He waved an arm toward the back of the church and said something so fast that I couldn’t follow it. Before I could ask for a repetition, two little boys ran over to tug at his arm and demand—as far as I could tell—a ruling on some dispute. I was immediately forgotten in the more important business of the moment.
I walked past the front of the church and found a narrow walkway leading to the rear. Chunks of pavement were missing, but someone had made a gallant attempt to spruce up the area. Scraggly rosebushes surrounded a dejected–looking statue that I assumed was St. Remigio himself. I picked an empty bottle of Four Roses from behind him and looked for a garbage bin. Finally, not wanting to present myself to the priest carrying a bottle, I tucked it into my handbag and rang a bell labeled FATHER LOU.
After a longish wait, when I was thinking the soccer coach might have been explaining that Father Lou was away, a harsh squawk startled me. I hadn’t noticed the intercom to the left of the door.
“This is V. I. Warshawski. I want to talk to the priest about one of his parishioners.” I didn’t think I could explain my errand intelligibly at a shout through a speaker.
After another long wait, the dead bolt snapped back and an old man in a T–shirt and slippers stood in the doorway. His upper body and neck had the thickness of a weight lifter. He looked at me as if assessing whether to pick me up and throw me off the stoop.
“Father Lou?”
“Are you with the police or the press?” He had the gravelly voice of the old Irish South Side.
“No. I’m a private investigator—”
“Whether you’re private or public, I won’t have you digging around in that boy’s past, trying to prove some slander about him.” He turned back inside and started to shut the door.
I put out a hand to brace the door; it took all my strength to keep a big enough crack open for me to cry out, “I’m not slandering Lucian Frenada. I’ve been trying to stop the Herald–Star from running their story on him and drugs. I’ve been trying to talk to Lacey Dowell, because she knows something about the true reason he was killed, but she won’t talk to me. I was hoping you might know something.”
The pressure on the other side eased. Father Lou reappeared in the entrance, frowning. “If you aren’t digging up dirt on Lucy, what’s your involvement?”
“Please. Can we sit down? I can explain the whole story to you, but not standing out here in the heat with one foot in the door hoping you won’t shut it on me.”
“This is my rest time,” the priest grumbled. “Everyone around here knows not to bother me from six to seven. It’s the only way an old man like me can keep running a big parish.”
That must have been what the soccer coach was trying to tell me—the priest is back there, but don’t interrupt his nap. I was starting to mutter an apology when he added, “But Lucy’s death—I can’t sleep anyway. I might as well talk to you.”
He led me into a wide dark vestibule. Despite his age he moved easily, his walk a graceful bounce. Dancers’ legs, boxers’ legs.
“Mind your step. I don’t put lights on in the hall—have to save every nickel in a poor parish; don’t want the cardinal shutting us down because we’re too expensive.”
Father Lou unlocked a small side room, furnished with the heavy remains of the previous century. Eight chairs with ornate legs stood primly around a heavy table. A blackened painting of Jesus in a crown of thorns hung over an empty grate.
The priest motioned me to one of the chairs. “I’m going to make tea. Make yourself comfortable.”
I did my best in the wooden chair. The flowers carved into the back dug into my shoulder blades. I shifted forward. On the table a plaster statue of the Virgin smiled at me sadly. Her lips were chipped and the paint had flaked from her left eye, but the right one stared at me patiently. She was wearing a cloak of faded taffeta, painstakingly trimmed in handmade lace.
Father Lou returned with a battered metal tray holding a teapot and two cups as I was fingering the fabric. “A hundred years old, that lace, we have it on the altar, too. What did you say your name was?”
When I repeated it he tried to talk to me in Polish. I had to explain that I knew only a handful of words, gleaned from my father’s mother; my own mother, an Italian immigrant, spoke to me in her language. At that he switched to Italian and grinned with delight at my surprise.
“I’ve been here a long time. Baptized Italians here, married Poles; now I offer the mass in Spanish. Neighborhood’s always been poor; wasn’t always this dangerous. Parish council suggested soccer. Seems to be good for the little kids, lets them run off some of that energy.”
“But you were a boxer?” I was guessing, from his gait.