all that about?” he asked.
“They’re doing some kind of service for the guys who got beat up last night,” Fred said. “Carl was wondering if you wanted to picket it. You know. I said I’d ask.”
“We should think about it. It’s the kind of thing we picket. There may be a serious police presence after last night.”
“Right,” Fred said. “That’s what I told Carl.”
Roy turned away and started down the street again. “We’ve got guys who got beat up,” he said. “We should do a service, too. But it wouldn’t attract the same kind of attention. There’s something else about Gregor Demarkian.”
“What?”
“He might not have joined any of those organizations, but somebody close to him could have. Somebody he’s connected to, publicly. Check into that.”
“All right.”
“And while you’re at it, check out Edith Lawton. Check out—” Roy stopped.
He could spend all day telling Fred what to check out, but in the end he would have to do at least some of the checking himself. Fred wasn’t up to it, and Fred was the cream of his own particular crop.
Up the street, the front windows of their church gleamed in the sun, untouched by last night’s madness.
God would always take care of His own.
3
The call from the Cardinal Archbishop came at five minutes to one, and when it did, Dan Burdock had an almostirresistible desire to refuse it. He did not, like some people, have reason to dislike the Cardinal, at least not personally. As far as he knew, he had never met the man. The problem was that he was so immensely tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally, he couldn’t imagine himself coping with what he was sure was going to be an unpleasant call. If it wasn’t unpleasant for the obvious reasons—it was the Cardinal, after all, who gave interviews to the papers once a year calling homosexuality an “objective evil”—Dan had the feeling it would be unpleasant for the peripheral ones. He didn’t think he would ever want to say it, but the truth was that he was sick of the entire issue. He didn’t even understand why it had to be an issue. Some people were gay, and some people were not. Why should that be any business of his? Why should that be any business of anybody’s? What was it, exactly, that made so many people feel that they had to Take A Stand at every possible opportunity, until the world was full of stands on matters so trivial, they made the mind numb? If he ever had the chance, he was going to quit this job and move out to Wyoming or Montana, where he could live with a television set and a computer and no contact with his neighbors at all.
Mrs. Reed was hovering in his doorway. Dan thought that, under the circumstances, Wyoming might not be the very best choice. He rubbed his eyes. He had been rubbing them since late last night. They were as raw as hamburger.
“Father?” Mrs. Reed said.
“Call me Dan,” Dan said automatically.
“It’s the Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia,” Mrs. Reed said. “I do understand that you’re very tired, Father, and it’s no wonder, with that disgraceful man and the disgraceful mess he made last night, but it is the Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia. I will tell him you’re out, if you’d rather I do that, but I thought—”
“No,” Dan said. “It’s all right. I’m going to—transfer it to the cell phone, will you? I’ve got to walk around. I’m asleep on my feet.”