Len Levinson - Without Mercy

There was the Boston Strangles Son of Sam, the L.A. Strangler, and now he was the New York Slasher. Someday he’d be more famous than them all, and people would realize he was right to kill whores, because they’re evil and undermine the social structure.

After breakfast he lit a cigarette and wondered if he should move out of his apartment. Many people knew him; maybe one of them would tell the police that he looked like the New York Slasher. But it would look suspicious if he suddenly moved all his stuff out. Maybe the answer was to leave everything where it was and just start living in a cheap hotel someplace. He could grow a beard and that would change the way he looked. Maybe he’d let his hair grow and look like a hippie.

It’d take a few days for a beard to grow, so he’d have to stop killing whores for a while. When he started again he’d have to do it so no one would see him. He should go on a diet and try to lose some weight, because the newspaper said the Slasher was heavyset. Maybe he should start running around Tompkins Square Park with all the crazy assholes.

The old Ukrainian people in the building would think it strange if he grew a beard, because they hated the bearded hippies who’d invaded the neighborhood. It probably would be best if he left his apartment that very day. He wouldn’t take any luggage, because people would notice that. He’d just walk out the door and let the city swallow him up. They’d never be able to find him. He’d keep moving like an Indian. He’d be free as a bird.

Leaning back in his chair, he looked around the kitchen. Food stains were on the refrigerator, dirty dishes were in the sink. He hadn’t taken the garbage out for a few days and the joint smelled a little rank. The toilet bowl kept getting clogged. Roaches were crawling everywhere. I might as well get out of here right now, he thought.

He decided to take down the garbage so the place wouldn’t stink and attract the attention of neighbors while he was gone. He also wanted to get rid of his red and black jacket because it had been described to the police. Picking up the jacket from the corner of the living room where it had been lying, he stuffed it into the bottom of an A&P bag, and covered it with some garbage from another bag. Then he carried all the garbage bags downstairs, making two trips to get rid of it all. Back in his apartment, he put on his blue bomber jacket and gray cap. He had about a hundred and fifty dollars in one of his drawers, and stashed it in his pants pocket. His chauffeur’s license was in his wallet, and he tucked his hack license into his shirt.

He descended the old slate steps of his building, feeling lightheaded and loose. It was as though he wasn’t in the world anymore. Downstairs on the street he walked to Third Avenue, then headed for the Bowery.

The Metropolitan Garage was on Sixty-first Street, a half-block from the West Side Highway. It was the largest taxi garage in Manhattan, with a fleet of three hundred cabs.

It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Kowalchuk approached the garage, wearing his blue bomber jacket and gray peaked cap. He had a five-day growth of beard which effectively obscured his features. He’d been spending his nights at the Osborne Hotel in the Bowery area, and his days at various movie theaters. Now he was running low on cash and had to return to work.

The garage was two stories high and made of red bricks. Adjacent was a parking lot half full of yellow cabs. It was in a neighborhood of factories and loft buildings.

The front proscenium door of the garage was open now that it was spring, and Kowalchuk looked to make sure a cab wasn’t coming out, then slipped inside the greasy dimness of the huge downstairs room. In its center were gas pumps manned by inside workers in their filthy one-piece suits. A line of cabs returning from the day shift entered the rear of the garage and came to a stop beside the pumps. The day drivers got out and were replaced by night drivers, while inside workers filled gas tanks and checked oil. The inside workers banged on the trunks when they finished and the drivers sped their cabs out the proscenium door into the city.

Kowalchuk passed a line of cabs mangled and battered in traffic accidents, and headed for a door marked with a sign that said Ride Yellow Ride Safe, a slogan the taxi industry had employed several years back to counter the growing threat of gypsy cabs. He pushed open the door and entered the shape-up room, filled with tobacco smoke and cabbies standing elbow to elbow arguing with each other while waiting to be assigned cabs.

Hogan, the dispatcher, sat behind the metal grating of a window, a burly, bald man who seldom smiled. Kowalchuk took out his hack license and passed it under the grating.

Hogan looked at him. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Sick.”

“You haven’t been here for almost a month.”

“It’s less than three weeks.”

“We’ve been firing guys like you who don’t come in regular. If you wanna work here, you gotta come in more regular.”

“C’mon, most of the guys here don’t come in regular.”

“That’s gonna end. We’re runnin’ a fuckin’ taxi garage here, not a funny farm.”

Kowalchuk decided to keep his mouth shut. He looked at his dirty fingernails while waiting for Hogan to cut out the bullshit.

Hogan put Kowalchuk’s hack license at the bottom of the pile and went back to his Playboy. Kowalchuk sidestepped through the crowds of yakking cabbies to a spot in the corner near the toilet, took out a cigarette, and lit it. Puffing the cigarette, he looked over the other cabdrivers. He wondered what they’d think if they knew he was the New York Slasher.

Kowalchuk was cruising in his cab at Kennedy Airport although cabdrivers were supposed to wait in special lots and approach the platforms in orderly lines. He didn’t like to do that, preferring to cruise the fronts of terminals illegally. He’d never been caught yet. You had to know which terminals were safe.

He was approaching one of the safe ones now, the terminal for Air Canada, Delta, and United. It was a big, white modern building and beside it was a lot filled with yellow cabs that trailed to the side of the building, where a special dispatcher from the taxi union kept everything moving in orderly fashion. It was six o’clock in the afternoon.

Kowalchuk steered to the lower road where the buses came. He drove slowly and saw the anxious faces of people standing beside their luggage waiting for the buses. Most of them were out-of-towners bewildered about being in the city. They were the easiest kinds to rip off.

Sure enough, two women raised their hands. Kowalchuk veered toward them and braked. They were business women in their forties and one knocked on his side window, which he rolled down.

“How much to go to the Hilton?” she asked.

“For just the two of you?”

“Yes.”

“Fifteen bucks apiece.”

She looked at her companion. “Why don’t we take it?”

“The bus is so much cheaper.”

“I’m tired of waiting for the damn bus. We can charge it to the company.”

The other woman shrugged. “ If you say so.”

The first one looked at Kowalchuk. “Would you wait a minute while we get our luggage?”

“Sure.”

They scurried back to the sidewalk, and he drove closer to the curb, noticing that the people waiting for buses were looking at him. He checked his rearview window and could see no cops. The women and a man, all with suitcases, came toward him. He got out of the cab and unlocked the trunk.

“Can he come too?” one of the women asked.

“Fifteen more bucks,” Kowalchuk replied.