“Oh, yeah. I boxed for Loyola in the forties, then I found my vocation but kept boxing. I still run a club here. St. Remigio’s remains the school to beat—gives the boys something to be proud of. We can’t play football against those big suburban schools. We can’t get enough equipment for eleven boys, let alone fifty or sixty the way they do. But I can outfit boxers. Lucy was one of my best. I was that proud of him.”

His jaw worked. For a minute he looked like a tired old man, his pale eyes filming over, then he shook himself, an unconscious motion, shaking off one more punch.

He looked at me aggressively, as if to make sure I didn’t try to pity him for his weakness. “The police came around suggesting Lucy was running drugs through his factory. They wanted me to spy on him. I told them what I thought of that. Then the papers and the television. Mexican boy makes good, so he must be selling drugs. All that innuendo—I saw what the Herald–Star’s been saying. This boy who drove an old car so he could pay his sister’s children’s fees here at Remigio? They couldn’t leave him alone.”

He stopped to drink some tea. I had some too, to be polite. It was light and flowery and surprisingly refreshing in the heat.

“When did you last talk to him?” I asked.

“He came here to mass once or twice a week. I’m thinking it was last Tuesday. He filled in as a server when he saw that the kid who was supposed to do it hadn’t shown. They used to laugh at him when he was fourteen, when I talked him into coming here, do some training and serve at the mass—little altar boy, that’s what they called him—but then he started winning boxing matches, and the tune they sang on the streets changed in a hurry.

“I’m getting sidetracked. I don’t like to think about him being dead, that’s all. It’s easy to say people are with Jesus when they die, and I even believe it’s true, but we need Lucy here. I need him, anyway. Jesus wept when Lazarus died—He’s not going to condemn me for crying over Lucy.”

He picked up the statue of the Madonna and twisted it around, smoothing the taffeta cape over her hips. I sat still. He’d speak when he was ready, but if I prodded him he might turn pugnacious again.