by Jack Clark
His hair was nearly gone and what was left was as grey as his face. A half smoked cigar sat unlit in a corner of his mouth. It might take him all night to finish it, and until he did he would keep it dangling there, spitting out flecks of tobacco now and then.
The waitress came by and filled Willis's coffee cup, then topped mine.
"Unbelievable, huh?" Willis said.
"What?"
"Polack Lenny," he said, as if that might mean something.
"What about him?"
"Oh, Jesus," he said, but then he didn't say anything. He looked off to the side, then towards the ceiling.
"What happened?" I asked.
"They found him by Cabrini," Willis said.
"Huh?" I still didn't understand.
"Shot in the head," he explained.
"Dead?" I whispered.
"What the hell you think we've been talking about?" the loudmouth wanted to know, and somebody passed a newspaper over.
"CABDRIVER SLAIN," the headline shouted. And there was a picture of Lenny's brand new cab, all the doors open so you couldn't read his name, and a bunch of cops standing around, probably laughing and telling stories.
"GOOD LUCK TURNS BAD," a smaller headline read. "The second cabdriver slain in Chicago this week was found shot to death early this morning on a dead-end street in the shadow of the Cabrini-Green housing project.
"Leonard Smigelkowski, who was recently awarded a taxi medallion in a lottery of fellow drivers, was found slumped over the wheel of his new cab by a security guard patrolling a nearby Commonwealth Edison substation.
"Smigelkowski, 56, is the fifth cabdriver slain in Chicago this year. Abdul Patel, 41, a driver for North Suburban Taxi in Skokie, was found stabbed to death early Tuesday morning in Garfield Park. His abandoned taxi was found several hours later in an alley a few blocks west of the park."
I remembered Lenny smiling and signing. Look ma, no hands.
"I just saw him," I said.
"When?"
"Last night."
"What time?" Willis asked.
"Midnight," I decided, "somewhere around there."
"They found him about two."
"He was deadheading up the Drive," I said. "He got on at Belmont and gave me the thumbs down. Said he was going home."
"You talked to him?"
I shook my head. "Hand signals," I explained.
"I wonder what happened?" Willis asked.
"Shit, he was going home."
"Yeah, but you know how it goes," Willis said. "Somebody flags you and you decide what the hell, one more load. You drop them off and somebody's waiting. Next thing you know you're back to work."
"Lenny was pretty careful," I said. "Christ, it doesn't make any sense. He never went into Cabrini." Lenny was one of those drivers who almost never picked up black passengers. He'd been fined and suspended several times.
"That's the scary part," Willis agreed.
The waitress dropped a plate in front of me. Two eggs stared back with sad, grease-covered eyes.
I pushed the food to the side and turned the newspaper to an inside page. There was a bad picture of Lenny, probably taken from his chauffeur's license, four for a buck and a half in the photo booth down at the Vehicle Commission. "Where the fuck is Hobbie Street?" I asked.
"Off of Crosby," Willis explained, "just south of that Edison substation."
"Jesus, what a place," I said. "Why the fuck would he go in there?"
"They stick a gun in your head, you'd be surprised the places you might go," Willis said.
I couldn't bring myself to eat the eggs. I made a sandwich of toast and bacon and washed it down with another cup of coffee.
We stood around in the parking lot, leaning against Willis's Flash Cab. "This fucking city," he said. "I don't know why I'm still here."
"Money," I said.
"You know when I first got up here I really loved this town. I thought I had the world by the balls. Just drivin' around all day bullshitting away with whoever happened to be in the back seat. Christ, the money was easy back then: forty-two and a half percent of the meter and all you could steal. I don't ever remember working hard."
"Those were the days," I agreed, although I'd never worked as a commission driver. Back then, cabdrivers were regular employees. They got paychecks like normal people, had health insurance and other benefits. They even belonged to a union.
The union had been busted years before my time and the commission drivers were long gone. Today, everybody leased their cabs and paid for whatever gas they used. Anything over the lease and the gas was profit. There were no benefits, of course. The cab companies now considered drivers independent contractors.
"Yoo-hoo," a woman called from out on the street. "Taxi!"
"Where're you heading?" Willis called back.
"The train station," the woman said. She was young and white, wearing a trench coat and running shoes and lugging a thin briefcase. "Please, I've only got five minutes."
"You take her," I said. "I'm gonna head north."
But at Division Street, I changed my mind and turned west instead. I flipped my NOT FOR HIRE sign down, drove a few blocks and there was the city's most infamous patch, Cabrini-Green. There was block after block of nothing but dim government-issue highrises, surrounded by hard-packed dirt, and grey, litter-strewn parking lots which were usually empty except for a few junk cars. There were few trees, little grass, and hardly any people.
That was one of the most noticeable things about Cabrini. There were thousands of residents, packed into scores of buildings; but, with occasional--sometimes terrifying--exceptions, there never seemed to be many people around.
The top floors of the tallest highrises had been emptied out years ago, supposedly in preparation for remodeling. But the remodeling never happened and at night the place had the foreboding look of a ghost town. A spooky little ghost town, where snipers set up shop in deserted apartments and took potshots at whatever caught their fancy.
The victims were usually fellow residents. People who'd made the mistake of actually going outside; women and children, as often as not.
The place was a cabdriver's nightmare. It sat in the middle of some of the city's best cruising territory. The Gold Coast was a few blocks to the east, River North just south, and Old Town and Lincoln Park north. There was no way you could avoid the place. Several major streets skirted the edge of the project and three went right through it. Inside, there were narrow side streets and dead-end driveways where, over the years, several drivers had been found murdered.
When I was a kid, there'd actually been white people living here. But that was long ago. Now almost everybody was black, poor, and on welfare. The place was a boomtown, one day a month.
I caught the light at Larrabee and sat there, a full car length behind the car in front, giving myself plenty of room to maneuver.
This was the main intersection of Cabrini. On New Year's Eve the police would close both streets for blocks in every direction. This did little to restrain the snipers on their biggest night of the year, but it did decrease the number of moving targets.
There were highrises on two corners, and a fire station on another. The most popular corner held a package liquor store. There was some local color lounging about and a few people waiting for the bus.
The light changed. I continued west and then turned south. This was Crosby Street, rutted with potholes and littered with debris. The substation was on my right behind a high cyclone fence. There were some small factories on my left, all closed for the night.
There were DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE signs sprinkled along the fence which turned in at Hobbie Street. I followed along. A large Bureau of Rodent Control sign joined the smaller signs. NO DUMPING, it warned. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Across the way somebody had dumped a truckload of wallboard fragments and splintered lumber in a patch of weeds.
There was no sign of Lenny's cab or any clue as to where it had been found. The street ran west for abo
ut half a block but it didn't dead-end, as the newspaper had said; it curved and tapered into an alley that ran under the Ogden Avenue bridge and then out to Halsted Street.
I made a U-turn and started back the way I'd come. I didn't know what I was looking for. Some trace of Lenny, I guess, a guy I'd been having coffee with for years. A guy I'd laughed and joked with, just killing time, while waiting for dawn.
"Eddie, you take too many chances," he'd told me years before, after I'd described some close call on the South Side. But somehow he'd ended up here, on a street that was little more than an alley, within spitting distance of Cabrini. There was no way he would have come in here on his own. Not a chance in hell. Not Lenny.
I stopped when I got back out to Crosby. A block ahead, a twelve-story red brick building stared back. Even with lights burning in most of the apartments, the building looked dark and menacing.
A group of guys were hanging out alongside the building. They were all black, of course. Most of them wore hooded sports jackets, the gang fashion of the day. The hoods were up although it wasn't very cold. It was just part of the look, the fashion of intimidation.
They knew I was watching and soon they were all facing my way. The smallest of the bunch started to run towards me. He probably wasn't twelve. I took my foot off the brake and the cab started to roll. The kid stopped and strutted back to the group and there were high-fives and jive handshakes all around.
I turned right. Two blocks later I was surrounded by the world headquarters of Montgomery Ward. That was how quick the city could change. Two blocks and there was a white guy in a suit and tie looking for a cab.
I made a left and popped the door locks, and he slipped into the back seat. "LaSalle Street and take a left," he said pointing the way.
"You mind telling me where you're going?"
He gave me an address on LaSalle and I started that way. "Did you hear about that cabdriver?" he asked.
"Heard all about it," I said, and put an end to that conversation.
I made a left on LaSalle, dropped my passenger, and continued on as the street curved through Lincoln Park and out to northbound Lake Shore Drive.
I drifted into the left lane and pushed it up to about 70, thirty over the limit, passing everything in sight.
I took the Drive until it ended and then followed what should have been Lenny's route home, Hollywood into Ridge.
I'd taken this same route last night, a few minutes ahead of Lenny. But something or someone had turned him around.
I went under a railroad viaduct. The local 24-Hour Pantry franchise was in a strip mall on the left.
There were a couple of taxis parked on Ridge, but around the corner on Devon just about every car at the curb was a cab. Some belonged to private owners like Lenny. Others, to single-shift drivers who kept their leased cabs around the clock and worked whichever hours they preferred. Later, when the night drivers called it quits, there would be even more cabs.
This was a neighborhood full of taxi drivers, mostly Indian and Pakistani. But there were still some Jewish drivers, left over from the days when both the industry and the neighborhood had been predominately Jewish. There were a few blacks too, mostly Africans. And the occasional oddball like Polack Lenny.
There were three cabs parked at the curb on Lenny's street. I recognized two of them. One belonged to Ace, another to Tony Golden. Both were regulars at the roundtable.
I slowed in front of Lenny's two-flat. I'd dropped him off here a few times but I'd never been inside. The second floor was all lit up. There were people moving around beyond parted curtains. Somebody turned and looked out to the street. I continued past
and retraced my steps to the 24-Hour Pantry. A sign over the door proclaimed: We Doze But Never Close.
I filled a go-cup with coffee, carried it up to the counter, and slid a dollar towards a muscular black kid sporting a razor haircut and a plastic name-tag which read Rollie. A skinny Indian or Pakistani stood a few feet behind him, arms folded, with a serious "I'm-the-supervisor," look planted on his face. His brass name-tag read Mohammed.
"Hey, man." Rollie smiled and a gold tooth gleamed as he rang up the sale. "I know you. You a taxi driver. You picked me up one time."
"Really?" I said. He didn't look familiar but that didn't mean anything. The passengers usually got a much better look at me than I got at them.
"You was cool, man." He handed me my change. "See, my uncle was sick and I couldn't get no cab to take me south. But then you came by. Yeah." Rollie smiled some more. "I tell you what. Next time you in, I buy the coffee."
"Anytime," I said, and I held up the cup. "Best coffee in town."
"See, wasn't for you, I might not of got to see my uncle that last time."
"You get a lot of cabdrivers in here?" I asked.
"Some nights."
"There was a guy might have been in last night," I said. "Older white guy, skinny, kind of reddish hair. You see anybody like that?"
He shook his head, "Most of our regulars be related to Mohammed here, you catch my drift." He smiled, and cocked his head towards the supervisor, who seemed not to hear.
I picked a newspaper off a stack, and opened it to the page with Lenny's picture. "How about this guy?" I asked.
"Oh, man, that the dude got killed?"
I nodded.
"Nah, man," he shook his head. "We was talking about that when I come on. See, everybody knew that guy they got a couple of months back. Used to be in every night. Little skinny, bitty foreign guy. Man, why would anybody kill a little man like that? You know he wouldn't put up no fight. You just blow him over."
I pointed to the picture again. "He would have been by just after midnight."
He shook his head again. "That's when I get off. Hey, Mohammed," he said, taking the paper from me and holding it up. "You see this dude in here last night?"
Mohammed barely looked then shook his head.
"You want I should ask the overnight crew?"
I shrugged, and dropped the paper back on the pile.
"He was your friend, huh?"
"Yeah." I picked up the coffee.
"Too many people out there got no heart, man," Rollie said. "No heart at all."
"You got that right."
"I thought about driving a cab one time," Rollie said. "But I got an uncle, different uncle, he used to drive a taxi and when I talked to him, he told me forget it."
"Smart man."
"Sometime," Rollie said. "But sometime he be dumb too."
"It's not much of a job," I said. "And once you get into it, it's hard to get out. Take my word."
"This here be the best job in the world." Rollie gave me a crooked grin and rolled his eyes towards Mohammed.
"I'll see you around." I started for the door.
"Hey, don't forget, man," Rollie said, "next time I buy the coffee."
"Sure," I said.
"Hey, what's you name?"
"Eddie," I said.
"I be Rollie," he pointed to his plastic tag.
DISCRIMINATION IN THE SOLICITATION, ACCEPTANCE OF, AND THE DISPATCHING OF SERVICE TO PASSENGERS ON THE BASIS OF RACE, GENDER, OR GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION OF PICK-UP OR DESTINATION WITHIN THE CITY OF CHICAGO IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
City of Chicago, Department of Consumer Services, Public Vehicle Operations Division
I headed back south, to the streets I cruised night after night after night. From Wrigley Field down to the Loop, the Gold Coast to Lincoln Park, Old Town and River North--never straying too far from the lake--following Clark Street and Halsted, Lincoln and Wells. They were all nightlife streets and on good nights, they were loaded with white kids looking for cabs.
On Halsted, in Lincoln Park, a girl in an ankle-length coat waved. She had blond hair and wore her coat open, exposing a tiny skirt and long shapely legs.
"Cafe du Midi," she said sliding in. "You know where that's at?"
"I think I can find it."
"The last guy took me for a joyride."
It had been a regular neighborhood back then, full of working stiffs like my father, a union printer. We were a little better off than most. My parents owned the building we lived in--a modest, red-brick three flat--and we had the entire first floor. Upstairs each apartment had been divided in two.
When I was in high school, hillbillies and Puerto Ricans began moving into the neighborhood, and my father decided it was time to get out.
He sold the building and used the money to make a down payment on a vast six-flat overlooking Columbus Park on the far West Side in Austin.
My parents really loved that place, at least for a time. And my father was so proud of his business genius, replacing a dumpy, working-class three-flat with this palace where a doctor lived. "That's right," I once heard him whisper to an old friend. "A doctor!"
A few years later we could see the smoke from the riots in the black neighborhood a couple of miles east. The doctor was the first to go. In no time at all, the neighborhood was almost entirely black. My father held on, hoping to get his money out of the building, but he never did. My mother got her purse snatched one day and that was it. He sold the place for whatever he could get and they moved to the suburbs.
And my father never owned another apartment building.
And he never, ever, wanted to talk about Lincoln Park which had gone on to become one of Chicago's wealthiest neighborhoods.
The hippies had come around--about the same time the West Side was burning--with their little shops, coffee houses and clubs. Eventually they'd chased the Puerto Ricans and white trash away, and made the place safe for upper-middle class suburbanites who wanted to live near the Loop.
A few years back, somebody had gutted the dumpy old three-flat and converted it to a single-family home.
At one time more than twenty people had lived in that building. Now it was just one family. You had to be even richer than a doctor to pull off something like that.
A few blocks past the old homestead the street turned industrial. This was the one section of the neighborhood that still reminded me of the old days. On the edge of the
