It took me a minute or two to digest this reality and still keep my eyes on the road. After a couple of minutes I began to wonder where in the Mafia echelon these two might fit. Were they big shots or thugs?
I ran that through my mind. I’d glance at them in my mirror and try to visualize them either as bosses or underlings. Did they give orders or take orders? I concluded that they must be low in the scheme of things simply because they were taking a cab to the airport instead of a private car. A big wheel would have some kind of a limo. But aside from that, how did they seem?
I looked at the younger guy. He wore an ordinary-looking leather jacket. He appeared to be a bit dull, actually. Definitely not a boss of any kind. I could envision him, however, as a muscle boy without conscience, perhaps hijacking a truck on I-95. He looked like he could play that part, but that was about it. He didn’t have a perceptible sinister demeanor about him but nevertheless he was somebody who could inflict real brutality at the behest of others.
But it was the older guy, once again, who stopped me in my mental tracks. I tried to imagine where he was in the Mob. Possibly a middle-level boss of some kind, but without flamboyance or spark. I didn’t find it difficult to picture him, however, knocking on a door which is opened by someone he’s never met before, calmly pulling out a gun, firing it into the stranger’s head, and then going home and enjoying a hot bowl of linguini.
The more I looked at him in the mirror, the more I became convinced that this was the guy. Yes, this was the guy! It was his manner, the way he carried himself, the way he looked when he talked to the other guy, the deadness in his voice, the shark-like quality in his eyes.
It is my understanding in life that people who decide to do evil things must first justify to themselves why it is okay to do what they do. What they’re not aware of is that along with this justification comes an attitude. This guy had the attitude, just a nuance thing, of someone who had long ago justified to himself why it was okay to murder other people. It was this which was sticking my attention on him! I had never consciously observed it in another person before, but the longer he was in my space, the more certain I was becoming of it. I was driving a professional killer to the airport.
So how do you drive when you know that the fellow sitting just behind you puts bullets through people’s brains for a living? Carefully! Two hands on the wheel, steady as she goes, and lots of space between the taxi and the other cars on the road! I figured the only danger I could be in from these guys would be if I had an accident while they were in my cab. We crash into another car, one of them ruptures a disc, and then a few months later, there’s a knock on my door…
Fortunately we arrived at Newark Airport without a problem, a smooth ride that left them plenty of time to make their flight. As we approached the terminal it occurred to me that there might be one other little way of determining their status in the Mafia – the tip. A boss at any level would surely be a big tipper, right? But a triggerman monster would be someone who knows in his core that everyone is his enemy and no one really exists except himself, anyway. And this lack of empathy would show itself in the tip.
We came to the end of the ride. The fare was $26.90. The younger guy got out of the cab and the older one remained seated while he reached into a pocket to find his money. As he handed me some bills, he reached forward and put his hand on my shoulder (this cab had no partition). And then, while keeping his hand right there – the hand of Death upon my shoulder! – he said these words, slowly and strongly accented:
‘I’m sorry, my friend, but I have not much money today.’
He had handed me a twenty, a five and two singles – $27. A ten-cent tip!
It was an insult to my dignity as a working man. Hit man or no hit man, I felt I had to say something. I could feel I needed all my inner strength to say to him what I wanted to say, so I reached down deep to come up with the right words. And then I spoke those words with a smile on my face and without the slightest indication of insincerity in the tone of my voice:
‘Hey, that’s all right, sir, have a good flight!’
He closed the door and walked off toward the terminal. I pulled out from the curb and drove away in the opposite direction. Quickly!
Ah, the Mob. I’ve wondered from time to time what exactly the charm is about these guys. Why do we usually see them not so much as criminals but more as a form of entertainment? The answer, of course, is that we view them in the abstract. It’s not really us that they threaten. They’re either killing each other or some fool who was stupid enough to cross them.
One’s attitude toward a criminal, however, can change rather abruptly when the victim is yourself. This was something I discovered first-hand on Christmas Eve in 1987…
The cab driver who does not speak English
As mentioned before, it’s quite common in my case to have someone get in my cab and suddenly express amazement that I’m an American. Or, if they don’t actually say ‘American’, they often say something like, ‘Wow, it’s really nice to have an English-speaking cab driver for a change.’ Immediately following this comment I will be told a story about how my passenger was recently in a cab with some driver who spoke absolutely no English and had to use hand signals to make this driver understand where he wanted to go. I’ve heard this story so many times that it began to give me the impression that there must be a small army of cabbies out there who speak virtually no English.
And yet I had never met one.
It struck me as odd that with all these reports about cab drivers who don’t speak English, I, who meet cab drivers all the time on the street, in garages, in front of hotels and at the airports, had never once found myself in a situation in which I could not communicate with a cabbie. Sure, there were lots of guys whose English was accented because their native language was Hindi, Arabic, Russian or whatever, but never did I have to resort to sign language to make myself understood, nor did I ever really have a problem communicating with words. So what was going on here? Why do I keep hearing about cab drivers who don’t speak English?
I had to become a crime victim myself to find out the answer.
On Christmas Eve, 1987, I was mugged. I had been at a party at a friend’s apartment on 9th Avenue between 44th and 45th Streets with my wife and young daughter. The party went on late and it was after three o’clock in the morning when we were finally ready to leave. My daughter had long since fallen asleep so I decided to walk to 10th Avenue, where I’d parked my car, and then bring it around to 9th Avenue to pick up my family.
I made a mistake that I, as a veteran New Yorker and a cab driver, should never have made: I attempted to walk down a deserted street (45th), in a not-so-great part of town (Hell’s Kitchen), late at night, carrying something that showed some value (two wrapped Christmas presents). When I was halfway to 10th Avenue, I was attacked by three thugs.
The whole thing took less than fifteen seconds: I heard running footsteps coming toward me from behind, I was shoved into a doorway, and I had a knife held against my throat by one man while the other two grabbed the Christmas presents and went through my pockets for my money (about a hundred dollars). Having gotten what they wanted, they then started to run down 45th Street, back toward 9th Avenue.
They say you follow your instincts in these situations, and my instinct was to let them get a bit of a lead and then run after them in the hope of finding a cop who could catch them and arrest them. I didn’t want to get too close to them – they had a knife – but I wanted to keep them in sight. So I started running after them in pursuit.
When the muggers got to 9th Avenue they ran to the right and then were momentarily