Hardware

by Linda Barnes

  I didn’t respond.

  “So, what do you think?” she asked.

  Most of the cinderblocks had crumbled or toppled; some were jet-black with ash-gray edges, like giant charcoal briquets.

  “It’s his way of apologizing,” I said. “Acknowledging his family’s responsibility. He’s not big on apologies.”

  “Doesn’t seem right,” Gloria said.

  “What?”

  “It feels—shit, I don’t know—like he’s paying me off for Marvin’s death. Like there was anything money could do to replace my brother.”

  “The check’s an apology,” I said. “Only that.”

  “Would you have trouble taking that kind of money, Carlotta? From that kind of man?”

  “Gloria,” I said. “You never heard this.…”

  “What?” she said, immediately keen, sensing gossip.

  “Paolina’s biological father has sent me over forty thousand dollars in the past six months.”

  The wheelchair did a quick half-circle so she could face me. “That bastard, Roldan Gonzales?” she said.

  “Alleged bastard,” I said. “I haven’t sent it back. I haven’t donated it to charity.”

  “So, do you have a problem with where that money comes from?” Gloria asked, eyes wide and intent.

  “It’s money; it can send Paolina to college.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Why encourage deadbeat dads?” I asked, kicking at a pebble-size chunk of blackened stucco. It skittered fifty feet, came to a rest under a chain link fence.

  “Guess that means you don’t object to me cashing Papa Gianelli’s check.”

  I said, “It means I’m not exactly the best person to ask.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said pensively. “Least you’ve had experience.”

  We surveyed the ruins. Someone had swept the broken glass into a heap.

  “Will Sam still be your partner?” I asked.

  Gloria said, “I’m not sure. Depends.”

  I waited for her to continue. She seemed to have more to say.

  “I may change the name of the company.”

  I stared at chunks of grimy concrete. It was hard to imagine the outline of the garage doors.

  “I was thinking, maybe, ‘Marvin’s,’” she said.

  “I like that,” I agreed. “Nice sound to it. I’ll bring a bottle of champagne, christen the new garage when the time comes.”

  “Bottle of Bass ale,” Gloria said. “More Marvin’s style.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “He had style,” Gloria said. “He kept the family together when most guys would have run as far and as fast as they could. Promoters begged him to go to Las Vegas, box the circuit, travel the country. He was that good. But then I had my accident, and he said no.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “It’s just, I feel like he gave up his life for me. Twice. And that’s too much.”

  “Gloria,” I said. “It was his choice.”

  “Right,” she said. “That’s what your shrink says. His choice. I never could tell Marvin anything.”

  “Remember that. He was stubborn as hell, and he loved you.”

  “Guess I’ve seen enough,” she offered fifteen minutes later. I was glad. It was cold. Gloria didn’t seem to feel it, but I did.

  “Think Paolina’s home?” she asked, once I’d managed the business with the hydraulic lift and strapped her wheelchair into the shotgun position. “We could visit.”

  I said, “We could take her over to Herrell’s for ice cream. Mocha with M&M moosh-ins.”

  “Think they’d put whipped cream on that?” Gloria inquired wistfully.

  I never thought I’d be glad to hear Gloria ask about whipped cream.

  I said, “I think it’s illegal unless you order hot fudge.”

  “Hot fudge,” Gloria repeated, like it was a vaguely familiar phrase from a language she’d once spoken fluently.

  “Paolina’d like that,” I said.

  Gloria waited for a red light to stick in the dart. “She’d like it better if you and Sam got back together.”

  A battered Pontiac Grand Prix sounded its horn, passed on my right in a lane clearly designated for parking only.

  “‘You can’t always get what you want,’” I quoted.

  “Marvin liked that song,” she said. “Stones, right? ‘But if you try sometimes …’”

  “I know the rest,” I said.

  As we crossed the River Street Bridge, I finished the lyric in my head: “You just might find you get what you need.”

  What did Paolina need?

  Her biological father? Carlos Roldan Gonzales?

  “What do you think he’s like?” She’d asked after our last volleyball game, staring at her reflection in the makeup mirror on the car’s visor, sweeping up her hair to make herself look older.

  “I don’t know,” I’d said.

  “Carlotta?”

  “Honey, leave your hair down.”

  “Someday, maybe, will you go with me to find my father?”

  “Maybe,” I’d said. “Maybe.”

  From the flash of her sudden smile, I knew she’d taken that second, hesitant maybe as a yes.

  She’s young; maybe she’ll forget about it.

  “Marvin’s Cabs,” Gloria said. “What color do you think we should paint ’em?”

  For their expertise in hardware and software of various types, I wish to recognize and thank Dr. Steven Appelblatt, Richard Barnes, Ann Keating, Olin Sibert, and Dr. Amy L Sims. The reading committee—Richard Barnes, Emily Grace, Susan Linn, James Morrow, and Julie Sibert—a merciless and gracious group, deserves credit and praise.

  The T-shirt crew marches on: Denise DeLongis, Beth King, Lawrence Lopez, John Hummel, and Cynthia Mark-Hummel. Keep those cards and letters coming.

  Gina Maccoby continues her valiant efforts on Carlotta’s behalf. And Carole Baron surely knows the tall redhead couldn’t have done it without her.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries

  1

  August, one year later

  “If his word were a bridge, I’d be afraid to cross.” Or as my bubbe, my mother’s mother might have said, in Yiddish rather than English, “Oyb zayn vort volt gedint als brik volt men moyre gehat aribertsugeyn.”

  Trust me; it’s funnier in Yiddish. I know. I also know that Yiddish is the voice of exile, the tongue of ghettos, but, believe me, I’ll shed a tear when it joins ancient Greek and dead Latin. For gossip and insult, you can’t beat Yiddish.

  I imagined that shaky bridge the entire time I was talking on the phone. Caught a glimpse of it later that evening, while interviewing my client. But that’s getting ahead of the story, something my bubbe would never do. “A gute haskhole iz shoyn a halbe arbet,” she’d say: “A good beginning is the job half done.”

  The lawyer’s voice oozed condescension over a long-distance connection so choppy it made me wonder if Fidel Castro were personally eavesdropping.

  “Excuse me,” he said firmly, the words a polite substitution for “shut up.” Enunciating as though attempting communication with a dull-witted four-year-old, he said, “I believe this conversation would be better suited to a pay phone. I’ll ring you in, say, half an hour.”

  I’ve never met Thurman W. Vandenburg, Esq. My mind snapped an imaginary photo: the tanned, lined face of a man fighting middle age, a smile that displayed perfectly capped teeth, pointed like a barracuda’s.

  “The same phone we used before. I have the number, if you can remember the location—” he continued.

  I stopped him with, “I’m sitting in that very booth, mister. And you’re eating my dwindling change pile. I don’t want trouble. I want the shipments to stop. ¿M’entiendes?”

  There: I’d managed five sentences without interruption. I’d included the key words: Trouble, shipments, stop. I hadn’t said “money.” He’d understand I meant money.

  “
I’ll call back in ten minutes,” he replied tersely.

  “Wait! No! I have a client, an appointment—”

  Click.

  I white-knuckled the receiver. I hate it when sleazy lawyers hang up on me. Hell, I hate it when genteel lawyers hang up on me, not that I have much occasion to chat with any. Classy lawyers with plush offices and desks the size of skating rinks are not exactly a dying breed. It’s just that I don’t come into contact with the cream of the crop in the normal run of my business.

  I compared my Timex with the wall-mounted model over the pharmacist’s counter. If he actually called within ten minutes, and if my after-hours client ran on the late side, I might barely squeak in the door with minutes to spare.

  I wish drugstores still had soda fountains. I could have relaxed on a red vinyl stool, spinning a salute to my childhood, sipping a cherry Coke while reviewing my potential client’s hastily phone-sketched plight, a situation distinguished more by his breathless, excited voice than the unique nature of his problem. I sighed at the thought of disappointing him face-to-face. Missing persons are a dime a dozen. Amazing the number of people in this anonymous big-city world who think they can make a fresh start elsewhere, wipe their blotted slates clean.

  There was no soda fountain, so I lurked the aisles, for all the world a shoplifter, or a woman too chicken-shit to buy a box of Trojans from a pimple-faced teenaged clerk. The newsrack provided momentary diversion. The Star trumpeted DEATH ROW INMATE GIVES BIRTH TO ALIEN TRIPLETS! in uppercase twenty-four-point bold.

  The Herald led with a heavily hyped local story: WILL VOTERS GO FOR DIVORCED MAN WED TO WOMAN 19 YEARS YOUNGER? Boston magazine handled the same sludge more tastefully, focusing on the upcoming gubernatorial race with a simple, CAMERON: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING.

  By the time the phone rang nine minutes and forty-five seconds later, I’d guiltily spent eighty-nine cents on a pack of spearmint Tic Tacs. Thurman W. Vandenburg, aka Miami Sleaze, might not be my idea of an upstanding member of the bar, but he was prompt.

  “Nothing I can do,” he said, not waiting for me to speak.

  “Well, I can do plenty,” I replied quickly. “Expect a large package of cash in the mail. I’ll bet you know dodges the IRS hasn’t heard more than a million times.”

  “The situation is somewhat delicate.”

  “Sure it is, buddy, but I’m out. I’ve managed to invest Paolina’s cash so far. Legit. It ends here. No más.”

  “There’s no evidence that she’s his daughter,” the lawyer snapped.

  “Except he sends money,” I replied dryly. “For her, through me. What’s your problem? Afraid he can’t pay your fees?”

  “He’s missing,” Vandenburg said softly.

  It took a minute for the words to sink in.

  “No names,” Vandenburg insisted.

  “Jesus Christ,” I murmured slowly. “Ooops, that’s a name. Sorry.”

  Total silence followed by a muffled eruption. Could have been Vandenburg chuckling. Could have been Castro swallowing his cigar.

  “No names,” I repeated.

  “I’ve been out of touch with our mutual friend,” Vandenburg said, “for a certain number of days. That sets off a chain of events, financial and otherwise. I don’t think you’ll be bothered.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don’t blow me off. I need to know. Is he dead?”

  Thurman W. Vandenburg terminated the call. No doubt he’d been clocking it with a stopwatch. No doubt he knew exactly how long it would take the DEA to get a lock on the pay phone.

  The drugstore on Huron Avenue boasts one of the last of the true phone booths, with a tiny seat and a bifold door, a poignant reminder that once upon a time phone calls were considered private conversations. Ma Bell installed it and NYNEX obviously hasn’t found it yet. If they had, they’d have ripped it out, gone for the handy-dandy wall model.

  I automatically scanned the aisles before exiting. I assumed the Drug Enforcement Agency would be all over Vandenburg’s calls, simply because word is out: If you get nailed on possession of a narcotic substance in the great state of Florida, Vandenburg’s your man.

  So I wasn’t surprised to see the guy. Dismayed, yes, but not surprised. He wasn’t watching me, wasn’t waiting like a total fool, artillery bristling. He was strolling the aisles and his mild-mannered browser routine might have worked if not for the incredibly hot weather, which surely wasn’t his fault. His windbreaker drew my attention like a red flag. The bulge under his armpit riveted my glance. The outline of a holstered gun is unmistakable.

  I had no desire to explain my Miami connection to the DEA. My fingertips touched 911 as I slid slowly to the floor of the booth, my T-shirt riding up in back, cool plasterboard tingling my sweaty skin.

  The Cambridge emergency dispatcher answered on a single ring. That-a-girl!

  I pitched my voice deliberately high, lisped, and paused in a childlike way. “Um, uh, there’s a man with a gun,” I said cheerfully.

  I heard a muted thud, as though the woman had set down a coffee cup in a hurry. “Where, honey? Now, don’t you hang up, child,” she said.

  “In the drugstore,” I replied in my singsong little voice. “Mark’s Drugs, I think. On Huron Avenue. I’m with Mommy and the man has a gun, just like on TV.”

  “Good girl, honey. What’s your name? Can you leave the phone off the hook—”

  I didn’t hear the rest of her advice because I was crawling toward the door behind the pharmacy counter. The front door sports a string of bells to signal customer entrances and exits. The back door doesn’t. I wedged my ass through the opening and slithered from air-conditioned cool into the inverted air mass that had hovered over Boston for the best part of early August, holding temperatures above eighty, redlining the pollution index. A street lamp cast a yellowish haze. The night air hung thick and noxious: recycled exhaust fumes, heavy and sticky as a steam bath.

  Somebody ought to sweep the damned alley, I thought. Clear away the busted beer bottles. I inched forward. Glass, or maybe a sharp pebble, pierced my right knee. I felt for smoother pavement, glanced up.

  No visible observers. Distant approaching sirens. I’d have loved to hang around, listening to the Cambridge cops dispute territorial rights with the DEA. Instead I stood, quickly brushing my kneecaps, and walked home, thankful I’d dipped into my savings for Paolina’s three-week stay at a YWCA-run camp on a perfect New Hampshire lake. No chance she’d see a newspaper in the back woods. If anything dreadful had happened to her dad, she wouldn’t run across some gruesome death-scene photo unprepared …

  I’d never told Paolina, my little sister from the Big Sisters Association, that her biological father, the alleged drug baron Carlos Roldan Gonzales, had been in touch. It had never come up in conversation. I’d never mentioned his irregular cash shipments.

  I found myself hoping Roldan Gonzales was dead, then trying to take back the thought as if it had the power to do the deed. His death would make my life easier, no doubt about that. I’d never have to explain. I could present Paolina with the money as a gift, me to her, no intermediary, no ugly stain on cash that must surely have come from the drug trade. It could be what I’d named it for the IRS’s benefit: track winnings. Simple luck, passed on with love from Big Sister to little sister. College. Travel. An apartment of her own when she turned eighteen …

  Except it would all be a lie without Carlos Roldan Gonzales’s name attached.

  Lies don’t usually bother me much, but I try not to lie to Paolina. She means too much to me. And lies have a sneaky way of tiptoeing back to haunt you.

  I glanced at my watch and doubled my pace, vaulting a fence, cutting diagonally through my backyard.

  I wondered if the guy had really been DEA or just a casual drugstore holdup man. The cops would go a hell of a lot tougher on him if he were DEA. I know; I used to be a cop. They hate federal poachers.

  Safely in my kitchen, I downed an icy Pepsi
straight from the can, standing in front of the open refrigerator to bring my temperature down from boil. I stuck my hair in a stretchy cloth band, bobby-pinning it haphazardly to the top of my head. I was dabbing my sweaty neck with a wadded paper towel when the doorbell rang.

  A prompt sleazy lawyer followed by a prompt potential client. What more could a private investigator want?

  2

  As I marched toward the front door, I wondered what lies Vandenburg, the sleaze, had slipped by me, what half-truths he’d told.

  What lies would this client try?

  With a touch—hell, a wallop—of vanity, I consider myself an expert in the field of lies, a collector, if you will. I’ve seen liars as fresh and obvious as newborn babes; a quick twitch of the eye, a sudden glance at the floor immediately giving the game away. I’ve interviewed practiced, skilled liars, blessed with the impeccable timing of ace stand-up comics. I don’t know why I recognize lies. Somebody will be shooting his mouth, and I’ll feel or hear a change of tone, a shift of pace. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe I got so used to lies when I was a cop that I suspect everyone.

  I’d rather trust people. Given the choice.

  My potential client beamed a hundred-watt smile when I opened the door, bounding into the foyer like an overgrown puppy. Even if he’d been a much younger man I’d have found his enthusiasm strange, since the number of people pleased to visit a private investigator is noticeably fewer than the number eagerly anticipating gum surgery.

  He’d seemed both agitated and exhilarated on the phone that afternoon, otherwise I wouldn’t have agreed to a Sunday evening appointment. He’d mentioned a missing person, given his name with no hint of reluctance. I’d checked with the Boston police; there was no 3501, i.e., missing person file, currently devoted to anyone sharing a last name with Mr. Adam Mayhew. Which left a ton of possibilities. The person in question could have been reported as a 2633, the current code for a runaway child. Could have had a different last name. Hadn’t been absent the required twenty-four hours. The missing individual might be considered a voluntary—a walkaway or runaway adult.

  Possibly my client-to-be knew exactly where the missing person could be found. Quick case; low fee.

  Which would be too bad, because the sixtyish gentleman currently shifting his weight from one foot to the other as though testing my wooden floorboards looked like he could donate megabucks to the worthy cause of my upkeep and not miss a single dollar. His shoes were Bally or a damned good imitation, slip-on tassle loafers with neither a too-new nor a too-used sheen. Well-maintained classics, indicating a man with more than one pair of shoes to his wardrobe. A man with quietly expensive taste and access to a good dry cleaning establishment. A formal soul, rigged out in full business attire on a shirtsleeves, sweat-hot evening.