Working the Hard Side of the Street Page 6

  “What’s all the excitement, Jimmy?” Big Pedro asked.

  Big Pedro/aka Big Pendejo was a Mexican who stood a good 6’3” and weighed two hundred and sixty pounds—but Big Pendejo liked to claim he was half Hawaiian every chance he got, when he wasn’t busy changing his background and nationality to suit the moment. It was his way of endearing himself to the other drivers, thus making it easier to steal the better fares, the longer rides, and made this M.O. a lot smoother and easier by greasing the palms of various doormen here at the hotel. Big Pendejo was well known for his fabrications. If he thought you had Native Indian in you Big Pendejo suddenly became part Indian. If Big Pendejo thought you were Jewish, Big Pendejo’s father was suddenly Jewish. In his thick south-of-the-border accent Big Pendejo would insist (laying on the earnestness):

  “No kidding, man—my father got Jewish blood. I wouldn’t lie to ju, man. I’m part Jewish.” Or if he thought you were French, suddenly his mother had French blood; or if he knew you to be Puerto Rican or from Spain, from the Philippines, Big Pendejo would alter his story to accommodate the occasion. “I never tol’ ju, my mother is part Filipino; no kidding, man; I got Filipino blood.”

  The purpose behind it? Big Pendejo liked to tell tales, Big Pendejo wanted you to think he was your buddy, he wanted you to relax in order to be able to stab you in the back by taking those good fares, the money-making trips that came out of the hotel—the Disneyland rides, the Newport Beach rides, the LAX rides… And if you were under the impression that Big Pendejo was your buddy it made it that much tougher for you to confront him and accuse him of dirty pool, to accuse him of paying off the doormen for the choice trips, while you were stuck with three dollar fares down to the shops on Rodeo Drive. This was Big Pedro Morales, aka: “the biggest maricon of them all.” And now his curiosity was eating him up and he was doing his best to be buddy-buddy with Jimmy Vance, the shoeshine man. Big Pendejo was itching to figure out what was going on—so were the rest of us, only we weren’t frantic about it.

  “Why so many cops? Why the fire engine, Jimmy?” Morales kept asking. Jimmy Vance was grinning about something. Happy to be alive. He’d had a close call months earlier, heart surgery. The bypass operation had given this former cocaine user a second chance and he was grateful to be breathing, grateful to be alive and kicking, enjoying the Southern California sunshine. Jimmy Vance liked to step outside and spend his breaks with us, chat a bit. Jimmy was giving Morales “the smile” now.

  “Come on, Jimmy,” Big Pendejo insisted. “The hotel got a bomb threat again? That’s it, ain’t it? Bomb threat? How come the fire truck is here? What’s going on, Jimmy?”

  “Had a woman hidin’ in the elevator,” Jimmy Vance said at last. “Claimed she had a bomb in her briefcase. Been in there for hours. Wouldn’t come out.”

  “No kidding?” Big Pendejo said.

  “Finally she come out, then run off someplace else inside the hotel. She’s hiding out, man; won’t come out. Front desk told her to check out. She wouldn’t hear of it, didn’t want to leave. So now, she’s hiding out somewhere in the hotel with the briefcase. They can’t find her. Called the po-leece on her, the bomb squad.”

  “Ju kidding me, man?” Big Pendejo said. “She won’t come out? She’s gotta be some kind of crazy bitch then, right?—if she won’t come out. That’s what chu said, right Jimmy? She won’t check out?”

  Jimmy Vance was grinning, nodding his head. He turned his light-skinned face upwards, toward the sun. “They been in there damn near three hours trying to get her to leave the hotel,” he said.

  Just then there was some shouting, a woman screamed. We all turned, looked in the direction of the hotel entrance.

  For a second I thought I recognized the woman’s voice, the one doing all the cursing and shouting, but I couldn’t be sure. I strained to get a better look, and could not get anywhere. Two other cop cars had pulled up and there were too many policemen around her. It wasn’t until after the heavy-set woman was half-carried, half-dragged to the front seat of one of the cop cars that it dawned on me who she was: “Maria Callas”.

  She stopped struggling, stopped cursing and screaming and, like before, started singing arias—at the top of her voice.

  A cop got in on either side of her, and they slowly drove past us. I looked in and could see the handcuffs on her wrists. Her face, that face I wouldn’t forget for quite some time, was covered with rouge, blood-red lipstick overlapped those opera-singing lips. Yes, it was she all right—that passenger I had picked up in front of Barney’s Beanery that Sunday afternoon, the lady who had started screaming at me simply because I had asked to be paid up front for a ride to L.A. International. And she sang loud enough now to just about crack glass.

  Then Big Pendejo pointed his finger at the cop car with the singing passenger that slowly made its way down the winding driveway toward Sunset Boulevard: “I know that crazy lady,” said he, recalling: “She’s a crazy bitch, I tell ju, man. Got money up the ass. She’s from New Jork. Got big money. She do the same thing at the Beverly Hillcrest, man, six months ago. They told her to check out; she refused to check out. The man at the desk ordered her out. I was her cab. She wouldn’t come out for two hours, man. I know that crazy broad. She’s a rich bitch, but she’s a mental case.”

  I said nothing.

  The BHPD squad car with the opera singer was gone. “That’s show business,” Jimmy Vance said. His break over, he walked back inside. “I’m not kidding about it, ju guys,” Big Pendejo insisted; “I had that crazy bitch in my cab six months ago.” One of the valets blew his whistle at that moment.

  “Personal for Morales,” the blond-haired valet yelled our way. And Big Pendejo eagerly backed up his station wagon to the lobby entrance, even though it was not his turn. But the people had “requested” Big Pedro (according to the valet). The huge Mexican was salivating. Another good fare. I no longer cared. My thoughts were with “Maria Callas.” I felt sorry, I felt something, a kinship. Something had gone wrong in her life, so terribly wrong… The truth of it was it could have been any one of us being carted away in a squad car like that, it could have been me. I knew it all too well. I knew it as much as I knew anything. This is what I feared most—that insanity would finally move in, that all rational thought would abandon me—and that there would be no way back, no way of ever again connecting with the one that I loved on any level.

  Working the Hard Side of the Street

  3:00 A.M. Sitting in my cab at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Dozing off. It’s been a slow weekend, a bad weekend. Close to forty hours invested and not much to show for it. Dozing off; no business. The new dispatcher with the Australian accent says he’s got one at Laurel and Sunset.

  I take it.

  It’s a Kirkwood address.

  I whip the cab down the driveway, go left on Sunset, drive over to Laurel Canyon. Turn left on Kirkwood. It’s pitch black. No lights. I near the address, look up—a woman in some kind of white dress waves to me. She’d been waiting outside. And right away I know she’s a prostitute. The dress has that wrinkled, slept-in, lived-in soiled look to it. The girl is probably in her early 20s, but looks ten years older, easy. Dishwater-blond hair. Bad complexion. Too much makeup. She’s got her little purse like all hookers.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Been waiting long?”

  “It seemed like it in this cold.”

  It’s been a cool January for L.A. I ask her where she’s going.

  “Marina del Rey,” she says. A good trip. “Do you know where Via Marina is?” she asks.

  I tell her I have a pretty good idea where it is. I take it down Laurel to Sunset, make a right and take Sunset Bl. all the way out to the 405. Not much is said.

  Things are going through my head: another sad story, one of many. Why is this one doing it? Needs the money? Too lazy (unable?) to get a real job? Needs the money for junk? Should I feel sorry for this one? I’m not sure. I do anyway. Nobody should
have to live like this.

  I try to shrug it off.

  Sunset Bl. is just about deserted.

  3:10 a.m.

  A Mercedes passes us.

  There is small talk. She asks if I work the airport. She says she has been taking cabs a long time but has never had me before, just small talk. I tell her I’ve been with the company over five years. The reason she never got me is because I’ve been driving weekends a long time now.

  I can smell her perfume: a cheap, strong perfume that does not agree with me. Most prostitutes seem to smell this way, usually something cheap and strong.

  I crack my window open.

  Her beeper goes off.

  I turn up the volume just a bit on the jazz station I’ve got on. I’ve got nothing to say.

  We get on the 405 south. I ask if she is going to need a cab later on (the beeper is a signal for them to call “home”).

  “No,” she says, “I’m through for the night.” Sounding relieved about it too. I find out she’s sharing an apartment in the Marina with another girl and would like to find a place of her own—and that apartments are really expensive.

  I agree.

  We get on the Marina Freeway, take it on in. She tells me all she has is a hundred-dollar bill and apologizes for not telling me earlier. She asks if I wouldn’t mind stopping somewhere to get change. No sweat, I tell her, and suggest the Marriott, since there is no way they would even look at a hundred-dollar bill at a 7-11.

  She agrees.

  She’s in a soiled dress, a hooker with a bad complexion, hair a mess, and not really pretty to look at; she lets men she does not know do things to her for money—and yet there is something tender about this human being sitting in the backseat of my cab, something naive and maybe innocent.

  She’s not hard (not yet), like so many hookers that I get (she’d had her share of hell, for sure, and the profession she was in was aging her fast and hard), and shit, there’s something in my belly or heart, a goddamn teardrop or two, wanting to weep for this woman. HELL—sometimes it’s a fucked-up world and not much to be done— nothing—SHIT, NOTHING. It just goes on. And my own life wasn’t any better.

  I live in a single with a dirty orange carpet, a room that reeks of roach spray, of decay, of death. I was always convinced the previous tenant—an old woman or man—had died there; and the pain goes on.

  Who was right?

  Who was wrong?

  I judge no one these days. Never had a right to judge anyone anyway. Life is sad. Her life was marking her and maybe preparing her for an early fall—and the other way, “the right way,” the loving way, being in love with someone and wanting to see it last, only to see it crumble instead, had left me just as marked as this hooker, just as scarred and hopeless. Life is a dead-end.

  Tell me different, show me I’m wrong. I have worked these hard streets for ten years now; I’ve seen it all. Show me different, let me see. The tears are there for all the pain, all that pain that never goes away.

  We reach the Marriott. I get out with her hundred-dollar bill, get change from the desk clerk. “I’m a cab driver and this hundred-dollar bill is all my fare has on her.”

  He gets me change, then indicates another tired (even her artificial tan looked tired) woman in a green miniskirt of sorts in her mid-40s, wearing high heels with sparkle on them. Needs a cab.

  “Sure,” I tell her. “Where are you going?”

  “Beverly Hills,” she says. “You have a passenger, don’t you?”

  “She’s just going two blocks from here,” I explain upon hearing Beverly Hills—it would be nice to get paid for going back there as this is my turf. She decides fine, but is not interested in being charged extra for this. “No,” I explain, “you won’t be charged extra at all. I just have to drop this lady off, and then I can drive you to Beverly Hills. I have to go back that way anyway, you see—”

  A woman passes us, compliments her on her shoes—and I’m thinking: They’ve got to be kidding. Nobody wears shoes like this, nobody; except maybe some young punk rocker, some teeny-bopper.

  The woman with sparkle on her shoes gets in the front seat, lights a cigarette, is clearly upset about something. My passengers say hi to each other.

  “People can be such assholes,” the one in the green dress says. “If there is one thing I cannot stand it’s being with people sitting around waiting for their dealer to show up.”

  She’s been with a group of people waiting for their coke to arrive—it never did.

  “I tried to tell those assholes that the dealer was not showing up.”

  I drive the hooker to an apartment complex on Via Marina. The fare is $31.70. She hands me two twenties and asks for seven back. I give her change, thank her.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “Take care,” I say.

  And she’s gone. Another one of many that I would never see again, another nameless, faceless blur, somebody I would not remember ever seeing in less than a week. They come, they go. So many, so many. You see them once, and they’re gone—but maybe this one will not be forgotten so easily, maybe this one will not be nameless and faceless and just a blur; maybe this one, at least here and now, for me and for you—and if she ever comes across this—for her as well.

  She’ll be a little more than just another nothing prostitute working the hard side of the street.

  The woman with the rhinestones on her shoes is still pissed at the “assholes” back there at the hotel, still pissed at the fact people cannot try to have fun without their cocaine.

  “I can understand getting high,” she says. “Christ, I’ve done it myself often enough. But goddamn, it just pisses me off the way our whole evening was ruined. Why does cocaine always have to enter the fucking picture? I’ve seen a friend ruined, totally ruined by that shit.”

  This is another one that has had her share of life’s beaners. She’d been there.

  I ask what she does for a living.

  “I’m an interior decorator,” she tells me.

  I like her.

  A heavy boozer, it’s easy enough to see: the slight paunch—and just not my type. I like her company nonetheless.

  I want to talk but know my mouth by now is like the breath of a dog. Poor diet, eating junk food, the ulcer acting up; so I can’t really talk as much as I would like to, to this woman, just talk. She is almost like a breath of fresh air compared to getting all those spoiled rich little bastards of Beverly Hills, spoiled and stupid and ill-mannered.

  So she decides it would be best if I drove her to the Marina City Club instead.

  “The guy—my date—I was with is really not bad. I’ve known him a while now. It’s those other assholes with him. I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s life, I guess.”

  I nod my head. I understand.

  “I’ll call him from the Marina City Club. I know someone who lives there and I can get a drink. I’ll just call my friend to pick me up.”

  She wants my cab number so she can ask for me in the future.

  “Sure,” I tell her, and give her my number and let her know I only drive weekends.

  We chat some more—me not opening my mouth too wide—the goddamn breath and that one tooth way in the back chipped and full of food particles and I know I’ve got breath coming out of my mouth like an elephant. What the hell can you do?

  I give her my card.

  And I can see that by talking with her, just talking with her, it has made her feel better—and she even smiles as she gets out, offers to give me some money. I don’t take anything for the short run.

  She tries again.

  I refuse to take anything.

  Money, money—the source of my problems all these years.

  I lost my love because of money—or lack of. If I didn’t have to eat, or pay rent for that room of mine that smells of death I wouldn’t go near money.

  She walks away with a cheery thank you. “You’re a sweetheart,” she says. Waves to me.

  And is gone insi
de the office.

  Driving the hack down a lonely Marina del Rey street, getting on the Marina Freeway, taking it to the 405, taking it back to town. The weekend had not ended soon enough for me.

  Tired, just exhausted, needing to get back to that bed in that room on Burnside that reeks of something terminal, needing to fall asleep—and forget about everything.

  Long Night

  “GO TO — Loma Vista,” the dispatcher says. 11:30 on a Sunday night. Sunday night Beverly Hills shuts down early; in fact, the whole city of L.A. shuts down. I pull away from the Beverly Hills Hotel, take Sunset east to Foothill, take Foothill on over to Trousdale Estates.

  This is where the big money is; motion picture composers, expensive lawyers; the big wheels with the big cons. I take it up Loma Vista, being careful not to make any wrong moves in the light drizzle. It’s been raining all day and into the night. It’s dark, the pavement slippery.

  I reach my address.

  A chunky guy in a suit holding an umbrella comes out. He’s got dark hair, curly, a perm job.

  “Hi-ya doin’?” he says.

  “How’s it going?” I say.

  He’s in.

  “Here’s the story,” he says. “I got this friend staying with me. And the thing is—he wants me to go out there—let’s take a ride down to the Strip—he wants me to go out there and find a girl. You know, a hooker? Something nice. Is that okay with you?” he asks. “Is that all right?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll do whatever you want, as long as I get paid for my time.”

  “Oh, you’ll get paid. My friend just wants me to bring him a girl.”

  “We can try,” I say.

  “Sure, we can try. Why not? There’s girls out there. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  I take him on over to the Strip. We pass a bony, ugly black hooker standing on the corner of La Cienega and Sunset. I slow down, glance at him.

  “Christ, no way,” he sighs. “No way. My friend wouldn’t like that. Shit, no.”

  I want to chuckle.

  “That wouldn’t be his cup of tea,” I say.