It was the
beginning of the end of an era for me the day my cab license was yanked by the
City. I couldn’t remember why I was in jail that night and I don’t know how I
got out. But I do know I walked all the three miles from County jail to the
hotel downtown and slipped past the watchful eyes of the desk clerk to my room.
Cab driving
always gave me the independence and pocket cash I needed to keep my bar tab
paid and enough extra for a room at The Virgin Hotel. Driving at night, I could
also stay invisible to a daylight world I wanted nothing to do with. I had been
at a stand-still for several years anyway and hardly cared but for the easy
money.
And now
that was gone.
I didn’t want
a drink, but I needed one, just to calm my nerves. I saw that my knuckles were
red and the mirror showed a slight bruise on my cheek. I dumped my coin-jar on
the dresser and, with a shaking hand, separated the pennies from the dimes and
quarters. There was enough silver for a pack of generic smokes and a pint of
the cheapest vodka as soon as Jerry’s opened in five minutes at o-six-hundred.
I tried to
slip back out through the lobby while Lucas sat on his ass behind the check-in
counter reading a skin mag. He was like a spider waiting for its prey all day,
the lobby was his web. If anyone touched the carpet at the bottom of the stairs,
he sensed the vibration without looking up. He let me get all the way to the
door before he put down his magazine and called out, “Crash!”
I froze,
“Yeh, I know.”
“I’ve let
you go a week already. The boss…”
“C’mon
Lucas, I’ve always been good for it, haven’t I? I’m waiting for a shift to open
up,” I lied. It wasn’t a big lie because there was always a chance the
Professor would change his mind.
“You ever
hear from the VA on that appeal?” he asked, rubbing the stub of what was left
of an arm under his shirt.”
“Not yet,
but any time now. It’s been three years,” I felt embarrassed. He’d lost an arm
and a leg in Nam and I’d only lost my mind. I went back to the counter, “How
come you never wear your prosthetic, Lucas?”
“That VA
antique? Not unless I have too. I like to air it. Irritates the skin something
bad, you know.”
“I’ll get
you a good one, like section eight civvies get, I promise… take you to Vegas too
when my ship comes in,” I promised. I meant it too but three years back-pay on
my VA claim was but a dream. I had a better chance of winning the lottery.
“Don’t try
to grease my butt Kraszhinski.”
“Think of
it, Lucas. The Chicken Ranch and...”
“Okay,
okay, enough Crash. But I want good news from you by tomorrow or you’re out.”
Spiderman
was a good guy in spite of his desk-clerk act. He was just doing his job. We
were like brothers over the years. He’d covered me several times in the past but
he had to answer to the boss. I apologized, “Lucas, you know how humiliating it
is to beg another week’s reprieve.”
“Humiliating?
Look at me. I sit here at a dead-end job putting the squeeze on losers like
you. And you whine about humiliation? I probably have only a year or two left
on this pile of shit.”
“Never
looked at it that way, Spiderman. I’ll pay up soon enough, okay?”
“It’s
Lucas, not Spiderman. Friday… no later than five, Crash,” he shook his head,
“and that’s final.”
##############
I was out
the door before he finished. I got my smokes and pint. It occurred to me I
ought to save it ‘til later... After being put on hold every time I’d called
the past week, I knew what to expect. Okay, just one toke before I face the
music. I needed a bit of liquid courage... enough to make the Professor squirm,
mano y mano.
The
company’s offices were over on East Yananoli and South Salsipuedes street, now called
Calle Cesar Chavez, and not too far a walk if I took the tracks. I could see
from a block away that Doc was in. His blood red Jaguar was parked in its
reserved spot in front of the building. I rehearsed what I would say as I
crossed the lot. I’ll be humble… ever so humble… kiss-up… agree to anything and
admit everything I can’t remember anyhow… and, if that didn’t work, call on the
good old times. I took a swig off the pint before opening the door.
It’s an
uneasy feeling to enter a place where you’re no longer a part of the business.
For several years it was like we were family but overnight I had become
persona-non-grata. Bob sat in the dispatch office situated behind a
crosshatched wire glass window where anyone entering the lobby could be seen.
He swiveled around in his chair to check-out who’d come in. He lifted a hand,
hesitated, and then gave me a brief parade wave. Next to the dispatch office,
the door to the inner sanctum was open. It was an oversight. Dispatch would
normally have to buzz me in and, as I passed through it, Bob stood as though I
had breached the barricades. The speaker above the door crackled, “Hey, Crash,
you can’t go...”
Once inside,
I took a seat across from Jenny’s reception desk guarding Professor’s office.
While she was on the phone I could see why all the drivers used to stop by the
receptionist desk just to be in the presence of her Dolly Parton’s. She was a
freak of nature for sure. When Jenny became Professor’s plaything he installed
the buzzer lock at the door and moved the drop-safe into dispatch office
instead of behind her desk (a drop safe is a safe that the drivers drop their
lease after each shift).
I already
knew Dr. Lawrence Spawn was in and, besides, I could see his door ajar. The
professor was one of us; an old cabby that hooked into a widow ten years
before. He was once called driver #75, or Larry, but now he insists we use his
formal name; title and all. He was a now PHD after all and we all knew that in
his case it stood for Piled Higher and Deeper.
There are
four basic types of characters that drive cab. Number one: There are innocent
students, for whom cabbing is just another job to pay the rent while getting a
sheepskin.
Number two:
There are others holding down a shift to make ends meet until they get that big
break... a screenplay/novel that gets accepted or a real acting job.
And Number
Three: There were realists ...fishermen that can haul groceries and church
ladies all day without losing sight that they are casting to reel in the big
tuna... a widow with enough inheritance to put ‘em on easy street.
Then there
is Number Four. We are graveyard drivers whose ambitions are limited to simply
getting through another shift. We try to pass through the dark night of the
soul without the haunts of nightmares and sweats… and especially without
getting noticed by, or dealing with, the front office. We try to make our drop
early enough to never see Doc’s red Jaguar or Jenny’s Dolly Partons.
Rachelle
was in her late fifties when the Professor sank a hook in her. He was in his
thirties, and movie star handsome, when she took his bait... empty promises of
eternal love. He gave her a free ride to Vegas, where they got hitched by an
Elvis impersonator, and that was the last time he did anything for her that
came from his own pocket.
Jenny
pretended to be on the phone and ignored me. I got out of the chair and stood
for several lifelong minutes before she acknowledged my presence.
Holding the
phone from her ear, she greeted me, “Hi, Crash, what can I do for you?” Her
welcome was warmer the last time I saw her.
I’m not a
breast man but my eyes couldn’t help themselves. It was everything I could do to keep them focused on
that silver cross hanging from her neck between those monstrous orbs
contained in an industrial strength bra under a puritan white blouse. I
stuttered, “I - I - uh... need to talk to the Professor.”
“I’m sorry, Crash, Dr. Spawn’s not in…” Jenny
brought the phone receiver down to cover that silver cross. I wasn’t distracted
enough to miss the door gently shutting.
I
regained my composure, “Don’t tell me he’s not in. Did a ghost just close his
door?”
“You can come back when Dr. Spawn isn’t busy,
Crash,” her tone sealed the conversation. “Or, I can tell Rachelle you were
here when she comes in.”
I knew the
Professor wasn’t busy. He didn’t run the company. Rachelle and Bob did that.
Doc only owned it. He owned it along with Rachelle’s house in Montecito, a fast
cigarette boat, like the ones he probably saw on Miami Vice, named A Doctor’s
Dream, and the blood red Jaguar, all bought with Rachelle’s inheritance and the
money he skimmed from what we dropped in the safe guarded behind the locked
door of the dispatch office.
Doc oversaw
the PR, the hiring and firing, and that was about all. You just knew he loved
hamming it up for spots on late night TV. He wore stripes behind bars for his
pitch... “Leavin’ the bar? Don’t drive your car. Take a cab.” He followed these
with Dr. Spawn’s Bail Bondsman ads, “Drop a dime and I’ll save you time.” Jenny
would bounce in on cue, “You’ll be out before you can shout, Dr. Spawn Bail
Bonds!”
Professor’s
wife knew about Jenny but looked the other way. Divorce was not an option for
other than religious reasons. Professor had a grip on the bank account she’d
signed away when the romance was still at fever pitch.
I gave
Jenny the once-over before nailing her eye to eye. I planted both hands on her
desk and demanded, “Jenny, don’t give me any shit.”
Bob came
out of dispatch with one of those 18-inch cop flashlights in his hands.
“Get back
in there, Bob.” I turned to face him, “The phone’s ringing. You’re missing a
call.”
Bob stood a
minute and considered whether there was anything he could do. We went back a
few years. There was a time when he could have mopped the floor with me but
he’d grown soft in the office and wasn’t about to take me on now.
I passed
Jenny’s desk and opened Professor’s door. Doc was standing a few feet back. He
reached out to shake hands. His gesture wasn’t reciprocated.
“Crash,
good to see you. I was just going to tell Jenny to let you in,” Professor
backed behind his desk and sat, “Have a seat, Kraszhinski.”
“Cut the
shit, Professor,” I was brief with him. Behind Doc, on the wall above his head,
hung a certificate nicely framed. It was his Doctorate of Philosophy diploma. A
few of us knew about how the Professor got his degree. It was a con like
everything else in his life. He had somehow incorporated, formed his own
college, and turned in a thesis. It was filed where doctorates are filed and
amounted to little more than a list of stats about cab drivers: their gender,
education, marital status, military service, race, and so on. He had a no more
than a dozen drivers to fill out a survey form from which he expanded the
numbers to hundreds for the sake of a thorough sampling.
“Doc, I
need a break. I know you always need a graveyard dispatch.”
“Crash, you
know I can’t re-hire you so soon after.”
“And you
know damned well I wasn’t busted on the job...” my protest was weak and I knew
it.
“It just
doesn’t look right, Crash,” Doc pulled out a green sheet of a carbon copied
police report from a folder, “Possession for sales.”
“Yeh, like
I’m a big drug king-pin living in the flea-bag hotel.”
“The city
still pulled your license and sent me this report: Drunk in public; creating a
nuisance; possession of a controlled substance; assaulting a police officer...”
Doc read from the list, checking off each item. When he finished he flipped a
pencil in the air, missed the catch, it bounced off the desk and rolled to the
floor.
“They
dropped all the charges ‘cept drunk in public and misdemeanor possession,” I
picked up the pencil and handed it to him, “Besides, I wasn’t in my cab when I
was busted!”
The
professor started chewing on the pencil. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, hoping
he would choke on the eraser. The pencil caused him to talk through his teeth,
“I can’t do anything right away. The town’s changing. You’re becoming a
relic... a thing of the past. We can’t be cowboys like you out there now.”
“That’s an
excuse Doc and you know it.” I approached his desk, “I’m not asking to be out
there. Dispatch has always been where drivers go that get their licenses
yanked. Who else would want the job?”
That was
the truth too. Dispatchers get paid minimum wage. They supplement their income
by milking tips and a taste of cola from drivers. No tip... no good fares....
all’s fair on the streets where money is concerned. Some, like Bob, make out
real well that way. It isn’t a job for anyone with some humanity, principles,
or dignity left. Years of driving cab does that to us all.
“Look
Crash, all the cab businesses have to clean up now. Times are changing and
Sergeant Lopez is getting on all our asses. The City’s leaning on him too. Go
to Schick/Shadel… to a rehab… or AA. Let ‘em know you got sober... get it on
paper when you graduate... get your license reinstated and maybe we can get you
back on...”
“A rehab,
you’ll help me with that?”
“Our
insurance doesn’t cover…”
“It’s all
bullshit, Professor. You and I know damned well you ain’t so clean yourself,” I
was so pissed I lost everything I’d rehearsed on the way over.
“That was
my past, David. But since I found the Lord...”
“Don’t give
me that Lord BS, Doc,” pointing to the wall I threw his crap back at him, “You
found the Lord up Rachelle’s vagina. You can get widows and schoolgirls to wipe
your ass with that paper but it won’t work with me!”
I was on a
roll and knew I got his goat but had no idea the implications went beyond the
obvious. Doc’s tanned face turned pasty white then to beacon red. He screeched,
“Kraszhinski, if you don’t leave now I’m calling nine-one-one!”
I’d never
heard the smooth talkin’ con-man yell like that. Professor stood from his chair
holding the receiver away from his ear with his fingers on the keys of the
phone.
Bob had his
ear to the door with the flashlight in hand. He opened the door, “You need help
Professor?” He lifted the flashlight as though he was ready to use it.
I slammed
my body against Bob and shoved him out the door so hard he landed on Jenny’s
lap with one of her bullet-bra breasts inches from his mouth. I was out of the
building and never did see him rise from Jenny’s lap. I suppose I did him a
favor landing him there.
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