Nobody's Angel (2 page)

Lenny took both hands off the steering wheel and waved them around for me to see. I could almost hear his gravelly voice, "Look, Ma, no hands." He was obviously having a good time and he was probably rubbing it in a little. I was driving a three-year-old beater with 237,000 miles on it. If I took my hands off the wheel I'd end up bathing with the zebra mussels, and Lenny knew it.

He put one hand back on the wheel and turned the other thumb down. I pointed a thumb in the same direction. It had been that kind of night. I held an imaginary cup of coffee to my lips and took a sip. Lenny shook his head, then laid his head on a pillow he made with one hand. He waved one last time, then his inside light went out and his cab dropped back.

"What was all that?" my passenger asked as I sped back to 55.

"Just your typical bitching and moaning," I explained.

"It must be kind of scary."

"What's that?"

"All those drivers."

"What drivers?"

"The ones getting shot. It must be kind of weird."

I'll bet, I thought, and I glanced in the mirror. He was slouched in the corner of the seat, looking towards the lake. His face had lost some battle years ago and was now dotted with scores of tiny craters. His hair was long and streaked with grey. He was too old to be dressed in trendy black, to be nightclubbing on a quiet Tuesday night. He was the kind of guy who would always go home alone.

"What's your line?" I asked.

"I don't follow you."

"What sort of work you do?"

"Graphic design."

"Now that sounds scary."

He laughed. "Yeah, but nobody shoots us."

"Probably all shoot yourselves out of boredom," I said.

"Hey, what's the problem, man?" The guy sat up straight and gave me a hard look.

"Just making conversation," I said, the most easygoing guy in the world.

I took the Drive until it ended, then followed Hollywood into Ridge. Past Clark Street, Ridge narrows and winds along, following some old trail. A few blocks later, parked cabs lined both curbs. Lenny wasn't the only one who'd given up early.

A skinny guy with a beaded seat cushion under his arm was leaning against one of the taxis. He looked my way and drew a circle in the air. A nothing night, I deciphered the code.  I waved and tapped the horn as I passed.

The meter was at $12.80 when I stopped just shy of the Evanston line. The guy handed me a ten and three singles and got out without a word.

"Thanks, pal. I'll buy the kid a shoelace."

Everybody wants a driver who speaks English until you actually say something.

A few years earlier I would have cruised Rogers Park looking for a load. It had been one of Chicago's great cab neighborhoods. There'd always been somebody heading downtown.

There were still plenty of decent folks around, black and white, but just to be on the safe side, I turned my toplight off, flipped my NOT FOR HIRE sign down and double-checked the door locks.

The sign didn't necessarily mean what it said, and the decent folks usually knew to wave anyway. But with the sign down, I could pass the riff-raff by without worrying about complaints.

I drifted east, working my way to Sheridan Road, and then headed south back towards the city.

On Broadway, I spotted Tony Golden locking up his Checker. I tapped the horn. He looked my way and pointed both thumbs straight down.

A few minutes later, in the heart of Uptown, a couple staggered out from beneath the marquee of a boarded-up theater. I slowed to look them over, then stopped.

The woman opened the door behind me. Her blouse was undone. Someone had been in a big hurry and popped all the buttons. She'd tucked the tail into her skirt, but when she leaned into the cab, I had a clear view of some very inviting cleavage.

"Hello," I said.

"You go Gary?" she asked. She didn't sound like she'd been in country too long. She was small and dark, with high cheekbones and probably more than a trace of Indian blood. One tiny brown hand rested on the back of my seat.

"Indiana?" I asked.

She nodded and her breath reached me and suddenly she wasn't pretty at all.

"Sure," I said. Gary was thirty miles. I pushed a button to lower the driver's window and took a deep breath of city air.

"How much dollars?" she wanted to know.

"Say forty bucks." I gave her the slow-night discount. "But I gotta have the money up front." And I would have to keep the window cracked all the way.

She turned to her partner and spoke in Spanish. He was a sawed-off guy wearing cowboy boots that still left him well below average height. He pushed her out of the way and leaned in the door. His breath wasn't any better. He could barely stand. "Fucking thief," he said, and slammed the door.

I coasted a few feet then sat waiting for the light to change. In the mirror I watched the pair stumble up the block to a big, beat-up Oldsmobile, a gas guzzler if there ever was one. They were a couple of drunks left over from some after-work saloon and now little man was going to drive the lady all-the-way-the-hell to Indiana. When they got there, their breath would mix nicely with Gary's coke-furnace air.

The light changed and I started to roll.

"Cab!"

Two guys in business suits bolted out of a nearby nightclub. I stopped halfway into the intersection. A car trapped behind me blasted its horn.

The first one in the door was a kid of about thirty. He was lean and trim with short, sandy hair. He wore a pale pinstripe suit. Some sort of junior executive, I decided. The second guy looked more like the genuine article. He was ten or fifteen years older and somewhat heavier, with lines in his face and grey in his hair. His suit was a deep, dark blue with tight, gold stripes.

"Jesus Christ, get us the fuck out of this neighborhood," Junior said.

The trapped car finally got around me. "Asshole!" somebody shouted as it squealed past.

"Hey, this is a good neighborhood," I said. I followed Broadway as it curved east and went under the elevated tracks. Off to the right a group of winos were passing a bottle around. They hadn't even bothered with the time-honored paper bag.

"Looks like New York to me," Senior decided.

"You want to see some bad neighborhoods," I offered. "I'll show you some bad neighborhoods."

"I've seen enough," Senior said. "Take us back to the Hilton."

I cut over Wilson Avenue and headed towards Lake Shore Drive, a few blocks away.

"Sorry about tonight," Senior said. "Tomorrow we'll try Rush Street. Can't go wrong there."

"I'll never trust you again."

"Used to be everything north was nice. 'cept for Cabrini, of course."

"What's Cabrini?" Junior wanted to know.

"Worst housing projects in Chicago," Senior said. "You know the first trip I ever made here I got some advice that served me well. Guy told me two things to remember about Chicago. Don't go too far south and keep away from Cabrini-Green."

"Here's how it really goes," I chimed in. "Don't go too far south. Don't go anywhere west. Be careful when you go north."

"What about east?" Junior wanted to know.

We were southbound on the Drive by then. I gestured towards the lake where a light fog was rolling in. "Can you swim?"

"It's still a great city," Senior said. "Too bad we can't see anything. Best skyline in the world."

There was a wall of fog-shrouded residential highrises on our right, most of the windows dark for the night. The towers of downtown were concealed behind thick clouds.

"Where you guys from?" I asked.

"Indy."

"Naptown," I said.

"A nice place to raise a family," the senior man informed me.

"We've got some of those around here someplace," I remembered.

An empty Yellow shot past, its toplight blazing away.

"I hear you guys been having some problems," Senior said as I flipped the wipers on in the taxi's wake.

"What's that?"

"Somebody killing cabdrivers."

"Christ." That was all anybody wanted to talk about.

"Seven guys killed, that's something."

"Three," I corrected him.

"Seven, three, whatever," Senior said. "It's gotta make you nervous."

"I've been driving for twenty years," I lied, "I was born nervous."

They both laughed.

"You know what a taxi rolling through the ghetto is?" I asked.

"What's that?"

"An ATM on wheels."

"You don't go there, do you?" Junior said.

"Where?"

"You know, those neighborhoods."

"I don't have any choice."

"Just pass 'em by," Senior advised.

"It isn't that easy," I explained. "Say you're driving by some fancy highrise and the doorman steps out blowing his whistle. You pull in and out walks the maid going home. What you gonna do?"

"Just step on the gas," Junior had the answer.

"Then they write your number down and call the Vehicle man."

"Yeah, but you're alive," Senior said.

"But eventually I'm out of a job. And, what's the big deal? It's just some old lady trying to get home."

"And you'll just be another dead cabdriver," Senior said.

"There's worse things."

"Name some."

"What kind of work you guys do?"

"Sales," Senior answered.

"Hardware." Junior fell into the trap.

"There you go." I said.

It took a minute to sink in. "They must send you people to school, teach you to be so disagreeable," Senior said.

"Just something I learned from all my wonderful passengers." And that was the end of that conversation.

I got off at Wacker Drive and took the lower level around the basements of the Loop. This was the city's famous two-level street. The downstairs was dark and dingy, full of loading docks, dumpsters, rats and bums. The detour added about a mile to the trip. The Hardy Boys knew what I was doing but neither had the balls to call me on it.

"Fourteen-fifty," I said when we pulled up in front of the Hilton.

Hotel Steve's Yellow was in the cab stand. Steve appeared to be sound asleep. But he'd wake at the first sign of a suitcase. "The ritzier the hotel," he'd told me once, "the worse the tip." And he was the man who would know. He spent a good part of his life asleep in hotel lines.

Senior threw a twenty over the front seat. "Keep the change, asshole," he said. I guess he was trying to prove some point but it was lost on me. I wouldn't have tipped myself a dime.