“Naturally.”
“We could live near the ocean and I could run the library and you could stay home and write your book.” She got up and came around the desk. As she did, she picked up the spindle. Dewey tensed slightly at the sight of it in her hand. But she only stood holding it.
“What do you think I should do with this?” she asked.
He relaxed. “Let’s drop it in the Chattahoochee River on our way to lunch.” He took her arm. “Come on, we’ve got lots of planning to do.”
On their way out to his car, she said, “Dewey, do you suppose we could get married?”
“I guess so. Why do you want to?”
She shrugged. “I’ve never been very pretty. Maybe I just want to tell people my name is Elizabeth Taylor.”
Dewey laughed and put his arm around her. “Sure,” he said, “why not?”
They were laughing together as they drove away from the library.
Linda Barnes
Lucky Penny
Linda Barnes introduces a female PI in “Lucky Penny” Like Michael Spraggue, the independently wealthy actor-detective of Barnes s three exceptional novels, Carlotta Carlyle is a six-foot-one-inch Bostonian. The similarity ends there. Carlotta may lack Spraggue’s sophistication, money, and good looks, but the combination of her experience as a Boston city cop and her womanly, if not feminine, instincts makes her a wily, doggedly determined detective. She also happens to be a splendidly fresh storyteller. The prospects at the beginning of her career look excellent.
Linda Barnes came to detective fiction from a background in the theater. In addition to her Spraggue novels, the most recent of which is Cities of the Dead, scheduled for publication in February 1986, she has written two one-act plays. Presently she is at work on a full-length play and a novel featuring Carlotta Carlyle.
Lieutenant Mooney made me dish it all out for the record. He’s a good cop, if such an animal exists. We used to work the same shift before I decided — wrongly — that there was room for a lady PI in this town. Who knows? With this case under my belt, maybe business’ll take a 180-degree spin, and I can quit driving a hack.
See, I’ve already written the official report for Mooney and the cops, but the kind of stuff they wanted: date, place, and time, cold as ice and submitted in triplicate, doesn’t even start to tell the tale. So I’m doing it over again, my way.
Don’t worry, Mooney. I’m not gonna file this one.
The Thayler case was still splattered across the front page of the Boston Globe. I’d soaked it up with my midnight coffee and was puzzling it out — my cab on automatic pilot, my mind on crime — when the mad tea party began.
“Take your next right, sister. Then pull over, and douse the lights. Quick!”
I heard the bastard all right, but it must have taken me thirty seconds or so to react. Something hard rapped on the cab’s dividing shield. I didn’t bother turning around. I hate staring down gun barrels.
I said, “Jimmy Cagney, right? No, your voice is too high. Let me guess, don’t tell me—”
“Shut up!”
“Kill the lights, turn off the lights, okay. But douse the lights? You’ve been tuning in too many old gangster flicks.”
“I hate a mouthy broad,” the guy snarled. I kid you not.
“Broad, I said. Christ! Broad? You trying to grow hair on your balls?”
“Look, I mean it, lady!”
“Lady’s better. Now you wanna vacate my cab and go rob a phone booth?” My heart was beating like a tin drum, but I didn’t let my voice shake, and all the time I was gabbing at him, I kept trying to catch his face in the mirror. He must have been crouching way back on the passenger side. I couldn’t see a damn thing.
“I want all your dough,” he said.
Who can you trust? This guy was a spiffy dresser: charcoal-gray three-piece suit and rep tie, no less. And picked up in front of the swank Copley Plaza. I looked like I needed the bucks more than he did, and I’m no charity case. A woman can make good tips driving a hack in Boston. Oh, she’s gotta take precautions, all right. When you can’t smell a disaster fare from thirty feet, it’s time to quit. I pride myself on my judgment. I’m careful. I always know where the police checkpoints are, so I can roll my cab past and flash the old lights if a guy starts acting up. This dude fooled me cold.
I was ripped. Not only had I been conned, I had a considerable wad to give away. It was near the end of my shift, and like I said, I do all right. I’ve got a lot of regulars. Once you see me, you don’t forget me — or my cab.
It’s gorgeous. Part of my inheritance. A ’59 Chevy, shiny as new, kept on blocks in a heated garage by the proverbial dotty old lady. It’s the pits of the design world. Glossy blue with those giant chromium fins. Restrained decor: just the phone number and a few gilt curlicues on the door. I was afraid all my old pals at the police department would pull me over for minor traffic violations if I went whole hog and painted “Carlotta’s Cab” in ornate script on the hood. Some do it anyway.
So where the hell were all the cops now? Where are they when you need ’em?
He told me to shove the cash through that little hole they leave for the passenger to pass the fare forward. I told him he had it backwards. He didn’t laugh. I shoved bills.
“Now the change,” the guy said. Can you imagine the nerve?
I must have cast my eyes up to heaven. I do that a lot these days.
“I mean it.” He rapped the plastic shield with the shiny barrel of his gun. I checked it out this time. Funny how big a little .22 looks when it’s pointed just right.
I fished in my pockets for change, emptied them.
“Is that all?”
“You want the gold cap on my left front molar?” I said.
“Turn around,” the guy barked. “Keep both hands on the steering wheel. High.”
I heard jingling, then a quick intake of breath.
“Okay,” the сrоок said, sounding happy as a clam, “I’m gonna take my leave—”
“Good. Don’t call this cab again.”
“Listen! The gun tapped. “You cool it here for ten minutes. And I mean frozen. Don’t twitch. Don’t blow your nose. Then take off.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Thank you,” he said politely. The door slammed.
At times like that, you just feel ridiculous. You know the guy isn’t going to hang around, waiting to see whether you’re big on insubordination. But, he might. And who wants to tangle with a .22 slug? I rate pretty high on insubordination. That’s why I messed up as a cop. I figured I’d give him two minutes to get lost. Meantime I listened.
Not much traffic goes by those little streets on Beacon Hill at one o’clock on a Wednesday mom. Too residential. So I could hear the guy’s footsteps tap along the pavement. About ten steps back, he stopped. Was he the one in a million who’d wait to see if I turned around? I heard a funny kind of whooshing noise. Not loud enough to make me jump, and anything much louder than the ticking of my watch would have put me through the roof. Then the footsteps patted on, straight back and out of hearing.
One minute more. The only saving grace of the situation was the location: District One. That’s Mooney’s district. Nice guy to talk to.