Dan Fante - Spitting Off Tall Buildings

The cab was sweltering. A morning summer rain had made the humidity worse. The Dodge’s temperature gauge showed three-quarters to the bright orange/red ‘HOT’ area. Already the back of my shirt was wet with sweat, stuck to the seat.

My plan at that time of the morning was to make my way empty uptown into the Seventies on Central Park West, get my next fare, drop them in midtown or downtown, then repeat the process. Uptown downtown, uptown downtown, until the end of rush hour.

After I passed Forty-first Street, traffic opened up. Rolling by the commuter hotels more frantic hands waved at me; a whistle blew from a red-faced doorman. I slowed but when I saw garment bags and suitcases stacked next to the guy on the curb, I punched the gas pedal again. No airport runs. Not at rush hour. It would mean a dead hit all the way back from Kennedy.

Crossing Forty-fifth and Eighth, a black guy stepped out from between parked cars, hailing me. I let up on the gas to check him out. A second guy, behind guy number one, was on the curb carrying an A & P shopping bag filled with groceries. The two looked like working men. Hotel employees. The night shift. I guessed their destination as Harlem or Washington Heights. It could be a parlay. Perfect. I’d drop them uptown then catch a long hit back down into midtown. So, flicking my ‘OFF DUTY’ light off, I pulled over.

But they’d been in the taxi for under a minute when I knew; the first guy did the talking, flat, inflectionless: ‘One-eighteenth and Manhattan Avenue.’

I threw the meter flag and twisted my way back into traffic, but I knew. Cab drivers know. My groin and stomach suddenly felt like they’d been punctured by the dirty blade of a pocket knife. This was a hold-up. These guys were going to do me.

My brain clicked to the word ‘fuck’ and screamed it at me over and over.

Guy number one, the talking guy, was sitting directly in back of me. He leaned forward against the plastic partition to give more instructions. ‘Into the park,’ he said. ‘Go in at Fifty-ninth Street. Come out uptown. Hundred and tenth street. Lenox Avenue…understand?’

I saw his eyes locked on me in the rear-view mirror. Dead eyes. Dead face. The gray lips moved but beyond that movement there was nothing alive. Guy number two stayed silent, staring at the back of the front seat. I knew it. I was fucked.

The route that number one had told me to take was circuitous, the long way. It was the way I would choose if me and another robber scumbag had decided we were going to take off a cabbie. By going his way there would be no interference. The uptown Central Park roadway was abandoned in morning rush hour. The fear that had jabbed my guts now worked its way up into my chest and down my arms.

‘That’s the wrong way,’ I mouthed. ‘Eighth Avenue and up Central Park West is the best way. Faster.’

Again Dead Face leaned up against the open partition window; a pull-cord zombie doll. ‘Yo,’ he hissed, ‘jus take the fucking park. Jus do what I say…take the park.’

Two blocks later we reached the turn-off entrance to the park at Fifty-ninth Street. I knew that if I entered the northbound drive there would be no chance for me at all. I chose not to turn, instead steering around the monument at Columbus Circle and heading north on Central Park West.

‘Man,’ came the voice from behind me, ‘what’s your fucking problem?’

‘I told you,’ I came back, ‘the park is the wrong way.’

‘Pull-the-fuck over, man. Do it…Stop here!’

We were between Sixtieth and Sixty-first streets on Central Park West. I rolled up beside a line of parked cars while my two passengers exchanged whispers.

What they did after that seemed choreographed. They both got out at the same time. The one on my side, Dead Face, took up a position by my driver’s window while the other dude moved to the front passenger door and began miming for me to roll the glass down further.

Dead Face talked across the roof of the cab to number two, sneering; ‘Pay this motherfucker, man. Let’s get us another cab.’ Their A & P groceries bag was still on my back seat.

Then I had the thought that I might be wrong, that guy number two at the passenger window was standing there intending to pay me, dealing straight. I saw his hand go into his pants pocket as if to get his money and an automatic reaction made me glance at my meter then call out the fare: ‘Two fifty.’

Later on, as I went over and over the incident in my brain, I realized that that was the moment the fuckers had me. It was a move, a feint, all part of the score. I’d been distracted. The idea was for me to take my eyes away from Dead Face.

A second later his knife was at my throat, his body leaning in through the window blocking the view of pedestrians, people in other cars.

His sweet breath was on my cheek and forehead. ‘My man,’ he whispered, ‘make one fucking sound and you die!…Anything stupid and you die.’

I didn’t move. I didn’t talk.

My paper money was kept in a cigar box on the seat, my coins in my steel change-maker attached to the car’s dashboard.

Then I saw the second guy’s weapon. A gun. Short. A small-caliber automatic.

The whole deal lasted a few seconds. The blade of the shank stayed pressed tightly against my neck while number two crawled across the seat, shifted the cab’s transmission up into ‘park’, turned the engine off, removed the car keys, and threw them out the door. Then number two scooped out my cash from the cigar box on the seat and unfastened the change-maker.

Dead Face took my wristwatch. A cheap watch. That done, he reached down and worked my wallet up and out from my rear pants pocket.

Then he traded weapons with the other guy and pressed the muzzle of the little pistol hard to the side of my head. ‘Face down on the seat, motherfucker. One word and you die.’

I hesitated for a second because I knew that if they had made plans to kill me it would happen while I was in that position. The feeling of the pressure of the gun’s muzzle digging into my temple took a week to go away.

They exchanged whispers and then I felt something else, a pressure, like being poked, but no pain.

Then they were gone. Down a subway entrance or over the wall into Central Park.

That’s when I saw the blood. Soaking my sleeve and the right side of my shirt. On the seat. Two separate fat red streams coursing around the sides of the empty cigar box then pooling where the front seat cushions come together.

I didn’t feel hurt. I felt nothing, only electricity in my arms and the hammering of my heart in my chest.

In the rear-view mirror I located my cheek and neck, then reached back to the source of the injury; a two inch gash, high on my neck behind my right ear. Not a big cut. It didn’t seem that deep either. But the blood flowed freely, quickly covering my palm and fingers.

I held the hand out to study it. The red stream looked as thick as motor oil. Fat drops fell on the vinyl seat below.

I was sitting on the curb near the open rear door of my cab, smoking, talking to the police, holding a thick wad of gauze up to my head to soak up the blood while I waited for the ambulance. One of the cops noticed the sack of A & P groceries still on the back seat. ‘Theirs?’ he asked.

I nodded.

The other cop pulled the bag out of the car. When he saw how light it was, he cackled. The three of us looked inside. On top, sticking out above the rim of the bag, were a milk carton, an egg box, a cornflakes box, and a cardboard orange-juice container. All empty, either taped closed or upside down. Beneath the upper layer of decoys was twelve inches of wadded up newspaper.

The one cop sneered. ‘Pretty slick.’

‘Yeah,’ said the other cop, ‘slicker than shit.’