Song of Susannah (42 page)

The blare of a horn.

And the thud.

Callahan forgot about his bashed ankle and sizzling palms. He ran around the preacher’s little crowd (it had turned as one to the street and the preacher had quit his rant in mid-flow) and saw Jake standing in Second Avenue, in front of a Yellow Cab that had slewed to a crooked stop no more than an inch from his legs. Blue smoke was still drifting up from its rear tires. The driver’s face was a pallid, craning O of shock. Oy was crouched between Jake’s feet. To Callahan the bumbler looked freaked out but otherwise all right.

The thud came again and yet again. It was Jake, bringing his balled-up fist down on the hood of the taxi.
“Asshole!”
Jake yelled at the pallid O on the other side of the windshield.
Thud! “Why don’t you—” Thud! “—watch where—” THUD! “—the fuck you’re GOING!” THUD-THUD!

“You give it to im, Cholly!” yelled someone from across the street, where perhaps three dozen people had stopped to watch the fun.

The taxi’s door opened. The long tall helicopter who stepped out was wearing what Callahan thought was called a dashiki over jeans and huge mutant sneakers with boomerangs on the sides. There was a fez on his head, which probably accounted
somewhat for the impression of extreme height, but not entirely. Callahan guessed the guy was at least six and a half feet tall, fiercely bearded, and scowling at Jake. Callahan started toward this developing scene with a sinking heart, barely aware that one of his feet was bare, slapping the pavement with every other step. The street preacher was also moving toward the developing confrontation. Behind the taxi stopped in the intersection, another driver, interested in nothing but his own scheduled evening plans, laid on his horn with both hands—
WHEEEOOOONNNNNNK!!!
—and leaned out his window, hollering “Move it, Abdul, you’re blockin the box!”

Jake paid no attention. He was in a total fury. This time he brought both fists down on the hood of the taxi, like Ratso Rizzo in
Midnight Cowboy—THUD! “You almost ran my friend down, you asshole, did you even LOOK—” THUD! “—where you were GOING?”

Before Jake could bring his fists down on the hood of the taxi again—which he obviously meant to do until he was satisfied—the driver grabbed his right wrist. “Stop doing that, you little punk!” he cried in an outraged and strangely high voice. “I am telling you—”

Jake stepped back, breaking free of the tall taxi driver’s grip. Then, in a liquid motion too quick for Callahan to follow, the kid yanked the Ruger from the docker’s clutch under his arm and pointed it at the driver’s nose.

“Tell me
what?
” Jake raged at him. “Tell me
what?
That you were driving too fast and almost
ran down my friend? That you don’t want to die here in the street with a hole in your head? Tell me
WHAT?
”

A woman on the far side of Second Avenue either saw the gun or caught a whiff of Jake’s homicidal fury. She screamed and started hurrying away. Several more followed her example. Others gathered at the curb, smelling blood. Incredibly, one of them—a young man wearing his hat turned around backward—shouted: “Go on, kid! Ventilate that camel-jockey!”

The driver backed up two steps, his eyes widening. He held up his hands to his shoulders. “Do not shoot me, boy! Please!”

“Then say you’re sorry!” Jake raved. “If you want to live, you cry my pardon! And his! And
his!
” Jake’s skin was dead pale except for tiny red spots of color high up on his cheekbones. His eyes were huge and wet. What Don Callahan saw most clearly and liked least was the way the barrel of the Ruger was trembling. “Say you’re sorry for the way you were driving, you careless motherfucker! Do it now!
Do it now!
”

Oy whined uneasily and said, “Ake!”

Jake looked down at him. When he did, the taxi driver lunged for the gun. Callahan hit him with a fairly respectable right cross and the driver sprawled against the front of his car, his fez tumbling from his head. The driver behind him had clear lanes on either side and could have swung around but continued to lay on his horn instead, yelling
“Move it buddy, move it!”
Some of the spectators on the far side of Second were actually applauding like spectators at a Madison Square Garden fight, and Callahan thought:
Why, this place is a madhouse. Did I know that before and forget, or is it something I just learned?

The street preacher, a man with a beard and long white hair that descended to his shoulders, was now standing beside Jake, and when Jake started to raise the Ruger again, the preacher laid a gentle, unhurried hand on the boy’s wrist.

“Holster it, boy,” he said. “Stick it away, praise Jesus.”

Jake looked at him and saw what Susannah had seen not long before: a man who looked eerily like Henchick of the Manni. Jake put the gun back into the docker’s clutch, then bent and picked up Oy. The bumbler whined, stretched his face toward Jake’s on his long neck, and began to lick the boy’s cheek.

Callahan, meanwhile, had taken the driver’s arm and was leading him back toward his hack. He fished in his pocket and palmed a ten-dollar bill which was about half the money they’d managed to put together for this little safari.

“All over,” he said to the driver, speaking in what he hoped was a soothing voice. “No harm, no foul, you go your way, he goes his—” And then, past the hackie, yelling at the relentless horn-honker: “Horn works, you nimrod, so why not give it a rest and try your lights?”

“That little bastard was pointing the gun at me,” said the taxi driver. He felt on his head for his fez and didn’t find it.

“It’s only a model,” Callahan said soothingly. “The kind of thing you build from a kit, doesn’t even fire pellets. I assure y—”

“Hey, pal!” cried the street preacher, and when the taxi driver looked, the preacher underhanded him the faded red fez. With this back on his head, the driver seemed more willing to be reasonable. More willing yet when Callahan pressed the ten into his hand.

The guy behind the cab was driving an elderly whale of a Lincoln. Now he laid on his horn again.

“You may be biting my crank, Mr. Monkey-meat!” the taxi driver yelled at him, and Callahan almost burst out laughing. He started toward the guy in the Lincoln. When the taxi driver tried to join him, Callahan put his hands on the man’s shoulders and stopped him.

“Let me handle this. I’m a religious. Making the lion lie down with the lamb is my job.”

The street preacher joined them in time to hear this. Jake had retired to the background. He was standing beside the street preacher’s van and checking Oy’s legs to make sure he was uninjured.

“Brother!” the street preacher addressed Callahan. “May I ask your denomination? Your, I say hallelujah, your
view
of the
Almighty
?”

“I’m a Catholic,” Callahan said. “Therefore, I view the Almighty’s a guy.”

The street preacher held out a large, gnarled hand. It produced exactly the sort of fervent, just-short-of-crushing grip Callahan had expected. The man’s cadences, combined with his faint Southern accent, made Callahan think of Foghorn Leghorn in the Warner Bros. cartoons.

“I’m Earl Harrigan,” the preacher said, continuing to wring Callahan’s fingers. “Church of the
Holy God-Bomb, Brooklyn and America. A pleasure to meet you, Father.”

“I’m sort of semi-retired,” Callahan said. “If you have to call me something, make it Pere. Or just Don. Don Callahan.”

“Praise Jesus, Father Don!”

Callahan sighed and supposed Father Don would have to do. He went to the Lincoln. The cab driver, meanwhile, scooted away with his
OFF DUTY
light on.

Before Callahan could speak to the Lincoln’s driver, that worthy got out on his own. It was Callahan’s night for tall men. This one went about six-three and was carrying a large belly.

“It’s all over,” Callahan told him. “I suggest you get back in your car and drive out of here.”

“It ain’t over until I say it’s over,” Mr. Lincoln demurred. “I got Abdul’s medallion number; what I want from you, Sparky, is the name and address of that kid with the dog. I also want a closer look at the pistol he just—
ow, ow! OWW! OWWWWW! Quit it!
”

Reverend Earl Harrigan had seized one of Mr. Lincoln’s hands and twisted it behind his back. Now he seemed to be doing something creative to the man’s thumb. Callahan couldn’t see exactly what it was. The angle was wrong.

“God loves you so much,” Harrigan said, speaking quietly into Mr. Lincoln’s ear. “And what He wants in return, you loudmouth shithead, is for you to give me hallelujah and then go on your way. Can you give me hallelujah?”

“OWW, OWWW, let go! Police! POLEECE!”

“Only policeman apt to be on this block around now would be Officer Benzyck, and he’s already given me my nightly ticket and moved on. By now he’ll be in Dennis’s, having a pecan waffle and double bacon, praise God, so I want you to think about this.” There came a cracking sound from behind Mr. Lincoln’s back that set Callahan’s teeth on edge. He didn’t like to think Mr. Lincoln’s thumb had made that sound, but didn’t know what else it could have been. Mr. Lincoln cocked his head skyward on his thick neck and let out a long exhalation of pure pain—
Yaaaahhhhhhh!

“You want to give me hallelujah, brother,” advised Rev. Harrigan, “or you’ll be, praise God, carrying your thumb home in your breast pocket.”

“Hallelujah,” whispered Mr. Lincoln. His complexion had gone an ocher shade. Callahan thought some of that might be attributable to the orangey streetlamps which at some point had replaced the fluorescents of his own time. Probably not all of it, though.

“Good! Now say amen. You’ll feel better when you do.”

“A-Amen.”

“Praise God! Praise Jee-eee-eee-
esus
!”

“Let me go . . . let go of my
thumb
—!”

“Are you going to get out of here and stop blocking this intersection if I do?”

“Yes!”

“Without any more fiddle-de-dee or hidey-ho, praise Jesus?”

“Yes!”

Harrigan leaned yet closer to Mr. Lincoln, his lips
stopping less than half an inch from a large plug of yellow-orange wax caught in the cup of Mr. Lincoln’s ear. Callahan watched this with fascination and complete absorption, all other unresolved issues and unfulfilled goals for the time being forgotten. The Pere was more than halfway to believing that if Jesus had had Earl Harrigan on His team, it probably would have been old Pontius who ended up on the cross.

“My friend, bombs will soon begin to fall: God-bombs. And you have to choose whether you want to be among those who are, praise Jesus, up in the sky
dropping
those bombs, or those who are in the villages below, getting blown to smithereens. Now I sense this isn’t the time or place for you to make a choice for Christ, but will you at least think about these things, sir?”

Mr. Lincoln’s response must have been a tad slow for Rev. Harrigan, because that worthy did something else to the hand he had pinned behind Mr. Lincoln’s back. Mr. Lincoln uttered another high, breathless scream.

“I said, will you
think
about these things?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“Then get in your car and drive away and God bless you and keep you.”

Harrigan released Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln backed away from him, eyes wide, and got back into his car. A moment later he was driving down Second Avenue—fast.

Harrigan turned to Callahan and said, “Catholics are going to Hell, Father Don. Idolators, each and every one of them; they bow to
the Cult of Mary. And the Pope! Don’t get me started on
him!
Yet I have known some fine Catholic folks, and have no doubt you’re one of them. It may be I can pray you through to a change of faith. Lacking that, I may be able to pray you through the flames.” He looked back at the sidewalk in front of what now seemed to be called Hammarskjöld Plaza. “I believe my congregation has dispersed.”

“Sorry about that,” Callahan said.

Harrigan shrugged. “Folks don’t come to Jesus in the summertime, anyway,” he said matter-of-factly. “They do a little window-shopping and then go back to their sinning. Winter’s the time for serious crusading . . . got to get you a little storefront where you can give em hot soup and hot scripture on a cold night.” He looked down at Callahan’s feet and said, “You seem to have lost one of your sandals, my mackerel-snapping friend.” A new horn blared at them and a perfectly amazing taxi—to Callahan it looked like a newer version of the old VW Microbuses—went swerving past with a passenger yelling something out at them. It probably wasn’t happy birthday. “Also, if we don’t get out of the street, faith may not be enough to protect us.”

“He’s all right,” Jake said, setting Oy down on the sidewalk. “I flipped, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”

“Perfectly understandable,” the Rev. Harrigan assured him. “What an interesting dog! I’ve never
seen one that looked quite like that, praise Jesus!” And he bent to Oy.

“He’s a mixed breed,” Jake said tightly, “and he doesn’t like strangers.”

Oy showed how much he disliked and distrusted them by raising his head to Harrigan’s hand and flattening his ears in order to improve the stroking surface. He grinned up at the preacher as if they were old, old pals. Callahan, meanwhile, was looking around. It was New York, and in New York people had a tendency to mind their business and let you mind yours, but still, Jake had drawn a gun. Callahan didn’t know how many folks had seen it, but he
did
know it would only take one to report it, perhaps to this Officer Benzyck Harrigan had mentioned, and put them in trouble when they could least afford it.

He looked at Oy and thought,
Do me a favor and don’t say anything, okay? Jake can maybe pass you off as some new kind of Corgi or Border Collie hybrid, but the minute you start talking, that goes out the window. So do me a favor and don’t.

“Good boy,” said Harrigan, and after Jake’s friend miraculously did
not
respond by saying “Oy!” the preacher straightened up. “I have something for you, Father Don. Just a minute.”