A Trouble of Fools Read Online Free Page A

breeze. At the beginning, I guess I went out of pity, but Gloria wasn’t buying. She sat in that chair like a queen born to a throne, and she ruled the G&W kingdom with a gloved iron fist.
    She never took lunch or dinner breaks, because she ate all day long, maintaining her bulk while sitting by the phones.
    Now I’m a snacker, but I’ve never seen anything like Gloria.
    She packs this huge handbag every morning with stuff that would make a nutritionist gag. She is Hostess’s best client, bar none. If she ever goes off the deep end, she can use the Twinkie defense.
    “Hey, Glory,” I said. She lifted her face from a bite of cream-filled cupcake, and flashed me a grin. She looked fatter than ever, her face so smooth she seemed ageless. “Hey, babe,” she said.
    I parked myself in a faded orange plastic chair, first checking for roach occupation. “Thanks for sending Miss Devens by.”
    “Just paying off, babe.”
    “We’re square by now.”
    After graduating U. Mass., I’d given up hacking and joined the Police Department. I’d been able to do Gloria a favor or two.
    She grinned wider and said, “Who’s counting?”
    “Got a minute?”
    The phone rang. She scratched a number on a pad, pressed a button on her microphone, and sang out, “Kelton Street. “Who’s got it?”
    Static, then a tinny voice filled the room. “Scotty. Park and Beacon.”
    “One-eighty-five,” she said. “Third floor. Guy named Booth. Got it?”
    “Copy.”
    “Out.”
    “I can chat between calls, Carlotta,” she said. “Sunny day like this. Warm. The folks are walking.”
    “Business okay?”
    She held up a plump hand and waved it back and forth.
    Not many people know Gloria’s a full partner in G&W. Sam Gianelli, the smooth-talking son of a Boston mob figure, is Gloria’s other half. Sam, who specializes in running small businesses into the ground, had taken her on to save himself the embarrassment of losing another company, pumping cash from her insurance settlement into G&W’s collapsing veins, building the wheelchair-accessible room in the back as part of the deal.
    Possibly the smartest day’s work he’d ever done.
    Sam and I had history. He was the reason I looked on my visit to the garage with apprehension. I’d dated him. Even learned something from the experience: Never sleep with the boss.
    “Bet you didn’t come by to ask if business was okay,” she said. “What’s up?”
    “Sam’s not here, is he?”
    “You care?”
    Everybody wants to be a psychologist. “Eugene Devens,”
    I said flatly. “Off on a toot?”
    She said, “Shit, Carlotta, I don’t like this business with Gene. Didn’t even bring his cab in. Left it down by the docks, and they towed it to that damn Cambridge yard.”
    “The one with the two Dobermans?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Maybe he scampered so he wouldn’t get stuck for the tow fee.”
    Gloria shrugged her massive shoulders. She can move fine from the waist up.
    “Ever do anything like that before?” I asked.
    “Reliable, on the whole.”
    “So what do you think?”
    Gloria finished her cupcake, and carefully swept the crumbs off her desk to feed the creatures below. “Seen the sister?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Maybe she made him go to church twice every Sunday.
    Maybe he just kicked over the traces,” Gloria said. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
    “Is he thick with anybody here? Anybody he’d move in with?”
    “They’re all thick,” she said. “More ways than one. You remember the crowd he hung out with.”
    I smiled. “The Old Geezers, right? Isn’t that what we called them?”
    “Right. Eugene Devens, Sean Boyle, Joe Fergus, Dan O’Keefe, Pat O’Grady, all the old Irish coots. Joe Costello’s in with them, but I don’t know what kind of Irish name Costello is. They’re tighter now, what with all the new cabbies. I mean for the Geezers, the Russian Jews were bad enough. Now they’ve got Haitians, and Jamaicans, and the Afghans are moving in