Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,33

down the street to my taxi.

Chapter Seventeen

A COUPLE OF days later, after the diner deal, I’d knocked off early and pulled into the mechanics section of the Rodney garage to have Hot Rod work on my front brakes. Another driver, a night-shift guy everybody knew, Al Bridhoff, was there too having some tranny work done. Al had once gone to law school upstate. Albany or somewhere. He was now the garage shylock. Because he had power and controlled money, many of the Rodney cabbies went to him for advice.

We were talking and drinking vending-machine coffee when I decided to mention the telephone incident and Betty at the diner and some of the stuff my mind had been saying to me.

But right away I regretted bringing it up.

Bridhoff was a pipe smoker. I began telling him what had happened and he began trying to light his fucking pipe. I’d say something, then he’d start to reply but stop in the middle, attempt to relight the pipe twenty-eight more fucking times, then nod that we could go on. I felt like the chump, the mooch, groveling for this asshole’s magical syllables of insight. In less than five minutes I hated him and hated myself for initiating the conversation.

When I’d said what I had to say, Bridhoff sat down. He could see that I was annoyed at having to watch him with his moron pipe. He scratched his cheek thoughtfully and attempted to give the appearance of contemplation. ‘Well, sport,’ he said finally, playing with the lid on his Zippo lighter, clicking the top up and down, ‘it sounds like you’ve been overdoing it just a bit.’

I didn’t answer. A dented cab fender had more intelligence than this shylock imbecile fuck.

Disgusted, I threw my half-full coffee cup in the garbage, and began walking away. Bridhoff stopped me, putting his hand up like a crossing guard. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘tell me what you did with all the telephone parts, the receivers and cords? Still have that stuff?’

‘No. It was broken junk. I threw it away.’

‘Evidence, huh?’

‘No. Junk. Not evidence of any kind. Useless fucking junk.’

‘Yeah, well, that wasn’t very good thinking, was it? Telephone equipment has value. I might’ve been able to help you there.’

‘There’s a dumpster in the alley behind my rooming house. The valuable telephone shit you’re looking for is under a cat carcass and six feet of garbage. Help yourself, sport.’

A day or two later something else happened. More insanity.

I was hacking. On Madison Avenue in the Eighties about to pull over and pick up a guy hailing me, when another hack in a Checker cab cut me off to get to a fare. I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting his taxi.

The fare got in the other guy’s Checker.

I pulled up next to the cabbie and yelled something and he mouthed ‘Fuck you’ and gave me the finger.

No big deal. Normally I’d just let it go. It can happen a couple of times a week when you’re hacking but, for some reason, I flipped out and lost control.

I followed the other taxi, yelling shit, tailgating, screaming out my window.

After a few blocks he swerved between cars and I was forced to stop for a light. Seeing that I’d caught the signal, he went ahead to his destination, assuming that because he’d gotten away the incident was over. But I kept my eyes on his taillights. Saw him turn. I caught up.

He had pulled to the curb after making his drop on Sixty-first Street, around the corner from the Pierre Hotel.

That’s when we settled up.

A lot of cab drivers I knew carried weapons; guns or mace or pepper spray. I didn’t. I carried a baseball bat under my front seat. A Louisville Slugger.

I walked up quickly. The other guy was looking down, still filling out his trip record. I attacked his window. Slam! Slam! Slam! putting a million spiderweb cracks in the windshield’s safety glass. Then I did the back and the side glass.

There would have been no witnesses too because the prick couldn’t see me through the opaque glass, and he was too shocked and scared to do anything about it but, as I was getting back into my cab, looking around, I recognized one of the drivers from my garage waiting alone in his cab at the hack stand in front of the Pierre. He saw me too, then he looked away.

A couple of nights later I was checking out with Shorty Smith, leaving the dispatch