CHAPTER 12

… thus the strong member may serve the weak, and we may be sons of God.

Martin Luther

As it turned out, Homer didn’t need to throw his weight around at the Department of Social Services. Alan discovered the whereabouts of young Charley Hall on his own.

After his meeting with Homer at Rosie’s apartment, Alan crossed Clarendon Street and glanced down at the excavation, where the pile driver still sat idle on its treads, its crane reaching high in the air, its hammer poised to fall. It pained him to think of the day when it would begin its work, dropping the hammer again and again to pound a thousand pilings into the ground, kerwham, kerwham, kerwham. How would he hear the subtle variations in the sound of his pipes with that racket going on across the street?

The cold had increased with the afternoon. Alan walked fast. At the Public Garden he started to run—past the frozen duck pond and the equestrian statue of George Washington, kitty-cornered to the intersection of Charles Street and Beacon, straight along Charles to Mount Vernon and up the steep hill to Louisburg Square.

And there he found Charley Hall.

Alan didn’t recognize him at first. Charley was just a blob in a rickety stroller. But when a ray of low winter sunshine streaked through the narrow opening of Walnut Street and landed on his face, Alan was reminded of the baby in the Three Kings window in the Church of the Commonwealth. This infant too was a bright object against a shadowy background. A thin girl pushed the stroller up the hill, struggling to maneuver the small wheels on the uneven bricks of the sidewalk. Another child dragged after her, clinging to her parka.

Something about the baby brought Alan to a halt. He stared at it curiously, then crossed the street and passed in front of the stroller as if he were heading for one of the handsome doorways on the other side. To his delight he saw that the child was indeed none other than the baby he had rescued from the traffic on Clarendon Street two weeks before Christmas.

The baby recognized Alan. His solemn expression brightened. He gurgled and threw out a mittened hand. Alan smiled at him, then climbed the steps of the house as though about to enter. The girl pushing the stroller frowned and increased her speed, bumping the little buggy over a cavity in the sidewalk. The child at her side whimpered and fell back. The girl spoke to her sharply, “For shit’s sake, Wanda, come on.”

Alan waited until the three of them were several yards ahead of him, then followed. He feared that if he spoke to the girl she might be just as suspicious as Mrs. Barker in the Department of Social Services, but if he followed them home, he would know how to find them again.

They kept going, on and on, up and up. The little stroller bumped and rattled on the uneven bricks, making its way out of the fashionable part of Beacon Hill, jolting past Alan’s own street and jouncing all the way through the tunnel beside the State House, where parking places were reserved for THE GOVERNOR, THE CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE, THE STATE AUDITOR and other luminaries of the political establishment in Massachusetts. At last the girl tipped up the buggy on two wheels and careened left on Bowdoin Street and started down the steep hill with the tearful child toddling in her wake.

Alan too had an appointment on Bowdoin Street, in the church of St. John the Evangelist, where the organist was troubled by a ciphering pipe. Was the girl heading for the same church? What a coincidence!

She was not. She pushed the stroller past Joe and Nemo, Hot Dog Kings, and made a sharp left into a yellow brick building called Bowdoin Manor.

Following her half a block behind, Alan grinned to himself, and noted the name of the place in his head. Now he would know where to find Charley. Satisfied, he went on down the hill, leaning backwards on the steep slope.

St. John the Evangelist was not like the other Episcopal churches in the neighborhood—nothing like Trinity, Emmanuel, Advent or Annunciation. It was a distinguished but shabby edifice catering to the poor, lavishing its funds on the hungry and homeless rather than on its soot-darkened interior. Under the church steps four elderly men were accepting sandwiches and soup from a woman who carried on a joshing exchange with her old regulars. Alan grinned at them and went inside.

The organist was glad to see him. Alan apologized for being late, and got to work at once on the ciphering reed. It turned out to be a simple matter. A cockroach had wedged itself under the pallet of the pipe, fixing it in the open position, so that it sounded all the time whenever the oboe stop was pulled. Alan repaired it, and urged the organist to do something about the infestation. “There ought to be something you could try. Oh, I know they’re incorrigible on Beacon Hill, migrating from one house to another. How does the church usually handle cockroaches?”

The organist rolled his eyes upward. “We pray for them.”

“Oh, I see.” Alan laughed and packed up his tools. It was time to find Charley.