Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,34

window, counting my tips, when Al Bridhoff patted me on the back. ‘Hey, “Batman,”’ he said. ‘Take it slow out there tonight.’

There were a dozen guys standing around the shape-up room. They all laughed. From then on I had a new name at the Rodney garage.

Chapter Eighteen

THE GOOD PART was that hacking kept me constantly busy. I was making money. I’d acquired a new electric typewriter to work on my play, a color TV.

Then something happened that triggered something else that put me over the edge: Shorty Smith had graduated me to what in the taxi business they call a ‘single’ - one long twelve- to fourteen-hour shift. No night guy. Just me. I was allowed to choose my own time slot; 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., six days a week. Sundays off.

It was early June, 8:30 a.m., drizzling a smelly rain in stop-and-go traffic. I was maneuvering my cab back up Eighth Avenue in the Thirties after a drop at Penn Station, staying to the east side of the street, barely making the staggered lights, preparing to avoid the stampede of commuters who would be flagging me down as I approached the Port Authority Bus Terminal at Thirty-ninth Street.

The cab was sweltering. A morning summer rain had made the humidity worse. The Dodge’s temperature gauge showed three-quarters to the bright orange/red ‘HOT’ area. Already the back of my shirt was wet with sweat, stuck to the seat.

My plan at that time of the morning was to make my way empty uptown into the Seventies on Central Park West, get my next fare, drop them in midtown or downtown, then repeat the process. Uptown downtown, uptown downtown, until the end of rush hour.

After I passed Forty-first Street, traffic opened up. Rolling by the commuter hotels more frantic hands waved at me; a whistle blew from a red-faced doorman. I slowed but when I saw garment bags and suitcases stacked next to the guy on the curb, I punched the gas pedal again. No airport runs. Not at rush hour. It would mean a dead hit all the way back from Kennedy.

Crossing Forty-fifth and Eighth, a black guy stepped out from between parked cars, hailing me. I let up on the gas to check him out. A second guy, behind guy number one, was on the curb carrying an A & P shopping bag filled with groceries. The two looked like working men. Hotel employees. The night shift. I guessed their destination as Harlem or Washington Heights. It could be a parlay. Perfect. I’d drop them uptown then catch a long hit back down into midtown. So, flicking my ‘OFF DUTY’ light off, I pulled over.

But they’d been in the taxi for under a minute when I knew; the first guy did the talking, flat, inflectionless: ‘One-eighteenth and Manhattan Avenue.’

I threw the meter flag and twisted my way back into traffic, but I knew. Cab drivers know. My groin and stomach suddenly felt like they’d been punctured by the dirty blade of a pocket knife. This was a hold-up. These guys were going to do me.

My brain clicked to the word ‘fuck’ and screamed it at me over and over.

Guy number one, the talking guy, was sitting directly in back of me. He leaned forward against the plastic partition to give more instructions. ‘Into the park,’ he said. ‘Go in at Fifty-ninth Street. Come out uptown. Hundred and tenth street. Lenox Avenue…understand?’

I saw his eyes locked on me in the rear-view mirror. Dead eyes. Dead face. The gray lips moved but beyond that movement there was nothing alive. Guy number two stayed silent, staring at the back of the front seat. I knew it. I was fucked.

The route that number one had told me to take was circuitous, the long way. It was the way I would choose if me and another robber scumbag had decided we were going to take off a cabbie. By going his way there would be no interference. The uptown Central Park roadway was abandoned in morning rush hour. The fear that had jabbed my guts now worked its way up into my chest and down my arms.

‘That’s the wrong way,’ I mouthed. ‘Eighth Avenue and up Central Park West is the best way. Faster.’

Again Dead Face leaned up against the open partition window; a pull-cord zombie doll. ‘Yo,’ he hissed, ‘jus take the fucking park. Jus do what I say…take the park.’

Two blocks later we reached the turn-off entrance to the park at Fifty-ninth Street.