I took a deep breath, hoping it would have an encore, and pivoted quickly, keeping my head low. Makes you feel stupid when you do that and there’s no one around.
I got out and strolled to the corner, stuck my head around a building kind of cautiously. Nothing, of course.
I backtracked. Ten steps, then whoosh. Along the sidewalk stood one of those new “Keep Beacon Hill Beautiful” trash cans, the kind with the swinging lid. I gave it a shove as I passed. I could just as easily have kicked it; I was in that kind of funk.
Whoosh, it said, just as pretty as could be.
Breaking into one of those trash cans is probably tougher than busting into your local bank vault. Since I didn’t even have a dime left to fiddle the screws on the lid, I was forced to deface city property. I got the damn thing open and dumped the contents on somebody’s front lawn, smack in the middle of a circle of light from one of those snooty Beacon Hill gas street-lamps.
Halfway through the whiskey bottles, wadded napkins, and beer cans, I made my discovery. I was doing a thorough search. If you’re going to stink like garbage anyway, why leave anything untouched, right? So I was opening all the brown bags — you know, the good old brown lunch-and-bottle bags — looking for a clue. My most valuable find so far had been the moldy rind of a bologna sandwich. Then I hit it big: one neatly creased bag stuffed full of cash.
To say I was stunned is to entirely underestimate how I felt as I crouched there, knee-deep in garbage, my jaw hanging wide. I don’t know what I’d expected to find. Maybe the guy’s gloves. Or his hat, if he’d wanted to get rid of it fast in order to melt back into anonymity. I pawed through the rest of the debris. My change was gone.
I was so befuddled I left the trash right on the front lawn. There’s probably still a warrant out for my arrest.
District One headquarters is off the beaten path, over on New Sudbury Street. I would have called first, if I’d had a dime.
One of the few things I’d enjoyed about being a cop was gabbing with Mooney. I like driving a cab better, but, face it, most of my fares aren’t scintillating conversationalists. The Red Sox and the weather usually covers it. Talking to Mooney was so much fun, I wouldn’t even consider dating him. Lots of guys are good at sex, but conversation — now there’s an art form.
Mooney, all six-foot-four, 240 linebacker pounds of him, gave me the glad eye when I waltzed in. He hasn’t given up trying. Keeps telling me he talks even better in bed.
“Nice hat,” was all he said, his big fingers pecking at the typewriter keys.
I took it off and shook out my hair. I wear an old slouch cap when I drive to keep people from saying the inevitable. One jerk even misquoted Yeats at me: “Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your long red hair.” Since I’m seated when I drive, he missed the chance to ask me how the weather is up here. I’m six-one in my stocking feet and skinny enough to make every inch count twice. I’ve got a wide forehead, green eyes, and a pointy chin. If you want to be nice about my nose, you say it’s got character.
Thirty’s still hovering in my future. It’s part of Mooney’s past.
I told him I had a robbery to report and his dark eyes steered me to a chair. He leaned back and took a puff of one of his low-tar cigarettes. He can’t quite give ’em up, but he feels guilty as hell about ’em.
When I got to the part about the bag in the trash, Mooney lost his sense of humor. He crushed a half-smoked butt in a crowded ashtray.
“Know why you never made it as a cop?” he said.
“Didn’t brown-nose enough.”
“You got no sense of proportion! Always going after crackpot stuff!”
“Christ, Mooney, aren’t you interested? Some guy heists a cab, at gunpoint, then tosses the money. Aren’t you the least bit intrigued?”
“I’m a cop, Ms. Carlyle. I’ve got to be more than intrigued. I’ve got murders, bank robberies, assaults—”
“Well, excuse me. I’m just a poor citizen reporting a crime. Trying to help—”
“Want to help, Carlotta? Go away.” He stared at the sheet of paper in the typewriter and lit another cigarette. “Or dig me up something on the Thayler case.”
“You working that sucker?”
“Wish to hell I wasn’t.”
I could see his point. It’s tough enough trying to solve any murder, but when your victim is the Jennifer (Mrs. Justin) Thayler, wife of the famed Harvard Law prof, and the society reporters are breathing down your neck along with the usual crime-beat scribblers, you got a special kind of problem.
“So who did it?” I asked.
Mooney put his size twelves up on his desk. “Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick! How the hell do I know? Some scumbag housebreaker. The lady of the house interrupted his haul. Probably didn’t mean to hit her that hard. He must have freaked when he saw all the blood, ’cause he left some of the ritziest stereo equipment this side of heaven, plus enough silverware to blind your average hophead. He snatched most of old man Thayler’s goddamn idiot artworks, collections, collectibles — whatever the hell you call ’em — which ought to set him up for the next few hundred years, if he’s smart enough to get rid of them.”
“Alarm system?”
“Yeah, they had one. Looks like Mrs. Thayler forgot to turn it on. According to the maid, she had a habit of forgetting just about anything after a martini or three.”
“Think the maid’s in on it?”
“Christ, Carlotta. There you go again. No witnesses. No fingerprints. Servants asleep. Husband asleep. We’ve got word out to all the fences here and in New York that we want this guy. The pawnbrokers know the stuff’s hot. We’re checking out known art thieves and shady museums—”
“Well, don’t let me keep you from your serious business,” I said, getting up to go. “I’ll give you the collar when I find out who robbed my cab.”
“Sure,” he said. His fingers started playing with the typewriter again.
“Wanna bet on it?” Betting s an old custom with Mooney and me.
“I’m not gonna take the few piddling bucks you earn with that ridiculous car.”
“Right you are, boy. I’m gonna take the money the city pays you to be unimaginative! Fifty bucks I nail him within the week.”
Mooney hates to be called “boy.” He hates to be called “unimaginative.” I hate to hear my car called “ridiculous.” We shook hands on the deal. Hard.
Chinatown’s about the only chunk of Boston that’s alive after midnight. I headed over to Yee Hong’s for a bowl of wonton soup.
The service was the usual low-key, slow-motion routine. I used a newspaper as a shield; if you’re really involved in the Wall Street Journal, the casual male may think twice before deciding he’s the answer to your prayers. But I didn’t read a single stock quote. I tugged at strands of my hair, a bad habit of mine. Why would somebody rob me and then toss the money away?
Solution Number One: He didn’t. The trash bin was some mob drop, and the money I’d found in the trash had absolutely nothing to do with the money filched from my cab. Except that it was the same amount — and that was too big a coincidence for me to swallow.
Two: The cash I’d found was counterfeit and this was a clever way of getting it into circulation. Nah. Too baroque entirely. How the hell would the guy know I was the pawing-through-the-trash type?
Three: It was a training session. Some fool had used me to perfect his robbery technique. Couldn’t he learn from TV like the rest of the crooks?
Four: It was a frat hazing. Robbing a hack at gunpoint isn’t exactly in the same league as swallowing goldfish.
I closed my eyes.
My face came to a fortunate halt about an inch above a bowl of steaming broth. That’s when I decided to pack it in and head for home. Wonton soup is lousy for the complexion.