To Kill a Cardinal (1992)

Michael Rumaker's novel, published by Arthur Mann Kaye in 1992, follows one Sunday morning in Manhattan on which The Cardinal prepares to say high mass at The Cathedral while an ACT UP demonstration gathers outside. In an abandoned tenement on Avenue D, Peter The Poet paces his squat with a semi-automatic pistol hidden in the kitchen cupboard, Deirdre The Rad Dyke prays to The Goddess and plans to sock The Cardinal, and Tom The Trickster, once of The Stock Exchange, climbs the cathedral roofs dressed as a roofer; the skinhead Skint rides the subway uptown with his own plans. (Open Library)

Watches

Timex (unidentified model): In his roach-infested squat on Avenue D, ravenous at the thought of the murder he plans, Peter The Poet holds his Timex up to the weak light from the airshaft window: 7 a.m., an hour before he will leave for The Cathedral. He glances at it again as the morning gets on and checks it once more cutting north up Avenue D, figuring the eight long blocks crosstown and fifty short blocks uptown at about an hour, with a stop at The Shrine on West 28th Street. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: He held his Timex up to the weak light from the narrow airshaft window. 7 a.m. He'd leave for The Cathedral in another hour. He knew once he got going, he'd calm down a bit. (Michael Rumaker, To Kill a Cardinal, scan cataloged as Arthur Mann Kaye, 1992, p. 29; he glances at the Timex again on pp. 71 and 75; the novel names him Peter The Poet from p. 1; Internet Archive scan OCR)

Timex (unidentified model): Deirdre, who lives by the moon, sun and tidal times of The Goddess and is late for everything, including ACT UP meetings, wears a Timex only when she has to be somewhere in man-made time. It was a gift from Tom The Trickster, and her lover Kitty bought an extra-long band from a shop for big women so that it would go round her wrist. She checks it after her dawn prayer to see that it is time to get ready for The Demo, and again after breakfast at Kitty's, finding a little time to spare for the sofa bed. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: She checked her Timex watch. Because she lived not in man-made time but in the moon- and sun- and tidal times of The Goddess, in the rhythms of her own body in rhythm with the earth, she was late for everything, including ACT UP meetings. So the watch had been a gift from Tom The Trickster, who may have left the men's club of The Stock Exchange but still kept time to its clocks. (Michael Rumaker, To Kill a Cardinal, scan cataloged as Arthur Mann Kaye, 1992, p. 57; the extra-long band is on the same page and she checks the Timex again on p. 106; the novel names her Deirdre The Rad Dyke from p. 30; Internet Archive scan OCR)

Timex (unidentified model): Tom The Trickster, the squat's master fare-beater, who left the men's club of The Stock Exchange and opens the corner hydrant with a stolen firefighter's wrench, climbs from The Chancellory roof over the pitched slate roofs of The Cathedral toward the north steeple, soot-black to the chest and passing for a roofer when a mounted policeman glances up. Straddling a ridge, he checks his Timex and sees that he is right on schedule for the climb to his goal. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: Checking his Timex, he saw he was right on schedule, that he had just enough time to make it over the adjacent roofs and the main roof to his goal. (Michael Rumaker, To Kill a Cardinal, scan cataloged as Arthur Mann Kaye, 1992, p. 119, in the passage that follows his climb on p. 118 and names Tom The Trickster on the same page; Internet Archive scan OCR)