“All right,” Jackman said.
Gregor felt him grab him by the arm and tug. He went willingly. He wanted to be out of this foyer, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think he could cross this street at this moment without getting hurt, unless he had some kind of protection. Coming out into the air, he was surprised, again, at just how cold it was. For a while, in the middle of the riot, he hadn’t noticed the cold, only his own fear and the feeling that it would be easy for it to turn to panic. Jackman dragged him across the street to St. Anselm’s front walk. They both said hello to the uniformed patrolman standing there, his entire purpose to keep people out of St. Anselm’s unless they belonged there and could prove it. Up on the steps that led to the front doors, it was quieter. Jackman stopped for a moment and looked back over the scene.
“What a mess,” he said. “Do you know this is going to be a disaster?”
“It is a disaster,” Gregor said.
“For the department. Because you know what’s going to happen. No matter what we do, no matter what happens out here, it’s all going to be our fault. Everything. We didn’t get here fast enough. We got here too fast. We didn’t move in fast enough. We moved in at all. We were unnecessarily rough with … pick your favorite party.”
“I don’t think it could have been helped,” Gregor said.
Jackman shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Reason and logic don’t matter. Fairness and truth don’t matter. When the dust clears from this thing, we’re going to be up on the carpet in front of one of those special commissions, and it will be a damned miracle if I don’t lose my job.”
Gregor would have said something comforting, except that he couldn’t think of anything. It was entirely possible that what Jackman had said was true, and for some reason it was enormously depressing, even more depressing than the scene on the street. He scanned the crowd one more time and found Roy Phipps, standing on the sidelines, dressed in an ordinary business suit and not moving.
“He doesn’t seem to be taking part in this riot,” Gregor said.
“He’s a very smart man,” Jackman said sourly. “Thirty demonstrations and six riot situations since he got to Philadelphia, and we haven’t been able to arrest him once. The body is supposed to be in some kind of office annex behind the church. We can go through and out the back.”
They went through and out the back, moving as quietly as they could, because in spite of what was going on outside, there was a priest at the altar celebrating Mass. Maybe, Gregor thought, it was because of what was going on outside. He wondered where the worshipers had come from. Some of them were nuns, and that was easy enough to understand, but some were ordinary lay people. Gregor couldn’t imagine they’d come through that crowd outside with all the fighting going on, but some of them must have, or else seen the mess in the street and come in by the side. Most of the lay people seemed to be workingmen and women still in working clothes: mechanic’s uniforms, nurse’s uniforms, waitress’s uniforms.
“Daily communicants,” Jackman said shortly, and Gregor had to remind himself that Jackman’s full name was John Henry Newman Jackman and that he’d been brought up Catholic and educated at Catholic schools. “You’d be surprised how many there still are,” he said. “Daily communicants, I mean. People who go to Mass every day and receive Communion every day. You’d think all that would have gone out with Vatican II.”
They went out the side door near the statue of Mary and into the courtyard. That was lit up, too, but the lights were concentrated on one small place on the first floor of a long, low annex. Behind them, out in the street, a sudden surge of sound rose up and broke and then died abruptly. Jackman ignored it.
“I can’t know what it was,” he told Gregor. “I don’t even want to speculate. There’s the Cardinal Archbishop.”
The long low building—me annex, Gregor supposed—was cordoned off, with a uniformed patrolman at the door and a bustle of tech men in white smocks milling around inside. Just outside it, though, there were two low benches, side by side. The Cardinal Archbishop was standing next to one of those, leaning over to talk to Sister Scholastica, who was sitting.
“The Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia, Roy Phipps, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, all in one night,” Jackman said. “I ought to be canonized.”
“You’re not dead yet,” Gregor told him.
Sister Scholastica caught sight of them and stood up, her veil whipping out behind her as soon as it was free of the bench. “Oh, Gregor, I’m so glad you’re here. I really am. You have no idea—”