A Trouble of Fools

by Linda Barnes

  I lifted my face. Over Flaherty’s body, maybe thirty feet away, I saw the outline of his killer, high boots first, then muscled thighs in camouflage fatigues. Because I was flat on the ground, the man seemed larger than life. My eyes traveled up—belt, shirt—and I clamped my mouth shut to force back a scream. Flaherty’s killer had no face, only a black hood with slitholes for eyes.

  I never found out which of the Old Geezers contacted the real IRA. And I’m not saying the police were in on it.

  But somehow, in the confusion, in spite of all the cops, Jackie Flaherty’s executioner melted into the crowd and got away.

  Chapter 34

  Hours ticked by. I told the same edited story to an endless parade of increasingly high-ranking cops, then to two Assistant District Attorneys, then to a full-fledged DA who looked about twelve years old, and finally to a comfortably graying Deputy Superintendent. I drank vile coffee. I ate two mysterious sandwiches that could have been tuna fish or chicken salad, but were mainly mayonnaise. After my chat with the Deputy Super, I expected release, but two more cops came in and started the whole show over again. Then two more. My mouth felt numb. Everything I said started to sound wrong. I sat and stared at cracked walls and peeling paint, concentrating on them with grim single-mindedness because the ugliness of the interrogation room beat the pictures in my imagination.

  Over and over and over. The core of my story was that I’d uncovered a drug ring while observing and tailing Wispy Beard. I had no client. The drug dealer’s location had posed a threat to my little sister. Check it out with Officer Jay Schultz of the Cambridge force if you don’t believe me. Since I was an ex-Boston cop, I’d brought my discovery of an upcoming deal to the attention of my former superior. He’d made the bust, but things had gone wrong due to the wholly unexpected interference of the FBI. What were those guys doing there anyway? Who was this Thomas C. Carlyle?

  I didn’t think “Andrews” would be eager to discuss the tap on my phone.

  As to who killed the drug dealer—Flaherty, was that his name? I didn’t know. I really didn’t. Sometimes I sound more convincing when I’m lying than when I’m telling the truth.

  Not a word about the cab company.

  It was such a simple story you’d think they’d have gotten it straight the first time, but no, I had to recite the bilge for anyone who had a spare half hour. It was a good thing I’d been on the other side of police interrogations, or I’d have gotten nervous, what with all the comings and goings, and pointless, repeated questions.

  Mooney was with me the first time—taking mental notes, I hoped—so he could make his version jibe with mine. Flaherty was dead. What would it hurt to keep the Old Geezers out of it? Not that they deserved protection, the damned fools. But Gloria did. And Sam.

  I wondered who’d tell John Flaherty’s mother that her son was dead. Who’d tell Sam?

  I got increasingly nervous as the hours wore on, not because I really thought they’d hold me, but because I didn’t want to disappoint Paolina. Word started filtering in about a number of other drug busts. Wasn’t it odd, cop after cop asked, that informants had been so considerate on this night of all nights? Yes, I enthused, wasn’t the Mayor’s Drop a Dime/Stop a Crime program wonderful? I stared at my watch. I listened to my stomach rumble.

  At five past five, I cornered Mooney and told him I absolutely had to leave.

  At half past six, he breezed into Interrogation and interrupted two new-minted detectives with the news that he was to escort Miss Carlyle over to Area B. I didn’t say anything until we were safely out of the building. Then I remembered the cat.

  “Don’t worry. Your tenant came and rescued him.”

  “You see her?”

  He nodded. “Pink hair, purple streak. You can pick ’em.”

  “Do I have to go over to B?”

  “Nah. Those guys were just questioning you for practice. I’m taking you home.”

  “My car—”

  “Impounded. You can probably get it back tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.” My mouth was so dry I could hardly get words out.

  Mooney’s car was parked about two feet from the curb in a No Parking zone. He’s got an old, dented, gas-guzzling Buick whose passenger door opens only from the inside. I slid in from the driver’s side.

  “How are you?” Mooney said, once we were settled. In all the hours since Flaherty’s death, nobody had asked that one.

  I swallowed and grimaced. “Okay. You?”

  “Okay.” He lit a cigarette, and shook his head the way he always does when he realizes he hasn’t given up smoking yet. “You lie pretty well.”

  “I guess you do, too, or we’d be sharing a cell.”

  “I might have to name the cab company. If we can’t squeeze Devens’s murder out of one of the punks.”

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t care anymore. That’s how the cops get most of their confessions. You just don’t care about anything after fifteen hours of looking at the same brown walls and hearing the same questions and breathing the same stale air.

  “What’s so important tonight? Heavy date?”

  I explained about Paolina.

  “You want to go straight to the concert?”

  I glanced down at my sloppy jeans and worn jacket. “I have to change—”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  “I can call a cab.”

  “I’d like to wait.”

  Mooney has infinite patience, which is one of the things that makes him such a good cop. I zipped upstairs, yanked on a green dress, brushed my hair, and was back in eight minutes flat. The bed called to me, but I knew if I lay down for a second I wouldn’t get up for nine hours. And Paolina expected me.

  Bypassing Harvard Square, we dodged the Broadway potholes into East Cambridge. We didn’t talk or listen to the radio, but the silence was warm and easy. Battered cars crowded the small parking lot near Paolina’s school.

  “Thanks, Mooney.” I said, getting ready to open the car door.

  “Hang on. I’ll find a space.”

  “I can get out here.”

  “Look,” he said. “Do you mind if I tag along?”

  “Mooney, it’s a kid’s band concert. Do your ears a favor.”

  “I like band concerts,” he said stubbornly. “I’d like to see Paolina.”

  Paolina has met Mooney three times. The first time, he was wearing his full-dress uniform, and he awed her into scared silence. The second time, he spent about an hour blowing soap bubbles with her on the front steps of the station house. The third time, they were old friends. His presence would more than make up for my lateness.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He parked illegally, and left his Officer-On-Duty card displayed prominently on the windshield. We went inside.

  All grammar schools are exactly the same, the way all hospitals and all airports are. Rows of lockers, long tiled hallways, a smell that comes from the union of chalk and blackboards. For me, that particular aroma always evokes shrill cries of “Single file in the hallways, line up according to height, please.” Which used to mean that all the little girls lined up first, and then all the little boys, and then yours truly at the back of the pack.

  We didn’t need directions to the auditorium. The noise—I hesitate to say music—guided us toward double doors on the left. We crept in like the shamefaced latecomers we were, and fumbled for seats in the dark. I saw two on the aisle way back on the right, and tugged at Mooney’s hand until he saw them too.

  The stage was a raised wooden platform, so high that the folks in the front row got a good view of forty little pairs of feet. They do that deliberately in schools, to give speakers more authority. It does nothing for acoustics. The lighting was a matter of on or off, and the front of the stage remained in twilight, which didn’t bother me because Paolina was near the back.

  The imitation-leather seats might have been roomy for ten-year-olds. I felt as if my knees were kissing my chin, and
I regarded Mooney’s struggle to find a halfway comfortable position with sympathy.

  Normally I can turn my mind off with music, quiet the incessant murmur of my brain. Marching-band tunes performed by an elementary school ensemble do not do the trick.

  I have perfect pitch. Usually I consider it a blessing. I’m not sure if my perfect pitch is absolute or relative. I carry around a middle C in my head, and I do the rest of the scale based on that one note. Tonight the gift was not a blessing. One of the flute players should have been muffled. A couple of violins weren’t even close. The entire brass section should have been locked in a room way down the hall, preferably soundproofed.

  Mooney patted his knee in time to the music.

  People hear music differently. For me, it’s a thumping bass line that I love, and voices twining in close harmony. Paolina doesn’t sing very well. Paolina hears the beat.

  She plays percussion, and I think she’s terrific, but then I would. In a white blouse and a dark pleated skirt exactly like the blouses and skirts worn by all the other girls in the band, she stood out as if a spotlight were focused on her. She sported two bright red plastic clips in her hair, one over each ear. She spent most of the time waiting for her cues. She seemed to vibrate with the music, her face taut with the excitement of the count, the unbearable tension of the moment before the cymbals or the snare drum or the triangle was sounded. She told me once that she hears music as a series of counts, like footsteps. That’s why she was so delighted with the ballet. She never hesitates about whether something is three-quarter or four-quarter time, much less more complicated rhythms. It’s her gift, one of many.

  I wondered if Jackie Flaherty had played an instrument in his grammar school band. I felt the first tear slide down my cheek.

  Of forty-seven people arrested on drug possession charges in Boston and Cambridge that night, one was my pal “Bud” Harold, aka Wispy Beard. With his record, another arrest might mean Walpole, the state penitentiary they call something else these days—Woodsy Glen or Meadow Marsh or some such name—to distinguish it from the fair town of Walpole. No more lazy drug-pushing days on Paolina’s stoop for him. I watched my little sister, poised for a cymbal strike, cheeks glowing, eyes intense, hearing the beat so clearly that it pulsed inside her—and I knew there would always be another drug dealer.

  I mumbled an excuse to Mooney and left the auditorium.

  I couldn’t find the ladies’ room. All I could find were doors marked Boys and Girls, and I finally entered the girls’ room closest to the auditorium. The place was impossibly small. It had four skinny stalls with graffiti-covered wooden doors that topped off at four feet. The mirror reflected my breasts on down, and the sink was so low I’d have to get on my knees to wash my face. I felt like Alice after she’d eaten the mushroom, and that made me cry harder.

  When I’m hot I sweat, and when I’m sad I cry. Neither is socially acceptable, and you might just as well tell me to stop sweating as to stop crying. When I say sweat, I mean sweat, not “mist” or “dew” or any attractively feminine version of sweat. And I don’t weep into any dainty handkerchief either. I wail. I howl. I gulp and hiccup and blow my nose.

  I knelt on the cement floor, and turned the cold tap on full. A discouragingly thin stream trickled into the yellowed basin.

  I heard somebody rap on the door.

  “Carlotta?”

  “Go away.”

  “Are you all right?” Mooney asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He pushed the door open. The room halved in size. His shoulders almost hit the door frame.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Mooney. Do you mind?”

  “Can I help?”

  “Go away.”

  He just stood there.

  I never cried when I was a cop. It was a point of honor. If the “boys” took it as weakness, I wouldn’t be weak. I’d show them. And after a while I lost the knack, and things just welled up inside, and hardened into a constant nagging ache.

  As a private operative, I’d made peace with my tears.

  “Look, Mooney, I’m fine. I just feel bad when I see somebody die. That’s all.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Mooney, you saw me at the bus station. Was I good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was I a good cop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then what I do afterwards, if I scream or faint or froth at the mouth or throw things, that’s my own business, okay?”

  I cupped my hands in the sink, and submerged my face in the water. Mooney had a stack of rough paper towels waiting. While my eyes were covered, he put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Mooney,” I said. “I appreciate it, but I don’t need a man to lean on. I don’t burst into tears in the hope one will come along.”

  His face got red, and he yanked his hands off my shoulders as if they were on fire. “For Christ’s sweet sake, Carlotta, will you stop treating me like some goddamned representative male! It’s because I’m a cop, right? Just because I’m a cop doesn’t mean I’m some kind of fascist macho asshole. I see rooms full of women in tears every week, and I don’t want to comfort them. I want to comfort you. You, Carlotta. I don’t mean it as an insult, dammit. I saw the bastard die too, goddammit, and it would comfort me to hold you.”

  He stopped dead. His voice echoed off the walls. I could hear a distant trombone, wailing off-key.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said quietly, “I guess I yell when I see somebody die. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, standing.

  There was hardly room for both of us. The walls pushed us together, and we stood in the little girls’ john, hugging. Friends—and maybe more. He kissed my hair, my forehead, my cheek. I think he would have gotten around to my mouth.

  The door squeaked. A small child in a flowered pinafore entered, dragging her black-garbed grandmother by the hand. The little girl paused openmouthed, made a noise like the door squeak, and retreated fast. Mooney’s back was to the door, so he didn’t see the mask of scandalized outrage freeze across the woman’s bony face. She raised her furled umbrella high. She looked just like my third grade teacher, and I felt trapped in a manic flashback—ten years old, hiding in the girls’ room, caught without my math homework.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re up to, young man,” she screeched.

  It must have been a while since anyone had called Mooney “young man” in that tone of voice. I could feel him jump. He glanced around. His face flamed as he became fully aware of his surroundings.

  He pivoted to face his accuser. “It’s okay, lady,” he said quickly. “I’m a cop.”

  I was laughing so hard I had to sit down on the floor.

  Chapter 35

  I made it home before midnight, and spent some time sitting cross-legged on my unmade bed, chewing my fingernails. Then I got resolutely to my feet, and walked across the room to the telephone. The journey seemed like a long one. I didn’t think I’d wake Sam. He’s a night owl; used to be, anyway. The phone rang and rang; ten, twelve, fourteen times. The answering machine never answered. I thought I might have dialed the wrong number, so I tried again, and kept on trying until 2 A.M.—playing guitar, dialing, wondering where he was, dialing. Pretty soon I knew his number by heart.

  The next morning, when the receiver clicked and I heard his voice, I started talking before I realized it was a recording. He must have come home, flipped on the machine, and left again, unless he was using the damn thing to monitor calls. The phone beeped in my ear. I panicked and hung up, unprepared for my allotted thirty seconds. What the hell could I say in thirty seconds? I dialed again, left my name, asked him to return my call. I sounded cool and impersonal, even to myself. He didn’t call back.

  I read about the funeral in the Globe. Not a detailed obituary, just one of those small alphabetized notices, listing the funeral home—a place I’d never heard of in the North End—and visiting hours: Wednesday 2–4. In other notice
s, husbands, wives, children were named as chief mourners. This one began: “Grandson of Anthony Gianelli.” Then it listed his mother’s name, then his father’s. It said: “Relatives only.” No funeral mass. No place to send donations in lieu of flowers.

  I bought flowers at a shop on Huron Avenue, purple iris that wilted in the unseasonable heat. My gray wool skirt clung to my thighs. It was too hot for wool, but I didn’t own any summer mourning. By the time I got to Park Street Station, I was sweating and sorry I’d chosen the airless Red Line train instead of my Toyota. I once made a vow never to drive into the North End. The streets are so narrow, and parking is impossible.

  The North End is no place for an Irish funeral. It’s Italian, densely populated, sliced off from the rest of Boston by the Central Artery. The streets are edged with strips of uneven sidewalk that directly abut the narrow three-story row houses. No lawns, no trees. But the buildings are surprisingly well maintained, clean and freshly painted. Pots of geraniums brighten window boxes and iron fire escapes. Old men sit on the front stoops reading the papers, passing the time. Espresso shops and bakeries scent the air. Sheets of cream-filled canolli sit in the bakery windows.

  The funeral home was unusual, set back from the street, a squat brick house with three steps up to a pillared portico, separated from its neighbors by foot-wide walkways. A hearse was parked at the curb, followed by three black limos. They turned the two-way street into a one-lane battle zone. Six Boston cops added to the confusion.

  A steady stream of people flowed up the front walk, the women subdued, the men in dark suits, white shirts, dark ties. Most were elderly. As they entered, the door swung wide, and I could see a dim foyer where two men in black suits flanked an inner double doorway.

  Cars honked. Adding to the traffic jam was a gas company van, parked across the street, two wheels up on the sidewalk, yellow lights flashing. It had tinted-glass side windows. The FBI likes to film Cosa Nostra funerals. I wondered why they hadn’t just planted the camera in plain sight.