Chapter 5 - The Parish School
St. Jude’s parochial school smelled of damp wool, floor wax, and the cabbage-heavy steam of the nuns' cafeteria three doors down the corridor. The hallway was narrow, lined with green-painted wainscoting that was chipped near the floor where generations of small shoes had kicked it while waiting to see Sister Mary Katherine.
Vincent Moretti didn't look like he belonged in a primary school hallway. Standing six-foot-two in his heavy overcoat, his shoulders nearly brushing the pale green doorframes on either side, he looked like a federal marshal who had wandered into the wrong building while looking for a bankruptcy hearing.
Sister Mary Katherine—a woman whose glasses were thick enough to make her eyes look like two gray beetles behind a jar—didn't blink when she looked up from her ledger and saw him filling the doorway of the administrative office.
"Can I help you, sir?" she asked, her voice dry as autumn leaves. "Classes are in session. If you're here about the parish raffle, the tickets are sold out until the spring."
"I'm not here for the raffle," Vincent said. He stepped inside, his shoes making no sound on the worn linoleum. He didn't take off his hat; he held it in his right hand, the brim slightly damp from the wind outside. "My name is Vincent Moretti."
The sister’s pen stopped scratching across the paper. She didn't gasp, and she didn't reach for a telephone. Women who ran parish schools in neighborhoods controlled by the Outfit knew three things: who the alderman was, who the priests were, and who actually kept the parish roof from leaking when the diocese ran out of funds.
"Mr. Moretti," she said slowly, her tone neither warm nor hostile, just level. "We don't have much call for import-export services here at St. Jude's. Unless you're looking to donate a truckload of coal for the boiler."
"I'm here about Sophie Miller."
Sister Mary Katherine’s eyebrows—thin, gray lines above her lenses—drew together. She laid her pen down beside the ledger, keeping her index finger pressed against the margin of the page. "Sophie is a good student. Quiet. Attentive. If this is about her attendance—"
"It's not about her attendance." Vincent reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a plain white bank envelope, and laid it neatly on the corner of her desk. He didn't push it toward her; he simply placed it there, flat and unadorned, the way a man drops a legal brief on a judge's bench. "I understand the parish has a tuition assistance fund for families experiencing temporary hardship."
The nun looked at the envelope. Then she looked up at Vincent’s face, her gray-beetle eyes studying every line around his mouth, every trace of silver at his temples.
"The parish has many funds, Mr. Moretti. Some of them come from sources that are easier to account for in the diocesan audit than others."
"This is clean money," Vincent said, his voice flat. "Drawn from a commercial account at the First National Bank of Cicero. It covers tuition for the third grade through the end of the academic year, plus an allowance for books and winter clothing."
Sister Mary Katherine didn't touch the envelope. She leaned back in her wooden armchair, the springs creaking softly in the quiet room. "And why would a man like Vincent Moretti care whether an eight-year-old girl in a frayed yellow raincoat has enough money for her arithmetic book?"
"She has an inconvenient habit," Vincent said, his mouth twitching with the ghost of something that might have been a smile if he’d had more practice at it. "She gives things back that don't belong to her."
The nun was silent for a long moment. Through the frosted glass of the office door, they could hear the faint, melodic sound of children's voices chanting the multiplication tables down the hall—three times four is twelve, three times five is fifteen...
"Sophie’s father left them with nothing three winters ago," the sister said softly, her eyes dropping to the white envelope on her desk. "Her mother works forty-five hours a week at a diner that pays below minimum wage and tips in nickels. And yet, every morning, that child comes to school with her hair combed, her shoes polished as best she can, and her homework done before the bell rings. She doesn't ask for charity, Mr. Moretti. She never has."
"She isn't asking," Vincent said. "I'm offering."
"There's no such thing as a free lunch in this neighborhood, and you know it as well as I do," the nun said, her voice sharpening just enough to show she wasn't easily impressed by a custom-tailored overcoat. "What does Mr. Moretti expect in return? A favor? A message passed along to someone downtown?"
Vincent looked down at the desk, his jaw tightening slightly. "I expect nothing. I just want to know what it feels like."
"What what feels like?"
"To do something that doesn't have a ledger attached to the end of it."
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Sister Mary Katherine studied him for another ten seconds—long enough for the radiator to let out a sharp, metallic ping—before she slowly reached out, her dry fingers touching the corner of the white envelope and sliding it toward her ledger.
"God moves in mysterious ways, Mr. Moretti," she said quietly, slipping the envelope beneath her blotter. "Sometimes He uses a parish priest. And sometimes He uses a man who smells like cigar smoke and federal reserve ink."
