Nobody's Angel (4 page)

The door of the squad car opened. "You ready to come out of there, Edwin?"

I looked up as the ambulance pulled away. The detectives stood waiting.

"Eddie," I said.

"Eddie it is," the senator said. "I'm Hagarty. This is Detective Foster."

"How you doing?" I asked as I got out of the car.

"Hold out your hands," Foster said.

I held out my hands and then turned them over as they examined them under a flashlight beam.

"I was holding her hand," I said.

"Tell us what happened," Hagarty said.

"I don't know," I said, as Foster shone the light down my shirt and pants. "I just found her."

"How did that happen?" Hagarty asked.

"I stopped to take a leak," I said. "When I was pulling out I saw her. I mean, I didn't know what it was but it was moving. So I backed out and came around the block."

"Did she say anything?" Hagarty asked as Foster pulled out a camera and started snapping pictures.

"Just that she was cold."

"Anything else?"

I shook my head, then held out my hands as Foster moved in for a close-up.

He put the camera away and took my arm. "Why don't you show us where you took this piss."

I led them past my cab which had all the doors and the trunk open, and down the alley. "Somewhere 'round here," I said.

Foster shone the light around. There were several patches of wet pavement and a large puddle from a recent rain. "What do you think?" he asked.

"Too much coffee," Hagarty said. He pulled out a penlight and aimed it at a bunch of weeds growing along the fence. "Queen Anne's Lace," he said.

Foster swung his own light that way. "Well, well, well," he said.

"You see anybody else around?" Hagarty asked.

I told them about the van.

"What kind of van?"

"I don't know," I said. "Just a van."

"You can do better than that," Hagarty said.

I closed my eyes and tried. "It was brown or maybe red," I decided after a moment. "Could have been a Ford. I'm not sure."

"Don't stop now," Hagarty said as Foster scribbled away in his notebook.

"It had a ladder on the back," I remembered. "You know, so you can climb up to the roof. That's all I remember."

"Was there a spare tire back there?" Hagarty asked.

"I don't remember."

"Tear drop windows?"

"Huh?"

"You know one of those customized jobs."

"Sorry," I shrugged.

"Illinois plates?"

"I don't know."

We walked out of the alley and stopped alongside the cab. "There was a bumper sticker on the back," I remembered one last thing. "I don't know what it said but it was yellow with dark letters."

Foster scribbled some more in the notebook, then pulled my driver's and chauffeur's licenses out of a coat pocket. "This your right address?"

"Yeah."

"How about a phone number?"

I gave him my phone number.

"What's your sheet look like?"

"Huh?"

"Do you have a record?" Hagarty translated.

"Just some stuff with my ex-wife," I said.

"Like what?" Foster asked.

"Domestic battery," I said. "It was all bullshit. She got a restraining order, the whole bit."

"Anything else?"

I shook my head. Wasn't that enough? She'd ended up taking my daughter away.

Foster handed me my licenses. "What're you planning to do with that mace?" he asked.

"What do you think?"

"Good luck."

Hagarty lit a cigarette. Foster put his notebook away and stuck a cigarette in his mouth but didn't light it.

"Is she gonna die?" I asked.

Hagarty shrugged. "Last year we had a couple cabdrivers," he said out of the blue.

"Yeah, when they weren't getting any press," Foster said. "Now they're all over the front page and all we get is winos and whores."

"You guys need me anymore?" I asked.

"No, you can get out of here," Hagarty said, "soon as these clowns get out of your way." He handed me a business card. Detective James Hagarty, Violent Crimes, it read. "You remember anything, or you see that van driving around, give us a call."

Foster pulled out his notebook and scribbled one last line. He threw his cigarette away unlit then closed the notebook. I got in the cab. The contents of the glove box were scattered over the front seat. I started the engine and turned on the lights. The two detectives got into an unmarked Chevy and pulled away.

My cab was surrounded by squad cars but the cops weren't in any hurry. They finished their stories and their cigarettes.

I gathered up the insurance card, owner's manual, the pads of receipts, matchbooks and lost disposable lighters, and crammed them back into the glove compartment, then sat there waiting, wishing I still smoked.

The girl would be in the hospital by now. They'd be putting her back together and, from what I'd seen, her odds weren't good. But for some reason I was sure she'd survive. I said a little prayer. Relita, it was such a strange name.

I turned the FM on long enough to hear a few riffs of jazz trumpet then tried the two-way radio where there was nothing but static.

I sat there listening to it, waiting.

After a while the clowns got out of my way.

The dome light when lit, must be visible at 300 feet in normal sunlight. The dome light shall be installed and maintained in such manner that the dome light will automatically be lit when the taximeter is not activated and that the dome light will automatically be unlit when the taximeter is activated.
    

City of Chicago, Department of Consumer Services, Public Vehicle Operations Division

I headed north into the heart of the bar rush. The early saloons were just closing. The smart drunks were heading home, and the not-so-smart ones were moving on to the late bars which would close in two hours at 4 a.m.

But I didn't feel like ferrying drunks around. One guy gave me the finger when he realized I wasn't stopping. A girl jumped up and down and waved both arms in the air. There was a switch that turned the toplight off but I left it burning.

I turned northwest up Lincoln Avenue. There wasn't a single cab in front of the Golden Batter Pancake House, the home of the Lincoln Avenue Roundtable. Everybody had gone home. I continued past to Cut-Rate Gas.

There were several cabs at the pumps. A group of drivers was standing around watching another driver clean the windows of his cab. I didn't know any of them. I parked at the farthest pump. The drivers were all jabbering away in their native tongue.

I started the pump then walked inside. I waved to the kid behind the counter--he was half hidden by dangling instant lottery tickets--then headed to the washroom.

My hands were sticky with blood. I turned the water on and let it run awhile but it barely got lukewarm. I added some soap and washed the stains away.

While I was waiting for my change, the early edition of the Sun-Times caught my eye. "SIX KILLED IN NIGHT OF VIOLENCE," the headline screamed. "12-Year-Old & Cabdriver Are Victims," a smaller headline read.

I picked up a copy and skimmed straight to the cabdriver. "Abdul Patel, 41, a driver for North Suburban Taxi, was found stabbed to death in Garfield Park on the city's West Side. His abandoned taxi was found several hours later in an alley a few blocks west of the park. Investigators believe Patel was killed in his cab then his body dumped in the park.

"Police are checking cab company records in an attempt to determine where Patel picked up his last passenger.

"Three Chicago cabdrivers have been slain in the city so far this year. Patel is the first suburban driver to be killed. He is survived by his wife and two children."

I dropped the paper back to the pile. "Anybody you know?" the kid behind the counter said.

"Some suburban driver," I said. "What the hell was he doing on the West Side?"

The kid shrugged. How would he know?

I pushed through the door, popped the trunk, grabbed a handful of paper towels and a bottle of window cleaner. I cleaned the steering wheel and wiped the blood off the hood, then climbed into the back seat and started my usual end-of-shift cleanup.

When I crawled out, one of the foreign drivers was waiting. He was about five foot two, dressed in a suit and tie, like he worked in an office somewhere. "Hello, sir," he said in a sing-song voice. "Would you be coming to the meeting?" He handed me a single sheet of paper.

"CAB DRIVER SECURITY MEETING," it read in big bold print. "ALL DRIVERS PLEASE COME TO THE FOSTER AVENUE BEACH PARKING LOT AT 10 A.M. WEDNESDAY. WE MUST STOP THE KILLINGS!!!"

I handed it back. "I haven't been up that early in years," I said, and I started washing the windows.

The driver followed along. "It's important everyone come," he said.

"It's important I sleep."

Wherever used in these regulations, the term "cab stand" or "cab line" means a fixed area in the roadway alongside and parallel to the curb set aside by city ordinance for taxicabs to stand or wait for passengers, which stands are designated by metal signs or posts indicating stand capacity and bearing stand identification numbers; "chauffeur" means a Public Chauffeur as defined in Chapter 28.1 MCC; "commissioner" means the Commissioner of Consumer Services or his designee; "diving" means picking up or attempting to pick up passengers by by-passing a cab line or authorized airport staging area. Wherever used in these rules, the use of the masculine gender includes the feminine gender; the singular includes the plural and the plural the singular.

City of Chicago, Department of Consumer Services, Public Vehicle Operations Division

I had an efficiency apartment off Montrose Avenue; a small living room, a tiny bedroom and a stand-up kitchen on the top floor of a large, brown-brick monstrosity named the Rosewood Arms. Most of the neighbors--those who spoke English--referred to it as the Armpit.

I'd moved in seven years before, intending to stay a few months. Now I was one of the senior residents. It was a building of long, narrow hallways. One dark door after another, each with a numbered brass knocker.

In the kitchen I poured a few ounces of Kentucky whiskey into a glass, cut it with a splash of tap water and added a single ice cube.

Once upon a time, I'd spent too many nights with a drink in hand. Now I rarely thought of drinking, except as a waste of time and money. But then a night like this would come along and the lure of the whiskey would be irresistible. Just holding the glass in my hand, swirling the ice around the rim, seemed to relieve some tension.