Free Where the Dark Streets Go by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

The unpliable hands of the doll were crossed over a bunch of violets.
    Out of the corner of his eye the priest saw Mrs. Morales make the sign of the cross and he sensed rather than saw the others who had pressed into the room after him do the same. He lifted his eyes to the picture which hung on the wall behind the table, the placid, bearded, long-haired Christ with his forefinger touching the flaming heart. It was a picture familiar to him from childhood on, but in that instant, as alien as the shrouded doll.
    He bent his head and prayed silently, but for himself.
    The people were waiting to hear his words, but when, after a moment, he raised his head, they assumed his silent prayer appropriate and said their amens.
    “You like it, Father, sí ?” Mrs. Morales said of the boxed figure, her gold teeth shining as she smiled.
    “Beautiful,” he said, and turned away determined not to look again at the picture of the Sacred Heart. Yet the words ran through his mind: Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in thee.
    “Please, Father, take something to eat. The stuffed crabs I make myself.”
    “Have a drink, Father. We brought the whisky, and I’ll have one with you.” It was Phelan who spoke, having come up beside him, bottle in hand. He had a deep voice for so slight a man. McMahon tried to suppress the thought, but it came again, the wife’s telling, ‘Like a bull, Father.’
    “Thank you,” McMahon said. “I will have a drink.”
    Mrs. Morales gave him a glass, wiping it first with her apron.
    When he held out his glass, two of the younger men present held theirs out to Phelan, too, and Pedrito Morales came up with his. Phelan poured without a word, generously, but with his lips clamped tight. He quarter-filled his own glass before setting the bottle on the table. Everyone held his glass, waiting. McMahon finally lifted his toward the effigy and said, “Peace be with him.”
    The men all drank. Pedrito coughed and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Irish piss,” he said.
    Phelan threw the contents of his glass in the boy’s face. It all happened with flashing instancy: Pedrito flung his own glass over his shoulder and started for Phelan; Phelan, with one step backward, drew a knife from his pocket and switched the blade. McMahon was a few seconds reacting, for the last person in the room he expected to carry a knife was Phelan. He leaped between the men and ordered Phelan in the name of God to put it away. Phelan stood his ground and made jerky little stabs with the knife, trying to motion the priest out of his way. Behind McMahon, the men were derisive, their mockery the filth of two languages, and the women more contemptuous than the men.
    Priscilla Phelan came up behind her husband and locked her arms around his neck, pulling his head back. McMahon caught his arm and twisted it until he let go the knife. The priest put his foot on the blade. It was not necessary. No one wanted it. Muller had been killed with a knife. McMahon picked it up, flicked the blade closed and put the knife in his own pocket.
    Phelan had gone limp. He stood in a slouch, his eyes wild with hatred. His wife gave him a push toward the door. He pulled himself up straight then and walked with the controlled, exaggerated dignity of the drunk which McMahon knew well. At the door he spat and went out.
    Priscilla Phelan tossed her red hair back over her shoulders. “This is my house, you bastards! You tell the police about this and out you go, every mother-selling one of you.”
    Mrs. Morales was scolding the instigators, the rilers among the crowd. The fat grandmother sat and rocked herself with pleasure. She clapped her hands. McMahon kept catching flashes of faces, of gestures, bare arms and laughing mouths, a girl draped over a chair, her legs fanning the air. And noise, noise, noise. Mrs. Phelan went out, her hips swaggering, and the men whistled and hooted, and one of them pranced a few steps as if to follow, stopped, and gave a