Where the Dark Streets Go Read Online Free PDF

afternoons—and other places. He’d come home sometimes walking along with Carlos or carrying him on his shoulders. Home…a shirt, a razor, a toothbrush, and a pair of clean shorts hung up to dry on the back of the chair.”
    “If the women gossiped to your husband they will to the police too, you know.”
    “No. You’re wrong about that too, Father. They wouldn’t tell the police the time of day. It’s up to me what I tell them. Me and Dan.”
    It was she who was wrong: one of her neighbors had already told the police that Phelan did not like Muller.
    “They’re bound to ask questions,” he said, “the man living in your house.”
    “It’s a back room, separate. Its own door. The john’s in the hall.”
    They were both avoiding the real question. Phelan’s capacity for violence. McMahon made up his mind he would not be the one to bring it into the open. “You ought to go home and wait for your husband.”
    “What if he doesn’t come home? The police will want to know why.”
    “Could you tell them why?”
    “No, but…”
    “I’d just leave it at no, Mrs. Phelan.”
    “I will, but they won’t, Father. Dan has an assault record. He cut up a man with a bottle once.”
    “Over you?”
    “Hell, no,” she said bitterly. “Over a dog that lifted his leg on Dan’s shoe.”

4
    A T FIVE MINUTES PAST five McMahon approached the precinct headquarters. He noticed that one of the two white globes that hung on either side of the entrance had been smashed. It was odd, the association, but he thought of the words, “Love Power,” scratched on the sidewalk outside the doomed building. Not so odd. One was as sure a sign of the times as the other. He also saw Carlos and his mother before they saw him. Mrs. Morales gave the boy a push out the door ahead of her, but then, seeing the priest on the steps, she caught her son’s curly head and hugged him against her. Carlos responded as limply to affection as he did to abuse.
    “He’s a good boy, Father, but sometimes I don’t know what to do with him.” When she spoke the gold of her teeth glittered.
    The priest ruffled the boy’s hair with his hand.
    “His brother, he is the bad one.” She jerked her head toward the station, which indicated that the older boy was in now with the police. “He hates the police. Why? They have a job to do like everybody else. He would like them to beat him, that’s how much he hates them. He was the same with his father. I do not understand. If you speak to him, Father, tell him, please, to be more polite?” The pleading of her voice was as ancient as motherhood.
    “I will,” McMahon said. What he did not say was that Pedrito Morales had little more regard for priests than he did for the police. Or his own father. But she knew that too. The conversation was its own kind of ritual, not entirely false, but the forms barely holding together.
    At the bottom of the steps she turned and called after him: “Father, he was a good man, Mr. Muller. Everybody wants he should have a nice funeral. You know?” By the rubbing together of her fingers she suggested money. “Come to my house, Father. The people liked him. They will all give something.” That, he felt, was genuine.
    He asked for Brogan at the desk. The sergeant directed him to a room on the second floor. He went up by way of a staircase, the color and smell of which put him in mind of a cheap hotel. The windows were wire-meshed on the outside, sealing in the dirt of generations. He met Brogan and Lieutenant Traynor coming out of the room with Pedrito, a tall, skinny boy of eighteen, sallow and sullen, with a mop of black hair and a scraggle of beard.
    The best he could do for him at the moment was to acknowledge an acquaintanceship. “Hello, Pedrito.”
    The boy nodded curtly.
    “Keep your nose clean, young fellow. We’ll be watching you,” Traynor said.
    “ Cochinos ,” Pedrito snarled. Pigs. But by then he had reached the stairs.
    “Makes you want to love them,