A Trouble of Fools

by Linda Barnes

  “Not too bad.”

  “The case going okay?”

  His tone was extra sympathetic. I guess he felt bad about breaking my Cedar Wash bubble. I decided to take advantage of his solicitude.

  “Mooney,” I said, “You remember the Valhalla, that ship that—”

  “The IRA gunrunner. You’re not hooked up to that, are you?”

  “Have you heard any gunrunning tales lately, anybody talking IRA revival?”

  “Not a thing, Carlotta. Far as I can tell, the only people talking IRA gun deals are FBI, or Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, trying to entrap. Why?”

  I tried my leprechaun story out on him. He didn’t like it any better than Jay Schultz had.

  Chapter 25

  I was starting to get a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I thought about Eugene Devens.

  Screeching the cab into its G&W parking slot dissipated maybe a grain of my foul temper. Gloria pretended not to notice. No doubt she’d given Mooney my cab number. I might have taken exception to her generosity except that all three big brothers, including the former NFL ear-biter, were hanging around the office, glowering on cue.

  What I couldn’t figure was where Sam Gianelli fit in.

  John Flaherty was Jackie, the young Irish firebrand Pat had described. While Mooney was busy mocking my intuitive powers, I’d flashed on the outline of Flaherty’s head under the cab’s domelight, the set of head on neck, the shape of his ears. I knew where I’d seen him before: reflected in a mirror near a sign proclaiming Michelob Light the preferred weekend brew of every patriotic American. At the Rebellion, the night I’d trailed the three old coots. He was the younger, talkative one. Even though I hadn’t seen Flaherty’s face that night, on the shape of his ears alone I was ready to label him Irish Jackie, organizer of the GBA revival.

  Why Sam had hired Jackie was another matter. I couldn’t work Sam into the picture. Like I said, IRA and Gianelli don’t exactly mix.

  I drove home. The clock said seven-thirty; the sun said morning. I panicked, then remembered this week’s Thursday morning volleyball had been postponed due to grievous bodily injuries. My distinctive blend of cab and cop-house smells would never tempt Chanel, so I stripped, tossed my clothes in the hamper, and stood under a stinging shower until the hot water ran cold. I wrapped my hair and the rest of me in matching oversized green towels. My phone’s red message light was blipping on and off when I stepped into the bedroom.

  “Hey, Carlotta, pretty fancy, answering machine and all, huh? So, uh, this is Detective Schultz calling. Uh, Jay. Um, look, you were right about, uh, the merchandise your, uh, friend is selling, you know. And, uh, if you’re taking pictures still, and you should see him passing any vials, well, that would help. Or going into any residences, say. Okay. Uh, good-bye.” He’d kept talking as he lowered the receiver, and I could hear him damn all frigging machines. Frigging machines were not properly impressed by boyish good looks and well-groomed hair.

  On the whole, I agree. I mean, who wants to talk to machinery? I replayed the message. Translated, it meant Wispy Beard was dealing crack, and the Cambridge cops would appreciate it if I’d continue surveillance, so they could get on with more important things, like citing teenagers for “lewd and lascivious behavior” in Harvard Square.

  Speaking of lewd and lascivious, another voice boomed on the tape. Sam’s, deep and husky. So sorry, he’d be out of town for the next couple days. Would call me the minute he got back. Shit.

  I toweled my hair into a state of tangled semidryness, and slid between the cool sheets. I imagined the FBI arresting my cat. I thought about Wispy Beard, christened Horace. I closed my eyes, and saw Jackie Flaherty’s face superimposed on Sam’s tanned body. I wondered if Margaret Devens’s heart would withstand the shock of coming home to a Roz-and-Lemon-cleaned house. Pretty soon I’d worked myself up to full-blown insomnia. You know, one minute you need toothpicks to prop your eyelids up, the next minute, bingo, wide awake. I get that way sometimes. The best thing I can say for insomnia is it isn’t fatal. I’ve learned when I can’t sleep, it’s best not to try. So I got up, swore a little, dressed in comfy old jeans and a long cotton knit pullover, ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, or maybe dinner, and piloted my Toyota to Cambridge.

  I didn’t run into old Horace Wispy Beard right away. Even scumbag druggies take time off. He was not at his usual post near Paolina’s front door. I dozed in the car, and woke, with a crick in my neck and a foul taste in my mouth, a little past five in the afternoon. So much for insomnia.

  Horace was in place. Motionless, he looked like a monument, the statue of the Unknown Drug Dealer. A pack of cigarettes was rolled into the sleeve of his T-shirt. His skin seemed yellower as the sun sank behind gray clouds. He sat and stared with his blind unfocused gaze. I took his picture. Nobody came near him. A little past eight, he lit a cigarette. The red point of light flared like a beacon, then moved away.

  Without much conscious thought, I decided to follow him. I could go straight to G&W afterwards.

  If he hopped the subway at Kendall or Central Square, I’d have to let him go. He headed for Central. I followed him. Portland to Main Street to Mass. Ave. Trailing a walker in a car requires patience. I kept my headlights on for a while, flicked them off, then on, pulled ahead of him, parked, turned off his street entirely, and picked him up again at the next corner. He seemed oblivious, possibly toking on something stronger than a Camel.

  He passed the subway entrance and crossed Mass. Ave., racing against the light, and nearly getting clipped by a silver Buick. Ran to catch the Dudley bus.

  Good thing I’d been hacking the past week. Hanging a U-turn in the middle of Central Square didn’t faze me. I sped off after bus 2654, one of the new ones, thank God. I was stiff, my neck hurt, and pretty soon I was going to have to find a bathroom. All I needed was a lung full of bus exhaust.

  Horace Wispy Beard slouched in half a double seat near the rear of the lighted bus. I drove erratically, one eye glued to his back. He stayed on board as the complexions of the passengers slowly changed, and the majority became minority, and the bus headed into Roxbury.

  I know Roxbury as well as the next whitey. To tell the truth, I feel more comfortable there than I do in Southie. Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of streets I won’t drive in Roxbury. I drew an imaginary boundary line for myself. I was not about to cruise down Sonoma Street into the area cops call “the shooting gallery,” both for its heroin and its firearms.

  Horace left the bus before I had much time to plan or worry, and set off at a determined pace down Albany Street. He went to the side of a narrow house on Norfolk Street, and knocked at the door. I didn’t see him enter, but then I didn’t see him come back out either.

  Without slowing down, I drove around the block and parked parallel to the Norfolk Street house, in the shadow of the neighborhood’s tallest and only tree. Across the street was some two-bit pocket playground. Pairs of sneakers, their laces tied together, decorated the power lines like Christmas lights. The park must have been crowded. I couldn’t see much, but I could hear sporadic laughter, the heavy bass beat of a ghetto blaster, and a distant repetitive creak, like someone rocking in a rusty swing.

  I wanted the address of that house. I wanted pictures of Wispy Beard entering and leaving. I wanted to weigh his satchel, before and after. I wanted an itemized list of its cargo.

  What I could get was another thing.

  The area seemed familiar, not because I’d been there before, but because it was like a lot of other crowded urban blocks. A place like this, near a major intersection, with a tiny park, overcrowded flats, slummy-looking row houses, is more active by night than by day. The music in the park blared, suddenly louder.

  If I’d tracked Horace to a “crack house,” a factory, I could bet a watcher had already noted the red Toyota’s passage. My car wouldn’t freak anybody. A red Toyota is not a cop car. Even undercover narcs drive American. Still, another loop with the car might
cause panic, and then the coke would wind up in the sewer.

  The tree blocked my parking spot from any guards stationed on the roof. I hadn’t noticed a lookout man on the stoop. So maybe this was Horace’s home, a respectable dwelling, for all I knew. I doubled the volume on my radio, and flipped to a hard rock station. It seemed an appropriate neighborhood activity. I started jamming my hair up under my hat, and that was the first I knew of my body’s plans to leave the relative safety of the car.

  Now darkness can hide a lot of things, but a six-foot-one-inch redhead is not one of them. I wanted to take pictures, but I needed camouflage. Momentarily, I wished Roz was along for the ride, so she could coddle the right high-speed film into the Canon, and do the shoot. Roz provides her own camouflage.

  I considered options. I could march up to the front door and ask everybody to say “cheese.” I could sneak up on the place from the rear, but the neighbor’s scrap-heap yard looked ideal for a nuclear waste dump. I had no desire to get my toes nibbled by rats.

  The tree that hid my car so well prevented picture taking. It was what we used to call a nice climbing tree back in Detroit, with a good low split fork, and plenty of heavy branches. Now I haven’t climbed a tree in maybe ten years, but the impulse was strong. I overcame it. Trees do not have back doors, and unexpected exits from trees can be both humiliating and painful. I leaned back in the driver’s seat.

  I was exhausted. Sleep in a car doesn’t count like sleep in a bed. I checked my watch. Almost eleven. I took pleasure in imagining the steam rushing from Gloria’s ears when I didn’t show promptly at G&W. I thought about bathrooms.

  Two giggling teenaged girls passed by talking about what Clyde did to Germaine in the back seat of that old Buick. And what Germaine did to Clyde. And what Howie was gonna do when he found out from Germaine what Clyde did to her. That Germaine would feel the need to confide in Howie was a given.

  Lights flared in a house across the street and I slid down in the seat. Slurred voices shouted back and forth, and “never-was-any-fucking-good-Angela” was given the boot for the night.

  A clatter of high-heeled shoes and a burst of raucous laughter signaled the arrival of four ladies of the night. I’d worked the Zone long enough to spot the clothes and the walk. Hoots from the park confirmed my judgment. These were not gals returning from a stint at the local convenience mart. Their workday was just beginning.

  Now my least favorite cop job was decoy. That’s when they’d dress me up as bait, wire me, and see if I could put the fear of God into some john in the market for a quick screw. I mean, I hated it. Not only did it make me feel like a piece of meat, but I always had the sneaking feeling that my backup officers got off on the whole trip.

  Ah, the hell with it. All experience comes in useful sooner or later. I yanked off my hat and ran my fingers through my hair. I found a lipstick, but no blusher, in my purse, so Max Factor’s Primrose Red had to make due for both. Rearview mirrors are not great for makeup, but I managed an exaggerated mouth, and two slanty cheekbone accents.

  My clothes were as wrong as they could be. I checked out the backseat for whatever I’d dumped there. I spend a lot of time in my car, and I’m not neat at heart, so things accumulate. I had my gym stuff: tank top, shorts, sneakers, a terrycloth headband; none too alluring. On the other hand, my sweater was one of those thigh-length numbers.

  I wriggled out of my jeans, and tugged at the sweater’s neck until it stretched and slipped down over one shoulder. With my bra strap hanging out, the new neckline didn’t have much pizazz, so I stuck my arms inside the sleeves, made a temporary tent out of the sweater, reached around, unhooked my bra, and stuffed it in the dash compartment. The new outfit cried for a wide, studded leather belt. What I located was a stingy yard of rope. I tied it around my waist and yanked the sweater up and over, to hide it. The blouson effect wasn’t bad, but it made the sweater damn short.

  My shoes were disastrous, but that was okay because I have plenty of abandoned shoes in my car. I hate uncomfortable shoes, but since the choice in size 11 is so limited, I often wind up with clunkers I’ve purchased out of desperation. Shoes that raise blisters generally get kicked off on the way home, because I can’t stand driving in them. I found one perfect heeled sandal under the front seat. It must have taken me ten minutes to find the other. I wasn’t sure they were a matched set. They pinched like hell. No wonder I’d ditched them.

  I bent over at the waist, and gave my head a shake to make the red curls wild. I stepped out of the car whistling, shoulder bag tossed carelessly over my arm, and was rewarded for my efforts by an anonymous wolf whistle from the park across the street. I turned and flashed my unknown admirer a come-hither grin.

  Walking the way the pros walk, I joined the gaggle on the corner. My arrival made us a well-integrated group. Two blacks; one Hispanic, who couldn’t have been more than sixteen; one washed-out blonde, who looked like an escaped suburban homecoming queen; and Momma’s own Jewish princess.

  “Hey,” I murmured as a low-key greeting. I knew from experience these gals were not much for chatter with strangers.

  “Hey,” the taller of the black ladies responded, after silently checking with her cohorts to see if anybody knew me. She was wearing a leather miniskirt and a cut-off top that didn’t hide the lower curve of her breasts. “Seen Renney tonight?”

  I took a while to respond, keeping my eyes half closed, leaning up against a lamppost, and humming a few meandering notes. The streetlight overhead was broken, which was fine because I look too healthy to be a working girl, what with all that volleyball and swimming. “Renney, yeah,” I mumbled hazily. “Renney’s the man, all right. Ain’t nothin’ Renney don’t know.” I slurred the words together in a singsong chant. I’d seen enough hookers coming down from highs to know the routine. I scratched my arm and yawned. “Jina fixed us up.”

  There used to be this pimp named Renney who ran a string in the Zone. I hoped he wouldn’t pick tonight for a spot check. Jina was a local hooker whose body had been pulled out of a railroad car in South Boston.

  I listened to the ladies rap about bullshit arrests, with fifty-buck fines, which don’t seem so bad when you make five hundred a night. The older black woman, Estelle, was thinking of ditching the life, spending more time with her kids. The Hispanic lady chuckled and asked her if she knew what they paid an hour at McDonald’s. The blonde had a friend who’d gotten AIDS. She’d had herself tested, and was relieved the results were negative. The girls agreed that a checkup every six months was the only way to go. And condoms. And weren’t the johns getting freakier, and what the hell did the cops mean, harassing the johns like that?

  Cars slowed, honked, stopped. The Hispanic girl went for a ride. The short black lady in the glittery bandeau top and cheeky shorts took a walk in the park, escorted by a gentleman in a leather flight jacket and silver sunglasses. I liked that touch, sunglasses at midnight.

  Nothing happened at the house I was watching, but the lights were still blazing, a hopeful sign. I kept my camera ready in my hand, blocked by the shoulder bag. I wasn’t sure I could risk walking by the house to get a better shot. And I wasn’t going to compromise my cover for any still life. If something didn’t happen soon, I was going to have to give up my hooker act, or start a new career.

  I wondered how long it would take the gals to get suspicious about my lack of dates. So far, the furthest I’d strayed was the all-night grocery where use of a grimy toilet was available for a buck. Oh, I’d go over to a car and whisper in the guy’s ear all right. At first, I priced myself out of the market. Hundred-dollar tricks are not turned on Norfolk Street corners. One guy was so stoned he okayed the hundred. I told him I hoped he had herpes, too. I hardly had time to pull my head out the window before he took off.

  A shiny Olds shrieked to a halt right in front of me. The door opened and a new addition to the hooker brigade got out. I pivoted as soon as I saw her face. I knew the lady. God, I’d booked her, what was her name? Marla? Mar
lene? Hell, I’d booked her so often we were practically best friends.

  I backed off, closed my eyes, hunched down, and nodded against the lamppost.

  “Babe, you okay?” Marla knelt down next to me. She was the motherly type. Maybe that’s why she had six kids, all in state care. I didn’t open my eyes. I could hear her breathing, smell her musky scent. “Hey,” she said, “hey, don’t I know you?”

  Adrenaline pumped. I hadn’t decided between fight and flight.

  “Lemme see now, what’s your name, girl?”

  I opened my eyes. She stared at me with a puzzled frown, then caught her breath. My legs tensed.

  Our eyes locked for a moment that seemed to last a half hour. Then she put her hand to her mouth, giggled, and said, “Bitch, cain’t you do nuthin’ ’bout that hair?” She slapped me on the shoulder in a friendly fashion, and the other ladies relaxed.

  Marla’s hair was a different color than it used to be. I think she was wearing a wig. Five years ago, she’d been a looker, high Cherokee cheekbones, and legs that wouldn’t quit. She’d put on weight. She had deep carved circles under her eyes, and wore too much makeup to hide them. At the moment, she looked beautiful to me.

  “Marla, babe, long time,” I said. “Hey, let’s walk.”

  We strolled the block. She asked if she was under arrest, in the kind of hopeful tone that said she didn’t have a place to flop for the night. I said I was no longer a cop, and she shot me a glance of shocked disbelief.

  “You ain’t hookin’?” she said.

  “Look,” I said, “you want to make some stand-up money?”

  “What I gotta do?” She was in a profession where wariness pays off.

  “I want some pictures of a house, and anybody who comes out of it. If we stand right over there, about two feet from that fire hydrant, and gab, and you shield me so they can’t see what I’m doing, I’ll give you fifty.”