Good Graces

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