Hit and Nun (3 page)

Lucille’s footsteps rang out against the marble floor, and she got up on her tiptoes as she moved forward. It just didn’t seem right to go making so much noise in church, even if it was empty.

As she approached the altar she dutifully paid attention to the flowers. They looked fine to her. Not that she was no expert or nothing. Frankie knew she liked her flowers already arranged and always went to Stahl–Del Duca in Summit and had them make something up for her for Mother’s Day and their anniversary.

Lucille would have lingered in the church in order to stay away from Jeannette for as long as possible, but she kept thinking of that slice of pie growing cold on her desk.

She tiptoed back down the aisle and was about to grab the handle of the heavy wooden front door when someone pushed it open.

Lucille jumped, and she could feel her heart thumping crazily in her chest. She hoped she wasn’t going to have no heart attack on account of being scared like that.

A man walked into the church and at first Lucille didn’t recognize him. He was real pasty white—almost like one of them albinos—and he was walking funny, kind of bent over with his hand pressed to his side.

“Sal!” Lucille exclaimed suddenly.

What was he doing in church when Tiffany was waiting for him over at the pizza parlor? Father Brennan didn’t do no confessions on Monday—everybody knew that.

He stared at Lucille. His eyes looked real funny, like they were about to pop out of his head.

“It’s Lucille,” she said to him. “Lucille Mazzarella. We get pizza from your place all the time.”

At first Sal didn’t say anything, and then Lucille noticed his lips move.

“What?” She moved closer so she could hear.

“Help,” he said weakly.

“What’s the matter? Are you sick or something?”

He pulled his hand away from his side. It was covered in blood.

Lucille screamed, and Sal sagged against one of the pews.

“You stay here, and I’ll go call nine-one-one,” Lucille said as she reached for the door.

“No.” He spoke more forcefully this time.

“But you’re bleeding. What happened? Did you have an accident or something?”

Sal shook his head, and even that small motion seemed to tire him. “I need Father Brennan.”

“He ain’t here. He’s off at some luncheon for the archbishop.”

“I want to be baptized. I’ve never been baptized.”

“Now?” Lucille asked incredulously. “Don’t you think we ought to get you fixed up first?” She was all for people being baptized, but there were priorities, after all.

“I’m not going to make it.” Sal slid to the floor, his back against the end of a pew. His face had grown even paler. “Please! Get a priest.”

“But there’s no one here.” Lucille twisted the hem of her top between her hands.

She didn’t know what to do. It didn’t look like Sal could hang on until Father Brennan got back from his lunch, especially if she didn’t get back to the office and call 911 right away.

She was thinking furiously. “Maybe I can do it,” she blurted out. “We learned way back in catechism class that if someone is in danger of dying, and they haven’t been baptized, anybody can administer the sacrament. I remember I always hoped that one day I’d be able to help someone in need.”

“Looks like I’m the answer to your prayers then.”

Sal’s breath had turned raspy and Lucille figured he wasn’t long for this world. No sense asking him a bunch of questions when there was no time to waste.

Lucille ran to the Holy Water font and filled her cupped hands with water. It dribbled down her pants leg as she ran back to Sal, but there was no help for it.

She splashed a drop on his forehead. “Sal, I baptize you in the name of Father”—another splash of water—“the Son”—Lucille opened her hands and let the last drops of water land on Sal’s forehead—“and the Holy Spirit.”

Sal’s eyes closed, and he slumped to the floor. Lucille checked, but his chest was no longer rising and falling.

He was dead.

For a couple of seconds Lucille was paralyzed. Not that this was the first time she’d encountered a dead body, but it was hardly the sort of thing you became used to no matter how often it happened. For a minute she wondered if she was some kind of jinx and maybe she ought to get Father Brennan to perform one of them exorcisms.

She closed her eyes, but when she opened them, Sal was still lying there dead. She had to get the police—STAT—like they said on them hospital shows Bernadette liked to watch.

She pulled open the door and made her way across the grass toward the path to the rectory. It felt like she was moving in slow motion, like through quicksand or something. Finally she reached the door to the church office and pulled it open.

She burst into the room, breathing hard as if she’d run all the way. Jeannette spun around and stared at her, her eyes going all beady and round. Lucille reached for the phone on her desk and noticed that a hunk of cheese had been pulled off her slice of pizza. She glared at Jeannette as she listened to the phone ringing on the other end, but Jeannette didn’t look away. She didn’t even turn red or nothing.

Finally the dispatcher answered, and Lucille explained the situation. She had to say it all twice because apparently she wasn’t making no sense. At least that’s what the woman on the other end of the phone kept telling her.

“What is going on?” Jeannette asked as soon as Lucille hung up.

“We got ourselves a dead body over in the church. Sal from Sal’s Pizza across the street.”

Jeannette gasped.

“I’ve got to get back there. The cops are on their way.”

She was about to leave but at the last minute turned around and grabbed her slice of pizza. She had half a mind to toss it in the trash knowing that Jeannette had touched it, but she was still hungry. Good thing this tragedy hadn’t hurt her appetite none.

As Lucille walked across the green, she could hear sirens in the distance, and by the time she reached the front door of the church, patrol cars were pulling into the lot and policemen were spilling out. An ambulance pulled in right behind them.

Lucille stuffed the last bite of pizza into her mouth and held the door for the patrolmen who rushed past her. As soon as the two men wheeling a gurney were inside, she let the door close and went to join them.

“Stand back, this is a crime scene,” one of the uniforms said.

“Crime scene? What are you talking about, Gabe? You mean he was . . .”

Gabe nodded his head. “You going to be okay, Aunt Lucille? You want to sit down for a bit?”

As a matter of fact, Lucille wasn’t feeling too good at all. The pizza was beginning to repeat on her. She covered her mouth and burped softly. She knew she had a pack of antacids in her purse, but she’d left it back at the office. She thought of going to get it, but she didn’t want to miss nothing.

Lucille was still hesitating when the door to the church opened. A shaft of light flashed across the floor and was quickly extinguished as the door shut. A man entered, and although it was hard to see his features on account of it was on the dark side, Lucille immediately knew who it was. She recognized his swagger as he walked toward the cops assembled around Sal’s body.

He came toe to toe with Lucille and looked her up and down. He was working a toothpick in the corner of his mouth and had his hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket.

“
Again
, Lucille?” he said.

“Richie.” The name burst out of Lucille with a combination of relief and dread.

“You keep stumbling over bodies like this and I’m gonna start wondering, you know?”

Lucille scowled at him even though Flo kept telling her that was going to cause wrinkles. “I didn’t have nothing to do with it, I swear.”

“Do you know the guy?”

Lucille shook her head. “Yeah, it’s Sal from Sal’s Pizzeria across the street.”

“He got a last name?”

“Something with a
z.
It sounds kind of like them machines they use to clean the ice during hockey games.”

“A Zamboni?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“That’s his name?”

Lucille scowled again. “No, but something like that.”

“Zambino,” one of the cops in the back piped up. “Sal Zambino.”

Sambucco gave a gusty sigh and shifted the toothpick from the right side of his mouth to the left. “Did you order a pizza from him or something? I mean, who comes to church in the middle of the afternoon on a Monday?” Sambucco looked around. “I don’t see any pizza.” He sniffed. “But I swear I smell it.”

“I picked up a couple of slices at Sal’s before coming over here. My clothes must have picked up the scent.” Lucille sniffed at her sleeve.

“Were you meeting him here or something? What they call one of them rendez-vous?” Sambucco raised his eyebrows up and down, and the cops chuckled.

“No! Me and Frankie’s been together for over twenty-five years. You know that, Richie. No way I’d be meeting another man.” Lucille thought back to the time she and Sambucco almost . . . She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Sambucco.

“Okay, okay, you don’t have to get all bent out of shape about it. It was just a question.” He chomped down on the toothpick. “He say anything to you?”

“Yeah. He said he wanted to be baptized.”

“What the . . .” Sambucco blurted out.

Lucille gave him a stern look.

“Seriously? He said he wanted to be baptized?”

“Yes. And I remembered that back in catechism class the nuns told us we could baptize someone in an emergency, and this looked like an emergency to me so I got some Holy Water and I—”

“So let me get this straight. The guy’s bleeding to death.” Sambucco gestured toward the glistening red puddle surrounding the body. “And he says he wants to be
baptized
? He doesn’t ask you to call an ambulance or nothing?”

Lucille shook her head.

“Any idea what killed him?” Sambucco turned and looked at the cops and paramedics gathered around the body.

“Stab wound,” a short, heavyset guy in the back said. “Looks like it anyway.”

He kept bouncing from the ball of one foot to the other, what Lucille’s mother would have called
having ants in his pants.

“We’ll know more when the ME gets hold of him.”

Lucille thought of one of them cop shows she watched with Frankie, where the medical examiner cut open the body to find out what killed the guy. Suddenly she was sorry she’d eaten both those slices of pizza.

Sambucco looked at Lucille. “I don’t suppose he said anything about how he came to be stabbed? Or who stabbed him?”

“No. All he said was he wanted to be baptized.”

Sambucco let out another gusty sigh. “Why is nothing ever easy?”

One of the cops had disappeared outside and was now back, coming down the aisle with a large black plastic bag in his arms. He laid it out on the marble floor and unzipped it. The harsh sound set Lucille’s teeth on edge.

Sambucco seemed to have noticed and took pity on her. “Lucille, look, you can go now. If there’s anything else you can think to tell us, give me a call, okay? You got my number, don’t you?”

Lucille nodded. She noticed a couple of the cops snicker and poke each other. She gave them the kind of look that Sister Marguerite used to give her second-grade class when they acted up, and they dropped their hands to their sides and looked down at their feet.

Lucille gave them one last parting shot and headed toward the door.

The sun hit her in the eyes and nearly blinded her after the dim light in the church. Why were churches always so dark, for chrissake? Was there some kind of hocus-pocus going on that the priests didn’t want you to see—like in them magic shows they had out in Vegas?

By the time Lucille got back to the office, Father Brennan had returned. He was halfway out the door, and he and Lucille nearly careened into each other.

“What is going on, Lucille?” He gestured toward the police cars in the parking lot and gave her a look like she must somehow be at fault.

“It’s Sal. Sal from Sal’s Pizzeria across the street,” Lucille added when Father Brennan continued to look blank.

“Is he in need of something?”

“Yeah, he wanted to be baptized, but you weren’t here and neither is Father Morales, so I did it myself on account of how I remembered how to do it from catechism class back when I was in school.”

Father Brennan looked at her sternly. “But, Lucille. A layperson can only administer the rite of baptism if the person is in imminent danger of dying.”

“He was. Sal was.”

“Sal was what, Lucille?”

“Dying. As a matter of fact, he’s dead. The police are about to take him away in one of them body bags.”

Lucille took a certain satisfaction in the startled look on Father Brennan’s face, but then realized that wasn’t very nice and sent up a prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary to ask for forgiveness for being unkind.

When Lucille left the church, she noticed a police car pulling into the driveway next to Sal’s Pizzeria. Poor Tiffany. This was going to break her heart.

Lucille wasn’t sure how she got home. Downtown New Providence went by in a blur. She supposed it was what they called shock. She was so rattled she couldn’t even remember what she’d planned to make for dinner. It wasn’t until she pulled into her driveway that she remembered she’d bought some nice veal cutlets from the butcher on South Street. Frankie would like that. Veal parmigiana was one of his favorite dishes. Maybe it would make up for giving him that curry stuff the night before.

The house was quiet when Lucille walked in. Bernadette and the baby must be napping. Tony Jr. was probably still at work. He’d inherited half of Frank’s pest control business—You Got ’Em—We’ll Get ’Em was Jofra’s motto.

“Polly want a cracker. Polly want a cracker,” a voice called from the living room. Lucille jumped until she remembered the parrot they’d acquired. It was in the living room in a cage. She hadn’t wanted a bird but sometimes you didn’t get no choice in the matter. Bernadette and Tony had named it Archie and thought it was real funny to teach it that expression—
Polly want a cracker
. Frank was constantly threatening to strangle the bird, but Lucille kind of liked the company when Frankie was at work. Lord knows she didn’t get much conversation out of Bernadette or Tony even if they was around.