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True Believers(175)

By:Jane Haddam


“Reverend Phipps.”

“I don’t think so. As I told you, your life may not be public, but it is traceable, and we traced it. Your ordination is bogus, although I doubt that that would matter to your parishioners, who don’t really understand what ordination is. But what’s more interesting to me is the fact that you never had anything to say about the homosexual agenda until exactly seven years ago, after you had moved onto Baldwin Place. In fact, it looks very much like your commitment to the anti-gay rights cause was dictated by your move to Baldwin Place. Before you came here, you did a lot of railing about pornography, and a lot of railing about evolution, but you never had a single word to say about gays.”

“I don’t see where that matters,” Roy said. “I don’t see what you think you’re going to be able to do with that.”

“I don’t intend to do anything with it,” Gregor said. “I do intend to make sure that the Philadelphia police have your record—your whole record, including the information that shows that you have been stalking Dan Burdock for over twenty years. That’s not criminal, as long as he never swore out a complaint, but it is indicative. If I were you, I’d move out of Baldwin Place and take your parishioners with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t want to give up the real estate.”

“That’s up to you. But Mr. Phipps, if one of your thickheaded Bible thumpers does some real damage somewhere to a gay man, it would be possible, knowing what I know now, to charge you as an accessory. You’ve always been able to avoid that up until now. I’m here to tell you you aren’t going to be able to avoid it again. You wanted to ruin Dan Burdock’s life. He ruined it for himself. This vendetta is over. Get out of here.”

“No,” Roy said. “You’re not as good as you think you are. And I’m not finished.”

Gregor looked up and saw the lights at the front of St. Stephen’s. Just a few feet from where he and Roy were standing, the homeless people were going in and out of St. Anselm’s, the way they did every night. He wondered if it had been on television yet, if the parishioners at St. Stephen’s knew that their pastor had been arrested. He hardly thought it mattered.

“I’m better than I think I am,” he told Roy Phipps, “and what’s more, I’ve got a very long memory. Move out of Baldwin Place. If you don’t, I’m going to come after you. And if I do, I’m going to shut you down.”

“You’re not as good as you think you are,” Roy Phipps said again, but for just one moment there was a crease of fear across his face, and a crease of doubt.

There was also a cab coming down the street, and Gregor hailed it. Surely it was as cold tonight as it had ever been this month, but he didn’t feel it. He felt as warm as if he were in his own living room, in spite of the fact that his coat was open and he seemed to be wearing his scarf on his sleeve.

The cab pulled up and he opened the door to get inside it. At the last moment, he turned back to Roy Phipps on the sidewalk and smiled.

“Move out of Baldwin Place, Mr. Phipps. I’m not bluffing.”

Then he got into the cab and told the driver how to get to Cavanaugh Street. The sky about his head was clear. Even in the glare of the streetlamps, he could see stars. He hoped Bennis was home from her dinner and ready to talk—but then, maybe she wouldn’t be, under the circumstances.

All Gregor Demarkian had ever wanted in his life was a world he could make right when it went wrong. Lately, he had been learning to settle for the fact that he could sometimes make a small part of it right for a finite period of time.

The cab pulled away from the curb, and he sat back and closed his eyes, thinking of Cavanaugh Street.