Hardware (The Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries)

by Linda Barnes

  “I heard some guys got their butts kicked real good,” Al said.

  “Names?”

  “Just talk.”

  “Anybody else?”

  Three minutes of jumbled free-for-all in several languages followed, with partial translations. Everybody’d heard rumors. Nobody mentioned Marvin. Details were few and sketchy. Street names. Bar talk. Drunk talk.

  “Twenty bucks for anybody writes me up a report with a genuine name and an address to match,” I said. “Leave it with Gloria at Green and White.”

  “And trust you for the money?”

  I thought I recognized Al’s skeptical voice.

  “I’m putting two tens in an envelope even as we speak,” I said.

  Gloria wheeled her chair into position. “Bribin’ my drivers?” she asked.

  “That okay with you?”

  “Anything makes ’em drive faster. Here. List goes back a year.”

  Two pages, double-sided. “You’ve got some turnover problems,” I said.

  “Average for the industry.”

  “If I check for prior arrests, how many you figure I’ll net?”

  “Hon, this is a cab company. They got a license, they can drive. They don’t need to be perfect. You gonna have Mooney run ’em?”

  “I can run ’em myself. I have access. Anybody you’d start with?”

  “None of these boys gonna win the Nobel peace prize.”

  “Any real nasty little snots?”

  “This one,” she said, tapping the starred name of Zachary Robards with the eraser end of a yellow pencil. “But that probably ain’t his real name, ’cause he dropped right after I asked him for some papers, Social Security, stuff like that.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “White kid. Local. No immigration problems; I cut more slack for immigrants. He just didn’t seem to like the job. Didn’t like answering to a black woman boss, maybe.”

  “Give you a reason when he quit?”

  “Didn’t show one day, didn’t show the next. Little creep. I called the cops.”

  “’Cause he didn’t show for work? You should have called his mother.”

  “He didn’t bring a cab back. Cops found it someplace in Southie. No damage. Goddamn miracle.”

  “They find the guy?”

  “Wrong name, wrong address; guess they gave it a look.”

  “He on a missing persons?”

  “I didn’t file on him. Ain’t no dearly beloved of mine.”

  I underlined Zachary’s name on the list.

  “Marvin awake?”

  “Sleepin’ like a baby.” Gloria hesitated, selected the bag of M&M’s, shook it over her desk till it was empty. The twenty or so candies must have looked lonely, so she added a handful of peanuts, blending her own trail mix. “Uh, you sure you haven’t seen Sam?” she asked after downing a mouthful.

  “Nope.” I hoped I didn’t sound as guilty as I felt.

  “Must be in Washington.”

  “He got a lady there?”

  “Not so he’d tell me.”

  “You get your computers?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Did Sam mention a guy named Frank?”

  She shook her head. “No. Is that the computer freak?”

  “Maybe he brought him by.” I described the man I knew as Frank, but even as I spoke I realized how useless the words were. Beard, no beard. Silvery hair, dark hair. The things people remember are the easiest things to change.

  Gloria took two more calls on the console, urged a cabbie onward toward B.C. “Sam doesn’t share this place much,” she said. “It’s not exactly snazzy reception desks with cute little secretaries. And Sam doesn’t seem to have many men friends, you know what I mean? His brothers, he’s not real close to.”

  “Let me know if Sam shows up with Frank,” I said.

  “You and Sam getting along?”

  I said, “Can’t get along with him when I don’t see him.”

  “Look, would you please ride graveyard tonight? Otherwise I got a cab with no driver.”

  “It’s time away from the investigation,” I said.

  She grinned. “You might get lucky. Beaten and robbed. ID the suspects.”

  “I thought Sam grounded me,” I said.

  She shrugged her massive shoulders. “He ain’t around, he won’t know,” she said, placid as a huge Buddha, nodding and munching in her metal chair.

  TWENTY-THREE

  By eleven forty-five, a full moon hung lazily in the sky, surrounded by a corona, gleaming like scoured bone. Scudding clouds covered it, dimming the glow before I could slam the door against the biting wind. The motor groaned twice, turned over. I shivered in spite of two pairs of wool socks and a heavy cable-knit sweater worn over a cotton turtleneck. I’d tucked the shirt into houndstooth-checked men’s slacks, thirty-four-inch in-seam, elastic waist, a Filene’s basement bargain too flamboyant to bring top dollar retail.

  No gloves. They get between me and the feel of the wheel, interfere with the connection.

  Midnight’s my favorite driving time. The regular folks are home in bed, kiddies tucked under quilts, furnaces roaring. The impatient horn-honking commuters are gone, banished from sight and mind.

  Night people are more relaxed in some ways, edgier in others. When I drive graveyard, my senses come alive; my whole body tingles on alert. Sometimes I feel like I’m back in a squad car, searching alleyways for the unexpected shadow, listening for the sound of running feet.

  I felt a rush of anger at Sam Gianelli, at anyone who’d try to deprive me of this blustery star-pocked night, shelter me in some spun-sugar cocoon.

  “Twelve seventy-eight,” I sang into the radio. “What’ve you got for me?”

  Gloria’s voice came over the box, relaxed and easy, Aretha singing backup. “A good one. French Consulate clear to Sudbury.”

  “Giving me cushy jobs? Sam’s orders?”

  “You don’t want it, I got other customers, babe.”

  “Thank you much,” I said, goosing the accelerator, catching the yellow light. An upper Comm. Ave. to Sudbury is a cabbie’s dream: forty bucks and a fat tip. Party for the Francophiles tonight, maybe. Charity shindig with too many free drinks. I sped up. Didn’t want my party guest to tire of waiting and stumble over to the Ritz-Carlton’s cabstand. Didn’t want some cruising independent to steal my big tipper.

  Wait inside the consulate, I willed him or her. Have another drink. Wait for the Green & White.

  Bare elms and maples lined Comm. Ave.’s well-groomed strolling mall. In front of the multistoried brownstones, twisty-branched magnolia trees loomed like witches’ broomsticks. I cut a close corner and my tires churned up spray from leaf-choked gutters, the leaves a brown and shapeless gunk, tattered remains of red-gold October.

  G&W 1278 had a working heater, a luxury.

  As I drove, I considered Gloria’s list. Zachary Robards was a dead end, a phony name. One Gustave Fabian had a juvie record that was sealed for all eternity, as did two of Gloria’s other former employees. Either G&W was fielding a lower class of applicant these days or general standards were down. Gustave had done time as an adult too. Arson. Favor for a friend in a failing Lowell furniture business. Short sentence. Good behavior. Record cleansed so he could get his hack license. How many second chances did someone with a record stretching back to childhood deserve?

  Out of prison at twenty-two, had he paid his debt? I’d be the last to condemn a kid in his twenties to a life of unemployment. On the other hand, as someone who runs her own small business, I’d think twice about hiring a happy firebug.

  “Psychologically well-adjusted,” some shrink had written on Gustave’s parole recommendation. “Responds well to penal regimentation.” If he behaved so nicely in prison, became so “well-adjusted,” I thought, maybe he should rot there.

  I wondered what Keith Donovan would say to that, found it odd that I had no idea. We hadn’t talked much.… It used to seem so important to me—ta
lking, knowing you shared certain ideas and values before you hit the sheets. Instead of becoming more conservative with age, I seemed to be getting more reckless. Except about disease. Maybe it boils down to AIDS fear. If the man seemed clean—smart enough to know the risks and take precautions—he became desirable. Not desirable enough to forgo a friendly condom, mind you.

  Just chemistry, I thought. Just that old boy-girl positive-negative charge I don’t understand and have quit trying to analyze. What I had with Sam. What I have with Donovan. What I can’t quite spark with Mooney.

  I pulled the cab to a halt in front of the consulate. It was not a honking neighborhood. Chandeliers blazed, and I strained to see if someone kept watch out the window. I counted to twenty, then mounted the stairs and pushed the bell.

  A tiny woman, well over sixty, vigorous, opened the door. A stream of French issued from her heavily lipsticked mouth, a different brand of French from Louis and Jean’s, but recognizably the same language. I was glad it was addressed to someone inside the consulate, not to me. She hesitated at the top of the steps, and I guided her down with a little elbow assistance. Tipsy or nearsighted. Maybe just having trouble adjusting her eyes to the dark after the glitter of so many jeweled necks.

  She gave the address in accented English. Easy half-hour ride out. Turnpike to 128 to 20. I checked in with Gloria. I’d have to deadhead back. Boston cabs can’t pick up in other towns, not even in friendly Cambridge right across the Charles. And who’d I pick up at midnight in respectable Sudbury, where everybody’s fast asleep except the teenagers screwing on the family room rug?

  The lady didn’t speak; neither did I. I wanted to punch on an old blues tape, but the fare, in her twinkling jewelry, looked like classical music. I turned to WBUR and watched a smile flicker across her wrinkled cheeks. Good guess. Better tip. The psychological art of cab driving.

  On the return trip, I played blues at top volume, shaking off the melancholy sonatas with a dose of Blind Lemon Jefferson:

  “Have you ever heard a coffin sound?

  Have you ever heard a coffin sound?

  Have you ever heard a coffin sound?

  And you know a good boy’s in the ground.”

  Talk about melancholy.

  “Twelve seventy-eight.”

  I turned down the music.

  “Where you been?” Gloria demanded.

  “Sudbury, where you think?”

  “I been trying to get you.”

  “Out of range,” I said.

  “Hold on. Your bad penny’s turned up.”

  Sam’s voice came over the crackling box, so deep and smooth it stole my breath. I wasn’t ready to deal with this. Why the hell couldn’t he have stayed in Washington? A few more days. Till I’d at least imagined a way to tell him about Keith.

  “Hey,” he said. “I don’t like being stood up.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “I brought flowers, but I already gave them to Gloria.”

  “I hope this isn’t going out across the band.”

  “It’s a private conversation.”

  “Sure, with every scanner freak in the area listening in.”

  “I’ll wait till you come by.”

  “I’m working. I’m not planning any stop at G and W. I’ve only made a couple fares.”

  “Then why’d you send me mail?” His voice was indignant.

  “What mail?”

  “E-mail. Meet you at Green and White.”

  I swallowed and felt a chill climb the back of my neck. “I didn’t send it.”

  “Come on. It’s late for Halloween pranks.”

  “What did I happen to say? In this e-mail?”

  “One A.M. Meet you here.”

  I glanced at my watch: 12:50. “Sam,” I said, my mouth so dry I could barely spit words. “Do me a favor. Get outside.”

  “What?”

  “Who else is there?”

  “Me. Gloria. Marvin’s in back. I heard about what you—”

  “Please. Get out.”

  “Carlotta—”

  “Sam, humor me. Wait across the street. Shit, you’re gonna need help getting Marvin out. Call in the nearest cabbie. Wait at the restaurant. They’ve got phones. Soon as you’re out, dial nine one one.”

  Growing up Mafia, he should be more suspicious, more careful. Dammit, hadn’t the Gianellis ever been threatened?

  “Will do,” he said curtly.

  Message received. I breathed for the first time in minutes.

  The rumble filled the car like thunder, distant, growling, growing louder. It turned to a crackling hum and the radio hissed into silence.

  “Sam!” I said. “Gloria!” I shouted. I pressed buttons. “All cabs! Call a nine one one to Green and White.”

  I floored the accelerator, held it there, screeching turns, ignoring red lights. Sweat beaded my forehead. I fumbled at the dash to turn off the heater, couldn’t take my eyes off the road, the speed I was doing. Sweat poured down my face, trickled down my back. I cracked a window.

  Greenough to Arsenal, the Charles River a black ribbon to my left, the wheels screaming the turns. Market Street, left at North Beacon, blessedly clear, using the opposing traffic lane to pass the few slow cars.

  As I approached Cambridge Street, I could hear sirens. I never looked to see if they were chasing me.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Lights blinded me. Cherry. Yellow. Blue. Harsh white spotlights trained on the blaze, illuminating towering ladders, powerful spurting hoses, black-and-yellow-slickered firemen. Engines from Ladder Company 19. District 7 pumpers. Boston Police. News vans, satellite dishes raised to the night sky.

  I shoved my foot to the floor, bypassing emergency vehicles. Then I stood on the brakes, spinning the steering wheel full left at the same time. Rubber shrieked. Cars honked. The noises floated by—distant, unrelated—as I fishtailed into the restaurant parking lot. I couldn’t yank my eyes from the surging smoke, spiraling gray against the blue-black sky like a lurid tornado.

  I think I parked between yellow lines. I ran.

  “Behind the tape. Get back. Keep back,” yelled a voice in my ear.

  I stuck out an elbow, connected with something that grunted, and kept running, head down. I ran till the heat forced a halt. The stink of burning rubber filled my nose. Acrid smoke seared my tongue. I was unable to go forward, unable to step back; my pulse raced, my heart pounded. I rubbed a sweater cuff across my wet cheeks and oozing nose.

  A shattered chunk of cork lay at my feet. I knelt and touched it. A cup-hook protruded. The keyboard, a fragment of the board where Gloria hangs, hung, used to hang, the cab keys. Kneeling felt better. Hugging knees to chest, lowering my head, I turned myself into a round ball.

  Gloria. Sam.

  GLORIA. SAM. I don’t know if I spoke the names aloud, don’t know if I muttered them, screamed them, shrieked them to the indifferent air.

  A small round ball, rocking back and forth, refusing to look, refusing to accept the evidence of sight, I coughed and choked on bitter fumes, willed my fingers to unclench, my hands to release their grip, my legs to straighten.

  Standing, I could see the metal crisscross shield, guaranteed to protect G&W from outside invaders, hanging crookedly from the side of the stucco shell, resting against a blasted-out cab. Forked tongues of flame licked skyward, hissing at jets of water, steaming.

  Hands grabbed me around the waist, yanked backward. I let them.

  A policeman spoke; I couldn’t hear him. His mouth moved, but I was deaf—from the noise of crackling flames and flooding waters, from the shouts of firefighters and the chattering herd of onlookers. From shock.

  Ambulances.

  Ambulances with whirling lights.

  Survivors. Ambulances might mean survivors. I couldn’t bear the hope. Hope was almost worse than loss. The fear of hope worse …

  I stumbled over a hose, tripped, staggered through a puddle. The policeman, still hovering, clutched my elbow.

  �
�Get the fuck away from me,” I muttered, striding toward the ambulances.

  Body bags lay on the ground. Flat, unzipped, waiting.

  I saw the wheelchair before I heard the voice, her achingly beautiful voice. How they’d moved her massive weight from chair to stretcher I don’t know.

  “Gloria!”

  “Carlotta?”

  I shoved, melting through the crowd, seeing an inch as an opening, a hand span as a thoroughfare.

  “Marvin” was all she said when I reached her, leaning over to stare into her eyes. She was swathed in a mound of shiny Mylar, covering her from the neck down. The gurney seemed fragile underneath her. Blood traced a pattern in her hair, trickled down her forehead. A raised welt started above her left eyebrow, slanted up. Soot smudged her cheeks. “Marvin,” she repeated. That’s all, but I knew from the way her voice broke, crackling like dry branches, that one body bag was reserved for his remains.

  “Don’t talk,” an EMT ordered her.

  “They already took Sam,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Move away. She needs to get some air in her lungs, for chrissakes.”

  “Where did they take Sam?” I persisted.

  The EMT shoved me back, strong hands against my shoulders. I crossed my arms in front of me, made taut blades of my hands, the way I’d seen Roz do so many times.

  It’s just a move I’ve seen. Someday someone’s going to call my bluff and kick the shit out of me. The EMT stared into my eyes and backed off.

  “Mass. General,” Gloria said. “Burns and trauma. Legs trapped … his legs caught under a beam … Marvin. Oh, Marvin.” The way she spoke his name made me close my eyes and look away. Not a cry or a scream or a wail, but an almost unearthly keening, the vocalization of a grief so intense that it grabbed my intestines and wouldn’t let go.

  “Somebody fightin’ with him,” Gloria said. “Door to the back room bursts open. I hear two voices, cursin’ each other. Marvin. Marvin says ‘Stop!’ or ‘No!’ I couldn’t see; he’s still in the other room. Sam started runnin’ and that’s when everything went—”

  The EMT inserted a needle into one of her bulging veins.

  “Did Marvin say a name? Did he know the person? Was the voice familiar?”