by Declan Finn
“I open up the school hall at three.”
James blinked, surprised. “Why so early? Bingo doesn’t start until eight. If you open that early, who is supposed to sit with the hall while you have dinner?”
“I don’t eat on Thursdays. Too nervous. Hold-ups, firecrackers, floods, furnace breakdowns, unannounced visits from the auditors from the State Bingo Commission, all the disasters happen on Thursdays. If my stomach is empty before I go into the hall, I may feel wretched but at least my lunch won’t turn on me. That way I can concentrate on whether we will have enough customers, enough workers, enough light and heat, and so on.
“If I open the school at three, the furnace will be throwing heat by half-past when they start. By the time the little ones leave at five, I open up the bingo hall so that the little old ladies who brown-bag it will have a place to eat and socialize before the session begins.” He paused. “I have to replace the prize money.”
“You have a checking account from which you pay your rent-a-priests,” James pointed out.
Father Sadowski opened his mouth to interrupt him.
James ignored him, and steamrolled past. “—why not borrow against that? And then don’t pay Tim. If he ever says Mass here, we can credit it against his ‘loan.’ Makes sense to me.”
“I’m not going to bill Tim. I will take the money out of the Mass account and just forgo some stipends – Do not look at me like that. Don’t say it, don’t even think it, and, above all, don’t argue. This isn’t anything virtuous. I just do not want any further uproar.”
And so went the daylight hours: Sister Dymphna—she of the religious education class—came and went. Tim stayed in his room. All was quiet, if one didn’t count Mass-arrangers and holy water bugs. From three till five, James finished off a paperback of Ellery Queen’s Egyptian Cross Mystery and started to get cabin fever.
He walked over to the school and was glad that the school yard was more or less sheltered from the blasts of icy wind.
“At least the sky is clear,” he said to no one in particular. But then, New York winters are either clear and cold, or cloudy and warm.
Gus and James were just standing around the hall when the cold air announced another visitor. The ladies scattered around the bingo tables waved as the female figure in the sky blue topcoat pulled back her hood and returned the greetings. She left the coat on but unbuttoned. Five foot five, 130 ponds, hair in a tight whit Afro, speaking TV network unaccented English
Gus smiled. “Dr James, may I present Miss Dominique Aristides, my bingo bookkeeper?”
“Nikki, please,” she interjected.
“Nikki,” Gus continued, “this is my new executive assistant.”
She nodded at him. “Pleased to meet you.”
James gave a little bow. “Likewise.”
She slid her arm around his and started for the back of the hall. “See you later, Gus. I’m going to introduce him to the magic of the money room.”
James went along and was amazed at the initial resistance he had to overcome in himself. At 28, I’m developing a suburban stodginess, he chided himself. Too much time in New Jersey.
The back corners of the hall had been filled with two rectangular walls. The left rear corner was the kitchen because of the serving counter which has been cut into the near wall. The addition to the right of the fire doors was solid wood. Obviously a later addition, the paneling only went eight feet. The distance from there to the room showed the underlying cinderblock: it was the counting room.
“What is a nice guy like you doing in a dump like this?” she asked as she locked him into the room with her.
He stopped and pulled out his pipe. “Mind?”
“No, I prefer being reminded that there are gentlemen in the vicinity, dahling.”
James struck a match. “A trifle arch, aren’t you?”
“Comes with the territory. I work for Reynolds Roper Delendick.”
“The best little PR House anywhere,” responded James in dripping sarcasm.
Nikki smirked. “You disapprove our rip-off of Larry King’s ‘Whorehouse’ article in Playboy?”
“Only if it implies that you’ll pimp for any product.”
“I won’t.”
James puffed on the pipe, getting a head of smoke. “As for RRD?”
“They won’t. And you are ducking my question,” she chided him.
“Observant.”
“Why?” asked Nikki in a less bantering tone of serious curiosity.
“Because you have lustrous hair the color of rich maple syrup, the deepest, darkest eyes I’ve ever seen, a creamed coffee skin. And I think I love you.”
Her laugh was rich and appealing. Laughing at the line, not at him. “Oh, Father had better keep you. You’re good for a girl’s ego.” She paused. “Did I detect a bit of a downturn on your last sentence?”
“Well, I’ve been seeing this lady…”
“How long?”
“Thirteen years.”
“Good God! Marry her!!” Nikki gave him a sly smile. “Then come back and we’ll continue the conversation,” she added mischievously.
“Abby and I have been drifting in and out of each other’s lives since college.” James was +determined to move the conversation away from his private life. “You don’t live in this neighborhood, do you?”
“Sad to say, a little way across the red line from here. My ‘mohair’ may no longer be ‘grande dame’, but we still live in a 19th-century townhouse that my late father bought for her and from which she intends to be buried.”
“You’re single?” he asked incredulously.
“I haven’t had a good enough offer. Anyway, I’m RRD’s oldest account executive. I’m having the time of my life. Even Dave is going to have to go some to make me a more attractive offer.”
“Dave?”
“David Kosciousko Kaminski. Pro football commentator. Retired wide receiver. Six-foot-six, 350.”
James cleared his throat, and made as if to leave. “Goodbye.”
“Don’t run. He’s very friendly.”
James was formulating a response based on Kaminski’s gregarious love of sacking quarterbacks on Monday night television when his thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Nikki unlocked the door for Father Sadowski.
“Why didn’t you use your key?”
“Didn’t want the people out there to think the room was under my control. Aren’t you set up yet?”
“Father! We don’t start selling for an hour and a half and we don’t begin play for two hours.”
Gus shrugged, ignoring the comment. “Is Dave coming?”
Nikki sighed, “He’ll be here by nine to walk the money back to your safe. Season’s over, so he’ll be here through August.”
Gus nodded. “What about the E-hoss?”
“What?” responded James once he realized that the question was aimed at himself.
“The Hijos de Dio, the children of God: you know the Hispanic Group Soldiers of God?”
James looked back and forth between the two, bewildered. “No. I have no idea what the heck you’re talking about.”
“Opus Dei is a Spanish lay association. Soldiers of God is the Latin American world’s version. They do Cursillo, Encounter, Psychological Program Retreats, Team building, Ferverinos. You must know the type of thing I’m talking about,” concluded Gus, frustrated at his exhausted store of examples.
James nodded. “I get the idea… And? So what?”
“Their parents think the idea is so terrific, they set up a teen version. Pedro used to be the moderator.”
It took James a moment to remember that Father Pedro was the schmuck that he had replaced. Damn, it’s been a long couple of days. “But I don’t speak Spanish! I speak Latin! My students act like I don’t speak English.”
“They don’t speak Spanish, either. A little Newyorkerican is the best they can do: they’re all born here… Please?”
“OK,” grumbled James, in a way Domin
ique took as a complimentary reluctance to leave her. “See you later.”
“Mind the house. Send them home at nine. Dave and I’ll be over at 9:30. Dave, Nikki, and I go out to dinner at 11, so don’t wait up.”
“Please, Father, I’d rather do it myself,” smiled James in mock moan. The priest didn’t get the reference, but Nikki did, and smiled.
* * *
Father Frank Yamamoto of Hiroshima said Mass. Luraleen served her usual indigestibles. James got to watch a 7PM rerun of M*A*S*H before the bell rang at 7:30.
There were ten kids, five of each, three paired couples and four singles. He ushered them into the sacristy and watched the body language and the pecking order. He explained himself as Father Pedro’s replacement and got everyone to introduce the person to their left and then reduced the group to some sort of mental order.
All had dark hair and brown eyes. All were over fifteen. The men he could run in mnemonic fashion.
Angel Gomez looked like a sane Charles Manson, with Jesus hair and a dot of a goatee under his lower lip.
Raoul, Pedro, and Juan Mendoza were brothers and at least a quarter black by ancestry, even if totally Hispanic by culture. Juan was clean shaven. Raoul looked uncomfortable seated, as though someone his height could only relax in an upright position with a basketball in his hands. Pedro was built like a short bookcase—five feet high and three feet between the armpits, a varsity wrestler, James thought, and then lamented that the days of his childhood were past. Pedro would have been a natural during the ’50s, when there was market for televised wrestling. Maybe wrestling would come back someday, with or without rehearsals.
Pete Da Silva was tall, rangy, and relaxed. He spoke as an educated man and sat like a panther at rest. A year of college, thought James, and he’ll be the complete continental charmer.
The way Margarita Gomez sat so close, his present credentials as a lady killer were in no doubt.
Margarita, petite and padded in hips and chest, paired with Da Silva.
Rosita Morano, slightly taller, had the tight curly hair of Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein and eyes which bulged from her skinny face as though her finger were in the electric socket. She was a “single,” but James hoped that she would one day find an ugly old kangaroo of her own.
Dolores Martinez was also a single. James thought her capable of religious fanaticism. She looked like a younger reincarnation of the hyper-pious Sicilian widow who would only talk to Father Gus, even down to the trace of a mustache on her olive skin.
Anita Velasquez paired with Raoul Menoza and Maria Sodi with Juan Mendoza. Both girls could pass for gypsy sisters and if they had differences, he could not discern them in the next hour and a half.
The youths walked him through the meeting: business, then shared religious reflection, and then a visit to the chapel.
As he saw them out the rectory door, it sounded like The Waltons, which he noted gratefully with a glance at his watch, was over.
“Goodnight, doc.”
“Goodnight, Angel.”
“Goodnight, Doc.”
“Goodnight, Raoul.”
“Goodnight, doc.”
“Goodnight, Juan.”
“Goodnight, Doc.”
“Goodnight, Rosita.”
“Buenos noches, doc.”
“Goodnight, Maria.”
“Goodnight, professor.”
“Goodnight, Peter.”
“Goodnight, doc.”
“Goodnight, Pedro.”
“Night, doc.”
“Good night, John-boy,” he muttered to himself.
Then he caught someone fighting the wave of children.
“Helloo, Mrs. Bonita!” James called over the little old lady who was bucking the tide out of the rectory. He showed her into the front parlor with a “Night, kids” over his shoulder to Anita and Dolores.
“You want to schedule a Mass?” he asked Mrs Bonita, and a quickly ran to the common room safe to get the book.
Sadowski was seated in his favorite chair, smoking the omnipresent cigar.
“Hi, Father. Goofing off?”
Gus took a long, contented drag on the cigar. “Dave is covering for me and I’m enjoying the peace and quiet. Ducked in on you at the back of the sacristy. You’ve got a good touch with the kids.”
“Gotta book a Mass. Leave the door open?”
“Of course,” replied Gus with half an eye on Jack Lord’s Hawaii Five-O, with another first-run episode he was destined to miss for the sake of parochial solvency.
James booked the Mass, undid the chain on the front door, and let Mrs. Bonita out. Then he returned to the front parlor and counted to ten.
I don’t mind him auditing my session with the kids because I’ve had people evaluate my classes before. But to put the chain on a locked front door for the four minutes it took to book the Mass!
James counted yet another ten, recalled all of Gus’s troubles this week, then threw the bolt which locked off the rectory from the sacristy and ambled slowly into the common room, only to find the object of his irritation had already departed—returned to bingo, James assumed.
The phone rang.
“Unlock the back door. We’re coming over.” Click.
James stood at the back door muttering about brass monkeys and rhyming icicles with other words, while Father Sadowski and David K. Kaminski carried some boxes from school hall to rectory.
After the exchange of introductions in the common room, after the money was locked in the safe, Father continued to go on and on about the security arrangements necessary in this neighborhood for the bingo bank. It wasn’t bragging so much as trying to convince his listeners that the issue was serious and that he was taking it seriously. They knew it was serious but a wound-up Gus took too much effort to stop.
“If they hold up the hall anytime before seven or after nine-thirty, all that they’ll find is the prize money.”
Dave, standing behind the priest at that moment, gave a shrug to say “What’r’ya going to do with him?” and pulled a responding smile out of James. Another member in the Conspiracy to Protect Father Sadowski From Himself. James had also noticed that the money was not in the same position it had been the day before but rather in a locked compartment within the safe. He had noticed, and Gus had seen that he had noticed. They returned to the bingo while he remained ’on call.’
There was one strange phone call: “What time is the noon Mass on Sunday?”
James packed it all in and was asleep by 10:15.
* * *
Sex two nights in a row without doing it yourself! exulted Tim as he played with breasts and she raked her fingernails down his back. She was slower to respond and his intake of Bombay Gin Bombers slowed him down to such a point where they orgasmed and came down together, she to a satisfied state, he to stupor.
“Timmy.”
“Unh?”
“I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m pregnant.”
“Oh?” he casually muttered?
“Don’t take that tone of voice with me. It’s yours.”
Tim Scoffed. “How can you tell?”
“How can you ask! You know that you were the first…”
“And I don’t know how many others there could have been between then and now.”
“I’m leaving.” She got up and started to dress.
Jim blinked his eyes cleared, then reached for the night stand. “Wait. I have some money to cover your expenses.”
“What expenses?”
“The Area Family Planning Center—”
“Abort my baby?” she started to protest.
James shrugged. “Don’t let it bother you. There are people who teach theology at places like Catholic U who would justify this because of our extraordinary circumstances. I told you about Father Curran’s recent papers, right?”
A wariness replaced her anger but it was a subtlety beyond Tim’s impaired attention. She took the
money and started for the door.
“Wait,” said Tim, who was pleased with her compliance, who was so delighted with how he was Man and was obeyed by Woman, when even a medieval warlock would have been disturbed by any woman’s similar power to influence. “I have to take you down and lock the back door behind you. And take off those heels, the taps sound like machine guns on the hardwood steps.”
He was four steps down when she grabbed the banister in one hand, pressed against the wall with the other and jabbed her heel between his shoulder blades.
She didn’t even hear the crack when his neck broke. But the body laid clumsily at the foot of the stairs.
She had no hope of getting the key out from under him and couldn’t move him an inch. Oh, well, she thought, I shouldn’t use the key anyway.
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
THIS IS YOUR WAKE-UP CALL
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16
The first Friday of Lent dawned bitter cold, dark gray. The gusts of wind seeped through all the windows in Dr. James’ room. He dressed quickly in the ‘school suit’ he had worn Wednesday, but decided to change his schedule a bit.
“Since the water won’t get warm here until after eight, I should be able to shave at the college before class if I hustle,” he said to himself in the mirror while trying once again to make his red foulard tie knot properly.
Since he needed one hand for his case and the other for the door, he always stopped after opening the door to insert the key into the outside in order to lock up.
This was a great habit, and prevented James from storming out and tripping over the body of Father Tim Lessner.
James looked down at Tim and growled, cursing Tim’s drunkenness. He was about to kick the drunken, lecherous son of a bitch awake … Then he noticed the odd angle of the neck.
With a sinking feeling, James knelt down and felt for the carotid artery. When he found no pulse, James stepped over the body, and went straight for the Pastor’s door.
Gus’ voice boomed, “I’m up!”
“Not good enough,” James answered. “We got trouble.”
