Neither of them was watching Frankie McCarthy.
Suddenly Frankie was behind Michael. And a blade was at the boy’s throat.
“Okay, stop right there,” Frankie shouted at the Golem, gesturing with a knife. Michael saw it glint in the light. “You tell this rat stool pigeon to unlock the fuckin’ door. You don’t do what I say, I cut his throat.”
Michael was terrified, but he forced himself to be calm. Nobody on earth would ever again make him go in his pants.
“It’s not locked, Frankie,” Michael said.
“I don’t believe you. You got the key. I seen you put it in your pocket.”
Michael slipped the key from his pocket and Frankie grabbed it. The knife remained at Michael’s neck.
“Now, you, big boy,” he said to the Golem. “You go in the back and lie down.”
The Golem did not move. He stared at Frankie McCarthy. His concentration was so fierce that a halo of energy seemed to rise off his head. Michael could see holes in his chest from the bullets, but no blood. And he could see a smile flickering on the dark face. If he were Jackie Robinson, he would now steal home. The Golem’s face became a hard grid.
And then Frankie McCarthy’s knife began to melt.
Michael could feel the heat on his neck. Then a warm dripping that was not blood. And not molten metal either.
Frankie backed up. His hand was full of wax. His face was full of terror. He turned to the door, stabbing at the lock with the key, his hand palsied by fear. The Golem stepped between him and the door. Frankie backed away in surrender.
“All right, enough,” Frankie whispered. “I don’t get this.”
“Sure you do, Frankie,” Michael said. “Don’t you ever read Crime Does Not Pay comics? This is the part near the end.”
“Please,” Frankie said, his face runny with fear. “Whatta ya want me to say? I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry about all that shit. You know… Mister G… I lost it, know what I mean? Dumb Hebe, buttin’ in. There I was, just havin’ a little fun with your friend Sonny and — Please. And your mother, hey, man, I was in the can that night.” The Golem took a step toward him. “And what’s that rabbi doing around here anyways? We ask him for a few bucks, you know, ’cause the guy’s got a secret treasure in there, and he gives us some lip. What’s he expect?”
The Golem inched forward, no expression on his dark face, and now Michael could smell the odor he wanted to smell. Coming from Frankie’s trousers. Tears of shame welled in Frankie’s eyes. His voice rose.
“Please, kid,” he said whimpering now. “Gimme a break. What’s done is done, right? Let bygones be bygones. Come on…”
The Golem looked at Michael. The boy could hear Father Heaney’s voice: We believe in an Old Testament God. He nodded, and the Golem went for Frankie. He slapped McCarthy three times. Each slap broke something. Then he bowed formally to Michael before kicking out the glass in the front door.
He shoved Frankie ahead of him into the blizzard. He reached for the banner welcoming Frankie home, pulled it down, and then tied an end of it around Frankie’s waist, making a crude leash. The black dog tore at Frankie’s trousers, shredding them. Michael stepped over the shards of broken glass and followed them into the street, carrying the Golem’s cape.
Holding the end of the banner, the Golem pulled Frankie to the middle of the avenue. He smacked him again, knocking him down, then grabbed his ankles. He snapped each of them. Frankie’s screams filled the air. Windows opened. Michael shivered, but not from the cold.
“Remember, no killing!” Michael shouted into the howling wind. “We save him for the cops!”
The Golem looked at Michael, inclined his head slightly. Then he grasped the end of the banner tied to Frankie’s waist and swung him around. Around and around and around, like a hammer thrower. With Frankie’s feet flopping loosely and his arms straight out as the speed increased.
And then, with one final, immense effort, the Golem let him go.
Frankie flew high through the driving August snow and landed with a skittering crunch on the top of the marquee of the Venus. His screams turned to moans. Well, Michael thought, he won’t be hurting anyone for a long, long time. And now, barely audible above the howling wind was Frankie McCarthy’s pleading voice. Help me, he called through the snow. Please, somebody help me, please.
The Golem paused and then turned to Michael, who was standing at the curb, holding the cape. The black dog howled in triumph and farewell and then disappeared into the snow. Michael walked to the Golem and handed him the cape, thinking: I’d better call the cops to pick up Frankie. And he now noticed that the Golem’s eyes were like tombs, as old as the Bible. The Golem slung the cape across his shoulders and fiddled with the Jackie button until it closed. Then he put a huge hand on Michael’s shoulder and together they vanished into the storm.
36
When they reached Garibaldi Street, they faced a border. Behind them was a blizzard. Across the street, there was no snow. Before leaving the safety of the storm, the Golem once again placed his hands on Michael’s head. They walked without being seen by sweating men who were emptying the bars to look at the snow falling a few blocks away. Kids poured out of houses. Women called them home. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing. Snow that fell on six square blocks and nowhere else? Snow in August?
In the lobby of the hospital, interns talked about freak meteorological conditions and how hailstones often fell before thunderstorms, and then one of the nurses said that nothing had been the same anywhere since they dropped that damned atom bomb and all of them laughed. They did not see the white boy with the slight limp. And they did not see the huge black man who was with him.
Michael led the way up the back stairs to the seventh floor. He cracked open the stairwell door and looked down the corridor. The nurses were crowded at a picture window at the far end, trying to see the storm, chattering and giggling in an amazed way. Michael and the Golem stepped into the bright white hall and walked away from the nurses to the room of Rabbi Hirsch.
He was asleep. His battered face was bloated and raw. Tubes were still dripping into his good arm.
The Golem looked down at the rabbi and his eyes filled with pity and tears. Michael wished that the clock could be rolled back, the rabbi healed. The Golem gestured to Michael to close the door. Then he leaned down and kissed the rabbi on the forehead. He placed his giant hands to the stricken man’s temples. He touched the word for Truth on his own brow and then touched the rabbi’s lips.
The swelling instantly receded. The flushed raw color evaporated. The Golem gripped the bottom of the plaster cast and gently tore it apart and then dropped it on the floor. The rabbi’s eyelids fluttered, his mouth tried to form words, to decode alphabets in the dark.
The Golem motioned to Michael to find the rabbi’s clothes, pinching the boy’s shirt to explain, as the boy had explained to him. Michael opened the closet beside the sink. The clothes were on a hanger. He lifted them out.
Rabbi Hirsch opened his eyes.
He fixed the Golem in a steady gaze, without wonder or astonishment; his eyes seemed almost surgical in their objectivity. Then he turned to Michael.
“God exists,” he whispered, and his eyes widened in wonder. “Not just sin.”
The Golem carried him home in his arms. The snow was now gone without a trace. They could hear sirens in the night. Michael opened the synagogue door on Kelly Street, glancing down the block at the turning dome lights of the police cars and the blinkers of the ambulances, all clustered around the poolroom. The Golem carried the rabbi into his cramped room and sat him in a chair.