by Linda Barnes
Everybody asks about Sam. It’s irritating, near-strangers knowing my love life.
I said, “You want to grab Ralph’s attention, Jer, ask him how he feels about cab leases.”
Ralph began whining his signature tune. “Not my fault,” he declared.
“Sweatshops on wheels,” Jerry said dismissively. Then he got a panicky look in his eyes. “Sam’s not planning to switch to leases, is he?”
Anything bad happens at the garage, Sam’s behind it. Anything good, it’s Saint Gloria.
I could see her behind the phone console, waving a meaty, beckoning arm. The dispatch area has few distractions—a rusty desk, a few cast-off plastic chairs, the kind you might find in a welfare office or an unsuccessful dentist’s waiting room. A wheelchair-bound three-hundred-pound black woman wearing a scarlet dress stuck out.
“Relax,” I said to Fleckman. “No leases as far as I know.”
“Don’t drive another shift,” he counseled. “You’re tired. Bosses, man, they suck your blood.”
I find it hard to regard Gloria as a bloodsucking boss.
“Glad to see you, babe,” she said, waving a Hostess Twinkie under my nose. “Want to eat?”
Twinkies don’t do it for me. I found a lone doughnut in a wrinkled sack.
“This spoken for?”
“Help yourself. Hardly stale.”
The phones lit up. She murmured, “Stick around.”
I plunked myself into a chair molded to someone else’s contours, rose immediately, and ruefully rubbed my backside. Light filtered through the front window. I walked over and lifted the corner of a broken Venetian blind. Its slats were thick with dust.
G&W, where I moonlight to afford such luxuries as Fancy Feast cat food and quarterly tax payments, is wedged behind Cambridge Street on an ugly commercial strip in Boston’s Allston-Brighton area. Neither Allston nor Brighton is eager to claim it. Understandably so: the exhaust fumes from the nearby Mass. Pike are less than a draw. A huge rug store dominates a nearby corner. There’s a food co-op, a cleaning plant, another rug wholesaler, and a restaurant that advertises itself as the pinnacle of casual dining, which means they keep a squadron of large-screen TVs blaring all hours of the day and night.
“Green and White,” Gloria sang over the line. “Where are you now, and where do you wanna go?” She has one of the world’s great voices, a deep Gospel-touched melody that speaks to my Motown roots.
I consider G&W an endearing eyesore, a semi-remodeled warehouse resembling a vandalized Taco Bell. Gloria insists the stucco started out white, but turned grit-gray so quickly there was no point swimming against the tide. Busted wooden garage doors—no excuse from Gloria, just a fact of life—add to the general air of dilapidation.
“You think I’m losing weight?” Gloria, off the phone, smoothed the red tent over her massive contours. “You seen Sam lately?”
“No,” I said, “and no. In that order.”
Gloria sighed. “Diet place my brothers signed me up for this time does packaged meals. Frozen gunk-in-a-box. Supposed to be healthy.”
“Huh?” I said, gazing out the window, wondering if the glass was frosted or filthy.
Gloria ordered a Green & White to 700 Comm. Ave. “Careful ’bout those B.U. kids racing across the street,” she admonished the driver. “Dummies run smack into traffic.”
“I’m talking diet here,” she said to me, sticking the handset back in the cradle. “Healthy food.”
Gloria’s brothers are concerned about her weight. Someone ought to be.
Gloria works full-time and three quarters. She lives in the back room. A hard worker before the auto accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down at nineteen, a hard worker she remains.
She used her insurance settlement to buy into Sam Gianelli’s latest failing business venture. Together they form an unlikely team—African American and Italian, street-raised and Mafia bred—and run one of the few successful small cab companies in town. Dispatching is Gloria’s vocation, but by preference and inclination she is an information trader, and what she doesn’t know about city politics and the cab scene in particular is not worth knowing. Sam handles the money side. He rarely hangs out at the garage.
Gloria doesn’t miss the company; she substitutes food. Bags of Chee tos, boxes of Mallomars. Cold Pop-Tarts. Nothing remotely nutritious crosses her lips. Junk food is her chosen comfort and solace.
“You mentioned Sam,” I said, dropping the blind back into place. “Do you know where he is?”
“Nope,” Gloria said cagily.
“You eat the diet stuff?” I asked. On her desk, within gobbling distance, an enormous jar of Bacon Bits dwarfed a box of double-cream-filled Oreos and a can of ready-made Betty Crocker chocolate frosting. As I watched, spellbound, she dipped an unresisting Oreo into the frosting, coating it liberally.
“Can hardly choke it down,” she said, admiring her creation before engulfing it in a single bite.
“You eat it—and only it—you ought to lose something,” I ventured.
“I’m losing patience is what. Eating cardboard lasagna’s bad enough, but I won’t listen to another ‘motivational’ tape, and if I have to go to one more crappy seminar, I’m gonna call the Better Business Bureau, close ’em the hell down. These folks have probably killed half a dozen people. You should taste what they call tuna casserole. Bean sprouts in it.”
“You don’t follow the diet, you don’t listen to the tapes, you don’t go to the seminars, why are your brothers doing this?”
“Makes ’em feel useful.”
Another Oreo smeared with Betty Crocker’s best went down the hatch.
“I bring Tootsie Rolls to class, chew ’em in front of the other fat folks. Counselor’s gonna toss me out, give the boys their money back.”
You’d have to be a first-class fool to quibble over a refund with Gloria’s three enormous brothers.
She motioned me closer, lowered her voice to a whisper. “Lee Cochran called an hour before you drove in.”
It took me a moment to place the name. “Head of the Small Taxi Association.”
“Seemed real eager to talk to you, asked me if you were any good.”
“And you told him …?”
“That I wasn’t your secretary, thank you very much. He’s planning to drop by in half an hour, if you’re interested. You want to make tracks, feel free.”
“I’m interested,” I said.
“You can use my room.” Gloria repeated the cookie maneuver, her fingers plump as sausages. “For privacy.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Lee Cochran … As I inhaled chocolate fumes, I pondered. I’d never warmed to Lee. He wouldn’t pay me a special visit to collect dues for the organization he’d run as a personal fiefdom for years. A job, perchance. The morning seemed suddenly brighter. I’d rather poke my nose into other people’s business than battle Boston traffic any day.
I racked my brain for information concerning Lee. There was a wife somewhere. Kids. Maybe a runaway. Lot of that going around.
I gave up speculation in favor of a stroll. Two more minutes and I’d be cramming Oreos in my mouth, just to keep them safe from Gloria.
Not a lot of space to stretch your legs at Green & White. It’s compact, with enough room to park all eight cabs inside as long as you don’t intend to open any doors. The two mechanics’ bays were occupied, cabs hoisted side by side on hydraulic lifts. The grease boys were sharing a joke in a language I couldn’t identify, much less understand.
The narrow passway near the back wall is lined with twelve battered metal lockers that look like they were stolen from my old high school. Full-timers get to claim one, and fasten it with a combination lock if they so desire. Sometimes I crack the combos for practice.
As a part-timer, I don’t rate my own locker. I drive when I need cash. I drive when I can’t sleep. Considering my P.I. income, sporadic insomnia’s a blessing in disguise.
To get to the toilet, you n
eed to walk through locker central. I make every effort to avoid G&W’s rest room, stopping at hotels to use their infinitely more attractive facilities. This morning, nature and coffee had caught me off guard.
I ran the locker gauntlet quickly, nervously. A friend of mine, a cop at the Dudley Street station, had recently been attacked by a rare-in-these-parts brown recluse spider. The venom had ballooned his foot to twice its normal size, turning it purple and black before a specialist recognized the symptoms. The guy almost lost his foot.
If I were a brown recluse spider, I couldn’t think of a cozier nest than G&W’s back corridor. Except the bathroom itself.
I knocked on the wooden door, got no response, and entered. It’s a unisex cesspool. I normally inspect the corners for cockroaches and mice. This time I surveyed the rafters as well. No webs. After spraying the seat with Lysol, I used the toilet, and exited fast, leaving the light on and the door closed. That’s protocol. Scares the roaches out of sight, keeps the mice in one place.
I’d forgotten all about brown recluses till I saw the spider scamper across the floor.
I’m no spider stomper. No spider lover, either. We’ve got a deal: I leave them alone; they leave me alone. But my friend at Dudley Street had described the little so-and-so who’d caused him so much pain: a small brown three-eighths-inch-long sucker with black markings. Much like the critter who’d just scooted by the lockers.
I had a mop in my hand before I consciously thought about it. I couldn’t locate the spider and panicked momentarily, feeling itchy. There. It had moved fast, reeling in line, making for the ceiling.
I thought I’d better wait till it hit a hard surface before I whacked it. I watched it rise through the air, and the more I observed it the more innocuous it seemed. I wasn’t sure it had black markings at all. It seemed larger than half an inch. I’d decided to smack it with the mop handle after all, for scaring me half to death, when I noticed something more intriguing.
A tiny microphone hanging from the ceiling, where no microphone should have been.
TWO
Lee Cochran approached so silently I almost jumped. I stared quickly at the floor, pretending to brush doughnut crumbs off my sweater.
“Gloria said there was a room where we could talk,” he said by way of greeting.
“For privacy,” she’d said. Privacy.
I said, “Right this way to the executive suite.”
A room behind a garage … You’re probably thinking patched linoleum, bare bulbs, concrete walls. Scratch that image. Entering Gloria’s place is like stepping from one planet to another, arriving in a world of glossy paint, fresh flowers, and framed museum prints. The airy space is soundproofed, so the clatter of the cab company stops dead at the door. Remodeled for wheelchair access by her three brothers, it’s equipped with every state-of-the-art device for the handicapped, including a system of bars, ropes, and pulleys she can use to haul herself to the bathroom and into and out of bed. Gloria’s not big on home health-care workers.
I eyed the ceiling suspiciously. No dangling microphones met my gaze.
“Wow,” Lee murmured. I didn’t blame him; it’s hard to believe a high-tech wonderland exists behind G&W’s squalor.
I’ve known Lee in a vague sort of way since I first started driving. While he examined Gloria’s room, I studied him. His face was thinner than I remembered, his nose beakier, but on the whole he’d aged well, trimming down instead of bloating. His features had sharpened. He looked like he always had—steely gray eyes, thin lips, chin marred by an off-center cleft. He was wearing a grubby chocolate-colored sweater, dark slacks of indeterminate hue.
“Maybe we could take a walk,” I said, shaken by my recent discovery.
“A walk?” He stared at me incredulously. “Have you been outside lately? I left my coat on top of the radiator, hoping the damned thing might thaw. Wind cuts right through you.”
So much for guaranteed privacy. I led him to an alcove with two chairs, one enormous enough to handle Gloria’s bulk, both strategically placed near snack tables that could double as writing desks. I glanced at a floor lamp, took a long look at a potted palm, then waved Lee into the larger chair.
He seemed puzzled by my behavior. And why not?
“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. This is association business,” he said, surprising me with his directness. Typically, my clients approach their problems sideways, like crabs.
Good, I thought. He doesn’t want me to catch his wife cheating on him, find out if his current lover has AIDS.
“My lawyer recommended you,” he went on. “Hector Gold.” The name meant nothing to me. “I checked with a couple cops. And Gloria.” He smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not if I passed,” I said softly, hoping he’d lower his voice to match. I didn’t want to risk losing a perfectly good client. I couldn’t very well suggest that we turn on a little mood music.
“You’re a driver; that was a factor as well,” he said.
I nodded, waited. I can wait quite a spell, having had considerable practice when I was a cop.
“It’s about the number of attacks on Boston cabdrivers in the past two months,” Lee said.
“Six,” I said.
“Six reported,” he corrected sharply. “At least three others were never, uh, mentioned to the police.”
I kept quiet; either he’d tell me why or I could spell it out for myself. Some cabdrivers don’t like to mess with cops. Various reasons.
“Immigration problems,” Lee said.
Parole problems, too, I thought.
“Do you have any other, um, engagements?”
“If I take your case, Lee, I’ll give it my full attention, but we ought to get something straight from the start.”
“What?”
“You can’t hire me to protect a thousand cabbies. The police are better at that kind of thing; they have the personnel. Your best bet would be to work through the Hackney Carriage Bureau, try to set up more safety guidelines, get more cab checkpoints. Convince the cops to use decoy drivers.”
“You don’t understand,” Lee Cochran said, banging a clenched fist against his open palm for emphasis. “Cabbies are getting beaten for a reason.”
Cabs get hit ’cause they’re out there, I thought. Mountains get climbed; cabbies get robbed.
“I want the city to know. I want the mayor and the police chief and every asshole on the street to know,” Lee said, cranking himself up to full podium cry.
I wished I’d thought to fetch a glass of water from Gloria’s kitchenette. I could have “accidently” left the water running.
“So why come to me?” I asked. “I’m private. Talk to the mayor. Talk to the police chief. Hold a press conference.”
If he spoke much louder he wouldn’t need to, I thought.
“I want you to catch him in the act,” Lee said.
“How about a drink, Lee? Water?”
“Hell, are you listening to me or what?”
“I hear you,” I assured him. “If you know who’s responsible, go to the police. They’ll listen. They’ll give you a medal.”
“It’s political,” Lee said, finally lowering his voice. “It’s not random street crime like everybody says.”
“Political,” I repeated.
“It’s about medallions,” he said. “This whole business is about medallions, and if it doesn’t stop soon, somebody’s going to get killed.”
“Killed over cab medallions?” I fished a notebook out of my handbag. “Try some facts, Lee.”
“History lesson,” he said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “The number of cabs, the number of medallions, is fixed by law, by act of the state legislature. The 1934 state legislature.”
“1934?”
“Right. In 1934, our forefathers decreed there could be fifteen hundred and twenty-five cabs operating within the city limits. That number was reached—stop me if you’ve heard this before—
in 1945.”
“So?”
“There’ve been no new licenses granted since,” Lee said.
“Boston has the same number of cabs it had in 1945?”
“Honest to God. No peeps about it either, until ’87, when a guy sued the state for restraint of trade, saying he couldn’t earn a livelihood because he was a cabdriver who couldn’t afford the going rate for a medallion.”
“Which is?”
“Which was ninety to a hundred grand. You limit the quantity of a thing, the price climbs. Like with original art, you know? Monet painted only a certain number of water lilies, the city of Boston doles out only a certain number of medallions.”
“I understand the basic economics, Lee.”
“The Department of Public Utilities gets into the ring with this guy, and all the hotel owners and restaurant owners crowd into his corner. The department caves in and says they’ll put five hundred more cabs on the street. In three months’ time!”
“That must have made medallion owners happy.”
“Overnight the price of medallions slides. Seventy-five, heading for seventy and lower. The DPU’s gonna issue the new medallions for a token fee. First, it’s gonna be a hundred and forty-five bucks, with the new medallions supposedly nontransferable and preference given to experienced Boston cabbies with good driving records.”
I grunted and took notes.
“Then the fee shoots up to three ninety-five. And the medallions can be immediately resold. We protested. Held a huge rally, a Taxi Mourning Week. You remember?”
I remembered the protest week. In ’87, when the trouble began, I wasn’t driving a hack. I had a full-time job as a cop. Other problems.
Lee went on, his lips easing into a smile as he reminisced. “We filed suit and we won. The only new cabs allowed were forty specially equipped handicapped-accessible vans. A victory for small owners, because you know damn well who would have bought up all those new medallions.”
As his voice hit top volume, I faked a coughing fit.
“Hang on, Lee, I need a drink,” I said, moving before he could jump up and pat me on the back. “Thirsty?”
