“I… I… I…” Henry stutters when he gets nervous.
“Say it, don’t spray it,” Troo says, wiping her arms off like he spit on her, which he mighta, just a little. His teeth don’t exactly match up in the front.
“I… I… don’t know if I should… I…”
“C’mon, Onree. Cough it up,” Troo says.
I give Henry a go-ahead nod because really, whatever he heard at the game, how bad could it be?
Henry takes a shuddering breath, the same kind he takes when he dives into the deep end of the park pool, and says, “I heard Detective Rasmussen tell Pops last night at the game that… that Greasy Al… escaped!”
“What?!” I have to grab on to the counter so I don’t fall off my stool. This is the worst news ever!
Before they shipped him off to Green Bay, Molinari told his brothers, Moochie and Tommy, that he’d get back at Troo someday for getting him sent to reform school and they made sure we heard that, too. Beady-eyed Greasy Al musta been marking on his cell calendar the days until he could come back to the neighborhood to give Troo what he thinks she deserves, but then one of her ironlung letters came and… and he busted out because he couldn’t wait a minute longer to get his hands around her neck.
“When?” I ask Henry, barely able.
“Like I told you… at… at… the game.”
“No, I don’t mean when did you… when did Greasy Al escape?” My hands are shaking, but Troo’s aren’t. I don’t think I have ever seen her get really scared. She is very much like Doris Day. A que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be person.
“I was sittin’ a few seats away in the bleachers so I couldn’t hear so good,” Henry says. “But I… I think Officer… I mean, Detective Rasmussen, said he got away a few days ago. They’re lookin’ for him everywhere. He… he hit a guard.” He turns to my sister. “Remember what… what happened last summer. You gotta be careful, Tr… Leeze.”
I press my cheek down on the chilly marble counter. I’m not sure how many miles away Green Bay is. I’m hoping it’s too far for Molinari to polio-limp walk all the way back here. Because if he did, I know the first person he would pay a murderous visit to. She’s twirling round and round on the stool next to me like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
Henry brings his head down to mine and says in a soft voice that he hopes Troo won’t hear, “You okay, Peaches ’n Cream?” His breath smells like vanilla and strawberry and chocolate all mixed together because Neapolitan is his favorite ice cream flavor and the name he called me is mine. “Maybe I shouldn’ta told ya.”
“A course you shoulda told us and a course she’s okay,” Troo says with a slap on my back. “She’s from fine pheasant stock, isn’t that right, Sal.”
I am just about to tell Henry that I don’t think I am fine and the O’Malley sisters are from what Granny calls fine peasant stock and to please hand me some ice out of the freezer to run across the back of my neck because I am not a Doris Day que sera, sera person. I am much more like Perry Como, a catch a falling star and put in your pocket, save it for a rainy day person.
Mr. Fitzpatrick calls from the back of the store, “Henry? Could you come here for a minute, please?”
Henry ducks out from behind the counter, comes to my side and picks up one of my hands in his pale ones that are also trembling. “See ya later?”
That would be so nice. To do what I hoped to do this summer when I wasn’t busy minding Troo. I’d love to come back this afternoon and read together on the drugstore step or count Ramblers whizzing past because they’re our favorite car and the one we will buy when we’re married, but now it looks like I’m going to have to erase Spend as much time as I can with Henry off my THINGS TO DO THIS SUMMER list and put on Keep my eyes open for Greasy Al instead.
I try never to lie to Henry, so I don’t tell him, I doubt very much if I’ll be seeing you again anytime soon because I’m going to be too busy protecting my sister every minute of every day. I don’t want him to get upset because he sometimes gets a nosebleed if he does, so I say to him the same thing I always do after one of our visits, “Thanks for the phosphate. It’s the best I ever had.”
When Troo doesn’t pay Henry a compliment the way she should, I nudge her.
“Thanks for the soda, Onree,” she says. “It wasn’t that bad.” She’s got a chocolate mustache, but I don’t lick my finger and dab it off the way a good sister should. I have had just about all I can take from Troo O’Malley this morning. (Sorry, Daddy. I know you’re watching, but enough is enough.)
Mr. Fitzpatrick calls again from the back of the store, “Son?”
Before Henry disappears all the way down aisle two to see what his dad wants, he stops and blows me a kiss.
“Awww, isn’t that sweet,” my sister says, drippy. “Ya done?” She grabs the soda glass out of my hand and before I can stop her she guzzles down what I got left.
“Troo!” I get her by the shoulders and stare deep into her eyes because you can really tell a lot about a person when you do that. The windows to her soul are twinkling, but not in the way regular people’s do when they’re feeling good about something. Hers have a steely glint. She doesn’t care that Molinari is seven years older or weighs a hundred pounds more. She’s already thinking about the best way to go about capturing him, I know she is. Greasy Al might want revenge, but so does she, and she won’t back down. She doesn’t know how. “You’re comin’ up with one of your plans, aren’t you,” I say.
“Whatta ya mean?” she says, like she just flew down from heaven, real angelic like that.
“You know what I mean, Trooper,” I say, slipping off my stool with this certain kind of feeling I’ve got all the time lately. I can’t stop thinking there’s something bad waiting for me around the corner with wide-open arms and no matter how many details I pay attention to, no matter how prepared I am, I can’t stop it from grabbing me or even worse, Troo.
My sister doesn’t snap her dime down on the marble counter the way I just did. She picks up her Golden Tomahawk bag and strolls past me out the drugstore door with a cherry-on-the-top grin. In the back pocket of her shorts, I can see the outline of a pack of L &Ms.
Chapter Five
Just like the park, where the O’Malley sisters are this morning is another important place to be in the neighborhood-Vliet Street School playground. The school is three stories high and made out of brick with a flat roof and a lotta doors, but none of us cares about that. It’s the blacktop we’re interested in. The heat comes off it in waves. And it’s not only the way it looks that reminds me of a bottomless sea. It’s the kids. Even if the last thing on your mind is playing a game of Statue Maker or Captain May I you can get lured over here by their happy sounds the same way those sailors did by those singing sirens the nuns taught us about when they covered the importance of resisting temptation. (Those sailors ended up dead, which is a word to the wise.)
The playground is about a block wide, so there is plenty of room to get together all kinds of games. Boys take off their shirts at the basketball court, which I have nothing to do with. Troo does. She likes any games that you play with balls. There are yellow-painted hopscotches and four-squares and flat green wooden benches that you can sit on if you want to play checkers or best of all, braid lanyards underneath the one shade tree, which I warned everybody is going to die soon if they don’t stop carving their initials into it. The playground’s also got four swings, a shiny slide that can blister the back of your legs in the afternoon if you forget to pull your shorts down far enough, a sandbox and two different kinds of monkey bars. The flat ladder ones that you can swing across jungle-style (Mary Lane’s favorite) and the other kind that are twisted metal pretzels that I don’t really get what you’re supposed to do with.