Not to mention the handle of a ball bat.
Which he does, in fact, seize.
And swings the bat with practiced ease target that is Nathan Hooper's head. From the of his eye, Hooper sees the bat coming, and he of raises his left shoulder, sort of hunkering into it, turning at the same time, trying to deflect blow, which he partially succeeds in doing in that bat hits his shoulder first and only then bounces to graze his head. This is not enough to .,rious wound, but it is enough to prevent ;sion and possible coma. It is also enough to his grip on the gun to loosen before he can fire shot. And as the gun clatters to the floor and young pulls back the bat for yet another swing at fences, Hooper recognizes it is time to get the out of here, but not without the dope for which he has now paid with a broken head. So off he goes with the bag of dope in his left hand and the pack in full cry behind him, and the rest of the story ends in church not once, but twice.
"The second time is today," Rudy said. "When we went back to look for the stuff.”
Because, yes, Virginia, it is true that Hooper stashed the dope someplace inside the church.
Bobby and his pals know this is so. Not because when he came out with the priest on the way to the hospital, they couldn't see the bag of crack nowhere in sight; he could've had it in his pocket, right? But because pretty soon after the incident on Easter, Hooper began bragging around Fifth Street that as soon as it was safe to go back to St. Kate's he was gonna be one rich nigger. And also, this must've been three, four days before the priest got killed, they were fooling around with a pussy kid named Fat Harold, kidding around with him, you know, giving him knucks and the burn, this was near the school, .and he told them he was with Hooper when he called the church and warned the priest he wanted his dope back.
So the dope is there inside the church, ri Someplace inside the church.
Four hundred dollars worth of crack.
And there hasn't been a single snooping around looking for it because there aren't any blacks go to St. Catherine' second of all, they know what happened to on Easter, and they don't want a taste of medicine.
This doesn't mean Bobby and the guys been in there tiptoeing around half a dozen looking for it, but they can't find the fucking the nigger hid it too good. So it's beginning to like four hundred bucks is going straight dow toilet.
Until today.
Today, Bobby gets sore.
And he tells them they''re going to that churc they're gonna turn it upside down till they findi fuckin' dope.
Whichis what they done.
"But not me," Rudy said. "I just went alonl didn't hit the priest, I didn't knock over any of things, the candlesticks, the altars, the thing with incense, I didn't do any of those things. And, a how is it burglary if nobody stole nothing?" Carella explained that it was burglary if some knowingly entered or remained unlawfully building with intent to commit a crime.
"But we didn't go there to commit a crime," Ru "We went there looking for dope rightfully to Bobby." Carella explained that criminal mischief was a And so was assault. And so was reckless "rment.
Rudy shook his head over the inequity of the law.
"Good thing I didn't do none of those things," he "Who did?" Carella asked.
The entire reason for this little exercise. Get one them talking, get him to nail one of the others.
get another one talking to save his own skin, have him nail yet another one. The Domino ry of law enforcement and criminal investigation.
"I just went along," Rudy said.
"Too bad you've been charged," Carella said sympathetically. "But you get a thing like this, a bunch of guys acting in concert..." He shook his own head over the inequity of the law.
"I don't see why I should take the rap for something I didn't do," Rudy said, beginning to sound a bit indignant.
"Yeah, it's too bad," Carella said. "But if you didn't see who knocked over the altar, for example, or who hit the priest...”
"Bobby hit the priest.”
"Bobby Corrente?”
"Yeah. I saw him grab the candlestick and hit him with it. And Jimmy Fava knocked over the big one. And...”
And that was the beginning.
When Dominick Abruzzi came back squadroom after having talked to his client, he "May I have a word with you, Detective No more sneering of the word "Detective.”
“Sure," Carella said. "My client went into the church because having an allergy attack,” Abruzzi said. Carella looked at him.
"Lots of pollen in the air this time of church is relatively pollen free. It was a him.”
“I'm sure," Carella said. "Dust free, probably”
Abruzzi looked at him.
"The wagon gets here at six," Carella said. that, you can talk to your client downtown. night, Mr. Abruzzi," he said, and went to lieutenant's door and knocked on it.
"Come!" Byrnes shouted.
XI
In this church, here in this hallowed place, Our ther who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, searching now behind a life-sized piaster statue of the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Christ in her arms, here in this place, on his hands and knees but not praying, lifting altar cloths instead and looking under them, groping along stone walls inch by inch, inspecting niches in which there were statues of saints he did not recognize or could not remember, Carella was transported back to a time when a young boy who looked somewhat like the man he'd grown into, sat in a church not too far away from this one . the family had not yet moved uptown to Riverhead -- sat Sunday after Sunday listening to the drone of ritual, barely able to keep his eyes open.
Sunday after Sunday.
He was inside a church again today, seeking not salvation but dope.
Because Lieutenant Byrnes had told him to find that dope. Because if there was dope inside the church, then the black girl was truth about her brother stashing it there and Hennessy was telling the truth about so calling up and wanting it back, and the existed that Corrente or somebody else had back for it sometime before this afternoon. that was the case, then maybe the somel who'd come looking for it had run into the instead., And such a chance encounter called i great many possibilities, least of which violence. Where there was dope, the [ murder always existed. So find the goddamn and at least maybe you had your goddamn Sunday after Sunday.
Sundays with sunshine blazing through the high windows on either side of the illuminating stained glass that had been a local artisan here in this Italian section of the (which was no Firenze, that was certain), dust climbing to the ceiling while from the organ loft fat notes floated out onto the scintillated air, boy with slanting eyes and unruly hair listened to priest and wondered what it was all about.
On the day of his first holy communion was ten or eleven, somewhere in there a life was so alien to him now that he could no remember the exact dates of the most events in a young Catholic's life his slicked down the cowlick at the back of his head, walked to the church with her and his father and Uncle Lou, all so long ago.
Carella he was called Stevie back then, a name :'d always sort of liked until a girl a few years later Lbbed him Stevie-Weevie in an attempt to make feel childish; he was twelve and she was a vast difference at that age, he'd gone in tears. But on the day of his first holy Stevie Carella accepted the wafer on his allowed it to melt there, careful not to bite it ..cause this was the flesh and the blood of Jesus and the wafer would bleed in his mouth, blood would flow in his mouth, or so he'd given to understand by one of the nuns who'd taught him his catechism every Monday and ay afternoons after school.
He'd felt a deep and reverent attachment to God that day. He did not know exactly what it was he believed, it was all mumbo-jumbo of a sort to him, but he knew that he felt an inner glow when that wafer dissolved in his mouth, and he knelt there at the altar railing with his head bent and his cowlick plastered down, and he felt somehow enriched by what had happened this day, so very long ago.