Hardware

by Linda Barnes

  “You don’t dress well enough,” I said.

  “How about this: Does Sam outfit himself like a man who might be testifying before a Senate subcommittee?”

  “Interesting idea,” I said after a long pause.

  “That’s all? Just interesting?”

  I chewed my lower lip. I had more than Sister Xavier Marie. I had a phone number in the District of Columbia.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It was dark by the time Mooney dropped me at my driveway, shadowy with the threat of snow, cold as a blue-steel grip.

  I didn’t invite him in. Exhausted, I worried I might relate the tale of “Frank,” the computer whiz, over a can of Rolling Rock. I needed time to think. And why would I need company when I had a new S&W .40?

  In the foyer I spread my hands near the radiator, reveling in the heat. As I hung my coat I took inventory.

  A new semiautomatic. An old revolver. I wrapped my .38 in its T-shirt shroud, shoved it in the bottom left-hand drawer of the desk, locked the drawer.

  The name of a nun. Sam’s computer diskettes. The Washington, D.C., phone number.

  Unanswered questions.

  I sat at my desk, threaded my way through the on-hold operator shuffle at MGH to find Sam out of surgery, stable. He could not speak on the telephone. Could not be seen by anyone outside his immediate family.

  Gloria, in satisfactory condition, must have been chatting on her phone. Thirty minutes later, the line was still busy. Maybe she’d landed a job dispatching cabs from her hospital bed.

  More likely making arrangements for Marvin’s closed-casket funeral.

  I flipped on the computer, considered feeding one of Sam’s diskettes into its maw. What I didn’t know about computer compatibility could fill volumes. Would I be able to bring up his files on my screen? What were my chances of destroying them in the process?

  Maybe Keith Donovan would like to hit a Chinese restaurant for dinner. For all his professed fascination with women and violence, I wondered if he’d be at ease with the new piece tucked into my waistband.

  I hollered for Roz.

  “What?” she responded, sounding more than mildly annoyed.

  “Could you come down?”

  “A sec, okay?”

  While waiting, I slipped my new gun out of its hiding place, practiced jamming the magazine into the slot, and sighting down the barrel.

  “I give up,” Roz said. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Busy?”

  “Painting. I’m totally inspired.”

  “Want to earn money?”

  “I’m painting. You got something against art?”

  “I’m talking money, Roz.”

  “What do you want?”

  I indicated the computer, started to babble about Sam’s diskettes. Mid-sentence I had a brainstorm.

  “Roz,” I said, “stay inspired. Do a sketch of ‘Frank.’ A quick one.”

  She pursed her lips, considering. “Style?”

  “Hell with style. No auras. No cubist shit. Make like a camera.”

  “Boring,” she said.

  “Lucrative,” I said.

  The tip of her tongue protruded through her sharp teeth. “Black-and-white sketch? Pencil?”

  “Fine.”

  “Ten minutes,” she said.

  “Sam’s phone calls? The transcriptions?”

  “Here.” She yanked crumpled notes from her pocket. I smoothed them on the desktop, wondering if they’d require translation, but what I wanted was printed clearly. A single number with a 202 area code.

  I took a deep breath and dialed. Punched. I’ve got a touch-tone phone. One of the keys says redial. All those years, I thought dial had something to do with round, with rotary phones. Another language lag, a failure to keep step with technology. I stared down the blank computer screen while the phone rang five times. A mechanical click, then the cheery message began: “So sorry I can’t take your call …”

  I hung up. Couldn’t bring off the phrasing without a dress rehearsal: Sam Gianelli’s been wounded in a bombing. Who am I? Oh, someone who thought you might want to know.

  I tapped my heels, twisted my hair into an untidy topknot, and discarded half a dozen equally inane opening lines. Finally I left my name, number, and a simple request to return my call day or night, collect. A promise to foot the bill impresses people with the urgent nature of the call.

  Roz bounced downstairs, offered up her drawing without comment. She’s a precise, well-schooled illustrator, although you’d never guess it from her artwork. If anything, she’d romanticized the man. His eyes had a vitality, a spark.

  The picture made me certain she’d slept with him.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You like it?”

  “I’m not planning to hang it over my pillow,” I said. “It’s for ID.”

  “Gonna show it to a police artist?”

  “Somebody better, I hope.”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want company?”

  “No. Paint while the muse is with you,” I said.

  I knew a place I could go where they’d have to let me in, no matter the hour. A place I’d be reasonably safe, even without Roz. Definitely without Roz.

  St. Cecilia’s.

  I wriggled my ankle. It was holding up better than the rest of me.

  I glanced in the phone book under churches, Catholic. St. Cecilia’s was on Hanover Street, the North End’s main drag. Only problem would be parking. No Green & White to call. I wondered how soon Gloria would be up and running again. I wondered about insurance. It would be somewhere on one of the computer diskettes.

  The cab medallions were the major company asset. If Sam had planned to sell, he certainly hadn’t told Gloria. Who’d buy? Phil Yancey? Brennan, at Hackney Carriage, hadn’t called back. Mooney was right: Brennan was lazy, didn’t like to shake things up.

  I hadn’t dressed for church since my dad used to haul me to Easter services over my mom’s protests. The best way for a Jew to celebrate Easter, she had maintained, was to hide in the cellar, safe from pogroms. Dad would reply that I was only half Jewish. She’d retort that “half” wouldn’t have stopped the Poles or the Nazis.

  One of the many charming rituals of my childhood.

  I didn’t intend to pray, although it wouldn’t hurt to light a candle for Marvin. I changed out of jeans into black wool slacks and a cream silk shirt. A long black vest hid the .40. I considered wearing a skirt, surely more appropriate, but the wind was chill and my legs needed a shave, so I went with the slacks. A red-and-gold scarf completed the outfit, a bit jarring with my hair, but I liked it. I could even pull it over my head if some throwback from the good old days gave my hatlessness a condemning glare.

  I like churches. I don’t know the apse from a hole in the wall, but I enjoy the echoing silence, the sense of space, and the motion the architects always seem to manage, leading your eyes up, up.

  St. Cecilia’s was no cathedral. No storefront either. A reassuringly warm, well-lighted place. A sanctuary.

  An elderly woman, face obscured by a black lace scarf, entered before me, genuflected, and padded to a pew as if she’d made the identical journey fifty thousand times. I echoed her movements, inhaling the odor of rain-sogged wool and pressed-linen sanctity.

  The confessional was to the left of the altar. A man exited, mumbling under his breath, getting a running start on his Hail Marys. A woman slipped into the cubicle, head lowered. The thought of confession brought a rising panic to my chest.

  I left and went in search of the parish office. In search of civilians. Outdoors, the air was brisk and damp. People walked the streets, carried on laughing conversations, loitered at intersections, under streetlamps. The North End stays alive and vibrant after the safest suburbs have tucked themselves in for the night. The residents feel protected, are protected, by their own. By reputation as much as reality.

  I wondered if the parish office, a jutting brick addition on
the right, had once housed the Star of the Sea grammar school. Up three granite steps to an imposing front door with a brass knocker. The sketch of “Frank” seemed suddenly futile, silly. After all these years to expect to stroll in and locate a nun who’d be able to provide a true name …

  When they’d closed the school they’d probably shipped the teaching sisters to Zimbabwe.

  So what? Dead end. I’d faced them before. Most roads lead to the same sign. It would be one more avenue explored, a byway crossed off the street map.

  A woman answered the door. A nun, I guessed, although without regalia. Gray hair, no makeup, wire-rimmed glasses. On the street, an aging Cambridge radical. In these surroundings, a nun.

  “Yes?” she said politely, smiling a gap-toothed welcome.

  “Hello. I’m trying to locate someone who can tell me about the grammar school that used to be here. At St. Cecilia’s.”

  Her eyes glowed.

  “Are you a reporter?” she asked eagerly.

  It’s too easy. Honestly, it’s as if people sit at home and invent scripts and wait for someone, some TV talk-show host, to waltz in the door and question them about their fascinating lives. I mean, everybody’s life is thrilling fodder for a docudrama, right?

  “Not exactly,” I said gently.

  “I miss the school,” she said. “I know it’s important to do what I do now, to liaise with the community, as they put it, but teaching was very special. Gratifying. I miss the children’s voices.”

  I wondered how many current grammar school teachers characterized their work as gratifying.

  “You taught there?” I asked.

  “At the end. They closed the school in ’78. Too few students.”

  “Did you know a Sister Xavier Marie?”

  “No.”

  “The Gianelli children went to school at St. Cecilia’s.”

  Her face altered subtly. The smile was on her lips but no longer in her eyes. “I know the name, of course,” she said cautiously. “The children were grown by the time I started teaching.”

  “Are there yearbooks? Class photos?”

  “All records have been sent to the central office. Near the cardinal’s residence on Lake Street. You’d need to put your request in writing. I can give you the address.”

  “Are any of the teachers from the old days still alive? Still at this parish?”

  She hesitated.

  “It’s a shame about the older teaching nuns,” I went on quickly. “They gave so much and now they seem to get so little.”

  “Sister Claveria’s here,” she said. She’d made up her mind about me. I was concerned about the old nuns. I was okay.

  “May I speak to her?”

  “She’s very old.”

  “I won’t upset her. It’s important.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name in God is Sister Mary Agnes.”

  “Sister Mary Agnes, if Sister Claveria had a chance to help an old student, would she leave him standing in the cold?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, clearly flustered. “I’m sorry. Things are different these days, even here.”

  “It’s okay, Sister.”

  She swung the door wide, without bothering to ask if I was armed or dangerous. Good thing.

  “Sister Claveria might be asleep.”

  “Don’t wake her,” I forced myself to say. Sister Mary Agnes seemed inclined to help. I wouldn’t push it. I could come back.

  The foyer was filled with twice the furniture it should have held. Dark carved wooden benches. Overstuffed armchairs upholstered in deep green. The contents of a large house compressed into a single room. The furnishings seemed to suck up all the air. The heat was turned too high. I unbuttoned my coat.

  Sister Mary Agnes reappeared at the door and nodded encouragingly. “I don’t know your name,” she said apologetically.

  I handed her one of my cards.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  Up one carpeted flight, then two more, steeper, bare. “Sister Claveria was reading,” she offered.

  I concentrated on my footing. “It’s very kind of her to see me.”

  “Sister loves to talk about the old times. She’s like the rest of us, only more so. Can’t remember what she had for breakfast, but don’t let that fool you. Get her going about the forties, about the time before she entered the convent, and she’ll talk your ear off.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. Not to warn you so much as to let you know what to expect. She’s not foolish or senile; she’s old. Some can’t tell the difference.”

  There was no television in the room. That’s what I noticed first, with relief. I felt the itch of the S&W at the base of my spine. Constantly blaring screens are starting to seriously annoy me. If I ever lose it completely, I’ll shoot as many TV sets as I can find before they lock me up. In bars and restaurants and waiting rooms.

  “Sister, this is Miss Carlyle.”

  With that, Sister Mary Agnes left me on the threshold. Had to liaise with the community, I suppose.

  “Welcome.” Sister Claveria’s voice rasped like dry paper. I entered. In contrast to the overfurnished foyer, the room seemed cell-like in its plainness. Small, it gave the illusion of space. There was only the single bed, a table. One chair.

  Sister Claveria’s hair was yellowy gray, a far cry from Clairol silver. Her nose was long and bony, her chin sharp, her eyes hidden behind Coke-bottle lenses. I wondered if she’d be able to make out Roz’s drawing. She closed a heavy book, the movement slow and deliberate. Maybe those were her reading lenses. They magnified her eyes.

  “Sister Mary Agnes says you want to know about the school.” She must have been a formidable classroom presence. When she spoke I stood straighter. Command voice, they called it at the academy.

  “About a particular student,” I said.

  “A boy or a girl?”

  “A boy.”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  “Would that make a difference?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you let me ask and if you feel comfortable answering, go ahead. You may not know my friend.”

  “Are you truly his friend?” she asked.

  I thought of Sam, not “Frank.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you remember the Gianelli family?”

  “Them.”

  “You do?”

  “Like asking the Sisters in Brookline if they remember the Kennedys,” she said scornfully. “You won’t stump me on that one.”

  “The youngest boy.”

  “Quite a bright child. Mischievous, like all of them. We used to call him ‘full of the devil,’ but he was not the devil’s child. It was a figure of speech. We shouldn’t have used it, not here.”

  The devil’s not a legend, the devil’s real. I couldn’t shake Smither’s song out of my mind.

  “You have a good memory,” I said.

  “For some.”

  “I’m interested in a friend of the youngest Gianelli boy, a close friend, his best friend.”

  She closed her eyes. Nodded her head. Her nose seemed enormously long. “Boys come and go. The years get mixed up. Who played together …” She’d lost her command voice; it had turned into a whimper.

  “Did you know a Sister Xavier Marie?”

  “In the bosom of her Maker. A finer woman never lived.”

  I unfolded Roz’s sketch, the last forlorn hope. “This is the man I’m looking for.”

  She studied the drawing for some time, holding it close to her face, adjusting the glasses on the bridge of her nose, finally removing them entirely.

  “This is not the Gianelli boy,” she said.

  “No.”

  “It’s very like him,” she said.

  “Like who? You know him?”

  “Like the father, not the child. But s
o many of the children came to look like the old man.”

  “Who?” I repeated.

  “If he was at school with the littlest Gianelli boy it would have been Joey Junior. Joseph Frascatti.”

  “Frascatti,” I repeated.

  “You can see how it might have been,” the sister said. “F and G. Alphabetical order. They would have been required to sit near each other, and though their fathers would have hated it, I’m sure, they were fast friends from the start. The little Gianelli boy, the little Frascatti boy. Yes. Yes.”

  The two rival families.

  “Is there anything in particular you remember about Joey Frascatti?”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Was he good at math, good with numbers? Interested in theater?”

  “What does it matter now?” Sister Claveria said fretfully. “He could have been a fine student, but he was full of rebellion. He had a brilliant mind, a defiant mind. He caused mischief.” The old woman stopped, seemingly lost in thought.

  “What kind of mischief?” I prompted gently.

  “I’ll tell you the one thing in particular I remember about Joey Frascatti,” she said. “I remember his funeral.”

  “His funeral.”

  “I’m sorry if you didn’t know,” the old nun said in her dry voice. “He was killed in that dreadful war.”

  “The war.” I wanted to tell her she was mistaken. I wanted to stop parroting her words.

  “Vietnam.” She drew in a shallow breath, coughed, held up a hand to stop me from coming closer, trying to help her sit more comfortably amid the pillows.

  “So many lovely boys, gone,” she said. “Sometimes I think I’ve lived too long …” She searched for my name, settled for “my dear.” “Too long,” she repeated. “I pray each night that God will take this old soul.”

  She seemed to be sleeping when I left. Her breathing was regular. I didn’t close her door or extinguish her light.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Good thing the North End is safe nights. I wouldn’t have noticed a band of roving muggers till they’d reached in my waistband and stolen my gun. I drove home with the extraordinary care of the drunkard.

  Joseph Frascatti.

  Joey Fresh.

  So this was progress. I knew who “Frank” was. I could find his last known address, his real Social Security number, his true credit history. Track him right up till the time he died.