Grief Street

mass. Creepy Morrison lived to regale these irritatingly pious lads with tales of martyrs screaming out Latin supplications as barbarians ripped out their fingernails, or skinned them alive—or as they quaked in the catacombs before jeering centurions booted them into the blood-soaked arenas of ancient Rome, there to perish in foaming lion jaws for the savage amusement of the emperor.
    Deprived of glorious sufferings from such ancient cruelties and decadence, the present-day martyrs of Tenth Avenue proudly made do on this Good Friday night with the casual taunts of modern-day heathens.
    Yo, Pontius Pilate, how come you want to whack the good dude with that big old cross?... Ain’t you the assholes that was waving around the plastic fetus in everybody’s face a couple weeks back there?... Yo, god boy, your fly’s open!
    O Lord, how the new martyrs hungered for words to break their bones as surely as sticks and stones.
    Ruby looked to me for an explanation of all this. The Phrase I was thinking of was holy codswallop, but I said nothing. So she asked again, “What’s with them?”
    “You’re observing a holy rite known as the Way of the Cross, a reenactment of the crucifixion,” I said, finally. “It’s one of our little Catholic embarrassments. Like exorcism. The cross boys will be turning east on Forty-second to pass by the church. Father Declan will bless the bunch of them, without a blush.”
    “Talk about religious embarrassment. Nothing’s more embarrassing than a bug-eyed Southern Baptist preacher waist-deep in a tub of water.”
    “Maybe.” I shrugged and turned away from the window. How do you mean I edited something?”
    “A friend of yours called today.”
    “Who?”
    “Harry Darcy.”
    I could not place the name, I told Ruby.
    “From a long time ago. He mentioned short pants and classroom nuns.”
    “Where did he get my number?”
    “He’s got access. Harry Darcy’s in the system, he’s a corrections officer at Rikers Island.”
    This was not helping me compute a face behind a forgotten name.
    “He mentioned something besides school days,” Ruby said. “He mentioned rats.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    Ruby cut me a look that said I should knock it off because she was on to me.
    “Same thing I asked Harry. He said to me, ‘Well, I’m very surprised, Mrs. Hockaday. You really don’t know?’ No, I don’t, I said. So I made him tell.”
    “About what?”
    “About wreathing. Another one of your little embarrassments.”
    “That is a sick thing done by rabid cops.” I might have raised my voice. “But it’s nothing you need to know about.”
    “Rabid cops string up rats on my husband’s locker at the station house—and that’s nothing I need to know? Then somebody who doesn’t belong here comes sneaking down the hallway outside our apartment and spikes rats on the front door—and that’s none of my business either?”
    “You shouldn’t be intimidated.” This was a lie to myself as much as it was to Ruby. First thing tomorrow, I decided, I would make a surprise visit to Rikers and find this friend of mine, so-called. Maybe I would punch out his face for upsetting my pregnant wife. “Besides spilling to you about the wreathing, what did this Darcy want?”
    “What did you do with the rats on our front door?”
    “Took them down. I didn’t want you seeing that crap.”; “Speaking of which, this Harry Darcy wants to see you-“Did he say why?”
    “Something about King Kong Kowalski. Harry Darcy says-”
    The rest of it would have to wait. Just then I was distracted by the crack-crack-crack of automatic rifle fire, people screaming, tires screeching, horns blasting...
    seven martyrs and their cross, fallen and bloody down below my window on Forty-second Street.

Twelve

    M y apartment window was a movie screen. This was the picture:
    A small army of cops in helmets and bulletproof shields and knee-high leather boots—waving their big, ugly AK-47s and otherwise scaring the stuffings out of scrambling motorists and pedestrians—galloped across Forty-second Street from the riot squad station house a block east of the pandemonium. A posse of Mounted Division officers was already on scene. Horses skittered in tight circles; cops with scope-sighted rifles drawn, cocked for killing on sight, scanned surrounding rooftops for snipers.
    I pulled Ruby from the couch to the floor, shoved her down, and made her lie as flat out as her belly permitted. I tilted the