Three

I started the motor. Dee pushed back the torn sleeve of her shirt and a thin red trickle oozed down her arm.

“Got a Kleenex or something?” she asked.

“Try the dash.” My pal, Gloria, dispatcher and co-owner of the Green & White Cab Company, stocks the cabs with first-aid kits, but some of the bozos who pilot them steal anything, including Band-Aids.

Dee rummaged in silence for a while, then said, “Here’s one of those things you clean your hands with after you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

“If it’s still in the wrapper, use it,” I advised.

Caught by a traffic light near the Public Garden, I watched as Dee wiped her arm and cranked down the passenger window, presumably to toss the used towelette. Instead she kept a tight grip on it, leaned back, and giggled. The sound echoed off the dividing shield.

“Something funny?” I asked.

“I was just thinking I’d probably get arrested for littering,” she said. “Jesus,” she gasped, squeezing out words between eruptions of laughter, “of all the cabs in all the cities in all the world … Is that how it goes? You know, that line from Casablanca. Bogie says it. ‘Of all the gin joints in all the cities in all the—’”

“‘You had to walk into mine,’” I quoted with feeling. “Calm down.” Some people throw giggle-fits when they realize they won’t have to spend the night in jail. Relief takes mysterious forms.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Carlotta. Not recognizing you right off, I mean. I wasn’t expecting … What I mean”—her laughter took on a bitter, self-mocking tone—” I mean, here I go skulking out of the hotel, all incognito and anonymous, and first thing, right off, I take a cab with you at the wheel. I mean, I’m doing everything just right, you know?”

Her voice had begun to waver.

“Lose a lot of cash?” I asked.

She hesitated. I gave her a raised eyebrow and she apparently decided that saving her ass twice in a single night gave me the right to a question or two.

“Around a hundred bucks,” she muttered. “Maybe two.”

My eyebrow went up another notch. I know what’s in my wallet down to the last dime.

“Back to the hotel?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You staying there? Nice place,” I said.

“Remember my apartment on Mass. Ave.? What a toilet that was.”

“But the parties were good,” I said. You get enough people together in a one-room dive and nobody notices the decor.

We drove another three blocks. The silence grew as heavy and uncomfortable as the heat.

“Carlotta,” Dee said slowly, “that license you showed the cops—are you the kind of investigator who finds people?”

“I’m a private investigator. I do missing persons work.”

“Can you get rid of the cab?”

“I suppose I could,” I said doubtfully.

She was suddenly eager. “Come upstairs. You can help me out. I mean, you’re perfect. You’re like a gift. I’ll pay for your time. I’ll pay for what you lose tonight with the cab. I’ll pay your damn parking ticket. I mean, even if you won’t do it, I’ll pay.”

I pulled up in front of the Four Winds. The doorman hurried down the walk, but Dee waved him off.

My hand hovered at the ignition. I straightened up and turned to look at her. I could feel my jaw muscles clench. “Is Cal with you?” I asked finally, breaking a long pause.

She looked searchingly at my face. I concentrated on a nearby traffic light.

“He left,” she said. “Long time ago.”

“You don’t want me to find him, do you?”

“Hell, no.”