Hardware (6 page)

He stood beside a rusted-out Chevy Nova, dangling the keys. Wrenching the passenger door open, he beckoned me inside.

“It's a loaner,” he said.

“And you must be the garage's most valued customer,” I replied, deadpan. “Let's take my car instead.”

“This car's what we want,” he said.

“Is it hot?”

“Stolen?”

“As in borrowed without consent of the owner.”

“You have a vivid imagination, Carlotta.”

“And tiny feet.”

The Nova's interior smelled of stale beer and cigar butts. I cranked open a balky window. Just a slit at the top, big enough to admit fresh air and mush flakes.

I hate to be chauffeured. I never relax with someone else at the wheel. My body automatically assumes brake-pedal access. I struggled to keep my right foot still.

“What, no blindfold?” I asked sarcastically.

“Frank would have liked that,” Sam admitted. “A midnight visit. A blindfold. Late-night e-mail bounced off a chain of anonymous remailers.”

“Will I be able to call this Frank guy later, if I have questions?”

“Unlisted phone. You can call me.”

I stared at the dashboard. AM radio only. I flipped the dial to 1120, WADN, raised static and Les Sampou, singing “Chinatown.”

“Sam, have you heard of anything odd going down in the medallion market?”

“Odd?” he said.

“Could you just answer the question?”

“Business as usual,” he said. “Far as I know. Which means bad, but not as bad as New York. Tense. It'll get worse here if everybody changes over to leasing.”

“Explain,” I said.

“Me and Gloria, we run a small business. The drivers earn a percentage of their daily receipts. We cover partial health, gas, repairs. Vacations. Leasing's a whole other animal. Management companies rent medallions from small investors—you know, doctors, the guys with extra cash who used to put their dough into fancy boutiques and restaurants that failed in two months—and then they lease 'em to drivers.”

“How?”

“Through the big garages.”

Like Phil Yancey's
, I thought.

“Driver pays in advance,” Sam went on, “maybe a hundred bucks for a decent shift. No unemployment. No Social Security. The cabbie has a bad shift, does under a hundred, tough. The medallion owner's got his. The management company's got theirs.”

“So a shift to leasing would drive up the cost of medallions,” I said slowly.

“Right. Because the medallion owner's income is guaranteed, a sure thing.”

“You think this is a good time to buy medallions?” I asked.

Sam shrugged. “It's like the stock market, Carlotta. Maybe it'll go one way, maybe another. Hackney Carriage Bureau could outlaw leasing tomorrow, or they could put another two hundred medallions on the street, drive the price down.”

“Sounds more like roulette,” I said. Possibly a game with a fixed wheel, so Yancey'd win either way. If he was planning to take a big plunge into leasing, every medallion he got his hands on might turn to gold.

Maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe Yancey could be the bogeyman in both of Cochran's scenarios. What could I do about it with no client?
Why hadn't I heard from Cochran?
Had Yancey threatened him? Scared him off?

“Keep your money in your mattress,” Sam advised, blissfully unaware that his remark was close to the truth.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You're welcome.”

I tried to wiggle myself comfortable in the passenger seat. No deal. It was worse than one of Gloria's old Fords.

“So who the hell is Frank?” I asked.

“An old friend.”

“All the years I've known you, Sam, you never mention any Frank till five, six days ago. It's late to spring an old buddy on me.”

“Frank and I go way back.”

“Yeah?”

“Grammar school.”

“Catholic?”

“Yes, ma'am. Except we said ‘Yes, Sister Xavier Marie.' And she whacked us with a yardstick if we gave her any lip. Right across the butt.”

“Turning you into the pervert you are today,” I said sweetly.

“Yeah, old Sister Xavier Marie. Thank God for her.”

While we spoke, he was driving a twisty, turning path, but he couldn't fool me. Ever since Sam gave me my first cabbie job, I've been navigating Boston's back roads. Few areas of the city retain their secrets.

Mattapan holds more than most.

Mattapan used to be quiet, peaceful, almost like a suburb, I've heard, before 1968, when, so the story goes, the Boston City Council decided on the quiet to integrate it, and the realty agents colluded to drive down prices. Between redlining and blockbusting, parts of Mattapan are now what people mean when they lock the doors, shudder, and invoke the term
inner city
.

The closest most whites get to Mattapan is the Franklin Park Zoo, a mile or so away, and most suburbanites are scared to go there.

Cabbies go everyplace, by law. You can refuse a fare and risk getting suspended by the Hackney Bureau, or you can beg your dispatcher to send a more fearless cabbie to pilot your fare into Roxbury or Mattapan or Dorchester or Southie. But if you do it often, you get a bad rep, and you don't get enough radio calls to make your weekly nut. So, with my hair tucked up under a cap, no makeup, a no-nonsense attitude, and a length of lead pipe beneath my seat, I drive where the fare wants to go. I'm cautious in passenger selection: I won't take groups of teenage boys anywhere. The teenybop girls are less than trustworthy fare-wise, but they rarely try to beat you up.

Sam turned onto Altamont Street, across from the New Calvary Cemetery. The way the street looks—garbage-dump vacant lots interspersed with ramshackle tenements and sag-porched triple-deckers—you might argue that the folks buried in the ground have a better situation.

At first I thought Sam had slowed due to potholes. I was startled when I realized he was looking for a parking place.

I was glad I hadn't come alone.

SEVEN

Sam wedged the car across from a gray triple-decker that should have sported a
CONDEMNED
sign. By mutual agreement we left the battered Nova unlocked. That kind of neighborhood, locking a car is an unspoken challenge, street shorthand signifying that something inside might be worth stealing.

I peered at the three closest dwellings; two were boarded up.

“Coming?” Sam was heading briskly up the walkway toward the deserted triple, skirting puddles. I stared at the house again, shielding my eyes with a gloved hand. No curtains. No mailbox. I could smell rotten wood through the peeling paint. Boards gave as I climbed three warped steps to the spongy porch.

Ignoring four doorbells—the house evidently included a basement flat—Sam rapped on the left-hand door, three long, two short, two long, a pause, and then a single rap.

“Your friend sells crack? This a crack house?” I asked.

“Shhh.”

We waited while the wind whipped my hair into a knotted tangle. I'd already decided that the mysterious Frank wasn't home when Sam knocked two more times.

The door creaked.

“In,” ordered a low-pitched voice. “Come on. Move it.”

“Take it easy,” Sam said soothingly.

“Get up the stairs. I don't want the door open too long.”

A nutcase, I thought. The stairs were steep and narrow, the stairwell smelly and dark.

Frank's second-floor digs featured cardboard-covered windows and overhead fluorescents, one of which was at the drive-you-crazy blinking stage just before burnout. Bolts turned and chains rattled into place. Then Frank scurried upstairs and proceeded to pace like a caged animal. If Sam had a case of the nerves, he'd caught it from Frank.

I was torn between staring at Frank—as tall and skinny a specimen as I've encountered—and examining his dwelling. Since he seemed to be gawking at me, I concentrated on the surroundings, a cross between a computer warehouse and a junk shop. It didn't take long to catalog the furniture.: two tables, two metal folding chairs, four gunmetal-gray bookcases jammed with technical manuals and unbound printouts. Everything else was machinery, cable, or cardboard box. Of the eight or nine visible monitors, none was a TV.

While I gazed, Frank jabbered nonstop. Sam's contribution to the mostly incomprehensible monologue was to toss in an occasional “slow down.”

Since they'd terrorized Sister Xavier Marie together, I figured Frank must be the same age as Sam, pushing forty. I'd have guessed him younger or older. Younger due to his sheer nervous energy. Older since his hairline was receding, his long, dark hair graying at the temples, with flickers of silver throughout. His beard was shot with silver, too, shaggy and unkempt. His face was thin, his cheeks hollow, his temples sheer, bony plates.

He wore brown leather pants and an open-necked white shirt, clothes with a decidedly foreign air. His accent was the same as Sam's, pure Boston. Affected by education and travel, yes, but definitely more Revere than Riviera.

Frank grabbed Sam by the shoulders. Staring at each other, they grinned hugely, then clinched in a bear hug, patting each other on the back, speaking rapid Italian. I tried to follow, becoming more and more aware of the limitations of my sole Romance language. I'd seen Sam with his four older siblings, three brothers and one sister, only a few times. They'd never embraced or kissed; they'd hardly smiled.

This, I thought, is how I picture brothers from a big Italian family reuniting after a long separation.

Frank, both delighted and frightened, exhilarated by our arrival, extended a grimy hand in my direction. I shook it. He held on too long, pressed too hard.

“Miss Carlyle.” His voice was pleasantly deep, but he spoke quickly, with a jerky rhythm. “Miss Carlyle, I'm happy to meet you, so very glad. Heard about you, uh, heard about you so very much.” He swallowed the beginning and ending of each sentence. I had to watch his mouth to catch the words, practically lip-read.

“I don't know your last name,” I said.

He glanced approvingly at Sam. “She doesn't … uh, Frank. Just Frank. Frank will do.”

“So will Carlotta.”

Frank drew in a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest. “You haven't married this one, Sam. How come?” He seemed to realize that his question wasn't exactly tactful, and sped on quickly. Nothing about the man stayed put, his arms were in constant motion, he jigged and jogged even when he wasn't pacing. If I stayed in the same room with him long enough, I thought, I'd develop a tic.

“How's the blessed family?” he asked Sam. “How's the holy trinity?”

“My older brothers,” Sam explained to me with a grin.

“Gilbert, Mitchell, and Anthony,” Frank sang in a pseudo-operatic falsetto.

Sam laughed.

“Which one's the fattest?”

“Mitch. Can't keep away from Mexican food. Drives Papa crazy.”

“‘Old Mitch the Mooch,' we called him,” Frank said. “He'd steal your lunch money so fast you didn't know it was gone.”

“He wasn't so fast; you were slow.”

“And Tony, can't keep away from the girls?”

“Right,” Sam said.

Frank folded his arms and walked stiff-legged around the room. I realized it was an imitation of Papa Gianelli even before the voice came out, and the voice was superb, mimicry worthy of applause. “It's a good thing I hava da one boy screwed together straight. Gilberto, son of my heart.”

“Gil's carrying on the family tradition,” Sam said. He'd heard the routine once too often, or else he didn't like the way Frank was trying to impress me.

“Your heavenly sister's married?” Frank inquired, standing very still.

“Separated.”

“That bum, Carlo?”

“No, she married Irish. Papa had fits.”

“Good for her. They have kids?”

“Three girls. Boy died.”

Sam bit his lip to keep from saying more, and I wanted to blurt out that the boy's—the man's—death was not my fault. It wasn't. It was past history. Sam and I had managed to come to terms with the disaster. Far as I was concerned it was none of Frank's business.

“Papa still keep a shrine to your sainted mama?” Frank asked.

“It stayed up a long time,” Sam said. “Flowers and candles and pictures. I almost feel like I remember her. Pop's working on wife number four now.”

I decided to turn the Q and A on our host.

“And your family?” I said to him. “They live close by?” It was the only way I could see him choosing this house. An elderly mom, dad, or aunt who refused to leave the downstairs flat.

“Sit,” he said. “Please, sit.” He glanced at the room as if he'd never seen it before. “Uh, sorry. I'll get another chair.” He disappeared and returned instantly with a third metal folding job, banged it into a semi-conversational grouping. “I've got cold beer. Potato chips.”

“You were telling me about your family,” I said, amused by his attempt at kid-in-a-dorm hospitality.

“Dead,” he said bluntly. “I'm an orphan.”

“Married?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Not now,” he said, his mouth twitching into what could have been a smile. He didn't look at me when I questioned him. If I'd been a cop and he'd been a suspect in the interrogation room, I'd have read him his rights and dialed a public defender. He had to be a perp. Jumpy, nervous as a cat, afraid to make eye contact.

I checked out his pallor and his clothes again. Maybe not a foreign country. Maybe prison. Solitary confinement, a place where he hadn't needed to communicate with humans.

Maybe a speech impediment or a hearing deficiency. I wished Sam had told me more about the man.

“You have kids?” I asked.

“You?” he responded.

Sam rocked back in his metal chair, uncomfortable with the exchange. “Look,” he said. “Let's forget the small talk and do business.”