At the bakery kiosk, a woman dropped dead from an aneurism. A vagrant in a nearby seat vomited in his sleep and quietly choked to death. A man with a briefcase and a coffee decided tonight was the perfect time to strangle his wife, and an NYU student walking upstairs checked the time and realized she would have to hurry if she was going to throw herself under the wheels of the 2:15 to Connecticut.
Alixis smiled with yellow teeth, still speaking softly, as the unleashing spread outward.
*
The crush of morning commuters poured off the 4 train and onto the platform. A broker in a rush bumped Karen hard, and she stumbled in high heels against the filthy metal side, almost falling into the gap. She swore as more people pressed past, mindless of her.
Karen shoved off the train, using a hip to push another woman out of the way, clenched her laptop handle and joined the herd. She cursed the bag’s weight as she moved with the crowd. The surge carried her to a wide set of steep stairs packed with bodies. It looked like a mountain.
“Screw that,” she said, turning right towards where a grimy ELEVATOR sign was fixed to the wall. The lighting here was poor, but at least she’d have the place to herself. Of course the elevator would smell like urine, but that was city life.
The doors opened and she stepped inside. They were waiting for her, black and deadly, clinging to the ceiling of the car like wild-eyed bats. Karen felt a stringer of drool drop onto her hair and she looked up as the doors closed.
They fell upon her, and no one heard her screams.
*
Leland pushed out of the terminal and onto the street, gritty and loud, choked with speeding cabs which wouldn’t stop for anyone. The train had been late, he was tired and hungry, and there was the hotdog cart.
Ellen would shriek if she knew. The fifty-year-old was not supposed to eat hotdogs, especially dirt water dogs from street vendors, but at this point he didn’t care what his wife thought.
“One with mustard,” he said. The Phillipino vendor grinned and nodded, and Leland lifted a metal flap to get himself a Pepsi.
From within, a small black hand caught him and black teeth crunched down hard, biting his finger off clean. The little demon choked a bit on the wedding ring, but managed to get it down.
A honking cab drowned out Leland’s cries.
*
He could always be found here, on the landing where the stairs turned as they descended to the 6 Train. Filthy, concealed within layers of coats, a vagrant huddled on the floor with a hat in front of him.
Commuters flowed past, few looking at him, fewer still dropping change or bills into the hat. He didn’t move, didn’t look up, and appeared to be sleeping. Within the layered coats, six small creatures feasted on his opened chest, black fur matted with blood, talons ripping greedily at the soft, juicy organs.
On the wall above, a PSA bulletin announced in bold letters, “If you see something, say something.”
*
She was perfect, hunched and shuffling with age, dressed in black, her handbag hanging loose and unprotected. The crackhead smiled, pacing her slowly from behind. He wiped a trembling, dirty hand at his mouth, his need all-consuming. A glance around for cops.
She was in a scattered crowd when he crowded in close beside her. God, she smelled bad! He gave the purse strap a brutal yank. It snapped easily and he was moving, tucking the bag under his coat and slipping quickly into the rush hour crowd, while behind him people stopped to help a fallen old woman.
No one saw him. The old lady didn’t even scream.
Minutes later he was in a men’s room stall, perched on the bowl so his feet wouldn’t show. He smiled and opened the bag to get his prize.
The pocket demon burst out, talons sinking into his chin and ear, needle-like teeth ripping into his throat. The crackhead’s hands fluttered helplessly as blood jetted across the graffiti-covered partition. The small creature pulled out his larynx.
Out in the terminal, Alixis chuckled behind her veil.
*
The priest needed a shave, and his eyes were wild and feverish. The ancient scrolls had predicted the day and location of the old woman’s arrival, and he had come to Grand Central ready to put an end to her with the sacred dagger blessed at Saint Pat’s. But now the cop had the dagger, and he was handcuffed, being hustled out onto the sidewalk of 5th Avenue.
“You have to listen to me!” he shrieked. “She’s come to usher in the End of Days!”
“Right, Father,” said the beefy cop, pushing the priest into the waiting Bellevue-bound NYPD van and slamming the door behind him. It pulled away, and the cop took the opportunity to light up a cigarette, wrinkling his nose at the worse-than-usual odor coming from the storm drain.
A RANCH IN NEVADA
Let’s talk about money and limousines. And murder. I know a lot about the first two, and more than I want about the last. If the wrong people hear this, I suppose I’ll learn about life expectancy, too. But a man can stay quiet only so long.
Nineteen-ninety-three, and there was sex in the White House, a thriving economy, terrorism a thing of the past. People in California were willing to spend on luxury recreation. My philosophy as a businessman was, “Give them what they want.” Nothing illegal, mind you, not at first anyway, just a higher level of service than most people were used to, and the highest level for those who expected it. It’s the little things that make a difference, and that reflects directly upon the tip.
Simple things, like spending the money for some quality suits, then keeping them crisp and dry-cleaned. Making sure you were always freshly showered, shaved and lightly cologned before picking up a client. Seems obvious, right? But I can’t tell you how many drivers I knew who showed up for a run looking and smelling like slobs, then drove away sour with a bare minimum tip. I don’t believe in bare minimums. I believe in excess. Other things you might assume drivers would do (and you’d be wrong) included punctuality, I’m talking ten minutes early punctuality. Having your routes mapped out in advance, or at least a current map in the front seat (remember, this is pre-GPS.) A clean car, inside and out, with ice in the bucket and the glasses sparkling. It’s where I learned how to open wine bottles and champagne – though I did pop a bride in the eye with a cork before I learned to wrap the champagne bottle with a linen napkin. She and the groom laughed it off, thank God, but I never made that mistake again. I learned how to pin flowers to lapels, to carry a lint roller for young gentlemen picking up prom dates or nervous executives heading into meetings. I knew how to give twenty dollar handshakes to maître’ d’s and bell captains, valets and bouncers to ensure my clients got into “impossible” places. It was worth it, because they were always so impressed they upped the tip and covered the twenty. I gave them the full treatment, what they’d always dreamed a chauffeur was, and they ate it up. Lots of guys didn’t. They didn’t make shit.
For the up-scale clients, I really turned it on. Figuring out what they wanted most was a ticket to cash, so I became a student of attitude. Some celebs just wanted quiet, others wanted a slow drive with the window down so people could see them. Some wanted conversation, others flattery. I had rich bitches who wanted to be followed through stores by a well-dressed, obedient servant in black leather driving gloves. There were executives who wanted to look like they had a bodyguard, someone imposing, and six-foot-four in a double-breasted dark suit, reflective shades and no smile fit that nicely. I had an earpiece like the Secret Service use that I would wear just to complete the look. The wire went to nothing, I tucked it in an inside jacket pocket. A few contracted for an actual bodyguard, and they got it. I had my concealed weapons permit for California (what a bitch it was to get that thing!) and I carried a 9mm Beretta all the time, whether it was an executive protection gig or not. It wasn’t for them – I wasn’t taking a bullet for anyone – it was to keep me safe. Limos did, and still do, a big cash business, and they draw attention. Sometimes from rip-offs, more often from nuts. The point is, everyone got what they wa
nted.
And everybody paid.
At the time, an eight-seater stretch ran you sixty-five an hour, and I saw fifteen-percent of that. It was crap, but it was there to satisfy Uncle Sam. The real money came from tips, and side deals worked out with the owner or client, all of it under the table. If a client specifically requested me, I earned an extra fifteen-percent of the run (the reason I always sent a polite thank-you card to every client.) An executive protection contract was all mine, and I charged one-twenty-five an hour with a four hour minimum. If I was on an overnight run, the client had to cover a room, a hundred dollars in expenses, and give me a minimum of eight hours down time. That was to satisfy D.O.T. requirements, but I functioned well on five hours sleep. And then there were the tips, the real cream.
A limo contract informed the client they were expected to give the driver twenty-percent of the total cost as a gratuity. My first year I saw a lot of twenty-percent and under, and even got stiffed a few times. It forced me to learn and adapt to their needs. After that, I never saw twenty again. And I was meticulously honest in recording time and paying the owner exactly what he was entitled to from the run, no playing games. Again, you might expect that, but again you’d be wrong. Drivers shave time and juggle numbers and screw owners every chance they get, and owners know it. When they find one who plays it straight, and gets rave reviews from clients? Well, guess who gets the wine country tours and who gets stuck with the airport runs?
That isn’t to say I didn’t do my share of those, along with weddings, the staples of the limo business. But I made my money off the longer, service-oriented gigs; proms, San Francisco night tours, bachelor and bachelorette nights, dinner and theatre evenings, executive outings. Let me tell you, there’s money to be made on an eight hour run through the Napa Valley with a carload of ladies, especially when the wine relaxes inhibitions and loosens pocketbooks. Why do you think the booze is free at casino tables? It loosens thighs, too, and sex plays a part in this story as well, but maybe not how you think.
It’s important I remind you that limo drivers are working class guys. Being around the glitz all the time can have a strange effect on people, and sometimes drivers forgot who they were, started believing it was their lifestyle too. Those are the guys who end up broke, unemployed or worse. I never forgot that this was a job, I was here to get paid, and I was only a prop in their luxury life. Careful with the money, that was my philosophy.
About the money. Probably your idea of good money and mine are different, and I don’t want to give you the impression I was carting home suitcases full of cash every night. Working class, remember? But even in my late twenties I was pulling in better than what a pair of thirty-year, union auto workers put together could earn, and all of it tax free. Plus I rarely got my hands dirty. I drove all the time, and I learned to love those hundred dollar bills I was seeing on top of the basic tip, on top of the run percentage and the by-request percentage. I learned to cultivate whales.
That’s where the real payoff was, the steady, repeat high-rollers. People who owned their own businesses and wanted to impress clients. The rich elite who wanted to show off. B and C-list celebrities who acted like A-listers. Foreign tourists. You’ve heard people say, “They didn’t get rich by giving it to people like you.” I say bullshit. These were the kind of people with no real concept of how much they had, tossing it around freely because there was always more where that came from. I had a monthly, two-night run to Carmel and Pebble Beach with one old bag who inherited an airline. She liked vodka with cranberry and paying too much for jewelry and clothes she wouldn’t wear. She also didn’t like to deal with the “little people” (that’s actually how she worded it) and would start the run by handing me four-hundred dollars so I could take care of all the tipping, and she wouldn’t have to be bothered with it. I’d break it into tens and fives and take care of everyone from bellhops to doormen to bartenders, even the kid in the hotel garage who I’d pay to wash the car and fill the ice bucket. Of course one of those hundreds went right in my pocket. The best part? When the four-hundred was gone, I’d tell her and she’d hand over another four hundred. No questions asked, no need for accounting. And the runs were always by-request, with sixteen hours of executive protection contract per day. Sweet, sweet runs. I only had to do “executive protecting” one time, when she got really drunk and nasty with another patron in the hotel lounge, a guy who looked like he was getting ready to smack the shit out of her, old lady or not.
“Go take care of him,” she slurred at me.
I walked over to the guy (who stood up and clenched his fists), smiled, and peeled off a hundred-dollar bill. “I’m really sorry my client is such an asshole,” I said, and shrugged. “What can you do?” Then I offered to buy a round for the table.
He smiled back and shook my hand. Conflict resolved. When I got back to her I said, “I straightened him out, told him who you were, said I’d break his head if he said anything else.”
The bartender winked at me, then poured her four fingers of Grey Goose to shut her down. She was snoring in her room fifteen minutes later, and the bartender earned himself an extra twenty for that. In the morning she gave me five-hundred dollars for being “her hero.”
By far my heaviest whale was Big Al, owner of a small oil company in central California. Because of him I made a fortune. And because of him I surrendered my soul to eternal damnation. Here’s where we talk about real money, and sex, and murder. And since you might be suspicious, no, I didn’t procure young girls for him to sexually brutalize and dispose of in some horrific manner.
Big Al was a monthly, by-request client who lived in Sacramento. Like clockwork, his assistant would call me and set up an overnight to Lake Tahoe for Al and a couple of business associates, with the executive protection option. The first time we met, he decided he didn’t care for my real name but announced that I looked like a “Rocco,” so that’s what he called me. Not a problem. Give them what they want. His business associates and friends started calling me Rocco too, and after only a single Tahoe run, so did the pit bosses.
“Good evening, Mr. (we’ll leave his name out.) Good evening, Rocco.”
Those guys don’t forget a thing. And they treated Big Al (and his buddies, and consequently me) like royalty. He’d hand the pit boss fifty grand to put on his account, and draw from it all night. If it ran out, they’d put him on a tab without a word. The bosses ensured he and his guests got first class service, never had to call for a drink, always had a fresh pack of smokes. No one ever gave me a hassle about the bulge under my left armpit (my carry permit was for California, not Nevada,) and they let me sit at the table even though I wasn’t playing. It was the best place to be, because when Al was winning, he’d slide green, twenty-five dollar chips towards me to put towards the tip fund. Of course that was just extra. I never came away from a Big Al run without a grand, plus the thirty-five percent, plus the chips. If he was really hitting, those sliding chips turned into black hundreds. Regardless of the color, I’d say thank you and tuck them away.
Of course the chips slid a lot less frequently when he wasn’t hitting. Big Al didn’t like to play blackjack. He liked to win at blackjack, and if he was losing, he turned into a monstrous prick. It didn’t bother me, and it didn’t bother the pit bosses. We were in the service industry, and the smile you got was the same, rain or shine. Win, lose, fall off his chair with a stroke…we were there to get paid.
On my third run with him, he steps away from the table to stretch and I step away with him.
“Rocco, we wanna get laid.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I said.
Between you and me, I wasn’t sure how I was going to deliver on that casually given promise, but I figured if you couldn’t find a hooker in a Tahoe casino, you weren’t really looking. I’ve learned that the best place to find anything in a hotel, especially things people won’t talk about, is from the bell captain.
I gave him a twenty-dollar handshake, with more rea
dy just in case. “I have clients looking for a little companionship.” I probably didn’t come across as smooth as it sounds. I’d never done this before (though once I did stop in Chinatown so a hooker could climb in and blow a group of college freshmen out for a night on the town. I told them I needed a fifty first, and then pulled over at the first skank I saw.)
The bell captain reached into his little podium and pulled out a photocopied map, handing it over like it was a tourist brochure. No shit. I thanked him and examined the map. It had the route from Tahoe to Carson City highlighted, with half a dozen smaller side roads also marked, each ending in a circle with the name of a cathouse written next to it. That was when I first learned prostitution was legal in Carson City. Of course my clients would never be permitted to learn that I had just discovered this amazing tidbit of information. It paid much better to be that smooth, “Rocco will make it happen” kind of character they expected me to be.
“We’re in business,” I said when I went back to the table. He collected his buddies and we were off, driving out of the mountains, me following the map in the front seat where they couldn’t see it.
“Rocco, where we going?” Al shouted from the back.
“To get you guys laid!” I shouted back. They roared their approval and started giggling like junior high boys. It was just the line Al wanted his friends to hear, and it earned me an extra hundred on the spot.
I chose the “Double D Pleasure Ranch” because it was close to Tahoe, and I liked its name better than the “Velvet Pussycat” and the “Ride ‘em Cowgirl.” I’d never been to a cathouse, had no idea what to expect, and was immensely let down when I saw it was a cluster of connected double-wides surrounded by chain link, under a flashing neon sign showing a voluptuous woman with neon pasties that blinked from stars to nipples every second. Classy. Ours was the only car in the gravel lot. Of course it was close to two in the morning, so not very surprising.
In The Falling Light Page 18
