1
THERE WAS A BANNER over the masthead of the New York Sentinel that night, a banner in red letters that read,
YOU COULD BE NEW YORK’S LUCKIEST FATHER! WIN $100,000 FOR FATHER’S DAY.
Under the masthead, there was a picture of the president of the United States and the word SMASHED in thick black letters. Dr. Michael Pride didn’t know what the president of the United States had done to deserve the headline, but, he thought, coming down the stairs from the third floor at a run, leaning over to pick the paper off the floor and throw it in a garbage can, the president deserved it a hell of a lot less than the people he was now about to see. Dr. Michael Pride felt that way about a lot of the headlines the Sentinel stuck next to the president of the United States, but he wasn’t a political man and he wasn’t going to complain about it. It wouldn’t have done any good. The Sentinel was owned—as this clinic was to a large part financed—by good old Charlie van Straadt, the Citizen Kane of his time. Charlie van Straadt liked two-hundred-foot luxury yachts, one-hundred-room apartments in Trump Tower, and conspicuous charity. He also liked Republicans of the Neanderthal variety. This president was a Democrat and a disaster by definition. But Michael had more important things to think about.
There was a copy of the New York Post on a molded-plastic folding chair in the corridor as Michael headed for the back of the building and the stairs that led down to the emergency-room door. The headline said, CAUGHT and the picture underneath it was of Michael himself. It had been taken two days ago and showed Michael being led to a police car in handcuffs with a group of men who looked as if they could provide a pictorial definition of the word degenerate. Behind them, the neon storefront of the place they’d all been in when it was raided said, HOT BUNS HOT BUNS HOT BUNS.
Everything in New York takes place in capital letters, Michael thought, and then he was into it, at the bottom of the stairs, in the middle of the action. It was a Saturday night with a difference.
Actually, it wasn’t even Saturday night, not technically. It was six o’clock in the evening and still more than a little light. It had been an unseasonably hot day and the heat was lingering. Michael was reminded of the first long summer he had spent in the city. He had been an intern at Columbia Presbyterian. He had been able to afford neither the time nor the money for air-conditioned rooms. He had spent a lot of time sitting on fire escapes, letting the sweat trickle down his neck and dreaming about being a rich-and-famous specialist, with a big house in Connecticut and an apartment off Fifth Avenue and a portfolio full of real estate deals for the Internal Revenue Service to worry about.
He could have been a rich-and-famous specialist.
That was one of the things everyone agreed about, even papers like the New York Post. He could have been someplace else. But he wasn’t.
He was standing in the middle of the small emergency room of the Sojourner Truth Health Center, which he had founded, just off Lenox Avenue in Harlem. He was standing knee-deep in bleeding teenage boys and frazzled nuns. He was wondering how he was going to get through it all this time. Every once in a while, he caught one of the boys staring at him, proof positive that the pundits were all wrong. These kids could read just fine if they had something that interested them to read. Michael would stand back and the kid would look away, ashamed. Ashamed of what? HOT BUNS HOT BUNS HOT BUNS. Michael saw little Sister Margarita Rose going by with a tray of instruments and grabbed her by the wide end of her sleeve. Sister Margarita Rose came to an abrupt and panicked stop and only relaxed when she saw who had hold of her. She wasn’t going to last long, Michael thought. She’d only been here since the first of the year, and he wouldn’t give her another three full months.
“Oh,” she said, when she saw who was holding her. “Oh, Dr. Pride. Excuse me. I was on my way to get these sterilized.”
“Stop and talk to me for a minute,” Michael said. “What’s the situation? Has anybody got any news from out there?”
“News?” Sister Margarita Rose said.
“I’ve got news,” Sister Augustine said. Unlike Sister Margarita Rose, Sister Augustine was neither young nor delicate, and she didn’t wear a habit. Sister Augustine was somewhere in her fifties, five feet tall, a hundred and forty plus pounds, and fond of velour sweatsuits. She was wearing one now in bright purple, with a little black veil on the back of her head.
Michael let Sister Margarita Rose go. “Hello, Augie. I haven’t seen you all day.”
“I had four deliveries today,” Augie said. “Never mind about that. The Blood Brothers have the block between One Forty-fifth and One Forty-sixth streets on Lenox blocked off. The Cyclones staged a raid over there about five thirty. The casualties are just starting to come in. The Cyclones have assault rifles.”