Nobody's Angel (19 page)

"See, you can't own nothing good," the Puerto Rican whined. "They stole my bike. They busted up my radio. Now they after my jacket."

"Just don't flash it at night," the black kid advised. "It be too much these motherfuckers see you struttin' at night."

There was $5.30 on the meter when we pulled up at Central Park, a dim little intersection with an old public school on one corner and a vacant lot on another. The kids stayed crouched down while they dug through their pockets and found three singles each. I handed back the change, and they opened the door and ran north up the side street.

I continued east through an old Puerto Rican nightlife strip. But the bright lights, the huge signs, and the loud music were all long gone.

In Bucktown, I found a trio of drunks, two girls and a guy. They'd obviously been drinking for hours.

"Where're we going next?" one of the girls shouted in my ear.

"I gotta go home," the guy said climbing in. "I'm gonna pass out."

"Come on," both girls screamed.

I started the meter. Sometimes those little red numbers helped people decide.

"Elm and Dearborn," the guy said, and he closed his eyes.

"What a spoilsport," one of the girls said as I headed for the highway.

I was on Division Street when one of the girls said, "Is this Cabrini-Green?"

"Why are you taking us this way?" the other girl asked. "You want us to get shot or something?"

"I would have taken you the long way if you'd asked."

"How'd you like to break down around here?" the guy woke up. "Excuse me, Mr. Black Man, I'm a simple white boy from the suburbs. I wonder if you could help me?"

"Yeah, right," one of the girls agreed. "Are we really going home?"

"Just a quick nap," the guy said.

The girls groaned. "What a party pooper," one said. "Oh, well, we'll just have to entertain each other."

"Come on. Knock it off," the guy said a moment later.

I looked back in the mirror. The girls were kissing.

"Don't do that," the guy shouted.

"Oh, you love it," one girl said. "You love watching us."

"You love it. You love it. You love it," the other girl chanted.

"You know what's funny?" the first girl asked. "Girls think two guys doing it is gross. But guys love two girls doing it. Why is that?"

"Because the guys really do it," the guy said as I pulled to the curb on Dearborn. "They don't just tease all the time."

"Yeah, wait'll we get upstairs," the first girl said. "We'll show you."

"Yeah," the other girl agreed. "Hey, Mr. Cabdriver, you want to come watch?"

The guy handed me a ten and a single. "They're just teases," he said.

"Did you see his face?" one of the girls screamed out on the sidewalk. "He would have watched all night."

Taxicab chauffeurs shall not ask the passenger his destination prior to the passenger being seated in the vehicle of which the chauffeur has charge.

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

I was a few blocks north of Greek Town when a black girl in a shiny down jacket waved.

"Where to?" I asked as she slid in.

"Ogden and Washington," she said.

She was in her late teens or early twenties, a big girl, wearing nice tight jeans. Her hair had been dyed, not quite as red as the jacket.

"You get high?" she asked as we headed west on Madison, through the old Skid Row.

"Not while I'm working," I said.

"I got some good reefer," she said.

"Sorry," I said. "Not tonight."

"You wanna buy some food stamps?"

"I'll pass," I said.

"They're just like money," she explained. "You just take 'em to the store. I got seventy dollars here. You can have 'em for thirty-five."

"Sorry," I said again.

"Twenty for ten," she said.

"Lady, I don't want any food stamps. Okay?"

Coming up to Ogden Avenue I drifted right. There was a hotel just off the corner at Washington and Ogden and I assumed that's where she was heading.

"You gotta turn left," she said.

"It's to the right," I told her.

"Washtenaw and Ogden," she said, and she managed this phony little giggle. "You thought I said Washington, didn't you?"

I should have thrown her out right there, or made a U-turn and taken her back to where I'd picked her up. I knew damn well she'd said Washington.

"I ain't going into no projects," I said.

"You just drop me right there on the corner," she said.

So I made the left and headed southwest towards Washtenaw, a couple of miles away. She'd conned me and now, like a chump, I was letting her get away with it.

We passed a block west of St. Lucy's. Was Relita still sleeping? I wondered what her dreams were like. I wondered if she would ever find the strength to lift her head.

There was a pair of dark low-rises off to the right at Washtenaw and Ogden. WELCOME TO OGDEN COURTS, a sign read. "Pull right behind that car," the girl said.

There was no way I was stopping behind any parked cars. "Six-eighty," I said as I turned into a local lane off the side of the main road.  There was no one around. A block down a sign read EMERGENCY ROOM. Beyond the hospital was the darkness of Douglas Park.

"I gotta run upstairs and get the money," she said. "Just park right over there."

"Shit," I said. I stopped right in the middle of the lane. "You know you should have told me you didn't have money," I shouted, but I was mainly pissed at myself. I'd been a fool not to get some money the moment she'd switched destinations. I'd been a fool not to throw her out of the cab.

"I'll be right back," she said, and reached for the door. "I'm just going to the second floor."

"Leave the jacket," I said.

"I ain't leaving no two hundred dollar jacket in your cab," she said, her voice rising. She tried the door handle but that didn't get her anywhere. I was holding the door lock switch.

"Give me those food stamps you were talking about," I suggested.

"I'll pay you with food stamps," she said, and she reached into a jacket pocket. "That's cool."

"I'll hold the food stamps. You get the money."

"Here's ten," she said and she handed me one book.

"One more," I said.

"It's only six dollars," she said.

"Seven," I said. The meter had already turned.

"You got ten," she said.

"Police station's right around the corner," I warned her, and I took my foot off the brake and started to roll.

"Twenty," she said. She handed me another book and reached for the door and I popped the locks. "I be right down," she said, and hurried away. I locked the doors.

The meter turned twenty cents a minute, inching along at twelve bucks an hour. I sat there with my foot on the brake, thinking what a chump I'd been, falling for her bullshit. I was a fool for hanging around. Take the stamps and go, I told myself. It didn't make any difference if they were good or not. Every click of the meter was just a little more wasted time and another minute of possible danger. I kept checking the mirrors and looking around to make sure no one snuck up on the cab. But the place was just like Cabrini. There was no one around. All the decent folks were hiding in their apartments, and it was still a bit early for the drug dealers and thugs.

Tony Golden had once argued that cabdrivers got a lopsided view of the poor. If you were poor and you were honest, you couldn't afford to take taxis. So many of the people who ended up in cabs in poor neighborhoods were thieves, drug dealers and other small-time hustlers.  Meanwhile, the working stiffs and the welfare moms with varicose veins, three kids, and seven bags of groceries, were pushing shopping carts or struggling on the CTA.

I wondered what my passenger's hustle was.  Food stamps and marijuana both seemed to be sidelines.

The meter was at seven-eighty when the girl finally returned. A big guy tagged along behind. He was twenty-five or so, wearing a T-shirt under a well-worn leather jacket. I could tell, by his slow, reluctant walk, that this wasn't his idea.

She tried the back door but found it locked. "Open up," she shouted.

I cracked the window just a bit and checked the meter. "It's seven-eighty."

"Me and my brother want to go to the North Side."

I almost laughed, it was such an old line.

"I got the money," she said, and held up two ragged twenties.

I shook my head again.

"Oh, man," she moaned. The brother stood back a ways. He was the kind of guy I would pick up any day of the week. A big easygoing guy who didn't want to fuck with anybody. He wanted to be back watching TV. Whatever plan they had, it was all hers.

"Seven-eighty," I said again.

She handed a twenty through the crack in the window and I slipped her the change and the food stamps.

"You're all fucked up, man, you know that?" She turned and stalked away.

After she passed, her brother gave me a little shrug. It was okay with him, the shrug seemed to say. No hard feelings.

I shrugged back. I knew it wasn't his fault. Someday we might sit around and talk about the devious ways of women. But if I'd been foolish enough to let them in the cab, he would probably have been the one holding the knife or the gun, or with his arms wrapped around my neck.

I pulled away, then made a U-turn and headed northeast. The light at Western Avenue turned yellow as I approached. I jumped on the gas, tapped the horn, and blew right through.

Once upon a time, this stretch of Ogden Avenue had been part of the legendary Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles and all those points in between. It had also been the main link between the West Side and Lincoln Park. But years ago the city had begun to cut the Lincoln Park section out.

It was as if some visionary traffic engineer had seen the course the city would take; that Lincoln Park would be for the rich, and the West Side for the poor, and what was the point of a street that connected the two? Now, even in the height of rush hour, there was little traffic.

I passed St. Lucy's and Madison Street. The next block was Warren Boulevard. To my left was the hotel I'd been thinking about. There was nothing at Washington and Ogden but a union hall and a park. So maybe the girl really had said Washtenaw. Maybe I was getting a little too paranoid.

The hell with that, I decided a moment later. I'd sure clocked her on that North Side routine.

I continued up Ogden, through the old Italian neighborhood around Grand Avenue--an old syndicate neighborhood undergoing gentrification--and then drove up the long, crumbling, bridge that crossed over industrial Goose Island. I passed over the river, then pulled to the side above the canal and killed the lights.