by Jack Clark
"I drop her off and go to the radio call. It's only a couple of blocks away. I beep the horn. This guy comes out. They decided they don't need the cab, he tells me. But he hands me twenty bucks. 'Thanks for coming out in the snow.' Shit, he just paid her fare, round trip. I'm telling you, sometimes I think it's all one big test and you either pass or you fail."
"Lenny must have failed," I said.
"No. No. I don't mean like that," Alex said.
"Big time," Willis agreed.
No passenger shall be permitted to ride on the front seat of the taxicab unless all other seats are occupied or unless written authorization from the Commissioner is in the possession of the passenger. At no time shall more than one passenger ride in the front seat.
City of Chicago, Department of Consumer Services, Public Vehicle Operations Division
Front seat riding was one of the Vehicle man's favorite tickets. So Betty was sitting in back, smoking and very clearly not saying a word, as we cruised east down Montrose Avenue.
"What's wrong?" I asked after a while.
"Your neighbor?" she said. "I can't believe you introduced me as your neighbor."
"But we are."
"Aren't we friends, Eddie?"
"Well, sure."
"Well couldn't you say, this is my friend Betty. I mean isn't that a little more than just your neighbor?"
"I guess so," I admitted. "Sorry."
"I know we're not exactly boyfriend and girlfriend but I hope I'm more than just the neighbor you fuck on Sunday mornings."
"Come on. I never said anything like that."
"Because if that's all I am "
"Betty, we're friends," I said. "You know that. And you know I think you're great." "I think you're great too," she said softly, and she put her arm over the back of the seat. "Can I hold your hand while you drive, Eddie? Or is that against the rules too?"
I reached up and found her hand.
"You always look so different from back here," she said.
I caught her eye in the mirror. "Better or worse?"
"Just different."
We went past Horner Park and over the river, then stopped for the light at Western Avenue.
"You know, I heard his name so much," Betty said. "The polack this, the polack that. Him and Ace, you're always talking about. Who's the other one?"
"Who?"
"Your other friend, you're always talking about."
"Ken Willis?"
"How come he doesn't get a nickname?"
"Kenny."
"How come you don't have one?"
"They used to call me Fast Eddie, years ago. I guess I slowed down."
"Fast Eddie. That's nice. Would you like to come up and keep me company for a while, Fast Eddie? Or is that another one of those rules?"
"You know what they say about rules?"
While his Public Passenger Vehicle is in service, no Public Chauffeur shall leave his vehicle to join any assembly or crowd of people upon any public way, and when standing or awaiting passengers he shall at all times remain in the immediate proximity of the vehicle of which he is in charge, but not further than ten (10) feet away. A Public Chauffeur shall not park or leave his vehicle in any place to engage in dice, cards, or any other game of chance in or about the vehicle.
City of Chicago, Department of Consumer Services, Public Vehicle Operations Division
The police station at Belmont and Western was a low, brick building on the edge of a modest shopping center just east of the river. The street in front was posted NO PARKING and a large NO PUBLIC PARKING sign guarded a side lot. It was a few minutes after midnight when I drove past the signs and slipped into an open space.
Inside, two uniformed cops, both white, overweight, and balding, sat behind a large, square counter, jawing away. All they needed were some hot dogs turning on a rotisserie, a few stools, maybe some french fries and fountain drinks, and they could probably take in enough to pay their own way.
A sign read: Detective Division 2nd Floor. I headed for the stairway.
"Help you?" a voice asked. I turned back towards the counter. A third cop, this one young and black, peeked out from behind a computer monitor.
"Violent Crimes," I said.
He waved me back his way and picked up a telephone. "Who're you looking for?"
"Detective Hagarty."
He spoke into the phone. "Hagarty there?" Then he twiddled his thumbs, holding the phone with his shoulder. "Somebody for you downstairs," he said after a while. He looked up. "Does he know you?"
"Tell him it's Ed Miles," I said. "The cabdriver from the other night."
He repeated that into the phone, then hung up. "Wait over there." He gestured towards a corner where a bench and an ashtray sat under a pay phone.
"Hey," I asked, "when this was Riverview, what was here?"
"Riverview?" He looked confused.
"Laughhhhhh your troubles away." One of the older cops mimicked a commercial that had run every summer for years.
"This was Riverview?" The black cop seemed amazed.
"Shit, I thought everybody knew that," the older cop said.
It had been Chicago's biggest and best amusement park. It had closed as usual at the end of the '67 season but never reopened.
The black cop took his glasses off and laid his head back, his eyes towards the ceiling. "We used to come when I was a little kid," he said.
"Yeah." The older cop smiled. "That's why they closed."
"That's right, isn't it?" The black cop came back to earth. "Scared all the white folk away."
"You remember what was here?" I asked the older cop.
He shook his head. "Must've been the freak show."
"How'd I miss that?" I asked.
"This is such a jive town," the black cop said.
"Used to be some city," the older cop said slowly.
"Shit," the black cop said. He stretched the word out, then slipped his glasses on and went back to his computer.
The third cop looked over at me. "See what you started?"
Hagarty walked up smiling. "Eddie Miles," he sang. "Born to be a cab driver. What's up?"
"You wanted to see me," I said.
"I did?" Now he looked confused. "About what?" he asked suspiciously.
"Lenny Smigelkowski, I guess."
"You involved with that?"
"I saw him on Lake Shore Drive the other night."
"That was you?"
I nodded.
"Well, come on up," he said, smiling again. "You can tell us all about it."
I followed him back the way he had come. Behind us the older cop said, "You can be damn sure it wasn't no Tunnel of Love."
Upstairs there was a large, open squad room with about twenty desks, most of them unoccupied. Hagarty led me towards the back where two desks were covered with papers and files. Foster was typing away at a computer keyboard. White letters moved across a blue screen.
Hagarty gestured towards a chair. "Turns out Eddie here is the guy who saw Smigelkowski on the Drive," he said as I sat down.
"Christ, he's everywhere," Foster said, and he looked my way. "I was hoping you were here to confess to that Relita Brown number."
I shook my head. "Relita Brown," I said. "How is she?"
"Intensive Care," Hagarty said. "St. Lucy's."
"She's gonna be okay?"
"Eddie, Eddie," Hagarty said, as if I'd just stepped off the first spaceship from Mars. "This is your typical Chicago success story. She just turned seventeen but she's already
been hustling for three years. Her mamma was a whore. Don't know nothin' about her daddy, probably just some trick. After her mamma OD'd she went to live with her grandmother, till she died too. So she moved in with an aunt who's also a whore. She grew up right there by North Avenue and got to watch all the girls in action. She's a nice kid for a hooker but that's what she is. Is she gonna be okay? Come on. She was never okay. Not one day in her whole fucked-up life."
"She's a prostitu
te?"
"North Avenue stroll," Hagarty said.
"Gonna have to find a new line of work," Foster said. "Hard to be a hooker without tits."
"I wouldn't bet on it," Hagarty said.
I was suddenly dizzy. I leaned forward and dropped my head into my hands. "He cut off her tits?" I said.
"Just one," Foster said.
"Oh, man," I said. Suddenly I knew what I'd been looking at the other night. Suddenly I could see. I tried to push the vision out of my mind.
"She was asking about you," Hagarty said as I looked up. "She thought you were an angel leading her up to the Pearly Gates."
"Hooker heaven," Foster said.
"She thought she was dead," Hagarty explained, "and then she saw the words 'Sky Blue' all lit up in the sky."
"My toplight," I said.
"This is not a girl who takes a lot of cabs," Hagarty said. "Hell, she can barely read. I think she was kind of disappointed when we told her you were just a cab driver."
"Did you find the guy in the van?" I asked.
"You practicing for Sergeant?" Foster wanted to know.
"Just wondering," I said.
Hagarty shook his head. "Tit Remover Number Two is still on the loose."
"Number two?"
"Oh, sure," Hagarty said. "We had another one, what was it, ten, twelve, years ago?" He glanced at Foster.
"Before my time."
"Somewhere back then," Hagarty decided. "Had a little trophy case down in the basement rec room. There wasn't a white tit in the bunch. Something about these clowns and black titties.
"This guy's got his little rituals," Hagarty went on. "He likes to lay flowers on them when he's done. Probably what he was getting ready to do when you showed up. We figure he thought she was dead. If you hadn't shown up when you did, might be one less hooker running around."
"He's done this before?"
"Looks that way," Hagarty said. "We keep getting reports. Christ, he's been everywhere. Milwaukee, Gary, South Bend, North Chicago, even the Quad Cities. He was on the six-week plan, but these serial guys are funny. The more they get, the more they want, and then finally " He held up an invisible branch, snapped it in two, and dropped the ends into a nearby wastebasket.
"About Smigelkowski," Foster said.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, I described our brief meeting out on Lake Shore Drive. By now I was embellishing the story quite a bit: Lenny seemed ecstatic. The hand signals went back and forth for miles.
Foster interrupted. "I think I've finally figured out why all these cabs are always weaving all over the road."
"My exact thought," Hagarty deadpanned.
When I finished Hagarty asked the obvious question. "So why didn't he go home?"
"I don't know."
"You're sure he didn't have a passenger?"
I remembered my dream. "Well, there could have been somebody hiding back there but "
"No, that wouldn't make any sense," Hagarty decided. "He's heading north, and then he ends up all the way down by Cabrini. You know what's funny, you're the only cabdriver saw him after ten o'clock."
"What's funny about that?"
"It's not like it's Yellow Cab 6-3-4-5-7-8-9. His goddamn name is on the door. Somebody had to see him but we haven't gotten one fucking call. You guys are the worst. Don't you want us to catch this guy?"
"Look, you're a cabdriver," Foster said. "How could somebody get in your cab after you'd decided to call it quits?"
"Well, if you're heading home and somebody flags you, sometime's you'll ask 'em where they're going, and if it's on the way you'd probably take 'em."
"Okay," Foster said. "How about another?"
"Well, sometimes you're gassing up and somebody'll need a cab. Or maybe you stop to pick up a loaf a bread or something, and somebody in the store or maybe the guy behind the counter ."
"Got anybody special in mind?"
So I told them my theory about Rollie at the 24-Hour Pantry. Foster scribbled some notes. Hagarty had me describe Rollie as best I could. They both liked the gold tooth.
"Was there anything in the cab that might have come from a convenience store?" Hagarty asked.
Foster picked up a file and began to go through it. An eight-by-ten photograph now lay exposed on the desk.
Lenny was stretched out like a V, his legs and his head at different corners of the floor. He was lying on his side, his ass still on the front seat. His pockets were pulled out and papers were scattered around. There was blood everywhere. One side of his face was almost gone. But the eye had survived and stared back at the camera. The meter was frozen at $16.20, and I could hear Ace asking how much Lenny had died for.
Hagarty followed my eyes. "Shit," he said, and he reached over and turned the picture face down. "No reason for everybody to get sick."
"A roll of peppermint lifesavers," Foster said, reading from a sheet of paper.
"Half a roll, wasn't it?" Hagarty asked.
Foster consulted the paper. "Check," he said.
"It was just a thought," I shrugged.
"We'll check it out," Hagarty said. "You never know. Smigelkowski might have had a whole bag of groceries and whoever shot him grabbed it along with the money. We're pretty sure whoever did him got in his cab somewhere around that store."
"Why's that?" I asked.
Hagarty looked over at Foster. Foster shrugged.
"An Indian named Raj got it about three months ago. We're pretty sure the same guy did them both."
"Why?" I asked, and I wondered if Raj was the guy that Rollie had known. The guy so skinny you could blow him over like a leaf.
"Well, for one thing, Raj was last seen gassing up at Devon and Ridge. Your buddy was last seen heading up the same way. They were both going home. Raj only
had three blocks to go from the station to where he parked the cab. Who knows? He might have stopped by the 24-Hour. The only thing wrong is, Raj didn't gas up until after two, so if this Rollie gets off at midnight he would have been long gone by then."
"Was Raj the guy they found on the South Side?" I asked.
"No, that's one of the other connections," Hagarty said. "They were found within a half-mile of each other. Raj was over in Old Town on Goethe Street." He pronounced the street, go-thee.
Foster corrected him, pronouncing it ger-ta.
"The guy behind the Oscar Mayer plant," I remembered.
"That's the one," Hagarty said. "What do you say?"
"Huh?"
"Ger-ta or Go-thee?" he asked.
"Whatever the passenger says," I let them in on my system, "I say it the other way."
"You must be hell on wheels," Hagarty said.
"It passes the time," I said.
"You still lugging that mace around?" Foster asked.
I nodded.
"You think it's gonna do any good?"
"I'm not planning to use it against a gun, if that's what you're worried about."
"What all the bad guys are packing," he said.
"Maybe I should get one," I said. This wasn't the first time that thought had crossed my mind.
"I wouldn't advise against it," Foster said.
"You ever hear about the cabdriver took out a fifth of the Most Wanted list?" Hagarty asked.
I shook my head.
"Must of been six, eight years ago." He glanced at Foster.
"Something like that," Foster agreed.
"They'd been doing 7-Elevens and liquor stores. Two jokers just out of Pontiac, cellmates. Killed two clerks. Anyway, we were staked out all over town waitin' for 'em so they decided to switch to cabs, but they sure picked the wrong driver. Clayton something "
"Thomas."
"Yeah, that's it. Clayton Thomas, nice old black guy. They pistol whipped him a bit, just for fun, and told him to drive way the fuck out to Harvey. Well, Clayton wasn't any fool. He knew they were never gonna let him make the return trip, and the thing was, he had a gun tucked away under a cigar box on the front seat. H
e managed to slip it out and then at a red light he turned around and just smoked 'em. They never got off a shot.
"We'd been looking for the guys for a week and Clayton solved all our problems in about half a second. And then he delivers 'em. He drives right to the station with the stiffs in the cab. We wanted to give him a medal. This was one tough hack. But a couple of months later he calls us. The city won't renew his license. Wouldn't tell him why. We went downtown to see if we could help out. They told us no dice. What was it that guy said?"
"We let cabdrivers carry guns," Foster mimicked some Consumer Services bureaucrat, "next thing you know, they'll be shooting little old ladies in fare disputes."
"See, Clayton's mistake was he told the truth about the gun," Hagarty said. "What you need is something that isn't registered. Then if you ever use it, just say you took it off the other guy. Nobody's gonna really care."
"Or find yourself a nice dark alley," Foster advised.
"Now don't give him any ideas." Hagarty said. "We've got enough work already."
Any driver who refuses a fare on grounds of NOT KNOWING where passenger's destination is, in addition to being charged with refusal of service under S28-28 Mcc and this rule, shall be retested. Failure to pass the written test shall result in recommendation for revocation.
City of Chicago, Department of Consumer Services, Public Vehicle Operations Division
It was one in the morning when I headed east towards the lakefront. Relita was a whore. Didn't that just figure?
I laughed at my own disappointment. What had I expected to find in an alley in the middle of the night, a choir girl?
On Sheffield Avenue, a cab light was flashing. People were milling about under a nightclub canopy. The ladies were in long dresses; the men in suits and ties. One cab was loading up and three empty cabs waited, blocking half the street.
I was going around the whole mess when an older guy stepped out from the crowd and pointed straight at me. I stopped and waved him over. The waiting cabs started honking their horns, the drivers yelling out the windows, but the guy didn't pay any attention. He shook a few hands, hugged a woman and walked right past the cabs and opened my door.
"Madison Street," he said, sliding in.
