Nobody's Angel (8 page)

A young guy in a sport coat slipped through the crowd. "I didn't know where you went." He sounded amazed.

"You've got to be fast in the big city," his friend said.

"Where to?" I asked.

"First I want to drop my colleague here at the Sheridan Plaza," the guy in the sweatshirt said. "Then I'm going to Fullerton and Clark."

"Be cheaper to do it the other way," I said.

"Let's do it my way," he said. "Take Clybourn, okay?"

"It's your money." I started down Clybourn Avenue, an old industrial street that had evolved into a shopping and entertainment strip.

We passed a row of tiny frame houses. There were some black people sitting on a porch under a large FOR SALE sign. A block down, a longtime black saloon had been transformed into a nightclub, full of white kids dressed in black leather.

Just past Ogden Avenue, the guy in the sweatshirt whispered, "This is it."

"What?" his friend wanted to know.

"Cabrini-Green," the guy whispered.

"Jesus," his friend said. Now he was whispering too.

We were skirting the northernmost point of the project. In front of a bleak-looking highrise, two black kids were jumping up and down on a pile of discarded mattresses. Nobody else was around.

The guy pointed to a boarded-up building on our left. "That's the only McDonald's to ever go bankrupt," he said.

"Why?" his friend asked.

"Because of all the crime," the guy said. Then he began to whisper again. "They killed a cabdriver in here last night."

"And you told him to go this way?"

"I come by here all the time," the guy said.

"Jesus, it's scary looking." His friend was impressed. "I wish I had my camera."

"I'll tell you one thing," the guy whispered, "you'd never catch me driving a cab."

"Boy, that's a relief," I put my two cents in.

"Were we talking to you?"

I slowed down a bit. "Why don't you get out right here, show me how tough you are."

"Why don't I write your number down and report you to the city?"

"Sure," I grunted. "Go ahead." It wouldn't be the first time.

They were right, of course. It was a scary looking place even on the brightest of days. What an ugly place to die, I thought, and I wondered again how Lenny had ended up down here.

For some reason, Rollie's words echoed in my mind. Some people got no heart, man, no heart at all. The kid had been right on the money.

In a window about fourteen floors up, a blue neon beer sign blazed away, the brightest light in all of Cabrini. I wondered if someone had an illegal bar up there for drinkers too petrified to leave the project.

If I saw the same sign in a Lake Shore Drive highrise I would assume it was some college student's room. But here, I figured anyone smart enough to make it to college would also be smart enough not to make their window such an appealing target.

If they were really smart they'd get the hell out completely.

I turned left on Division, a street that led to the biggest bar strip in town, and we left Cabrini behind, just a dim reflection in the mirrors.

Sitting at the light at LaSalle, I found myself thinking about Rollie. The kid was all right, I decided. He could probably run a pretty fair hustle. He had the smile, that gleaming gold tooth, and the easy chatter. But instead, there he was playing it straight behind the counter of a convenience store.

And just like that, it hit me. I hardly knew Rollie, and here I was thinking of him like some long lost cousin. Christ, had he pulled some similar routine on Lenny? Was that what had happened? Was he the one who had conned the Polack down to the Green?

"Fuck," I said softly. I got sick of waiting for the light to change and made a right on red and headed south on LaSalle.

"Hey, where're you going?" the guy in the sweatshirt wanted to know.

"The Sheridan Plaza," I said.

"Why didn't you go straight to the Drive?"

I lifted my hand in a too-late-now shrug and turned left on Maple.

The meter read $5.70 when we pulled up in front of the Sheridan. "I'm getting out here too." The guy in the sweatshirt broke my heart. He handed me six dollars and waited for the change, then slammed the door.

I cruised north, thinking about Rollie.

Maybe I didn't remember picking him up because I'd never seen him before. It didn't take a genius to figure out I was a cabdriver. Not when I'd pulled up to the front door of the 24-Hour Pantry behind the wheel of a Sky Blue Taxi.

And if Rollie really did get off work at midnight, that's right when he'd need a cab. A few minutes to clean up, a few more minutes to bullshit with the overnight shift, and right about then Lenny would be walking through the door to pick up a newspaper, or maybe a six pack of beer. "Hey, Polack, remember me? I'm the guy who bought you that cup of coffee last week. You mind giving me a ride home?"

It would be hard to say no.

I exhaled, as if I'd been holding my breath all day, then relaxed in the seat. Maybe it was just a crazy theory but then again, maybe it wasn't.

Maybe the reason Rollie had decided not to drive a cab was because he'd figured a way to get the same money without the bother of actually getting behind the wheel.

At Division and Dearborn, a Yellow was angled towards the curb, picking up passengers. I was going around when the light changed. I stopped halfway into the crosswalk, a couple of inches over the center line.

An American-United Cab, making a left, was having a heck of a time trying to fit through the space I'd left. The driver, an old white guy with long, stringy hair, and the face of a heavy drinker, finally managed to line the cab up, then he crept forward slowly with both hands tight on the steering wheel. He had about a foot and a half to spare on either side.

As he pulled abreast, he looked my way. "Typical A-rab," he said, and he continued past.

All my relaxation went right out the window. "Hey, fuck you, you senile motherfucker," I shouted. "I could put a Mack truck through that hole."

His cab came to an abrupt stop and then started to back up. I grabbed the mace. A limousine, following the cab, laid on the horn.

The cab stopped, the driver still a couple of feet beyond me. He stuck his head out the window. "Who you calling an old motherfucker?" he shouted. Brother, this was one ugly cabdriver.

"Who you calling an A-rab?" I asked.

"You drive like one," he said.

"And you drive like an old motherfucker, pal. You better find a new line of work."

I saw he was warming-up to spit, but I had the green light by then so I stepped on the gas and got the hell out of there. "Dumb motherfucker," I said to myself.

I went up Dearborn until it ended at the foot of Lincoln Park, then switched over to Clark Street and continued north, the park on my right.

The cab business was not the business to get old in, I knew. I wondered how long the old guy had been driving. Thirty or forty years, I guessed, and now his reflexes were shot. His vision was almost gone and his judgment had taken the same one-way trip. He probably got robbed once a month and had passengers run out without paying every other night.

It was a glimpse of my own dim future, I decided. If I didn't figure something else out soon, or if someone--like my new friend Rollie--didn't shoot me first. Was that his game? I wondered. Was he setting me up with small talk and free coffee?

I kept driving but my heart wasn't in it. I couldn't keep my mind off Lenny, Lenny and my new friend Rollie.

I hardly saw my passengers. They were just people heading home from work, or out for the night. People complaining.

"Driver, shouldn't we have turned back there?"

"Driver, wasn't that a twenty I gave you?"

"Driver, where the hell you going?"

"I'm going to 1300 Grand Avenue, just like you told me."

"Granville," he shouted. "I said 'Granville.' "

"Oh, Jesus Christ," I said, and I flipped the meter off and made a U-turn.

Chauffeurs shall not solicit patronage for any restaurant, night club, cabaret, dance hall, hotel, public resort, place or amusement, nor solicit any person for transportation to any prostitute or house of ill-fame or disorderly place nor transport any passenger to any place other than the destination to which the passenger has requested transportation.
 

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

The roundtable started early that night. When I pulled up, around twelve-thirty, there must have been twenty cabs parked in front of the pancake house.

The back table was full. Ace and Ken Willis moved over to make room. I slid a chair from a second table where the overflow sat.

"What's going on?" I asked. "There's still plenty of business out there."

"Some strange reason nobody wants to work," Fat Wally said. There was a pile of empty dishes in front of him and he was drinking straight from one of those metal milkshake canisters. It looked like a baby's bottle in his huge hand. We weren't dealing with any metabolism problem here. Wally liked to shovel it in.

"I still don't believe it," Ace said. He was a tiny old Jewish guy with a bald head and a neat, grey mustache. He'd known Lenny as long as anyone. "Christ, if they can get the Polack "

And he left it dangling there.

"He fucked up," Willis said.

Ace shook his head. "Somebody conned him."

"But he fell for it," Willis said.

Ace lit a cigarette, the first one I'd seen him smoke in months. He was one of those guys who could never quite quit. "Kenny tells me you saw Lenny last night," he said.

"Right around midnight." I nodded, and I described the brief encounter out on Lake Shore Drive twenty-four hours before.

"Well, you're the last, so far," Ace said. "Jake saw him about eight, heading into O'Hare."

"Escrow." I winked.

Jake smiled back, and tipped an invisible cap. "Edwin Miles," he said. "The cabdriver's cabdriver."

"Morning, Eddie." Clair dropped a cup of coffee in front of me, then went around topping off the other cups. She'd just come on duty at midnight.

"Decaf," Tony Golden held up a hand.

"Oh, hell, you can't tell the difference," Willis said.

"Man, if I drink too much of this stuff," Golden held up the nearly empty cup. "I start throwing 'em out of the cab."

"Give him a double," somebody at the back table suggested.

"I was up along Ridge earlier," I said, "trying to figure out what might get Lenny to stop."

"Don't go looking for trouble, Eddie," Ace warned.

"There's that 24-Hour Pantry up there," I said. "I thought he might have stopped there on his way home."