Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [89]
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