“You’re going home now, right?”
“Right.” Carl was a good guy, but I thought breaking into Mo’s store while Carl was looking over my shoulder might be pressing my luck, so I closed Mo’s door and made sure the lock clicked.
When I got out to the street, Lula and the Firebird were nowhere to be seen. I put my head down and walked to my parents’ house, where I was pretty sure I could mooch a ride.
My parents lived deep in the burg in a narrow duplex that on a cold day like this would smell like chocolate pudding cooking on the stove. The effect was similar to Lorelei, singing to all those sailors, sucking them in so they’d crash on the rocks.
I walked three blocks down Ferris, and turned onto Green. The raw cold ate through my shoes and gloves and made my ears ache. I was wearing a Gore-Tex shell with a heavy fleece liner, a black turtleneck and a sweatshirt advertising my alma mater, Douglass College. I pulled the jacket hood over my head and tightened the drawstring. Very dorky, but at least my ears wouldn’t crack off like icicles.
“What a nice surprise,” my mother said when she opened the door to me. “And we’re having roast chicken for dinner. Lots of gravy. Just like you like it.”
“I can’t stay. I have plans.”
“What plans? A date?”
“Not a date. These are work plans.”
Grandma Mazur peeked around the kitchen door. “Oh boy, you’re on a case. Who is it this time?”
“No one you know,” I said. “It’s something small. Really, I’m doing it as a favor to Vinnie.”
“I heard old Tom Gates got arrested for spitting in line at Social Security. Is it Tom Gates you’re after?” Grandma asked.
“No. It’s not Tom Gates.”
“How about that guy they were talking about in the paper today? The one who pulled that motorist through his car window by his necktie.”
“That was just a misunderstanding,” I said. “They were in dispute over a parking space.”
“Well, who then?” Grandma wanted to know.
“Moses Bedemier.”
My mother made the sign of the cross. “Holy mother of God, you’re hunting down Uncle Mo.” She threw her hands into the air. “The man is a saint!”
“He’s not a saint. He got arrested for carrying concealed, and then he didn’t show up for a court appearance. So now I have to find him and get him rescheduled.”
“Carrying concealed,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. “What moron would arrest a good man like Mo Bedemier for carrying concealed?”
“Officer Gaspick.”
“I don’t know any Officer Gaspick,” my mother said.
“He’s new.”
“That’s what comes of getting new cops,” Grandma said. “No telling what they might do. I bet that gun was planted on Mo. I saw a TV show the other night about how when cops want a promotion they plant drugs on people so they can arrest them. I bet that’s what happened here. I bet that Officer Gaspick planted a gun on Mo. Everybody knows Mo would never do anything wrong.”
I was getting tired of hearing how Mo would never do anything wrong. In fact, I was beginning to wonder what sort of person this wonderful Uncle Mo really was. It seemed to me everyone knew him, but no one knew him.
My mother had her hands up in supplication. “How will I ever explain this? What will people say?”
“They’ll say I’m doing my job,” I told my mother.
“Your job! You work for your no-good cousin. If it isn’t bad enough you go around shooting people, now you’re hunting down Uncle Mo as if he was a common criminal.”
“I only shot
“Course it wasn’t one of those laws we care much about,” Grandma said, weighing the crime.
“Has Mo ever been married?” I asked. “Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Of course not,” my grandmother said.
“What do you mean, of course not? What’s wrong with him?”
My mother and my grandmother looked at each other. Obviously they’d never thought of it in those terms before.
“I guess he’s sort of like a priest,” Grandma Mazur finally said. “Like he’s married to the store.”
Oh boy. Saint Mo, the celibate candyman…better known as Old Penis Nose.
“Not that he doesn’t know how to have a good time,” Grandma said. “I heard him tell one of those lightbulb jokes, once. Nothing blue, though. He would never say anything off-color. He’s a real gentleman.”
“Do you know anything about him?” I asked. “Does he go to church? Does he belong to the VFW?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Grandma said. “I just know him from the candy store.”
