The Snake Tattoo by Linda Barnes Page A

three brothers, each bigger and meaner than the last, all protective as hell of their sister. Leroy’s my favorite. The youngest and smallest, rumor says he got kicked out of the NFL for biting some guy’s ear off.
    Leroy blows a mean blues harmonica, and Gloria owns an old guitar she never plays—an Epiphone that won’t stay in tune more than a minute at a time. So Leroy and I left Gloria to juggle the phones, adjourned to her high-tech room-and-bath behind the garage, and jammed till my fingers bled. The action on that Epiphone is brutal.
    I took off my gloves and explored the tips of my left-hand fingers with my thumb. My calluses aren’t what they used to be.
    I half hoped Sam Gianelli would drop by the garage. He hadn’t, which was probably a good thing. I have mixed—very mixed—feelings about Sam.
    Sam Gianelli owns half of Green & White Cab. We have history—the ancient kind from before I got married, back when I was just a kid hacking part time, and dumb enough to sleep with the boss.
    We tried again six months ago. It didn’t work out. For a lot of reasons.
    That old Willie Brown blues ran through my mind again:
    Can’t tell my future, Lord, I can’t tell my past.
    Maybe the line was really “Can’t tell my future, Lord, if I can’t tell my past.” I’d have to see if I could find it on a record. It’s hard to understand the lyrics on some of those old-time recordings.
    Sam is six-three and well-built, with a bony face and a stubborn jaw. My spine aches when he walks into a room.
    If I’m physically attracted to a guy, if I breathe a little faster when he’s near, it’s practically a disaster warning. When that red flag goes up, I know I ought to run, not walk, to the nearest exit. Reverse chemistry, I call it. Whatever it is, I’ve got it with Sam.
    He’s the absentee partner in G&W. Gloria’s the other half, and a more unlikely partner for gorgeous Sam Gianelli you’d need to scour the city to find. Gloria is a self-proclaimed “three-fer” who swears she’s going to run for City Council some day and get elected so all the white males can say they’ve got a black, a woman, and a handicapped person on the job.
    She’d get the overweight vote, too.
    Gloria is not overweight through any metabolic trick. She’s fat because she eats nonstop, junk food only. She’s the world Tootsie Roll-eating champion, and she’s gaining on the record for most Hostess Cupcakes consumed in a single day. Why she seems as cheerful as she does is a mystery to me. If I’d been paralyzed from the waist down in a car crash at nineteen, I’d be damn bitter. Maybe Gloria was, too, for a while, but now you can’t even think about self-pity and Gloria at the same time. Maybe she takes it out in eating. I don’t know.
    Gloria is the queen bee of G&W. She rules the roost, which fronts on the less-than-scenic Mass. Pike in Allston, nestled in the middle of a row of cut-rate auto-glass replacement shops and used rug stores.
    G&W’s heartbeat issues from an ugly rectangular cell whose most attractive item of decor is a pegboard dangling with keys. It makes Geoff Reardon’s office at the Emerson look like a Better Homes and Gardens spread. The floor is wavy linoleum, curled at one edge. The walls are army-surplus-green cinder block. A calendar, the gift of some defunct insurance company, livens up one wall. The matchstick blinds are broken. The file cabinets are gray and dented. Light is provided by unshaded hanging bulbs.
    I don’t go to Green & White for the atmosphere. I go to work, or I go to visit Gloria.
    She has the world’s most spectacular voice—mellow, rich, and deep, like a gospel singer’s. I didn’t meet her until long after I’d heard her belt out names and addresses over my cab radio. Green & White gets a lot of business from men who just want to hear that