by Jane Haddam
Instead, he left the convent and stood for a while in the courtyard, looking around. The streets immediately surrounding St. Agnes’s seemed to be purely residential. Sturdy wood-frame houses with tiny neat front yards and carefully shoveled walks, all three stories tall, marched east and west and north and south without interruption. Some of them had plaster statues of the Blessed Virgin next to their stoops. More had stained glass hangings on their doors, of crosses or doves or roses of life. When he looked up and north, he could see the spires of the Cathedral. In fact, he could see nearly half of the Cathedral’s south side. He was surprised to find it so close, even though he’d been told it was. He’d forgotten how little space Catholic parishes in heavily Catholic cities needed to take up. He let his eyes travel to the cross that was the Cathedral’s highest point and sighed. The mere sight of the place was annoying to him. The situation as it now stood was nearly intolerable. Why had O’Bannion been in such a rush to get him here, when he must have known Gregor would be left hanging most of Holy Thursday? As far as Gregor could tell, he was going to be left hanging all of Holy Thursday. Every time he talked to someone new, he heard something else about the activities for the Easter Tridium. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the dark hours of Holy Thursday night were to be occupied by an Archdiocesanwide rosary, with all the parishioners down on their knees mumbling Hail, Marys to the exclusion of any other form of speech until Good Friday morning.
He could have gone back to Rosary House, but he didn’t want to do that. His room was small and cold, and he had forgotten to bring along a book to read—even one of Bennis’s. He could have gone looking for Colchester Homicide, but he didn’t want to do that, either. Barging in on an insanely busy squadroom with a lot of not immediately relevant questions first thing in the morning was not his idea of tact. Besides, he wanted to talk to O’Bannion before he talked to the police, to get a better idea of what was really going on. He considered St. Agnes’s Church, and decided against it. It was much too busy. Both the front doors and the one at the side were propped open and people were hurrying in and out—including, he noticed with interest, both the women he’d seen talking to Scholastica earlier—but they were all too busy to pay any attention to him. Preparations for Mass this morning at St. Agnes’s Church looked more like preparations for a theatrical extravaganza. At one point, he actually saw the expensive-looking woman in the red coat come trotting into the courtyard from the direction of Carver Street, leading a goat.
A goat.
He watched the woman in the red coat tug the goat through the church’s side door and shivered. There were none of those handy electronic billboards near St. Agnes’s, so he had no way of knowing the temperature, but he was sure it was well below zero. As always, it was windy. Colchester seemed to have a patent on the wind. He flipped up the collar of his coat, tightened his scarf, and started walking.
Both the convent and Rosary House were empty. Both the church and the school were busy with their own work. That left the rectory.
Gregor climbed the low metal-edged concrete steps to the rectory’s front door, and rang the bell.
[2]
It was Father Declan Boyd who answered Gregor’s ring—not Andy Walsh, whom Gregor had been hoping for, but still hadn’t met. Gregor supposed Andy Walsh was over at the church, doing whatever he had to do to help out with what was going on over there. Declan Boyd looked like he’d just roused himself from an unintentional doze. His black pants and Roman-collared black shirt were rumpled, and his eyes were red and bleary. Somewhere behind him, a television was blaring out what sounded like a political speech.
Declan Boyd looked him over. “Oh,” he said, “Mr. Demarkian. Oh. Well. Um. Ah—”
“Can I come in?” Gregor asked him.
Boyd got control of himself, a little. “Of course,” he said, stepping back. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I, uh—”
But Gregor had stepped inside by then. Standing in the tiny foyer, he had no trouble figuring out what was making Declan Boyd so nervous. The television wasn’t tuned to a political speech, but to a sermon. And what a sermon it was, too.
“The Roman Catholic Church,” the voice shouted, “calls itself Holy. The Roman Catholic Church calls itself Apostolic. Do you know what that means? That means ‘from the apostles.’ From Paul and Peter and James and John and all the other holy men Christians all over the world look to for guidance in their search for a personal relationship with Our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, let me tell you something, brothers and sisters. The Roman Catholic Church is a liar. She is not holy. She is not from the apostles. She is the Whore of Babylon and the engine of Hell, and she is on a worldwide mission to drag every soul on earth down into the pit in which she lives. I tell you, if you are to be saved, you have to do more than find Christ in this world. You have to strike out at His enemies, and His greatest enemy is the Church of Rome.”
Gregor Demarkian gave Father Declan Boyd a long, searching look. Declan Boyd blushed.
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. Well—”
“What is that?” Gregor asked.
“Barry Field,” Boyd said resignedly. “He used to be Catholic, you know. He used to be part of St. Agnes Parish. In the old days.”
Gregor had no idea what Boyd meant by the “old days”—pre-Vatican II or the week before last. “What is this Field person now?” he asked. “The head of the local Know-Nothing party?”
“He’s a television preacher,” Boyd said. “Just regional, you know. Although there have been rumors.”
“Of what?”
“Of his getting on one of those Christian networks.”
“Wonderful,” Gregor said. He was in, but the door was still open behind him. He’d been so caught up by the sermon, he’d forgotten to close it. Now he remembered. “Does Cardinal O’Bannion know you listen to that nonsense? Does Father Walsh?”
“If it wasn’t for Father Walsh, I wouldn’t listen to it,” Boyd said. “After the—uh—talk, well, there’s this kind of talk show. Father Walsh is his guest on this talk show.”
“His guest,” Gregor repeated, stunned.
“Father Walsh is his guest a lot. Barry Field’s guest, I mean. It’s all very well and good for the Cardinal to say we shouldn’t watch the thing, but there’s the instinct of self-preservation to be satisfied. I’m sorry. I’m not making any sense. It’s just that—”
“If you’re going to get in trouble, you want to know about it ahead of time.” Gregor nodded. “I can see the point in that. Does that television have to be so loud?”
“Of course not.” Boyd turned and shot through an archway to the side of the main door, and Gregor followed him. He found himself in a small living room furnished with two worn couches, three rickety chairs, and an enormous television set. Declan Boyd was standing in front of the television set, fiddling with the controls. Barry Field’s voice was sinking to a whisper.
“When he told me he was going to go do this on Holy Thursday, I couldn’t believe it. I mean, he was the one who insisted on taking the ten o’clock Mass. If he was going to be out half the morning, he should have taken the one tonight. What if he’s late? The ten o’clock is a Mass for children, for Heaven’s sake. Children get restless.”
Gregor looked at his watch. “It’s only eight-fifteen. Surely he’ll be back by ten.”
“If I know Andy, he’ll be back at ten. On the dot. That way, he’ll get out of all the dirty work, and he won’t have time to talk to the Cardinal. Judy Eagan won’t even have a chance to kill him.”
Judy Eagan. Gregor ran the name through the river of names O’Bannion had poured out on him during their telephone discussions and came up with an identification. “Judy Eagan is president of the Parish Council?”
“That’s right. You may have seen her this morning. She’s this blond woman in a red coat. She’s being dragged all over the courtyard by a goat.”
“A goat,” Gregor said. “I’m glad you told me about that. I was begi
nning to think I was—”
“Seeing things? Well, you’re not. It was all Andy’s idea. Judy had to drive out to Knot Hill Farm this morning and pick it up. Knot Hill Farm is this place where they train animals for commercials and things.”
“What’s the goat for?”
“I don’t know,” Boyd said, looking depressed. “Andy never tells me anything. Andy practically doesn’t talk to me. Anyway, you can be sure it’s nothing good.”
“I have heard that Father Walsh has something of a reputation.”
“Oh, he’s got a reputation, all right, but that isn’t it. The problem is, he’s doing everything else much too right today.”
“What do you mean?”
Declan Boyd sat down on the nearest couch. “Well,” he said, “take the altar girls. We’re not supposed to have altar girls. Rome says we’re not, and the Cardinal is very tight with Rome. So usually, especially if Andy knows the Cardinal’s going to be there or somebody from the Cardinal’s staff is going to be there, he has altar girls. It’s the same with women altar servers. Extraordinary ministers, they call them. According to Rome, you’re not supposed to have anyone but a priest handing out Communion except in dire emergencies, and even if the world is coming to an end you’re not supposed to have women. So—”
“Father Walsh always has women?”
“Always,” Declan Boyd said. “He was supposed to have them today, too, but he canceled them before he left for his talk show. I take that back. He told me to cancel them, which I did. Leave it to Andy to get somebody else to take his flak.”
“Were the altar girls really that upset about not being allowed to serve?” Gregor asked. “Living this close to the Cathedral, they must have some idea what the official policy is.”
“It isn’t the altar girls I’m taking flak from. A lot of the ones Andy asked had to turn him down anyway. Their parents wouldn’t let them serve once they knew the Cardinal was coming. It’s the nuns I’ve got problems with. Andy always leaves the training of the altar servers up to the nuns. Which he isn’t supposed to do, either, by the way.”
“I’m surprised he doesn’t hand the job over to you.”
“He doesn’t hand anything over to me. He made it clear from the day I got here that he thought I was an idiot, and he hasn’t changed his mind. When I say Mass, he stands in the back of the church and practically holds up cue cards.”
“And the nuns?”
“Sister Benedict Marie nearly bit my head off,” Declan Boyd said gloomily. “Any minute now, Sister Scholastica is going to call up and threaten to cut my throat. And I don’t blame her. This would be bad enough with an ordinary Mass, and this is no ordinary Mass.”
Gregor smiled. “Not with a goat, it’s not.”
“Even without the goat, it’s not.” Declan Boyd shook his head. “You’re not Catholic, so maybe you don’t know. This is the day the priest is supposed to wash the feet.”
Actually, Gregor did know, at least about the washing of the feet. He hadn’t realized it took place on Holy Thursday, or that it was part of Mass and not a separate rite. Twelve men were chosen from the congregation to represent the apostles. The priest then poured water on the bare feet of each one and dried them off with a cloth. As Gregor understood it, it was a commemoration of Christ’s self-humiliation on the night of the Last Supper.
“What worries me about the washing of the feet,” Boyd said, “is that Andy never seemed to be doing anything strange with it. Not even at the beginning. Last year, he only washed the feet of women.”
“And you’re not supposed to wash the feet of women at all?”
“People think it’s sexist,” Boyd said, “but it isn’t, really. It’s supposed to be a reenactment of the scene at the Last Supper. And all the apostles at the Last Supper were men. Having women up there is like, I don’t know, doing King Lear and casting Jane Fonda in the title role without giving an explanation.”
Gregor wondered whether that explanation would have satisfied Bennis Hannaford, or even Donna Moradanyan, and decided it might. It would depend on the mood they were in. “Maybe Father Walsh thought he’d done enough mucking around with the Mass,” he pointed out to Boyd. “He already had the altar girls, and the women giving out the Communion—”
“Andy never thinks he’s done enough mucking around with the Mass. If he didn’t know he’d get canned for it, he’d rewrite it. And besides, if he didn’t have something up his sleeve, he’d never have agreed to cancel the women. Girls. Whatever. No matter what Tom Dolan said.”
“What does Tom Dolan have to do with it?”
“Didn’t I tell you? He called this morning right before Andy left for the studio. They were on the phone for nearly half an hour. I figure Tom was reading Andy the riot act.”
“Father Walsh canceled the altar girls only after he talked to Father Dolan?”
“Yup. But the goat showed up just the same. And I wasn’t expecting it.” Declan Boyd sighed. “I ought to be thankful for small favors. If Tom and Andy hadn’t been friends in high school, the altar girls would probably have shown up just the same. After all, it’s one of those days. Andy’s alerted the media.”
“About what?” Gregor asked.
“About the Mass,” Boyd said. “The Tribune is not exactly the most pro-Catholic paper on the face of the earth, and WCCN isn’t much better. They love the crap Andy pulls. Wait a minute.” Boyd scooted forward on the couch, to get close enough to the television to readjust the volume control. “Here it is,” he said. “The good part. Why don’t we just take a look and see what Andy’s going to do now.”
What Gregor really wanted was to meet Father Andy Walsh, in person, as soon as possible. The more he heard about the man, the more fascinated he became. Because no meeting appeared to be in the offing for several hours, he supposed a television talk show would have to do.
Gregor took a seat next to Declan Boyd on the couch and turned his attention to the set.
[3]
Gregor Demarkian had not watched much television in his life. In his childhood, it had not existed. During his working life, he hadn’t had time. After Elizabeth died, he simply hadn’t had the interest. The programs always seemed to be about nothing in particular, and rarely made sense. News anchormen always made him feel as if he were watching schizophrenics trying to appear normal for half an hour.
Even so, he wasn’t totally without experience of the medium. He’d spent his share of nights cooped up in hotel rooms on one assignment or another, waiting for phone calls or worrying about what he was going to have to get himself into the next day. Before he’d been assigned to organize the Behavioral Sciences Department, he’d done most of his FBI work on high-level kidnapping cases. High-level kidnapping cases had given him a gastric ulcer and a passing acquaintance with The Tonight Show.
The Tonight Show, he supposed, was what he’d instinctively expected Barry Field’s talk show to be like. In some ways, it was. There were the same potted plants, the same fake windows covered by half-transparent curtains, the same little platform that raised the furniture a short step up from the stage. What there wasn’t was a desk, an announcer, a sidekick, or a band. Barry Field’s set had been built to look like a living room in a better-than-average suburban ranch, right down to the total lack of decoration on the walls. There wasn’t even a cross.
Barry Field didn’t look much the way Gregor had expected him to, either. He was the customary twenty pounds overweight—why was it television evangelists always had so much trouble with bulk?—but the weight wasn’t distributed in the usual way. Instead of looking sleek and smug and buttered, he merely looked lumpy. The light in his eyes wasn’t complacency, either. Gregor knew that look very well. It was blind ambition.
“Did you say this man used to be a Catholic?” he asked Declan Boyd.
“Not only Catholic, but slated to go to the seminary,” Boyd said. “From what I heard, he was one of the Cardinal’s prime protégés. Him and Tom Dolan and, believe it or not
, Andy Walsh.”
“I didn’t think O’Bannion had been Cardinal here that long.”
“He hasn’t. He was an aide to the archbishop—it was two archbishops ago. An auxiliary bishop, they call it. He was spiritual director of the two high schools the Cathedral runs.”
“And Father Walsh and Father Dolan and Barry Field were students together at this high school.”
“At Cathedral Boys’, yeah. Here we go. Look at that. That’s Andy.”
Gregor looked. Barry Field was on his feet and holding out his hand. At the right side of the screen, a small, compact, athletic-looking man in blow-dried hair and a Roman collar was emerging from the wings to take it. When they finally came together, Field lifted both their hands into the air, turned to his audience and said,
“Brothers and sisters, Father Andrew Walsh!”
He might have been Ed Sullivan, announcing yet another appearance by Robert Goulet.
“Sometimes, he just gets on and blithers,” Declan Boyd said, “you can’t tell what he’s talking about or what he means. Sometimes he gets on and drops these really incredible bombs.”
“Theological bombs?”
“Gossip,” Declan Boyd said. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that about Andy? He’s not only a nut, he’s the next best thing to a party line.”
On the screen, Barry Field and Andy Walsh were settling down on the Danish modern couches.
“Father Walsh,” Barry Field was saying, “as most of you out there know, is a longtime missionary in the worldwide effort to reform the Catholic Church—in fact, to make the Catholic Church a Christian church, as She was intended to be. Now, I know some of you out there find his job as a priest hard to deal with. I read your letters and I feel your fear and I understand what you’re going through. There’s a lot to be feared from the Whore of Babylon. But I’ve got to tell you now as I’ve told you so many times before, real Christians need men like Andrew Walsh. We need them right where they are, in the very belly of the beast. They are our intelligence network. They are our early warning system. They are our—”
