Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“It’s entirely up to him,” Fitzsimmons said.

“We’re a half hour late,” Helen announced bitterly. “The perfect dinner guests.”

“It is not enough to be sorry,” said the cab driver. “ Police …”

“Say, listen, Bud,” the young man said, his voice quick and confidential, “what’s yer name?”

“Leopold Tarloff,” the cabby said. “I have been driving a cab on the streets of New York for twenty years, and everybody thinks just because you’re a cab driver they can do whatever they want to you.”

“Lissen, Leopold,” the young man pushed his light gray hat far back on his head. “Let’s be sensible. I hit yer cab. All right. I hit you. All right.”

“What’s all right about it?” Tarloff asked.

“What I mean is, I admit it, I confess I did it, that’s what I mean. All right.” The young man grabbed Tarloff’s short ragged arms as he spoke, intensely. “Why the fuss? It happens every day. Police are unnecessary. I’ll tell yuh what I’ll do with yuh, Leopold. Five dollars, yuh say, for the fender. All right. And for the bloody nose, another pound. What do yuh say? Everybody is satisfied. Yuh’ve made yerself a fiver on the transaction; these good people go to their party without no more delay.”

Tarloff shook his arms free from the huge hands of the man in the gray hat. He put his head back and ran his fingers through his thick hair and spoke coldly. “I don’t want to hear another word. I have never been so insulted in my whole life.”

The young man stepped back, his arms wide, palms up wonderingly. “I insult him!” He turned to Fitzsimmons. “Did you hear me insult this party?” he asked.

“Claude!” Helen called. “Are we going to sit here all night?”

“A man steps up and hits me in the nose,” Tarloff said. “He thinks he makes everything all right with five dollars. He is mistaken. Not with five hundred dollars.”

“How much d’yuh think a clap in the puss is worth?” the young man growled. “Who d’yuh think y’are—Joe Louis?”

“Not ten thousand dollars,” Tarloff said, on the surface calm, but quivering underneath. “Not for twenty thousand dollars. My dignity.”

“His dignity!” the young man whispered. “For Christ’s sake!”

“What do you want to do?” Fitzsimmons asked, conscious of Helen glooming in the rear seat of the cab.

“I would like to take him to the station house and make a complaint,” Tarloff said. “You would have to come with me, if you’d be so kind. What is your opinion on the matter?”

“Will yuh tell him the cops are not a necessity!” the young man said hoarsely. “Will yuh tell the bastidd?”

“Claude!” called Helen.

“It’s up to you,” Fitzsimmons said, looking with what he hoped was an impartial, judicious expression at Tarloff, hoping he wouldn’t have to waste any more time. “You do what you think you ought to do.”

Tarloff smiled, showing three yellow teeth in the front of his small and childlike mouth, curved and red and surprising in the lined and weatherbeaten old hackie’s face. “Thank you very much,” he said. “I am glad to see you agree with me.”

Fitzsimmons sighed.

“Yer drivin’ me crazy!” the young man shouted at Tarloff. “Yer makin’ life impossible!”

“To you,” Tarloff said with dignity, “I talk from now on only in a court of law. That’s my last word.”

The young man stood there, breathing heavily, his fists clenching and unclenching, his pale gray hat shining in the light of a street lamp. A policeman turned the corner, walking in a leisurely and abstracted manner, his eyes on the legs of a girl across the street.

Fitzsimmons went over to him. “Officer,” he said, “there’s a little job for you over here.” The policeman regretfully took his eyes off the girl’s legs and sighed and walked slowly over to where the two cars were still nestling against each other.

“What are yuh?” the young man was asking Tarloff, when Fitzsimmons came up with the policeman. “Yuh don’t act like an American citizen. What are yuh?”

“I’m a Russian,” Tarloff said. “But I’m in the country twenty-five years now, I know what the rights of an individual are.”

“Yeah,” said the young man hopelessly. “Yeah …”

The Fitzsimmonses drove silently to the police station in the cab, with Tarloff driving slowly and carefully, though with hands that shook on the wheel. The policeman drove with the young man in the young man’s Ford. Fitzsimmons saw the Ford stop at a cigar store and the young man jump out and go into the store, into a telephone booth.

“For three months,” Helen said, as they drove, “I’ve been trying to get Adele Lowrie to invite us to dinner. Now we’ve finally managed it. Perhaps we ought to call her and invite the whole party down to night court.”

“It isn’t night court,” Fitzsimmons said patiently. “It’s a police station. And I think you might take it a little better. After all, the poor old man has no one else to speak up for him.”

“Leopold Tarloff,” Helen said. “It sounds impossible. Leopold Tarloff. Leopold Tarloff.”

They sat in silence until Tarloff stopped the cab in front of the police station and opened the door for them. The Ford with the policeman and the young man drove up right behind them and they all went in together.

There were some people up in front of the desk lieutenant, a dejected-looking man with long mustaches and a loud, blonde woman who kept saying that the man had threatened her with a baseball bat three times that evening. Two Negroes with bloody bandages around their heads were waiting, too.

“It will take some time,” said the policeman. “There are two cases ahead of you. My name is Kraus.”

“Oh, my,” said Helen.

“You’d better call Adele,” Fitzsimmons said. “Tell her not to hold dinner for us.”

Helen held her hand out gloomily for nickels.

“I’m sorry,” Tarloff said anxiously, “to interrupt your plans for the evening.”

“Perfectly all right,” Fitzsimmons said, trying to screen his wife’s face from Tarloff by bending over to search for the nickels in his pocket.

Helen went off, disdainfully holding her long formal skirt up with her hand, as she walked down the spit- and butt-marked corridor of the police station toward a pay telephone. Fitzsimmons reflectively watched her elegant back retreat down the hallway.

“I am tired,” Tarloff said. “I think I will have to sit down, if you will excuse me.” He sat on the floor, looking up with a frail, apologetic smile on his red face worn by wind and rain and traffic-policemen. Fitzsimmons suddenly felt like crying, watching the old man sitting there among the spit and cigarette butts, on the floor against the wall, with his cap off and his great bush of musician’s gray hair giving the lie to the tired, weathered face below it.

Four men threw open the outside doors and walked into the police station with certainty and authority. They all wore the same light-gray hats with the huge flat brims. The young man who had hit Tarloff greeted them guardedly. “I’m glad you’re here, Pidgear,” he said to the man who, by some subtle mixture of stance and clothing, of lift of eyebrow and droop of mouth, announced himself as leader.

They talked swiftly and quietly in a corner.

“A Russian!” Pidgear’s voice rang out angrily. “There are 10,000 cab drivers in the metropolitan area, you have to pick a Russian to punch in the nose!”

“I’m excitable!” the young man yelled. “Can I help it if I’m excitable? My father was the same way; it’s a family characteristic.”

“Go tell that to the Russian,” Pidgear said. He went over to one of the three men who had come in with him, a large man who needed a shave and whose collar was open at the throat, as though no collar could be bought large enough to go all the way around that neck. The large man nodded, went over to Tarloff, still sitting patiently against the wall.