Authors: Laurence Gough
ANDY PATTERSON’S FRIDAY shift started at four in the afternoon and ended at two in the morning. By ten o’clock that night he’d run less than a hundred dollars through the meter. Worse, he’d spent most of his free time cruising restlessly around the city. Boredom had kept his foot on the gas pedal. It had also pushed his mileage total far beyond the acceptable limit. If he hoped to avoid catching an earful from the cab’s owner, he was going to have to spend the rest of the night roosting, not move an inch.
Turning left off Hemlock, Patterson drove west down Broadway to Granville and parked in the two-cab stand in front of the Royal Bank. The rain continued to belt ferociously down. Traffic was light, the sidewalks deserted. He radioed the dispatcher and told him he’d be out of service for a few minutes, and then turned off the engine. Using the business section of the evening newspaper to keep his head dry, he got out of the cab and ran around the corner to the VIP newstand.
When he came in through the door, the elderly Hungarian woman at the cash register smiled at him and reached behind her for the two packs of menthol cigarettes he bought every night he worked. Patterson paid her out of his tip money, exchanged a few words about the weather, and hurried back to his cab. Smoking, he waited for a break in the radio traffic and then cleared himself with the dispatcher.
Across the street, an old lady carrying an armful of bright yellow daffodils came out of the Aristocratic restaurant. She didn’t have an umbrella and she wasn’t wearing a hat, but she paid no attention to the rain. A native, thought Patterson. He watched her walk slowly down Broadway and then disappear into the lane behind the restaurant. Settling back into his seat, he opened the paper to the sports section. James Lawton’s column was on golf, a game Patterson had never played and had no interest in playing. He flicked cigarette ash to the floor of the car and began to read.
Twenty minutes later, his call number came over the radio. Dropping the paper on the seat, Patterson picked up the mike and acknowledged the call. The dispatcher directed him to the Penthouse, a downtown cabaret. The club was a little more than a mile away, but it was a straight run over the Granville Street bridge and down the Seymour off-ramp. He’d be there in two minutes, three at the most.
Judith and Sidney were standing in the scant shelter of the big, old-fashioned Penthouse sign when Patterson swung his cab sharply into the curb lane in front of the club. The sign had flashing red arrows above the name of the club, which was written in green neon. More red neon advertised the continuing presence of GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. The main attraction of the evening was,
NANCY BON BON
RARE & BARE
Sid hurriedly stepped forward as the cab pulled up to the curb. The gaudy neon of the club’s Eagletime clock stained his face blue and yellow, his teeth pink. Turning up the collar of his trenchcoat, he pulled Judith across the sidewalk, through the rain. Behind them, an emaciated pimp in a popsicle-coloured suit burst through the club’s double doors on the dead run. There was a wide gap between his front teeth. He used it to whistle shrilly. His bug eyes were fixed on the taxi. Sid was in a race, and he knew it. Yanking the back door of the cab open, he pushed Judith inside and fell in after her, slammed the door shut and locked it. Out on the sidewalk, the pimp screamed abuse and jumped up and down in his alligator shoes. Sid smiled, and blew him a kiss. The pimp reached under his coat. Patterson dropped the meter and put his foot down on the gas. The cab shot away from the curb. Patterson glanced in his rearview mirror. “Where to, folks?”
Sid looked at Judith. “Your place or mine?” he said.
“Whatever’s closest.”
Sid grinned. “You think you can find eleven-twenty Jervis, cabbie?”
Patterson nodded. The light at Smithe was red. He braked, noted the time and address of the fare on his call sheet, spoke softly into his mike. The dispatcher responded immediately. The light changed to green and Patterson turned left on to Smithe. In the back seat, Sid laughed and Judith giggled. Patterson heard the faint rustle of clothing, and took another quick look in the mirror. He guessed Sid’s age at about thirty-five. Sid’s hair was beginning to thin, and he was a few pounds overweight. But he wasn’t a bad-looking guy, in a meaty kind of way. Patterson noticed that Sid had removed his trenchcoat and that it now lay across his lap. Sid’s right arm was across Judith’s shoulder, his hand rested on the back of her neck. Patterson saw the soft, lightly tanned skin above her collarbone dimple briefly as Sid’s fingers played a nervous tune on her flesh.
Patterson slowed to let a black El Camino ease into his lane. He shifted slightly in his seat, and his Van Halen T-shirt made a faint rippling noise as it came unglued from the vinyl. The interior of the cab was like a sauna. He turned off the heater and rolled the window down a few inches, took another quick peek in the mirror. Judith had a mop of thick blonde hair that was cut short in a way that emphasized the narrowness of her face, giving her a waifish look. Her eyes were cornflower blue. She had a wide, pouty mouth. She might be nineteen, but Patterson doubted if she was twenty.
Ahead of him, the Camino signalled a left turn and slowed for the oncoming traffic. The light turned yellow. The Camino accelerated down Comox past the hospital, leaving them at the intersection, caught by the red.
Patterson slowly became aware that Judith was watching him. Their eyes met in the mirror. Before he could look away, she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and gave him a small, secret smile.
Behind them, a car honked angrily. Patterson looked up, and saw that the light had turned to green. He hit the gas, accelerated through the intersection In the back seat, Judith laughed softly.
Five minutes later, the taxi pulled into the wide, semi-circular driveway in front of Sid’s apartment block The huge lobby, encased in towering sheets of plate glass which rose from ground level all the way to the thirty-foot high ceiling, was brightly illuminated by a massive chandelier. Light splashed through the immense windows, across the sidewalk and into the cab. Andy Patterson stopped half a car-length behind a bone-white Corvette convertible. The car was empty and its hazard lights were flashing.
Patterson turned off the meter and put the gearshift lever in park. Twisting in his seat, he caught a glimpse of a large brown nipple as Judith unhurriedly buttoned her blouse. Sid, his face empty and smirking, fumbled with his wallet. He pulled out a crisp new ten-dollar bill, crumpled it in his fist and tossed it negligently at Patterson.
“Keep the change, pal.”
Patterson looked down at the money lying on the seat beside him. He didn’t say anything. He reached for his pack of cigarettes, lit up.
On the far side of the street, fifty feet away, a rusty maroon-coloured Ford LTD pulled up to the curb. The driver rolled down his window. His blonde wig reflected light from the distant chandelier as he turned to look at the cab. Picking up the Winchester, he slid a cartridge into the breech and pushed home the bolt. A few drops of machine oil had leaked from his rifle to the upholstery of the seat. He rubbed the oil with the ball of his thumb, smearing it driving it deeply into the fabric.
Sid opened the rear door of the cab.
The sniper rested his forearm on the Ford’s door sill, peered into the telescopic sight.
Sid stepped out of the cab and into the crosshairs of the scope. He was fumbling with his trenchcoat, shaking out the folds so he could throw the coat over his shoulders to protect himself from the rain.
Judith, as she followed Sid out of the cab, trailed her hand through Patterson’s hair, across the nape of his neck. In the same moment, she gave him a look that made it clear she’d much rather be spending her time with him.
Patterson was amazed. He was short, pudgy, shaped like a pear. It was obvious that he was gay. Why would she be interested in him? Why would she even bother to pretend to be interested in him?
The rear door of the cab was wide open. Sid hadn’t bothered to shut it. Patterson watched as Judith leaned against the glass door of the lobby. He saw the wash of relief on Sid’s face as Sid found his keys. Through the windscreen, Patterson saw Sid push open the door, saw Sid and Judith hurry hand in hand into the brightly lit glass bowl of the lobby, across the polished marble floor towards the bank of elevators.
Patterson unfastened his seatbelt and reached behind him, straining as he groped for the handle of the open door. Grunting, he stretched an extra inch backwards. His fingertips touched cold metal.
The first bullet punched a neat hole in the side window and then disintegrated as it sheared through the vertical steel support post on the far side of the car. Fragments of metal ricocheted off the sidewalk.
The sniper fired again.
The window split into a thousand precariously balanced pieces and then collapsed. The air hummed and vibrated. The left side of Patterson’s face went numb. He brought his hand to his cheek. His fingers slid across warm, wet flesh. He realized that he had been shot, and reacted instinctively, without conscious thought.
His hands slapped wildly at the steering wheel and gearshift lever, his foot jabbed hard at the gas pedal. The taxi lurched forward, striking the Corvette at an angle and tearing away half the rear deck. Chunks of fibreglass and plastic rained down on the cab’s yellow hood. The Corvette’s surviving tail-light flashed at an accelerated rate.
Panicked, Patterson kept his foot on the gas pedal and never thought of putting the transmission in reverse. The taxi bulled the Corvette slowly forward, then slipped away and veered sharply towards the lobby. Patterson heard a shot. He felt the cab lurch as the left rear tyre blew out. A shower of bright orange sparks bounced across the sidewalk. A hubcap whirled straight up into the night, shrieking madly. Patterson fought the wheel as the taxi burst through the huge plate-glass windows in an explosion of glass, skidded sideways across the marble floor and shuddered to a stop directly beneath the enormous chandelier. His elbow hit the meter and knocked down the flag. The big red numbers blossomed on the display screen, began to turn over dime by dime.
There was a moment of silence, and then another thirty-foot panel of glass collapsed in a welter of shards and splinters that dropped hissing and spinning to shatter on the marble. Patterson lay across the seat, his right arm tucked awkwardly beneath him at an impossible angle.
The sniper, peering through the rain and into the haze of light, caught a flicker of movement inside the cab. A bloody hand rose slowly into view, clawed at the rearview mirror. The sniper fired, and the mirror vanished in a red and silver froth. He opened the door of the Ford and stepped into the street. A gust of wind tugged at the broad brim of his hat, ruffled the lace trim of the white dress.
Standing in the middle of the road, pelted by the rain and buffeted by the wind, he fired steadily into the body of the cab. Spent brass tinkled on the asphalt as he emptied one magazine after another. When he had fired a dozen rounds, he paused to scrutinize the taxi through the Lyman scope. The front door on the driver’s side was shot to pieces. The big, soft-nose bullets had fragmented on impact with the sheet metal and ripped through the interior of the cab with all the force of a shotgun blast.
Balancing on one foot, the sniper kicked out. His right shoe described a shallow arc and landed in the gutter on the far side of the street. He turned and climbed back into the Ford, slammed shut the door. He released the emergency brake, depressed the clutch pedal, put the car in gear and revved the eight-cylinder motor. The valves clattered noisily. The exhaust vented a cloud of greasy blue smoke. He eased out the clutch. As the Ford started down the street, the rain suddenly doubled in volume, cobbling the windscreen and lashing down at him through the open window.
The car slowly picked up speed. The sniper was just about to shift into second gear when something small and furry bolted into the glare of the headlights. He hit the brakes and then accelerated as the creature, a racoon the size of a large cat, stared at him with luminous green eyes from the safety of the boulevard.
From the moment the first shot was fired, Sid and Judith had stood transfixed against the far wall of the lobby, next to the bank of elevators. As the sniper kicked free of the high-heeled shoe and turned to get back into the Ford, Judith broke free of Sid’s grasp. He cried out as she ran lightly across the field of glass and outside, into the middle of the circular driveway.
The Ford, trailing a stratus of burnt oil, continued steadily down Jervis.
Judith, searching frantically through her purse, came at last upon her platinum Sheaffer, a fat booklet of personalized cheques. Rain plastered her golden hair to her scalp and trickled down into her eyes as she squinted into the night. The licence number was, she thought, GHN 121. She uncapped the pen. The Ford’s brake lights flared an angry red. For a terrifying fraction of a second, Judith thought the sniper had seen her in his rearview mirror. Then she saw that an animal had run in front of the car and that the driver had braked to avoid hitting it. Trembling, she scribbled the plate number down on the back of the chequebook.
“Judith!”
Turning, she saw Sid standing on the sidewalk where it was bisected by the curving driveway. He shouted her name again, and wildly waved his arms. She saw that the rain and fitful wind had played havoc with his artfully arranged hair. He was very thin on top, almost bald. He took an uncertain step towards her. Suddenly he was bathed in light. Judith heard a sound behind her, the roar of an engine. She spun on her heel, stumbled, and sat down in the middle of the road. The lights were aimed straight at her now, blinding her, pinning her to the asphalt. She stared, horrified, as the police car raced towards her, fishtailing crazily from side to side, dome and headlights flashing out of sync with the piercing scream of the siren.