Nobody's Angel (12 page)

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

The funeral home was on Milwaukee Avenue, in the heart of the Polish section.

Lenny was laid out in a gleaming, silver-colored coffin that looked like it might do double duty as a one-man space capsule. The inside was all white silk, and there was Lenny in a dark blue suit, white shirt, and a blue tie sprinkled with tiny stars. His hands looked even bigger than in life. They lay one on top of the other, wrapped with grey rosary beads. His head was cocked to the side and I found myself wondering what the hidden side looked like.

I knelt down and made the sign of the cross. "Lenny," I couldn't help thinking, "how could you let them get you?"

He looked like he had never been alive. His face was covered with heavy makeup and was ghost white. His hair, which I'd always thought of as red, was now brownish-grey and it appeared to be glued to his scalp.

Above the casket there was a large photograph of an island in some lake, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It was lit from behind, all trees and water and blue skies. You could almost see the angels fishing.

I made another sign of the cross, stood up, and headed for the door.

"Eddie." Ace caught me from behind. He was decked out in his funeral best, a suit a good ten years out of fashion.

"You look like an insurance salesman," I told him.

"And you look like a cabdriver," he said. I hadn't bothered with a suit. "Come on over and say hello to Nettie." He tried to turn me around. Nettie was the widow.

"Oh Jesus, Ace," I said. "I'm not any good at that kind of thing."

"Nobody is," he said. "All you've got to do is tell her how sorry you are."

"I'm gonna pass."

"Eddie, she wants to talk to you." Ace grabbed my arm and I could tell by his voice that he wasn't planning to let go. "You were the last person to see Lenny alive. Now come on over and tell her how happy he was, just like you told me."

"Fuck," I said, but I let him lead me a few feet. Then I jerked to a stop. Betty, my next door neighbor, was walking towards us. Now what the hell was she doing here? And where did she get that dress?

"Hi, Eddie," she said, and she leaned in and I gave her a little hug.

"Hey," I said, and then I ran out of words.

"I'm Betty," she said to Ace.

"Sorry," I said. "Ace this is Betty. Betty, Ace. Betty's my next door neighbor."

"Call me Carl," Ace said. "Hey, didn't we meet a while back?"

"You remember, that's nice," Betty said. "Eddie brought me to the pancake house one night."

"That's right."

"I met Lenny the same night. I thought I should "

"Sure," Ace said. "Come on, we're gonna pay our respects to the widow."

He took Betty by the hand and led her forward. I followed as they pushed through the crowd around a woman dressed all in black. "Nettie, this is Betty," Ace said, "and this is her friend Eddie Miles."

           I'd been hearing her name for years and I think I had a picture in my mind of some old babushka lady. This wasn't her. The real Nettie couldn't have been more than thirty-five, which made her twenty years younger than Lenny. She was a tall, well-built blond--one of those healthy looking Poles--with clear blue eyes that shone right through her widow's veil. She spoke slowly, with a slight accent.

"Thank you for coming." She hugged Betty then extended a gloved hand towards me.

I took the hand and held it, and mumbled how sorry I was. She pulled me to her side.

"Oh, Eddie Miles," she said sadly. "Many times I have heard your name."

"He was a good guy," I said, and I started to mumble on but she stopped me.

"Now tell me when you talked, the last night."

"We didn't really talk," I started to explain.

"No. Carl has told me," she smiled. "That special way of cabdrivers."

So I tried my best to describe the night on Lake Shore Drive. I probably exaggerated a little. Lenny's smile, his playful mood. Her face glowed and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

"I don't understand this no hands," she said, and she held out her hands and imitated me as I'd imitated Lenny taking his hands off the steering wheel.

I tried to explain how as kids riding bicycles we would take our hands off the handlebars and call to each other, "Look Ma, no hands."

"You wouldn't really say it to your mother," I said. "That was the joke, I guess. You'd never ride that way around her or she'd probably have a heart attack right on the spot."

"I understand," she said. But she looked confused. "And if he was coming home how did he that place "

"I don't know," I shrugged.

"My husband hated that place," she said. "He would tell me how he had to hurry past, and the people and the filth. When I hear that name now I begin to shake."

"It's a hellhole," I agreed.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

I shrugged. Who could answer a question like that?

"This Cabrini, what kind of name is that?"

"Mother Cabrini," I said. "She was a nun years and years ago." There was a small hospital out in the old Italian neighborhood, and a tiny side street, both named for the same woman.

"And why did they put this terrible place in her name?"

"She helped the poor, I think."

"And this was her reward?"

I shrugged again. What could I say?

"What a city, Eddie Miles." She began to weep. "What a horrible city."

"I'm so sorry," I said, and I stood there not knowing what to do. Betty hurried over and put her arm around Nettie. I tiptoed away.

Ace came up behind me. "Hey, I almost forgot, the cops want to see you." He dug through his wallet and pulled out a business card. I had one just like it. "Detective Hagarty," Ace said. "He's over at Belmont and Western. He said call or stop by after midnight."

The lobby was crowded with people talking and smoking. I heard Escrow Jake's voice, "When you're talking about cabdrivers, you got white guys, you got black guys and you got foreign guys." I looked over. The rookie was hanging on every word. "Now a black guy from Africa or Jamaica or somewhere, he's not black he's foreign. And a guy like Polack Lenny, he's been here so long, he's not foreign, he's white. Got it?"

The rook had a puzzled look on his face. He didn't get anything.

"They might have used the baby trick," someone else said.

"What's that?" another driver asked the question for me.

"You're driving along and a lady with a baby waves," the first guy said. "Nice guy that you are, you stop and she gets in and tells you where she's going. You go a block or two, not very far, and suddenly she gets very excited, 'Driver, stop the cab! Stop the cab!' You think there's something wrong with the baby, so you stop. She opens the door and gets out and leaves the baby on the back seat. 'Hey, Tyrone,' she calls to some guy who's been waiting for you to show up, 'you need a ride?' Well, you can't drive away with the baby in the cab. So the next thing you know you've got Tyrone sitting behind you. That's the baby trick."

I wandered on.

"I go whichever way the customer wants to go," an old grey-haired guy explained to another circle of drivers. "It's their money. I'm just trying to earn it. I always ask, 'Do you have a preferred route?' Man, I've had people take me on some of the most godfangled trips. Some of them have no idea at all how the streets work."

Alex the Greek stuck his head out of the circle, winked, then turned back to the old guy. "You're telling me that if someone wanted you to go up North Michigan Avenue the last Saturday before Christmas, when it's absolute gridlock, you'd do it?"

The old guy nodded his head. "I go whichever way the customer wants to." He sounded as if he'd said the same thing a thousand times. "It's their money. I'm just trying to earn it."

"Fuck that," I said, and I followed Alex out the front door.

"Guy doesn't have a clue," he said.

Ken Willis walked up, puffing on a cigar. "Come on, I'll buy." He pointed to an adjacent tavern where a sign read, Zimne Piwo.

"I can't," I said. "I've got a friend inside."

"Come on, Eddie," he said. "A Polish wake is the same as an Irish wake or a hillbilly wake. Why do you think there's a saloon next door?"

"I'm not much of a drinker," I said.

"What are you gonna do with all that money?"

"What money?" I asked, and they both laughed.

"Just have one," Alex said.

"What the hell," I said, and we all walked next door.

"To Lenny." Willis held up a shot of whiskey.

Alex and I raised our beers, "To Lenny."

"So who's the tomato?" Willis asked after he'd downed his shot.

"Oh, just my next door neighbor."

"Doin' the neighbor, huh?"

"Good work," Alex said. 

"You guys ever hear about the baby trick?" I asked, and then explained it.

"Sometimes I think it's all part of some enormous plan," Alex said when I was done. "Remember a couple of weeks ago, that Friday night it snowed? About one in the morning I pick up this girl on Halsted. She's drunk. She's got no coat, no hat, no boots, and no money, and she wants me to take her way the fuck out to Irving and Austin."

"Fat chance," Willis said.

"That's what I told her," Alex said. "But she kept begging me. It's an emergency, she says, can't I please help. I don't know why but for some reason I really believed her, so I said okay."

"Chump," Willis said.

"What happened," I explained, "is she spent all her money on booze and now she wants a free ride home."

"Exactly," Willis agreed.

"All the way out I'm kicking myself," Alex went on with the story. "I mean, there's business all over the lakefront and here I am heading out to the fucking Northwest Side in the middle of a blizzard and I'm not even getting paid.

"On the way, I turn the radio on, and believe it or not, they're calling an order out that way so I take it.

"I drop her off and go to the radio call. It's only a couple of blocks away. I beep the horn. This guy comes out. They decided they don't need the cab, he tells me. But he hands me twenty bucks. 'Thanks for coming out in the snow.' Shit, he just paid her fare, round trip. I'm telling you, sometimes I think it's all one big test and you either pass or you fail."

"Lenny must have failed," I said.

"No. No. I don't mean like that," Alex said.

"Big time," Willis agreed.

No passenger shall be permitted to ride on the front seat of the taxicab unless all other seats are occupied or unless written authorization from the Commissioner is in the possession of the passenger. At no time shall more than one passenger ride in the front seat.