Hardware (11 page)

“Do you know why you're in the hospital?”

“Uh, am I sick?”

“Think back.”

“I can't seem to recall …”

“Let's try this. You were driving …”

“Did I have an accident? Hey, something's wrong with my leg.”

He was writing it down, his tongue clamped between his teeth. You'd think they'd have sprung for a tape recorder.

“You hurt your ankle,” he said. “It might have happened when you tried to run for help.”

“I tried to run for help?” No way Mooney had trained this bozo. What kind of rookies were they getting these days? Maybe if I let him prompt me enough, he'd tell me the whole story. Then I could ID some suspects. He probably had handy mug shots available.

“We have reason to believe you may have been assaulted,” he said firmly.

“Not an accident?” I murmured.

“Were your assailants black?”

A probable racist to boot. I wished Gloria would come back. “My what?” I asked.

He lowered his voice to a more confidential level. “Guys try to rape you? It's okay, you can tell me. I'm a cop. You can talk to me about anything.”

Why me? I wondered. Why do I rate the jerk who missed the sensitivity-training class?

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said. “I don't even think you're a policeman. You get any closer, I'm gonna start screaming.”

“Lady—”

“Carlotta, remember? I mean it. One more step—”

“Look, I just want to know what happened.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I'm asking the questions here.”

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, go ahead.”

He glanced down at his notebook, flustered. “Uh, do you have any recollection of the events of the night of December fourteenth?”

Dear Lord, a graduate of the Agatha Christie Police Academy and Charm School.

“What's today?” I asked.

“The fifteenth.”

“What time is it?” I was having fun. I was asking the questions again. The doctor and Gloria interrupted.

The handsome cocoa-colored gentleman was still on duty.

“You're going to be using crutches for a while, young lady,” he said.

Crusty, I bet that's how his patients described him.

“Doctor,” I said. “My name is Ms. Carlyle. How do you do?”

Those little backless johnnies make me revert to the strictest formality. I didn't remember changing into any goddamn johnnie. Where were my clothes? It's not that I'm immoderately modest. It's that I dislike being inspected like a lamb chop. I'd rather be treated like a sex object than a chunk of damaged meat.

“Broken?” I asked, indicating my ankle.

“Severe sprain. You were lucky.”

“I feel okay. I can handle crutches. When do I leave?”

“We'll have to decide that.”

“
We?
” I said, my voice taking on the edge it reserves for the royal pronoun. “My vote's for right now. What time is it anyway?”

“A little past noon. You were brought in this morning at five.”

He did the light-shining bit and asked me where I was born and tricky stuff like my mother's maiden name. Probably in cahoots with my imagined wallet-ransacking admissions clerk. Wanted the information to fake out a jewelry store with my credit card.

With my line of credit, he'd have to shop Kmart sales.

“Where's my stuff?” I asked.

“The police have it,” the cop said.

“All of it? They've got my underwear?”

“Possible evidence.” The cop smirked. “I've got a receipt you can sign.”

“Terrific.”

“With head injuries we prefer to keep the patient overnight for observation,” Doctor Crusty said after testing the reflexes in my good leg. “I don't believe there's any residual trauma or interior bleeding, but since you were unconscious when you were brought in, it would be unwise to release you until tomorrow.”

“What if I had a friend spend the night?”

He smiled as if I'd told a particularly funny joke. “A friend who'd wake you every two hours and take your blood pressure? A lawyer, I presume?”

No way was I getting out with Doc Crusty on call. He departed to flirt with other patients, and I resigned myself to my fate. I strongly suggested that the door cop call in the amnesia report and return to meaningful work in his chosen profession.

He stayed put. Gloria and I conversed in quiet verbal shorthand.

“M?” I asked.

“Okay. Take it.”

“What's this?”

“Dollar. You once told me you needed a dollar to—”

My fingers closed on the bill. “Where am I gonna put it, client? Hang on to it for me.”

“Babe, what it is, I think, somebody might be trying to close me down.”

“Close down G and W?”

The cop approached and we segued into meaningless chatter. Gloria stayed and I was grateful for her reassuring presence. She gossiped about weather and friends. I drifted in and out. The day started to take on a rhythm. When my ankle throbbed, I'd press the call button. A nurse would appear with a tiny paper cup of pills. Just ibuprofen, but they worked.

Paolina came by at three, which meant she'd cut her last class. I didn't mention it. I didn't have a chance.

With a contemptuous glance at the cop, she started rattling away in Spanish.

“Whoa,” I said. “I can't keep up.
Despacio, por favor
. And please, before you yell at me, give me a chance to apologize. I'm sorry I scared you. I'm hardly hurt at all, and I was careful. Sometimes you can be careful and still get messed up.”

Her words spilled out in an angry rush, English this time.

“Look at your leg. What about volleyball? There's a game tomorrow. At school. I was counting on you. You promised,” she said furiously. “I thought that now you weren't a cop, I wouldn't have to worry like I used to. Sam's right. You're crazy to drive a cab.”

“That what you and Sam were chatting about at the Y? Deciding my future for me?”

“The way you try to do for me? No. We said nothing about you.
Nada.
”

“What did you talk about?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Sit down, baby. Please. I don't want to fight.”

“Don't call me ‘baby.' I always tell you that.”

Gloria said, “Girl, I still call
her
‘baby,' and she's bigger than most.”

I was grateful for the interruption. It took some of the wind out of Paolina's sails. She was geared for battle, eyes flashing. Storing her fear and anger since early morning, letting them simmer and come to a boil. She'd dressed for confrontation, in her most grown-up outfit, a dark sweater and matching skirt. I preferred her in bright colors.

She was right. I wanted her to stay a baby. If not a baby, young. Very young for a very long time.

The hell of it was, I understood her fury. As a child, she'd been too often abandoned, dumped with one relative or another so her mother could try out a new live-in boyfriend without the added burden of kids. She'd see my hospitalization as another in a series of betrayals. As a horrid reminder that I could die, become another transient “aunt” in her life.

“Paolina,” I said. “I'm sorry. There'll be other games. I promise. My ankle's not so bad. I'm not out for the season—”

“I hate you,” she said, her low voice charged with emotion.

And stomped out of the room.

I swallowed. Twelve years old, I probably said that to people. To my mother. And I wasn't Paolina's mom, just her adopted Big Sister.

I shook my head, stirring the rumbling ache under the bandage. She didn't mean it. I knew she didn't mean it, but the cold fist that closed around my heart made me want to apologize to my long-dead mother all the same.

THIRTEEN

Bureaucracy ruled and I squirmed the night away in my mechanical bed, unable to punch the pillow into a comfortable shape, awakened by nurses bearing blood-pressure cuffs, annoyed and annoying to all. I toyed with conspiracy theories: Mooney knew all about the switcheroo with Marvin, was holding me prisoner pending an arrest warrant.

A warrant for what? Impersonating a victim? Obstruction of justice?

Mooney himself paid a visit before my release. He brought flowers, which made me feel terrible. Wicked. Evil. Better he should have brought a warrant.

The Big Lie, I reminded myself: Don't remember a thing.

I never lie to Mooney when I can help it. And when I absolutely have to prevaricate, I try to do it via telephone. He has one of the best bullshit meters in the business. I've heard hardened perps discuss crimes with him in a way they wouldn't talk to their priest during confession. I don't know why. It's a gift, like music. Some have the ear, some have the instrumental skill, some have the voice.

Mooney's got something extra in the lie-detector field.

He also has a linebacker's body, wide shoulders, narrow hips, and dresses like he never saw a cop uniform. Sneakers, faded jeans, button-down shirts, tweedy sweaters: a Harvard prof who spends his free time working out. I like the way he looks. Tell the truth, if we hadn't worked together so long, we might have had a fling. Maybe more.

But I'd committed the cardinal sin of sleeping with my boss before I'd ever met Mooney. My first boss, Sam Gianelli. And in spite of everything—Sam's brief matrimonial venture, my own semiretaliatory wedding vows—the two of us still manage to generate electricity at combustion levels.

I never—well, almost never—get that melted-chocolate feeling when Mooney's around. Maybe he's right when he says I prefer outlaws to cops.

Mooney looks like he expects the best from you, like you'd disappoint him with a lie, like he's always known you and he can see inside your head. A deadly blend of teacher, priest, and your father when he was at his most understanding, and you felt you could tell him all about the way your stomach tingled when that boy in your math class kissed you for the first time.

And wasn't that a big mistake! I steeled myself.

Mooney nodded the guard out of the room.

I was glad I didn't have to face Mooney and his posy of gift-shop flowers in my johnnie. Anticipating departure, I'd changed into old navy pants—one leg ripped to accommodate my ankle—and a white cotton sweatshirt. I'd told Roz the exact items to bring, plain, serviceable, reliable. Without instruction, she might have turned up with anything from a satin teddy to gym shorts.

Mooney smiled down at me.

If a nurse came in to take my blood pressure right now, they'd keep me an extra day. Maybe more. I purposely slowed my breathing. You can outwit the machines, the lie detectors and the blood-pressure cuffs.

Can you beat Mooney?

He surprised me. Totally. First he bent down and awkwardly kissed me on the cheek. Then he dumped the flowers in the sink like he didn't want to mention them.

Instead of saying “Hello” or “How are you?” or asking a single question, he simply unsnapped his service holster and took out his gun.

“Mooney?” I said.

“You see what I'm holding, Carlotta?”

“I know what a gun looks like.”

“Here.”

“You keep it for me, Moon,” I said, wondering if I should buzz for the nurse. “I'll feel safer.”

“Tell me, what's your carry-gun these days, Carlotta?”

“My old Chiefs Special thirty-eight. You know that.” Except I didn't have it. Marvin had it.

Mooney said, “Your hardware's out of date. Cops don't carry six-shot thirty-eights anymore. See what we're issuing now?” He handed it to me, butt first. I wouldn't touch it till he removed the magazine and showed me the empty chamber. “Glock Seventeen Auto Pistol. Nine-millimeter. Seventeen rounds and one ready.”

“Ugly too,” I said.

“Stopping power. You need to upgrade your hardware, Carlotta.”

“What kind of hospital visit is this? You shill for the NRA on your time off?”

His voice grew noticeably cooler. He sat in the chrome-and-vinyl visitor's chair. “Three weeks ago, I catch a report on a drive-by. They zip across my desk like roaches. This one's a zero. Nothing. Nobody killed. Nobody down. Garbage paperwork. No witnesses willing to say much beyond ‘screw you.' You know the kind?”

I kept an expression of polite interest glued to my face.

“Except there's this seven-year-old boy says he saw a white lady, real tall with real red hair.”

“When you're seven, everybody seems tall,” I offered.

“That's how we're gonna play this?” he asked.

“I don't know the game,” I said.

“I think you do. And I think you know who knocked you out of your cab too.”

“Mooney—”

“How about hypnosis?” he said. “You willing to try hypnosis? The department has a good person.”

“It's inadmissable evidence. Waste of time.” I clamped my mouth shut. A simple no would have been enough.

“Why did I know you were going to refuse, Carlotta? And I bet you still can't remember a thing. Temporary amnesia. Right. But I can't keep a guard on you forever. I don't have that kind of manpower. So when you get out, we're gonna visit a gun shop, and maybe you'll make a little investment in staying alive.”

I said, “You ever think of doing volunteer work in your spare time?”

“The Glock's fine when it's fully loaded. Light touch. You should try one. The balance isn't that great after you fire. Metal top, plastic stock, fewer bullets you have in the magazine, the more top-heavy it gets. I hear S and W makes a good nine.”

“That's enough, Mooney.” If he was trying to scare me, he wasn't doing a half-bad job.

“It's not enough, Carlotta. You get shot at, you get mugged. You're having a bad stretch, and you're not telling your friends why. You may think you've got good reason, okay. But I'm not satisfied. I'm going after your client list. I already questioned Roz—”