"Come on, midgets," O'Brien said.
Kling looked up at the clock again.
"I'll be checking out a car," he said to no one.
"You want a cup of coffee?" O'Brien asked Willis.
It was only fifteen minutes before the beginning of All Hallows' Day.
In the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, the first day of November is a feast day upon which the church glorifies God for all his saints, known or unknown. The word "hallow" derives from the Middle Englishhalowen , further derived from the Old Englishhalgian , and it means "to make or set apart as holy; to sanctify; to consecrate." All Hallows' Day and Hallowmass are now archaic names for this feast; today mdash;except in novels mdash;it is called All Saints' Day. But it has always been celebrated on the first day of November, which in Celtic times was coincidentally the first day of winter, a time of pagan witches and ghosts, mummery and masquerade. Wholly Christian in origin, however, are the vigil and fasting that occur on the day before.
On the eve of All Hallows' Day, a Christian and a Jew kept vigil in a corridor of the Ernest Atlas Pavilion on the fourth floor of Buenavista Hospital.
The Christian was Teddy Carella.
The Jew was Sarah Meyer.
The clock on the corridor wall read 11:47 p.m.
Sarah Meyer had brown hair and blue eyes and lips her husband had always considered sensual.
Teddy Carella had black hair and brown eyes, and lips that could not speak, for she had been born deaf and mute.
Sarah had not seen the inside of a synagogue for more years than she cared to count.
Teddy scarcely knew the whereabouts of her neighborhood church.
But both women were silently praying, and they were both praying for the same man.
Sarah knew that her husband was out of danger.
It was Steve Carella who was still in surgery.
On impulse, she took Teddy's hand and squeezed it.
Neither of the women said a word to the other.
Neither of the women said a word to the other.
They spotted him the moment they came back into the bar. Annie knew he was their man. So did Eileen. They headed immediately for the ladies' room.
A black hooker wearing a blonde wig was standing at the sink, looking into the mirror over it, touching up her lipstick. She was a woman in her early forties, Eileen guessed, wearing a black dress and a short, fake fur jacket, going a bit thick in the middle and around the ankles. Eileen was certain she had just come in off the meat rack on the street outside.
"Getting chilly out there, ain't it?" the woman said.
"Yeah," Annie said.
"I'd park in here a while, but Larry gets twenty percent."
"I know."
"My man take a fit I give away twenty percent of the store."
There was a knife scar across the bridge of her nose.
She must have been pretty once, Eileen thought.
"One last pee," she said, and went into one of the stalls.
Annie lighted a cigarette. They chatted idly about how cold it was. The black hooker chimed in from behind the closed door of the stall, reporting on the really cold weather in Buffalo, New York, where she used to work years ago. They waited for her to flush the toilet. They waited while she washed her hands at the sink.
"Have a nice night," she said, and was gone.
"He's our man, isn't he?" Eileen said at once.
"Looks like him."
"Hitting on the wrong hooker."
"You'd better move in," Annie said.
"Sheryl won't like it."
"She'll like a slab even less."
"Will Shanahan know he's here?" Eileen asked.
"He'll know, don't worry."
Eileen nodded.
"You ready for this?" Annie asked.
"I'm ready."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure."
Annie searched her face.
"Because if you hellip;"
"I'm ready," Eileen said.
Annie kept searching her face. Then she said, "Let's go then," and tossed her cigarette into one of the toilet bowls.
The cigarette expired with a short tired hiss.
He was telling another joke when Eileen took the stool on his right.
Blond. Six-two, six-three. Two hundred and ten easy. Eyeglasses. A tattoo near his right thumb, a blue heart lined in red, nothing in it.
" hellip; so he says to the old man, 'What's the matter? Why are you crying?' The old man just keeps sitting there on the park bench, crying his eyes out. Finally he says, 'A year ago, I married this beautiful twenty-six-year-old girl. I've never been happier in my life. Before breakfast each morning, she wakes me up and blows me, and then she serves me bacon and eggs and toasted English muffins and piping hot coffee, and I go back to bed and rest till lunchtime. Then she blows me again before lunch, and she serves me a hot, delicious lunch, and I go back to bed again and rest till dinnertime. And she blows me again before dinner and serves me another terrific meal, and I fall asleep until morning when she wakes me up again with another blowjob. She's the most wonderful woman I've ever met in my life.' The guy looks at him. 'Then why are you crying?' he asks. And the old man says, 'I forgot where Ilive !' "