Nobody's Angel (9 page)

"Not the Polack," Ace let me know. "He didn't like paying convenience store prices."

"Yeah, but say he just needed a loaf of bread or something," I went on. "This black kid works there. I asked him if he saw Lenny, you know, about 12:15, and he says

no, he gets off at midnight. But what if he stood around talking for a while, and then Lenny comes in and the kid asks him for a ride home. I mean, if Lenny's in there all the time, he might do it."

"He wasn't in there all the time," Ace said.

"Here's the funny part," I kept going. "The kid comes up with some bullshit how he knows me. Says I picked him up one night when nobody else would. But I'll be damned if I remember him."

"Sounds just like you," Willis said, and he got the biggest laugh of the night. "You probably took him down to the Taylor Homes or something stupid like that."

The Robert Taylor Homes, on the South Side, were bigger and badder than Cabrini. And I'd been in there more times than I cared to remember. But some of the guys had never made the trip. Some of them went out of their way to avoid picking up black passengers. That included Tony Golden, the only black driver in the group. One of his favorite sayings was the punchline to Lenny's joke: "I don't go south."

Fat Wally would pick up anybody and go anywhere but he was a special case. His front seat was pushed as far back as it would go and it was so bent out of shape that when you got in his back seat you found Wally sitting right there with you. There wasn't enough room to sit behind him. He'd stretch his huge arm along the back of the seat and it would be inches from the passenger's face. Wally had been driving for almost ten years and he'd never been robbed. But people were always ducking out without paying. There, Wally didn't stand a chance. It took him about five minutes just to work his way out of the cab.

"How come it's got to be a black guy?" Tony Golden wanted to know.

"Not a lot of white guys robbing cabs," Alex the Greek said from the second table.

"Shit," Roy Davidson disagreed. "They're the only ones ever get me. The last son-of-a-bitch was wearing a suit and tie."

"It's kind of hard to believe it was a white guy got the Polack into Cabrini," Willis said.

"You've got a point there," Tony Golden said.

I tried to tell them about my trip into Cabrini to Hobbie Street but they never let me finish.

"Eddie, what the fuck's wrong with you?" Willis interrupted.

"It was early," I tried to explain.

Tony Golden shook his head. "You ain't never gonna learn."

"Tony if you're so goddamn afraid, why don't you find another line of work?"

"Afraid?  What do I have to be afraid of?" Tony shouted.  "Nothing. 'Cause I stay right where I belong, and out of those shitbag neighborhoods."

"How many kids from Kansas can you stand?"

"What the fuck are you talking?" Willis wanted to know.

"Don't you get tired of tourists?"

"The trouble with you, Eddie," Ace started in, "you're still trying to work the old city. Forget it. The old city's gone."

"If it wasn't for tourists," Willis cut in, "we'd all be on welfare."

"The workable area of town is almost nothing," Ace went on. "It's a tiny little sliver. Figure it's from Irving Park down to the Loop, and from the lake maybe a mile inland. I'll bet the whole area ain't as big as Des Moines, Iowa. And that's how you've got to think of yourself. You're a Des Moines cab driver, and if you get a trip out west or south and you can't get out of it, it's like being in Des Moines and going out to the countryside. When you drop your fare, you lock your doors and head straight back to Des Moines. No fucking around in between. Somebody tries to flag you, you drive right by. Sorry, buddy, I'm a Des Moines cab. You better call one of them West Side cabs out here."

"Amen," Tony Golden said.

"I've been telling you for years, Eddie, you take too many chances."

"Yeah," I said, "The Polack used to tell me that."

"Eddie, you may think you're smarter than the Polack," Ace suddenly sounded pissed off, "but I'll tell you something, whoever got Lenny could have gotten any one of us. The Polack was one very street-smart hack."

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

"Hell, I remember one time " Fat Wally began.

But we never got to hear the story. "It's not so funny anymore, is it?" Paki Bob said.

"Don't start this up again," Willis said.

"It was all so funny when only foreign drivers got killed," Paki said.

"Come on, Bob," Ace said. "You know that's not true."

"My name is not Bob," Paki said.

"Yeah, well mine ain't Ace either but that's what everybody's been calling me for forty years."

"And I am not Pakistani," said Paki Bob, who was in truth a Berber from Algiers. When he'd first gotten in the business everybody had assumed he was Pakistani and someone had hung the nickname on him. By the time he'd had the nerve to correct them it was too late. This was the first time I'd heard him complain about the Bob part of his name.

"In my country," Paki said, "no one would ever kill someone for money. For politics maybe. For money, never."

Willis laughed. "In your country nobody's got any money."

"Oh, you lead such sheltered lives, you Americans."

"I like to be in America," Alex sang.

"How much you think Polack died for?" Ace asked.

"What's this about Lenny?" Clair asked as she pulled up with the pot of decaf.

"Don't you ever read the newspaper?" Willis asked.

"Dear Lord," she said softly, "that wasn't Lenny?"

She looked around the table. No one said a word.

"Oh, goddammit," she said, and she set the pot down way too hard and the glass shattered. The steaming coffee rushed out across the table. We all jumped to get out of the way, but Clair just stood there crying, the handle of the coffee pot, with a couple of jagged pieces of glass still attached, dangling there in her hand.

Violations of the following Rules and Regulations are Major Offenses: Solicitation; Refusal of Service; Deceptive Practice; Assault; Abusive Behavior; Operating Under the Influence; Reckless Driving; Failure to Surrender License; Bribery; Driving While License Suspended or Revoked; Failure to Display License; False Report of Lost License; Unlicensed Operation; Unlicensed Vehicle; Unsafe or Unclean Vehicle; Overcharging; Leased Vehicle Driven by Other Than Lessee; "Diving" - O'Hare; Unattended Cab - O'Hare.

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

Even with Ace's words ringing in my ear, I couldn't stay out of the old city. He was right, I knew. Once you got away from the trendy lakefront neighborhoods, much of the city was garbage. But sometimes I felt more at home in the shabbier parts of town, cruising streets that reminded me of the city I'd known as a kid.

I was on Fullerton near California when an old white guy peeked out of a doorway, then raised an arm into the air. I pulled to the curb and he hobbled over, opened the door and leaned inside.

"A nickel to Logan Square?"

"It's gonna be a little bit more than a nickel." I waved him into the cab.

He was a little old man, shriveled with age. It took him a while to get in. First he backed up to the seat then he lowered himself slowly while holding the door for support. He lifted his legs, one at a time, and pulled them into the cab by hand.

Logan Square, where Kedzie and Logan Boulevards meet Milwaukee Avenue, was less than a mile away. The boulevards were tree-lined streets with broad parkways on either side. Large houses and stately two-flats were left over from another era.

This was one of the neighborhoods that real estate agents tried to promote as the next Lincoln Park. This was the great Chicago dream. Any crummy neighborhood might

become the next Lincoln Park, where fortunes could be made buying buildings cheap from people like my father.

There was $2.20 on the meter when I stopped in front of a neat frame house, stuck between dilapidated apartment buildings. It didn't look anything like Lincoln Park. It looked like the next San Juan.

The old man dropped a five dollar bill over the front seat. "A nickel," he explained.

I killed the engine, grabbed the keys and the five, and walked around the cab to help him out. He went through the same routine with his legs, lifting them out one at a time. I held my hand out. He reached up, and I pulled him out of the cab.

He stood there breathing hard, holding the door for support. "Never get old, young man," he said after a while. "Never get old."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out two singles. "Here," I said. "You gave me too much."

He waved it away. "Keep it," he said. "Hell, I got plenty of money."

"Why don't you find somewhere else to live?"

"I've been here my whole life. Where would I go?"

A few doors down, a couple of punks were lounging in the doorway of a run-down apartment building. If the old man was lucky they would never hear about all his money.

I headed to Milwaukee Avenue and then turned southeast. Just past Logan Square, a guy in a fancy yellow jacket jogged across the street and stuck out an arm. I slowed to look him over. He had three strikes against him. He was skinny, which meant he might be a junkie. He was young, the age of most cab robbers. And he was Puerto Rican in a neighborhood loaded with Puerto Rican gangs. Everybody had guns.

But he was well dressed and he'd waved in a nice casual manner. I stopped a couple of car lengths past and he hurried up and opened the door.

"Thanks man," he said sliding in. "Thanks a lot."

"Where to?"

"California and Chicago."

"I'll drop you right on the corner," I said as I turned south on Sacramento. He looked okay but that didn't mean I wanted to take him down any dark side streets. And there were some very dark side streets just around the corner from California and Chicago.

"That's cool," he said.

"You making any money out here?" he asked a few minutes later.

It was one of those questions I hated to hear. "I just started," I said evenly, and I slid the canister of mace out of the ashtray and set it on my lap.

"Why you guys all so afraid?" he asked in a near whisper.

"Who's that?" I asked, and suddenly I could feel the blood pumping through my veins.

"Just seems funny that every time I get in a cab the driver just started."

"Maybe you're asking the wrong question," I told him.

"Okay, Mr. Cabdriver, what am I supposed to say?"

"Why don't you just sit back and enjoy the ride."

"Man, I've tried that. Just makes 'em more nervous."

"Well, when you get in a cab," I said, and then I stopped because I'd never really thought about it.

" 'Cause it's a real drag sitting back here and the driver's thinkin' I'm gonna rob him."

"You're not robbing anybody," I said as hard as I could.