more than an inch from his legs. Blue smoke was still drifting up from its rear tires. The driver’s face was a pallid, craning O of shock. Oy was crouched between Jake’s feet. To Callahan the
bumbler looked freaked out but otherwise all right.
The thud came again and yet again. It was Jake, bringing his balled-up fist down on the hood
of the taxi. ” Asshole! ” Jake yelled at the pallid O on the other side of the windshield. Thud! ” Why don’t you — ” Thud! ” — watch where — ” THUD! ” — the fuck you’re GOING! ” THUD-THUD!
“You give it to im, Cholly!” yelled someone from across the street, where perhaps three dozen people had stopped to watch the fun.
The taxi’s door opened. The long tall helicopter who stepped out was wearing what Callahan
thought was called a dashiki over jeans and huge mutant sneakers with boomerangs on the sides.
There was a fez on his head, which probably accounted somewhat for the impression of extreme
height, but not entirely. Callahan guessed the guy was at least six and a half feet tall, fiercely bearded, and scowling at Jake. Callahan started toward this developing scene with a sinking
heart, barely aware that one of his feet was bare, slapping the pavement with every other step.
The street preacher was also moving toward the developing confrontation. Behind the taxi
stopped in the intersection, another driver, interested in nothing but his own scheduled evening
plans, laid on his horn with both hands — WHEEEOOOONNNNNNK!!! — and leaned out his window, hollering “Move it, Abdul, you’re blockin the box!”
Jake paid no attention. He was in a total fury. This time he brought both fists down on the
hood of the taxi, like Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy — THUD! ” You almost ran my friend down, you asshole, did you even LOOK — ” THUD! ” — where you were GOING? ”
Before Jake could bring his fists down on the hood of the taxi again — which he obviously
meant to do until he was satisfied — the driver grabbed his right wrist. “Stop doing that, you little punk!” he cried in an outraged and strangely high voice. “I am telling you — ”
Jake stepped back, breaking free of the tall taxi driver’s grip. Then, in a liquid motion too
quick for Callahan to follow, the kid yanked the Ruger from the docker’s clutch under his arm
and pointed it at the driver’s nose.
“Tell me what? ” Jake raged at him. “Tell me what? That you were driving too fast and almost ran down my friend? That you don’t want to die here in the street with a hole in your head? Tell me WHAT? ”
A woman on the far side of Second Avenue either saw the gun or caught a whiff of Jake’s
homicidal fury. She screamed and started hurrying away. Several more followed her example.
Others gathered at the curb, smelling blood. Incredibly, one of them — a young man wearing his
hat turned around backward — shouted: “Go on, kid! Ventilate that camel-jockey!”
The driver backed up two steps, his eyes widening. He held up his hands to his shoulders. “Do not shoot me, boy! Please!”
“Then say you’re sorry!” Jake raved. “If you want to live, you cry my pardon! And his! And his! ” Jake’s skin was dead pale except for tiny red spots of color high up on his cheekbones. His eyes were huge and wet. What Don Calla-han saw most clearly and liked least was the way the
barrel of the Ruger was trembling. “Say you’re sorry for the way you were driving, you careless motherfucker! Do it now! Do it now! ”
Oy whined uneasily and said, “Ake!”
Jake looked down at him. When he did, the taxi driver lunged for the gun. Callahan hit him
with a fairly respectable right cross and the driver sprawled against the front of his car, his fez tumbling from his head. The driver behind him had clear lanes on either side and could have
swung around but continued to lay on his horn instead, yelling ” Move it buddy, move it! ” Some of the spectators on the far side of Second were actually applauding like spectators at a Madison Square Garden fight, and Callahan thought: Why, this place is a madhouse. Did I know that
before and forget, or is it something I just learned?
The street preacher, a man with a beard and long white hair that descended to his shoulders,
was now standing beside Jake, and when Jake started to raise the Ruger again, the preacher laid a gentle, unhurried hand on the boy’s wrist.
“Holster it, boy,” he said. “Stick it away, praise Jesus.”
Jake looked at him and saw what Susannah had seen not long before: a man who looked eerily
like Henchick of the Manni. Jake put the gun back into the docker’s clutch, then bent and picked up Oy. The bumbler whined, stretched his face toward Jake’s on his long neck, and began to lick the boy’s cheek.
Callahan, meanwhile, had taken the driver’s arm and was leading him back toward his hack.
He fished in his pocket and palmed a ten-dollar bill which was about half the money they’d
managed to put together for this little safari.
“All over,” he said to the driver, speaking in what he hoped was a soothing voice. “No harm, no foul, you go your way, he goes his — ” And then, past the hackie, yelling at the relentless horn-honker: “Horn works, you nimrod, so why not give it a rest and try your lights?”
“That little bastard was pointing the gun at me,” said the taxi driver. He felt on his head for his fez and didn’t find it.
“It’s only a model,” Callahan said soothingly. “The kind of thing you build from a kit, doesn’t even fire pellets. I assure y — ”
“Hey, pal!” cried the street preacher, and when the taxi driver looked, the preacher
underhanded him the faded red fez. With this back on his head, the driver seemed more willing
to be reasonable. More willing yet when Callahan pressed the ten into his hand.
The guy behind the cab was driving an elderly whale of a Lincoln. Now he laid on his horn
again.
“You may be biting my crank, Mr. Monkeymeat!” the taxi driver yelled at him, and Callahan almost burst out laughing. He started toward the guy in the Lincoln. When the taxi driver tried to join him, Callahan put his hands on the man’s shoulders and stopped him.
“Let me handle this. I’m a religious. Making the lion lie down with the lamb is my job.”
The street preacher joined them in time to hear this. Jake had retired to the background. He
was standing beside the street preacher’s van and checking Oy’s legs to make sure he was
uninjured.
“Brother!” the street preacher addressed Callahan. “May I ask your denomination? Your, I say hallelujah, your view of the Almighty? ”
“I’m a Catholic,” Callahan said. “Therefore, I view the Almighty’s a guy.”
The street preacher held out a large, gnarled hand. It produced exactly the sort of fervent, just-short-of-crushing grip Callahan had expected. The man’s cadences, combined with his faint
Southern accent, made Callahan think of Foghorn Leghorn in the Warner Brothers cartoons.
“I’m Earl Harrigan,” the preacher said, continuing to wring Callahan’s fingers. “Church of the Holy God-Bomb, Brooklyn and America. A pleasure to meet you, Father.”
“I’m sort of semi-retired,” Callahan said. “If you have to call me something, make it Pere. Or just Don. Don Callahan.”
“Praise Jesus, Father Don!”
Callahan sighed and supposed Father Don would have to do. He went to the Lincoln. The cab
driver, meanwhile, scooted away with his off duty light on.
Before Callahan could speak to the Lincoln’s driver, that worthy got out on his own. It was
Callahan’s night for tall men. This one went about six-three and was carrying a large belly.
“It’s all over,” Callahan told him. “I suggest you get back in your car and drive out of here.”
“It ain’t over until I say it’s over,” Mr. Lincoln demurred. “I got Abdul’s medallion number; what I want from you, Sparky, is the name and address of that kid with the dog. I also want a
closer look at the pistol he just — ow, ow! OWW! OWWWWW! Quit it! ”
Reverend Earl Harrigan had seized one of Mr. Lincoln’s hands and twisted it behind his back.
Now he seemed to be doing something creative to the man’s thumb. Callahan couldn’t see exactly
what it was. The angle was wrong.
“God loves you so much,” Harrigan said, speaking quietly into Mr. Lincoln’s ear. “And what He wants in return, you loudmouth shithead, is for you to give me hallelujah and then go on your way. Can you give me hallelujah?”