A Trouble of Fools (Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries Book 1)

by Linda Barnes

  “I’ll keep in touch.”

  “I’m tired,” Margaret said fretfully. “The kind of bone-tired you get when you have to fight the battle over again, after you thought you’d won. Grinding tired, and I do wish they’d let me go home.”

  I lowered my voice. “What should I do with the money?”

  “Keep it away from the Provos. Keep it out of their filthy, bloody hands. Is it safe where you’ve put it?”

  I envisioned the cat box. “I think so. Yes.”

  “Then leave it, just leave it. I don’t want it. Lord, I’m so tired.” She closed her eyes, and the knitting collapsed against her chest. “I don’t know what to do, but you have to go on. Certainly, go on. I can’t look for him, stuck here like this, but I have a bad feeling about it. If he were nearby, he’d have heard about what happened. He’d have come to see me. He was always good like that, always good…”

  She fell asleep while she was talking, which I found so disconcerting that I went in search of a nurse, who reassured me that this was a normal effect of the medication, that Miss Devens’s concussion was minor, but that the physician in charge felt a few more days of observation would do no harm. Margaret must have had all her medical insurance paid in full.

  I was glad she did. Margaret in the hospital, even unguarded, was safer than Margaret at home …

  The Toyota, which had been on automatic pilot for some time, arrived at its destination, and Paolina tugged me back to the present. She led me around the wild-animal farm, proudly tracing the map they’d given her at the entrance. Some parts of it were fine, spacious and open and clean. Some were like those awful old zoos, with animals in metal prisons so small the inmates could barely pace, back and forth, back and forth.

  Paolina liked the huge fenced-in range with the Siberian tigers best. Mom and three cubs. Paolina names all the animals at the zoo. She started the game years ago, when I first took her to Franklin Park, and it’s become a tradition. She’s not interested in the animals’ real names, and scorns those signs they sometimes put up to educate the public. All the names must be alliterative. Jeremiah Giraffe. Penelope Penguin. Since the tigers were Siberian, the three cubs became Sonia, Sasha, and Sofia. We watched them stalk and tumble, imitating mom, but too clumsy to be fierce. We ate ice cream, and cotton candy, and got our hands sticky. We picked a bouquet of colored leaves for Marta.

  It wasn’t until we were getting back into the sun-baked car for the drive home that I remembered our phone conversation. “You wanted to ask me something about volleyball, right?”

  Her face fell. One minute she was smiling, holding the bright leaves like a trophy, the next minute grim.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s this?”

  She pulled a grubby, folded square of newsprint out of the pocket of her jeans, and passed it over wordlessly. I unfolded it. I’d seen it myself, in the Globe.

  “Where’d you get this?” I asked.

  “Somebody brought it in for current events.”

  It was a combination news item and obituary. A filler, really, from the sports section, with an inch-square photo that could have been anybody. The caption said it was Flo Hyman, co-captain of the women’s U.S. silver-medal-winning volleyball team. Dead. Died suddenly while playing an exhibition game in Japan. Thirty-one years old.

  “I didn’t play hard this week,” Paolina said when I looked up after reading the brief sentences. “I wish—how old are you? I don’t want you to play.”

  “Oh, honey.” I put my arm around her and drew her close. “This doesn’t happen. This is a freak, a one-in-a-million shot.”

  “I don’t want you to play,” she insisted, her voice a stubborn parody of Marta’s.

  When I was a cop, she was always afraid I’d get shot. You take a kid when she’s young, and expose her to a lot of loss and death, and either she toughens up so hard she never risks loving again, or she’s scared all the time.

  “Paolina,” I said as gently as I could, “this is like being hit by lightning. Run over by an ice cream truck. Like getting eaten by a shark.”

  Like having your husband turn into a drug addict, I thought but didn’t say.

  “She was sick. She had a disease called Marfan’s syndrome, or something like that. It hits mostly tall, thin athletes—hey, a lot taller and thinner than me, and mostly blacks. These things happen, but they happen very rarely.”

  “If she hadn’t played so hard—”

  “She might have lived longer, but I’m not sure she would have wanted to.” I had vivid memories of watching Flo Hyman hurl herself across a court as if she thought she could fly. I’d hauled my old black-and-white TV out of the closet in honor of the Olympics. We’d watched the volleyball games together, Paolina and I, but I thought she’d be too young to remember. I’m always surprised at the things she remembers. And the things she forgets.

  Paolina’s voice was muffled by her hand. I could barely hear her, but I think she said, “I’m scared,” said it in Spanish, the way she does when she’s not completely sure she wants me to understand.

  “That’s okay. It’s okay to be scared.”

  “It made me think about dying. I’m scared I’ll die, and I’ll go someplace, and nobody will tell me what to do, and I’ll be all alone.”

  Oh, God. Let me get this one right.

  “Paolina,” I said slowly. “There are a lot of things that people believe about what happens when you die. Some think you go to heaven, where it’s beautiful and peaceful. Some people, and I’m not one of them, think bad people go to hell and get punished. Some people think you just stop, that it’s like sleeping at night, with no dreams at all. But I’ve never heard that you’re lonely when you die.”

  You’re lonely when you’re alive, I thought but didn’t say.

  I remembered it late that night, curled on my half of the king-sized bed I’d bought for the extra length, never mind the width that made me feel so wasteful. I couldn’t get to sleep, so I played my old National steel guitar well into the night, cutting into my calluses till they bled.

  When I divorced Cal, people told me I was lucky to be rid of him. I suppose so. Except the guy I was rid of wasn’t Cal any longer. Acquaintances said to be glad we hadn’t had kids. I wasn’t. I was happy to have Paolina.

  There’s this old song that kept rattling through my mind. It’s a Blind Lemon Jefferson tune, bluesy and upbeat, but you wouldn’t think it to hear the words:

  There’s one kind favor I ask of you.

  There’s one kind favor I ask of you.

  There’s one kind favor I ask of you.

  Won’t you see that my grave

  is kept clean, pretty momma,

  Won’t you see that my grave is kept clean?

  I played it three times, trying to remember the order of the verses.

  I turned off the light, but I couldn’t sleep, and finally I got up and searched for Sam Gianelli’s card. I found it tucked into the pocket of my jeans, and stood staring it down for a long time. Anytime, he’d said. Day or night.

  He won’t be home, I thought. I’ll hang up if he answers, I thought.

  I should have called Mooney, but I called Sam.

  And he was home, and alone, and awake.

  Chapter 19

  Funny how the old moves come back when you need them.

  Reporting for Sunday’s graveyard shift at G&W gave me a genuine shiver of déjà vu. Because I was the new kid on the block, I got stuck with one of the worst of the vintage Fords. Gloria, blank-faced, handed me the key to Eugene’s locker—now, temporarily, mine. I had nothing to store, but I chugged on back and tugged the door open, pretending to make sure the lock worked. I was really spying on a group of cabbies gathered near the bench, talking Red Sox, talking Bruins, talking Celtics.

  Usually you don’t have to follow the Sox to comment on them. Their autumn slide to box-score oblivion is sadly predictable. This year was different. They seemed unbeatable, but the loyal fans were waiting for them to fold.

>   I went through the motions, bitching about the high salaries those bastards get for striking out three times in game, but all the time I was watching the other drivers, and how they reacted to me, to the fact that I’d appropriated Eugene’s locker, to the GBA pin sparkling on my lapel. I felt like an undercover cop, and I didn’t like the sensation. It’s too weird. First you join up with the baddies, identify with them, and then you betray them. If you don’t keep a part of yourself separate, shut off, you wind up bonkers.

  I recognized a few members of the pack. One middle-aged woman, who’d been hacking for all eternity, was named Rosie, or Happy, or some cheerful name completely at odds with her forbidding face and dim view of the sports world. I said hi to her first, and she either vaguely remembered me, or politely faked it. Then Sean Boyle said hello, and a couple of the others. Rosie—that was her name—took charge of introductions. I nodded and smiled and tried to match the names to the employee records, which was difficult because intros were strictly on a first-name basis. A lot of the drivers had nicknames, like Red Light, and Speedy, and Mad Dog.

  I’d have to run the noms de cab by Gloria.

  Cab number 223. It had a ding in the right front fender and smelled like the inside of an old shoe. I made an immediate detour to buy air freshener. 223’s supposedly bulletproof plastic shield, required equipment on all Boston cabs, was so scratched and cloudy that the rearview mirror was useless.

  Tucking my license into the slot on the sun visor, I felt like a TV actor caught in a rerun. Just walking into that grimy garage, dressed in jeans, work shirt, and driving cap, made me think about who I’d been when last I’d hacked for a living—and who I am now.

  And Sam Gianelli.

  Funny how the old moves come back …

  He’d wanted to drive over at two in the morning, as soon as he’d recognized my voice on the phone. I’d backed off. We’d compromised on Sunday brunch at a small North Cambridge restaurant. It was a place we used to visit, jammed with closely packed tables for two, and probably a choice I should have vetoed. Too many memories of ravenous afternoon breakfasts, delayed by hours of lazy lovemaking.

  At ten-thirty, a guy banged on my front door, and presented a bunch of flowers. Not one of those awful dyed-carnation-in-a-pot things, but a bouquet of iris, alstroemeria, and freesia. Freesia’s my favorite for its apricot smell. That’s the kind of thing you can hustle up on a Sunday morning if your name is Gianelli.

  I dressed casually, maybe to show Sam I set no great store by our meeting—lie number one—and wasn’t impressed with the flowers—lie number two. I chose white jeans and a hot turquoise knit top that’s a perfect match for my malachite beads. I wear necklaces. No rings or bracelets, on account of volleyball. I never wear earrings. They bother me, the whole idea of earrings bothers me, not to mention the pressure on my earlobes. And I can’t stand the thought of poking holes through my ears. It seems, I don’t know, barbaric or something. Earrings and nail polish, I can’t stand. I wear makeup though, so try to sort that out.

  I wore sexy silk underwear, so I won’t pretend I was shocked by the outcome of the afternoon.

  Of course, he wanted to see the house. And, of course, the area of the house that is really mine, that I’m proud of, is my bedroom. And that’s where the stereo sounds best. Sam and I don’t share a common taste in music. He’s more into jazz. But we agree that Billie Holliday makes everyone else sound mediocre, so I stuffed a tape in the tape deck, and soon we wound up just where I knew we’d wind up when I saw him shake water off his hair under the light bulb in Gloria’s office.

  “I remember you,” he said. “You’re the one who likes to climb on top.”

  “You look like you could hold your own weight, Sam,” I said, turning over, obligingly prone. He did. He could. He looked like he’d been lifting weights, sculptured and sweaty.

  We took turns on top, and it was great. I found myself making noises that would put Roz to shame, and I secretly hoped she and Lemon were upstairs, ears glued to the floor in astonishment at the landlady’s afternoon antics.

  Funny how the old moves come back …

  A beat-up VW bus charged out of an alley masquerading as a street, and I had to yank the wheel over to the right to avoid a collision. My tires screeched a protest.

  Back to work.

  Downtown traffic was faster paced, more tightly packed than I remembered. Aggressive driving is the Boston norm, but things seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. Rudeness reached new heights. People leaned on their horns, really leaned on them.

  All the way down Storrow Drive, the crush of cars got in the way of my three objectives. Number one was the radio. I intended to listen in on every call and note it down. Later, I’d see if I could figure any code, any pattern. Number two was to match names with faces and voices, to figure out who was piloting which cab. Number three: follow one of the Old Geezers each night. See if anybody’s dumb enough to do something openly suspicious.

  My candidate for the evening was my old pal Sean Boyle, driving number 403. Now I couldn’t have done it in sunlight. A one-on-one tail job is ridiculous enough, but in the daytime it’s impossible. At night, in order to be just another set of anonymous headlights, all I had to do was shut off the roof lights. By hard-won arrangement with Gloria, I had to pick up fares only if every other cab in the city was busy. I hoped we’d have no more typhoons.

  Late-night cabbing is alive and well in Boston, mainly because the T, public transit, shuts down at twelve-thirty in order to discourage the citizens from staying out late and indulging in wild revelry. If you revel in Boston, be prepared to stumble home or flag a cab. The best places to score fares are the areas devoted to revelry, like Kenmore Square, home of the college student, the disco, and the punk bar; and the Combat Zone, home of the lowlifes, the strip show, and the XXX movie.

  Sean Boyle cruised the Zone, sandwiched between Chinatown and the struggling theater district. It’s a place I’d just as soon avoid. My cab smelled bad enough. The Zone is one reason I quit being a cop. They kept sticking me in that damn stinkhole, and pretty soon I thought the world was composed of nothing but creeps. All I saw was the gutter, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it for fear something would crawl up out of the depths flashing a straight razor. At first, I felt a kind of awed fascination, sharpened by unadmitted fear. Life’s cheap in the Zone. It’s where people peel off that thin veneer and get right down to bone. Thirteen-year-old runaways trick for ten bucks a throw. Respectable suburban daddies screw kids younger than their daughters. “Working late at the office, honey, sorry I can’t make Sally’s band concert.” You’ve got your choice of alcoholic derelicts and drug-fogged former beauty queens. It’s a place that breaks your heart, or turns it into granite. Mine must have been seven-eighths petrified before I threw away my badge.

  I reached under the seat of the cab and, sure enough, felt a reassuring hunk of lead pipe. Cabbies aren’t allowed to carry guns in Boston. Mine was within arm’s reach, resting on a layer of junk in my bag, but I haven’t used a gun since one of my last cop days. A bad day in a bad place, not far from the corner of Washington and Boylston.

  Boyle hung a right on Tremont, then a couple of lefts, and drifted over to the Pussy Cat Lounge. A blond male hooker semaphored his desire to use my cab as his traveling boudoir. I drove by quickly, wondering if there was any long-term denizen of the Zone with sufficient brain cells intact to remember Carlotta, the cop.

  I followed Boyle all night. He ferried lost souls out to the suburbs. Once he had to wait in the cab while this guy went inside and found some dough. Poor bastard probably got rolled by some hooker, and was too embarrassed to report it to the cops. Boyle dropped by several bars. Either he had to drink a lot, pee a lot, or pick up the dimes and quarters from those green canisters.

  I wrote it all down; time, place, everything. If other cabs were in the area, I noted the license plates. I collected a hell of a lot of data. I could toss them up in the air, and see how they came
down. That was the best organizational scheme that came to mind.

  By 7 A.M., when Boyle turned his cab in, my ass was numb, an occupational hazard I’d forgotten. I hung around by the lockers, but nobody talked about anything more significant than Wade Boggs’s batting average, so I waited until the office was clear.

  Gloria tore herself away from a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts long enough to answer a call. Then she glanced up at me with arched eyebrows.

  “Comfy cab,” I said, rubbing the seat of my jeans.

  “How long’s this going to go on?”

  “I just started, Gloria. Give me a break.”

  She snorted M&Ms.

  “Gloria, one of these records is—” I was going to say “nothing but a piece of shit.” That’s how far I’d retreated into undercover cop mentality. I stopped myself. “One of the records is incomplete.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “You hired a guy named John Flaherty a year and a half ago, and all you’ve got on him is an address.”

  “So?” Gloria was in a talky mood.

  “So on everybody else you’ve got an employment history.”

  “Maybe it’s his first job.”

  “At thirty-one? He a slow learner?”

  “Look, he drives his cab. He shows up. He’s okay.”

  “He shows up out of the blue, without even a Social Security card, and you hire him? Come on.”

  “Leave this one alone, Carlotta. It’s got nothing to do with Eugene Devens.”

  “Convince me.”

  She pursed her lips, then bit down on them until they disappeared. “If you want to know more about Flaherty—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Talk to Sam.”

  I tried to keep my face as blank as hers. “Gianelli recommend this guy?”

  “Talk to Sam, that’s all I can say, and I shouldn’t have said that much. You coming in tonight?”

  “Yeah. See if you can give me a car that drives.”

  I shouldn’t have said it so angrily, because my ire had nothing to do with Gloria. She looked at me in a kind of speculative way, and raised both eyebrows. Sometimes I think she can see my thoughts in the air, floating inside a cartoon balloon.