Most of Philadelphia was quiet, and well lit. Whatever crisis John Jackman had on his hands, its urgency had not seeped into the rest of the population. They passed through the kind of neighborhood where the bars would open as soon as the law allowed and stay open until the law required them to close. Gregor remembered how shocked he had been, in college, to discover that there were men who would sit down on a barstool at eight o’clock in the morning and have a couple of beers before going in to work. He tried to figure out if they would be passing anywhere near the University of Pennsylvania campus, but he had never been particularly good at directions. He didn’t know where he was. The houses in this neighborhood were shabby, and mostly cut up into apartments. The one small park they passed looked like it needed to be raked. There were dead leaves and broken bottles on the ground, even though this was February.
Then they turned a corner, and Gregor was suddenly able to see light, far too much light, right ahead of them. He leaned toward the front just as John Jackman slumped backward, but the scene was too far away to make sense, and too bright. He sat back himself and asked,
“What’s that ahead of us? It looks like somebody’s setting off fireworks on the ground.”
“It’s St. Anselm’s and St. Stephen’s,” Jackman said.
Gregor slid forward again. Now that he knew enough to look for the spires, he had no trouble finding them, but the scene on the ground still made no sense. He made out the Channel 6 Action News van, mostly because its ABC logo seemed to be lit by a spotlight and facing right toward him. After that, all he could get was an impression of people, hundreds of people, far more than there should have been.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “What is that, rubberneckers? Why don’t you have your people clear the area?”
“It’s not rubberneckers. It’s a demonstration. And a counterdemonstration.”
“A demonstration of what?”
Jackman tapped the driver on the shoulder, and he sped up, just a little. They were three blocks away, and those blocks were clear. It was only when you got to the corners where the churches stood that you ran into a solid wall of people. Past the Channel 6 Action News van, Gregor got sight of what seemed to be a man in a white bedsheet, wearing a gold foil crown on his head and gold-painted … wings.
“Wings,” he said cautiously.
Jackman pulled him back and leaned forward himself. “Yeah, wings,” he said. “Wings and halos. They told me about the wings and halos. Shit.”
“Do you want me to pull up to the side entrance so you can go around to the back and avoid the crowd?” the driver said.
Jackman shook his head. “Let us out here. The whole point is to get ourselves on television. Let the good people of Philadelphia know that their police are on the case, right to the highest levels. Do we know if the Cardinal has arrived yet?”
“No,” the driver said.
The car pulled up to the curb. John Jackman got out, and Gregor followed him. They were now less than half a block away. Gregor could see other news vans, and the tight crowd of demonstrators in their white sheets and gold wings that seemed to be clogging the street between the two churches. This was not a spontaneous demonstration, at least not entirely. The demonstrators had professionally printed signs, the kind you usually had to put orders in for weeks in advance. GOD HATES SIN one of them read. Another read YOU WON’T BE GAY IN HELL. As they got closer, Gregor realized that at least some of the sound they were hearing was music. The angels were singing.
“What’s that music?” he asked Jackman.
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Jackman said. “It’s probably something Rapid Roy wrote all by himself.”
“That’s who these people are? They’re connected to Roy Phipps?”
“Right. They’ve got a full gospel something or the other church down the street. You know the kind of names these places have. They annoy Dan Burdock a lot.”
“Dan Burdock is the pastor at St. Stephen’s,” Gregor said.
They had pushed far enough into the crowd for Gregor to see that there were, indeed, counterdemonstrators. It took him a moment to place the man at their head, but then he did: Chickie George, the man he had met when he’d come to look over St. Stephen’s and St. Anselm’s after he’d talked with the Cardinal. Chickie George’s sign was not professionally made, and it showed. The cardboard was too thin to make for an effective sign. The letters, drawn hastily with a black felt-tip pen, wavered slightly. Their message, however, was unmistakable: Queer Nation.
“I didn’t realize St. Stephen’s had this big a congregation,” Gregor said.