"The woman you met's with us," Callahan said after a brief hesitation. "She's okay."
"I wonder about that," Harrigan said. "The Book says - praise God and praise His Holy Word - to beware of the strange woman, for her lips drip as does the honeycomb but her feet go down to death and her steps take hold on hell. Remove thy way from her and come not nigh the door of her house." He had raised one lumpy hand in a benedictory gesture as he offered this. Now he lowered it and shrugged.
"That ain't exact, I don't have the memory for scripture that I did when I was younger and Bible-shoutin down south with my Daddy, but I think you get the drift."
"Book of Proverbs," Callahan said.
Harrigan nodded. "Chapter five, sayGawd. " Then he turned and contemplated the building which rose into the night sky behind him. Jake started away, but Callahan stayed him with a touch...although when Jake raised his eyebrows, Callahan could only shake his head. No, he didn't know why. All he knew was that they weren't quite through with Harrigan yet.
"This is a city stuffed with sin and sick with transgression," the preacher said at last. "Sodom on the halfshell, Gomorrah on a graham cracker, ready for the God-bomb that will surely fall from the skies, say hallelujah, say sweet Jesus and gimme amen. But this right here is a good place. Agood place. Can you boys feel it?"
"Yes," Jake said.
"Can youhear it?"
"Yes," Jake and Callahan said together.
"Amen! I thought it would all stop when they tore down the little deli that stood here years and years ago. But it didn't. Those angelic voices - "
"So speaks Gan along the Beam," Jake said.
Callahan turned to him and saw the boy's head cocked to one side, his face wearing the calm look of entrancement.
Jake said: "So speaks Gan, and in the voice of the can calah, which some call angels. Gan denies the can toi; with the merry heart of the guiltless he denies the Crimson King and Discordia itself."
Callahan looked at him with wide eyes - frightened eyes - but Harrigan nodded matter-of-factly, as if he had heard it all before. Perhaps he had. "There was a vacant lot after the deli, and then they built this. Two Hammarskj?ld Plaza. And I thought, 'Well,that'll end it and then I'll move on, for Satan's grip is strong and his hoof prints leave deep tracks in the ground, and there no flower will bloom and no grain will grow.' Can you saysee -lah?" He raised his arms, his gnarly old man's hands, trembling with the outriders of Parkinson's, turned upward to the sky in that open immemorial gesture of praise and surrender. "Yet still it sings," he said, and dropped them.
"Selah," Callahan murmured. "You say true, we say thank ya."
"Itis a flower," Harrigan said, "for once I went in there to see. In the lobby, somebody say hallelujah, I say in thelobby between the doors to the street and the elevators to those upper floors where God knows how much dollarbill f**kery is done, there's a little garden growing in the sun which falls through the tall windows, a garden behind velvet ropes, and the sign says GIVEN BY THE TET CORPORATION, IN HONOR OF THE BEAME FAMILY, AND IN MEMORY OF GILEAD. "
"Does it?" Jake said, and his face lit with a glad smile. "Do you say so, sai Harrigan?"
"Boy, if I'm lyin I'm dyin.Gawd -bomb! And in the middle of all those flowers there grows a single wild rose, so beautiful that I saw it and wept as those by the waters of Babylon, the great river that flows by Zion. And the men coming and going in that place, them with their briefcases stuffed full of Satan's piecework, many ofthem wept, too. Wept and went right on about their whores' business as if they didn't even know."
"They know," Jake said softly. "You know what I think, Mr. Harrigan? I think the rose is a secret their hearts keep, and that if anyone threatened it, most of them would fight to protect it. Maybe to the death." He looked up at Callahan.
"Pere, we have to go."
"Yes."
"Not a bad idea," Harrigan agreed, "for mine eyes can see Officer Benzyck headed back this way, and it might be well if you were gone when he gets here. I'm glad your furry little friend wasn't hurt, son."
"Thanks, Mr. Harrigan."
"Praise God, he's no more a dog than I am, is he?"
"No, sir," Jake said, smiling widely.
"Beware that woman, boys. She put a thought in my head. I call that witchcraft. And she wastwo. "
"Twins-say-twim, aye," Callahan said, and then (without knowing he meant to do it until it was done) he sketched the sign of the cross in front of the preacher.
"Thank you for your blessing, heathen or not," Earl Harrigan said, clearly touched. Then he turned toward the approaching NYPD patrolman and called cheerfully, "Officer Benzyck! Good to see you and there's some jam right there on your collar, praise God!"
And while Officer Benzyck was studying the jam on his uniform collar, Jake and Callahan slipped away.