True Believers

by Jane Haddam

  “No,” Roy Phipps said, smiling faintly. “Father Healy was a Satanist and a devil worshiper in the pay of the Whore of Babylon, but as far as I know, he was as heterosexual as he was damned. I was thinking of the man who died at St. Stephen’s. Scott Boardman.”

  “Were you responsible for the death of Scott Boardman?”

  “If I was, I wouldn’t tell you. But you know that. So that can’t be what this is about. Was it me you wanted to talk to, or one of the men of the church?”

  “It was you,” Gregor said. “If you don’t mind. I’d like to know why you decided to found your church here, rather than, say—”

  “In a neighborhood closer to where my parishioners live?”

  “You can’t draw much of a crowd from the surrounding blocks,” Gregor pointed out. “You’re mismatched for the area. You have to admit it.”

  “Christians are always mismatched for the world they live in,” Roy Phipps said. “At least, real Christians are. There aren’t a lot of us left anymore. Most of the people who call themselves Christians in the United States are anything but. They’re children of their times. They don’t like to hear the truth when it’s pointed out to them.”

  “And the truth is?”

  “That sinners go to hell and God hates sinners. I’m not in the wrong neighborhood, Mr. Demarkian. I’m in the right one. The only chance these people have is to hear the truth preached to them and to repent. If God will let them repent. God doesn’t give the gift of repentance to everybody.”

  “Were you here, on the street, yesterday afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “In this office?”

  “Most of the time, yes.”

  “When you’re here in this office, do you keep watch on St. Stephen’s and St. Anselm’s?”

  Roy Phipps shrugged. “I do what I can. I can’t really see the churches clearly from here. If you’re expecting me to have seen some particular person come in or out, the chances are nearly nil. I do see people when they walk by here, but they almost never do.”

  “Do you know who Mary McAllister is?”

  “No.”

  “She works with homeless people. She brings a van from a soup kitchen—”

  “Wait,” Roy said. “I do know who she is, by sight. I wasn’t sure of the name.”

  “Did you see her anytime on the afternoon of the day Father Healy died?”

  “No.”

  “What about Sister Scholastica and Sister Peter Rose?”

  “I assume they’re nuns,” Roy said. “But that isn’t very helpful, is it? There are a fair number of nuns down at St. Anselm’s. I couldn’t tell one from the other at a distance, and I don’t think I know any of them by name.”

  “Did you see any nuns on the street the afternoon of the day Father Healy died?”

  “Of course I did. They’re everywhere, aren’t they? But I don’t think that means anything, either. What difference would it make?”

  “What about Father Healy?” Gregor said. “Did you see him?”

  “No.” Roy stirred in his chair. “Why don’t I save you some trouble, Mr. Demarkian. The only person I saw down this end of the street all day yesterday was the whore atheist, Edith Lawton. I saw her come down the street and go into her own house. Dozens of people could have gone into and out of the churches without my ever seeing them. I don’t have a good enough view.”

  “And that was it? Edith Lawton.”

  “That was it. At least, that was it on the day Father Healy died. Since then, of course, the street has been hopping. There are half a dozen people skulking around this morning. I assume they’re all reporters.”

  “Fine,” Gregor said. “What about you, on the afternoon of the day Father Healy died. You said you were mostly in this room. Where else were you?”

  “In the bathroom,” Roy said.

  “That was it?”

  “I didn’t go out even once all afternoon. I had work to do, and that evening I had a Bible study. In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t even manage to put together a picket line after the murder, although I should have. Sometimes, I can’t do everything at once.”

  “Were you here alone?”

  “I am never alone,” Roy said solemnly. And then he smiled. “I live in a fishbowl, Mr. Demarkian. There’s always somebody here, Fred or one of the other men. They man phones day and night, for one thing. And I’m not exactly easy to lose in a crowd, am I? By now, my face must have been on every news broadcast in Philadelphia. I wasn’t wandering around the street by myself that afternoon. I couldn’t have been and gotten away with it.”

  “Shit,” Garry Mansfield said.

  Gregor only sat back in his chair and tried to think.

  FOUR

  1

  The Cardinal Archbishop had never had any patience for the sort of cleric who thought of himself literally as a Prince of the Church: the kind of man who wore robes everywhere, or traveled with an entourage, in order to make himself as conspicuous as possible. He had the same feeling of distaste for those of his parishioners who insisted on wearing expensive Christian jewelry. Christ died on a cross of wood. It made no sense to wear a cross of eighteen-karat gold with a diamond in the middle of it, the way so many of them had been after Christmas, because Tiffany and Company had had the piece in its Christmas gift catalogue. People called him an ascetic, but it wasn’t really true. An ascetic denies himself things he wants, out of a sense of duty and a will to self-discipline. The Cardinal Archbishop simply had no taste for certain kinds of luxury. If he had a failing as a pastor, he thought this was it. Most people craved luxury, and they were positively addicted to self-indulgence. He seemed to have been born without the genes for either.

  Of course, at the moment, he was decking himself out with as much splendor as a Renaissance Pope, and with a good deal less money in his treasury to back himself up. Even the present-day Pope wouldn’t go out on the streets of a major city looking the way the Cardinal Archbishop was looking now. Every once in a while, the Cardinal Archbishop could feel Father Doheny staring at his back, confused and concerned, as if he thought the Cardinal Archbishop might have had a psychotic break while he wasn’t looking, and now they were all going to be stuck with the consequences. Even so, Father Doheny did his job. He handed pieces of heavily embroidered cloth across the table when the Cardinal Archbishop reached out for them. He straightened things at the back where the Cardinal Archbishop couldn’t see them. He kept a straight face, as bland as the face of a bad statue in the sort of church which bought its art from the same sculptors that manufactured its funeral monuments.

  The Cardinal Archbishop looked into the mirror and straightened the bright red skullcap on his head. He had a traditional red Cardinal’s hat, but nobody ever wore those anymore, not even in Rome, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to order it brought down from the wall of the cathedral where it hung. Even so, a scarlet cap and a scarlet cape were obvious enough, and under them he had all these … things.

  “So,” he said finally. “Do you think I’ve finally lost my mind?”

  “I was wondering what you were doing, Your Eminence, yes. This isn’t, uh, standard street attire in this day and age.”

  “Some of it isn’t street attire at all.” The Cardinal Archbishop brushed what might have been lint and might have been a thread from the wide cummerbund that spanned his waist. “I feel like I’m about to go trick-or-treating on Halloween. Do you think it was actually the case that there was a time when people were impressed with this sort of thing?”

  “I think people are still impressed with this sort of thing. Some people, at any rate.”

  “Yes, so do I. And that’s part of the reason why I’m wearing all this. The other part is the press. Have we managed the press? Do they know I’m coming?”

  “Absolutely, Your Eminence.”

  “Good. We’re going to get a lot of phone calls when all this is over, but I wanted to tell you now that I’m not taking any from the Conference. Not a s
ingle one. I already know what they’re going to say, and I don’t particularly care.”

  “If you’ve cleared this with the Holy Father, I don’t see that you have anything to worry about with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.”

  “I keep telling you. I haven’t cleared this with anybody. I’ve only kept them informed. Except that I haven’t kept the Conference informed. I think it was easier when we really were Princes of the Church. I’d like to be an autocrat for a day. It would be considerably more relaxing than being what I actually am. Have you kept tabs on that damned fool with the money?”

  “Uh, not exactly,” Father Doheny said. “Which damned fool with the money were you referring to?”

  “The one who was in here the other day. The one we wanted to put at the head of the committee. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Either he’s going to quit outright, or he’s going to lecture me and I’m going to tell him off, and then he’s going to quit. It can’t be helped. I doubt if the bankruptcy can be helped, either. I’ll think about it tomorrow. Are we ready to go?”

  “Of course. I’m ready if you are, Your Eminence.”

  “Do we have press at the door?”

  Father Doheny gave him a very odd look and went to the window to check. “Yes,” he said finally. “It seems we do. We do have press at the door.”

  “Good. There ought to be even more when we get across town. I’m ready to go if you are, Father. It’s about time we got this show on the road.”

  The Cardinal Archbishop never used phrases like “get this show on the road.” His English was as formal and correct as a set of model sentences in a grammar book. He didn’t care. He swept out of his office and into the hall with Father Doheny trailing behind. He let Sister call the elevator for him, then swept inside the elevator cab when it came. In these clothes, the only movement possible for him was sweeping. The cape could have been designed for Zorro on a night with more assignations in it than sword fights.

  “Make sure the car is ready when we get down,” he told Sister, as the elevator doors closed. She scurried back to her desk, and he looked at the crucifix that had been put up in the cab next to the security mirror.

  “There are people who think we should abandon the crucifix for a plain cross,” he said to Father Doheny. “They want Christ risen and triumphant, not dying in agony. But you know, Father, I think they’re wrong. We preach Christ and Him crucified. That’s what St. Paul said. He knew what he was talking about.”

  “Yes, Your Eminence,” Father Doheny said, sounding thoroughly confused.

  They had reached the first floor. The elevator doors were opening again. The Cardinal Archbishop stepped out and walked across the broad foyer to the front doors of the chancery, moving so quickly that Father Doheny had to half run to keep up. Outside, the wind was bitter and full of ice. The Cardinal Archbishop felt it as needles against the skin of his face. He got into the car and let the driver close the door on him as half a dozen reporters pushed in to ask him questions. He wasn’t answering questions, at the moment. He would answer questions when he got to Baldwin Place.

  “Are they following us?” he asked Father Doheny when the car pulled out into traffic.

  “They seem to be.”

  “With any luck, there will be more of them when we get to St. Anselm’s and St. Stephen’s. That was a pretty poor showing. You’d think the Cardinal Archbishop of Philadelphia could command more press attention than that just by going to a baseball game.”

  “Your Eminence, would you mind very much if I asked you what we’re doing?”

  “We’re going to see Father Burdock.”

  “Well, yes, I know that, but—”

  “Something else occurred to me. Now that Father Healy is dead, he’s no longer a suspect.”

  “Your Eminence?”

  “Never mind. We’ll have to come back for Father’s funeral, too, of course, when the time comes. But that will be later. Is that Baldwin Place up there?”

  “Yes, Your Eminence.”

  “Is that a television van?”

  “Your Eminence, if you could just tell me—”

  The car pulled up to the curb in front of St. Stephen’s. To pull up in front of St. Anselm’s would have required going against the traffic. There was indeed a television van—in fact, there were two of them—but what the Cardinal saw the most of were nuns. Sister Scholastica had done what he had asked of her. She had her nuns out on the street in force, in full habits and capes, so that there looked like there were a lot more of them than there actually were. Maybe there really were a lot more of them. The Cardinal Archbishop would not have put it past Sister Scholastica to bring in recruits from other schools in other parts of the city, or even from other traditional orders. All that mattered was that the nuns looked like nuns. They had to be easily recognizable to non-Catholics who had only a quick glimpse of them on television. The driver came around the side of the car and let the Cardinal Archbishop out. He stepped into the street and looked around.

  “Your Eminence?” Father Doheny asked anxiously, hurrying around from the street side. “What’s going on here? This looks like the start of another riot.”

  “It is. It’s my personal riot Mine and Father Burdock’s.”

  “Your Eminence—”

  “Don’t worry,” the Cardinal Archbishop said. “The police are already here.”

  It was true, too. The police were already there. The Cardinal Archbishop could see them, lined up on either sidewalk but standing well back so that they didn’t become too obvious either to the television cameras or the crowd. There was a crowd, too, just building up, coming from both the St. Anselm’s side and the St. Stephen’s side of the street. The Cardinal Archbishop looked down the street, but everything at the other end seemed to be quiet and dark.

  “I only hope Father Burdock and his people did their part,” he said. “We’re going to look pretty silly if we’ve gone to all this trouble and they’re not at home.”

  “Your Eminence—” Father Doheny said again.

  The Cardinal Archbishop walked away without listening to the rest of what Father Doheny had to say, mostly because he had already said it himself to himself several times over the past few days since the riot. He walked across the street to St. Anselm’s and mounted the steps. He should have brought a censer to waft incense at the crowd. He could hardly believe he’d been so stupid as to forget it. He got to the top step in front of St. Anselm’s front doors and held his hands out at shoulder height.

  “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sanctus. Amen,” he said, in the loudest voice he had, which was very loud. He had a good deep bass when he wanted to use it.

  In front of him, the crowd calmed down. The nuns fell into ranks and repeated the Latin to him. People began spilling out of St. Stephen’s Church. Some of them sat down on the frozen sidewalk to listen.

  “Pater Noster,” the Cardinal Archbishop started, and after that it was a piece of cake. He was old enough to have been taught all these prayers in Latin as a child. He had been trained as a priest in the days when speaking Latin was expected of everyone who took Holy Orders. The words rolled out of his throat the way thunder rolled out of a valley before a storm.

  Over on the other side of the street, the doors to St. Stephen’s opened one more time and Dan Burdock came out, looking far less impressive in green-and-gold vestments than he might have—but then, the Cardinal thought, even High Church Episcopalian wasn’t as high church as Rome was on an off day.

  Since the Pater Noster was over, the Cardinal Archbishop started in on the Ave Maria.

  2

  For a long time after the Cardinal Archbishop arrived on Baldwin Place, Dan Burdock had stayed inside his own church, his hands resting on the green-embroidered cassock he had made up his mind to wear, hesitating. He had not been surprised, and he had thought he should not be afraid. This was what his meeting with the Cardinal Archbishop had been about, and as he watched men stream out of St. Stephen’s fr
ont doors into the street, he thought that he ought to be glad of it. God only knew, the men were glad of it. Aaron was nearly euphoric. Dan had been careful about security, as the Cardinal Archbishop had been careful. He had called the men he needed and told them it was urgent, but he had not told them why. Given the events of the last few days—maybe even of the last few months—they had all assumed the emergency had something to do with Roy Phipps, and they had not been wrong. What Dan had not done was call his own bishop. His bishop was a gentle, wise, intelligent man who believed more of the Christmas story than Bishop Spong, but he was essentially cautious. He would worry, as Dan had worried, about what would happen if something went wrong. Then, looking out on the street at the crowd swelling slowly and relentlessly, Dan realized that, of course, something was going to go wrong. The Cardinal Archbishop had always expected that something would go wrong. He was not afraid of what the wrongness would bring, or what it would mean, or how he would look tomorrow morning on the front page of the Inquirer. That was when Dan had finished up dressing in his silly ritual clothes. They weren’t even the right ritual clothes. Episcopalians didn’t have pompous costumes for everyday life. He’d had to put on Mass vestments, although he was sure there was some rule telling him he couldn’t. Even so, he could see the Cardinal Archbishop’s point. The brighter their clothes, the more easily they would be seen on television.

  Dan finished dressing and went out to the front steps of the church. Aaron was there, hopping from one foot to another, hard-pressed not to double over, he was laughing so hard.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” he demanded. “We would have loved this. We would have helped you.”

  You would have told the immediate universe, Dan thought. Instead of saying it, he pressed forward toward the middle of the street, where the Cardinal Archbishop had now gone to stand and wait for him. A man ran forward and thrust something into his hands and ran away again. Dan looked up to see that he was holding the gold cross mounted on a pole that they used for procession at the start of the Sunday service. He hadn’t realized it was as heavy as it was. He wasn’t the one who usually carried it. He held it over his head and thought that it must be visible for blocks. Somebody parked in a car at the diner this moment would be able to see only two things, the mass of people in the middle of the street and the cross. Then he thought that he should have worn something under all this embroidered linen, like a sweater. It really was February. The air was cold enough to make his bones ache.