Clark Nobody's Angel

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80336-748-4
Verlag: Hard Case Crime
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 65, 224 Seiten

Reihe: Hard Case Crime

QUENTIN TARANTINO on NOBODY'S ANGEL: 'My favourite fiction novel this year was written by a taxi driver who used to hand it out to his passengers. It's a terrific story and character study of a cabbie in Chicago during a time when a serial killer is robbing and murdering cabbies. Kudos to Hard Case Crime for publishing Mr. Clark's book.' TWO KILLERS STALK THE STREETS OF CHICAGO-CAN ONE TAXI DRIVER CORNER THEM BOTH? Eddie Miles is one of a dying breed: a Windy City hack who knows every street and back alley of his beloved city and takes its recent descent into violence personally. But what can one driver do about a killer targeting streetwalkers or another terrorizing cabbies? Precious little-until the night he witnesses one of them in action...

Jack Clark was nominated for the Shamus Award for his novel starring private eye Nick Acropolis, Westerfield's Chain. Nobody's Angel, the author's first novel, was originally self-published in an edition of only 500 copies that the author sold for five dollars apiece to passengers in the Chicago taxi he drove for a living.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Clark, Jack

Leseproben

Passengers shall only be solicited by a taxicab chauffeur while he is behind the wheel of his vehicle, and the chauffeur may only use the words: “Taxicab,” “Taxi” or “Cab.” City of Chicago, Department of Consumer Services, Public Vehicle Operations Division The neighborhood kids woke me on their way home from school. I lay there in bed listening to their laughter and fighting, and fragments of the night flickered through my mind. Relita. The cops. The sweetness of my daughter’s voice followed by the nightmare voice of my ex: I thought you were dead for sure. And now she knew I wasn’t. Was that good or bad? I looked out the window. Irv, my dayman, had quit early. The cab was parked at the curb. I showered and shaved, and went out to another grey day. My first load was a nurse on her way to Weiss Hospital. $2.80 on the meter; she gave me three and told me to keep the change. I went south, heading for the business down in the Loop. Two short hops and I was on Michigan Avenue where a woman with a tiny shopping bag waved. “Thank you so much,” she said climbing in. “Union Station, the Adams entrance, please.” I worked my way through the Loop, through early rush hour traffic. Thousands of trench coats were heading the same direction we were, to the commuter railroad stations just west of the river. There was $4.40 on the meter when I pulled up with a swarm of other cabs. The woman handed me five dollars. “Keep it,” she said. A young black guy hurried over and opened the passenger door. He was clean and healthy looking, wearing a navy pea coat and sporting a thin goatee. The woman started out, then stopped. “Driver, I’m sorry. Could you let me have one quarter, please.” I handed her a quarter and she dropped it into the guy’s waiting hand. “Thank you,” he said, and he closed the door behind her and held the same hand out to me. “Help the poor?” “Whose quarter you think that was?” I started away but then the black guy slapped the side of the car. “Got one for you,” he shouted. “Do you go south?” It was an older black woman. She was lugging an old suitcase, one that looked like an oversized doctor’s bag. I waved her towards the cab, and the guy grabbed her suitcase and started around for the trunk. “Put it in here.” I reached back and opened the door. The woman slid into the back seat. The guy slid the suitcase in behind her. “Thank you so much,” she said, and she handed him a dollar. She gave me an address on South Aberdeen and I pulled away trying to calculate what the guy might make on a good day. If you could make a buck and a quarter every thirty seconds for an hour… “Where you coming from?” I asked, once we were on the highway heading south. “Mississippi,” she said. “Good trip?” “A funeral.” “Oh. Sorry.” “Long time coming,” she said. The address was in the heart of Englewood. But most of the neighborhood—like so many other neighborhoods on the South and West Sides—was pretty much gone. Half the buildings had disappeared. There were drug dealers and gangbangers on the corners. But the old woman lived in the middle of the block, in a well-kept six-flat, with a sturdy looking gate out front. Ten dollars on the meter. She gave me thirteen. “Thanks very much,” I said, and started to open my door. “Let me help with your bag.” “No. No. You stay right there.” She got out, then reached back for the bag. “Don’t pick anybody up out here,” she whispered. “Lock your doors. Go straight back to the highway.” I locked the doors, waited until she was through the gate, then I followed the rest of her advice. I got stuck in a traffic jam on the way back to the Loop, then wandered around for a while, trying to stay away from the worst of the traffic. I made a short hop from LaSalle Street to Union Station. The black guy was nowhere around. An older guy in a suit and tie flagged me on Wacker Drive. As we headed for Lincoln Park, he opened a newspaper. “They ought to give you guys shields,” he said. “This job isn’t bad enough,” I said. “Now you want us to drive around locked up in little cages all day.” “Whatever you say,” he decided. $6.20 on the meter, I got $7.00. On Lincoln Avenue, a familiar-looking guy was standing at a bus stop holding a small gym bag. As I stopped for the light, he stepped off the curb and looked up the street for a bus, then decided the hell with the CTA and pointed a finger my way. I waved him over. “The Three-Six,” he said, sliding in. “You going to work?” I asked. “Goin’ to pick up the fucking cab,” he said and he didn’t sound very happy about it. “Maybe I’ll get something to eat,” I said. The Three-Six was a restaurant and cabdriver hangout just north of the Loop. There was a big parking lot that was often busier than the restaurant itself. If the dayman lived south and the nightman north, it was the perfect spot to drop the cab. “You always do nights?” the guy asked. “Yeah. How about you?” “It’s all fucked up, man. You know that?” “Sure,” I said. If you listened to some drivers everything was fucked up. They never made any money. If it was sunny they complained that people walked. If it rained they bitched that everybody stayed home. “I just can’t do these nights anymore,” the guy said. “I can’t do the days.” I knew how to bitch too. “I’ve tried but I can’t deal with the traffic.” “You’d rather get shot in the fucking head?” “I’m not sure,” I joked. “I got kids, man,” the guy said. “Ain’t nothin’ funny ’bout this shit. You got kids?” “Yeah.” “Then you know what I’m talking about.” “Sure,” I lied. The truth was I didn’t have a clue. I hadn’t seen the afternoon edition of the morning paper yet. The meter was pushing five dollars when I pulled into the parking lot of the Three-Six and found an empty space between two Yellows. “Just give me a couple,” I said. “Thanks, man,” the guy said. He handed me three. Inside, I nodded my head at a few familiar faces then slid into a vacant booth. The waitress brought coffee. I ordered bacon and eggs. “It’s all about body language,” a loud voice behind me said. “The assholes always give themselves away.” “But how?” a familiar voice asked. It was the rookie. He’d been on the streets for months but he was still a rookie. “Usually it’s something about the way they wave,” the loudmouth said. “Or the minute they open their mouth.” “But they’re already in the cab,” the rook whined. “Don’t pick up kids. That’s the biggest thing. You see ghetto kids trying to flag a cab, you know something’s wrong. You know they can’t afford no ride. Let ’em take the CTA.” “I hope you didn’t order the special,” a new voice said. I looked up as Ken Willis slipped into my booth. “Bacon and eggs,” I said. “Keep your fingers crossed, boy. Keep your fingers crossed.” Willis was a big, barrel-chested guy who still spoke with a West Virginia drawl after thirty years in Chicago. He’d driven a cab for several years back in the sixties, then switched to trucks. When the truck line had gone bankrupt during deregulation, Willis had come back to cabs while waiting for another decent trucking job to open up. Years had gone by and he was still waiting. His hair was nearly gone and what was left was as grey as his face. A half smoked cigar sat unlit in a corner of his mouth. It might take him all night to finish it, and until he did he would keep it dangling there, spitting out flecks of tobacco now and then. The waitress came by and filled Willis’s coffee cup, then topped mine. “Unbelievable, huh?” Willis said. “What?” “Polack Lenny,” he said, as if that might mean something. “What about him?” “Oh, Jesus,” he said, but then he didn’t say anything. He looked off to the side, then towards the ceiling. “What happened?” I asked. “They found him by Cabrini,” Willis said. “Huh?” I still didn’t understand. “Shot in the head,” he explained. “Dead?” I whispered. “What the hell you think we’ve been talking about?” the loudmouth wanted to know, and somebody passed a newspaper over. “CABDRIVER SLAIN,” the headline shouted. And there was a picture of Lenny’s brand new cab, all the doors open so you...