Taxi Driver (8 page)

Well I’m about to put the cab in gear when the next thing I know the front and rear side doors have opened and there is a struggle going on and the girl is being held by somebody and I can hear this voice kind of soft and silky saying, “Come on Baby let’s go. This is all a real drag.”

She didn’t struggle, she just left. Just let herself be dragged from the cab and then the rear door slammed.

Presently this guy, this person, comes over to my front window and leans partially through it and throws something down onto the front seat, a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. Says, “Just forget all about this, cabbie. It’s nothing, you understand.”

Well I couldn’t see his face completely but I noticed he was wearing a fringed suede jacket and he had a young man’s voice, kind of gluey, pockmarks.

There was another man with him too and they both walked off with the girl, the one young, as I say, and the other older and shabbier. All gray.

Well I hadn’t made a move to do anything. It was as if reality had punctured the glass from the other side on me but I hadn’t even done a fucking thing. I could feel that gun like a cold slug against my thigh. I shrugged and turned away and drove off like some people’s business isn’t really any of my business.

Foreplay To Gunplay

All that night as I drove back to the garage I thought to myself that girl with her flimsy outfit and her pale face and that bare stringed back and her tulip bulb ass and the rubber tire and all those adolescent pimples was out on the streets already peddling her pussy, and there was nothing any decent person could do about it. That was just part of the condition of life. I thought it was an outrage that she should be such a victim of men like that, and I let that twenty-dollar bill just lie there on the seat next to me until I checked in, and then, you know, I took the money and stuffed it into my jacket pocket and signed in and later I almost used it to pay for my ticket at the Adam but decided I could not allow myself to take pleasure out of her blood money. I paid from my wallet for my ticket.

Well, there was a young man now behind the concessions counter, and he was probably queer, but I paid him no mind. I was riled.
Whatsa cunt a wife etc?
In the dark this woman had her beaver exposed and with her voice, she’s saying,
“Oh, come no, now, now, lick it, lick it, lick it. Mmm, that’s good, hhh, hhh, more, more, more.”
Well, that got to me, too, until I couldn’t look no more. Had to hide my eyes. Couldn’t stand to look anymore at all that beaver. All that nastiness to make a dollar. Lickity split . . .

That night I just couldn’t sleep at all. I had so much work to do. The idea that had been growing in my brain for some time now took entire hold of me. I had collected all the material I could find on Palantine’s itinerary from Kennedy Airport to the Plaza Hotel and | about the city. I knew the allocation of secret service personnel from clippings in the
Times
and was compiling a kind of action or game plan. Words to that effect.

The only solution seemed to lie in true force: that all the kings men could not put Humpty back together for me otherwise. After I memorized Palantine’s route I strapped on the empty holster of the .44 and practiced late into the night at drawing and squeezing off imaginary rounds. I had devised this system of metal gliders along my inner forearm so that the Colt .25 could rest hidden behind the upper forearm until a spring near the elbow was activated, sending the .25 gliding down into my palm, and I had cut open a special Western shirt to accommodate the gun mechanism against my arm.

I had also figured out a way to strap an army combat knife to my calf with a slit cut in my jeans so that the knife could be pulled out easily. The problem was concealment. The guns bulged on me everywhere. I looked bulky and armored. It was only by wearing two Western shirts, a sweater, and a jacket that I was able to obscure the location of all my weapons but then I resembled some hunter bundled up against the arctic winter, and the weather was getting very warm outside.

The rest of that evening, I sat at the table dumb-dumbing forty-four bullets, scraping Xs across their heads. I had a big poster of Palantine’s head in the room and I would sight at him through the scope of the .38. At last all bundled up in my shirts and sweater, my jacket and guns, I fell out on the mattress with my eyes closed, the room still fluttered with light, into a half-sleep, like a big furry animal drifting into his own world.

Last thing I remember is writing in this diary: “Listen, you screwhead: Here is a man who wouldn’t take it anymore, a man who stood up against the cunts, the dogs, filth Here is . . . . . .

Incident in a Deli

About that time sometimes late at night I began to frequent this all-night deli in Spanish Harlem for snacks when the streets were relatively deserted.

Fellow named Melio ran the place to a blare of
salsa,
and he was the type of guy, you know, who liked to have company sometimes late at night, especially if you carried a piece.

Well this one particular night I had just gone over to the dairy counter to get a pint of chocolate milk and a Cuban sandwich on a hero roll when I hear a very nasty low voice talking to Melio and I turned toward the counter and saw a young black dude holding a gun on him, obviously strung out, a junkie.

“Come on, man, quick, quick, quick, let’s see that bread.” The dude is shaking his gun at Melio as he bounced up and down on the balls of his cheap worn black tennis shoes, and Melio he seemed frozen like an ice cream on a stick

The dude hadn’t noticed me yet, he was too jittery. This was probably his first real heist. He kept bouncing up and down on the balls of those cheap black tennis shoes and Melio he seemed frozen, as I say, like sludge. So much Chilly Willy.

The guy . . . the dude he said, “Come on, man. Quick, quick, quick let’s see the bread.” His gun’s shaking, his hand’s trembling. He hasn’t noticed me yet, off to one side, behind this stack of Quaker Corn Meal. Grits.

I said, “Hey, dude!”

Said, “Hey, dude!”

Surprised, he turned towards me just as I squeezed off a round of the .38 and there was this big explosion of blood on his lower jaw as he reeled and crashed to the floor and the gun smashed me back up against the grits, smashed me back hard against those grits as if I’ve been socked in the hand.

Well, I couldn’t feel anything else except the trembling in my hand as the grits came tumbling down, and then Melio he sort of came apart too and sort of leaned or fell across the counter and he had his own .38 in his hand . . . and as the dude rolled about on the floor and groaned, Melio he discharged two more bullets into his chest and then the guy lay still. He was one dead hunk of dark meat.

Melio was still feeling pretty hot I guess because then he turned the gun up toward me as if to get me, too, until he saw it was only me, Travis, and he lowered it again. Said, “Thanks man.”

Said, “Thanks, Travis, really. Figured I’d get him on the way out.”

Well, I didn’t want to have to argue with Melio about the ethics of the thing. I slipped the pistol back into my jacket pocket and I told him that he would have to cover for me on this one. Said, “I can’t stay for the cop show, Melio, my gun’s hot.”

“Well, you can’t do that, Travis,” Melio said. “You are my witness.”

“Hell, I can’t,” I told Melio. “It’s no sweat, Melio. What is this for you, four?”

Smiling, he held up three fingers: “Nah, three.”

Said, “All right, Travis, I do what I can. Thanks.”

I was feeling pretty frozen myself, said, “Thank you, Melio.”

When I turned to go I saw him pick up the phone to dial the police. He had his gun on the counter. I had my piece back in my jacket. The place smelled like a butcher shop. I went out the door with a pint of chocolate milk and a Cuban sandwich to my cab.

As the saying goes, when a man has taken blood, once a man has taken blood like that there is a definite dent in his life and it isn’t anymore the same as it was. Time has a different feeling. And it just blends one minute into the next. The film over life seems to slide back and forth on its
sprockets
so that one minute you are inside this horny dream, all wild and hot with blood, and the next it is like some sort of soap opera maybe between a boy and a girl and everything is in slow motion and there are just huge gaps between the words like feelings.

I stayed home more and more after the killing. My place became a cave to hide in. I cleaned and re-cleaned the .38. Watched TV. Ate out of jars.

I don’t know it was like nothing mattered to me anymore except to do what I had to do and that would take time and cunning. To be silent and careful and exact so that I might go down in history too.

Midafternoon Melodrama

It was boring a lotta the time but it didn’t seem that way to me then. I don’t know whether I knew what it was to be bored. There was this game I used to play when I watched TV. I’d be wearing all my guns, and I’d be watching the TV with my feet up on that crate, and as the people in the little box hassled each other, I would sort of take the heel of my boots and sort of rock that crate slowly back and forth to see how far it would tip over before falling.

It was all a question of balance, I guess, a teeter-tottering kind of thing. This beautiful young man would be talking to the beautiful young woman very earnestly about their “relationship” and how she had hurt him, maybe, and my heels would be on the melon crate rocking it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, every time just a little bit more, until one day the inevitable happened and the crate tipped backward and that TV went crashing to the floor and there was a short smelly flash and everything turned white like a cloud and the box was all jagged and broken glass. Dead knobs. That image had fled. “Damn,” I said to myself,
“damn.”
I said to myself,
“Damn, damn.”

That image had fled. There wasn’t even anything to watch on TV anymore.

The Wizard Speaks

So one morning at 3:30 I’m sitting with Wizard, in this greasy spoon at a rear table over coffee and we can’t even talk. We’re like dead.

Charley T. enters, wearing his hang-dog look, and he works his way down through the other tables of the restaurant toward our table. Lately, as I say, I’d been keeping to myself, stayed away from all the other drivers, but that evening I went looking for Wizard. To talk, just to talk. Maybe to make one more stab at keeping in time with other people. So that I wouldn’t be completely inside this you know dream of going down in history, as I say, and then Charley T. had to come along. Almost spoiling things. As it were.

Wizard says, “How’s it, Charley?”

“Hey,” I say. I say, “Hey, Charley.” Almost as if I meant it, too.

Charley has an answer for me and Wizard too. He says, “Hi, Wiz. Hi ya killer.”

Says, “How ya doing, killer?”

He has his hand formed into a pistol which he cocks and fires pow with his lips.

Then Wizard says, “You’re getting quite a rep, Travis.”

Frankly, I felt like ice. Charley called to the cook for coffee and scrambled eggs, and then he sat down. He said, “Got the five bucks you owe me, killer?”

Well, when I reached into my jacket pocket for my roll, that old twenty-dollar bill I got that evening down on the Lower East Side it fell out too and I just stared at it a moment almost as if I was afraid to touch it. Then I found a five and gave it to Charley and scooped up that twenty and put it back into my jacket pocket.

Wizard was asking Charlie what the action was like.

“Slow,” Charlie says. “The night would have been shot, if I just didn’t grab a hot one—out-of-town line loader. Very straight. Played in slow and got twenty-five bills out of him.”

Wizard laughed, “I’m gonna turn you in to the Chamber of Commerce, you keep fleecing all the hicks like that.”

Charley T. he jived right back: “I knowed you to do worse.”

“Hell,” Wizard grinned, “at least I work the town. You just hang around the hotels, looking for line loaders in thousand-dollar suits . . .”

“It’s a living,” Charley chuckled.

“Well, I’m shoving on,” I said, getting up to leave.

“I’m with you,” Wizard said, getting up too.

We nodded goodbye to Charley and the cook and worked our way out toward the front door, but Charley wouldn’t leave it alone: “See ya, killer. Don’t forget your pea shooter.”

Out on the sidewalk Wizard makes a break straight for his cab, but I follow him. I just had to talk to somebody about something. He was standing there trying to open the door and he looked very old and sort of wise to me for a minute. A little old man. I said, “Hey Wiz?”

“Yeah.” He fell back against his cab leaning on it and we were facing each other dead on, while two black hookers worked the sidewalk across the street from us and the all-night neon sign of a live strip show flashed on and off and on and off, this box with hips blinking yellow and green in my eyes. I noticed some guy asleep in the doorway like a tiny little baby all curled up under an old jacket.

“Look, Wiz,” I said. “We never talk much, you and me . . .”

“Yeah?”

A group of street punks maybe fourteen years old rushed passed and jived at the hookers and they jived back at them.

“Yeah?” Wizard repeated like he knew something was up.

“I wanted to ask you something,” I said, “on account you’ve been around so long.”

“Shoot.” Wizard was drumming with his fingertips against the fender of the cab but he seemed prepared to listen. Said, “They don’t call me Wizard for nothing.”

Said, “Shoot, Travis, I hear you talking to me.”

Well I just couldn’t get the words out straight, they just, you know, came out like a lot of words at first, all strung together without much sense to them and a lot of spaces in between like on one of those soap operas.

“Things got you down?” Wizard asked.

“Real down,” I said. I hung my head against my chest.

Wizard said, “It happens.”

I thought I could spill it all to Wizard maybe. Thought I really needed to. I really tried to let him know where I was at. Said, “Sometimes it gets so I just don’t know what I’m gonna do. I get some real crazy ideas, you know? Just to go out and do something?”