Eugene Salomon - Confessions of a New York Taxi Driver

But the one type of criminal we seem to be endlessly fascinated by, the one we can’t get enough of, is, of course, the professional. Grouped together, they are the subjects of countless movies and TV shows.

You know who I mean…

These people don’t go around telling you who they are. You have to figure it out for yourself. One Friday afternoon in February, 1985 I had two of them in my cab taking a trip to Newark Airport.

They didn’t tell me who they were.

I figured it out for myself.

I’d been cruising lower Manhattan in the late afternoon when they hailed me from the street. One of them was tall and thin, the other shorter and a bit on the chubby side. They told me immediately that they had to go to Newark Airport in New Jersey; that they wanted me to take the Holland Tunnel; that they were getting a 5.30 p.m. flight to Chicago; and that they did this trip every week on Fridays. I didn’t realize it at the time, but these bits of information were to become pieces of the puzzle needed to understand exactly who they were and what they did for a living.

I was glad to get a fare to Newark Airport – it was about a $25 run at the time – but I was concerned about the traffic. From where we were in lower Manhattan I would indeed have to take the Holland Tunnel and the rush hour congestion in the tube can be a nightmare, both leaving and returning to the city, and especially on a Friday. So I turned the radio on to the news station so I could learn as much as possible about road conditions in the area.

My passengers were engaged in continuous conversation, going back and forth from English to Italian. I found there was something about them which stuck my attention on them and aroused my curiosity. It wasn’t just the Italian – it was a certain demeanor they had. When you do a job continuously over a long period of time, the types of particles you deal with fall into familiar categories. These two guys didn’t quite fit. There was something about them.

I found myself wondering if maybe they were Mafia and I immediately scolded myself for even thinking that. I’m not the kind of person who goes around making bigoted assumptions. Still, I just couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that they seemed like they could be Mob. It was not a thought I would normally have had.

Of the two of them, the one who really grabbed my attention as I glanced at them in the mirror was the taller, thinner one. He appeared to be in his late forties and had slick, black hair that was combed straight back. His face was noticeably pale and tight. This was a man who could have been cast as Dracula if he’d been an actor – he had a vampire kind of look. His companion was much younger, a bit heavy-set, with sleepy-looking eyes, brown hair and a protruding lower lip.

I engaged them with some small talk about the traffic. The younger one had some feeling in his voice, I noticed, but the older one had a voice and a manner in the way he spoke which I found disturbing. There was a hollowness and a solidity about him that wasn’t quite like anyone I had encountered before. I couldn’t seem to get free from an intuitive feeling that this guy was the real thing.

We approached the Holland Tunnel in traffic that really wasn’t as bad as I’d expected and, as we entered the tube, the sound waves of the cab’s radio went temporarily dead, not returning again until we were nearly at the end of the tunnel on the Jersey side. Then, as the radio kicked in, a story started to come on about a criminal trial which was taking place in Manhattan at the time and had been receiving quite a bit of publicity. It was called the ‘pizza connection’ trial because pizzerias were said to be laundering drug money. About twenty Mafiosi were being tried together as a group on various charges. As the broadcast began, the older one heard what it was about and jolted forward in his seat.

‘Turn that up, please!’ he blurted out in his heavily accented voice.

I turned the volume up. The latest details about the trial, which had been going on for several weeks, were given. For the twenty seconds or so that the story was being broadcast, my passengers both listened intently to every word. Then, when the piece was over, they sat back in their seats and began talking to each other with great animation in Italian.

As I turned the volume back down, there was something akin to a lump in my throat. I had suddenly realized exactly where it had been that I had picked them up – it was in Foley Square, the very place where all the courthouses were located. And they’d gotten in my cab at four o’clock, the time of day when a trial would be recessing. And they had told me that they make this trip to Chicago every Friday. They were going back home for the weekend until the trial picked up again the following Monday!

I knew at this moment as well as I could ever know that these guys sitting five feet behind me were card-carrying members of the Mob. Not Mob wannabees like the blowjob conversationalist whom we’ve already met – they were the real thing and were either on trial themselves or associated with others who were.

It took me a minute or two to digest this reality and still keep my eyes on the road. After a couple of minutes I began to wonder where in the Mafia echelon these two might fit. Were they big shots or thugs?

I ran that through my mind. I’d glance at them in my mirror and try to visualize them either as bosses or underlings. Did they give orders or take orders? I concluded that they must be low in the scheme of things simply because they were taking a cab to the airport instead of a private car. A big wheel would have some kind of a limo. But aside from that, how did they seem ?

I looked at the younger guy. He wore an ordinary-looking leather jacket. He appeared to be a bit dull, actually. Definitely not a boss of any kind. I could envision him, however, as a muscle boy without conscience, perhaps hijacking a truck on I-95. He looked like he could play that part, but that was about it. He didn’t have a perceptible sinister demeanor about him but nevertheless he was somebody who could inflict real brutality at the behest of others.

But it was the older guy, once again, who stopped me in my mental tracks. I tried to imagine where he was in the Mob. Possibly a middle-level boss of some kind, but without flamboyance or spark. I didn’t find it difficult to picture him, however, knocking on a door which is opened by someone he’s never met before, calmly pulling out a gun, firing it into the stranger’s head, and then going home and enjoying a hot bowl of linguini.

The more I looked at him in the mirror, the more I became convinced that this was the guy. Yes, this was the guy! It was his manner, the way he carried himself, the way he looked when he talked to the other guy, the deadness in his voice, the shark-like quality in his eyes.

It is my understanding in life that people who decide to do evil things must first justify to themselves why it is okay to do what they do. What they’re not aware of is that along with this justification comes an attitude. This guy had the attitude, just a nuance thing, of someone who had long ago justified to himself why it was okay to murder other people. It was this which was sticking my attention on him! I had never consciously observed it in another person before, but the longer he was in my space, the more certain I was becoming of it. I was driving a professional killer to the airport.

So how do you drive when you know that the fellow sitting just behind you puts bullets through people’s brains for a living? Carefully! Two hands on the wheel, steady as she goes, and lots of space between the taxi and the other cars on the road! I figured the only danger I could be in from these guys would be if I had an accident while they were in my cab. We crash into another car, one of them ruptures a disc, and then a few months later, there’s a knock on my door…