Good Graces

Chapter Twenty-three

I’m not going over to the Latours’ the way Troo told me to. I don’t want to hear her plan. I’m afraid to hear her plan. That’s why I’m running over to the Piaskowskis’ as fast as I can. Dave’s still over there getting his sister’s house up to snuff for her return.

One part of me wants to rush in the front door of the house and tell Dave that he has got to drop whatever he’s doing because Troo is right this minute preparing to seek revenge, but the other part of me knows if I rat Troo out, she’ll never forgive me. Ever. Even after she’s dead. And I couldn’t really blame her. It’s bad enough to rat out your sister, but to tattle to Dave, the man who took Daddy’s place? I can’t even begin to think what she’d do to me. But what about keeping her safe the way I promised Daddy I would?

I’m still going back and forth, listening to an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, not sure which is which, when I come round the corner of 56th and Lloyd and one of the other places where everyone in the neighborhood spends so much of their time looms over me.

Mother of Good Hope Church.

Next to Gesu, which is downtown and so fancy that it makes you feel sorry for people who aren’t Catholics, our church is one of the most beautiful ones in all of Milwaukee. It’s got two spires, a bell that peals every hour and lots of windows with stained-glass pictures of sheep and saints and the inside is gorgeous, too. There’s row after row of pews with red leather kneelers. The confessionals are made out of cherry-colored wood. They’re where you have to go and tell on yourself at least once a week if you’re me, more if you’re Troo. The altar up front is white marble and there’s lots of gold dripping off everything and Jesus is hanging on the cross, blood oozing down his forehead from his crown of thorns. Votive candles are always flickering with ten-cents-a-pop prayers in front of statues that have got these special kinds of eyes. Like the ones in the stuffed deer head that hangs behind Jerbak’s bar, those eyes follow you around no matter what direction you go in like it’s all your fault they’re dead. The exception to that rule is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her eyes are chipped and she’s got outstretched blue arms that, if nobody is around, you can climb between and breathe in the incense that sticks to her cloak, especially around her neck.

Behind the church is the school that’s two stories high and made of red bricks, same as Vliet Street School. Father Mickey kept telling everybody that we’d outgrown it and needed more classrooms so that’s why there’s a giant hole next to the cafeteria that has DANGER signs hanging off the rope around it, which is just asking for trouble. That hole is like putting a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting in front of kids and telling them hands off. Denny Desmond already broke his collarbone. He fell in after B.O. Montanazza challenged him to walk the plank across the hole on the first day of summer vacation.

They’re going to get busy building the rest of the school as soon as Father Mickey has taken in enough money from his parishioners, which he’ll hand over to Mr. Tony Fazio, who I recently found out in a rude way from Fast Susie isn’t exactly a silverware salesman like I’ve been thinking this whole time. Mr. Fazio owns the construction company that’s building the new classrooms. His business partner, Mr. Frankie “The Knife” DeNuzio, will be helping him. (Fast Susie also told me in a very cutting tone that Mr. DeNuzio is also known by another nickname, “Mr. Thanksgiving,” because, “Frankie is the best there is at carvin’.”)

On the opposite side of the playground is a spooky-looking old house where the nuns live, and according to Mary Lane, torture children with dripping holy water.

Father Mickey and Father Louie live together, too, in a one-story house called a rectory that’s behind the school. Father Louie’s practically an antique, but very sweet in his personality. He plays Santa at our church Christmas party, that’s how jolly and red he is, especially in his nose. He’s not here right now. He’s been taking the summer off to go on a special retreat someplace really dry and won’t be back until school starts, so that’s why Father Mickey has been living alone the past couple of months.

I’ve never been in the rectory, but Troo has. That’s where she gets her extra religious instruction. She told me the priests have got a living room with two davenports and an office with pictures on the wall of their boss on earth, the Pope. And they have a bathroom with a tub and both the priests have crosses hanging over their beds with palm fronds the same way Troo and me do. That seemed so funny to me. How those priests are pretending to live like any Tom, Dick or Harry, when they’re not. They don’t resemble normal people at all. They’re above and beyond.

I’m still staring up at the church, trying to decide whether or not I should go tell Dave about Troo’s revenge plan, when Mary Lane comes peeling around the corner, head down, legs pumping a mile a minute and skids right into me.

“For crissakes,” she says, grabbing me up off the grass and dragging me into the familiar bushes in front of the Kohls’ house. We hide in them all the time after we go out ringing doorbells or when the Molinari brothers chase us. One of Troo’s old Dubble-Bubble wrappers is caught in the bottom of a branch. Mary Lane’s got her black high-tops on like always. And her Brownie camera is hanging off her neck. That’s kinda unusual. It’s her most prized possession. She won it in a church raffle and hardly ever takes it outta the house. She shoves me into a squat, not giving me enough time to put up a fight, which I would lose anyway.

“What’re ya doin’ here?” she says. “You’re supposed to be over at the Latours’.”

“I was on my way to the Piaskowskis’. Dave’s over there and I… I… what are you doin’ here?” Troo told me that Mary Lane was going to be at the powwow tonight. “And who are we hidin’ from?”

“Father Mickey… he’s after me,” Mary Lane says, wiping her leaky nose off with her finger and running it down her tan shorts. Her bare legs look like two soda straws. “For an old guy… he’s pretty quick, almost fast as you.”

It takes me less than a breath to figure out what’s going on. Mary Lane’s not here scouting out the school, thinking about setting it on fire even though she’s threatened to a couple of times. That’s just big talk. She wouldn’t really do that. I don’t think. Our little cat burglar musta been up here doing what movie thiefs always do before they break into a place. They don’t just dive right in to commit a crime. They come the night before to have a look around to see if there’s a mean dog or a night watchman.

I point at the rectory and ask her, “Were you casin’ the joint and Father saw you?”

“What?” Mary Lane says with a look on her face that reminds me so much of a monkey that’s gotten a peanut stolen out of its hand by another monkey, real astonished like that. “Didn’t Troo fill you in? Didn’t she tell ya about-”

“Over here,” someone shouts from across the street. I can’t hear the rest of what the person says, only that he sounds furious and out of breath.

“That’s him. He’s comin’,” Mary Lane says, spreading apart a couple of bushy branches. “Look.”

Father Mickey is ripping across the school playground, hollering at two boys who are working hard to keep up with him. When he comes to a stop across the street from us, he checks up the block one way, then the other, and now he’s staring where we’re crouched and he’s so close. That look on his face… it’s the same look Bobby Brophy used to get when we’d play chess together at the playground, when he was planning his next capturing move that I never saw coming. I can’t help it, I groan.

Mary Lane slaps her hand over my mouth and whispers, “Shut your trap. He’s got really good hearin’. You recognize the boys?”

I couldn’t at first, but now that they’ve caught up, I can see that it’s Larry Montgomery and Hank Holzhauer. If Mary Lane wasn’t cat-burglaring around, then there’s only one other reason I can think of why she’d be getting chased by Father and the boys.

I take her fingers off my mouth and say, “I know what you did. You peeped in on one of their overnight parties.” The altar boys brag about how they bring sleeping bags over to the rectory and stay up to all hours of the night snacking and playing games, and it drives Mary Lane right up a wall that there aren’t any altar girls. “What were they doin’? Playin’ checkers and eatin’ jujubes?” (Her favorites.)

I’m waiting for her to launch into some no-tripper story about how they were doing something else that priests and altar boys would never do. There would be kidnapping gypsies involved and maybe that man, Ed Gein, she told me about would stop by with a blood-dripping woman, but she doesn’t. She says, “They were sittin’ around in the livin’ room with all the shades drawn. I could barely see ’em.”

“Oh, they musta been watchin’ a movie and needed it dark.” I know all about that. I am the visual-aids girl in our classroom.

Mary Lane says, “The only thing they were watchin’ was Father Mickey shakin’ his fist at ’em.”

That doesn’t sound anything like the kind of fun sleepovers I heard they have.

From across the street, Father says, “Did either of you get a good look at her?”

None of the boys answer him.

“Hank?” The priest is singling Holzhauer out because he is the head altar boy.

“No, Father.”

When the church bell starts ringing, Father Mickey checks his fancy watch and says, “It’s getting late. I have an appointment. Go back to the rectory and tell the boys I want to see them at the same time tomorrow night.”

Hank and Larry say, “Yes, Father,” and scoot after him across the playground the same way they follow him down the Communion rail with their golden skillets in case he should accidentally drop the Host.

I wait until I can’t see them anymore before I begin belly-crawling out of the bushes, but Mary Lane’s got another idea. She grabs me by my braid and reels me back.

“Seein’ that Troo hasn’t gotten ya up to speed yet, I guess I will,” she says with a first-place smirk. The two of them. Always trying to one-up each other. “Whatta ya think of when you hear those two boys’ names?”

Oh, this is such bad timing. Not the time to play the name game at all. But Mary Lane, just like me, has a lot of stick-to-it-iveness. She’s never going to let go of me until I answer, so I tell her, “Hank is really superstitious. He’s always throwin’ salt over his shoulder at lunch and knockin’ on Woody Anderson’s head for luck and Larry is the captain of the basketball team.”

“Not their first names, their last,” she says impatiently.

“Ah… Holzhauer is a Kraut and Montgomery… I don’t know what he is. Can we go now?” I gotta get back to doing what I was doing before Mary Lane ambushed me. Trying to decide what to do about Troo. Should I or shouldn’t I tell Dave that she’s coming up with a scary revenge plan?

“Holzhauer and Montgomery.” Mary Lane gets me by the shoulders, brings her face in real close to mine. I can smell her banana breath when she slowly says, “Montgomery and Holzhauer. Conner. Livingston. Jenkins. Put on your thinkin’ cap, Sal. What do those names have in common besides all of them bein’ altar boys?”

The split second after I say, “I don’t know,” that’s when it comes to me. “Holzhauer and Montgomery, all the others… those families have all gotten robbed!”

Mary Lane rocks back on her heels and says, “Give the little lady a cigar,” but when I don’t say anything else, she blows up. “Don’t you get it? The altar boys… they’re the cats. They’ve been takin’ stuff from their own houses!”

“I… I… what?!”

That can’t be right. Sure those boys are rowdy and full of themselves, but they’d never do something like that. Mary Lane has really gone off the deep end. It must be the heat. Or maybe the Toni Permanent fried her brain along with her hair.

I say, “But why… why would the boys steal their own stuff?”

Mary Lane says, “It’s not their idea. Troo told me they’re stealin’ against their will. Somebody’s makin’ ’em and then takin’ the loot. Who do ya think that could be?”

She knows who it is, I can tell by the teasy look on her face. It’s got to be one of the bad apples we got around here. They’re the only ones who could bully those altar boys into doing something so against their religion.

“The Molinaris?” I ask.

“Nope.”

“The Twomy brothers?”

“Uh-uh.”

There are more, but those are the worst of the batch. “I give.”

Mary Lane gets the gummiest smile. “Father Mickey! He’s makin’ the boys steal.”

I can hear the wump my jaw makes when it drops.

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, using her pointer finger to close up my mouth. “I don’t blame ya for not believin’ me. I didn’t believe Troo when she told me either.”

As much I’d like to think that I was right about Father Mickey being slippery, him being the ringleader of a gang of thieving altar boys… that can’t be the truth. Any kind of stealing is against the Eighth Commandment. And taking things from his own parishioners, the neighborhood people who trust and love him, put him up on a pedestal like he is God’s gift, and using innocent boys to do it, that wouldn’t be just sinful, that… that would be… evil.

Mary Lane says, “I knew they were gonna have one of their parties tonight ’cause I heard Hank tellin’ a kid at the playground this afternoon, so I came up here to eyeball it for myself. To see if Troo was bein’ honest or just screwin’ around.”

I’m not sure if Mary Lane is telling me the truth or not, but I’m not going to automatically think she’s lying the way I did last summer. I learned my lesson. She tried to warn me about Bobby and I didn’t believe her.

“Could… did you see anything besides Father shakin’ his fist at the boys?” I ask.

“Not right away ’cause of those pulled-down shades, but then I looked around and found a higher window that was a little more open and I dragged over a concrete block they got in the pile for the new wing,” Mary Lane says, like this is all in a day’s work. “After I got up, I could see every one of them boys in the livin’ room, not just Hank and Larry. Billy Maertz was cryin’. He was hugging that silver bowling trophy that belongs to his dad. Father Mickey ripped it right outta his arms.” Mary Lane looks down at a scratch on her arm and licks off the blood. Taps the top of her Brownie. “I woulda had a picture of all of ’em, but I slipped off the block. Father heard me fall into the bushes.”

Artie Latour tried to tell me how Father was doing something bad with the altar boys. I was sure he was just being jealous about the priest spending so much time with Troo. And when Troo told me the priest wasn’t a good egg at the Fourth fireworks, I thought that was nothing but sour grapes over him getting the annulment for Mother. Could I have been right about Father all along? That he is slick and dangerous as black ice? I can’t believe that wasn’t my imagination. Maybe that cod liver oil really is doing its job.

Or maybe not.

I say, “Wait a minute.” I think I mighta found a hole in her story. “Why would the boys go through all the trouble of climbing through their house windows? They coulda just taken the stuff when their parents weren’t payin’ attention.”

Mary Lane looks at me like I’m thicker than the Yellow Pages. “Father had to make it look like a real cat burglar was doin’ the jobs so the cops would waste all their time searchin’ for somebody who doesn’t even exist. You know… it’s like a whatchamacallit… a…”

I don’t know what it’s called either, but they do that sort of thing in movies all the time. Try to trick you into thinking it’s somebody else doing dirty deeds even though it’s always the butler, so I guess that adds up. But the longer I squat in these bushes thinking about all this, something else doesn’t. When we watch our detective shows together, Dave tells me that there’s always got to be something called a motive when there’s a crime. Even if we don’t understand how some people’s diabolical minds work, there is a reason someone stops listening to their conscience.

“But why would Father make the boys steal and hand him the loot?” I ask.

Mary Lane shrugs and says, “People who steal usually do it’cause they need dough really bad, right?” Troo doesn’t. She gets a nice allowance from Dave and still takes whatever she wants without paying. “In Hawaiian Eye there was this guy who stole from a savings and loan because he-”

“But Father doesn’t need money,” I say. “Priests take a vow of poverty!”

Everything him and Father Louie need is provided for them by the church. I know that because Dave is the treasurer of the Mother of Good Hope Men’s Club. I think most of the checks are written by the Pope or his helpers, but not all of them. Dave puts on his reading glasses and spends one night a month going over the church expenses at our kitchen table trying to find some leftover money to put toward the new wing on the school.

Mary Lane pulls out her bottom lip, which is what she does when she thinks. “Maybe Father needs extra cash ’cause he’s gotten himself in deep with Mr. Fazio. He owes him. Yeah, that’s gotta be it. I told you I saw ’em in that car the night I was scoutin’ out the old bottling plant! Mr. Fazio was yellin’ at Father about being overdue.”

When she mentioned that to me in the library lavatory, I thought she was telling me a no-tripper story about Mr. Fazio hollering at Father about returning a late book, but what if I was wrong?

“Let me get this straight.” I try to gather up my thoughts, which are flying away like dandelion fluff on a windy day. “You’re tellin’ me that you think Father Mickey owes Mr. Fazio’s construction company for buildin’ the new wing onto the school and… and he’s late paying him and that’s why Father made the boys steal so he can use the extra money he’s gonna get from selling the burglary stuff to pay off Mr. Fazio?”

“Good one, Sal,” Mary Lane snorts.

“Whatta ya mean?”

She looks at me with squinty pity. “You really don’t know?”

“What?”

“Mr. Fazio and Mr. DeNuzio are gangsters.”

Oh, for cripes sake. I can’t believe I almost fell for all of this. I don’t know anything about Mr. Frankie the Knife/Mr. Thanksgiving, but Mr. Fazio… he’s Fast Susie’s dad. He lives two blocks away from us in the nicest house on Vliet Street.

“Mr. Fazio and Mr DeNuzio are not gangsters,” I tell Mary Lane. “Gangsters don’t live in Milwaukee, they live in Chicago. Like Al Capone in The Untouchables.” Dave and me never miss that show so I’m sorta an expert of Italian bad guys.

Mary Lane says, “Yeah, well, I guess some of them decided to move up here.”

I doubt it. Those gangsters seem pretty smart about the law. Crossing state lines makes anything you do a Federal offense, which Dave told me is much, much worse than a local offense.

Mary Lane says, “Mr. Fazio and his partner… everybody in the neighborhood knows they’re not only construction men. They take bets on the ponies in a parlor somewhere and… and if you welsh and don’t pay them back what you owe, they’ll make you a cement overcoat and drop you into Lake Michigan.” I must have the most disbelieving look on my face because she throws her hands up in air. “Ask anybody! You could ask your uncle if he was right in the head. He used to work for Mr. Fazio as a bookie. Ask your granny. She knows everything that goes on around here. She’ll tell you how much gamblin’ trouble your uncle and his best friend, Father Mickey, got into in the olden days.”

Mary Lane admires Granny’s ability to know everything that goes on in the neighborhood to the nth degree. She wouldn’t bring her into this if she wasn’t sure of her information.

“For cryin’ out loud… ask your sister!” Mary Lane says, at the end of her rope with me.

Why am I always the last to know?

I must look like I finally believe her because Mary Lane springs up outta the bushes and says, “Let’s beat it over to the Latours’.” I have never seen her so excited except on trick-or-treat night. “Now that I know she wasn’t ribbin’ me about Father Mickey and the altar boys, I can’t wait to hear the rest of Troo’s plan.”

I’m not going anywhere. My legs feel like rubber bands and my tummy is all balled up. I’m snuffing, swallowing, doing everything I can not to break into tears. I promised to keep my sister safe and now she’s in the worst kind of trouble. I feel like I’m standing on the shore watching her go under for a third time. I gotta do something to save her, only I don’t know how to swim.

I can’t go running to Mother to ask her to rescue Troo. She would tan my sister’s hide with her golden hairbrush and tell her, “You made your bed, now lie in it.” Granny is out of the question, she’s got enough troubles of her own. My other hope would be Nell, but she’s barely keeping her own head above the water. For sure, I can’t go to Dave. He’s a policeman sworn to uphold the law no matter what. The only other person I can think of asking for a helping hand is Ethel. Maybe she could figure a way to get Troo outta this jam.

With all my heart, I don’t want to believe that Troo is guilty of stealing from our neighbors the same way she does from the drugstore and the Five and Dime. But there are those middle-of-the-nights when she snuck out of our bed. And Mrs. Galecki’s emerald necklace that’s hidden in the toe of one of her Wigwam socks. There is just no getting around this. How could my sister tell Mary Lane about Father Mickey and the altar boys unless she was part of his gang of cat thieves?