Hardware

by Linda Barnes

  It slammed before I could stick a foot in it. Not that I would have, what with the splint.

  I leaned against the wall. If I’d brought one crutch, I could have used it as a battering ram.

  “Good evening, Miss Carlyle,” said a light tenor voice. “You would please to come in?”

  “Merci,” I replied, exhausting one third of my French vocabulary.

  “Je m’appelle Louis Vertigne. You may call me Louis. My last name, it is difficult, non? This is Jean. As you say, John.”

  I was welcomed in both English and what I took to be French, a lilting melody that rose and fell like water trickling through a rocky brook.

  Scrawny little fellows they were. Gloria’s been known to exaggerate, but the two of them, soaking wet, probably weighed far less than she did. They were short as well as stringy. I towered over them, which they seemed to find amusing. Less amusing was the mottled bruising on the first man’s face. And the circle of burned, shredded flesh encircling his neck. I wondered if his clothing covered other wounds. Louis’s face was unmarred.

  They had to be close relatives, brothers I’d have said, except for the different last names. Both had similar features, skin the color of shriveled walnuts, and close, kinky hair, dark with a white sugar frosting. Both wore khaki slacks, too cool for the season, and gray hooded sweatshirts. I’d have had trouble telling them apart except for Jean’s injuries.

  Louis, noticing my bruises and my splint, quickly invited me to “Sit, please, sit, mademoiselle, eh? Madame, perhaps?”

  In the sparsely furnished room, there weren’t many choices. I got the pick of the litter, a folding card-table number whose glory was that all four legs touched the ground simultaneously. The other two, a mismatched set of wooden uprights, required balancing acts. The TV was the only visible item of any value, and it was a twelve-inch black-and-white a self-respecting thief would reject out of hand. Neither man made an effort to turn it off.

  I ignored it, although I can’t imagine background music less tolerable than TV whine, especially commercial crescendos. I wanted to make nice, gather information, not aggravate the tenants.

  A table shrouded in a plastic cloth nestled beside the TV. On it rested a collection of small religious figures made of porcelain or some kind of paintable clay. I recognized a crucified and gory Christ, a kneeling Mary Magdalene. Mary and Joseph and the whole crèche were there too. Before and after. A vase of scrawny mums shared the surface, perhaps an offering.

  Three other suffering Christs decorated the room: two painted crucifixions, one wood carving with a particularly vicious crown of thorns jammed down over His bleeding forehead.

  “Your leg? The stairs were difficile?” Louis inquired politely.

  I spoke slowly and distinctly. “Difficult. Yes. There is no elevator and I need to speak with you.”

  “From Gloria?”

  “No trouble,” I said as they exchanged worried glances. “I’m not here to make trouble.”

  “This is good,” Louis said. He mumbled a few words to Jean, who visibly relaxed.

  “I also drive for Green and White,” I said.

  Louis studied my card. It’s simple: name, address, phone. A gap, then PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.

  “You work for the cab company?” he asked.

  “As a driver, like you.”

  “You should not do this ‘investigations’ business,” Louis counseled in his gentle way. “Your papa, your maman, votre mari—do not they object? Is dangereux.”

  I ignored his observation. “Why did you stop driving?”

  “Look at my brother, my half brother,” he said. “Regard his face and his neck.”

  “I see.”

  “You do not see. He could have lost his eye. He could have lost his life. He is now much improved.”

  I said, “Did you call the police?”

  The word police was enough to bring a surge of sound from the injured Jean. The word for immigration sounds pretty much the same in French as it does in English.

  “An accident,” Louis declared, staring at the floor. He was not a gifted liar.

  “I wondered if Jean might have been attacked. Threatened. Like me.” I pointed at the splint. “By three men.”

  Jean let out another torrent, accompanied by gestures and curses.

  “Please,” I said to Louis, wishing I spoke his language, “I won’t make trouble. I don’t have anything to do with Immigration. Jean got hurt and I got hurt and somebody should pay. That’s all. Not with money, but with time and pain.”

  Louis exchanged heated words with his brother. I couldn’t keep up with the rapid-fire delivery. “Time and pain,” Louis repeated finally. “We would like that. But we make no talk to the police. Comprenez-vous?”

  I said, “May I record what you say? If you slip into French I could have a friend translate for me. It would help.”

  “No machine,” Jean said flatly. I wondered if he understood everything I said.

  “Then tell me. I’ll remember.”

  Louis hesitated. “Evil men beat my brother. They do more than hurt him. How should I say, they embarrass him. They break his spirit. He wants now only to go away. We come, we work, we send money home. Gloria is good to us and we regret to leave her rudely.”

  “I’m sure she understands.”

  “My brother says it is whites hating blacks, hating especially Haitian peoples.”

  “Can he describe the men?”

  There was a quick exchange. “Les trois,” I decided, must be the same as “Los tres.” The three.

  I asked if this was so.

  “Yes, there were three, but they blindfold him and he gives his word he will not speak about them. Jamais.”

  Like jamás. Spanish for “never.”

  “Did you give your word?” I asked Louis.

  “I found him. And no, I did not give my word.”

  Abruptly Jean rose and left the room, a torrent of sound trailing behind him.

  “He is full of hate,” Louis said. “But not so angry as I am when I see him, when I smell him. My brother is a man of culture and refinement. In my country he is a teacher of botany, a man who makes flowers grow from concrete.”

  “Did he plant the rosebushes?”

  “He makes flowers everywhere, even here.”

  “What did they do to him?”

  “He is truly afraid it comes from our country, from the Tontons Macoutes. You know of them?”

  “Secret police?”

  “Secret torturers.”

  “You speak English very well.”

  “I work for Americans in Haiti. Long ago. It comes back to me. When you are young, you learn.”

  “What did they do to Jean? To make you quit.”

  “He has not told me all. He is like a child now. He screams in the night.”

  “You found him?”

  “We work always the same shift. We are partners with our own radios. Like they call walkie-talkies. We speak with each other every half hour, because something terrible may happen. You know how many of my countrymen are wounded driving cabs this year, this city? Four good men, and one shot and he lives, but with a bullet so near his spine, he may yet die. And no one is caught, no one punished.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Jean and I thought this country would be different.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I waited for him to speak.

  “Wednesday afternoon, three-thirty, I do not hear from Jean. I know from his last call where he was to go and I also go there. I drive up and down each street until I find his cab.”

  “No police?”

  “Our papers are not so good.”

  Gloria’s lax on the Immigration Act of ’86. I am too. Start hollering about America for Americans, I figure we’ll all have to pack. I have no desire to reside in the slice of Poland my grandmother called home.

  “His cab is empty, on a street in Dorchester. I wait a bit. Maybe he has gone to help an old one up the stairs.
I hear sounds, but it takes time to know, to realize they come from the trunk. And then I have not the keys and I forget about the thing you can push inside to open the trunk and even when I remember, the doors are locked. So I smash the driver’s window with a brick.

  “I reach in, with my jacket wrapped around my arm so the glass does not cut me, and open the door. I release the lock and I find Jean.”

  From the other room I could hear faint noises, as if Jean was pacing, listening.

  “He is without clothing, naked, so cold he shakes. He is tied with harsh rope, rough like you would use to bind an animal. The rope is wound around his legs and around his neck so that when he kicks to make the noise to save himself the rope tightens around his neck. His neck is all blood, covered with blood. If I do not come, he would be dead. He would struggle, keep on struggling. Jean would never lie still like that, in a pool of stink.”

  “Was he gagged?”

  “Gagged?”

  “Was something covering his mouth, so he couldn’t scream for help?”

  “Nothing. He had yelled for some time, till he was—how you say?—hoarse, given up. He decide to kick. Why?”

  “Never mind.” If Jean’s attackers meant to ensure his death, they’d have taped his mouth. I wondered who knew about the twosome’s walkie-talkie connection.

  “Please, go on,” I said.

  “I cut the ropes and cover him with a blanket.… He tells me, a very long time later, after he bathes and bathes, he tells me the three men jump in the cab, they take him to a park, they beat him and threaten him, order him not to drive again or they will kill him for sure. They piss on him while he lies naked in the trunk of the cab, tied like a calf they will butcher. They park the cab on the street.”

  “Did they rob him?”

  “He had only a few dollars. We are cautious; often we bring money here and hide it. They take his clothes and his shoes, but they are worth less than nothing. They take them for sport.”

  “Who?”

  “Americans.”

  “Black Americans, white Americans?”

  “Jean does not talk about them.”

  “Is it possible he knew one of them?”

  “Why do you ask this?”

  “One of the men who hurt me was a cabdriver, or knew something about cabs.” I hadn’t said anything to Marvin at the time, but a guy who could reach in an open window and disable rooflights and radio with no direction from the driver had to have some experience with cabs.

  Louis’s dark face puckered in concentration as he considered the possibility that a fellow driver might be involved.

  “The walkie-talkies,” I said, “the half-hour checkins. Were you always so careful?”

  “No. But with so much hurting going on—”

  “Do you know anyone else who’s been beaten? Threatened?”

  “Not one, but many.”

  Jean came back into the room. From the few understandable bits of the ensuing argument, I got the feeling he’d followed most of what we’d said.

  I decided to test my theory.

  “Jean, would you agree to hypnosis? To identify your attackers?”

  He stopped and faced me, fingering the noose mark around his neck. “I would not.”

  “You understand what I say.”

  “Louis is the older brother. It is better we speak with one voice.”

  Louis continued to do so. “Jean believes this violence is directed against Haitians only.”

  “I’m not Haitian. I’m not on any Tontons Macoutes hit list.”

  “Then Jean believes you were unlucky.”

  “Does he know of others who were unlucky? Any other non-Haitian victims?”

  Another round of impassioned French passed between the brothers. Incomprehensible.

  Louis said firmly, “We may know of others, but Jean does not wish me to speak of them. He believes they are only—how you say, the red fish? The red herrings. He says if you are an investigator—which he greatly doubts—you should investigate these hate crimes against the Haitian peoples. He says Americans believe the Haitians come here to spread AIDS, and someone must tell the world otherwise—”

  “I’m not a politician.”

  “I only translate for you what my brother says. I do not think he is right, although there is much hatred.”

  “Were most of the victims Haitian?” I asked.

  “Many. And they do not go to the police. Not without immigration papers.”

  “Did all the victims work for G and W?” I addressed my question to Jean. He remained maddeningly silent, merely shaking his head in his brother’s direction, ignoring me.

  “No,” Louis said.

  “Did any own their own medallions?” I asked.

  “A medallion costs the earth,” Louis said. “We work for the company. The company owns the medallions.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But there are independent owners. People who own their own cabs, or who share a medallion. Have any of them been beaten, threatened like Jean?”

  Louis stared hard at Jean. Jean gave no sign.

  “Perhaps,” Louis said. “I do not know.”

  “Do you belong to the Small Taxi Association?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know Lee Cochran?”

  “The name is not familiar. Jean, tu le connais?”

  “Non.”

  “Did you or your brother ever drive for a large company, a company owned by Phil Yancey?”

  “Yet another name I do not know.”

  “The big three: Yellow, Town, Checker?”

  “When we arrive, our countrymen recommend Green and White. Because, they say, the owner, she is not so hard on drivers with bad papers. Also she is a woman of color. Jean, he would rather work for a man. But once he meets the lady, he, too, is charmed.”

  My ankle throbbed with a dull ache.

  I stared at Jean, spoke slowly, addressing my words to Louis. “If your brother changes his mind, Louis, or if you change your mind, call me. I could use a list of names. Haitians and non-Haitians. I guarantee no one will get in trouble with Immigration.”

  I sensed that Louis was on my side. Unmoved by my plea, Jean fingered the damaged flesh on his neck.

  I’d gotten nothing. Not a single victim’s name. Not from Jean or Louis, who admitted they knew many. Not from Lee Cochran, who’d sworn he knew of three.

  Nothing.

  EIGHTEEN

  Louis wished, please, to escort me to my car. His offer provoked agonized wails from Jean. Louis gravely apologized: he so regretted that his formerly brave brother was now afraid to be left alone after dark. I insisted I could make it to my car solo. Louis insisted I could not.

  At a stalemate, we trooped downstairs, the two little men and I, one preceding me, one lagging behind, only to find my car secure and the desolate street empty. I admired the rosebushes, in a vain attempt to buck up the visibly trembling Jean. It didn’t work, for him or me. I saw the carefully tended stalks differently now, in harsh counterpoint to the surrounding blight.

  Decent gestures; they get driven off the six-o’clock news by constant calamities.

  “Merci,” I said as I left. “Au revoir.” There. My entire French vocabulary. Except for escargot, which is harder to work into conversation.

  I drove slowly, the stereo on full blast, Rory Block soothing my spirit, singing “Faith Can Lift Me Up on Silver Wings.” I didn’t buy the Haitian hate thing, not with Marvin involved. Marvin’s absolutely African American; aside from skin pigmentation he had nothing in common with the brothers I’d just interviewed.

  He’d fought back; seized the initiative. Was there anything the three assailants could have done to scare Marvin the way they’d terrified Jean?

  I considered simple racial hatred. A white supremacist thing. Except, according to Marvin, one of the perps was black. I couldn’t see a black man fronting for a reborn KKK.

  A cab is always risky. I’ve heard them described as automated
teller machines on wheels. All the advantages of your local bank’s ATM, no armed guards in the lobby. But these particular guys, the ones who’d hurt Marvin, spooked Jean, were not after money. They were salaried. Or paid for piecework. What was the goal? Scaring cabbies? Why? To get them off the street? Why?

  Why hadn’t Lee Cochran hired me? Because I’d refused to take his orders? Had Phil Yancey paid him a warning visit?

  Who benefits when cabs disappear?

  The question repeated itself over and over, keeping time to the music’s insistent beat and the throbbing in my ankle. I drove faster, hoping Dr. Keith might make a late-night call to check on my foot.

  Leaning heavily on the crutches, inching up the front walk, I thought seriously about ringing the bell three times, making Roz bolt downstairs. I was actually happy to hear the click of welcoming tumblers.

  Until I realized who was opening my front door.

  “Frank” had certainly spruced up his act since the drive-by. Gone were the leather pants and the cheap white shirt, replaced by Gap jeans and a light blue cotton chambray number. He was clean shaven, revealing a blunt chin that altered his appearance for the better. His hair had been cut short, shampooed shiny. The gray streaks had vanished.

  I could see why Roz had succumbed.

  “Welcome home,” he said. There was a florist’s arrangement on my hall table. Exotic blooms laced with bear grass.

  I listened for footsteps, for another voice: Sam’s.

  “Sam loaned me his key,” Frank said quickly, as if to forestall my question.

  “Liar,” I said. I shrugged off his attempt to help, hung up my coat. My ankle felt like it was on fire.

  “Ah.” He seemed pleased at my response.

  “Ah?” I repeated.

  He folded his arms smugly. “Either Sam doesn’t have a key, which I like, or you don’t trust me.”

  “Roz,” I guessed.

  “Your charming tenant.”

  “Roz!” I hollered upstairs.

  “She didn’t let me in. Not this time.”

  “No?”

  “She graciously accepted the flowers on your behalf, but she was most hard-hearted concerning entry. I waited till she left.”

  “You broke into my house.”

  “You should have your security parameters checked.”