Hardware (33 page)

“I have information—”

“So you're Sam's piece of the action, huh?” She looked me over from stem to stern. “He could sure do better, that boy.” Her voice was pure southern syrup. I couldn't tell if the accent was real, any more than I could tell if blond was her natural color or double D her God-given chest size.

“We could all do better, Mrs. Gianelli,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “I'm sorry if I insulted you. I only meant that you look very young.”

“Thank you,” she said uncertainly.

“I know your husband has had a bad week. I know he's an old, uh, older man. I won't take much of his time.”

“Maybe you could see Mitch or Tony.”

I said, “I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying.”

“I don't think you get it, hon. No is no. You can't see him.”

“Life and death,” I said.

“For who?”

I didn't bother correcting her grammar. “His son,” I said.

“His sons are grown men. They handle their own lives.”

“He cares about them,” I said. “Grown men or not.”

“He's not well; he can't be disturbed,” she said.

“Let him make the decision himself. Don't you owe him that?”

“Wait here,” she said coldly. She swayed to the end of the hall, stopped before a brass-and-glass table, opened a rosewood box, extracted a telephone receiver. Punched buttons.

“Life and death,” I called after her.

She spoke for some time, then waved the instrument at me. I hastened to take it.

“Mr. Gianelli?”

The voice was raw and angry. “You'd think I could send one bitch to talk to another. Wouldn't you say that was a reasonable assumption?”

He's an old man, I reminded myself. My hand tightened on the receiver.

“We should do this face-to-face,” I said.

“I'll have you thrown out,” he countered.

“I think I know who tried to kill Sam.”

“Think? You think? Tell me when you really know.”

“Mr. Gianelli—”

“My son gets himself blown the hell up with colored people. How does that make me look? In the community?”

“You don't want to know, do you?” I said. “Or maybe you already know.”

He spoke in Italian then, and I couldn't understand anything except the hatred. I waited for a pause in his invective. None came, just the click when he hung up.

When I'd visited the house two wives ago, a portrait of Sam's mother hung in the hallway. It was gone without a trace. Not a mark in the perfect white paint.

I left my package—diskettes and confession—with the guard at the door, trading them for my automatic. He made me open the parcel. No exploding envelopes for Papa G.

“Seems okay,” the guard said.

“Let me add a little something,” I said.

“What?” He looked at me like he was expecting folding money to materialize in my hand.

I borrowed a pen, scrawled a single line on the back of Joey's confession.

Ask your accountant
it said.

Then I reassembled the package and told the guard to deliver it to Anthony Senior. To no one but Anthony Gianelli, Senior. In person.

He seemed uncertain. I dropped a twenty on the floor; his foot covered it before the corner-mounted cameras could record the transaction. We had a deal.

He shook his head as I left, like a grandfather mourning a grandchild gone wrong.

FORTY-TWO

Roz got home a good three hours later than I did. She was cheerful for a woman who'd spent most of her day at the cop house, having successfully ID'd the taller goon, a man with an awesome rap sheet displaying a broad assortment of dismissed felonies. Often, the complainant changed his or her mind about preferring charges. Sometimes the complainant left town hurriedly or disappeared completely.

Roz can read between the lines. She'd expected to find an intimidator. Even on the phone, he was loud, obnoxious, and threatening. No sense of humor, she complained.

A meeting was set for tomorrow night at a crowded Faneuil Hall watering hole.

I'd notify Mooney beforehand. I'd already left the floppies and Joey's statement for Papa G. I went down a mental list, putting an invisible check against each item. In volleyball terms, the match was mine. Twelve-to-one in the deciding game, my turn at net, and a six-inch advantage over the opposing blocker. No contest.

Joey Fresh remained in the closet. Lauren was spending the night in the beige room, far down the hall. With so many in the house, I'd begged off when Keith proposed to add one more, even though the extra body would have been warm and welcome, and wouldn't have taken up much space.

Keith said he'd succeeded in provoking Gloria to anger; he saw that as progress.

Sam had a gaggle of undercover police guards.

Everything under control.

Except the timing.

When I heard footsteps in the middle of the night, my first thought was that goddamned Joey had Houdinied himself out of the closet.

I grabbed the pistol from under my pillow. When I hold captives, I sleep lightly. I keep loaded weapons in unsafe places. Another reason to disappoint Keith.

Too many voices, low and gutteral. Lauren's was the sole high note, and she sounded frantic. Lauren wouldn't be terrified by an escaped Joey Frascatti. She'd still see a nineteen-year-old boy, frightened out of his wits, covered with another kid's blood.

Roz slept upstairs alone. I didn't like the odds.

I keep my bedroom door closed at night. I slid the bolt home silently. It wouldn't stop anyone for long. I lifted the phone. Dead, which I expected.

A professional invasion.

I yanked on the jeans lying at the foot of my bed, more to have a place to shove the pistol than for decency's sake. I'd freeze in my tank top, but risking the squeak of a drawer was out of the question.

I stuffed two pillows lengthwise in my bed, threw the quilt over them, and tucked them in like a baby.

I slid up the window sash, going for speed rather than silence. It banged like a shot in the night. Listen up, neighbors, I thought.

I've lived in this house since I was sixteen. Since my mother died in Detroit, and I got sent to live with her older sister because nobody else wanted me. For a while I wasn't sure Beatrice wanted me either. I always kept an escape hatch. A downspout to an elm tree, a five-foot drop.

I hadn't used it since I was eighteen. Lighter, scrappier, with fewer broken bones and scars and sprained ankles. At eighteen I never,
never
, thought about falling.

Didn't have that back-of-the-neck tingle to contend with either, the image of a gun barrel aimed at my heart or my head.

The downspout was less than firmly connected to the roof. Had it always had that sway, that slight bounce? I twined my legs and inched my way down in blackness. The tree. How far to its sheltering branches? As soon as I had the thought, one poked itself at my behind. A skinny branch. No help. I shinned farther down the spout, praying it would hold, testing the area around my feet for a good crotchlike branch. It ought to fucking be there. I hadn't pruned the damned tree.

I stepped into it and sank low. I could hear voices from my room. The bedroom light flashed on. Good. Ruin their night vision. Suddenly it snapped off. I held on to the branch and extended my body full-length. If anybody was gazing out the living room window, he'd have an easy pickoff. Quick drop and roll, or protect the ankle? I heard a shout that made up my mind for me. Quick drop, forward roll, out of the crouch running.

Keith's seemed miles away.

“Nine one one,” I hollered through the door as soon as I heard the jangle of chain.

“What?” he said.

“Yell. Life and death. Whatever the hell you can think of to make it as top priority as top priority gets.”

“What? Where are you—?”

“I'll be back,” I said.

“I'll be there.”

“Don't you fucking dare,” I screamed. “Just call the police.”

Then I really ran.

FORTY-THREE

A spindly black ladder rested against the back of the house. Like “Frank,” they must have slipped in through the kitchen window. Why hadn't I nailed it shut?

I had choices: I could enter the same way; I could wait for the cops. Turnaround time on the 911 depended on intangibles: who was riding dispatch; what else was going down in Cambridge tonight. Would Keith Donovan choose the right words? “In progress. Break-in. Shots fired.” I should have told him the code. He knew hospital lingo, not cop talk. I wriggled my bare toes in the freezing grass, crossed my arms, and tucked my hands under my armpits to keep them warm.

They had Lauren. Lauren might give up Joey. Lauren, believing they wanted the actual culprit, would talk. I imagined Joey, locked in the big closet, hearing voices in the dark.

I dug my pistol deeper into the back of my jeans, made sure the tank top covered it. Then I rang the front doorbell. I didn't have my keys.

I kept ringing. Got a good rhythm going. Twenty-two times before Roz said, “Who's there?”

“Me.”

“Run!” she yelled. “You don't wanna be here.”

The door swung open and Mitch—Sam's brother, good old Mitch, the middle boy—grabbed my wrist and hauled me inside.

“Where'd you go?” he demanded. He was dressed in baggy black sweats. His face was ruddy and his breath came hard.

“Where do you think? You didn't cut the phone lines on the whole block.”

He chewed his lower lip. You could practically see wheels turning in his head as he glanced at his watch. “Give me the computer disks and we're history. We can forget this.”

“It's gone too far for a kiss-off,” I said.

“She packing?” one of Mitch's associates asked. I recognized the big goon from Sam's apartment. He was gleefully dangling Roz by her hair, one meaty hand twined in the colored strands. A bizarre marionette, she barely managed to balance on the tips of her toes.

“Here's her piece,” Mitch said scornfully, waving my old .38. The bottom left-hand drawer of my desk hung open. Must have busted the lock. “Some big-time investigator. Keeps her gun wrapped in her ex's undershirt. Sam told me all about it. She couldn't bronze her ex's balls, so she keeps the shirt for a trophy.”

“It's just you, Mitch, right?” I asked, feeling the weight of the new .40 sag my waistband. “Solo. Gil and Tony don't know.”

“About what?” he said with an innocent smirk.

I didn't like taking my eyes off Mitch, but I had to view the damage. Lauren, sprawled on a chair near the arch leading to the dining room, clasped a hand to a reddened cheek. An unfamiliar man loomed over her.

She caught my eye, inhaled; she was ready to speak.

“I can't believe Papa G knows,” I said, jumping in before Lauren could open her mouth.

“Always yapping,” Mitch complained.

“You're the mouth, Mitch,” I continued, willing Lauren to shut up. “Volunteering that crap about Sam selling the company. I almost believed you. On the whole, you did a hell of a job.”

“Shut up,” Mitch said.

“I like a good story.” The goon near Lauren had a surprisingly high voice.

“Harry,” Mitch snapped, “shut it.”

Harry didn't seem intimidated. I made sure my voice was loud enough to reach him.

“What I like best is the way you took advantage of an already existing situation. You played Cochran and Yancey like a pair of violins, Mitch. Really. You have my admiration.”

“I don't need it. I've got your gun. I want Sam's disks.”

“Then there's the long-range planning,” I said. “You hire a nasty little shit like Zach, figure Gloria'll take the kid on as a driver, but he's only around long enough to check the lay of the land. He quits and all the pieces are in place. Small owners always feel paranoid about medallions; you stoke the paranoia with rumors, rumors spiced with truth. Yancey's probably gonna try to move to leases, right? Make major money. You provide the spark to ignite the blaze. Simple. Two anonymous phone calls: one to Cochran; a follow-up to Yancey. You dial 'em yourself? Or did one of your goons do that?”

“The disks,” he said, idly aiming my .38 at various parts of my body. “You shouldn't have taken them.”

“You pay Zach and a couple freelance punks, nobody with Mob connections, to beat up cabbies, folks from Green and White, other small companies, independents. Zach knows the routine, how to kill the lights, the safety flashers.”

“Good for him,” Mitch said scathingly. “Never met the guy. I understand he blew himself to kingdom come.”

“Mitchell,” I said. “You made mistakes. The drive-by was stupid. What? You got impatient? Things moving too slowly for you? Maybe you were hoping Sam might take a shift when drivers got scarce, get killed in one of your staged robberies? He never would, Mitch. You know why? He promised your dad; Sam never drives.”

Mitchell licked his chapped lips, grunted.

I hurried on. “You were lucky; nobody identified the drive-by shooters. Were you one of them, by the way?”

“Shut up,” he said.

“I'll take that as a yes. So Zach keeps the game going, spreading the beatings around. You want it clear that Green and White's
a
target, but not
the
target. When it comes, you want the explosion to seem like cab business, not Mob business.”

“You always talk this much?” Mitch asked.

“You ought to know,” I said. “You bugged G and W. You nabbed the old FBI mikes. You're the ‘expert' Sam trusted. He'd trust his big brother, wouldn't he?”

“You done?”

“No,” I said. “Actually I'm not: I have a major question, the big one:
Would you need that kind of dog-and-pony show if your dad wanted Sam dead?
Papa wants it done, I hear it gets done.”

“Some decisions an old man shouldn't have to make,” Mitch said, with more dignity than I'd expected. “Sam took our money. He took Gotti money, Gambino money. Nobody takes my money.”