Стивен Бойетт - Mortality Bridge

On the radio now the sibilance of bottleneck slide.

The Black Taxi Driver wipes the mason jar clean with a white silk kerchief as heedless paramedics hurry past him into the truck cab. The CHiPs ignore him passing in their busy midst. A fireman cradling a length of hose now braces himself as it swells like a regurgitating python. He directs the spray across the freeway surface to dilute the gasoline as the Black Taxi driver strolls past him and toward the black 1933 Franklin sedan idling smoothly in the breakdown lane on the clear stretch of freeway on the other side of the wreck.

The cabbie drums her grime-crescented nails on the steering wheel in time with the radio’s heartbreak blues and glances in the rearview at her passenger. “These old songs are still the best, I think.”

Niko stares blankly at the cabbie and then realizes it is himself playing on the radio. Niko twenty years ago and hurt and pissed off and freighting every note with feeling.

The cabbie stubs out her cigarillo and feathers the accelerator. Valves protest like rowdy clams. “This isn’t generally allowed,” she says. She pushes a sequence of radio buttons and then eases the cab forward and cuts right and heads between stalled lanes. Cars are not a yard apart here yet somehow the Checker Cab passes between them. Niko fights an urge to yell. On one side the orangelit concrete retainer wall flows past a foot away from the cab. On the other the firetrucks are not a foot beyond the door. Ahead the trucks and wall are only a few feet apart.

Niko’s vision blurs. His brain can’t make it fit. “I see your radio gets some extra stations,” he says.

The cabbie smiles tightly. “One or two.”

Seconds later they are past the firetrucks, the wreck, the stalled traffic. Just past the wreck the Black Taxi sits purring on the other side of the road. Niko’s heartbeat ratchets up a gear. The son of a bitch is right there, a hundred feet away. The marine layer is encroaching and a misting stillness lies hardedged about the miles between the two cars and the clustered downtown skyscrapers rising futuristic in the distance, lighting up the very air about them like some alien encampment.

Niko sees a match flare and then a cigarette glow behind the driver’s window of the Black Taxi. The window rolls down smoothly and a long thin arm emerges, gold cufflink gleaming in a crisp white cuff, glowing cigarette clamped between thumb and forefinger. The cufflink winks, the finger flicks, the cigarette arcs away, and the Black Taxi smokes rubber and leaps forward like a dragster while behind it the discarded cigarette is a tiny meteor streaking an impossible distance back toward the wrecked and bleeding tanker.

Niko bolts forward and grips the cabbie’s seatback and yells Go.

The Checker Cab lumbers forward and gains speed, engine valves complaining castanets. Niko looks back toward the wreck just as an aurora of paleblue flame springs from the pavement where the cigarette butt landed and races toward the leaking tanker like some kind of magic trick. Niko winces in expectation of some worldconsuming blast, but a fireman taps a hose-wielding colleague on the shoulder and points, and the man merely nods and turns with the hose and drowns the spreading curtain of pale flame.

Niko lets out his breath and turns forward again to see the taillights of the speeding Franklin half a mile ahead. Two cars drawn like moths toward luminous downtown.

THE LONG BLACK Franklin whips out from in front of a Fed Ex truck just before the Golden State Freeway divider and at the last possible moment angles across a broad expanse of lanes and nearly sideswipes a concrete divider at the Temple exit before it takes the exit ramp at twice the posted speed.

“Gee,” says the cabbie. “Think he’s onto us?” She cuts the wheel and the Checker Cab slews across three lanes to the Temple offramp. Ahead of them the Franklin runs the light and slews left onto Temple beside Our Lady of the Angels cathedral.

Niko snatches at the strap as the Checker Cab squeals around the ramp. The traffic signal just ahead turns green for them as they turn left on Temple. Tires screech to either side as drivers panic-stop for a light that went from green to red without a yellow inbetween.

Ahead of them the Franklin turns a sudden right. The Checker Cab howls around the corner in a fourwheel drift and now they’re heading down Hill fast, driving through the Civic Center past generic slabs of government buildings. A few hundred yards ahead the Black Taxi slows to a crawl and then speeds away. The cabbie guns the engine.

Niko grips the back of the front seat. “Where’s he trying to get to?”

“Red Line tunnel.” The cabbie points down. “Underground.”

They pass the entrance to the Red Line station on their left and Niko sees long steep escalators and staircases. “He’s trying to get in there from here?”

“Not with us on his tail. He’ll head to the next station at Fourth. We’re riding above the Red Line route right now.”

A few streets over to their left is the quaint old gumshoe movie backdrop of City Hall with the Lindbergh light revolving like a lighthouse beacon warning traffic not to founder on some downtown shoal.

They cross Second Street and the light turns green for them. Bunker Hill a clump of skyscrapers above them and to the right. The twin towers of the California Plaza with their neonbanded tops. The palegreen robot of Library Tower. The glossy tiled tube of Second Street tunnel whips by. Beyond this a black and orange gateway reading ANGEL’S FLIGHT RAILWAY stands alone along the sidewalk at the foot of the hill, railtrack slanting up to meet a matching gateway on the hilltop at the California Plaza. On the track two black and orange railway cars are shaped like parallelograms to fit along the slope.

“He’s slowing down again.”

The cabbie nods. “Red Line station on both sides at Fourth. And he might give that a try.” She points to a building up ahead on Fourth Street. Niko stares out at trompe l’oeil window-washers cleaning painted-on windows. “The old Subway Terminal Building. In the Twenties there was a mile’s worth of subway running under Bunker Hill. The tunnel’s still there, they broke into it when they dug the foundation for the Bonaventure in the Seventies. Runs all the way to where Beverly and Second meet.”

“Why isn’t he going faster?”

“He’s trying to time it so he loses us at the lights.” As if to illustrate her point the traffic light turns yellow as the Franklin speeds across Fourth Street. The Checker Cab is close behind and the light turns from yellow back to green. Two cars run the light in opposite directions and without even looking at them the cabbie taps the brakes just so and avoids a broadside.

“I like your greenlight trick,” says Niko. Because if he doesn’t say something he will scream.

“Good one, huh?” They pass the defunct Subway Terminal Building and the cabbie waves her cigarillo at it. “There’s a huge copy of The Thinker in the lobby of that.”

“Do you sell maps to the stars’ homes too?”

She arches her eyebrows in the rearview. “The Thinker was originally the figure on top of Rodin’s Gates of Hell. Which he never finished.” She smiles. “You should look up what he was working on when he died.”

Niko studies the cabbie’s profile as they chase the Black Taxi toward the Jewelry District. Crow’s feet but her eyes seem young. Beautiful color really. Forehead that wrinkles when waiting for an answer. Beautifully sculpted lip, the upper wanting to favor one side. Barely glancing at traffic as she drives. She knows this cab and its surround like an old pair of jeans. Dark hair without gray. Hardworked hands. How old is she I wonder.

They pass Fifth Street and the Red Line station entrance across from the yellow and purple building blocks of Pershing Square. The Black Taxi puts on speed and cuts left onto Seventh.