Flood - Andrew H. Vachss [59]
While Max finished checking over the cab, I got the giant portable tape player (another mugger’s donation) and a supply of tapes for Max to play while he drove. It was a little after eight when we finished, so I put some Judy Henske tapes in the player and Max and I continued our game of gin. We had previously agreed to play until one of us won a million dollars from the other. We’d been playing almost ten years and Max had all the score sheets from our first game in the Tombs to last week’s. I was a good seventy bucks ahead. We sat there, playing gin, smoking—me listening to the music, Max feeling the bass lines through his body. It was good to be sitting in the one club where I was always welcome. I think Max felt the same, although we never talked about it.
23
JUST PAST NINE we loaded up the cab and pulled out, me driving and Max as the passenger. We rolled the cab into my own garage. Max stayed there while I went upstairs, let Pansy out, and got her something to eat. Then I climbed into the trunk and Max took the wheel. No way I was going to let these people get a look at my face until I was sure it was going down like it should. If there were cops on the corner, Max would just motor right on by. We headed for the pickup point near Thirty-fourth Street. Although Max loved to drive, he generally behaved himself when he was at the wheel of a cab. Cabs were too sloppy for him—they didn’t respond to a delicate touch. The Plymouth was another story—every time I let him drive that beast he’d happily tear chunks out of the pavement, corner in four-wheel drifts, break 125 on the West Side Highway, and generally act like the city was a giant demolition derby. A lot of cabbies drove like maniacs but there was a purpose to it—making money. Max was immune to money.
I could feel the streets slip by—I could tell where we were just from the sounds and smells. I lay there wrapped in the quilt, looking like so much garbage in the filthy refrigerator suit. If anyone were to open the trunk, it would take them more than a second or two to figure out there was a live human being in there. By then they’d have mace, if not stars, in their eyes. We had checked the trunk light to make sure it wasn’t working.
The cab slowed to a gentle stop and the engine revved sharply—once, twice. It meant we were a few minutes early and Max didn’t want to turn the corner until he could do it right on the money. Okay. We started up again, turned a corner, drifted over to the right, and began slowing down in a long gradual slide. By now Max was blinking the lights like we had arranged. I heard someone say “That’s it” and people approach the cab. The back door opened and a voice said, “Are you the guy from Burke?” The cab lurched as Max took off—the body of one of them slammed backward from the acceleration and the cab shot straight ahead, heading for the West Side Highway.
One of the passengers started to say something, but gave up as the shrieks and screams of contemporary disco pounded through the cab’s interior from Max’s ghetto blaster. There was no hope of them getting any kind of look at Max—the interior light hadn’t gone on when they’d opened the door, Max had kept his high beams on while picking them up so they couldn’t see through the windshield, and the protective screen of plexiglas between driver and passenger was black with years of nicotine and grime.
Max sped downtown, obviously ignoring several red lights, judging by the occasional gasps of the passengers and the uninterrupted flow of our passage. When he got near the Division Street underpass, he slammed to a stop. There was no action from the backseat, but when Max turned off the cassette player they got the message that this was the place. They got out and the cab was moving again before the back door was closed. We were out of their sight in less than ten seconds, around the corner and heading for the warehouse.
Max pulled the cab in the back, I let myself out of the trunk, and we both covered the cab with one of the tarps we always kept around. You never know what you might