CHAPTER 10

The Chevy squealed away from the curb. In the front seat, Janine’s frizzy blonde hair was sandwiched between a ducktail and a conservative banker-cut. The driver had narrow shoulders compared to the burly guy on the passenger side. I figured we were off for a quick romp to a nearby hotel.

We followed Washington Street to the turnpike access road, but instead of getting on the ramp to the Pike, the Caprice zigzagged onto Columbus Avenue and I started to worry.

Now I like tail jobs, but one-on-ones are tough. Darkness gave me the advantage. Taillights are individualistic. The Caprice had two rectangular panels, each made up of six red glass plates, three on top and three below. They worked in tandem, two plates to a set. The outside pairs blinked as turn signals. The inside and outside pairs of each set lit up when the driver hit the brakes. Either the left turn signal was broken or the man behind the wheel didn’t believe in signaling lefts.

Most headlights look the same. With my rooflights off, I was just another set of round eyes in his rearview mirror. I kept well back, two hundred, three hundred yards.

When I drive I like music. Gloria’s cabs, even the new ones, have dime-store radios, so I carry a mini-boombox that fits nicely on the passenger seat. I punched on my local blues station, came in on the tail end of an old Bonnie Raitt cut, and sang along, cruising easily behind the Chevy. I even cracked the front window, hoping for a breath of spring.

Columbus Avenue is not the place to smell spring. It’s a place to lock your doors. I’m pretty comfortable just about anywhere in Boston, thanks to the anonymity of cab jockeys, but I’d have preferred a route that didn’t take in the highlights of Roxbury. Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t about to call off the chase. There’s nothing like surveiliance to make you eager for action. I mean, I didn’t want to drive deep into Roxbury, but I had no desire to hang around the Zone looking for Janine forever either. I wanted to track her down now, get this business over with, and start work on finding Valerie, the high-school runaway.

I’m a good driver. I can leave my cab on automatic pilot while I puzzle things out. I wondered about Elsie’s “Ask Jerry why she left” remark. Had Jerry driven Valerie away, then hired me to soothe his guilt? Would Valerie run from a rough pass? How shy was she? How grown up? I’ve seen girls sell their bodies at eleven and brides blush at twenty-eight, so you can’t tell. On the dashboard, Valerie’s photo, dark and uncommunicative, stood out against the fake grained wood. Between pothole lurches, I grabbed it and tucked it into my purse.

Columbus Avenue doesn’t get much in the way of maintenance. Some say that’s because Boston is a racist city and nobody cares what happens in the black areas. I suspect it’s true. I mean, the Red Sox used to have one black player. They’d get two, they’d trade the old one. Slow white boys were their specialty.

The Sox are getting better, but the Celtics are still one of the palest teams in the NBA.

I composed a blistering mental letter to the Department of Public Works, accusing them of racism in pothole repair. I was glad I wasn’t driving a small foreign car. In the dark I couldn’t keep an eye on the Chevy and watch for craters at the same time. I hit one the size of a canyon and cracked my skull on the padded roof. I didn’t hear any hubcaps fall off, for which I was grateful. Thank God, the guys ahead of me weren’t speeding.

If anything, they were driving a little too lawfully for two gents with a hooker between them. No weaving, no sign of the one-handed wheeling required for groping a thigh or hoisting a beer. I wondered if they’d spotted me, but they didn’t speed up or turn. I dropped back, took a place in line behind a Pontiac Turbo. But I kept my eyes on that Chevy’s tail.

They turned into Franklin Park. I cursed, but followed. Franklin Park was once a well-tended gem in Boston’s chain of Emerald Necklace parks. When the whites left the area the money went with them, and the golf course went to hell and so did the zoo. They keep talking about revivals and kite festivals and bringing the park back, but all the cash that goes into the zoo seems to disappear into some construction company’s pockets, and the golf course clubhouse has been a burnt-out shell for years.

Courting couples wouldn’t dream of nighttime necking in Franklin Park. Franklin Park is where you go to get beaten and raped. Franklin Park is where you go to dump a body out of a car.

Tailing was tougher now because there weren’t many cars on the road. I hung way back, just catching the faintest glimpse of the taillights. There was a chance I’d lose him, because the roads in the park twist and turn. But he kept bearing right, and I was pretty sure he’d come out onto the Arborway at Forest Hills.

There was nothing behind me and then there was. The car must have been cruising without lights. It wasn’t visible until the driver suddenly switched on his brights. They burned in my rearview mirror, momentarily blinding. I squinted and held up my right hand to shield my eyes from the glare. I shouldn’t have taken a hand off the wheel.

It happened fast. I felt the rush of speed as the front bumper hit my rear bumper and carried me forward. I hit the brake, but the cab wasn’t in my control anymore. I couldn’t look at the rearview mirror and drive and stomp the brake and turn the wheel and yell all at the same time. Reflex took over and then I was off the road weaving through high grass, bumping and thrashing, wrestling the wheel. Abruptly, the extra speed was gone. I braked, but the tree in front was too close. I jerked the wheel as hard as I could, counterclockwise, thinking of Gloria’s brand-new cab and Gloria’s three huge brothers. Right before impact, I turned the key. The engine died. The tree was too damn close.

I jerked forward but the harness seat belt did its stuff. The noise was immediate and surprisingly soft, a series of slow-motion crunches rather than one tearing crash. The car and the tree shuddered. The tree stayed upright, protruding from the right front fender. The boom box hit the dash, then the floor. It kept on playing. I thought maybe I could send it to some advertising company, like the one that does those wristwatch commercials: Timex keeps on ticking.

I jerked my head to the right. Taillights—not the Chevy’s—vanished over a rise, and I hoped they were the lights of the bastard who’d forced me off the road. I fumbled under the seat for the hunk of lead pipe most cab drivers keep as standard equipment. It felt cold and heavy.

I turned off the music, killed the headlights. Showing your emergency flashers in Franklin Park is asking for trouble. I sat and breathed, glad of the air, moved my legs, flexed my arms. My right knee ached. My hands tingled but I thought that was just from squeezing the wheel so hard. I could hear the faint hiss of the radiator, nothing else. I might have been on the moon, not in the middle of a city park. I could see the burnt pillars of the clubhouse.

I groped in my purse, found a ballpoint, and scribbled the license number of the gray Caprice on the back of an envelope. My hand shook, but I got it down. I tested out my voice, then I picked up the speaker and called Gloria.

Eight years ago, a drunk hit my cab, racing a red light at Boylston and Tremont. I broke my nose bouncing off the steering wheel, and I’ve been a seatbelt fanatic ever since. My nose had already been broken twice before: once when the little boy next door smacked it with a hammer; once when a felon pushed my face into a wall. My friends say my nose has character.

While I waited for Gloria’s reassuring voice, I found myself rubbing my nose, running my forefinger down the bridge and over the slight bump. I guess I’ve gotten fond of its shape.