Snow Globes and Hand Grenades (8 page)

“Maybe he's not coming,” Detective Kurtz said, “Maybe he's ill today. Let's get started.”

The door from the priestly kitchen above the rectory creaked opened, and Monsignor O'Day, wearing black pants and a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up and top button undone, descended the steps with a plate of Eggo waffles, lightly humming “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”.

Everyone stood to greet him. “Monsignor,” they all said as he sat down.

“Oh, please sit down, forgive my late breakfast. I was reading the sports section after 6:30 Mass and forgot the time.”

“Monsignor O'Day,” Sister Helen said, “this is Father Ernst and Detective Kurtz. They're here to help with the investigation.”

Monsignor O'Day nodded to them and picked up his fork. Detective Kurtz eyed the stack of three Eggo waffles with two pats of butter and maple syrup running down the side.

“We can't let whoever did this get away with it,” said Miss Kleinschmidt. “I have some ideas who did it.”

“Oh, I forgot my napkin,” Monsignor O'Day said. “Never mind. I'll just be careful. My mother used to make me waffles when I was a lad. She was a loving person. Were you men close to your mothers?”

“Why, of course,” Father Ernst said. “She was very devoted, to the church and to me. Her name was Mary.”

Everyone looked over at Detective Kurtz. “My mother and I were very close when I was young, yes.”

Monsignor O'Day cut a big section of waffle and lifted it halfway to his mouth. “I'm sorry, did she pass away?” O'Day said.

“No, she's still living.”

O'Day nodded thoughtfully. “Well, what do you mean you ‘were close when you were young'?” he said. “Are you still close?”

Everyone looked at Kurtz. This question was not on the agenda.

“In our own way, yes, but I don't mind saying … well, I suppose she still holds a grudge about the speeding ticket I gave her when I was on motorcycle patrol.”

“How fast was she going?”

“Thirty-five in a thirty.”

“You gave your own mother a ticket for just going five miles over?”

“The law is blind.”

O'Day pushed away his plate and pulled a deck of playing cards from his shirt pocket. Sister Helen rubbed her forehead, dreading a display of Queen of Hearts card tricks again. “Monsignor O'Day,” Sister Helen said, “these men have volunteered their time to share with us their plans for the investigation.”

“Probably just some boys blowing off steam, end of the year pranks,” O'Day said. “Do you really think an investigation is the way to go? I mean have you been outside today? It's a lovely spring day. We need to open a window down here.”

Father Ernst cleared his throat and sat up straight in his chair. “Monsignor O'Day, it is indeed a lovely spring day, and when I was chatting with the archbishop in the garden at the basilica before I came here, he expressed his full support for our efforts to root out this sin.”

“That's right, it's a sacrilege,” said Miss Kleinschmidt, getting a pack of Benson and Hedges 100s from her purse, “and whoever did it should not be allowed to breeze into some Catholic high school. You mind if I smoke?”

Monsignor O'Day nodded his permission and shuffled the deck of cards from hand to hand. “Did the archbishop really say all that stuff?”

“Yes, Monsignor,” Father Ernst assured him.

“Let's look at this from a police standpoint,” Detective Kurtz said. He pushed back his chair on the rectory floor, still sticky from trivia night beer spillage, and stood up. “This zip code has seen a wave of unsolved juvenile delinquency for years—kids opening fire hydrants, throwing tomatoes and peaches at buses, letting the air out of police tires, naked pool hopping.”

“I used to go skinny dipping myself years ago,” Monsignor O'Day said, smiling.

“We can't make light of this,” Detective Kurtz continued. “If they get away with this crime against the church, what will they try to do in fifteen years when they're running the world? Steal from some company? Steal from the church? We have to send a message that the law is the law. And I think whoever stole this snow globe will be able to provide police with a wealth of information about all these other crimes that could one day blossom into something that could really threaten public safety. We have to teach them a
lesson they'll never forget.” Kurtz sat down. Everyone looked at Monsignor O'Day for his ruling.

“Okay, but tell me one thing. Does your mother still go thirty-five in a thirty?”

Monsignor O'Day thought he had him, but Detective Kurtz had an answer. “No, she lost her license. She hit a child and lost her license.”

The table fell silent. This admission was news to everyone at the table, and it gave them all a sense of holy urgency for the investigation. Monsignor O'Day put away his playing cards and listened. Father Ernst and Detective Kurtz outlined their plans to interrogate each student from Miss Kleinschmidt's class individually. Before they could start, they requested a file on each student with their academic and disciplinary records for the year, along with photos of each child to examine for hints of rebellion. The investigation was now officially sanctioned and underway. Everyone shook hands with Monsignor O'Day and left him alone in the rectory basement. He sat back down to pick at his waffles and think about his mother.

A SLOW FREIGHT MOANED AND CREAKED its way along the track, and Patrick ran up the embankment to have a look. It was a gentle train of big, rusty boxcars with wide open doors. The kind of train that wants to be hopped. But he had to go to school, so he stood in the middle of the two sets of tracks, about two feet from the train watching it. His spied a ladder with hand grips passing by and looked at a footrest where it would be so easy to land a shoe on the chipped paint and head off someplace else.

When he was younger, he and his friends would catch a freight train down into the business district to go to the Ben Franklin or the Velvet Freeze. But everyone had good bikes now and they had all cast train hopping aside as immature. All but Patrick. He still had thoughts about it, mostly at night. Or in the day, when he walked to school. Or when he walked home from school along the tracks.

Lying in bed, he'd hear a passing freight and think about his unmet calling. The tracks knew what he wanted. The tracks knew that if he ever got really bored, or in bad trouble, he could go there and grab a boxcar and see where it might take him. His only problem was that he had no real troubles to run away from. Unfortunately, his parents loved him. And his brothers and sisters were good to him. He shared a room with his older brother John, who was a freshman at St. Aloysius. So he had that to look forward to, going to high school with his brother. But even so, the tracks knew what he really
wanted and they were always there, waiting for him to give in. Waiting for him to join them.

A speeding freight train on the second set of tracks sounded its horn.

Shit
. Patrick flinched and turned. It was charging toward him a hundred feet up the line by the golf course. He stood still in the no man's zone between the twin sets of tracks. The engineer laid on the horn ordering him to get off the tracks. Now. Move fast. Run for your life!

Patrick gave him a gentle wave of the hand. The engineer was furious. The front of the engine shot toward his spot, its horn blaring one long, solid
Holy Shit
note that bent into a lower key as it shot passed him. Now he was between two trains going in opposite directions. He looked up. Blue sky above—rushing, grinding metal on either side. His hair whipped up and twisted in the whirlwind. Wheels as sharp as butcher knives sliced and thumped all around him. His thin blue uniform tie pulled to one side in the vacuum of wind sucking under the cars of the fast train. Dust and grit picked at his face, and he squinted against it. If he wanted, he could reach out his arms and touch both trains. But he kept them clamped tight at his sides and listened to the metallic melody. The trains hummed and groaned and roared like the shout of all the dead wishing they were living again, and only Patrick was alive in the middle to hear it.

And then it stopped.

The trains passed. Dust settled. Quiet returned. And standing there looking at him by the side of the black bridge was Tony and Mimi.

“What the hell?” Tony said.

Patrick looked at Tony to see if he felt the same way about the trains. But he didn't. The only thing he was feeling was being with Mimi.

Mimi walked over in the middle of the tracks, looking both ways to be safe, and Tony followed. “I've got a plan,” she said.

“She told me some of it,” Tony said, “but the rest she wanted to wait for you. We were looking for you.”

“Did your dad notice the grenade missing?” Patrick asked her.

Mimi rubbed her nose a little worried, but not too much. “No, not yet, probably tonight he'll notice.”

“What are you gonna say?” Patrick asked.

She shrugged. “I don't know. Probably just say I don't know what happened. We did have a party last night, so anybody could have borrowed
it. I'm not worried about that.” She took a breath, worried about something else.

“What?” Tony said.

“Tony, I need you and Patrick to steal a letter from the mailman today at my house.”

Patrick and Tony looked at each other.

“No way,” Patrick said. “Are you kidding?”

She turned to Patrick and put her hand on his shoulder like Joan of Arc assigning a soldier an important battle task. “It will help me with the snow globe investigation to get this one thing out of the way.”

Tony saw her hand on Patrick's shoulder and grabbed her other hand. “What do you want us to do?”

She laid out her plan, glancing back and forth at them. It was a daring idea that would mean sneaking away from the playground at recess and getting back just in time for the next class. Mimi told them for the first time that she had sneaked into Holy Footsteps Academy a while back to get some letterhead and that she had mailed the fake letter rescinding her acceptance to the school. Patrick and Tony traded glances. They didn't tell her they had followed her that day.

Mimi was also holding back something. What she didn't tell them was she also had a second piece of school letterhead and an envelope, one she had taken in case of a typing mistake. Instead, she used it last night, after she came home from the golf course, to type another fake letter from the school saying they were looking forward to her coming and wished her a safe summer. That letter she could maybe swap out with the first letter when it arrived—if Patrick and Tony failed in their mission.

“We can't just walk up to a mailman and rob him,” Patrick said. “He'll see us and tell the police what we look like.”

Tony kept quiet, because that was true.

“Here's my plan,” Mimi said. She opened up her book bag and pulled out two pair of aqua blue dishwashing gloves.

“What's that for?” Tony said.

“Can't leave fingerprints,” Mimi said. Then she got out two facemasks. One was a black wool ski mask and the other was a rubber Halloween mask of President Nixon. “Just put these on, run and grab the letter, and no one will know who you are.”

“That'll never work. He'll still see our ties and uniforms and know it's somebody from the school,” Patrick said.

Tony twisted his tie.

“I thought of that. You'll just have to strip down to your underwear.”

The boys looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“No way in hell. Someone will see us,” Patrick said.

“Don't worry. I've been in my underwear outside before and nobody saw me.”

Patrick and Tony tried not to glance at each other as Mimi kept talking. They both studied her eyes and her hair and her lips and thought of her pale skin and white underwear gleaming in the bright after-school sun. The train tracks stretched out behind her onto the bridge deck and down the long straight away that ran along the golf course. The scrub brush that grew along the sides of the track was mint green and budding. How could they say no to her, a girl standing there like a wildflower, asking them, essentially, if they were brave enough to do this one little thing for her?

“I'll do it,” Tony said, “as long as I can wear the ski mask.”

Patrick looked at the Nixon mask and then at Mimi's green eyes.

“I've got a whole plan for the snow globe investigation,” she said, “but first we just need to get this letter out of the way.”

They agreed to rob the mailman in front of her house during recess, and then they walked to school, arriving as Father Ernst and Detective Kurtz entered the school building to examine the student files in the office.

“Class,” Miss Kleinschmidt said, “We're going to rehearse your graduation ceremony in the gym today, after recess. But first, today in history …”