Hardware by Linda Barnes

morning.”
    â€œGet in your car and come over. Now. You’ll need a cab for this, a radio.”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œDon’t shout at me.”
    â€œGloria, should I wear my ball gown?”
    â€œDress for driving.”
    â€œYou don’t need a cabbie bad enough to pay P.I. rates.”
    â€œMarvin’s in trouble.”
    Marvin is Gloria’s largest and oldest brother. He is trouble, but I didn’t say that to Gloria.
    â€œI can’t raise him on the radio,” she said. Either she’d turned the music down a notch or I was getting used to its roar.
    â€œMarvin’s piloting a cab?” Far as I knew, Marvin’s cabbie license had expired for good during his last stint on the state. No convicted felons driving cabs in the Commonwealth.
    Unconvicted ones, yeah.
    â€œI wouldn’t have let him drive,” Gloria explained, “except two more guys quit on me today. There wasn’t anybody else.”
    â€œWhat about me?”
    Silence.
    â€œGloria—”
    â€œSam told me to keep you off the graveyard shift.”
    â€œSince when—”
    â€œListen up, Carlotta. I just got a call here, anonymous, saying eight twenty-one’s in trouble, somewhere in Franklin Park.”
    â€œEight twenty-one probably broke down. You send your own brother out in that clunker?” I wondered whose tag Marvin was hacking on. Probably one of his brothers’, both of whom have failed to score in the courts, for undefined reasons. God knows, it’s not that they haven’t done anything illegal.
    â€œI mean real trouble,” Gloria insisted.
    â€œGet the cops.”
    â€œLast call I sent Marvin on was Franklin Hills,” she said, naming a Dorchester housing project I wouldn’t go near on a bet.
    â€œPay phone or apartment?” I asked.
    â€œCorner.”
    â€œGreat.”
    â€œMarvin can handle himself.”
    â€œSure he can. Call the cops.”
    â€œThey’ll shut me down, Carlotta, using an ex-con for a jockey. I’m hiring you instead. As of right now.”
    â€œTo do exactly what?”
    â€œCheck out Franklin Park.”
    â€œIt’s one hell of a big place.”
    â€œFind Marvin.”
    â€œDid Mr. Anonymous sound familiar? Friend of Marvin’s?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWould Marvin try to scam you?”
    â€œCarlotta, please. Get over here.”
    â€œGo trolling through Franklin Park at four in the morning. That’s what you want me to do.” Sam will be ecstatic, I thought, and the idea of his anger made the job more attractive. The nerve, ordering Gloria to keep me safe.
    â€œI wouldn’t ask except for my brother,” she said. “You bring your gun, hear?”
    I hung up and got dressed. No jeans when I drive; there’s a dress code. I stepped into loose elastic-waist sweats, a matching long-tailed shirt. If it doesn’t need ironing and it’s cheap, I can put up with anything the fashion industry dishes out.
    I sped downstairs, unlocked the lower left-hand drawer of my desk, unwound my Smith & Wesson .38 from its undershirt wrapping, and loaded it with slugs kept in separate quarters. I shoved it into the waist of my slacks, icy against my back. When I threw on my wool car coat, the gun became unreachable, so I relocated it deep in my right-hand pocket. I ponytailed my hair with my hands and managed to subdue it under a black watch cap. Headed out the door.
    In the weeks since the drive-by, Gloria had never once mentioned sending a cab to J.P. in the middle of the night to collect me and Sam and the computer equipment. I’d have thought that would pique her curiosity, and once Gloria’s curiosity is piqued, you’re better off just telling her what she wants to know.
    Maybe she’d tackled Sam about it; maybe he’d manufactured a successful lie. It must have been a good one; Gloria keeps her ear to the ground.
    If she thought the