Hardware (7 page)

Frank frowned. “That's no way to treat an old buddy, Sam. You look terrific. Life's been treating you pretty damned good.”

Sam stayed silent. What could he have said: “You look like hell”?

“We can't stay long, Frank.”

Frank stretched his lips over his teeth in an attempt at a grin. “Uh, okay. That's okay, I guess. I won't need to know much. How will she treat the equipment? I mean basics, is she okay? You sure about her? Positively, I mean?”

Sam replied solemnly, “She's good with machines. A good driver.”

“Stick shift?”

“I change my own oil,” I said. “What the hell is this?”

“You're the first woman who's been in this apartment,” Frank said, so softly I almost missed it.

Now, that surprised me. If Frank reminded me of an animal pacing his lair, the beast was wolf-like.

“You move in recently?” I asked.

He laughed, stood, and slapped Sam on the shoulder. “I like her,” he murmured to Sam. “It's a deal.”

What had Frank looked like as a child, what manner of blood-brother oaths had the two little boys exchanged? I've met a few of Sam's male friends over the years, although he tends to keep me away from his family since cops and robbers don't mix. They aren't all handsome, but they all share a certain level of polish.

Not this one.

Frank's flat smelled greasy. Burger King wrappers were strewn in the corners. God knows what else.

To hurry things up, I said, “Sam tells me you've got some extra computer equipment.”

His chest swelled. “Whatever you need.”

“A basic PC and a modem.”

“That's all?” He seemed disappointed.

“That's all.”

“You into reading BBSs?”

“I want to link into an information database, a major one.”

“An infomart like PC Profile or—”

“I was thinking U.S. Datalink.”

“They're all available,” he said. “But as far as a PC goes, you'll need something decent or you're gonna work up a hell of a phone bill. Something where you can program a macro search strategy off-line. Datalink has good front-end software. Very compatible. I could fix you up with ProComm, maybe, or CrossTalk, or there might be something pirated. I'll scan the BBSs. The bulletin boards. BBSs is short for bulletin boards.”

“Pirated?” I repeated. It was one of the few words I'd picked out of his rushed babble. “I'm not interested in merchandise that fell off the back of a truck.”

“No, no, no,” he said quickly. “I'm talking software. The hardware's bought and paid for; it's obsolete for what I do, that's all. I'd like to give it a good home. Software's different; it belongs to everyone. Information belongs to everyone. You think we should padlock libraries, give the librarians the keys? Give the keys to AT&T and the goddamn technocracy, so the masses can be worker bees for the rest of their lives?”

“Frank,” Sam said firmly, “we'll take the equipment, not the sermon.”

“An old PC/XT,” Frank mumbled, as if he were talking to himself. “That's the ticket, that's what you need. With a modem card.”

“How much would a PC/XT set me back? With this modem card?”

“You plug it into any phone jack.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Good home?” He looked at Sam.

“Excellent. Highest recommendation.”

“A gift, then.”

“No,” I said.

“She's got a cat,” Sam amended.

“A cat.” Frank looked horrified. “Is she going to get rid of it?”

“What are we talking about here?” I asked. “I have a bird too. The world's oldest, nastiest parakeet.”

“Cat hair's bad for computers,” Frank said hurriedly. “So is dust. And you have to get a static protector if you're working on carpet. And …”

I glanced at Sam, eyebrows raised.

“It's a good home,” Sam said earnestly. “She'll do right by your PC, Frank.”

“Since there's a cat, fifty bucks,” he said, crossing his arms. “Fifty firm.”

I felt like I was slipping through the looking glass with a skinny version of Tweedledee holding out a helping hand.

“Done,” I said. I'd never envisioned paying less than three hundred to get myself on-line. I'd feared the price tag might go higher.

And much as I hated to admit it, on-line was the future. If I was going to keep cutting it as a private eye in this town—a less sexist place than some, but still not a utopia where many seek the help of a female P.I.—I was going to have to keep up-to-date.

Computers have arrived. There it is. Pretty soon there'll be a different kind of cop show on TV. Uniforms'll sit around and punch keyboards and discover—gasp—who checked out porno tapes from Videosmith today. I wish I could get
into
computers, but they have a level of abstraction that doesn't make me tingle. Cars are truly the only machines I enjoy tinkering with, probably because I grew up in Detroit when cars were sacred chariots.

Things change. I drive a Toyota. I need a computer.

“You want a Coke?” Frank asked, as if suddenly remembering that he ought to inquire. He couldn't seem to decide whether to rush us out the door or hold us hostage. “I mean, if you're not into beer?”

“I'm not real happy about leaving a car on the street,” Sam said.

“You brought your own car?”

“I borrowed something.”

“And you parked in front? What are you trying to do to me? Jesus. You better get going.”

“Let's get the stuff first. You know where this PC happens to be?”

“Of course I do. Original carton. I'll help you load it.”

“I can carry it, Frank.”

“I could use the air.”

I could see his point. I wanted out and I'd only been there fifteen minutes.

It took another twenty for the three of us to locate the correct equipment plus manuals, and for Frank to swear that he'd run a search for whatever software could get me the best bang per buck on Datalink. He spoke in initials and put his phrases together so oddly, with no apparent punctuation, that I didn't understand half of what he said. I kept looking to Sam to translate as if Frank were speaking Italian, and then I'd realize that the words were English, just double-timed and oddly used. Verbs for nouns. Nouns for verbs. Acronyms sprinkled throughout.

“Getting dark” was one phrase I caught.

“We'll be going,” Sam said. I tried not to nod agreement too vigorously.

“You can't stick this baby in the trunk, Sam. You want to rest it on the floor of the backseat, on a blanket, or better, she could hold it, maybe.”

“Yeah, ‘she' could hold it,” I said. I counted two twenties and a ten into his hand and decided not to give advice about what to do with the cash. A moving van sprang to mind.

“You could pay me later,” he said. His dark eyes had short, bristly lashes. His eyebrows almost met, knitting themselves into an angry slash across his face.

“I like to settle up as I go along,” I said.

Sam carried the computer. Frank grabbed the manuals away from me. Also a carton of diskettes he'd insisted on tossing in as a last-minute bonus. I had to promise not to let the cat shed on them.

The deepening twilight hadn't improved the block's appearance. It obscured the mush puddles. My feet were soaked in an instant. Sam had parked close to a streetlamp. Its feeble bulb provided little light. The borrowed car appeared unmolested, but it could have had an additional dent or five. I wouldn't have noticed.

Frank fiddled and fussed and decided the computer carton was too large for me to hold on my lap. He took his time arguing about safe stowage, then set off on a lengthy cautionary tale about surge suppressors.

I was starting to follow his accelerated speech, but it took concentration.

I didn't see the black van turn the corner. I heard the screech of tires. It should have had its headlights on. It shouldn't have been going so fast, I thought as Sam crashed into me, shoving me to the ground, yelling at Frank to get down, get down. I was falling by the time I heard shots. Instinctively I turned my head, too late to keep my gaping mouth from filling with slush. I spat and felt Sam's weight on top of me. I saw the flash, coming from the passenger side of the black van. Flash and flash again. Automatic fire lit the sky like lightning.

I could feel Sam's heart beating furiously. I tried to shift him off me, but he raised his hand, covering my mouth. With both hands trapped underneath me there wasn't much I could do about the imposed hush. I breathed deeply, flexed my arms and legs, found them in working order.

What struck me was the silence. If I could have, I would have screamed, just to release tension. Nobody cracked a window, nobody yelled.

I couldn't expect much from the graveyard residents, but one of the living neighbors might have roused himself from TV-induced stupor or drug-dealer-bred fear, inquired if we were living or dead.

Mush fell.

EIGHT

The first noise, other than my rasping breath, was cop cars, sirens pulsing.

Sam's bulk shifted and moved. “Get in the car!” His voice seemed too loud.

“We've gotta wait—”

“Get in, Carlotta.”

“Dammit, how's Frank? Are you okay? Am I okay?”

“Frank's gone. We're gone.” He yanked me to my feet and pushed me toward the Nova.

I found myself unceremoniously shoved inside. “What the hell?” I could have invited a broken shoulder by butting against the slamming door. Instead I wriggled closer to the steering wheel, my teeth chattering.

Sam gunned the motor before he shut the door. He didn't burn rubber taking off; neither did he imitate a Sunday driver heading to church.

I kept my voice under control with effort. “What do you mean, Frank's gone? Dead?”

“He can take care of himself. He's … resourceful.”

I breathed. In and out. In and out. Counted to twenty twice. My left hand was shaking and I stuck it between my thighs to steady it.

“What was that about, Sam?” My breathing was screwed up. It took me three tries to get the words out.

“A drive-by. What's the matter? Don't you read the papers anymore?”

“A drive-by,” I repeated. “And what else?”

“Nothing else. You hear them?”

“I heard you yell and I got tackled.”

“Fuckers. Leaning out the windows, screaming that ‘kill honky' bullshit. We are not exactly in an integrated area. One of the neighbors is probably chief whitey watcher for some street gang.”

“And they never spotted Frank before?”

“He doesn't go out.”

“Did you get a look at them? Were they wearing colors?”

“What?”

“Gang colors, Sam. Could you pick 'em out? Bromley-Heath? Academy Homes? Goyas?”

“No, Carlotta. I did not concentrate on what the fuck they were wearing.”

“Sam, where are you going?”

It took him a while to admit that he didn't exactly know.

“Pull over. Let me drive.”

He squealed the brakes and yanked the wheel. We came to a stop under an ailanthus tree. “You know where we are?”

“Get out and do a fast runaround. I'll slide over, get us into Franklin Park and back to the Arboretum and we can—”

“Don't drive to a police station,” he warned as soon as he hit the passenger seat.

“I'll park someplace in J.P.,” I promised. Jamaica Plain is a residential neighborhood where they allow on-street overnight parking. The Nova wouldn't stick out.

“Abandon the car,” Sam agreed eagerly.

“At least check to see if it's wearing bullet holes. We could be leaking gas or transmission fluid—”

“Somebody may have seen it. We need to ditch it.”

“Sam, what the hell is going on?”

“Carlotta, I am not getting involved in this. It was a racial thing. That's it. But the minute my name comes into it, it will be a Mafia thing, and you damn well know it.”

“Sam, it wasn't your fault. You're a victim here. You should call the cops.”

“Listen to you,” he said, shaking his head. “You talk like a child.
Fault
. My family, everything's been my fault since I was born.”

The steering wheel felt warm against my icy hands.

“After my mother died,” he went on, “when I was a baby—a toddler, I guess—my brothers took me to church and left me there, like they thought God would accept me as an offering, a kind of exchange, and give Mama back.”

“The priest must have been happy to see you,” I said. Sam doesn't speak of his childhood often. The gunfire seemed to have loosened his tongue.

“Oh, they didn't take me to the local parish. Not that dumb. They wrapped me in rags, stuck me in a stroller they'd pinched from a garbage dump. Not the fancy Gianelli carriage all the mamas in the North End could identify. I was just a baby dumped on a doorstep, well on my way to a wonderful life in foster care.”

“Who found you?”

“I only know this from stories, the way it was told to me. Papa jumped to the conclusion that I'd been kidnapped, the biggest crime since the Lindbergh baby. Fired the nanny on the spot. She didn't have her papers, had to go back to Italy. He wanted her arrested, but he settled for deported.”

“It wasn't her fault.”

“There you go again,” Sam said.

“How did your father find you?”

“He heard my brothers praying in the nursery, asking God to take me instead of Mama. Beat the crap out of them till they talked. I remember he said by the time he got me back, I was sick. A cold, but he thought I was really going to die.”

“Do you believe it?” I asked. “The story? I mean, your brothers were adolescents, teenagers. Old enough to know God doesn't play
Let's Make a Deal.
”

Sam shrugged. “My father could have made the whole thing up. Any of the boys could have invented it, as a way to let me know they didn't want me around. That's the most likely explanation, but hell, I suppose I could have been kidnapped by the Winter Hill Gang. It doesn't matter.”