A Trouble of Fools (16 page)

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 p| 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 117

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.

I was exhausted, and my butt ached. Maybe I’d have fallen asleep if I’d gone right home, but then I would have missed volleyball, which might not have been a bad thing considering that Caitlin, our best center setter, was down with the flu, and all the women were trying to make up for her absence, crashing into each other as well as the floor. I took a flying elbow in the ribs that knocked me breathless.

After winning three out of five from a team we should have beaten three straight, I did my twenty laps, and finished up with an adrenaline overload. Ah well, I read somewhere that it’s easier to adjust to a new shift if you stay awake extra hours instead of forcing yourself to sleep when you’re not tired.

I jaywalked to Dunkin’ Donuts out of force of habit. My stomach wasn’t sure if it wanted dinner or breakfast. I ordered a lone cinnamon cruller and black coffee. If I stayed at Dunkin’ Donuts, I didn’t have to go home. If I didn’t go home, I didn’t have to check my answering machine. If I didn’t check my answering machine, I wouldn’t have to respond to any messages left by Sam Gianelli. If I didn’t talk to Sam, I wouldn’t have to figure out a discreet way to question him about John Flaherty, the man with no employment history.

I could hear myself casually tossing probes about Flaherty into our pillow talk. “So, Sam, I been meaning to ask, you hire anybody at the cab company, say, in the past year and a half?”

I burned my tongue on the coffee, and set the cup down so fast that it teetered in the saucer and almost spilled all over the counter. Why do simple things always get so mixed up? I’d seen the man, and liked what I saw. I was ready for a little uncomplicated coupling. I should have known better.

Sex without strings attached is a rare commodity.

I called Missing Persons at Area D, and harassed some poor sergeant. Nothing on Eugene Devens. I called my client, in the hope that the wayward brother had suddenly seen the light and come to visit his ailing sister. No such luck.

I’d parked the Toyota in its usual Bishop Richard Allen Drive slot, and since I was close to the project, I kind of gravitated to Paolina’s school, ugly yellow brick with bars on the windows, just like a prison.

The kids were outdoors, although it seemed early for recess, divided boys and girls, just the way we used to be back in my Detroit elementary school, not by decree, but by custom.

A red-faced male teacher with a silver whistle on a chain around his neck supervised an intense game of late season baseball among the boys. The girls played halfhearted unsupervised volleyball, which made me angry. I mean, why teach girls to play, right? They’re never going to make millions in the big leagues, right? As if all the tubby little boys on the field were hot prospects. I wanted to join the girls’ game. Take it over.

I yawned and stretched, and told myself to stop being so bad-tempered. It was easy to shift moods. All you had to do was watch the kids. They wore bright colors, and they moved fast. Spots of yellow and blue and red flowed over the playground. I felt like I was staring through a huge kaleidoscope at a swirl of color come to life.

I tried to sort through the color spots to see if I could find Paolina. The kids seemed about the right age.

One white and brown blob stood out. I swear the hairs on the back of my neck stiffened.

He was behind the high fence, half hidden by a brick 121

wall, but I picked him out. I knew him. Old Wispy Beard with his satchel, selling dope by the schoolyard.

I had the car door open before I realized I’d moved, and I had to force myself to stick my legs back inside and cool off.

What was I going to do anyway? Assault the guy in front of fifty young witnesses?

I wanted to. God, I wanted to.

Instead I breathed deeply for a count of ten. I took my Canon SLR out of the locked dash compartment, and took several long-lens shots. I breathed for another count of ten.

I located my little sister on the volleyball court. I was glad to see her involved in the game. She was holding back, you could see that, letting a taller girl on her right smash most of the shots. But she was playing.

No doubt about it, I was going to have to teach her a few finer points of volleyball.

I waved, even though she didn’t see me. I drove off.

I didn’t go far. Just over to the police station.

The lone parking space at the curb, smack in front of a police business only sign, was a tight one. I wedged the Toyota in, rubbing bumpers with two cruisers, and trotted up the front steps.

I’d been dealing with a Cambridge detective named Schultz—a guy I knew from my police academy days—on the Wispy Beard business. While I waited for him to answer the desk sergeant’s call, I wondered if he’d be clued into rtli

IRA activities in his fair city. I’ve never heard of an Irishman named Schultz, so I figured he wouldn’t be likely to lie if I asked him outright. On the other hand, you can’t always tell by the name. I mean, with a tag like Carlotta, wouldn’t you expect a trace of Spanish blood on my family tree? Not a drop. Dad named me for some starlet who was eclipsed the day after her movie debut.

Even if Schultz turned out to be a whiz on Cambridge crime, that didn’t mean he’d know squat about Boston. Cambridge and Boston don’t cooperate. As a Boston cabbie, I couldn’t even pick up a hailer in Cambridge, which makes cabs in both cities more expensive, and folks on the street corners angry.

Schultz didn’t rush across the linoleum once he saw me. I figured that meant he hadn’t done a thing.

Detective First Class Jay Schultz looked like he combed his hair about every fifteen minutes, and carried a mirror for spot checks. Maybe he used the mirror to see who was gaining on him. He was a test taker, a promotion chaser, a potential captain on the make. Good-looking, if you like the boyish sandy-haired type, which I don’t. He gave the impression of a certain coolness, a cultivated so-what. I didn’t take a so-what attitude about Wispy Beard. In regard to that situation, I was definitely uncool.

“So,” I said, as he guided me to his desk, resting one hand heavily on my shoulder in that proprietary manner I despise, “you know where that bastard I asked you to nail is? Right this very minute?”

“I know he ain’t in my jail.” Hearty laugh.

“Funny.”

“Hey, hey,” he said, pointing to a battered chair in his dingy corner. “Cool off. Not for lack of trying.”

“Really?” I tried hard to keep the disbelief off my face.

Well, not too hard.

“Hey, Carlotta, we busted the creep. Nothing on him.”

“Jay, that guy hasn’t had nothing on him since the nurse first diapered his ass.”

“We thought he had something but he didn’t.”

“Not in the satchel?”

“No satchel.”

“Probably dumped it when he noticed you tailing him.”

“Not me personally.”

“Of course not, an important guy like you. Jeez, I wouldn’t expect anything like that.”

“Look, we blew the collar. But we got some interesting stuff.”

“Like?”

“Name, date, serial number. Rap sheet, if you’re interested, and the creep is into something heavy.”

I waited. When they teach cops to interrogate suspects, rule one is never interrupt.

“You know who that bastard called after we charged him?

I mean, we charged him with some bullshit vagrancy rap, because we didn’t have the evidence. Probably should have kicked him loose, but we wanted to see what shook when we rattled his chain. So you know who he called?”

I shrugged my ignorance.

“Wendell Heyer.”

Now that was a name to give one pause. Wendell Heyer, a man who did more than his bit to make “lawyer” a four letter word, emerging from under this particular rock. Word was that when Wendell surfaced, the mob was not far below.

Let me tell you, it gave me pause.

“Now, look that over for yourself,” Jay continued. “You think this freak of yours is an independent, and just happens to have the bucks to retain Wendell, that’s your business. But I think we just found the tail end of some big mother, and I’m gonna take some time before I yank it again.”

“But you’ll let me see the file on this guy. I’m getting tired of calling him by a nickname.”

Wispy Beard had his own nickname: Bud. The poor sucker had been named Horace by his adoring mom about thirty-six years back. Horace “Bud” Harold. I could practically hear the schoolyard jeers: “Whore-Ass, Whore-Ass.”

Destined for a life of crime. Ever notice how all those mean looking football players are named Lynn and Marion and stuff like that? That’s how the best of the weirdly christened turn out. The rest wind up behind bars.

Bud’s rap sheet was not quick reading; it was too long for that, but so far it was light. Started boosting cars at eighteen.

Either he was pretty good not to get caught until then, or, more likely, he had a sealed juvie record. Nabbed in his nineteenth year for armed robbery. Suspended sentence.

Tried it again, seeing as how he got off so easy, and sent a victim to the hospital this time with a chunk of his ear blown away. Four-year sentence at Concord, of which he served a big six months. Just long enough to learn more sophisticated ways to boost. Long enough to hook up with the sort of companions every mom hopes her kid will cultivate.