“Is Father Burdock here?” he asked. “My name is—”
“Gregor Demarkian,” the woman said.
“Gregor Demarkian,” Dan Burdock said, sticking his head out the door of the inner office. “Hello. Is this the official interrogation? I’ve been waiting for you.”
“It isn’t an interrogation at all,” Gregor told him. “I’m actually on my way to somewhere else. I have a friend picking me up in your parking lot in less than half an hour. It was just something that struck me, that’s all, and since you were more or less on the way—”
“Sure. Come on in. Mrs. Reed can get you coffee, if you like.”
“No, no. I don’t have time for coffee. It really is a small thing.”
Dan Burdock stepped back and shooed Gregor through the door into the inner office. Gregor found himself in a high-ceilinged, paneled room with a wide fireplace, like the libraries in private clubs for men that used to dot the better neighborhoods of the city. There was an enormous leather wing-backed chair just in front of Dan Burdock’s desk. Gregor sat down in that and waited for the priest to settle himself.
“Well,” Dan said. “What’s the problem? I can’t imagine we’ve done anything in the last few days that hasn’t been thoroughly documented on the evening news.”
“You probably haven’t. No, it isn’t anything you’ve done. It’s—” Gregor tried to think of a way to make this sound sensible, and realized he couldn’t. “It bothers me, in a way, that you and the Reverend Phipps are on the same block. It seems like too much of a coincidence. So I thought that perhaps it wasn’t one.”
“You’re right,” Dan said. “It isn’t one.”
“So the Reverend Phipps moved into his town house in order to harass St. Stephen’s. Was that before or after you became pastor here?”
“I’ve been pastor here for twenty-five years,” Dan Burdock said. “Roy has only been up the block for the last ten. And he didn’t come to harass St. Stephen’s. He came to harass me.”
“You personally?”
“Got it in one.”
“But why?”
Dan Burdock sighed. “We were in college together,” he said. “At Princeton. We were roommates one year. We were in the same entryway for two years. I’m the one he knows.”
“The one what?”
“Gay man.”
“Are you gay?” Gregor asked.
Dan Burdock sighed again. “Of course I’m gay,” he said. “I’m not practicing, as the church likes to put it, but I’m gay. Everybody knows it. Nobody will talk about it. Except, of course, Roy. Sometimes I think it would be easier if I posted a sign on the church bulletin board out there by the sidewalk that said, ‘The pastor of this church is a homosexual. Other homosexuals welcome to worship.’ Except that everybody knows that, too. It drives me nuts.”
Gregor nodded. “What about Roy Phipps? Is he also gay?”
“You mean, as a handy explanation for why he feels the need to persecute homosexuals? If you want my private opinion, and that’s all it could be, the answer is no. I threaten the hell out of Roy, and I always have, but it’s not because he’s latent.”
“What is it, then?”
Dan Burdock stood up. “Do you know anything about Roy? I mean, beyond the rhetoric and the newspaper stories about picket lines at gay funerals?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. He came from a dirt-poor family in some backwater hollow in West Virginia, at a time when kids like that didn’t get to places like Princeton. He fought his way through high school. He fought his way to a scholarship. He spent four years of college working three jobs and studying his head off and managed to graduate salutatorian of our class. He’s a very unusual man, Roy is. He could have been anything. I’ve always thought of what he did become as a form of reaction formation. He finally couldn’t stand it anymore. He wanted to bring us all down. Those of us who didn’t have to fight, if you know what I mean.”
“But why pick on homosexuals?”
“I don’t think he decided to pick on homosexuals. I think he decided to pick on me. And since I happen to be gay—well, there it is.”
“He’s going to a lot of trouble, just to pick on you.”
“I agree. But I do think that is what this is. I always have. Is that really all you came here to find out? Why Roy took up residence on this block?”
“More or less, yes. And I’m interested in the coincidences. The two churches, for instance, with their layouts so similar, the courtyards, the annexes, the parking lots.”