Grief Street

lobby, but could not move in her pain to a position where she could see them.
    “One at a time out the door,” one of them said. “Mask off, socks off, then walk. Different directions. Walk slow.”

    Father Declan Byrne lay on his side beneath a jumble of wool sweaters. The sweaters were not much good, pocked with moth holes and the life stretched out of them long ago. Father Byrne was the same, except that the holes in his back and neck had been made with a knife, and the blood was fresh enough for the killer to have struck within the hour and simply vanished from the crowd of people desperately minding their own poor business.
    I had pushed my way through people variously screaming and shoving to get a look at the dead priest—and then scrambling to get out of the basement, up the street, and the hell away from the church. When I reached the sweater bin, I recognized the handiwork of my killer: Father Byrne had been scalped, the blade run down from the top of his head on either side, his face torn away.
    I crossed myself, and waited several minutes until a homicide team arrived, along with a uniform squad and forensics unit. None of it would be of any use, and certainly I was no use standing around.
    I made my way up the stairs, the same stairs I had climbed up and down as a boy at every lunch period of a winter’s day. In the hallway at the top of the stairs, uniforms were herding away the kids and the keening nuns and sobbing brothers. Old Mrs. Hamill with her bun and sensible shoes had fallen to her knees, hands clasped together in weeping prayer. The kids were frightened and hollow-eyed, all them looking too old to be having such small faces and bodies.
    Staggering like a half-blind man up the old street I had walked thousands of times, bumping into posts and fences and people along the way, I had this thought pounding in my head: I am after Satan.
    Was I? A doubting Catholic is every bit the match of a doubting devil.
    Eddie the Ear was standing outside the door to my apartment house when I walked up. Next to him was a uniformed officer I had seen around the station house occasionally. “What do you hear, Eddie?”
    “Bad news. Hock.”
    I asked the uniform, “What’s up?”
    “My partner’s waiting in your apartment,” he said. “He’ll tell you.”
    “What is it, Eddie?”
    “They won’t tell me exactly neither.”
    “Have you seen Ruby today?”
    “This morning she left for someplace,” Eddie said. “I ain’t seen her since then. I had things to do. I only just now got back to Dinny’s a minute ago.”
    I ran upstairs.
    The uniform in my apartment was a German guy built like a fire hydrant. His name was Haefs, and he was my age, give or take a few years. He had a lot of bags under his eyes, the kind that come from a career of giving out bad news.
    “I want you to know, your wife's okay,” Haefs said, holding up his hands as if I was about to knock him down. “She’s UP to Roosevelt. You can go see her right now if you want.” But right now the telephone rang.
    “Oh, would this be Mr. Flagg?” a woman wanted to know after I said hello.
    “This would be Detective Hockaday. My wife would be Flagg.”
    “Detective. I see. My name is Eileen. I work for Mr. Harvey Vennum Junior—of Ashton, Baker, Vennum and vennum.”
    I covered the telephone speaker and asked Officer Haefs, Look, give it to me—how bad is she?”
    “She’s okay. Really.”
    “All right, Eileen,” I said, back to the phone. “Your boss, he’s a lawyer?”
    “Yes, we’re handling the estate of the late Mr. Arnold Rosenbaum . .
    “Oh, the house.”
    “That’s right. The West Fortieth Street property. Your wife had some questions for us this morning.”
    “She’s not here right now.”
    “Well, I can give you the information.”
    “All right.”
    “Two things. First, the medical clinic operated in the house for fifteen years—off and on. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, Ms. Flagg wanted the doctor’s name.”
    “Yes?”
    “I don’t know how to pronounce the first name, so I’ll spell it: E-o-i-n. ”
    “It’s the Irish for Owen.”
    “I see. The last name is Monaghan.”
    “You're getting this from where, Eileen—the City Health Department?”
    “Yes.”
    “Any record of where Monaghan keeps his practice these days?”
    “Well, I didn’t ask that. Is he in trouble. Detective Hockaday?”
    “That’s an open question. You said this clinic matter was the first thing. What’s the