STANDING ON FIFTH AVENUE, JOHN LOOKED ACROSS the street at St. Patrick’s Cathedral while trying to catch his breath. Before him, the twin spires of the cathedral divided the sky. The building itself loomed there, an ecclesiastic testament to both man and God, surrounded by the abrupt yet suddenly meaningless steel-and-glass rectangles of New York City. A number of people milled around the front steps before the enormous copper doors. He scanned the crowd for Tressa Walker but could not find her. Why would this bum Mickey want to meet here? It was bizarre. Already, he did not like this Mickey O’Shay character.
He mounted the steps of the cathedral two at a time, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his pants, and paused at the crest of stone risers, again dissecting the crowd. Catching his breath after his mad sprint from Rockefeller Center, he feared he was too late. He could find Tressa Walker nowhere. Perhaps O’Shay had changed his mind.
“Damn,” John muttered under his breath.
“Here,” a woman’s voice said from behind him. “John.” He turned around and saw Tressa Walker, half-bundled in a thick green coat, standing in the cathedral’s entranceway. She looked much smaller than she had the night they met at McGinty’s. Her skin looked paler, too—possibly from the cold. She had her coat bundled around something which was pressed to her chest. Not until John made out a distinct little fist jutting from the coat did he realize Tressa had brought along her baby. “John,” she said again, a plume of vapor blossoming in the air before her mouth.
“Thought I was late.”
“It’s cold,” she said. “Come on. It’s warmer inside.”
“Your friend with you?” But, with the exception of her child, John could see Tressa was alone.
“Inside,” she repeated, and disappeared behind the large copper doors of the cathedral.
Growing up near the city, John had been inside the cathedral on a number of occasions and, even as a small child, had understood at least some part of the church’s power. His father had been a devout Catholic and had taken him to St. Patrick’s for Christmas Mass a number of times. He could remember sitting in the pew beside his father and staring at the church in awe.
He realized he was sweating.
There were a number of people slowly working their way around the interior of the church. They were like large fish swimming laps in an aquarium. At his side, Tressa unzipped her coat and shook her hair out from her collar, cradling her child in one arm. Watching her, John was amazed how skewed some people were in this world. He tried to imagine Katie standing here before him, their own child propped against her chest, and the thought made his head spin. He could almost feel the heat from the fiery collapse of morality all around him.
The baby began to fuss, and Tressa quickly popped a pacifier into its mouth to keep the kid quiet.
“Is he here?”
“He’s up there in the front,” she said, nodding toward the altar. Two rows of pews stretched out before them like trails of garments. “I’m staying here.”
“Are you kidding me? The heck is this?” There were too many people to see Mickey O’Shay clearly. A few people were seated in the pews facing the altar—a collection of necks and heads. “Where?”
“Up front,” Tressa repeated, “sitting down.”
Slowly, he began walking down the aisle between the pews. He was aware of his footfalls hammering the floor, the heels of his shoes overly loud despite the commotion created by spectators surrounding him. He was always conscious of himself, even under circumstances unrelated to his job: another benefit of having grown up in the streets.
Directly before him, powerful in gold baldachin, humble in alabaster, the grand altar loomed.
There was a man seated in the first row of pews to his left, facing the altar. He could only see the back of the man’s head—scraggly, dirty-blond hair—and he could tell he was fairly young just by his posture, but he couldn’t make out the man’s profile. Not that it mattered; he had no idea what Mickey O’Shay looked like. Before approaching the man, John turned around toward the back of the church, as if seeking Tressa’s approval, but the girl was gone.
He stopped at the end of the aisle beside the first row of pews, hands in his pockets, eyes fixed on the magnificent altar. He didn’t bother trying to catch a glimpse of the man’s face. If the guy was O’Shay, it would play out. “Something, ain’t it? Makes you think about some things,” he said, shooting for the man’s attention.
“You John?”
“Mickey?”
“Sit down.”
John sat, his eyes still straight ahead. “This is good … that we could meet…”
“You still want that hundred grand?” Mickey asked.
“These the same bills I was supposed to get before?”
“The same. How come you don’t go back to Deveneau?”
“I don’t know any Deveneau.”
“Good answer.” There was a pause. “We can do the deal right now,” Mickey said after a moment.
John turned and faced him. He guessed Mickey to be roughly around his own age, though he appeared much older. His eyes were startlingly blue, his profile—for Mickey O’Shay did not take his eyes from the altar—that of a choirboy. His sandy hair was long and greasy and curled behind his ears. He wore a dull green canvas coat, nondescript slacks, scuffed boots. In all, his appearance was nothing if not disappointing. O’Shay sat there motionless, the collar of his polyester shirt flipped out over the zippered collar of his canvas coat. He looked like some eccentric throwback, a confused and ignorant homage to the Dead End Kids, a street punk who’d somehow struck oil and was now dealing up. There was nothing intimidating about him, nothing in his eyes that professed any semblance of uniformity, of rationalization, of the ability to organize and be organized. Less a gangster and more a man who’d just finished scrounging for beer money in his sofa.
“Right now?” John uttered a small laugh. “You wanna do the deal right now? Are you serious?”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t have the money on me. I had to bust my ass to get here in time just to meet with you. I had no notice. Give me a day or two to get my money together and then—”
“You know the price.”
He shifted in his seat and turned back toward the altar. “Twenty grand for a hundred thousand.”
“You got a pen?”
John blinked, patted the front of his shirt. “I—I don’t know …”
“Wait.” Mickey fished around inside his coat and produced a pencil stub, handed it to John. “Here,” he said, then picked up a Bible from beside him, flipped it open to the middle, and handed it over to John. “And here. Write down your phone number.”
He printed his cell phone number on page 887, just above a passage in Jeremiah that said, “The stain of your guilt is still before me.” He slid the open Bible across the pew back over to Mickey, who gazed disinterestedly at the main altar. When he did glance down, it was only for a second before turning to look at John.
Something flickered behind Mickey’s ice-blue eyes—something like a spark in the darkness. But it was there and then gone, too fleeting for John to interpret.
Mickey tore the page from the Bible and stuffed it inside his coat.
“Guess you’re not a religious man, huh?” John said.
Mickey stood, his frame unimposing. His eyes remained on the altar. “You know Tressa long?”
“On and off since high school.”
“Anything goes wrong with this deal, no one will know her. Or you.”
The words were out and John let Mickey say them, though he would have normally slapped the little punk right out of the pew. Instead, he looked forward to slapping the cuffs on O’Shay’s wrists. That would be satisfaction enough.
“I’ll call ya,” O’Shay said.
“When?”
But Mickey O’Shay had nothing more to say: he sidestepped his way out of the pew and mingled among the tourists and spectators until he disappeared in the confusion of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.