After I climbed back into my cab I had a choice: circle the block and park again at the Brown, or start taking calls off the radio. Rather than follow my natural inclination, I chose to take calls off the radio. The emotional turmoil of being in the presence of a recently published novel made it impossible for me to touch my paperback.
Since it was a Friday there was a surfeit of calls. Fridays are like Christmas in many ways. The radio hops all day with the dispatcher dealing fares like a card-jockey in Reno. I try not to think about Christmas or Reno because they both remind me of my brother Gavin. Reno is on the route to California. I used to visit Gavin there once a year but I stopped going when I realized it was costing me too much money in Reno. With all the money I’ve dropped at Blackjack over the years I could have bought ten word-processors. Gavin bought me a PC last Christmas and one was plenty. So far I haven’t successfully written any failed novels on it, although I have written a number of unfinished novels. I don’t consider a novel to be failed until it has been rejected by at least one agent. You may not believe this but I once had a novel rejected by an actual publishing company. The novel was titled “Draculina.” I was so excited about getting rejected by a New York publisher that I called my old college buddies to celebrate. I woke up in Reno. It’s probably a long story. Let’s move on.
I worked Capitol Hill until noon. Capitol Hill is always jumping with short trips on Friday. You can earn as much money in a single hour on The Hill as you can earn from a rich lady with a published nephew if you know what you’re doing. This is one of the reasons why I rarely work The Hill—there’s no challenge. You work twelve hours, pocket your one-hundred-and-twenty-dollar profit for the day, and go home feeling cheated. The real challenge of cab driving is to work as little as possible and still bring home fifty bucks.
It takes years of experience to fine-tune your skills to the point where you don’t get ambitious and work five days a week instead of three. If I earned one hundred and twenty dollars a day five days a week, I would become an emotional wreck because it would make me want to earn even more money, but to do that I would have to get a real job. And let’s be honest, where am I going to find a job that pays 30K a year? I’ll tell you where: vocational training school. As soon as you graduate they help you find a job—that’s what the infomercials say anyway. The next thing you know you’re connecting pipes in a basement or laying tile in a kitchen and going home with sore knees and a fat paycheck. My knees haven’t been sore since the last time I did squat-thrusts. Believe me, if I had been paid thirty grand a year in the army I would be a corporal by now.
I ran fares back and forth across The Hill, down to Cherry Creek, to dentist and doctor offices, to grocery stores and restaurants and bars. I don’t pick up many people at bars in the daytime but I do seem to take a lot of people to bars around noon. On “Radio Days” as I call the rare days when I take calls off the radio, I know it’s time to go to a delicatessen after my third bar-drop. I have noticed over the years that people who go to bars don’t talk as much as people who come out of bars. But I understand. Whenever I take a cab to Sweeney’s I sit quietly in the backseat and contemplate all the hilarious things I am going to say to the barflies when I arrive. I feel like a Denver Bronco psyching himself up for The Big Game—mostly playoffs.
I drove to a supermarket on Capitol Hill and bought a ham-and-lettuce sandwich. I had been thinking about ham-and-lettuce ever since Rollo had shown me that picture of carnage in Los Angeles. It made my mouth water.
I also bought a small cup of macaroni salad, which I rarely do. I usually go with potato chips because it’s much easier to brush crumbs off my lap than mayonnaise.
“One twenty-three,” the dispatcher said, as I was dabbing at my right kneecap with a napkin.
I grabbed the mike off the dashboard. “One twenty-three.”
“You’ve got a personal, Murph.”
A “personal” is a trip that you set up ahead of time with a fare. It might be a daily where you take the same person to work every morning. But I steer clear of personals because it entails an obligation, which is a sub-set of “doing things,” and I don’t ever want to be anywhere at all at any time doing anything.
“Check,” I said.
I frowned with bafflement because I had not set up a personal with anyone lately.
Then the dispatcher gave me the address of Mr. Heigger’s office. He said that Mr. Heigger had a client who needs to go to Broomfield, which is a town way north of Denver.
“Check,” I said again. I love the word “check” because it has so many subtle interpretations, including the affirmative “Yes,” or simple clarification, as in “I understand,” or best of all, “We can stop talking now.”
Heigger’s office was less than ten minutes away. After I hung up the mike I looked at my knee. Here I was on my way to a hotshot lawyer’s office and I had a mayonnaise stain to be embarrassed about. One of the nice things about being a cab driver is that fares rarely see your pants. If you took calls off the radio all day rather than working the hotels you could conceivably wear a swimsuit because most radio calls are simple pickups and dropoffs, so you don’t even have to get out of the driver’s seat. However if a radio fare is going to DIA you are forced to climb out and load luggage if you want a tip. But even if you don’t want a tip you still have to load luggage. There’s an art to it. A trunk loaded by a civilian is a catastrophe just waiting to happen.
But I reminded myself that I was a taxi driver and not a man seeking legal help, so I didn’t have to worry about fashion statements. I gave the mayo stain one last dab, then sacked my trash and carried it to a waste can outside the grocery store. I climbed back into my cab, started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. I headed for 10th Avenue making a mental list of all the places I would hate to be seen wearing a swimsuit. DIA was at the top of the list of course. Then there were grocery stores, as well as hotels. If I showed up at the Brown Palace wearing a Speedo, William might not slip me any more Aspen trips.
I parked in front of the lawyer’s building, got out, and went up to the porch.
“You arrived here so quickly, Mr. Murphy,” Mr. Heigger said as soon as I entered his office.
“I was just a couple minutes away when I got the call,” I said, making another of the pointless explanations that beleaguer my life.
A man wearing a slightly rumpled suit and clutching a briefcase was seated on a chair next to Heigger’s desk.
“This is Mr. Weissberger,” Heigger said. “We have just now completed our business. He needs to go to an address up north.”
Mr. Weissberger hoisted himself out of the chair. He appeared to be in his mid-sixties, and had the affable demeanor of a furniture salesman. I say this only because I once delivered furniture for a living. All of the young salesmen wore snazzy suits and were pushy. The older salesmen wore rumpled suits and were affable.
“This is Brendan Murphy, the taxi driver whom I spoke to you about,” Heigger said.
“Oh yes,” Mr. Weissberger said. He reached out to shake my hand. “Mr. Weissberger was a friend of Mr. Zelner,” Heigger said. Suddenly I felt awful. But I smiled and shook Mr. Weissberger’s hand. His posture was rather stooped. He had an odd way of hunching his shoulders and raising his chin when he looked at me. “I understand you were with Mr. Zelner when he passed away.”
“That is correct, sir,” I said.
“Terrible thing—for both you and my old friend.”
I nodded while simultaneously scouring my mind for a mature response. I drew a blank.
“I don’t want to keep you any longer than necessary,” Mr. Heigger said to Mr. Weissberger, relieving me of the responsibility of pretending to be mature on short notice.
“Yes, well, thank you very much,” Mr. Weissberger said, reaching out and shaking Heigger’s hand. “I think we can have this matter settled by Monday.”
“I’ll stay on top of it,” Heigger said. “I might give you a call over the weekend.”
Mr. Weissberger began nodding, adjusting the briefcase, tucking it under one arm, hunching his shoulders, raising his chin, and smiling at me. “I am ready,” he said.
I led him out of the office and down the hall toward the front door, grateful that Mr. Heigger had not said anything more about the trip from Union Station to Diamond Hill. It was only as I was holding the door open to allow Mr. Weissberger to step out to the veranda that I thought about telling Mr. Heigger about my inadvertent “lie.” I also wanted to ask if he had found Mr. Zelner’s luggage.
I looked back and saw Heigger standing in the hallway watching us leave. It was the part of my brain that I sometimes refer to as “insane” that made me want to rehash a subject that so far I had managed successfully to avoid. I had been trying not to think about the lie. It was the part of my brain that I sometimes refer to as the “stranger” that caused me to keep my mouth shut and follow Mr. Weissberger outside. It seemed like every time I became involved in the personal life of a fare, the “stranger” was nowhere to be seen. I wished he would come around more often. I wanted to develop a deep and long-lasting relationship with him. Perhaps he could be permanently coaxed out of his hiding place if I got some goddamn therapy.