Small Town Taxi (Honey Walker Adventures Book 1)

by Harriet Rogers

  “Hey, is that Wonder Bread? I heard they was closing the plant. Ain’t gonna make it no more.”

  “You’re kidding. I was raised on that stuff.”

  “How come you got so much of it?”

  Two more residents hobbled into the group. A few more came out of the restrooms. There were at least 10 wheezing geezers standing around observing the cart overflowing with plastic sacks of bread.

  “You ain’t hoarding it, is you?”

  The elevator doors opened and I shoved the cart and Tommy inside. As the doors started to close, a wrinkled hand reached between them and they slid back open. The whole crowd trooped in and the doors shushed together. I was crushed to the back wall.

  “I could use a loaf for peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. It’s the only kind of bread that works.” A gnarled hand reached out and snatched a sack.

  “Yeah, I use it for liverwurst with pickles. Them pickles go with everything. And you can get ’em by the gallon at Wal-Mart.” Another package disappeared. Two loaves toppled to the floor and were gone.

  Tommy slapped wildly at grabbing hands.

  “Hey, gimme that!” a cracked voice squeaked.

  “That one’s mine.”

  “Back off, asshole.”

  The cart was almost empty when the elevator labored to a stop. The doors creaked open and everyone spilled out into the grungy hallway. I stayed plastered to the back of the elevator. Tommy stood next to me, shoulders slumped in a defeated posture.

  I left the cart blocking the door open and peeked into the hall. There were two people still visible. Unless you counted the body laid out on the floor. One of the upright bodies nudged the horizontal one with his toe. The elevator door tried to close, banged the cart and slid back open.

  “Don’t know where he came from. I heard his head hit the wall. He shoulda known better than to stand in the way like that. Old Ethel there was in a hurry to get home. Talking about her Depends.” He nudged the body again. “I wonder if he’s dead.”

  “I remember when Harry came out into the hall to die.”

  “Yeah, what a mess he made. Sometimes when you die, you shit in your pants.”

  “I heard that.”

  I slipped around the cart and stepped out of the elevator. The door tried to close again, bounced off the cart and opened again.

  “So, he’s still breathing.” One of the old men turned to me.

  “I think we should roll him over.”

  We each pushed with a foot, and the skinny body flopped over onto its back. He looked about 25 years old. He had a number tattoo on his upper arm. It said 18th. I wondered what he was 18th in and why he would be proud enough of coming in 18th to tattoo it on his arm.

  “Hey, I recognize him. He was just on the news. You know, one of them bulletins. Wanted for some kind of drug deal. He had what’s-her-face, down the hall, handing out free samples.”

  “’Member that horsey-looking lady, came with him one day? She wanted to swap some funny-looking pills for Anwar’s oxy. I heard her tell him she was trying out new territory.”

  “Yep, this guy’s the one did a high-speed chase, driving a truck full of Porta Potties. Dumped the shit-mobile on its side and run off into the woods. They never did nab him. Found a bunch of ‘suspicious white powder’ in the cab of the truck. Porta Potties were clean as a whistle, though. I betcha he’s part of some big drug cartel. Think there’s any reward?”

  The other old guy whipped open his cell phone and dialed 911. He turned to me. “You know this ain’t just any old subsidized housing. We’re a regular stop on the interstate drug-running corridor. I read that in one a them national magazines,” he bragged.

  Any drug runners who stopped in here were putting their lives in danger. Unless they were supplying the senior citizens who lived here, their chances of survival were pretty poor. I wondered what kind of samples were being passed out. The apartment complex housed a population of elderly and disabled, so there were lots of medications floating around. I could see some enterprising business involving the heavier painkillers.

  The body groaned.

  “Maybe we should tie him up. Anybody got some string?”

  I shrugged and pulled out my duct tape.

  Tommy finally staggered out of the elevator and looked sadly at the last three loaves of bread in the shopping cart.

  “It’s nice to know they like the stuff so much,” I said, trying to put a positive spin on it. He shuffled out and down the hallway, dragging the cart behind him. The elevator, having nothing to bump against, finally closed. I took the stairs down.

  The police cars were pulling up when I got to the lobby. Jon’s unmarked was first in line.

  “How’s your duct-tape supply?” he asked.

  “Are they sending detectives to bust senior citizens now?” I snapped back.

  “Dispatch said there was a possible drug dealer in the area.”

  “It was all about Wonder Bread,” I said.

  Jon shook his head. He looked at me and smiled. He leaned over and handed me a stray loaf that must have fallen out of the cab.

  “I can’t keep up with your crime-fighting spree.” He looked toward the building. “So, where’s the body?”

  “Upstairs, third floor. And he’s alive.”

  “Contained?”

  “Very.”

  “Duct tape?”

  “Yes, but I just loaned it out,” I said defensively. “It was the senior-citizen brigade who used it and called emergency.”

  Jon motioned to the uniforms and they went inside. “Any idea who it is? Or why they called 911?”

  “Those old people watch news television 24/7. They saw the guy on one of the local channels, a trucker who fled the scene after a high-speed on the interstate. They were talking about Porta Potties and suspicious powder and being a stop on the drug runners’ route. He has a tat that says he’s 18th.”

  “Shit, 18th Streeters and Porta Potties. That just makes my day,” he said, looking a little overwhelmed. “I need to talk to that guy. And I’ll talk to you later.” He ran his hand down the side of my cheek, along my neck and onto my shoulder. He sighed and disappeared inside.

  Jon knew things he wasn’t telling me. In a small community, people share stuff with a taxi driver. Jon wasn’t sharing.

  I decided to live in the moment. Tommy had paid up and tipped well before the riot. I got a loaf of sort-of bread out of it. With thoughts about the guy at city housing and drug runners flipping around my brain, I headed back to scare up more rent money. Crime in Northampton is either personal and domestic or about drugs and money-laundering. The domestic problems are local. The drugs and money laundering are controlled from outside the city. The victim of the Wonder Bread riot was an outsider. It got me thinking about how important Northampton was to the drug trade. Lots of small towns, especially those with colleges, were feeling the pressure of increasing drug presence in the population. I was sure I had inadvertently transported drugs up the interstate. We avoided doing it, but the quantity was overwhelming and it was getting increasingly difficult to sort out the drug runners from the rest of society. A driver for another company told me about a woman who paid him to deliver the drugs and to collect payment. She used her American Express card.

  Mona and Belle were sitting down to lunch when I got to Cool Rides. It was pizza loaded with, thank God, no Wonder Bread.

  “So, how was he?” Mona asked around a mouthful of sausage.

  “We had a little accident.”

  Mona rushed to the window to check out the car.

  “Not the car. The car is fine. No scratches, no dents. Honest.” I told them about the bread riot.

  “Yeah,” Belle said, “those old folks, they have real chutzpah. Gotta be careful around them. Look at Lucille. She’s murder with those cookies.”

  A pretty good shot with a large gun, too.

  “The senior citizens called the cops but it wasn’t about Tommy or Wonder Bread. They bagged a drug dealer.
” I turned to Mona. “You got fares?”

  “Yeah, King Street porn store to Easthampton. Don’t worry,” she said at my look of dismay. “It’s one of the clerks.”

  “Like he’s gonna be normal.” I turned back to Belle. “Want to come along? You still need some drive-time experience.”

  “Yeah, from super-pro driver here.” Belle got up and headed for the door. “I can run bodyguard. Protect you from the big bad porno clerk.”

  I rolled my eyes and followed her out.

  We picked him up and delivered him to an apartment building in Easthampton. Belle fidgeted the whole way, bouncing her leg, cracking her knuckles, shifting in her seat. He paid up and disappeared into the ancient, crumbling brick structure. He was big and mean looking. I tried to envision him selling accessories to horny senior citizens.

  Excuse me, sir, but how many tubes of lube did you want with that elephant-sized dildo?

  When he was out of sight, I turned to Belle. “Okay, what is wrong with you? You’re acting like there’s a bomb in your britches.”

  I backed into a side street to turn around.

  “I know that guy. I saw his portrait in the police station. He’s up for a mob hit.”

  “Are you sure? Some of those wanted pictures are pretty fuzzy. And way out of date.”

  “I know who he is,” Belle said with certainty.

  I slowed to a crawl and studied the side-by-side brick buildings where we dropped him. There was an alley between them that dead-ended into a brick wall. Unless you like brick, the landlord wasn’t charging for the view. The side door emptied into the alley.

  Suddenly the door slammed open. A woman charged out with our fare in hot pursuit. He grabbed her hair with one hand. The other hand was holding a gun. The woman lost the battle to get away. He forced her to her knees, raised the gun and pressed it to her head.

  I jammed the car into drive and mashed the accelerator to the floor. We squealed another few feet and careened into the alley. The guy’s head jerked up. He dropped the woman. She did a fast crab walk back to the doorway. He turned toward the cab. Too late, asshole. He must have thought the same thing because he wheeled around, took two steps, smacked into the brick wall, bounced off and planted his butt on the hood of my car. I slammed on the brakes. When I opened my eyes, he was spread across the front of the car. His hand twitched, and he slid to the ground.

  Belle called 911. I got out of the car to find the gun. His victim had come out of the doorway and was looking for it too. I found it first, probably because she had stopped to kick him a few times. I was less inclined to shoot him than she might have been, so I might have saved his life. I couldn’t decide if that gave me my good karma or my bad karma for the day.

  By the time the cops arrived, the guy was starting to come around. They checked his pulse, cuffed him and loaded him into the back of the cruiser. His lady friend and one of the cops disappeared into the building. Jon had been visiting the Easthampton station, swapping paperwork, when the call came in. He stood with Belle and me while the Easthampton cops did their capture and cuff. One of them came over to Jon.

  “You know who that guy is?” He glanced at me. “That’s Ruzzi. He’s wanted in five states for murder. They finally got enough evidence to nail his ass in New Jersey.”

  “Jesus, Ruzzi. Did you get all his weapons?” asked Jon.

  “Two guns, a knife and a bottle of unknown substance.” The other cop looked at me again.

  “Strip-search him when you get to the station. Meantime, keep your gun handy. What the hell is he doing here? He’s a freakin’ mob hit man. Shit.” Jon looked like he wanted to kick something. The name Scarpelli wandered around in the back of my head.

  “You want to take him to Northampton?” the cop asked, pride of possession battling with the reality of a truly bad guy.

  “Nope, he’s your collar. Just be careful. I’ll do interviews with the taxi driver for you and forward the paper.” Jon turned back to me.

  “Honey, you are truly frightening,” he said. “I will see you later in my private interview room,” he added, running his thumb over my lip, and he left.

  Belle and I went back to Cool Rides. When you’re high on adrenaline, it’s best to keep moving. Belle went to a pickup at the movie theater. Mona handed me a slip.

  “This one is an accident. No fatalities. Just need a ride back to town.”

  “Who called it in?”

  “Lieutenant Jon was on his way back from Easthampton when a car crashed coming the other direction. He called the ambulance, the tow truck and us. Said you are one scary woman. What’s that about?”

  “I don’t know. I just do my job,” I said and snatched the fare slip.

  Jon was still at the scene when I pulled up. The driver and passenger had declined medical treatment, so the EMTs declared everyone lucky and left. The tow truck was leaving with a bent-in-half car. A tree on the side of the road had lost some skin.

  “Hey, hi again,” I said to Jon.

  “Hi, yourself. I wondered if Mona would send you.”

  “So, what happened? Talking on the phone?”

  “Nope.” Jon grinned. “The driver’s airbag deployed.”

  “Before or after the crash?”

  “After. His fly was unzipped. And her face had airbag burn.”

  “Gak,” I replied.

  I dropped the couple from hell downtown. He said she was a controlling, brain frozen bitch. She said he was a manipulating cocksucker and from now on he could suck his own cock, ’cause she sure as shit wasn’t going to. They split the fare and argued over that. They didn’t split the tip because there wasn’t one.

  I headed back to the office. The phone rang as I walked through the door. Belle had returned and volunteered to ride along to whatever Mona had.

  “Yeah, we could do that.” Mona flipped the phone closed. “Woman wants a ride out to the bridge as soon as possible. Pick up in front of the Deep Hole bar.”

  The Coolidge Bridge is named after President “Silent Cal” Coolidge. It’s the only way to cross the Connecticut River from Northampton unless you go twenty miles north to the next bridge or find out if your car floats. Traffic is always backed up inducing occasional bridge rage.

  We pulled up in front of the Deep Hole Bar. There was a girl of about sixteen with a huge shoulder bag listing to the side as if the bag carried some excessive weight. She stepped forward tentatively.

  “Are you my taxi? Can you take me to the bridge?” she asked as Belle opened the back door for her.

  “So, you going out to the bridge for a swim?” Belle asked, sliding into the front.

  “I’m going to jump off and kill myself.” The girl opened her bag and took out a medium-sized brick.

  “You have got to be shittin’ me.” Belle turned in her seat to get a better look at the girl and the brick. “Lady, no one takes a cab to commit suicide. You better pay me right now. And a big tip would be nice so we don’t take a detour to the police station. And that brick—that ain’t gonna help drag you to the watery depths. You want us to stop at the hardware store first and get you a cement block? I mean, how serious are you about this? ’Cause if you change your mind, we charge a wait fee.”

  A cabbie’s first concern is collecting payment, but I thought Belle was being a bit insensitive. I turned around. “Fasten your seat belt, please. You can kill yourself, but if I kill you, it’s going to raise my insurance rates.”

  Belle and I stared at her. She fastened the belt.

  “Okay? Happy?” She did the pout and slouch that only a teenager can do well.

  Oh, yeah.

  “So, what you want us to do? About that silly little brick. I mean, you need to get realistic about this. The fall will probably kill you, but just in case, we should get a cement block, and some rope would be good, too. And, hey, are you old enough to commit suicide without your parents’ permission?” Belle gave the girl the raised-eyebrows look.

  “I’m 17 years old. And Mom, like,
doesn’t care what I do.” More pouting. “You really think the fall will, like, kill me?”

  “Sweetie, it’s over a hundred feet before you hit the water. That’s like hitting a sidewalk from a 10-story building. You’re gonna be a mess. But most likely you’ll be too dead to worry about how you look. Of course, you could have dressed better.” Belle gave the girl’s outfit the once-over. It was blah and baggy.

  “You got clean underwear on?” I asked. “’Cause in my limited experience with suicide, clean underwear would be high on my list of stuff to do before.” I didn’t think it was close to a hundred feet from the water, even at the bridge’s highest point but it wasn’t an argument I was going to start since even a forty-foot drop could kill her.

  The young woman’s bottom lip quivered a little. We reached the parking lot next to the bridge. “I don’t need a bigger brick. I got, like, three of them in here. I’m going to, like, hang the pocketbook, like, around my neck.”

  “Oh, that’ll look real nice. It’ll probably fly up and smack you in the nose on the way down. I hope you didn’t ask for an open casket, ’cause your nose will be flat, flat, flat. You did make some arrangements for after?” Belle opened her door and got out.

  “I didn’t really, like, think about all that. Suicide seemed like the simple way out. I guess it’s more complicated than I thought.” Our passenger had begun to look more morose and less certain. Belle held the passenger’s door open.

  “Well, come on then. Honey and I will walk up with you. We can throw one of the bricks off. That way, you can test the distance. See how long it’s going to take you to hit.”

  “Why do I need to know that?” She was starting to whine.

  “You want your last minutes on earth to be quality time, don’t you? It’s good to know how many you got. That way you can think worthwhile thoughts during the last few breaths you suck in.” Belle started to walk up the sidewalk that edges the bridge. She turned back to our young passenger. “That’s ten dollars, by the way.”

  The girl looked at her blankly.