CHAPTER 16

“So how the hell’s your knee?”

Those were the first words out of Gloria’s mouth when I limped into G&W’s late that night, which is why I adore that woman. None of this “What did you do to my cab?” business. No bemoaning what can’t be changed.

She had the phone tucked between her shoulder and one of her chins and was busily scribbling an address down with one hand and hanging onto the microphone with the other.

“Get me a cab at 124 Emory,” she crooned into the mike. “Come on, boys, pick it up now, pick it up. And be careful. I understand it’s slippery at the corner of Comm. Ave. and Allston.”

I grinned. In cab talk, “slippery” means the cops have set up a speed trap.

A metallic voice responded: “335, Gloria, I’ve got it. Five minutes.”

“Sit down,” she said, replacing the receiver. “Take the weight off.”

I sank into the guest chair, forgetting for once to check for cockroaches. I hate the idea of sitting on a cockroach. Nothing squished beneath me.

“Knee’s not bad,” I said. “But I wish I’d been driving my own car.”

“Wishes don’t get you shit, you know,” Gloria said, punching buttons on her console and biting into a Hostess cupcake. “It happened. It’s over. You’re sitting here, not lying in some hospital, so you be grateful.”

Gloria has a certain authority when she talks like that. I’ve never heard her version of the car crash that put her in the wheelchair, but she and hospitals are no strangers.

“You want a cupcake?” she asked. She had a whole carton of them, twelve packages, two to a package, squatting on one corner of her desk. “They got cream in the middle,” she said.

“No, thanks.” Normally I love junk food, but I can’t eat with Gloria. I just sit back and marvel.

“The insurance is paid up,” she said, separating cellophane from the chocolate frosting with the squiggle on top. “You’re bonded. I hate having a cab off the road, but Sam said to go ahead and lease one. Hackney Bureau’ll transfer the medallion.”

“You told Sam,” I said.

“She had to, didn’t she?” The voice came from the doorway leading to the garage, but I didn’t have to turn around to see who it was.

Not only hadn’t I looked for cockroaches, I hadn’t checked for fancy cars outside. He couldn’t have been standing there long. I’d have felt his eyes.

“Hi, Sam,” I said.

He looked like he’d stopped by on his way to someplace else, wearing an expensive gray suit, a white shirt, and a patterned tie with glints of blue and green. I didn’t notice the clothes right away. When I did, I wondered if there was some woman waiting for him out in that Mercedes or BMW, and I swallowed hard.

Sam’s not stop-your-heart gorgeous, not like Geoffrey Reardon, but he’s the right height and the right build. He’s got a strong, bony face, dark eyes and hair, a stubborn chin, and he does something to me, just standing across a room, that most men can’t do no matter how close they come.

“Carlotta,” he said. It came out flat, an acknowledgment of my presence, nothing more.

“Sorry about the cab,” I said.

He had Gloria’s big ledger under his arm. He’s the partner who keeps the books, and he stops in from time to time to pick up the records. I shot a reproachful glance at Gloria, who could have warned me. She was communing with Hostess.

“Nice blouse,” he said. I couldn’t remember what I was wearing. I knew I’d changed at home after substituting hot compresses for the longed-for bath. I remembered feeding the cat, the bird, admiring one of Roz’s incomprehensible paintings. My turquoise shirt, that’s what I’d chosen. Tucked into black jeans.

“Nice suit,” I said.

His face had that clean, just-shaven glow, and I thought I could catch a hint of his after-shave, but it was probably just my nose playing tricks—and my memory.

To tell the truth, standing in the doorway under the light from the bare hanging bulb, he looked like a goddamn knight in shining armor. But did I feel like a damsel in distress? Nope. We six-foot-one-inch women rarely do. Glass slippers don’t come in size eleven.

There was one of those silences. I could hear Gloria demolishing cupcakes. Sam and I have too much to say to each other, and not enough. I left a message on his answering machine six months ago. A very inadequate message.

“Maybe you’re getting to be bad luck,” he said.

“I hope not,” I said. “I don’t mean to be.”

More silence.

“Your cop buddies gonna get the guy who hit you?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “You know how it is.”

“If you got a license plate, I know somebody who can run it down,” he said.

Sam Gianelli is the son of a Boston Mob boss. He has ways of getting information that I don’t even want to think about. If your name is Gianelli in this town, people tell you things. Strangers fall on their faces doing you favors.

“I’d like to do it,” he said.

Maybe he had a couple more lines at the corners of his eyes. Maybe I was just searching for flaws.

Gloria stopped chewing long enough to say, “Of course she got a plate. She’s got good eyes and she uses them. Here, write it down on this.” She stuck a stub of pencil in my hand and slid a card across her desk. I wrote down the number of the gray Caprice, feeling like I ought to explain that it wasn’t really the car that had run me off the road, knowing that I didn’t want to start a discussion. Not about Mooney’s problems. Not with Sam.

Gloria clicked her tongue impatiently, waiting for me to hand the card to Sam, or for him to cross the room and take it. We must have been eight, ten feet apart.

“Well, shit,” she said finally, reaching for the card and reading it aloud. “It’s 486-ITO. Got that? Mass. plate, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Sam said.

“Thanks,” I said.

He turned and went out the door, and I started breathing again.

The phone rang. Gloria scribbled, sang an order over the mike to pick up Dr. Bennett on Peterborough Street. She blew cupcake crumbs off her desk. Then she motored her chair halfway around the desk, leaned forward, and tapped me on the shoulder. “Wake up,” she said sharply. “That wasn’t so damn bad, was it? You could have moved your ass and given him the damn card, you know?”

“You could have told me he was here, Glory.”

“Yeah, but then you’d have walked out, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Can’t hide from him all your life, babe.”

“Who’s hiding?” I said.

Gloria shot me a cream-filled smile. She had this incurable, romantic, happily-ever-after streak that fascinates me. I mean, if working at Green & White Cab in a wheelchair doesn’t knock that kind of crap out of you, what will?

“Look,” I said. “I want a cab.”

“Shit,” she said. “One thing about you, Carlotta, you never quit.”