Read Online Where the Dark Streets Go by Dorothy Salisbury Davis - Free Book Online Page B

that the association that had brought her? He felt no incumbence to go to the police. She had not identified the victim, only to herself. Of one thing he was sure: he would not again be used as Brogan had used him, and if he never saw Brogan again, so much the better.
    A half hour later he went back to see Rosenberg. The pawnbroker was glad to see him, but he shook his head. “Ach, Father, for me writing is like trying to take fleas from a dog. As soon as I think I have one it disappears into another part of the anatomy. But I will keep trying.”
    “Perhaps we should talk,” McMahon said.
    “Nothing would give me more pleasure, but on Saturday afternoon I am busy like no other day in the week. You know how the old song goes. Nobody who can raise a buck wants to be broke on Saturday night.”
    Even as he spoke a well-dressed young man came into the shop, removing and winding his watch. Rosenberg asked the priest to wait. McMahon watched the transaction from the back of the shop, the gestures, the expressions. He did not hear the words, but the ceremony was as ancient as the charge of usury against the Jews. Another customer came in, this one in a Mexican serape. He reclaimed his guitar with a kind of shamefaced emotion, like someone getting his brother out of jail. Rosenberg, before handing it over to the boy, ran his own fingers over the strings. You see, he seemed to be saying, it had been in good hands.
    He came back and entered both transactions in his ledger. He took off his glasses.
    “Just one question today,” McMahon said. “Did he ever speak of a girl, Mim, Min, something like that?”
    “Many girls but not often by name. Nana Marie. I remember that one. I liked that name, Nana Marie.”
    Nim for short, McMahon thought. He wanted to be careful not to start the old man’s thoughts in flight from whatever his association might be. It was a pleasant memory, whatever it was. Then very quietly the priest started: “Where were they together? What kind of neighborhood—or what were they doing?”
    “Making love, I should think. Excuse me, Father.”
    “I’d think so too,” he encouraged, “but where?”
    “There would be a Greek church and it would be a poor neighborhood, for he loved poverty as much as honor. To him poverty was the only honor. No, that is not right. It is the climate of honor. God protect me! If only I could write it down and get it straight.” He struck his temples with his fists.
    “It will come, my friend. It will come. Perhaps we can help one another.”
    “I will not do this for the police, Father. Honor will not be confused with justice, not by Abel Rosenberg. Where in this world is justice, will you tell me that? And if there is a world in which there is justice, tell me why there is none in this? God is just, you will say, and I will say that is because man is not.”
    McMahon smiled. “I have said nothing, my friend. If I had, I’d have said, God is merciful, and that would have upset you even more.”
    “Pah! Mercy. Excuse me again. But it was the police who spoke of justice. They were here. I told them about the books. Now they will check the stores for their inventories. Let them. Nothing will be missing except the man himself.”
    “The Greek church,” McMahon prompted gently.
    “Very old—in a forgotten place, forgotten people: he said that. Beautiful old…” He made an elongated shape with his hands.
    “Icons?” McMahon suggested.
    He shook his head. “The delicate chains from the rafters to hold the candle bowls, beautiful in the dark of night. He was a janitor. There’s an old-fashioned word for you, a janitor. He would not call himself a building superintendent, not my friend Gust.”
    “Not a man to pretend to greatness,” McMahon said.
    “It is so, and it was to not pretend to anything, that was how he wanted to live.”
    “You wonder what his talent was like,” the priest mused. “I have a feeling it was valuable.”
    “Beware of feelings,