Small Town Taxi (Honey Walker Adventures Book 1)

by Harriet Rogers

  “The fare, sweetie. It’s ten bucks.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She started digging in her bag. She came up with a few dollar bills and a lot of quarters.

  I sighed. “Keep the change. It’ll help weigh you down.” I got out of the car wondering if there was a “like” free zone somewhere close by that I could retreat to or, if I was serious about the Queen’s English, to which I could retreat. Before I could retreat to anywhere else, we all went about a third of the way up the bridge. Belle and I were walking faster than the girl who was slowed down by her load of bricks. We stopped to let her catch up.

  Belle leaned over the railing. “This is probably far enough. Should do the trick.”

  We were over the water now. I knew no one had ever died jumping off this bridge and it was not close to ten stories high. Our young passenger must not have had that piece of information.

  She caught up with us and stared over the railing.

  “What’s your name anyway? You know, for when the cops ask us if we knew you. That’s if they find your lily-white, crushed and broken, bloody, chewed-on-by-fishes, body. Be good to have a name. And any special reason for taking this swan dive, just in case the press wants a caption for that photo of your flat, crumpled, compressed body on the front page.” Belle put a friendly hand on the kid’s shoulder.

  “Umm, my name’s Galaxy.”

  “Galaxy?”

  “What?”

  “No, I mean, that’s your name?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “It’s a real interesting name.”

  “My mom’s, like, an astrologer.”

  “Your mom, huh. So, give me one of those bricks.” Belle held out her hand.

  “I guess two will be enough.” Galaxy reluctantly slipped a brick into Belle’s hand. “My mom told me I couldn’t go to the hospital to, like, visit my friend. She overdosed on heroin. She’s only, like, fifteen. She has some problems with drugs and all that shit, but she’s, like, really a good person.”

  “Your mom?”

  “My friend!” Galaxy rolled her eyes. “Mom said she was a bad influence and she didn’t want me around friends like that.”

  “Oh.” Belle hefted the brick in her hand. “So, let’s see how this goes down. Honey, you got a watch with a second hand?”

  I raised my hand. “One, two, three.”

  Belle dropped the brick. “Bombs away.”

  We all watched it careen toward the water. It dropped like a, well, a brick. Splat.

  Galaxy stood back from the railing.

  “How long?” Belle asked.

  “Less than 30 seconds.” A lot less, but I didn’t want her to think it would be over quickly so I didn’t say it only took about five seconds for the brick to go from being a weight in Belle’s hand to being a ripple in the water. Galaxy’s eyes had followed the brick from hand to water and were now glued to the ripple.

  “Wow, I could have an orgasm in 30 seconds.” Belle smiled.

  I looked at her.

  “Well, if I really concentrate,” she said.

  Galaxy shifted her gaze to her feet. “So how much will it cost to take me back to town?” she murmured.

  “Sweetie, why don’t we take you home?” I put my hand on her arm. “No charge.” Sucker, I thought to myself.

  We all trooped back off the bridge, loaded up and took her home. We watched the hugs and tears for a few seconds when her mom came to the door.

  “I’m so sorry I was harsh about your friends. Friends are important.”

  “I’m sorry I said you would never see me again.”

  Then Mom noticed us. “Who are you? And where did you find her?”

  “Cool Rides Taxi, ma’am.” I handed her a card.

  “Mom, I think I owe them some money.”

  “Oh, let me get my purse.” Mom dug around and handed me a 50-dollar bill. “Keep it. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  We left them at the kitchen table with soda and chips. I thought about mob hit men, drug runners, and all the horrible stuff Jon had to face in his job. Even if her friend had somehow landed in the hospital, this young girl lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a nice town. I thought about the kids from Holyoke and Springfield growing up with drive-by shootings, surrounded by drugs. Suicide seemed like an overreaction. But she was a teenager and that job description comes with a lot of drama.

  “Wow, that wiped me out. I need fuel.” Belle settled into the cab.

  I called Mona.

  “Cool Rides Cab, where are you and where do you need to be?” she sang into the phone. “Oh yeah, you guys. You can head home. Night shift is here.”

  We headed to Jon’s house. He greeted us at the door.

  “Been a full day on the crime-fighting front?” I asked.

  “For both of us, as I recall.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been busy saving lives,” Belle said. “And busting heads. I’m calling takeout.” Belle thumbed through a stack of menus by the phone.

  “Let’s see…we got Chinese, we got more Chinese. Ah, here we got Italian, and Indian, and Mexican, and pizza…and Chinese.

  “Lucille brought us cake. Should go well with Chinese.” Jon pointed at the counter. “And she left a package for you.” He handed me a manila envelope.

  I pulled scissors out of some deep recess in my shoulder bag and sliced the envelope open. Jon was standing close behind me, almost leaning against my back, looking over my shoulder as I stared at the multicolored, Day-Glo, extra-sensitive, extra-large condoms. The note said, “Hope you get to try these out. I’m still waiting to get lucky. Let me know if I should invest in a box for myself. Enjoy, Lucille.”

  I blushed and slapped the envelope closed.

  Jon’s fingers rested on my neck. They started a slow, sensual movement down my arms.

  I whipped around and took a step backward.

  He grinned. “Love Lucille, she’s always looking out for my best interests.”

  “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Absolutely.” Jon looked at the envelope. “And with you.”

  “You aren’t laughing with me. I’m not laughing. I’m not even smiling.”

  “I could change that. I could make you smile all night and half of tomorrow.”

  Self-confident bastard. But he was probably right. Of course, he would be smiling too.

  I was edging forward when the doorbell rang. Belle came out of the bedroom.

  “Give the man some money,” she said, snatching the bags of takeout and heading for the kitchen.

  An hour later we slowed to a nibble and the rest went into the fridge for breakfast. Cold Chinese for breaky, yumm!

  Belle had another choir practice. That meant a severe dress-down. Her boob-announcing spandex top became a plain white shirt. Her butt-enhancing pants changed into a long black skirt.

  Jon looked at her appraisingly. “Changing our wicked ways?”

  “Mine were never wicked. But I bet yours haven’t changed one bit. Don’t wait up, sweeties.” She sashayed out the door, closing it with an exaggerated softness.

  Jon started clearing the dishes. I put my plate in the dishwasher and turned for the next plate, brushing against Jon’s chest which was two inches from my own. I stood there, staring at his shirt and put a tentative hand on the first button. I slid my finger past the button and felt warm skin. He put the plate on the counter and I felt his hand come back to my waist.

  “Honey,” he said.

  “Mmm?”

  His hand spread across my back and his other hand moved behind my neck. I let my eyes wander up to his mouth and, finally, up until I was looking into those blue eyes. His thumb ran over my lower lip and I opened my mouth slightly. Feeling like a sixteen-year old on a first date, my expression frozen, I ran an experimental finger further up his open shirt.

  Suddenly we were kissing and stumbling toward his bedroom. We were through the door and on the bed. His hand was under my shirt and heading upward when I heard a distant ringin
g.

  Jon yanked the offending phone off his belt and tossed it over his shoulder. It hit the wall with a thud, dropped to the floor and stopped ringing. His lips were working their way down my neck and his hand was working its way up my body when the landline started ringing. His hand slowed and his mouth stopped.

  “Shit.” He rolled away. “I have to get that. Probably work.”

  Telephonus interruptus.

  He seized the phone. “What?” he snapped. “And this better be good.” He listened for a few seconds. “You have got to be kidding. And you need me because?” He listened for a few more seconds. “Rank?” he yelled into the phone. “Bust me to foot patrol for the night, for Christ’s sake. Yeah, okay.”

  Jon flopped back onto the bed. “I have to go in. They’re about to do a takedown and they need my Lieutenant-hood.”

  “What happened?”

  “Two idiots tried to pull the front off an ATM.”

  “And they didn’t catch them?”

  “They took off after the ATM pulled the bumper off the truck. They left the bumper attached to the ATM.”

  I grinned. “With the license plate.”

  “Yep. DMV says they live off King Street. I’ll be back. Don’t move.”

  My body was pulsing like a bass drum and he thought I would stay there for the hours it took them to grab the bad guys, fill out the paperwork and finish the questioning? I needed a cold shower or a long walk. I thought about walking to Belle’s choir practice. But that was probably a no-no in Jon’s book. Having the Scarpelli gang interested in my whereabouts was creepy. I took the shower.

  Jon wasn’t home when I fell asleep and I didn’t find him in my bed in the morning so either he had gone into work early or not come home at all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I stopped at the donut drive-through before work so I arrived with jelly doughnuts for Mona, hoping they would get me some airport fares.

  As I walked in, Mona snatched the box and replaced it with a fare slip.

  “Mr. Pettibone needs a ride to the bank out on King Street near the construction site.” An aging mini-mall was being rebuilt. The only upright structure was a branch of the local bank. Mr. Pettibone lived on Fruit Street at the edge of the commercial district. The bank he wanted a ride to was a good three miles from his house. I waited at the door while he tucked a blanket around his elderly wife.

  “I’ll be back real soon. I’ll make it better, I promise.” He kissed her cheek and followed me out. His hands were shaking as he pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over wispy white hair. The hand warmer pocket on the front bulged, giving him a potbelly. His eyes were clouded with age. His shirttail hung out and one shoe was untied.

  “You want me to take you up to the Main Street branch? I can wait while you go in. Be quicker than going all the way to King.”

  “I got a friend out at the King Street branch,” he mumbled, keeping his head down. “I gotta get some money to buy some medicine.”

  I eased up the hill through downtown. Traffic was heavy, the sidewalk teemed with pedestrians, and jaywalkers were rampant, each doing a self-righteous dance between the cars trying to negotiate downtown. Mr. Pettibone twitched in his seat.

  “Can’t you take a shortcut? If I were driving, I’d know a shortcut. And I’d be going faster. And I’d use the horn a lot. Maybe I should be a taxi driver.”

  And, thank God, you’re not, I thought. I liked Mr. P, but he seemed really stressed today.

  “I need to do the bank first, and then I got to go to the drugstore and get some medicine for my wife. I got the prescription right here.” He pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of his sweatshirt.

  I stopped at a traffic light and looked at Mr. P. There was an odd-looking tuft of blond hair sticking out of his pocket. It was stiff and I couldn’t figure out what he had stuffed in there.

  “Maybe you could let me off at the bank and wait around the corner.” His hands were shaky and in constant motion.

  That sounded ominous. He stuffed the prescription back into the sweatshirt hand-warming pocket and a gun bounced out the other end onto the floor. He moved his foot over on top of it. And squashed it flat.

  “Mr. P, what is going on?” I pulled around the corner, out of traffic and stopped.

  “I told you, I gotta get some money for my wife’s medicine.”

  “Do you have an account at the bank?”

  He leaned over and picked up the plastic gun. He tried to bend it back into shape. “Not really,” he said. “But this medicine costs more than our rent. We never needed this stuff before.”

  “Don’t you think someone at the bank might recognize you?”

  “I got this.” He pulled out a rubber Joan Rivers mask.

  “Mr. Pettibone, you have trouble remembering to tie your shoes. You really think you can rob a bank with a flat plastic gun?”

  “They’ll never think an old geezer like me would do it. Can you wait around the corner while I do the job?”

  “You don’t have insurance, do you?”

  “I got some life insurance. Took it out so my missus wouldn’t hafta pay for my bein’ put in the ground. But it’s not enough to pay for the meds even if I somehow managed to die.”

  “Health insurance, Mr. P. Who pays for your doctor’s visits?”

  “Never went to the doctor before. The Missus had to go up to the hospital. They were real nice. Fixed her up with some medicine and told me to go get more. I tried to pay them, but they just kept handing me papers. Finally I gave up and left.”

  Bank robbery wouldn’t exactly be a stable profession, but maybe better than Social Security or Medicare and a lot less paperwork. And then I thought about the real guns the police would use. Mr. Pettibone needed to dump the gun before he got shot, and he needed to get health insurance in case he got shot. I pulled into traffic and hung a left.

  “Hey, this ain’t the way to the bank.”

  “I’m taking you to get free medicine.” I didn’t know how to make the intricacies of the modern medical system clear to Mr. Pettibone, but I did know where to get him freebies. And I knew the people at the drop-in center/homeless shelter would get his paperwork done.

  I parked in front of the ancient but beautifully rehabbed building that housed the emergency shelter in Northampton and, during off hours, the drop-in center. I pulled Mr. P out of the cab, shoving the plastic gun under the seat. I could flatten it more when I got back to Cool Rides. Then I could safely put it in the dumpster. Maybe I would cut it in half, just to be sure. We shuffled into the drop-in office.

  “Meds,” I said to the woman sitting next to the desk. “He has the script. He needs a note for the pharmacy.”

  She pulled out forms and started filling them in. She turned to me. “You need transport money?”

  “Can you pay me, Mr. P?”

  He looked at his untied shoes. The woman made out a check to Cool Rides. She turned to Mr. P.

  “Take this to the downtown pharmacy. They’ll charge it to us. This is a one-month supply. Come back here in a week and I’ll have your medical card ready. Sign here.” She pushed the paper over for his signature and handed me the check. It included a tip. God, I love this town.

  After the pharmacy stop, I took Mr. P home. By the end of the week, he would know more about the services available to people in need than the governor, the mayor and any of the politicians who had passed legislation creating the services combined. The volunteers at the drop-in center knew the ropes. Northampton always took care of its people in need.

  A vulnerable population attracted predators. The Scarpelli family provided the predators. How that predation was kept under control was the problem Jon and the rest of the Northampton police had to deal with daily.

  Mr. P and his wife had survived on their own for a lifetime. They hadn’t needed medical assistance or even housing assistance before. And that made me think about my trashed apartment and Susan Scarpelli and that made me remember she was still on the loos
e. I wondered if she was the one who had trashed my place. Old man Scarpelli was after the same disc. He might have searched but I might not even have known he’d been there.

  Whoever did it had probably worn gloves and I lived in the Grand Central Station of fingerprints anyway. Belle’s and my fingerprints would be the first ones to pop out of the system. Mine because Jon had busted me long ago and far away. Belle claimed she had never been busted. Did they print witnesses? Did I believe her?

  I swung back by Cool Rides to see what Mona might have for me. Before I got out of the car, she had a fare slip in my hand.

  I spent the day running kids to doctors’ appointments and soccer practice, people loaded with electronics and oversize televisions from Wal-Mart to subsidized housing, mumbling dental patients, temporarily blind eye patients, and impatient college students who had forgotten the buses don’t always run on time. Mona called on my way back from a junk food run for a local stoner.

  “Annie needs to go to the liquor store. You’re up.” That was fine. I could get some beer to stock my apartment fridge while Annie got her sherry. I might not move back right away but I wanted to be prepared to receive guests on the off chance.

  I picked Annie up at the retirement home. Her cocktail hour was notorious. But she never drank before five o’clock and never on Monday, just to make sure she could go a whole day without. Old-lady sherry was strong stuff.

  “What time is it now?” said Annie as she got in the cab. “What day is it today? Is it five o’clock yet?”

  “It’s almost four o’clock and it’s Tuesday. We’ll have you home in time for cocktails.” I parked in front of the liquor store and trailed in behind her. I headed to the beer aisle. She grabbed an extra-large shopping cart and forged her way to the sherry.

  The beer aisle in a big liquor store overwhelmed me with the wonderful and exotic. I ended up with Budweiser. It was mostly for guests anyway. If they wanted exotic, they could BYOB.

  I was staring at beer when I heard Annie’s shrill and angry voice. Her eyesight was terrible and her hearing was worse. Sometimes she thought the clerk cheated on the change.

  “And don’t you ever butt ahead of me in line again, young man.”