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.