The streets of Manhattan were only marginally warmer for the St. Patrick's Day Parade than the plains of Colorado had been. However, that didn't stop tens of thousands of watchers and participants from congregating on Midtown at dawn, nor the myriad Irish pubs around the Fifth Avenue route from opening their doors early to snag the first of the celebrants.
The first St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York was in 1766 when Irish soldiers in His Majesty's army on the "island of York" held a parade of their own, before heading off to celebrate in a more stereotypical Irish way. Two hundred and forty years later, the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York was the largest in the world and one of the very few where everyone still walked, no cars or floats allowed.
The two-mile-long parade route began at Forty-second Street in Midtown and proceeded up Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick's Cathedral, between Fiftieth and Fifty-first streets, where traditionally the Archbishop of New York would bless the marchers. They would then continue on to Eighty-sixth Street, skirting the east side of Central Park before hanging a right, moving onto Third Avenue for the last hoorah.
Millions of people would eventually line up to watch the 165th Infantry-formerly the "Fighting Irish" 69th-lead the procession of more than 150,000 kilted bagpipers, drummers, drum majors, high school band members, cheerleaders, dance ensembles, representatives of every branch of the services, and the loyal members of the Irish societies, including the Emerald Societies of the NYPD and NYFD, as well as thousands of real Irish folk who'd flown in from Eire herself.
In the grand tradition of those first soldiers, many of the revelers were already inebriated as Lucy and Ned elbowed their way through, and sometimes over, the weaving masses. They were searching for the needle in the haystack and the green beer-swilling straw kept getting in the way.
Moving with any sustained speed was difficult. The side streets had been closed off for a block on either side of Fifth for the first half dozen blocks or so to provide places for the marchers to assemble, every group assigned to a particular spot on a particular street. And each enclave was a party unto its own, with bleating bagpipes competing against blaring horn sections while drummers tried to keep the beat with both and neither. Meanwhile, military honor guardsmen in dark glasses not necessary in the sunless caverns between the buildings watched the pretty girls who strutted about in uniforms of their own. Banners representing the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Loyal Sons and Daughters of County Cork, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, Clan-na-Gael, and a thousand others waved to and fro along with many thousands more tri-color flags bearing the orange, white, and green of Ireland.
They wandered through the crowded side streets-Tran and Jojola on one side of Fifth Avenue, and Ned and Lucy on the other-and got up to Forty-ninth Street when Lucy found what she was looking for…or at least hoped it was what she was looking for when her "totem" showed it to her. She was standing in the middle of the crowd with Ned, stamping her feet and blowing on her fingers to ward off the cold when she looked up and saw the owl glaring down.
Actually, it wasn't a real owl, but a plastic or clay version that building superintendents placed on ledges to keep pigeons away. Lucy followed the faux owl's gaze to the big, brightly colored banner proclaiming that bit of street was occupied by the representatives of the Irish Society of County Heath. Like many of the other Irish society banners, this one depicted a religious theme-St. Patrick walking on a green hill between two large, slightly askew stone monoliths. It was the stones that got Lucy's attention, or actually the symbols embroidered on the stones. As clearly as on the day he'd said it, she heard Cian's voice: There are stylized versions-such as a triskele where the legs are represented by spirals. The earliest of those discovered so far were found on Neolithic carvings in County Heath in Ireland.
As far as she knew, there was no connection between the County Heath and the Sons of Man beyond a shared, and common, symbol. But Lucy was absolutely sure that she'd come to the right place and pointed out the banner to Ned. "Maybe they just have a flair for the dramatic," she said.
Lucy called Jojola and Tran, explaining her conclusion. "We're off to mingle," she said. "You guys keep looking in case this is a red herring. Then maybe you can follow along when we move out onto the parade route."
The young couple walked over to join the worthies of County Heath, many of whom had been taking liberal advantage of Tully's Irish Pub in the middle of the block. Speaking in perfect Irish Gaelic, Lucy soon had those nearby convinced that she was from the home county itself, and was welcomed as a long-lost cousin to them all. Lucy introduced her "American boyfriend," whose reception was not quite as enthusiastic given that his last name, Blanchet, sounded suspiciously English.
When the greetings died down and the others went on about their business, Lucy huddled against Ned to stay warm and give herself a chance to look around. But outside of the banner with the triskele, nothing seemed remotely linked to any sinister plot by the Sons of Man. She wondered if she'd jumped to her conclusion too swiftly.
The County Heath was represented by one of the larger cadres of bagpipers and drummers, a good fifty in all, led by a huge, red-haired drum major with a tall bearskin hat. His legs stood out like tree trunks from beneath his plaid kilt and he glowered fabulously for the Japanese tourists with their cameras. The county was also represented by two members of a color guard, one bearing a U.S. flag and the other the flag of Ireland. Off to one side, several members of a precision drill team were practicing, tossing rifles through the air to one another.
Lucy looked at the drill team for a moment before realizing what she was seeing. Then it came to her. "Rifles," she said.
"What?" Ned replied. He started to turn to see what she was talking about.
"No," she warned, "don't look. But there's a drill team behind us with rifles."
"Oh, yeah, well, I've seen the kind of rifles they use at the county fair," he said. "They're fakes and can't shoot."
"Are you absolutely sure about that?"
Someone was watching the young couple who'd arrived late and now stood huddled in the midst of the County Heath representatives. But the girl appeared to be from Ireland-he'd overheard one of the bagpipers saying that he could even place her accent as coming from a small village "to the west of where my people originated from." The boy didn't look like much, just another skinny kid.
Dismissing them as a threat, his attention was drawn to a pair of cops walking through the crowd. His hair was longer and dyed a different color from when he was on the force, and he was wearing sunglasses and a tam, but he turned quickly away just in case one of them might remember him.
Paul Stewart was proud to be a dedicated assassin for the Sons of Man. He was not a first son of a first son, not even a second. He'd been born to a female distantly related to Andrew Kane and had only advanced to a foot soldier for the cause. But that was okay, he was also a true believer and had signed up for the marines out of high school so that when the time came, he would be a trained warrior as well.
Only problem with the marines was that the corps corrupted itself by allowing niggers, spics, and gooks to join. He hated them all and had been dishonorably discharged after nearly killing a black marine. He'd then returned to New York, where his distant cousin Andrew helped get him a job on the New York City Police Department, in part by magically turning his dishonorable into an honorable discharge. He'd repaid the favor by doing anything his cousin asked him to-whether it was roughing somebody up, delivering messages, or reporting anything interesting on the NYPD grapevine. He'd even disposed of the bodies of a couple of teenaged girls after Kane was finished with them.