The Oxford Book of American Det (104 page)

I checked out the log I keep in the Chevy, totalled my fares: $4.82 missing, all in change. A very reasonable robbery.

By the time I got home, the sleepiness had passed. You know how it is: one moment you’re yawning, the next your eyes won’t close. Usually happens when my head hits the pillow; this time I didn’t even make it that far. What woke me up was the idea that my robber hadn’t meant to steal a thing. Maybe he’d left me something instead. You know, something hot, cleverly concealed. Something he could pick up in a few weeks, after things cooled off.

I went over that backseat with a vengeance, but I didn’t find anything besides old Kleenex and bent paperclips. My brainstorm wasn’t too clever after all. I mean, if the guy wanted to use my cab as a hiding place, why advertise by pulling a five-and-dime robbery?

I sat in the driver’s seat, tugged my hair, and stewed. What did I have to go on? The memory of a nervous thief who talked like a B movie and stole only change. Maybe a mad toll-booth collector.

I live in a Cambridge dump. In any other city, I couldn’t sell the damned thing if I wanted to. Here, I turn real estate agents away daily. The key to my home’s value is the fact that I can hoof it to Harvard Square in five minutes. It’s a seller’s market for tarpaper shacks within walking distance of the Square. Under a hundred thou only if the plumbing’s outside.

It took me a while to get in the door. I’ve got about five locks on it. Neighbourhood’s popular with thieves as well as gentry. I’m neither. I inherited the house from my weird Aunt Bea, all paid for. I consider the property taxes my rent, and the rent’s getting steeper all the time.

I slammed my log down on the dining room table. I’ve got rooms galore in that old house, rent a couple of them to Harvard students. I’ve got my own office on the second floor, but I do most of my work at the dining room table. I like the view of the refrigerator.

I started over from square one. I called Gloria. She’s the late-night dispatcher for the Independent Taxi Owners Association. I’ve never seen her, but her voice is as smooth as mink oil and I’ll bet we get a lot of calls from guys who just want to hear her say she’ll pick ‘em up in five minutes.

“Gloria, it’s Carlotta.”

“Hi, babe. You been pretty popular today.”

“Was I popular at one-thirty-five this morning?”

“Huh?”

“I picked up a fare in front of the Copley Plaza at one-thirty-five. Did you hand that one out to all comers or did you give it to me solo?”

“Just a sec.” I could hear her charming the pants off some caller in the background.

Then she got back to me.

“I just gave him to you, babe. He asked for the lady in the ‘59 Chevy. Not a lot of those on the road.”

“Thanks, Gloria.”

“Trouble?” she asked.

“Is mah middle name,” I twanged. We both laughed and I hung up before she got a chance to cross-examine me.

So. The robber wanted my cab. I wished I’d concentrated on his face instead of his snazzy clothes. Maybe it was somebody I knew, some jokester in mid-prank. I killed that idea; I don’t know anybody who’d pull a stunt like that, at gunpoint and all. I don’t want to know anybody like that.

Why rob my cab, then toss the dough?

I pondered sudden religious conversion. Discarded it. Maybe my robber was some perpetual screwup who’d ditched the cash by mistake.

Or... maybe he got exactly what he wanted. Maybe he desperately desired my change.

Why?

Because my change was special, valuable beyond its $4.82 replacement cost.

So how would somebody know my change was valuable?

Because he’d given it to me himself, earlier in the day.

“Not bad,” I said out loud. “Not bad.” It was the kind of reasoning they’d bounced me off the police force for, what my so-called superiors termed the “fevered product of an over-imaginative mind.” I leapt at it because it was the only explanation I could think of. I do like life to make some sort of sense.

I pored over my log. I keep pretty good notes: where I pick up a fare, where I drop him, whether he’s a nailer or a radio call.

First, I ruled out all the women. That made the task slightly less impossible: sixteen suspects down from thirty-five. Then I yanked my hair and stared at the blank white porcelain of the refrigerator door. Got up and made myself a sandwich: ham, Swiss cheese, salami, lettuce and tomato, on rye. Ate it. Stared at the porcelain some more until the suspects started coming into focus.

Five of the guys were just plain fat and one was decidedly on the hefty side; I’d felt like telling them all to walk. Might do them some good, might bring on a heart attack.

I crossed them all out. Making a thin person look plump is hard enough; it’s damn near impossible to make a fatty look thin.

Then I considered my regulars: Jonah Ashley, a tiny blond southern gent; muscle-bound “just-call-me-Harold” at Longfellow Place; Dr. Homewood getting his daily ferry from Beth Israel to MGH; Marvin of the gay bars; and Professor Dickerman, Harvard’s answer to Berkeley’s sixties radicals.

I crossed them all off. I could see Dickerman holding up the First Filthy Capitalist Bank, or disobeying civilly at Seabrook, even blowing up an oil company or two. But my mind boggled at the thought of the great liberal Dickerman robbing some poor cabbie. It would be like Robin Hood joining the sheriff of Nottingham on some particularly rotten peasant swindle. Then they’d both rape Maid Marian and go off pals together.

Dickerman
was
a lousy tipper. That ought to be a crime.

So what did I have? Eleven out of sixteen guys cleared without leaving my chair. Me and Sherlock Holmes, the famous armchair detectives.

I’m stubborn; that was one of my good cop traits. I stared at that log till my eyes bugged out. I remembered two of the five pretty easily; they were handsome and I’m far from blind. The first had one of those elegant bony faces and far-apart eyes. He was taller than my bandit. I’d ceased eyeballing him when I noticed the ring on his left hand; I never fuss with the married kind. The other one was built, a weight lifter. Not an Arnold Schwarzenegger extremist, but built. I think I’d have noticed that bod on my bandit. Like I said, I’m not blind.

That left three.

Okay. I closed my eyes. Who had I picked up at the Hyatt on Memorial Drive? Yeah, that was the salesman guy, the one who looked so uncomfortable that I’d figured he’d been hoping to ask his cabbie for a few pointers concerning the best skirt-chasing areas in our fair city. Too low a voice. Too broad in the beam.

The log said I’d picked up a hailer at Kenmore Square when I’d let out the salesman.

Ah, yes, a talker. The weather, mostly. Don’t you think it’s dangerous for you to be driving a cab? Yeah, I remembered him, all right: a fatherly type, clasping a briefcase, heading to the financial district. Too old.

Down to one. I was exhausted but not the least bit sleepy. All I had to do was remember who I’d picked up on Beacon near Charles. A hailer. Before five o’clock, which was fine by me because I wanted to be long gone before rush hour gridlocked the city, I’d gotten onto Storrow and taken him along the river into Newton Center.

Dropped him off at the Bay Bank Middlesex, right before closing time. It was coming back. Little nervous guy. Pegged him as an accountant when I’d let him out at the bank. Measly, undernourished soul. Skinny as a rail, stooped, with pits left from teenage acne.

Shit. I let my head sink down onto the dining room table when I realised what I’d done. I’d ruled them all out, every one. So much for my brilliant deductive powers.

I retired to my bedroom, disgusted. Not only had I lost $4.82 in assorted alloy metals, I was going to lose fifty dollars to Mooney. I stared at myself in the mirror, but what I was really seeing was the round hole at the end of a .22, held in a neat, gloved hand.

Somehow, the gloves made me feel better. I’d remembered another detail about my piggy-bank robber. I consulted the mirror and kept the recall going. A hat. The guy wore a hat. Not like my cap, but like a hat out of a forties gangster flick. I had one of those: I’m a sucker for hats. I plunked it on my head, jamming my hair up underneath—and I drew in my breath sharply.

A shoulder-padded jacket, a slim build, a low slouched hat. Gloves. Boots with enough heel to click as he walked away. Voice? High. Breathy, almost whispered. Not unpleasant. Accentless. No Boston r.

I had a man’s jacket and a couple of ties in my closet. Don’t ask. They may have dated from as far back as my ex-husband, but not necessarily so. I slipped into the jacket, knotted the tie, tilted the hat down over one eye.

I’d have trouble pulling it off. I’m skinny, but my build is decidedly female. Still, I wondered—enough to traipse back downstairs, pull a chicken leg out of the fridge, go back to the log, and review the feminine possibilities. Good thing I did.

Everything clicked. One lady fit the bill exactly: mannish walk and clothes, tall for a woman. And I was in luck. While I’d picked her up in Harvard Square, I’d dropped her at a real address, a house in Brookline: 782 Mason Terrace, at the tope of Corey Hill.

Jojo’s garage opens at seven. That gave me a big two hours to sleep.

I took my beloved car in for some repair work it really didn’t need yet and sweet-talked Jojo into giving me a leaner. I needed a hack, but not mine. Only trouble with that Chevy is it’s too damn conspicuous.

I figured I’d lose way more than fifty bucks staking out Mason Terrace. I also figured it would be worth it to see old Mooney’s face.

She was regular as clockwork, a dream to tail. Eight-thirty-seven every morning, she got a ride to the Square with a next-door neighbour. Took a cab home at five-fifteen.

A working woman. Well, she couldn’t make much of a living from robbing hacks and dumping the loot in the garbage.

I was damn curious by now. I knew as soon as I looked her over that she was the one, but she seemed so blah, so normal. She must have been five-seven or -eight, but the way she stooped, she didn’t look tall. Her hair was long and brown with a lot of blond in it, the kind of hair that would have been terrific loose and wild, like a horse’s mane.

She tied it back with a scarf. A brown scarf. She wore suits. Brown suits. She had a tiny nose, brown eyes under pale eyebrows, a sharp chin. I never saw her smile. Maybe what she needed was a shrink, not a session with Mooney. Maybe she’d done it for the excitement. God knows, if I had her routine, her job, I’d probably be dressing up like King Kong and assaulting skyscrapers.

See, I followed her to work. It wasn’t even tricky. She trudged the same path, went in the same entrance to Harvard Yard, probably walked the same number of steps every morning. Her name was Marcia Heidegger and she was a secretary in the admissions office of the college of fine arts.

I got friendly with one of her co-workers.

There was this guy typing away like mad at a desk in her office. I could just see him from the side window. He had grad student written all over his face. Longish wispy hair. Gold-rimmed glasses. Serious. Given to deep sighs and bright velour V necks.

Probably writing his thesis on ‘Courtly Love and the Theories of Chretien de Troyes.’

I latched onto him at Bailey’s the day after I’d tracked Lady Heidegger to her Harvard lair.

Too bad Roger was so short. Most short guys find it hard to believe that I’m really trying to pick them up. They look for ulterior motives. Not the Napoleon type of short guy; he assumes I’ve been waiting years for a chance to dance with a guy who doesn’t have to bend to stare down my cleavage. But Roger was no Napoleon. So I had to engineer things a little.

I got into line ahead of him and ordered, after long deliberation, a BLT on toast. While the guy made it up and shoved it on a plate with three measly potato chips and a sliver of pickle you could barely see, I searched through my wallet, opened my change purse, counted out silver, got to $1.60 on the last five pennies. The counterman sang out,

“That’ll be a buck eighty-five.” I pawed through my pockets, found a nickel, two pennies. The line was growing restive. I concentrated on looking like a damsel in need of a knight, a tough task for a woman over six feet.

Roger (I didn’t know he was Roger then) smiled ruefully and passed over a quarter. I was effusive in my thanks. I sat at a table for two, and when he’d gotten his tray (ham-and-cheese and a strawberry ice cream soda), I motioned him into my extra chair.

He was a sweetie. Sitting down, he forgot the difference in our height, and decided I might be someone he could talk to. I encouraged him. I hung shamelessly on his every word. A Harvard man, imagine that. We got around slowly, ever so slowly, to his work at the admissions office. He wanted to duck it and talk about more important issues, but I persisted. I’d been thinking about getting a job at Harvard, possibly in admissions. What kind of people did he work with? Were they congenial? What was the atmosphere like? Was it a big office? How many people? Men? Women? Any soulmates? Readers? Or just, you know, office people?

According to him, every soul he worked with was brain dead. I interrupted a stream of complaint with “Gee, I know somebody who works for Harvard. I wonder if you know her.”

“It’s a big place,” he said, hoping to avoid the whole endless business.

“I met her at a party. Always meant to look her up.” I searched through my bag, found a scrap of paper and pretended to read Marcia Heidegger’s name off it.

“Marcia? Geez, I work with Marcia. Same office.”

“Do you think she likes her work? I mean I got some strange vibes from her,” I said. I actually said ‘strange vibes’ and he didn’t laugh his head off. People in the Square say things like that and other people take them seriously.

His face got conspiratorial, of all things, and he leaned closer to me.

“You want it, I bet you could get Marcia’s job.”

“You mean it?” What a compliment—a place for me among the brain dead.

“She’s gonna get fired if she doesn’t snap out of it.”

“Snap out of what?”

“It was bad enough working with her when she first came over. She’s one of those crazy neat people, can’t stand to see papers lying on a desktop, you know? She almost threw out the first chapter of my thesis!”