Hardware

by Linda Barnes

  “Will she—” I started to say before my voice was lost in the roar of the engine. If I hadn’t moved, the ambulance would have run me down. I could have claimed my own body bag.

  I turned and watched the blaze, transfixed by the whistling wind and water, soaked by the spray, unable to avert my face from the flames, a primitive ape staring at a magical lightning strike, reeling with the fear and fascination of fire.

  Minutes later, hours later, a police officer in a yellow slicker tapped me repeatedly on the shoulder. He said, “Lieutenant Mooney wants you. His car. Now. He’s waiting.”

  I couldn’t find words, so I nodded. I followed.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Why Mass. General?” asked a flat, zombielike voice. My voice. I couldn’t seem to raise or lower the pitch. My throat burned when I swallowed. Smoke inhalation … Something wrong with my ears … Maybe I’d always sound this way now—numb, affectless, dead.

  Dead. Marvin dead.

  Gloria injured. Sam injured …

  I tried to stretch my legs, but there wasn’t room in the backseat. Must be one of the new command cars. No steel-mesh screen to separate cops from perps. My hand rested on a working door handle.

  Between the front seats—jump seats instead of the standard straight-across bench—a computer screen took up the usual radio space. Below it, a keyboard. Communications devices bristled. Mooney was nursing a handheld mike, advising someone of our destination.

  “Call the Arson Squad,” I said.

  The uniformed driver wove through Storrow Drive traffic, blue lights flashing, siren screaming. Mooney yapped into the speaker. The unfamiliar officer beside me scribbled in a notebook for all he was worth.

  “The Arson Squad,” I repeated, placing a hand on Mooney’s shoulder.

  “What?” he said. I could hardly hear him.

  I shook my head. I felt like I was underwater, drowning, observing through filmy mist. I covered an ear with my index finger, tried to swallow.

  “You gonna faint?” Mooney asked.

  I breathed in and out, counted to ten, breathed. Yawned. The ear popped. I could hear.

  “What about the Arson Squad?” Mooney said.

  The suit beside me stopped scratching with his pencil. “It’s an idea,” he said eagerly. “I can see it. The Gianelli kid tries to blow up the place. I’ll get on to his broker, his bank, his insurance company, see if he needs cash. Boston Mob, Jesus, figures they’d screw up. Whole shit-canful should blow themselves to kingdom come.”

  Mooney’s quick. Before I could move, he’d turned in his seat and fastened his hand around my right wrist.

  “Oglesby’s with the Organized Crime Task Force,” Mooney explained hastily. “New. He doesn’t know the, uh, situation.”

  “And I suppose she does?” Oglesby said, a smirk creasing his thin lips. He sat so stiffly his backbone didn’t touch the upholstery. A self-righteous guy who didn’t need starch in his shirts. “These goombahs, they’re always so up-front with their, uh, what do I call you so as not to offend, huh? His main squeeze?”

  “Sam’s not Mafia,” I said, my voice still flat. It wasn’t my ears, it was my throat. Felt like a skeletal hand tugging my vocal cords. “You should know that if anybody does.”

  “Well, excuse me,” Oglesby said sarcastically. “Anthony Gianelli’s boy, you can understand my confusion. What do the Italians say? ‘The acorn doesn’t drop far from the tree’?”

  I was going to hurt him. Now or later.

  “Why Arson Squad, Carlotta?” Mooney asked, cautiously releasing my hand.

  “Sam was supposed to be there when the place blew.” I swallowed; it hurt. “Me too.”

  “Why?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure.”

  “Speculate,” Mooney ordered, like I’d suddenly returned to the force. How many times had I heard him say that word?

  I swallowed again, trying to form thoughts into sentences. “Sam got e-mail telling him to meet me at G and W at one A.M.”

  “Fire department was called before then,” Oglesby interrupted.

  “I know that. I put out an emergency call. All cabs. At twelve fifty-two.”

  “Go on, Carlotta.” Mooney gave Oglesby a warning glance.

  “I was helping Gloria earlier today. Took over dispatch, asked for information about cabbie beatings. A lot have been reported, but more haven’t been. Immigrants scared of cops. Cabbies who believe the threats. You know: You call the cops, we’ll get your wife, we’ll get your kid.”

  Mooney didn’t say anything. Oglesby looked like he was dying to break in, but Mooney held his eye.

  Mooney said, “So somebody who didn’t want you poking your nose into the cab beatings might have assumed you’d be dispatching, and he sent Sam by to keep you company? That’s a big assumption, considering the amount of time Gloria spends handling those phones.”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” I muttered.

  “Sam know anything special about the beatings?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Carlotta?” Mooney said softly. I don’t know how long I’d sat motionless before he spoke.

  “Is Sam dead, Mooney? Is he dying? If you know and you’re not telling me—”

  “I honest to God don’t know. Only thing I heard was ‘multiple trauma.’ Let me get on the radio, send a team from Arson over to G and W.”

  Sam. Multiple trauma. Burns. Legs trapped under a beam.

  I’ve seen burn victims. Auto accidents. Blackened skin hanging in shreds, exposed muscle, raw flesh …

  “Bet he’ll have great docs, a whole team of them,” Oglesby said cheerfully. “Most of their last names’ll end in vowels. And I wouldn’t worry if I were you. He’ll make it. You know what doctors say: Scumbags never die.”

  I hit him. A short right jab that snapped his neck back. Mooney could have stopped me, but he didn’t try. Maybe he wanted me in custody, and assaulting an officer was good enough.

  I covered my face with cupped hands, tried to keep my shoulders steady. Goddamn Oglesby wasn’t going to see them shake, wasn’t going to get the treat of a single tear.

  Mooney should have locked me in a cage car. I don’t hit people; I was out of control. I glanced at Oglesby and was savagely glad to see blood dripping from his nose.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Mass. General is the big one, with the ether dome and the nurses capped in dome-shaped snowy white to commemorate the fact that anesthesia took a giant step in Boston. The one with the history and the rep that makes other teaching hospitals drool with envy. What it doesn’t own outright, MGH “cooperates” with. What it can’t own or cooperate with, it devours. When Massachusetts General Hospital desires a new department—say, high-risk pregnancy—it steals top personnel from other hospitals with a snap of its collective fingers. Along with a Harvard affiliation, a Mass. General credential brings great riches in the medical world.

  Conventional wisdom holds that if you’re really sick, your ailment both deadly and rare, you want the General. Routine disorder, you’re in the wrong place. If the docs at MGH don’t find something worthy of their talents, they might be tempted to experiment.

  That’s what cops tell me. They also say don’t mess with MGH Emergency. Too crowded.

  Mooney’s driver dropped us near the massive front entrance and sped away. As I marched up the granite steps, sandwiched between Mooney and Oglesby, I wiggled the fingers on my right hand. Nothing broken. I scanned the knuckle abrasions thoughtfully. Could I pretend they hurt worse than they did, get myself closeted with a doctor or nurse, escape?

  “You buy a better gun yet?” Mooney asked.

  I shook my head no. I’m not sure he noticed the response; it could have been a rhetorical question. Lot of good a new automatic would have done me; I could have shot Oglesby instead of smacking him.

  Mooney led the way. We’d already traversed the main lobby, two endless hushed corridors, and ascended three flights via elevator in stony
silence. Mooney’s hand clasped my arm too tightly for politeness. I assumed he didn’t want to cuff me in public, scare the elderly lady carrying the bouquet of wilted geraniums, the harassed father with the scraggly teddy bear in tow.

  I tried to remember what I knew about burns. Are third-degree the worst and first-degree the best? Or the other way around?

  The waiting room had the kind of fluorescent lights that make people look like they’ve been dead for days. Or else the patrons had all assumed a ghastly pallor as they wondered what the green-gowned priesthood were doing to their loved ones behind surgical steel doors.

  “Gianelli.”

  I realized Mooney had flashed his badge and spoken. A receptionist stared at him with the gaze cops inspire, a mixture of curiosity, irritation, and fear. An appraising glance, as if she was sizing him up against some TV police hunk.

  She rattled terminology. I caught the catchall “multiple trauma” again, interspersed with words that had yet to be translated from the Latin.

  I leaned close. “Will Sam be okay?”

  She ignored me, continuing her Latin chat with Mooney. Maybe he’d picked it up at Mass.

  “Will he be okay?” I insisted, my voice dangerously low.

  “Shut up,” Oglesby said, trying to grab my arm and haul me back.

  “Condition as yet undetermined,” Mooney said over his shoulder. “Watch the mouth, Oglesby.”

  “Life threatening?” I demanded loudly.

  The woman at the desk, attempting to size up the situation with seen-it-alleyes, said, “I wouldn’t know that,” in as condescending a manner as she could manage.

  “The lady’s already punched out a cop,” Mooney warned her.

  She shuffled papers, hesitating to keep up appearances. “You’ll need to speak to a doctor,” she said primly.

  “When can I see Sam?” I asked her.

  “A surgical team is currently evaluating Mr. Gianelli.” The response was perfectly automatic, as if I’d yanked a string on a talking doll.

  “When can I see him?”

  “I can’t tell you. I don’t know.”

  “Is there anything you can tell me?”

  “There are other people in line.” She turned away abruptly and addressed a tiny woman with tears in her eyes.

  The other woman’s tears threatened to trigger my own. Mooney took my hand.

  “Let’s find a doc,” he said.

  Mooney was a pit bull; he wouldn’t give up or let go. He used his badge, threw its weight around.

  Within twenty minutes, a gowned intern informed us that she “didn’t believe Mr. Gianelli’s condition would be termed life threatening at this time.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. It came out in such a rush I had to stiffen my knees to keep them from buckling. I gulped and bit the inside of my cheek. Hard. Sam’s not going to die, he’s not going to die.

  Gloria’s not going to die.

  Marvin’s dead.

  And somebody else. Who else?

  Mooney’s hand gripped my arm. We were seated at some distance from the receptionist, side by side on a low beige couch. Oglesby was tucked into a nearby chair, one brown shoe waving back and forth, back and forth, rhythmically, hypnotically. My feet must have crossed the carpet. Oglesby held a steaming plastic foam cup in his right hand. I wondered if he’d offered me coffee. I’d have taken him up on it if I’d heard him.

  “Okay, Carlotta,” Mooney was saying, “it goes like this. I book you for assault unless I hear the whole shebang, anything remotely relevant. That covers drive-by shootings, cabbie beatings—reported and unreported. Your stint as a mugging victim in Franklin Park, what Gloria hired you to do—”

  “Sam’s in good shape,” I said. “His blood pressure’s low. He exercises.”

  “He’ll get good care,” Mooney said. “Talk.”

  “Maybe they need blood,” I said.

  “They do, you can donate. No plasma shortage in this place.”

  Oglesby said, “If there were a blood shortage, believe me, they’d find juice for a Gianelli. Put out the word, get a dozen goombahs in here faster than pizza delivery.”

  I stared at the guy. He’d shifted the cup from his right hand to his left. His fist was balled. He wanted me to hit him again. He was orchestrating it.

  “I’ll talk to you, Mooney,” I said slowly, “but not to this jerk. Get him the hell out of earshot.”

  “Oglesby,” Mooney said pleasantly, “why not take a hike?”

  He glared at both of us, but he finally stood and departed. He took his sweet time.

  “Mooney, I hate to ask this, but are you wired? You planning to record me for posterity?”

  “No.”

  “Is Oglesby a close personal friend?”

  “No.”

  “Will you feel honor bound to tell him every word I say?”

  “No.”

  “Is he going to press charges? He’s not hurt, which I regret.”

  “He’ll press if I tell him to. Or if you keep pissing him off. With Organized Crime, he spends a lot of time proving how tough he is. When I tell his boss he got sucker punched by a lady P.I., he’ll hate it.”

  “Don’t tell.”

  “I was looking forward to it,” Mooney said wistfully.

  “I want to talk to you as a friend, Mooney.”

  “A friend who’s a cop,” he said.

  “Don’t make this harder than it is.”

  “Carlotta, I’m sorry as hell about Sam and Gloria and Marvin. Marvin was something else, but he didn’t deserve what he got. This is a homicide investigation, and you know what I’ve gotta do.”

  “You wouldn’t know it was homicide without me. Not yet.” I blinked my eyes. A TV set was suspended from the ceiling. People nearby were hunched in their seats, watching reruns of daytime talk shows in the middle of the night.

  Mooney said, “Some favor. How long you think it’ll take Gloria to talk, with her brother dead?”

  “Depends on when she comes around. I saw a paramedic shoot her full of dope. Hypo the size of your arm. Is she here too?”

  “Yeah.”

  The TV set had hypnotic power. I found my eyes drawn to it. A red-faced man with glasses was speaking to someone on the telephone. Napalm. I was sure he used the word napalm in the same sentence as the Bill of Rights. I folded my hands in my lap. I didn’t realize how tightly the fingers were laced until I felt Mooney prying them loose, heard his low, comforting murmur.

  “Moon, I don’t know where to go. I don’t know whether to stay near Sam or Gloria or—”

  “Talk to me. Best thing you can do for either of them.”

  The message had come by e-mail. It hit me like a fist in the stomach. Frank would use e-mail.

  I confessed to swapping places with Marvin. I talked about the Haitians, Jean and Louis. Mooney’s got no more interest in helping the INS deport working people than I do. I mentioned Lee Cochran and Phil Yancey and what I’d heard about the hotel and restaurant lobby wanting more cabs on the road. I said I’d been checking a list of drivers who’d quit Green & White, drivers Gloria’d fired.

  “Why?” Mooney pounced on the last item like a hungry cat on a canary.

  “Why what?”

  “Why ask Gloria for a list?”

  I ran both hands through my hair. “Let me think. Let me think.… Because it seems like Green and White’s suffering more damage than other companies. Lee Cochran said two of the drivers who got attacked and didn’t report it to the cops were independents.”

  “You happen to get their names?”

  “No.”

  “Go on.”

  “But Jean got hit, and Marvin. Gloria’s having trouble finding new jockeys. Lee told me he knew Phil Yancey was at the bottom of everything, trying to corner the medallion market, but then Lee dropped the whole thing cold. Brennan, over at Hackney Carriage—remember Brennan?—said Yancey wasn’t buying medallions—”

  “Brennan’s so dumb, he
probably doesn’t have a clue.”

  “He sends his best to you, too, Mooney, and he promised he’d go over some recent medallion transfers, see if Yancey might be dealing under the table, using straws.”

  “Brennan’s so lazy, he’ll probably get around to that by the Fourth of July.”

  “So you check it, Moon. Anyway, nothing quite meshed; nothing made sense. And I’d already asked Gloria for the list, so—I don’t know—I thought I might as well follow up on it.…”

  “Let me make sure I’ve got this,” Mooney said. “The target could have been you, because you were gabbing on the radio earlier today about cabbie beatings. It could have been Sam, because he got the e-mail. It could have been Gloria, for some kinda freakin’ revenge, or because somebody’s after Green and White’s medallions.…”

  I bit my lip, nodded.

  “You think Marvin spotted the bomber?”

  Frank could be dead, stashed in a body bag, I thought.

  “Carlotta?” Mooney said. “What?”

  I licked my lips, managed an answer. “Marvin wasn’t supposed to be there. Gloria moved him in this afternoon. If Marvin saw a stranger fooling around in his sister’s room, no matter what kind of pain he was in, he’d have tried to stop the guy.”

  Mooney said, “I hope we find enough parts to ID.” I must have shuddered because he added, “Sorry. I’m not doing real well on tact.”

  “Mooney,” I said, making up my mind. “There’s another thing.”

  “Just one?”

  “Maybe more. Let’s start with the drive-by.”

  He said, “I thought we might get to that eventually.”

  I gave him the plate number of Sam’s borrowed car. I gave him the block on Altamont, the house number. Told him I’d bought a used computer.

  “Yellow Pages?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Friend of Sam’s.”

  “Name?”

  “Joe somebody.”

  Keep Frank out of it, Sam had warned. Pleaded. Begged.

  Mooney asked more questions. The attack vehicle? Gang colors? Racial slurs? Number of individuals involved? Question after question I couldn’t answer to his satisfaction.

  “Why is Oglesby here?” I said, trying to change the subject, divert him momentarily.