They're what, those vials? An inch long? of an inch in diameter? Little plastic cap top of the vial, well, just like the perfume vials, those are what these deadly little con are. So yes, they were small enough to fit insi smallest of the commercial plastic bags, one of sandwich-sized things and yes, practically the thing he'd have seen when he came running church would have been the offerings box black conning tower. It wouldn't have taken; more than a few minutes to dump those vials slot on top of the tower, turn over the bag of funnel them in, using the edge of his free a shovel, it was possible. Two, three minutes at If he had two, three minutes. With all of roaring up behind him?
But suppose he'd been too frightened to there in the entrance narthex, suppose he'd run the church instead... Carella stepped through the doors into the ... and was suddenly confronted with a feast of offerings boxes. There were shrines right and to his left... Dedicated to the Reverend... there were more statues of saints, were marble altars with goldleaf screens above were standing racks holding votive candles and were racks fastened to the wall and holding yet votive candles, and everywhere the candies there was an offerings box. Nathan Hooper to have seen what Carella was seeing now.
everywhere. Candles and flowers. The ons of the cross starting on the north wall of the to the right of the altar... Jesus is condemned , death... Jesus is made to bear His cross... Jesus is to the cross ..
Carella walking up the side aisle now... a stained glass window with an air-conditioner it.
He passed his fingers over the evaporating fins.
ut an inch of space between each fin. Had oper dropped his vials into one of the ditioners set under windows everywhere the church? But he was being chased! He have time to look, to find, to... More candles against the wall.
And another offerings box.
Maybe Farnes had been right about the good priest's obsession with the tithe.
Jesus falls the First time under His cross... And more candles.
And an offerings box.
And a shrine with a statue of Jesus with his open revealed in his chest, radiating gold-leaf rays, fresh flowers under the statue. And votive candles.
an offerings box.
Jesus meets His afflicted Mother... A candle rack fastened to the stone wall metal lip at its topmost edge, forming a angle with the wall. He felt behind the lip.
Double rows of candles flickering.
Where? he thought.
There were niches all over the church, little insets in the stone, all of them statues.
He felt behind each statue for the third fingers widespread, searching.
Nothing.
Niches everywhere.
He passed a font designed for bearing holy little steel basin sitting in a stone cavity. He empty basin. It fit the cavity exactly, there was millimeter of an inch to spare. No place to hide here, and besides it would have contained Easter Sunday, Hooper was being wouldn't have had time to... Hey.
Hey, wait a minute.
Wait a holy goddamn minute!
He came running up the righthand side church, passing the stations of the cross in order... Jesus is placed in the sepulchre... running past the arched doorway that led sacristy and the rectory beyond...
Jesus is taken down from the cross... passed another little shrine with a statue of yet ther saint, flowers at his feet... Jesus dies on the cross... opened the center inner doors, and stepped into entrance lobby, and turned instantly to his right.
Because if the offerings box with its black tower one of the first things Hooper had seen ;diately upon entering the church, then the next he'd have seen, had to have seen, was the urn of holy water.
Stainless steel, sitting on a black wrought-iron stand. Little upright brass cross fastened to the top of its lid. Little brass spigot on the container below. He did not know how often this um was refilled. But it looked too heavy to be carded to a water tap, and he was willing to bet it was regularly filled right here on the spot. Which, if true, meant that someone would simply lift the lid and pour water into the urn. He took off his jacket, unbuttoned the right-hand sleeve of his shirt, shoved the sleeve up to his elbow, and with his left hand, reached out for the brass cross fastened to the um's lid. Virtually holding his breath, he lifted the lid and reached into the water with his free hand.
Felt around. And... There.
He lifted the plastic bag dripping out of the water.
It was sealed with one of those little yellow plastic ties.
He loosened it.
Kneeling, he shook the contents of the bag onto the stone floor. The bag wasn't waterproof, the first thing that spilled out onto the floor' small amount of water. The vials came s next. He could tell at once that water had some of them as well, partially dissolving the crystals, melting others entirely. But, remained looked a hell of a lot like crack.
It occurred to him that if the urn had been since Easter Sunday... And if Father Michael had blessed the between then and the time of his death... Then the crack was holy, too.
Which, in a way, in America today, it was.
It began raining again later that evening, Willis was heading crosstown to a shop Castillo de Palacios. He was going there nobody at 1147 Hillsdale knew anyone Carlos Ortega. This was the address Orte given his Parole Board when he was released prison in October of last year. If there was address, the Department of Corrections was of it. Trying to find a Carlos Ortega in a city locked up eighty-three of them in the last little was akin to finding a pork roast in the state of El Castillo de Palacios would have ungrammatical in Spanish if the Palacios been a person's name, which in this case it be. Palacio meant "palace" in Spanish, and lacios meant "palaces" and when you had a plural un, the article and noun were supposed to unlike English where everything was so put together. El Castillo de los Palacios have been the proper Spanish for "The Castle the Palaces," but since Francisco Palacios was a El Castillo de Palacios was, in fact, correct though it translated as "Palacios's Castle," a on words however you sliced it, English or anish.
Francisco Palacios was a good-looking man with .,an-living habits (now that he'd served three Istate on a burglary rap) who owned and operated pleasant little store that sold medicinal herbs, books, religious statues, numbers books, tarot cards, and the like. His silent partners were named Gaucho Palacios and Cowboy Palacios, and they ran a store behind the other store, and this one offered for such medically approved "marital aids" as dildos, French ticklers, open crotch panties (bragas sin entrepierna), plastic vibrators (eight-inch and ten-inch in the white, twelve-inch in the black) leather executioner's masks, chastity belts, whips With leather thongs, leather anklets studded with chrome, penis extenders, aphrodisiacs, inflatable life-sized female dolls, condoms in every color of the rainbow including puce, books on how to hypnotize and otherwise overcome reluctant women, ben-wa balls in both plastic and gold plate, and a highly popular mechanical device guaranteed to satisfaction and imaginatively called Suc-u-i Selling these things in this city was not ille Gaucho and the Cowboy were breaking This was not why they ran their store store owned and operated by Francisco. did so out of a sense of responsibility to the Rican community of which they were a did not, for example, want a little old lady in shawl to wander into their backstore shop dead away at the sight of playing cards men, women, police dogs and midgets in marital-aid positions, fifty-four if you counte jokers. Both the Gaucho and the Cowbo' community pride to match that of Francisco Francisco, the Gaucho, and the Cowboy fact, all one and the same person, and they collectively a police informer.