The Cardinal Archbishop was performing a rite of exorcism.
3
In the back of the crowd, so far back that she found it difficult to hear exactly what the Cardinal Archbishop was saying, Mary McAllister was holding on to Chickie George’s arm. Chickie was so excited, he looked feverish, feverish and triumphant, as if he were liable to explode at any moment. It didn’t help that he was not well, or that he was solving his problems—Mary was sure—by taking double the prescribed amount of his pain medications. It didn’t help that it was so cold out here and he was wearing nothing but a cashmere sweater over a thin cotton shirt over good wool pants. Why was it impossible to get Chickie to take care of himself? Why was it impossible to get him to wear a coat?
“Listen,” she said, tugging desperately at his arm. “Listen, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you—”
“Who would have believed it?” Chickie demanded—and it wasn’t in that high-queen voice of his, either. Mary bit her lip. “The Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia. The old son of a bitch. On our side.”
“Oh, no,” Mary said. “I mean, I don’t think—”
“I don’t either,” Chickie said shortly. “I know the old fart will be back on television tomorrow talking about how gay sex is objectively evil or whatever it is he says. That’s not what I mean. Listen to him. Listen to him. Old Roy is going to bust a gut.”
“Please listen,” Mary said, trying to brush hair out of her face faster than the wind was brushing it in. Roy Phipps had tried to go back into his house, but the door was blocked behind him. Two of the men from St. Stephen’s had come up and got in his way. Chickie never used phrases like “bust a gut.”
“Listen,” she said again. “There’s something I have to tell you. I should have told you before. I’m—I mean, you know, at the end of the school year—I’m going to go into the convent. Into the Sisters of Divine Grace convent. In New York. I mean, I talked to Sister Scholastica, and she said—”
“I know,” Chickie said.
“What?” Mary said.
“I know,” Chickie said again. “I’ve known for a year. Haven’t you known?”
“No.”
“Well, it was obvious to everybody who cares about you. Which just goes to show that that idiot boyfriend of yours didn’t give a damn about anything but getting in your pants, which I sincerely hope you haven’t allowed him to do, because he isn’t worth it and—”
“Chickie.”
“Sorry.”
“Do you mind?”
“No,” Chickie said. “I don’t mind. If you invite me, I’ll come up for that ceremony they have where they put the veil on your head. You know. I won’t even, ah, be too obvious about, ah, things.”
“Be as obvious as you like. Just be yourself.”
“Right,” Chickie said.
Mary looked up at the town house again. The Cardinal Archbishop was still intoning in Latin. The words seemed to go on and on, and the crowd seemed to know how to answer—but Mary didn’t. She didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on, or why Chickie was so ecstatic. She wrapped her arms around her body and shivered.
“What’s he doing up there?” she asked. “Is there something in particular that’s supposed to happen?”
Chickie looked at her with wide eyes, momentarily shocked.
And then he burst out laughing.
FIVE
1
Gregor Demarkian was in the offices of Brady, Marquis and Holden when news of the exorcism came, sitting in a large and expensively outfitted conference room with both Garry Mansfield and Lou Emiliani, a junior partner, and Delmark Marquis himself. The news was brought by a secretary who was running when she came, but Gregor was only momentarily surprised about that. Surely there were radios in these offices, and even small television sets, that belonged to the support staff and that were kept running, surreptitiously, throughout the day. Even more likely, everybody, senior as well as junior, management as well as staff, had computers that were plugged into the Internet for e-mail purposes. One way or the other, the news was out. Delmark Marquis demanded that the conference room’s own television be taken out of the carved mahogany cupboard where it was hidden when it wasn’t needed and turned on to the station that promised the most extensive coverage. How he knew which station this would be was anybody’s guess. Gregor sat back and watched the set and the room together. He was neither surprised nor particularly upset. He had gotten past his simple personal distaste for the Cardinal Archbishop. Now he thought that the man was—complicated—to say the least, and where he wasn’t complicated he might be unusual. But watching him on the screen, making the sign of the cross over Roy Phipps’s balding head, Gregor still didn’t much like him.