A Trouble of Fools Read Online Free Page B

fast. Devens and his buddies see themselves as the last American cabbies. They hang out and booze and moan about how the industry’s going to hell.” She smiled one of her wicked smiles. “Funny, they don’t bitch much to me. I think they figure I might be prejudiced. Can you beat that?”
    Nobody complains much to Gloria. First of all, she’s got a tongue so caustic it ought to be registered with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and second, she’s got those three devoted brothers, each bigger and tougher than the last. The smallest, nicest one got tossed out of the NFL for biting some guy’s ear off, or so the story goes. Her brothers rigged up the room behind the garage with every electric gizmo available. Wires and motors everyplace. There’s even a network of pulleys and ladders and metal bars so she can haul herself up and get to the fridge or the stove. Walking into Gloria’s high-tech room and bath, tucked behind that grimy garage, is like charging from the nineteenth century straight to the twenty-first with no pit stops.
    “What about Pat?” I said. “You ask Pat where Eugene went? He used to be plugged into every little intrigue.”
    “Pat left, Carlotta, maybe six months ago. Cancer. Operation, chemotherapy, the works.”
    “Shit.” Pat almost made the rest of the Old Geezers bearable with his self-deprecating humor and ready smile. “Well, you ask the guys where Eugene went? You ask Boyle?”
    I waited while Gloria took another call. She frowned as she hung up. “Look, Carlotta, I hope this whole thing is a lot of smoke. It could be. I’ve asked all the Geezers about Gene, and I’ll tell you, they’re not worried. They’re, I don’t know, kind of weird and excited and, well, they’re not saying shit.
    He coulda run off with some woman, somebody his sister would have hated on sight, some teenybopper, for Christ’s sake. All I know is he’s gone.”
    “He pick up his last paycheck?”
    Gloria stared down at the desktop. “We owe him two days.”
    “I don’t like that much.”
    “We’ll hold it for him.”
    “He leave anything?”
    The phone bleeped, and Gloria went into her spiel. I’d changed my question by the time she hung up.
    “What did he leave, Gloria?”
    She spent some time rooting for a cookie in her bag, removing a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, then a sack of marshmallows. I doubt she has room in there for keys or a wallet or a comb. “Well,” she said finally, “I didn’t tell his sister about his locker.”
    I just raised my eyebrows.
    “Oh, I don’t know, Carlotta. She looked so, hell, sort of sweet, but, you know, white gloves and a flowered hat. I figured she’d bust it open and find stuff she could use against him for the rest of his natural life. Box of condoms or something sinful, you know?”
    “I wouldn’t hold it against him, Glory.”
    “I don’t have a key.”
    “You got a bolt-cutter?”
    “He comes back, he won’t like it.”
    “He comes back, we’ll buy him a new lock.”
    “Sam won’t like it.”
    She watched me obliquely, with half-closed eyes, when she mentioned Sam’s name. She always does, so I was ready.
    I met her with a blank stare that would have done credit to a cardsharp.
    “Sam won’t know,” I said evenly, “will he? And if he should happen to find out, we’ll snow him somehow.”
    “You will, babe. You’re practically a one-woman blizzard.”
    She
    scribbled Gene’s locker number on a scrap of paper.
    The phones were starting to ring in earnest now, so I left her to it. The mechanic kept a rusty bolt-cutter in a spider webbed corner behind the workbench. He’d flipped the calendar pages as far as April, only five months behind. Maybe the siliconed blonde straddling the red motorcycle was the stuff of his dreams.
    The lockers along the back wall had collected a few more dents, but were otherwise unchanged—khaki-colored and smeared with greasy fingerprints.
    No need for the bolt-cutter. The lock of 8A hung