Good Graces (27 page)

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.

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?

M
y sister gave me the cold shoulder all day. That’s how she always acts when I don’t do what she tells me to do, which was show up at the powwow she had planned over at the Latours’ last night where she was gonna reveal her revenge plan. I could just kick myself. That’s what I shoulda done. Hearing what Troo’s got up her sleeve would’ve been awful, but thanks to Mary Lane, now I know something even worse. Something that could get Troo sent to reform school if she gets caught. Getting revenge is not against the law. Not like stealing from your neighbors is.

I
was
going to talk to her about what she’s been up to with Father Mickey and the altar boys after we turned in tonight, but then I decided keeping my sister’s criminal life to myself is the smart way to go. What would be the point? After I accuse Troo and she finally admits to being one of the cats, she’ll cuddle up and talk to me in her purring dolly voice, give me excuses for being wayward the way she always does, or worse, she won’t do that at all. She’ll hawk a loogie at me and say, “Yeah? So what?” and prance into the darkness to kick up her heels.

After we got done saying our prayers, Troo was still doing an excellent imitation of an iceberg. She didn’t twirl my hair and she didn’t want me to rub her back or give me butterfly kisses. She drew a line down the middle of our bed that I couldn’t cross without getting kicked, then rolled away from me as far away as she could and sang over and over in the coldest voice, “Every party has a pooper, that’s why I invited you. Party pooper. Party pooper,” until I couldn’t take it for one more second and had to run out to the green bean teepee.

That’s where I am now. Listening to the crickets and trying to decide if I should hop the white fence and ask great-advice-giving Ethel what she thinks I should do about thieving Troo, when I hear the first wails of the ambulance. I automatically cross myself and say a Hail Mary the way the nuns taught us to for the poor person’s suffering soul and go back to figuring out how to get Troo out of dutch, but I can barely hear myself think. The siren is getting closer and closer and doesn’t wind down to a whimper until it’s right next door.

Knowing that can only mean one thing, I scramble out of the teepee as fast as I can and shout, “Ethel! I’m comin’.”

Because of my fly-like-the-wind speed, I beat out Dave, Mother, Troo and all the other neighbors who heard the siren and have come to see what the ruckus is about. The flashing light on the ambulance parked in front of Mrs. Galecki’s house is making our faces go red, then black, red, black, while we watch the men who’ve come to do their job. They hurry up the steps with a stretcher to hunch over Mrs. Galecki, whose head is slumped down to her baggy chest. The porch light is shining down on her face, which matches her gray hair. Ethel is swaying next to her patient and friend, wringing her hands and asking for Jesus’s help.

I want to go to her, but the porch is small and there’s no room for me. All I can do is call to Ethel from the bottom of the steps in my most soothing voice that I learned from her, “Everything’s gonna be fine, sugar,” but she either doesn’t hear me or doesn’t believe me because she’s pleading to the heavens even louder.

The ambulance guys are the same two that always come when Mrs. Galecki’s heart acts up. Like Laurel and Hardy, one of them is fat and one is skinny. When they get done poking around, they heave Mrs. Galecki onto the stretcher with “A one and a two and a three a,” and struggle down the steps with her in their hands. She looks even worse close-up. Her toothless mouth is hanging open and she’s only got on one of the pretty pink slippers that Ethel knit her.

Ethel is scurrying after them with the other slipper in her hand, whimpering out, “Don’t you fret, Bertha, don’t you fret. Ya gonna be back home eatin’ berry cake in no time.”

Ethel doesn’t notice me when she rushes past me in the dark. I don’t think she knows if she is coming or going. When I chase after her and tap her on the shoulder, she turns with a start, brings both of her hands to her chest and says, “Oh, Miss Sally. Bertha . . . she’s real bad!”

“Is it her . . . ?” I place my hand across my heart the way you do for the Pledge of Allegiance.

“I . . . don’t know . . . we was just sittin’ there on the porch talkin’ about Mr. Gary’s visit and then all of a sudden . . .” Ethel goes back to taking giant steps toward where the ambulance is parked and I’m working hard to keep up. “Bertha give out a shout and went limp and . . . she didn’t come back ’round the way she does mosta the time with a little jostle and the smellin’ salts so I called the operator.”

Down at the curb, the men slide Mrs. Galecki through the open doors of the ambulance like she’s a refrigerator shelf. She clanks, and that sound . . . it gives me the shivers in the hot night.

Ethel wants to get in, too, so she can comfort Mrs. Galecki on the way to the hospital, but the skinny man with
Augie
embroidered on his white shirt puts a hand on her arm to stop her. “Family only. You know the rules.”

Of course she does. This has happened so many times before. She’s just not thinking straight.

“Rest easy, Bertha,” Ethel calls through the door. “Your boy . . . he’ll be here right quick and—”

Augie slams one door shut and then the other. “Give the hospital a buzz later on,” he tells Ethel on the way to his shotgun seat beside his partner, who cranks the siren back up and off they go ripping down 52nd Street to St. Joe’s.

Somebody laughs and the crowd of neighbors breaks up to go back to whatever they were doing before all the excitement except for Troo, who is hanging back, and Mother and Dave, who’ve come to Ethel’s other side.

Dave puts his arm around Ethel’s shoulders and she leans against him and for just a second I think she is gonna faint right there in the street and Mother must think that, too, because she says to her, “You look like you could use a stiff drink.” To me, she puts her foot down. “You and your sister get back to bed on the double.”

All there’s left for me to do is watch them guide my good friend across the grass to the front of our house, propping her up between them.

“Ethel?” I call to her.

“Don’t you worry, Miss Sally,” she calls back over her shoulder. “Everything’s gonna be fine,” and as much as I want to believe that, my pounding heart is letting me know the smartest woman I know couldn’t be more wrong.

I try to never disobey Mother, but I can’t do what she wants me to. Go back to bed and let my thoughts chase their tails. Listen to my sister sing that party pooper song until she falls asleep and I’m left alone in the dark to toss and turn in the damp twisted sheets, watching the aquarium fish swim by the sunken pirate ship and think about Troo’s half-buried feelings and what trouble she’s in and how the fox-stole-wearing angelfish don’t seem to care about anybody but themselves and poor Nell, just a skeleton of her former self. And how Dave is probably gonna get shot in the back by a bank robber after he marries our unlucky-in-love mother. And Daddy. All he asked me to do was pay attention to the details and keep Troo safe. He expected me to come through for him in the clinch and I’m batting 0 for 2.