The Chevy Cavalier growls at the curb.
A man drags a hyper pit bull named Diablo into the house.
It's dark. About 10 p.m. Allentown.
Light streams from the Cavalier's open driver's side door.
And Tara Dunleavy stands at the gate, her eyes darting around. She carries a pizza and wings and nothing else.
Moments pass. Insects buzz. A woman emerges.
"Hi!" she calls out as she moves down the walkway. "The dogs are inside!"
Ms. Dunleavy reads the total from the receipt and passes a grease-stained cardboard box over the fence.
"Thank you!" the woman says.
"Have a nice night!"
One delivery down.
She scrambles back into the Cavalier with a wad of cash, which she quickly stashes in the center console. She doesn't want anyone to see she has it. Not out here. Not at this hour.
"I didn't like the side of that house," she says. "It's an open lot with high brush."
From Jucunda Street, it's onto the next delivery and the next, in a job where each order comes with the unknown. The last transaction went well, as have hundreds before. But Ms. Dunleavy knows it doesn't always work that way.
At least four pizza delivery drivers have been attacked, robbed or shot in the region in recent weeks, news of which sent a scare to fellow drivers and prompted city police to issue a word of caution to them as they make their nightly rounds. Two of the assaults happened in the Hilltop neighborhoods where Ms. Dunleavy's shop, Paisano's on Warrington Avenue, serves its food.
A delivery driver from another shop told police that a pair of young gunmen robbed him just after midnight July 6 while delivering to Knox Avenue in Carrick. While speaking with one man on the porch, police said, a second man shoved him from behind, stuck a pistol in his face and took his cash.
Three days later in nearby Mount Oliver, two men told a driver, who was waiting by his car, that they had ordered food but pretended they didn't have enough money to pay for it. As they turned to walk away, one of them punched the driver in the face while the other held him at gunpoint. The driver relinquished the money, and the pair darted off.
Two days later, the Hill District. A driver was robbed and shot in the stairwell of an apartment. And on Monday, a group of teens emerged from between vacant homes in Braddock and rifled through a driver's pockets. He noticed one had a gun, tussled with him for it and was shot in the biceps, police said.
Ms. Dunleavy, 24, doesn't want hear it. She knows her job is dangerous. She says she hardly thinks of it, but it's obvious she does, by the way she glances around her, by the way she leaves her car door open for a quick getaway, by the way she avoids alleyways after dusk. Porch lights are a must. There are some places she won't go at all.
"If I don't want to do it all I have to do is say so," she says.
She climbs into the turquoise Cavalier -- "a little beater box, but it gets me around" -- moving a child's car seat and a motorcycle helmet from the back. A key chain labeled "Mom" dangles from the ignition. She's got three little ones at her home in Carrick, and she kisses them goodbye every afternoon before she leaves for her 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift.
"I'm a mom," she says. "My life is way more important than a bag of food."
About 7:15 Wednesday night she gets a call for a medium pizza, wings and hoagies on Industry Street, a narrow, one-way road in Allentown. She parks on the side of the street opposite a group of men lounging on a stoop. Rap music wafts from their porch. She's unassuming, wearing jeans and a tank top, her long hair swept up in a headband. She climbs a short set of stairs, then passes the food to a woman behind the door. Another delivery without incident.
She keeps her car close, keys in hand, headlights on at night.
A delivery driver off and on since she was 16, Ms. Dunleavy considers herself lucky she hasn't been robbed. Neither have her brother and mother, who also used to deliver. But the business is full of war stories.
"I've had a gun to my head twice," said Chuck Morgan, a 19-year veteran who stands outside Paisano's. "You give them what they want and keep your mouth shut."
Ms. Dunleavy is off to a delivery in Arlington. La Roux's "Bulletproof" sounds from her radio. She's not bulletproof, but leery of carrying a gun. She's considering applying for a permit to carry, on a friend's urging.
"I'm sort of thinking about it," she said. "If it came down to protecting myself, it would be handy."
After every delivery, it's back to the shop to return the money.
"If you don't come back, something's wrong," she said.
The rule around here is not to carry much cash, and don't carry it on you. Sometimes customers will ask if a driver has change for a large bill while placing their order. That's a red flag.
"If it's a $14 order, you'll have change for a 20," Ms. Dunleavy said. "You never have more than $100 on you."
That's enough to make a driver an easy target, said Lt. Daniel Herrmann of the city's major crimes section. The robberies of late probably aren't linked, despite their similarities, he said.
"They're more premeditated robberies," Lt. Herrmann said. "They know [drivers] carry at least enough change for a 20. They know they'll get at least a couple dollars off them."
Ms. Dunleavy drives up hills and down narrow streets, past overgrown lots and shadowy figures, to a house in Alice Street in Carrick, where someone has ordered a 16-cut pizza, with mushrooms. When she pulls up, she realizes it's an apartment.
"I never go into apartment buildings," she says. "I prefer they come out."
And they do, summoned to the door by a phone call from Ms. Dunleavy. She always takes a phone number, and when in doubt, she calls it.
She's on her way back to the shop, her windows rolled down, the balmy night air streaming in. It's about 10:30 p.m., and the night has been calm.
There are two hours left to go.
First Published: July 16, 2010, 8:00 a.m.
