"Nuts, right?"

"What is it?"

"Mary's in there," Ma said, getting bumped by the ripple effect of the crowd he was holding back.

"Mary who."

"Mary the Virgin. She showed up in the condensation on one of the freezer doors last night. Word travels fast around here, no?" Taking another bump from behind.

Then Eric saw a second crowd shaping up across the street from the one at the side windows: a crowd watching the crowd, this crew mostly young, white, and bemused.

"She's he-ere," one of them called out.

Eric was always good at weaseling his way through a mob, had plenty of practice just trying to get to the reservations pulpit at Berkmann's dozens of times a day, so he was able to pop into the narrow deli without anyone behind him calling him out. Directly inside, one of the Yemeni brothers, Nazir, tall and bony with an Adam's apple like a tomahawk, was playing cashier-doorman, standing with a fat stack of singles in one hand, the other palm-up, fingertips flexing towards the incoming pilgrims.

"Say hello to Mary," his voice singsong and brisk, "she loves you very much."

The Virgin was a sixteen-inch-high gourd-shaped outline molded in frost on the glass doors fronting the beer and soda shelves, its smoothly tapered top slightly inclined to one side above its broader lower mass, reminding him vaguely of all the art-history Marys tilting their covered heads to regard the baby in their arms, but really, it was kind of a stretch.

The people kneeling around Eric held up photo phones and camcorders, left offerings of grocery-store bouquets, candles, balloons-one saying YOU'RE SO SPECIAL-handwritten notes, and other tokens, but mainly they just stared expressionless, some with clasped hands, until the second Yemeni brother, Tariq, stepped up, said, "Mary says bye now," and ushered everyone out through the rear delivery door to clear space for the next group.

By the time Eric made it around to the front of the store again, Fenton Ma had been spelled by an older cop, his shield reading lo presto.

"Can I ask you something?" Eric said lightly, not knowing this guy. "Have you seen her in there?"

"Who, the Virgin?" Lo Presto looked at him neutrally. "Depends what you mean by 'seen.'" "You know. Seen."

"Well, I'll tell you." He looked off, palming his chest pocket for a cigarette. "About eight this morning? A couple of guys from the Ninth Squad went in there, you know, curious? And kneeling right in front of that thing is Servisio Tucker, had killed his wife up on Avenue D maybe six months ago. Now, these guys had been turning that neighborhood upside down looking for him ever since, right? And this morning alls they did was waltz on in and there he was, on his knees. He looks right up at them, tears in his eyes, puts out his hands for cuffs, and says, 'OK. Good. I'm ready.' "

"Huh." Eric entranced, experiencing a fleeting rush of optimism. "So . . ." Lo Presto finally fired up, exhaled luxuriously. "Did I see her? Who's to say. But if what I just told you isn't a fucking miracle, I don't know what is."

On bright quiet mornings like this, when Berkmann's was empty, delivered from the previous night's overpacked boozy freneticness, the place was an air palace, and there was nowhere better to be in this neighborhood than sitting in a lacquered wicker chair immersed in the serene luxury of a cafe au lait and The New York Times, sunlight splashing off the glazed ecru tiles, the racks of cryptically stencil-numbered wine bottles, the industrial-grade chicken-wired glass and partially desilvered mirrors, all found in various warehouses in New Jersey by the owner, Harry Steele: restaurant dressed as theater dressed as nostalgia. For Eric personally, the first few moments of coming in here every day were like the first few moments inside a major-league ballpark: getting that whooshy rush of space and geometric perfection, commuting as he did from a three-room dumbbell flat with one of its two windows overlooking the buildings interior airshaft, which was supposed to provide cross ventilation but in fact had served, since the year of the McKinley assassination, as a glorified garbage chute.

But with nothing to do this morning but rerack the newspapers on their faux-aged wooden dowels or lean against his pulpit, shaking like a flake from drinking coffee after coffee served up by the two probationary bartenders, even that momentary pleasure was denied him. In his jumpy boredom he took a moment to study the new hires behind the stick: a green-eyed black kid with dreadlocks named Cleveland and a white kid-Spike? Mike?-who. Was leaning on the zinc bartop and talking to a chubby friend who had successfully breached the procession. This friend, Eric could tell, was even more hungover than he was.

People said that after fourteen years of on-and-off working for Harry Steele, Eric had come to look like him; both had those dour baggy eyes like Serge Gainsbourg or Lou Reed, the same indifferent physique; the difference being that with Harry Steele, this lack of physical allure just added to the mystique of his golden touch.

A waitress from Grouchie's who had all seven dwarfs tattooed in miniature tramping up the inside of her thigh had once told Eric that people were either cats or dogs, and that he was most definitely a dog, compulsively trying to anticipate everyone's needs, a shitty thing to say to someone you just slept with, but fair enough he guessed, because right now, despite his constant "I am more than this" mantra, his boss's helpless exasperation had him humming with the desire to act.

At least Steele was no longer alone, sharing his small table now with his dealer, Paulie Shaw, a sharp-faced ratter whose alert eyes, spitfire delivery, and generally tense aura reminded Eric of too many shadow players from back in the shame days. Passing on a fifth cup of coffee, he watched as Paulie opened an aluminum attache case and from its velvet, molded interior removed a number of rectangular glass photo negatives, each in its own protective sheath.

" 'Ludlow Street Sweatshop,'" holding it up by its edges. " 'Blind Beggar, 1888.' 'Passing the Growler.' 'Bandits Roost'-that one right there, as I told you on the phone, worth all the rest combined. And last but not least, 'Mott Street Barracks.'"

"Fantastic," Steele murmured, eyes once again straying to the milagro line, to his empty cafe.

"Each one personally hand-tinted by Riis himself for his lectures," Paulie said. "The man was light-years ahead of his time, total multimedia, had sixty to a hundred of these fading in and out of each other on a huge screen accompanied by music? Those uptown dowagers had to be crying their balls off."

"OK," Steele said, half listening.

"OK?" Paulie ducked down to find his eyes. "For the, for what we, for the number we discussed?"

"Yeah, yeah." Steele's knees pumping under the table.

The hungover kid sitting at the bar abruptly laughed at something his friend said, the rude sound of it bouncing off the tiled walls.

"Mike, right?" Eric tilted his chin at the probationary bartender.

"Ike," he said easily, still leaning forward on the zinc like he owned the place.

He had a shaved head and a menagerie of retro tattoos inside both forearms-hula girls, mermaids, devil heads, panthers-but his smile was as clean as a cornfield; the kid, Eric thought, like a poster boy for the neighborhood.

"Ike, go see if they want anything."

"You got it, boss."

"Chop-chop," said his friend.

As Ike came from behind the bar and headed for the back deuce, Paulie pulled up the velvet interior of his booty case to reveal a second layer of goods, from which he took out a large burnt-orange paperback.

"You're an Orwell man, right?" he said to Steele. "Road to Wigan Pier, Victor Gollancz Left Wing Book Club galleys, 1937. What you're looking at right now doesn't even exist."

"Just the Riis plates." Steele's eyes yet again straying to that barely moving line. "I cannot fucking believe this," he blurted to the room at large.

"How about Henry Miller," Paulie said quickly, burrowing into his case. "You into Henry Miller?"

Ike's shadow fell across the table, Paulie half twisting around and rearing back to eyeball him.