Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [87]
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