Grief Street

shipboard poker games,” Father Declan continued. “But he never got his chance at the fleshpots, for the lieutenant cheater’s disgrace was there properly avenged on Forty-second Street: his pockets were picked clean. Alas for the young crook from California, this lesson was ignored. He became a politician and otherwise continued his opprobrious ways. Not thirty years later, his sins were so avenged as to force him to a surrender as sure and humiliating as Tojo’s own.”
    “And your story,” I said, smiling, as warmly amused as if I had heard it with a glass of Scotch, at least in hand, “it’s as sure a morality tale as any ever told by the sisters of Holy Cross School.”
    “But then it’s no mere nun’s fable, it’s all quite true.” Father Declan consulted his wristwatch, pawed at his lips. “Look now, I’ve got to be getting back. There’s another mass to come. Will you leave with me, son?”
    “Yes. I’ll pay up for us, too.”
    The tab turned out to be approximately five times the price of two sodas out of a delicatessen cooler. Plus tip. Being the son of a hard-working Hell’s Kitchen barmaid, I am ordinarily generous about tipping. Not this time. I left nothing extra, my own small avenging act for the vandalism done to a neighborhood treasure.
    I was steady on my feet on the way back across Forty-second. Walking along with a priest, I had no bother of dodging cars and trucks. Father Declan, stoutly marching along in collar and cassock, puffing on a cigarette, parted traffic as if he were Moses cutting through the sea.
    “You’ll be coming in with me for the mass?” asked Father Declan. We had reached the broad steps of the church. tossed down his cigarette, stepped on it. I looked up at the cross over the doorway, then glanced at my own wristwatch. The priest asked, “Pressed for time, are we then?”

    “It’s just that—”
    “Don’t even say it, Neil, it’d be a fib. You haven’t been to a mass since Christmas last. You don’t think I keep track you and the other just-in-case Catholics of this parish?”
    “Sunday I’ll be here.”
    “Will you now? Easter being soon enough to be getting right with Our Lord and Savior?”
    I thought. This is the fundamental of us being Catholicics: we are guilty before taking our first breath. Then came a question, in the street below that contrarian cross, “Father, help me...?” It was me who asked this, odd as the voice founded within my head, as if someone else were speaking. Welcome such unsettling sensations in my life as a detective, which is more art than science, and I have learned to value the artistic moment.
    “What’s this torment now?” The scolding tone of Father Declan’s voice was replaced by a catch, as if he was sorrier than even myself to have sensed trouble. “Tell me.”
    “I’m looking for a murderer.”
    “Good luck for us survivors you’re a copper then.”
    “But this time...”
    A shadow of death this time. The smell of maggots and a shadow that slayed a friend. How could fourteen people see only a shadow? A shadow that mutilated my friend as he read ancient words: The closed eye is only then satisfied with seeing. And how had Glick put it? He looked into shadow and imagined—and he was terrified... Bá’al zbub... Do you understand?
    “What are your troubles, son?”
    Did Father Declan yet know it was Marv—Rabbi Paznik, a fellow cleric in the neighborhood—who was murdered on his holy day? If not, how could I deliver such news on this, his own holy day? I answered with, “You could say I’m having a crisis of faith.”
    “Keep faith that God never fails us.”
    “That’s what I’m lacking.”
    “I’ll not like hearing blasphemy.” Father Declan rubbed his head, as if it were suddenly hammering with pain. “Answer me this: what would a religious crisis be having to do with a policeman’s job of work?”
    “Ordinarily, little or nothing. But this time...” How could I say what I thought? Maybe you think it’s crazy what I’m saying. “Put it this way, there’s something unholy about the murder.”
    Father Declan rubbed his pained head more vigorously-He was trying to respond, but could only repeat what I had said. “Unholy...?”
    “As a cop, let’s say, I just don’t get it.”
    “I imagine there are such crimes as tax the limits of a policeman. Neither badge nor gun means a fiddler’s fart to the intelligent sinner.” Father Declan stroked his chin. “And this is what