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

free after that.”
    “In mufti, Father.”
    “The best mufti I have,” McMahon said.

6
    I T WAS ONLY AFTER McMahon had resisted the temptation to take the steak bone in his fingers that he remembered, “Holy God,” he said, “it’s Friday.”
    “Well, it’s not a sin any more, is it?” Brogan wiped his fingers in his napkin. He had not been inhibited about taking the bone in hand.
    “No, not for you, but a priest should hold to it.”
    “But tonight you’re on French leave—was that it?—and if I know the French…” The young policeman rolled his eyes. His cheeks were flushed. They had had two stiff drinks before dinner.
    McMahon brushed the crumbs from the lapel of his sport jacket. “I was trying to think where that term could have come from.”
    “World War I?”
    “Much earlier, I think. From the time of Napoleon, I shouldn’t be surprised, when the French fleet turned back from the west coast of Ireland and left Wolfe Tone in the lurch.”
    “That’s the French for you,” Brogan said solemnly.
    “There was a MacMahon, a general in the French army in those days.”
    “Was there now? Were you related?”
    McMahon grinned. He was aware that after the drinks both of them were falling into a brogue of sorts. “Well, there were Wild Geese in the family, I’m told, Irish soldiers fighting in the French army.”
    “Ah, yes. We’re a race that fights best when the cause is somebody else’s. Wouldn’t you say that, Joseph?”
    McMahon flinched inwardly at the policeman’s use of his first name, the deferential young man of the afternoon. He laughed to cover his pulling-in in case it showed. But Brogan would not have noticed. McMahon would not be the first priest he had taken on the town. He said, “Well, we fight best for lost causes, and no man’s our hero until we’ve made a martyr out of him.” Nonsense, he thought. Poetic nonsense.
    “Brian Boru and Kevin Barry?” Brogan suggested.
    “I’m not sure about Brian Boru,” McMahon said. “Shall we have coffee or another drink?”
    “Irish coffee?”
    “It’s too early in the night for that,” McMahon said.
    “You’re a man after my own heart.” Brogan reached for his wallet. “Let’s have a drink somewhere else.”
    “Down the middle,” McMahon said of the check.
    “Not tonight. Who knows? Before it’s out we may turn up something that’ll put the city in debt for our tab.”
    McMahon said nothing. He did not know which he liked the least: carousing on Brogan or on the taxpayer. But with the ten dollars he had borrowed from the monsignor on the way out and his own two, he would not pick up many tabs. Remember your prerogatives and not your pride, the old man had bidden him, not for the first time.
    But McMahon enjoyed himself all the same. The streets were alive with youth and music, purveyors and flowers and chestnuts, carters of cameras and souvenirs, papier mâché and art nouveau, sailors on leave and cops on vigil. He loved the young people, beards, beads and begonias, and if he had had his way, he and Brogan would have sat astride an old Morgan car parked near MacDougal Street, and he’d have conducted the singing himself. “…Now don’t you know that’s not the way to end the war…” a young troubadour sang to the off-key strum of his guitar.
    “Beautiful!” McMahon shouted. “Sing it again.”
    A whole chorus of young people did.
    A fire truck approached, its bell clanging. The youngsters pushed back from the street, but coming abreast of them and making the wide turn even wider than necessary, the fireman gave a deafening blast with his bullhorn. A leprechaun of a boy cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted after the truck: “Yankee, go home!”
    McMahon threw back his head and laughed as he had not laughed for a long time. A shaggy-haired girl came up to him and held out a string of beads. McMahon stooped and allowed her to put them around his neck. He offered her money but she would not take it.