“Oh, yeah?”
“He thought very highly of them,” Keller said. “But you know, you lose track of people. I don’t know whether he joined up or not. Say, isn’t that—”
“Father O’Herlihy,” the cop said. “He hasn’t got enough on his plate, he needs a bomb threat on top of everything else.”
The man in question looked to Keller as though very little stayed for very long on any plate of his. He had a full face and an extra chin, and looked massive even though his robe hid his figure. His was a plain brown robe, but somehow it seemed less plain and even less brown than those worn by the other monks. He was quite clearly in command, and while Keller couldn’t make out what he was saying he could see how the rest rearranged themselves according to his orders.
“And here comes Eyewitness News,” the cop said sourly. “Fuckin’ media won’t leave the man alone. Jersey’s got a certain level of corruption, and it don’t matter whether you’re the Church or some local businessman, you gotta go along to get along. But maybe you see it different.”
“No, I’m with you,” Keller said.
“But as soon as a man of God’s involved, and especially if he just happens to be a Catholic man of God, then it’s all over the goddamn papers. These days, beating up on the Church is everybody’s favorite sport. Not too many years ago this woulda got swept back under the rug, where it belongs.”
“Absolutely,” Keller said.
“What did the man do, for Christ’s sake? I didn’t hear no scandals about altar boys. All right, somebody goes and sells a kidney, that’s gonna draw attention. I’ll grant you that. But is it any reason to sling mud at a man who does as much good in the world as Father O’Herlihy?”
Keller was ready to express agreement, when someone off to the side said, “Hey, look, a dog!” And indeed a uniformed bomb squad officer was fastening a leash to the collar of a sprightly beagle.
“Jesus,” somebody said. “Don’t tell me the monks are selling drugs on top of everything else.”
“It’s a bomb-sniffing dog, you moron,” someone else said.
“It’s cute, whatever it is,” a woman said.
“We had one just like that when I was a kid,” a man said. “Dumber than dirt. Couldn’t find food in his dish.”
The dog disappeared into the building, and the conversation looked for other topics. The abbot continued to move among his corps of monks, patting this one on the back, touching this one on the shoulder, looking like an officer rallying the troops.
“Hey, O’Herlihy,” someone called out. “I hear you’re running a special on kidneys this week!”
The crowd had been buzzing with casual conversation, and it stopped dead, as if someone had unplugged it. Keller sensed his fellow spectators gathering themselves, brought up short by the combination of shock and a sense of opportunity. The speaker had clearly crossed the line, and they were deciding whether to disapprove or join in. It would depend, he figured, on whether they came up with things too clever to suppress.
But the abbot made the decision for them. He broke off his conversation, spun around to his left, and stalked up to the curb. He drew himself up to his full height and silenced the crowd with a stare.
Then he spoke. “Disperse,” he said. “All of ye. Have ye nothing better to do? Go about your proper business, or return to your homes. There’s no need for ye here.”
And damned if they didn’t do exactly that, and Keller with them.
Fourteen
It was pretty impressive,” he told Dot. “He just assumed command.”
“I guess he must be used to it. Comes with the job, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose so, but I got the feeling he’s been like that all his life. I can picture him as a ten-year-old in the schoolyard, settling disputes in kickball games.”
“I always wanted to play kickball,” Dot said, “but at my school it was boys only. I’ll bet it’s different now.”
He’d bought another prepaid phone, with a chip good for one hundred minutes or one call to 911, whichever came first. His first call was to Julia; he told her how it felt to be in New York, and how the auction was shaping up, and she filled him in on Jenny’s day, and passed on some gossip about a couple two doors down the street. He hadn’t told her anything specific about his assignment, and didn’t talk about it now.
To Dot he said, “I’m not sure I accomplished anything with that call I made.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Keller. You got a look at him, didn’t you?”
“It’s not as though I hadn’t seen enough pictures of him.”
“But seeing him in person’s a little different. You got a sense of the person.”
“I guess.”
“And you established for certain that he’s in residence there. You’d assumed as much, but now you know it for a fact.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“You don’t sound convinced, Keller. What’s the matter?”
“The phone.”
“Why’d you toss it? I know they log 911 calls, but I thought your phone’s untraceable.”
“They can’t tie it to me,” he said, “but they can tell what numbers I call with that phone. Then all they have to do is walk back the cat.”
“To Sedona,” she said, “and to New Orleans. No, you wouldn’t want them to do that. So what’s the problem? You bought a disposable phone and then you disposed of it.”
“I paid seventy bucks for that phone,” he said, “and I made one useless call with it, and now it’s floating in the New York sewer system.”