Hardware

by Linda Barnes

  Geoffrey, I thought, might not look so scary if he didn’t shave and oil his skull.

  “Yeah, well, she was only tryin’ to help,” Leroy said.

  “I know that,” I said. “You know that. The shrink—whose name is Keith Donovan, by the way—knows that.”

  “Gloria’s gonna be fine,” Geoffrey said, as if daring anyone to contradict him.

  “You eat anything lately?” I asked after a brief silence.

  Leroy said, “I don’t remember.”

  “There’s a cafeteria. You trust Roz to get you stuff?”

  Geoffrey nodded immediately. Leroy eyed Roz; he knows her better.

  “Stick to sandwiches and cookies,” I advised her. “Don’t get fancy.”

  “That shrink is makin’ her cry,” Geoffrey said. His mouth barely moved.

  “I need to check on Sam,” I said. “Geoffrey, maybe crying’s the best thing Gloria can do right now. Don’t smack the guy if he comes out, okay? I like him.”

  “You like him so that means he’s a good doc?”

  It was a legitimate question and deserved a better answer than I had. I escaped to the waiting room on the surgical floor.

  Oglesby, wearing the same cheap navy suit, lurked by the watercooler. A web of wrinkles starting at the backs of both knees and spreading down his calves told me he’d spent the night in a chair. His jacket had fared better; he must have hung it up. I hadn’t awarded him more than a glance last night. His sandy-haired plainness surprised me; he was hardly the devil incarnate. His lower lip, swollen and cracked by two vertical gashes, gave me pause. When he opened his mouth to speak, I noticed dark blood trapped under his gum, rimming an upper incisor.

  Maybe I owed the guy an apology. Maybe not. I said, “Oglesby, who’s here from the family?”

  “The Mob?”

  “The Gianelli family,” I said. “The family.”

  “One of the brothers. Mitch.”

  I grimaced. Mitch would have to do.

  “What are you gonna—?”

  I didn’t hear the end of Oglesby’s query. I was on my way to confront Mitchell, seated in one of a row of chairs bolted to the floor to maintain orderly aisles. Massive in his dark suit and tie, he almost overflowed the chair. His tie had been loosened; its dark silk was stained. Belly folded over his belt, head canted to one side, he could have been asleep.

  The Gianelli constellation of sons began with Gil, leader, eldest, and heir apparent. Tony, the third son, Papa Anthony’s namesake—movie-star handsome, a bit of a rake—was the apple of Papa’s eye. Mitch, the middle boy, was just Mitch, a little too obedient, a little too eager to please. None too bright, not too quick. Most likely to be sent out for coffee.

  I got the feeling Sam felt sorry for Mitch, when he thought of him at all.

  Sam, born twelve years later than Tony, raised by nannies and stepmothers, had always seen himself as separate, an afterthought, a member of a different generation.

  Figured the family’d leave Mitch on duty. Old reliable Mitch.

  “Wake up,” I said.

  He stirred, snorted, sat up. “Huh? Something happen?”

  I stuck out my hand, offered a smile. “When Sam was growing up, who were his best friends?”

  “Huh?”

  “Mitch, you remember me, right?”

  He yanked his hand back. “Oh, yeah, I remember you, okay. Maybe you’re bad luck for the Gianellis, ever think of that?”

  “I’m going to find out who did this to Sam.”

  Mitch rolled his eyes at a soldier across the aisle. A dismissive gesture. An I’ve-got-the-situation-in-control kiss-off. “You can leave that to guys who know how,” he said. “Cops already know who did it. Creep’s dead. Blown to hell.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You don’t buy it?” Something moved behind his eyes. I wondered if he was as dim as his family seemed to think. Maybe just slow.

  “I’d like to make sure,” I said.

  “Sam said … Wait a fucking minute. You think I might pay you for this? Private heat, whatever the hell you call yourself, you think anybody’s gonna pay you?”

  “Forget about money. What did Sam say?”

  “Shit. Nothing … Just that he might be selling the cabs. Too bad he didn’t get out before this shit went down. That crazy bitch he works with fires some geek and then this happens.”

  “Sam wanted to sell? You sure?”

  Mitch shook his head wearily, shrugged. “He had other irons in the fire, I guess.”

  “A new business?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I wondered if the new venture might have included a move to the nation’s capital. A clean break. I blinked, refocused.

  I was going to need sleep soon. Lots of sleep.

  I went back to the beginning, to “Frank.”

  “What about the kids Sam hung out with, Mitch? When he was young? You remember any names?”

  “Childhood pals? That’s how you investigate?”

  “Names, Mitch.”

  “I’m about a hundred years older than the kid. I don’t know who the fuck he played with.”

  “He go to the same grammar school as you?”

  “I guess. We lived in the same house after Mama died. No big difference. She was sick all the time anyway, barely moved out of bed.”

  “What school?”

  “St. Cecilia’s Star of the Sea.”

  “You have a teacher named Sister Xavier Marie?”

  “Christ, they were all named Sister Something Mary or Marie or the other way around. I don’t remember any Mary Xavier or Xavier Marie. They closed the old school years ago. Not enough white kids left in town.”

  Damn.

  “The church is still there, right?” I asked. “St. Cecilia’s?”

  “Where’s it gonna go? It can’t move to the ’burbs like everybody else. Cardinal Law, he’d kinda miss it, you know.”

  I paused. “Sam holding his own?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “A lot,” I said.

  “I was with him a couple hours. What with the drugs, he’s out of it. But, hey, I could share this with you. You’d appreciate it. He keeps calling a woman’s name: Lauren or Laura. Not you, babe.”

  He aimed to hurt, so I smiled sweetly and said, “Thanks, Mitch.”

  “Hey,” he muttered, “if I helped you any, I’m sorry.”

  Oglesby tried to corner me on the way out. “What did you get?” he demanded.

  “You haven’t got a mike planted in Mitch’s lapel? What kind of crummy task force are you on?”

  “I’m going to tell you something in confidence. We never bugged the cab company. Seeing what went down, looks like we should have, but we didn’t.”

  “I’m supposed to believe you, right?” I said. “Maybe you should cross your heart and hope to die.”

  “I didn’t file charges. Don’t you think you owe me one?”

  I said, “Maybe I’ll feel like reciprocating if you answer a question.”

  “Shoot,” he said in a resigned tone.

  “If the cops have it wrapped, why are you here?”

  “’Cause it stinks.”

  “What? Why?”

  “A Gianelli doesn’t get blown up ’cause some—pardon me, is it African American or black this week?—some darkie broad fires a cabbie. It’s gotta be somebody hates Papa and can’t kill him. He’s like Fort Knox, you know, you can’t get next to him. Lotta thugs would like to take him down. Can’t nail him, so nail his kid. Didn’t used to be like that. The old-style Eye-ties kept kids out of it. Jamaicans, Colombians, it’s fun for the whole family.”

  I thought about informing him that broad had gone out the same year as Eye-tie.

  “So what did Mitch say?” he asked, leaning close.

  Speak up for the microphone, Carlotta.

  I said, “Told me to fuck off. Advised you to do likewise.”

  His face burned red. I didn’t care. I’d noticed the top of her head
peeking over the back of a chair, dark hair fastened with a white barrette, thin legs dangling an inch off the floor.

  Paolina. My Little Sister. Who should have been in school.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I spun around, abandoning Oglesby with his mouth mid-flap, dodged through a row of seats, tripping over extended legs. I didn’t speak until I had a grip on her shoulder. I’ve spent too much time chasing slippery preteens down hallways.

  “Hi,” I said. Hardly revolutionary, but an opening. Better than a question. Paolina hates questions. That is, she hates questions she’s expected to answer. She doesn’t mind dishing them out.

  “Where’ve you been?” she demanded, standing because it was too late to flee. She must have remembered that she was angry at me. She clamped her lips shut in silent-treatment mode.

  “¿Dónde estás?” I translated hesitantly, wanting to grab her and squeeze, the way I used to when she was seven and smelled of cherry Life Savers. Holding the impulse in check because Paolina’s twelve-year-old hugs are grudging gifts at best.

  “¿Dónde usted a estado?” she corrected. “You never get it right.”

  “I try,” I said. “Yo trato. Past tense kills me.”

  Her eyes were a window on a private war. Should she speak to the enemy? Her defiant glare wavered. The enemy might have a vital battlefront update.

  “We’re meeting at too many hospitals,” I said gently.

  “They won’t let me see him,” she said, trying not to sound frantic. “I’ve been waiting and waiting, ever since I heard on the news.…”

  “They won’t let me see him either.”

  Oglesby hovered, so I grasped her firmly by the hand and led her into the broad corridor. He shot an agonized glance through the glass doors, but I knew he wouldn’t abandon a genuine Gianelli brother to follow me.

  “How long have you been waiting, Paolina?” Dammit. When I question her, I sound like a cop. Worse. An inquisitor. A fourteenth-century Spanish monk.

  At least I hadn’t demanded to know why she was skipping school.

  “I didn’t know where you were,” she said. “I didn’t have any idea. You weren’t home. You weren’t here. You could have been at G and W too. You could have been killed. Burned alive. Did you call me? Did you even try to call? You’re not my sister. No way. Sisters don’t behave like you. All you do is make promises. That’s all. Dumb, stupid promises.”

  I tried to hold her, but she broke my grip with a downward slash of her hands, and kept talking. “You’re walking fine. You don’t even limp. You could have played volleyball with me. You just didn’t want to.”

  A hundred responses flashed through my brain: Yeah, my foot is better now, but it wasn’t okay for your game. I was going to call. We can play next week. A hundred excuses: I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve been trying to find a way to make you financially secure without winding up in jail. I’ve been busy, so goddamned busy.…

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Honest-to-God sorry.”

  She stared at the floor, refusing to meet my eyes.

  “How long have you been waiting, Paolina?” Interrogation time again.

  She ignored my words, as if their tone rendered them inaudible. “I told him I wished he was my father,” she blurted instead. “I wish Sam was my father.”

  It’s unlike her to mention fathers. They never come up in conversation.

  “When was that?” I carefully made my voice less inquisitorial. Why was what I wanted to know, but I’d settle for when as an opener.

  “At the gym. He sat down next to me. You know, the time I went to get you in the locker room. Will he walk again? He’s not going to—you know—die or anything, is he?”

  “He’s not going to die,” I said. She stared up at me, seeking further assurances. With none to give, I waited while she scuffed the toe of her sneaker across the gray carpet.

  “The last time I saw him, at the gym, he talked to me a long time. It was … I don’t know. Strange.”

  “How?” I urged, to keep her talking.

  “I don’t know.… He said … he asked me, like, if I thought I could ever forgive my, uh, my father. For, you know, leaving me.”

  Casual courtside repartee.

  “Had he ever asked about Carlos before?” On the rare occasions when Paolina and I spoke about the absentee Colombian, we called him Carlos, not “father.”

  “Never.”

  I was hoping she’d ramble on so I could avoid the inevitable question. She didn’t.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  She shrugged, perplexed. “I guess, that I didn’t really have a father. Not like a father I grew up with, who spent time with me, or played with me and stuff. So how could I forgive him when I never even met him? And then Sam said …”

  “What?”

  Her voice was very low. I had to lean forward to catch the words. “He said something like: ‘Well, what if your father came back?’”

  I hadn’t told Sam about the money. I never would have told him. Had Roz said anything?

  Paolina squirmed uncomfortably, which meant she hadn’t finished unburdening herself. I reached over and tucked a strand of silky hair behind her ear. My touch broke the dam.

  “Sam said it was different with me, because I hadn’t ever known my father. But that families should always forgive each other. Even if it’s been years and years. They’re family, so they should forgive. Carlotta?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Did Sam have a fight with his father?”

  A running war. A twenty-year battle. Had Papa won? Was the new business Mitch had hinted at Mob business?

  Paolina averted her eyes. There wasn’t much to see in the empty hallway, so she fixed them on a framed poster extolling the virtues of donating blood. She hates to cry in front of me.

  “It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  “What if he never gets to tell his father the stuff he told me? About forgiving and everything?”

  “Sam’s not going to die.”

  “You’re no doctor,” she said defiantly. “What do you know?”

  “Come on,” I said softly, taking her hand. “I know Sam’s going to be in surgery for hours. Maybe we can see Gloria. Have you seen Gloria yet?”

  She started guiltily. “No,” she said. “I wanted to be there when Sam woke up.”

  “They won’t let you, Paolina. You’re not family.”

  Her mouth worked. “I guess I wanted to pretend I was—that I was his kid.”

  Her words felt like stones pressing against my rib cage. A grim and terrible burden. Married women in rotten marriages must feel this way every time they hear the classic bromide: Stay together for the sake of the children.

  Was I required to stick with a lover because my Little Sister adored him? Hell, couldn’t we all be friends?

  Talk about bromides.

  We walked down silent corridors. Carpeting gave way to linoleum and the squeak of rubber soles.

  A congregation had gathered outside Gloria’s room. Keith Donovan looked pasty and fragile next to Geoffrey and Leroy. Roz resembled a dwarf. An odd dwarf. She’d removed her hat. What the hell, with Leroy and Geoffrey keeping her company, nobody was going to criticize her hairdo. They chewed sandwiches, except for Donovan, who was talking desperately, as if he might be next on the menu. His look of relief when we came down the hall was almost comical.

  I returned his glance searchingly, swallowing a sudden ache, wondering why I continually expect the opening of some extrasensory channel of communication with a new lover, the ability to read thoughts. I always think I’ll grow out of it, but I don’t. I can’t read minds. I’ve known Paolina since she was a child, and I can’t read hers. On the whole I accept that others are others. Separate. That we are each in the business of living alone.

  But sometimes, despite reason, despite my insistence on the unromantic nitty-gritty here and now, between rumpled sheets, when a man moves inside me, I think he might b
e able to hear my soul.

  “Your sister,” Keith was saying, “has remarkable coping skills. She is not, in any sense of the word, ‘crazy.’ But nothing in her experience seems useful to her now. Her paralysis was accidental. She saw no reason to wrestle with issues of fault or blame. She’s having trouble accepting that a person did this deliberately, that in trying to destroy her business, someone wound up destroying her brother.”

  “We don’t like it much either,” Geoffrey said vehemently. “If it turns out it wasn’t that punk the cops say, the one got killed, we’ll nail whoever did it.”

  “I don’t think revenge has crossed your sister’s mind. She’s having a hard time wrapping herself around the idea that Marvin won’t be walking through the door.”

  “Me too,” Leroy admitted. “That make me crazy?”

  “Human,” Donovan said. “That’s all.”

  I let out my breath. He was doing fine.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Dr. Donovan, his manner briskly professional, granted Paolina and me a brief visit with Gloria. I couldn’t tell if he’d donned a bit of arrogance along with his hospital badge or if he was playing tough-guy-in-charge to counter a gut fear of Geoffrey and Leroy. At any rate, he didn’t welcome me with a kiss, which, considering Paolina and her feelings for Sam, was a good thing.

  No time to think about it.

  No time.

  Gloria’s eyes were teary and bloodshot. She looked—hell, wan is as good a word as any, and it’s tricky, describing a three-hundred-pound black woman as wan. Her thoughts elsewhere, she tried to summon a smile and a quip for Paolina.

  “Can’t feel much,” she said. “Part that’s burned. Guess I found the positive side of paralysis.” Her massive legs hung in midair. Suspended by pulleys, swathed in white gauze, they glittered with a petrochemical glaze.

  “Can’t go to any more ‘Eat Right’ seminars,” she went on. “My brothers’ll definitely get a refund from that diet dump now.”

  Her heart wasn’t in the banter. It fell flat.

  “My brothers Geoffrey and Leroy,” she said softly.

  Paolina squeezed Gloria’s right hand, the one unencumbered by IV lines, and we were silent.

  The knock at the door was a welcome interruption. Until Mooney marched in.