Network Aztlan Latino Chicano Comunidades Transnacionales

Cap 7235

by Joe Navarro

C.T. Lowell was killed in this cab. Some said it was haunted. Jim Marrow sat in it, looking at the dashboard, the windshield, and the steering wheel. Three weeks ago Lowell's blood and brains had been sprayed like diced tomatoes throughout the interior. Looking at it now, you'd never know it. It was scrubbed clean.

It was 9 p.m. and Marrow was getting hungry. If Marrow believed in anything, it was his stomach. Marrow believed in hunger. He did not believe in ghosts. He did not believe in 3-dollar bills, UFOs, or anything else that went against the grain of his well-heeled sensibilities. Marrow did not believe in Santa Claus--or God. Marrow believed in money and all the things that money could buy. Jim Marrow was a realist.

Over the radio, the dispatcher squawked, "Sunset-Echo."

"7209--Sunset-Echo."

"--209, take it into the Pioneer Market--in the front."

"Check."

Marrow sat with mike in hand, waiting, listening.

Slow night.

A night like a turtle's crawl, he thought, and he was pleased with himself. I shoulda been a poet. Yeah, maybe that's what I shoulda been.

"7102."

"What is it --102?"

"I can't find Benton."

"Check your map book, sir." The dispatcher wanted to yawn.

Asshole, Marrow thought. He had no patience with green drivers.

"You're a moron!" he yelled into the mike. "Ya hear me, you're a fuckin' moron!" A gob of spit landed on the mouthpiece.

"All right," the dispatcher said. "Knock it off. I need a unit for Sunset-Vermont. Plenty of calls, gentlemen. Let's go get 'em."

Marrow pressed the key and brought the mike to his mouth. "--235, Sunset-Vermont."

Someone beat him to it. The call was just three blocks away. He felt like guzzling it. But on second thought, the hell with it. Probably a shorty anyway. Besides, he was tired. Damn wife and her stubborn demands. Who ever heard of moving people in the middle of the night? Lucky they weren't taken for burglars. Marrow had almost thrown his back with his sister-in-law's refrigerator. He had almost told his wife, her sister, and her sister's husband where they could put it all.

After he began swearing for half a minute, his wife took him aside and said in a low tone, "Jim, don't forget who loaned us the money for the car. And don't forget who helped pay the rent last month."

He grumbled. "Okay, okay, let's get it over with."

Sure, his in-laws were good for a few bucks in a pinch, but who the hell ever heard of moving out of a house and into another at 3 o'clock in the fucking morning? He thought he was a reasonable guy and couldn't understand why people put him in such unreasonable situations. Jesus Christ, he mumbled, rubbing the small of his back. Life's a bitch.

Marrow was parked at a Chevron gas station near Sunset-Virgil. The station was closed. He'd only been out since 5 o'clock but he already felt like calling it a night. Four hours out and he'd only booked $20. No wonder the old lady was always bitching. This ain't no job for a married man. Everyone told him and he knew it. He didn't have any kids and the wife worked, so that helped. But still it wasn't enough. No matter how much money he made, it was never enough.

He'd been hacking off and on now for five years. He'd never been a high booker--not with any consistency. He couldn't figure some of these guys. $100 or more a day, everyday. Whatever their secret was, they weren't saying. Maybe it was just plain luck. Or maybe it was just plain bullshit. Talk, just talk. That's probably it. Some kind of psychological game to get you on edge. To make you think you weren't worth a damn. But fuck it--he wasn't going to let it worry him. There were plenty of other things to worry about. Can't let something like that get you down. Last night he booked $40. If they didn't like it, they could stick it.

"Okay, gentlemen, let's not be lazy," the dispatcher said. "There's plenty of calls. Let's go get them."

Maybe that's it, Marrow thought. Maybe I'm lazy. A second stringer. But no, that's not right either. His conclusion was that he just usually wasn't at the right place at the right time. Although, in some respects, he had had his share of luck. While he did have the run-outs--they just hurt the wallet, and that was bad, especially when you didn't make that much to begin with--he had never been strong-armed--knock wood, he thought.

Yes, his luck surely wasn't as bad as some. Like good ol' C.T. Lowell's. Poor sap.

He'd been on the job less than two weeks. A stone rook. Marrow never met him. Didn't even know what he looked like. All he knew was that he had been Black and that he had been killed at 94th & Vermont at 3 o'clock on some dreary Sunday morning. Any self-respecting cabbie had no business in that part of town at that hour of the morning. Anyone dumb enough to be there was just asking for it. Five bullets in the head. Must have been a mess. Still, they did a good job of cleaning it up.

Marrow had heard about it that same day on KFWB. It sacred the shit out of him. News like that always scared the shit out of him. His wife tried to get him to switch jobs, or at least get him to change from nights to days. He had actually considered quitting. But what would he do? When he wasn't driving a taxi, he worked out of labor pools. Marrow wasn't dumb, but he wasn't skilled at anything either, except hacking, and that wasn't exactly a skill. That came under the heading of making a fucking living.

Being in this cab wasn't any fun either. It gave him the creeps. It was like wearing a suit you knew someone had died in.

"It's twenty exciting minutes after nine," the dispatcher said. "And the board is momentarily clear."

Marrow switched to channel 2, the westside of town, and a woman dispatcher was saying, "--338, it's in the alley. Be careful, dear. And remember, money up front. No money, no ride."

"Check."

In the alley, Marrow thought. There ought to be a law against picking up people in alleys. He was no genius but he did pride himself on his sense of caution. Even cops had better sense than to come storming into the middle of a family dispute the minute they got the call. Let them knock the shit out of each other. Those cops were going to finish their cheeseburger and coffee and la-de-da their way to the combat zone when they were good and ready. And fuck it, more power to 'em. That's what Marrow called good common sense. If things came to a head, they'd just call the coroner and put the cuffs on the winner. Simple as that. And that's the way it should be. Why the hell go sticking your neck out when it just wasn't worth it?

Marrow's stomach was complaining again. It needed sustenance; it was insisting. It was sending ideas to his brain. The most prominent being that of a medium-size pizza. His stomach accepted this suggestion with great interest, evoking in Marrow's mind visions of bubbling cheese and sizzling disks of pepperoni atop an ocean of red, well-seasoned sauce. His mouth watered. He hooked the mike and was about to start the cab when someone suddenly opened the rear door and stepped in.

Marrow turned and saw a young black man staring at him. Ever cautious, Marrow sized him up. He looked at the eyes to detect any hatred. The eyes were always a dead giveaway. Generally, he got along fine with blacks.

But there was always that chance (especially in the cab business) that you could run into someone out to scalp a honky for no better reason than to scalp him.

Instead, what Marrow saw was a rather listless, bewildered face. Mar-row somehow got the impression that the guy was lost. Satisfied that there was no danger, he said, "Where to?"

"1125 N. Cahuenga."

The load even sounded lost. Marrow started the cab and dropped the flag. Even at the age of 39, the feeling of dropping the flag came close to opening Christmas presents as a child. Marrow grinned.

As 7235 made its way up Sunset, Marrow looked at his passenger in the rearview. The guy was in his mid-twenties and looked none too happy. He didn't look all that sad either. There was just a vacant look about him. The

kind you see on someone who's caught up in a daydream, a persistent reverie.

"You just getting off work?" Marrow always liked to break the ice with his passengers--to feel them out.

"Not now." The answer sounded hollow.

Maybe he had a fight with his girl, Marrow thought. "What do you do?"

"I was thinking of driving a taxi."

"Beats welfare," Marrow said.

He was quiet, figuring it was the guy's turn to say something. He looked in the rearview. The face in the glass was looking out the window, totally disinterested in Marrow or what he had to say. The bright neons shifted quick shadows about them.

The meter went click!

Music to my ears, Marrow thought.

At the corner of Sunset-Gower, another cab pulled up beside him at a red light. Marrow was on the inside lane. He looked over to the driver next to him and called over, "How's it going?"

The other driver, Benny Duran, said, "What you doing --235? Giving yourself a ride?" Benny's brash, wide eyes were trying to figure --235 out.

"What?" Marrow said, squinting.

"You got your flag down, dummy."

"Sure I got the flag down," Marrow said. "I also got someone in the cab."

"Guess I'm blind." Benny said.

"Where you goin'?" Marrow said.

"Going to find myself some pussy," Benny said, smiling.

The light turned green and Marrow checked the rearview to make sure his load was still there. The cabs took off and Benny let Marrow get ahead. Must be a foot high midget, Benny thought.

In Hollywood, on any given night of the week, the place is swarming with taxis like a sea infested with sharks. Aside from Benny, half a dozen other cabbies saw Marrow driving down Sunset jabbering to someone they couldn't see. This included a supervisor who not only noticed that Marrow was talking to someone, but actually made a U-turn and followed him three blocks just to make sure that nothing was wrong. The fact that the meter was running gladdened the supervisor's heart. But to have a driver talking to himself meant that he was either drunk or ready for a shrink. In either case, it was bad PR and the supervisor pulled along side Marrow and glanced at him.

"Busy night?" the supervisor questioned.

"Could be better," Marrow said good-naturedly. Did he detect a hint of suspicion in the supervisor's voice?

They came to a red light and the supervisor watched him carefully to see if he could sense anything out of the ordinary. Everything seemed fine--except that the meter was running and there was no passenger in the cab. He could be running a package or picking up something at a store for a shut in. There could xbe a perfectly logical answer.

"Have a good one," the supervisor said.

When the light changed the supervisor turned right and headed toward Holly-wood Boulevard.

Marrow breathed easier. He was doing nothing wrong. But his feeling would have been the same if he had had a squad car tailing him. And then, too, why had the supervisor given him such a peculiar look?

For a while now he had been commenting to his passenger on the degenerate condition of the Hollywood streets, the appalling state of the nation, and the virtues and dangers of prostitution. But no matter what Marrow said, the load never responded with anything more than a grunt.

"Santa Monica-Gower," the dispatcher said.

Marrow tried for the call. He would be dropping in about two minutes and would be glad to get the stiff out of his cab. The load wasn't much of a conversationalist. He just sat looking out the window, quiet and moody...and then...there was a smell to him, too... What was it?

He turned off Sunset onto Cahuenga and --235 headed up toward Franklin.

...formaldehyde...

"You did say 1125 Cahuenga, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

...and flowers...

Marrow saw the building to his left, an old brownstone hotel, and parked the cab at the curb. He put the flag at 9 o'clock to stop the meter.

"Okay, sir, that'll be $8.50." Marrow glanced in the rearview and couldn't believe his eyes.

The man was bleeding.

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