A Trouble of Fools (3 page)

As you may have gathered, I had not located Eugene Devens at the local hospitals. Unless he’d contracted that soap opera standard, amnesia, he was healthy and managing on his own.

Amnesia. Perhaps if I rapped Red Emma gently on the head, her previous existence as Fluffy would evaporate. She would return to budgie infancy, ready for me to instruct her further in what dad and I used to call The Sayings of Chairman Mom.

One good thing. I had gotten through to the morgue, and they didn’t have any unclaimed corpses that matched up with Eugene Devens.

“Budgies of the world, unite!” I said to the parakeet.

“You have nothing to lose but your brains.”

“Fluffy wanna cracker,” she replied hopefully.

Seeing that we’d reached an impasse, I said good night, stuck her back in the cage, and yanked the hood down, providing instant sunset. That bird has my late Aunt Bea’s exact voice. She’s just as stubborn, too. Sometimes it’s like being haunted.

I fed T.C. his dinner, pulled a windbreaker over my Grateful Dead T-shirt, and checked my jeans. Both knees intact.

I made sure all the lights were on before I left. That way the burglars don’t trip over anything. I leave the radio blaring, too, since T.C. is not much of a watchcat.

I was going to have to do some legwork for Margaret Devens’s thousand. Legwork I was looking forward to with, shall we say, mixed emotions.

My old red Toyota kicked over on the second try. I love that car, first one I ever bought, and still feisty. I indulge my passion for red in automobile ownership. Cars don’t have to complement your hair.

Green & White is not one of your more prosperous cab companies. It’s tucked into a block of cut-rate auto-glass dealers and used-rug shops that front on the less-than-scenic Mass. Pike. The garage is ugly yellow brick, with an interior done in Early Oilstain. Eight cabs can park inside, as long as nobody needs to open any doors. There’s one hydraulic lift,

14

just in case the mechanic gets ambitious. The mechanic they had in my day rarely had the energy to flip the pages on the girlie calendar.

The office is the real treat. The two eight-by-four windows have never been washed. If you didn’t know that, you might think they were supposed to be opaque. The left-hand Venetian blind, a blotch of black smudges trisected by strips of yellowed tape, is out-uglied only by the right-hand one, which is dirtier, and broken to boot, so that the slats list to the left. A pegboard full of car keys is the most attractive item of decor. You wouldn’t want to peer in any of the corners.

I

hacked part-time while I majored in sociology at U.

Mass.-Boston. It taught me how to get around the city without ever being obliged to stop for a red light. It also kept me away from waitressing, which was a good thing because I’ve never gotten the knack of taking orders.

I worked nights. From eleven to seven the voice of the late-night dispatcher came over so smooth and fine it was a pleasure to hear the squawk box. I bet we got a lot of business from guys just dialing for the pleasure of hearing that sexy contralto say she’d pick ‘em up in five minutes. I didn’t meet the owner of the voice till months after I’d formed a picture of her in my mind.

I guess I’d always imagined her black. A deep huskiness in her voice, the kind I associate with gospel singers and fire-and-brimstone preachers, gave it away. In my imagination she was tall and svelte and exotic as hell, breathing heavily into the microphone, a future Motown R&B star.

Her color was the only thing I got right.

Gloria. Her immense bulk caught me totally off guard.

Not to mention the wheelchair. I mean, that low sexy voice never gave a hint of anything but ease, even when the board was lit up from here to Tuesday and all the cabs were broken down and a hurricane was set to blow.

Gloria. Spinal cord injury in a car crash at nineteen.

Lived in a room at the back of the garage; no steps to interfere with the motorized chair. She kept herself to herself, seemed to socialize only with her three behemoth brothers.

When the cabbies joked about her—which wasn’t often, and always in stifled tones coupled with quick over-the-shoulder glances in case said brothers were present—they’d say she was suicidal, eating herself to death.

I got in the habit of dropping by her office, shooting the breeze. At the beginning, I guess I went out of pity, but Gloria wasn’t buying. She sat in that chair like a queen born to a throne, and she ruled the G&W kingdom with a gloved iron fist.

She never took lunch or dinner breaks, because she ate all day long, maintaining her bulk while sitting by the phones.

Now I’m a snacker, but I’ve never seen anything like Gloria.

She packs this huge handbag every morning with stuff that would make a nutritionist gag. She is Hostess’s best client, bar none. If she ever goes off the deep end, she can use the Twinkie defense.

“Hey, Glory,” I said. She lifted her face from a bite of cream-filled cupcake, and flashed me a grin. She looked fatter than ever, her face so smooth she seemed ageless. “Hey, babe,” she said.

I parked myself in a faded orange plastic chair, first checking for roach occupation. “Thanks for sending Miss Devens by.”

“Just paying off, babe.”

“We’re square by now.”

After graduating U. Mass., I’d given up hacking and joined the Police Department. I’d been able to do Gloria a favor or two.

She grinned wider and said, “Who’s counting?”

“Got a minute?”

The phone rang. She scratched a number on a pad, pressed a button on her microphone, and sang out, “Kelton Street. “Who’s got it?”

Static, then a tinny voice filled the room. “Scotty. Park and Beacon.”

“One-eighty-five,” she said. “Third floor. Guy named Booth. Got it?”

“Copy.”

“Out.”

“I can chat between calls, Carlotta,” she said. “Sunny day like this. Warm. The folks are walking.”

“Business okay?”

She held up a plump hand and waved it back and forth.

Not many people know Gloria’s a full partner in G&W. Sam Gianelli, the smooth-talking son of a Boston mob figure, is Gloria’s other half. Sam, who specializes in running small businesses into the ground, had taken her on to save himself the embarrassment of losing another company, pumping cash from her insurance settlement into G&W’s collapsing veins, building the wheelchair-accessible room in the back as part of the deal.

Possibly the smartest day’s work he’d ever done.

Sam and I had history. He was the reason I looked on my visit to the garage with apprehension. I’d dated him. Even learned something from the experience: Never sleep with the boss.

“Bet you didn’t come by to ask if business was okay,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Sam’s not here, is he?”

“You care?”

Everybody wants to be a psychologist. “Eugene Devens,”

I said flatly. “Off on a toot?”

She said, “Shit, Carlotta, I don’t like this business with Gene. Didn’t even bring his cab in. Left it down by the docks, and they towed it to that damn Cambridge yard.”

“The one with the two Dobermans?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe he scampered so he wouldn’t get stuck for the tow fee.”

Gloria shrugged her massive shoulders. She can move fine from the waist up.

“Ever do anything like that before?” I asked.

“Reliable, on the whole.”

“So what do you think?”

Gloria finished her cupcake, and carefully swept the crumbs off her desk to feed the creatures below. “Seen the sister?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Maybe she made him go to church twice every Sunday.

Maybe he just kicked over the traces,” Gloria said. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

“Is he thick with anybody here? Anybody he’d move in with?”

“They’re all thick,” she said. “More ways than one. You remember the crowd he hung out with.”

I smiled. “The Old Geezers, right? Isn’t that what we called them?”

“Right. Eugene Devens, Sean Boyle, Joe Fergus, Dan O’Keefe, Pat O’Grady, all the old Irish coots. Joe Costello’s in with them, but I don’t know what kind of Irish name Costello is. They’re tighter now, what with all the new cabbies. I mean for the Geezers, the Russian Jews were bad enough. Now they’ve got Haitians, and Jamaicans, and the Afghans are moving in fast. Devens and his buddies see themselves as the last American cabbies. They hang out and booze and moan about how the industry’s going to hell.” She smiled one of her wicked smiles. “Funny, they don’t bitch much to me. I think they figure I might be prejudiced. Can you beat that?”

Nobody complains much to Gloria. First of all, she’s got a tongue so caustic it ought to be registered with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and second, she’s got those three devoted brothers, each bigger and tougher than the last. The smallest, nicest one got tossed out of the NFL for biting some guy’s ear off, or so the story goes. Her brothers rigged up the room behind the garage with every electric gizmo available. Wires and motors everyplace. There’s even a network of pulleys and ladders and metal bars so she can haul herself up and get to the fridge or the stove. Walking into Gloria’s high-tech room and bath, tucked behind that grimy garage, is like charging from the nineteenth century straight to the twenty-first with no pit stops.

“What about Pat?” I said. “You ask Pat where Eugene went? He used to be plugged into every little intrigue.”

“Pat left, Carlotta, maybe six months ago. Cancer. Operation, chemotherapy, the works.”

“Shit.” Pat almost made the rest of the Old Geezers bearable with his self-deprecating humor and ready smile. “Well, you ask the guys where Eugene went? You ask Boyle?”

I waited while Gloria took another call. She frowned as she hung up. “Look, Carlotta, I hope this whole thing is a lot of smoke. It could be. I’ve asked all the Geezers about Gene, and I’ll tell you, they’re not worried. They’re, I don’t know, kind of weird and excited and, well, they’re not saying shit.

He coulda run off with some woman, somebody his sister would have hated on sight, some teenybopper, for Christ’s sake. All I know is he’s gone.”

“He pick up his last paycheck?”

Gloria stared down at the desktop. “We owe him two days.”

“I don’t like that much.”

“We’ll hold it for him.”

“He leave anything?”

The phone bleeped, and Gloria went into her spiel. I’d changed my question by the time she hung up.

“What did he leave, Gloria?”

She spent some time rooting for a cookie in her bag, removing a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, then a sack of marshmallows. I doubt she has room in there for keys or a wallet or a comb. “Well,” she said finally, “I didn’t tell his sister about his locker.”

I just raised my eyebrows.

“Oh, I don’t know, Carlotta. She looked so, hell, sort of sweet, but, you know, white gloves and a flowered hat. I figured she’d bust it open and find stuff she could use against him for the rest of his natural life. Box of condoms or something sinful, you know?”

“I wouldn’t hold it against him, Glory.”

“I don’t have a key.”

“You got a bolt-cutter?”

“He comes back, he won’t like it.”

“He comes back, we’ll buy him a new lock.”

“Sam won’t like it.”

She watched me obliquely, with half-closed eyes, when she mentioned Sam’s name. She always does, so I was ready.

I met her with a blank stare that would have done credit to a cardsharp.

“Sam won’t know,” I said evenly, “will he? And if he should happen to find out, we’ll snow him somehow.”

“You will, babe. You’re practically a one-woman blizzard.”

She

scribbled Gene’s locker number on a scrap of paper.

The phones were starting to ring in earnest now, so I left her to it. The mechanic kept a rusty bolt-cutter in a spider webbed corner behind the workbench. He’d flipped the calendar pages as far as April, only five months behind. Maybe the siliconed blonde straddling the red motorcycle was the stuff of his dreams.

The lockers along the back wall had collected a few more dents, but were otherwise unchanged—khaki-colored and smeared with greasy fingerprints.

No need for the bolt-cutter. The lock of 8A hung open.

There was nothing inside.

I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the cool metal door of 7A. Maybe Margaret knew about the locker after all. Maybe she’d found the key, taken Eugene Paul et cetera’s extra shirt home to iron.

There were a few crumpled scraps of paper in one corner of the locker. I smoothed them out. One was a bank wididrawal slip, the kind you get from those automated tellers, for fifty bucks. The other was a receipt from an all-night grocery for a dollar and change. Big whoop. Fifty wouldn’t get him far. I shoved them both in my shoulder bag, and ran my fingers around the dusty edges of the locker.

“Ouch!” The damn thing stuck me, whatever it was. I sucked the tip of my finger and put in my other hand, gingerly now, to investigate. Some rare breed of biting cockroach, no doubt.

I murmured a few other things. I probably wouldn’t need to teach the parakeet to swear after all. She could just pick it up around the house.

A human voice, female, nasal. “And here is our Mr. Andrews at lovely Cedar Wash Condominiums.”

I inhaled. Before I could speak the music started up again, then stopped, lush strings mercifully strangled.

“To whom am I speaking?” demanded a gruff bass voice.

He sounded like I’d kept him waiting.

“Carlotta Carlyle,” I repeated for the umpteenth time.

“Want me to spell it?”

“Ah. Wife of Thomas C. Carlyle.”

“Ah,” I echoed.

“You’re calling about the contest,” he continued.

Bingo.

“Mrs. Carlyle,” he said excitedly, sounding like he was auditioning for TV game show host of the week, “could you read me the number on the top left-hand corner of your letter?”

I

am not Mrs. Carlyle. Carlyle is my maiden name, which I never abandoned. I am Ms. Carlyle, sometimes Miss Carlyle, although I don’t see what business my marital status should be to people who don’t even know me on a first-name basis. I wasn’t even Mrs. when I was married. But I don’t quibble with folks who want to give me money.