Читать книгу Confessions of a New York Taxi Driver - Eugene Salomon - Страница 18

I had someone in my cab on a Saturday night in March, 1999 whom you know. Or at least know of. You have never seen his face, but you have wondered what he looked like. And you have spoken of him from time to time.

Let me explain. Has something like this ever happened to you? You are walking along on a crowded city sidewalk and you’re in a pretty good mood, just minding your own business, when someone walking in the opposite direction bumps into you so hard that it knocks you off balance for a moment. You look at the person who did this and expect to hear some kind of an apology, but instead you hear this: ‘Watch where you’re going, asshole.’

Or this? You are waiting in line at the Quikcheck and someone a foot taller than you blatantly cuts right in front of you with his beer just as you were about to step up to the cashier. You think of saying something to the guy but he looks like a thug, so you just keep your mouth shut and stand there with your half-gallon of milk.

In both cases your urge to react in a forceful way is suppressed by the consideration of what the consequences might be if you did. You might be injured. Hell, you might be killed. You might be arrested and charged with assault. You might have a lawsuit on your hands. So you just stand there and take it. But you soothe your anger by thinking this thought: ‘Someday that guy is gonna meet the wrong guy.’

But the wrong guy is not you, so the moment of retribution has not arrived. Nevertheless, you know he’s out there somewhere and it’s just a matter of time before he evens the score with this subhuman who was just so rude to you.

It was the ‘wrong guy’ who got into my cab that night in March, 1999. I had taken a fare out to Jackson Heights in Queens at midnight and was heading back toward Manhattan on Northern Boulevard when I was hailed by a man who came suddenly running out to the street. I stopped the cab, he got in, and we drove off.

He was a stocky, Hispanic-looking man, maybe five foot six or seven, and he was in a state of extreme agitation. Without any prior conversation, these alarming words came out of his mouth: ‘FUCKING BASTARD! DAMN FUCKING BASTARD!’

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked (of course).

His answer startled me again. Not only because of what he said, but the way that he said it. He actually started to cry.

‘Oh my God,’ he sobbed in a lowered voice, ‘I hope I didn’t kill him.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘THAT STUPID FUCKING BASTARD!’ he screamed. ‘WHO THE FUCK DOES HE THINK HE’S TALKING TO? I WAS IN ’NAM, I DON’T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS SHIT!’

‘What happened?’

And then he began crying again.

‘I think I killed him,’ he sobbed as he covered his face in his hands. ‘Oh God, I hope I didn’t kill him.’

To say that this guy was upset would be more than an understatement. He was riding on a wave of emotion that went up to anger and down to grief like a yo-yo, back and forth, and was literally inconsolable. It took the full ten minutes of the two-mile trip to Astoria for me to piece together what had happened.

He had been sitting in a bar, alone, just minding his own business, having a couple of drinks, and brooding to himself about his own troubles. Three rowdy young men entered the bar and sat nearby. One of these guys decided it would be a good time to have some ‘fun’ at my passenger’s expense. He began making belittling comments to him while his buddies laughed. He wouldn’t let up and it led to a brawl.

The fight was no shoving match. It became an outright slugfest which ended with the other guy collapsing on the floor from a chop to the neck which may have crushed his windpipe. He gasped desperately for breath before finally slumping over, unconscious, and possibly suffocating. My passenger ran out of the bar to the street and jumped into my cab which happened to be approaching on Northern Boulevard.

What the moron in the bar didn’t know when he decided to forget his manners was that he had finally met ‘the wrong guy’. His object of ridicule was an ex-marine who knew martial arts and was in no mood to take crap from some punk.

When we arrived at his place, I gave him this advice: talk to no one else about this incident other than a priest. Don’t let your feelings of guilt put you in a jail cell. The guy muttered something that might have been a thank you, got out of my cab, and disappeared into the night.

I found it a bit odd in myself that, although my passenger had just committed a serious crime in the eyes of the law, I felt sympathy for him and was actually rooting for him not to get caught. This was partially because I had seen how remorseful he was and I did not deem him to be an evil person. But it was also because the person he may have killed represented to me an aspect of humanity that is begging for correction – the psycho who takes pleasure in intimidating strangers. This person, in my mind, is more of a danger to society than the guy with a short fuse who strikes him down.

Of course, New York, the city which prides itself on its variety, also has great variety in its types of criminals. There’s the overt bully mentioned above; marauders who commit impulsive crimes like grabbing pocketbooks and running away; husbands who commit adultery; wives who put nail polish in their cheating husband’s soup; and even the occasional sociopath who doesn’t clean up after his dog (although this is rare, indeed).

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…