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demonstrations in their youth; many of them
still carried a residue of nostalgia for those days. He hoped enough of them
would realize that but for luck and the grace of God they might be marching on
this line tonight.
    As he marched
and led the chants and singing, Dan felt alive. More truly alive than he
had felt in years. His priestly routines had become just that--routine. Hearing
confession, saying Mass, giving sermons--it seemed little more than preaching to
the converted. The souls who truly needed saving didn't go to Mass, didn't take
the sacraments. His priestly duties around the altar at St. Joseph's had become
. . . empty. But when he left the main floor and went downstairs to the soup
kitchen in the basement--the place he'd dubbed Loaves and Fishes-- then he
felt he was truly doing God's work.
    God's work .
. . Dan had to smile at the phrase. Wasn't
God's work for God to do? Why was it left to mere mortals like him and Carrie
to do God's work?
    And lately, in his darkest moments, Dan had begun wondering if God
was doing anything. The world--at least the part of it in which he spent
his days--was, to put it bluntly, a fucking mess. Everywhere he looked people
were sick, hurt, or dying--from AIDS, from racism, from drugs, from child abuse,
from stabbings, shootings, or just plain old kick-ass muggings. And the violence was escalating.
Every time Dan told himself it can't get any worse than this, sure enough, it
did.
    And every year
there seemed to be more homeless-- more lost souls.
    Tighten up
on the misery spigot, will you, God? We 're up to our lower lips down here.
    Yeah. Where was the hand of God in all of this? Why wasn't it doing God's work? A
long, continuous howl of agony was rising from this city, this world. Was
Anybody listening? Why didn't He respond? Dan could do only so much.
    Like tonight.
This was doing something--or at least Dan hoped it was. Who knew if it would
accomplish anything? All you could do was try.
    And then word
came out that the thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner was over. The doorman started
signaling the hovering limos forward. Taxis nosed in like koi at feeding time.
Dan pulled Dirty Harry out of the line and set him in the middle of the circle.
    "All
right, everybody! He's coming. Chant as loud as you can. Harry's going to lead
you."
    "Me?"
Harry said. He had long greasy hair, a thick beard matted with the remains of
his last three meals, and probably hadn't changed his four or five layers of
clothing since the winter. "I dunno what to--"
    "Just keep
leading them in the same stuff we've been doing all night," Dan told him.
"And give me your posters. I want to get up close."
    Harry lifted
the sandwich-board placards over his head and surrendered them with obvious
reluctance. Dan grabbed them, waved, and hurried off. He didn't dare slip them
over his own head--not after Dirty Harry had been wearing them.
    He headed for
the Waldorf entrance. As he squeezed between two of the barricade horses, one
of the cops moved to block his way but let him pass when he saw the collar.
    Ah, the perks
of the Roman collar.
    Celebrity
gawkers, political groupies, and the just plain curious
had formed a gauntlet along the path from the Waldorf entrance. Dan pushed,
squirmed, wheedled, and elbowed his way to the front row where anyone exiting
the hotel would have an unobstructed view of the sandwich-board's message:

    concentration
    camps are
    unamerican!

    Finally he saw
his man. Senator Crenshaw appeared at the door. He stopped inside the glass,
shaking hands and smiling at some of the hundreds of people who'd plunked down
a grand for a chicken dinner. Dan ground his teeth as he calculated how many
people he could feed at St. Joe's for the cost of just one of those dinners.
    He watched him
through the glass and reviewed what he knew about Senator Arthur Crenshaw, the
Silicon Valley giant. In the mid-seventies, at age thirty, he'd started
CrenSoft on a shoestring. His software innovations earned him huge