Hardware (20 page)

I turned down the music.

“Where you been?” Gloria demanded.

“Sudbury, where you think?”

“I been trying to get you.”

“Out of range,” I said.

“Hold on. Your bad penny's turned up.”

Sam's voice came over the crackling box, so deep and smooth it stole my breath. I wasn't ready to deal with this. Why the hell couldn't he have stayed in Washington? A few more days. Till I'd at least
imagined
a way to tell him about Keith.

“Hey,” he said. “I don't like being stood up.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“I brought flowers, but I already gave them to Gloria.”

“I hope this isn't going out across the band.”

“It's a private conversation.”

“Sure, with every scanner freak in the area listening in.”

“I'll wait till you come by.”

“I'm working. I'm not planning any stop at G and W. I've only made a couple fares.”

“Then why'd you send me mail?” His voice was indignant.

“What mail?”

“E-mail. Meet you at Green and White.”

I swallowed and felt a chill climb the back of my neck. “I didn't send it.”

“Come on. It's late for Halloween pranks.”

“What did I happen to say? In this e-mail?”

“One
A
.
M
. Meet you here.”

I glanced at my watch: 12:50. “Sam,” I said, my mouth so dry I could barely spit words. “Do me a favor. Get outside.”

“What?”

“Who else is there?”

“Me. Gloria. Marvin's in back. I heard about what you—”

“Please. Get out.”

“Carlotta—”

“Sam, humor me. Wait across the street. Shit, you're gonna need help getting Marvin out. Call in the nearest cabbie. Wait at the restaurant. They've got phones. Soon as you're out, dial nine one one.”

Growing up Mafia, he should be more suspicious, more careful. Dammit, hadn't the Gianellis ever been threatened?

“Will do,” he said curtly.

Message received. I breathed for the first time in minutes.

The rumble filled the car like thunder, distant, growling, growing louder. It turned to a crackling hum and the radio hissed into silence.

“Sam!” I said. “Gloria!” I shouted. I pressed buttons. “All cabs! Call a nine one one to Green and White.”

I floored the accelerator, held it there, screeching turns, ignoring red lights. Sweat beaded my forehead. I fumbled at the dash to turn off the heater, couldn't take my eyes off the road, the speed I was doing. Sweat poured down my face, trickled down my back. I cracked a window.

Greenough to Arsenal, the Charles River a black ribbon to my left, the wheels screaming the turns. Market Street, left at North Beacon, blessedly clear, using the opposing traffic lane to pass the few slow cars.

As I approached Cambridge Street, I could hear sirens. I never looked to see if they were chasing me.

TWENTY-FOUR

Lights blinded me. Cherry. Yellow. Blue. Harsh white spotlights trained on the blaze, illuminating towering ladders, powerful spurting hoses, black-and-yellow-slickered firemen. Engines from Ladder Company 19. District 7 pumpers. Boston Police. News vans, satellite dishes raised to the night sky.

I shoved my foot to the floor, bypassing emergency vehicles. Then I stood on the brakes, spinning the steering wheel full left at the same time. Rubber shrieked. Cars honked. The noises floated by—distant, unrelated—as I fishtailed into the restaurant parking lot. I couldn't yank my eyes from the surging smoke, spiraling gray against the blue-black sky like a lurid tornado.

I think I parked between yellow lines. I ran.

“Behind the tape. Get back. Keep back,” yelled a voice in my ear.

I stuck out an elbow, connected with something that grunted, and kept running, head down. I ran till the heat forced a halt. The stink of burning rubber filled my nose. Acrid smoke seared my tongue. I was unable to go forward, unable to step back; my pulse raced, my heart pounded. I rubbed a sweater cuff across my wet cheeks and oozing nose.

A shattered chunk of cork lay at my feet. I knelt and touched it. A cup-hook protruded. The keyboard, a fragment of the board where Gloria hangs, hung, used to hang, the cab keys. Kneeling felt better. Hugging knees to chest, lowering my head, I turned myself into a round ball.

Gloria. Sam.

GLORIA. SAM
. I don't know if I spoke the names aloud, don't know if I muttered them, screamed them, shrieked them to the indifferent air.

A small round ball, rocking back and forth, refusing to look, refusing to accept the evidence of sight, I coughed and choked on bitter fumes, willed my fingers to unclench, my hands to release their grip, my legs to straighten.

Standing, I could see the metal crisscross shield, guaranteed to protect G&W from outside invaders, hanging crookedly from the side of the stucco shell, resting against a blasted-out cab. Forked tongues of flame licked skyward, hissing at jets of water, steaming.

Hands grabbed me around the waist, yanked backward. I let them.

A policeman spoke; I couldn't hear him. His mouth moved, but I was deaf—from the noise of crackling flames and flooding waters, from the shouts of firefighters and the chattering herd of onlookers. From shock.

Ambulances.

Ambulances with whirling lights.

Survivors. Ambulances might mean survivors. I couldn't bear the hope. Hope was almost worse than loss. The fear of hope worse …

I stumbled over a hose, tripped, staggered through a puddle. The policeman, still hovering, clutched my elbow.

“Get the fuck away from me,” I muttered, striding toward the ambulances.

Body bags lay on the ground. Flat, unzipped, waiting.

I saw the wheelchair before I heard the voice, her achingly beautiful voice. How they'd moved her massive weight from chair to stretcher I don't know.

“Gloria!”

“Carlotta?”

I shoved, melting through the crowd, seeing an inch as an opening, a hand span as a thoroughfare.

“Marvin” was all she said when I reached her, leaning over to stare into her eyes. She was swathed in a mound of shiny Mylar, covering her from the neck down. The gurney seemed fragile underneath her. Blood traced a pattern in her hair, trickled down her forehead. A raised welt started above her left eyebrow, slanted up. Soot smudged her cheeks. “Marvin,” she repeated. That's all, but I knew from the way her voice broke, crackling like dry branches, that one body bag was reserved for his remains.

“Don't talk,” an EMT ordered her.

“They already took Sam,” she said.

“Where?”

“Move away. She needs to get some air in her lungs, for chrissakes.”

“Where did they take Sam?” I persisted.

The EMT shoved me back, strong hands against my shoulders. I crossed my arms in front of me, made taut blades of my hands, the way I'd seen Roz do so many times.

It's just a move I've seen. Someday someone's going to call my bluff and kick the shit out of me. The EMT stared into my eyes and backed off.

“Mass. General,” Gloria said. “Burns and trauma. Legs trapped … his legs caught under a beam … Marvin. Oh, Marvin.” The way she spoke his name made me close my eyes and look away. Not a cry or a scream or a wail, but an almost unearthly keening, the vocalization of a grief so intense that it grabbed my intestines and wouldn't let go.

“Somebody fightin' with him,” Gloria said. “Door to the back room bursts open. I hear two voices, cursin' each other. Marvin. Marvin says ‘Stop!' or ‘No!' I couldn't see; he's still in the other room. Sam started runnin' and that's when everything went—”

The EMT inserted a needle into one of her bulging veins.

“Did Marvin say a name? Did he know the person? Was the voice familiar?”

Gloria's head lolled, rolled slowly sideways.

“Will she—” I started to say before my voice was lost in the roar of the engine. If I hadn't moved, the ambulance would have run me down. I could have claimed my own body bag.

I turned and watched the blaze, transfixed by the whistling wind and water, soaked by the spray, unable to avert my face from the flames, a primitive ape staring at a magical lightning strike, reeling with the fear and fascination of fire.

Minutes later, hours later, a police officer in a yellow slicker tapped me repeatedly on the shoulder. He said, “Lieutenant Mooney wants you. His car. Now. He's waiting.”

I couldn't find words, so I nodded. I followed.

TWENTY-FIVE

“Why Mass. General?” asked a flat, zombielike voice. My voice. I couldn't seem to raise or lower the pitch. My throat burned when I swallowed. Smoke inhalation … Something wrong with my ears … Maybe I'd always sound this way now—numb, affectless, dead.

Dead. Marvin dead.

Gloria injured. Sam injured …

I tried to stretch my legs, but there wasn't room in the backseat. Must be one of the new command cars. No steel-mesh screen to separate cops from perps. My hand rested on a working door handle.

Between the front seats—jump seats instead of the standard straight-across bench—a computer screen took up the usual radio space. Below it, a keyboard. Communications devices bristled. Mooney was nursing a handheld mike, advising someone of our destination.

“Call the Arson Squad,” I said.

The uniformed driver wove through Storrow Drive traffic, blue lights flashing, siren screaming. Mooney yapped into the speaker. The unfamiliar officer beside me scribbled in a notebook for all he was worth.

“The Arson Squad,” I repeated, placing a hand on Mooney's shoulder.

“What?” he said. I could hardly hear him.

I shook my head. I felt like I was underwater, drowning, observing through filmy mist. I covered an ear with my index finger, tried to swallow.

“You gonna faint?” Mooney asked.

I breathed in and out, counted to ten, breathed. Yawned. The ear popped. I could hear.

“What about the Arson Squad?” Mooney said.

The suit beside me stopped scratching with his pencil. “It's an idea,” he said eagerly. “I can see it. The Gianelli kid tries to blow up the place. I'll get on to his broker, his bank, his insurance company, see if he needs cash. Boston Mob, Jesus, figures they'd screw up. Whole shit-canful should blow themselves to kingdom come.”

Mooney's quick. Before I could move, he'd turned in his seat and fastened his hand around my right wrist.

“Oglesby's with the Organized Crime Task Force,” Mooney explained hastily. “New. He doesn't know the, uh, situation.”

“And I suppose
she
does?” Oglesby said, a smirk creasing his thin lips. He sat so stiffly his backbone didn't touch the upholstery. A self-righteous guy who didn't need starch in his shirts. “These goombahs, they're always so up-front with their, uh, what do I call you so as not to offend, huh? His main squeeze?”

“Sam's not Mafia,” I said, my voice still flat. It wasn't my ears, it was my throat. Felt like a skeletal hand tugging my vocal cords. “You should know that if anybody does.”

“Well, excuse me,” Oglesby said sarcastically. “Anthony Gianelli's boy, you can understand my confusion. What do the Italians say? ‘The acorn doesn't drop far from the tree'?”

I was going to hurt him. Now or later.

“Why Arson Squad, Carlotta?” Mooney asked, cautiously releasing my hand.

“Sam was supposed to be there when the place blew.” I swallowed; it hurt. “Me too.”

“Why?”

I shook my head. “I'm not sure.”

“Speculate,” Mooney ordered, like I'd suddenly returned to the force. How many times had I heard him say that word?

I swallowed again, trying to form thoughts into sentences. “Sam got e-mail telling him to meet me at G and W at one
A
.
M
.”

“Fire department was called before then,” Oglesby interrupted.

“I
know
that. I put out an emergency call. All cabs. At twelve fifty-two.”

“Go on, Carlotta.” Mooney gave Oglesby a warning glance.

“I was helping Gloria earlier today. Took over dispatch, asked for information about cabbie beatings. A lot have been reported, but more haven't been. Immigrants scared of cops. Cabbies who believe the threats. You know: You call the cops, we'll get your wife, we'll get your kid.”

Mooney didn't say anything. Oglesby looked like he was dying to break in, but Mooney held his eye.

Mooney said, “So somebody who didn't want you poking your nose into the cab beatings might have assumed you'd be dispatching, and he sent Sam by to keep you company? That's a big assumption, considering the amount of time Gloria spends handling those phones.”

“Doesn't make sense,” I muttered.

“Sam know anything special about the beatings?”

“I don't know. I don't think so.”

“Carlotta?” Mooney said softly. I don't know how long I'd sat motionless before he spoke.

“Is Sam dead, Mooney? Is he dying? If you know and you're not telling me—”

“I honest to God don't know. Only thing I heard was ‘multiple trauma.' Let me get on the radio, send a team from Arson over to G and W.”

Sam. Multiple trauma. Burns. Legs trapped under a beam.

I've seen burn victims. Auto accidents. Blackened skin hanging in shreds, exposed muscle, raw flesh …

“Bet he'll have great docs, a whole team of them,” Oglesby said cheerfully. “Most of their last names'll end in vowels. And I wouldn't worry if I were you. He'll make it. You know what doctors say: Scumbags never die.”

I hit him. A short right jab that snapped his neck back. Mooney could have stopped me, but he didn't try. Maybe he wanted me in custody, and assaulting an officer was good enough.

I covered my face with cupped hands, tried to keep my shoulders steady. Goddamn Oglesby wasn't going to see them shake, wasn't going to get the treat of a single tear.