Hot Town

July 15th, 2010 - Tyler - permalink

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

Every time I hear that song on the radio I think of this scene, the opening minute of Die Hard With a Vengeance. One of the greatest sequels ever made, and a memorable introduction. They really capture the feeling of a city on the brink, when the pavement’s so hot you’re sure the whole place is ready to explode. Then it does. I just watched it the other night streaming on Netflix. Good times.

Yesterday was the hottest day of the summer here in Peoria. Thankfully I spent the daylight hours in bed and went into work just before midnight. The city had cooled, a light breeze, no need for air-conditioning…not that I’d ever use it.

After picking up all the flag trips Farmington Road had to offer me on a fairly busy Wednesday night, I ventured a few miles North to Walgreens on War Memorial Drive to find some cigarettes.

Buying cigarettes for most smokers is relatively easy, find a 24 hour gas station and pop in. I am not most smokers. There was a time when I smoked Camel Turkish Royals, before whatever disgusting chemical they use to “fireproof” cigarettes was invented. Now, that’s all I taste.

American Spirits to the rescue. No additives, no chemical taste, just glorious tobacco. They are on the expensive side, but each cigarette is so dense you can’t even pack them and the smoke lasts twice as long as any Marlboro, Camel, or Newport.

Once you’ve experienced the genius of American Spirits, there’s just no going back to the polluted smoke of the white-man.

The only problem is finding a store that carries them. Casey’s does, Thornton’s, but any other place is doubtful and I was too far away from the sure things. Then I remembered glimpsing a stocked shelf full of American Spirits at Walgreens one time and decided it was worth a shot. It paid off, they didn’t have my blues (full flavor), but the yellows (light) were a better substitute than anything else I’d find.

That left me parked in zone 10 after most of the bars outside of downtown had closed. Catching a trip out there would be a long shot unless a prescription run came through…but that seemed unlikely since I’d just gotten one the night before from that Walgreens going to Rosewood Nursing Home in East Peoria.

Despite this, I waited patiently and decided to work on my novel a bit. Half a page in the trip phone chirped. Thank god for Spidey-Sense.

It was Raphael, the owner of the Dormitory on Farmington Road. He had stuck around to close his place and was taking the cab home a little later than usual.

I enjoyed his trip whenever I got it. He preferred rock music, spoke of the struggles of the Cubs, or made small talk about how business had gone that night. Always a very nice guy who tipped consistently.

The route was simple, I knew the routine and got him to his house quickly.

When I cleared the trip phone rang out immediately…a double edged sword. I liked to keep running, but Zone 9, the East Bluff/North End could be problematic.

I pressed “Accept,” and the screen presented an address most of the drivers have memorized: 700 N Adams…The Taft Homes. Brilliant.

The Taft isn’t necessarily a bad trip. Many people who live there call cabs, I’ve taken a lot of them myself, and none of them have given me any problems. Most are just as friendly as anyone else I pick up. The customer is not who I’m worried about, the majority of the time. The Taft is gang territory, there’s always a risk, shit happens…but it could be worse.

My customer was going to a residential address on the South End a couple blocks off Western, a decent trip, if it turned out. When I was just short of the Taft I called the number provided. A young man answered and said he would meet me out front on Adams.

A dark figure in an over-sized red t-shirt started calling to me from one of the buildings when I was still a hundred yards from where I expected to see my customer. I braked, unsure, and the red tee told me to hold on as he disappeared behind a building. My phone rang and I recognized the number I’d just called.

“Hey, don’t you see me? I’m up here, walking to you,” he said. I looked ahead and saw the guy in a white tee taking long steps toward my cab.
“Oh, yeah, sorry, somebody else was trying to flag me down. I didn’t know if it was you.”

I rolled forward to my customer despite the protests of the red tee. He got in and I pulled off a safe distance before recording all the pertinent information.

“Yeah, I’m glad you called me back, man. I don’t know what that other guy was on…”
“Yeah, I don’t know what he was on either if he didn’t call for a cab.”
“I don’t think he did.”
“But I don’t think ya’ll have to worry about getting robbed or anything at that Taft.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’ve lived there my whole life and I never heard about that shit. Maybe when I was a lot younger, but a lot of people call cabs out of there and they don’t want to do shit…”
“It doesn’t make much sense to me, robbing a cab…”
“Because you ain’t gonna get shit,” he confirmed.
“Exactly. You could get more ripping off a McDonald’s register.”
“Yeah, and see most of them know that. That’s why they ain’t gonna do shit. They know it. Unless you get somebody real stupid, some drug addict or somethin.”
“Hell yeah. I’d expect it more at the Harrison, or somewhere down there.”
“Yeah, probably.”

He was a good guy, I liked him right away. It never took me long to realize who I needed to worry about, and who I didn’t. The trip was mostly quiet the rest of the way, I dropped him off and he left me a very generous tip.

“You gonna be around later? I’ll be callin back in about half hour, forty-five minutes.”
“Yeah, I’ll be out all night.”
“Aight, I got your cell phone number, is it cool if I call you direct?”
“Sure.”

When I cruised downtown the stand in front of the Hotel Pere Marquette was full of cabs. Around the block at the Holiday Inn City Center, I went inside to use the restroom and spoke to the security guard sitting on the front steps. He was a nice man with keen eyes and a lot of respect. We usually made small talk.

The other side of Main Street, directly in front of the bars, had a few open parking spots when I made my way back around. I pulled in there and took in the scene of loitering bar customers, some smoking cigarettes, some just talking.

There was a disturbance in progress that caught my eye about ten feet in front of me. A young woman with wavy hair was irate with a broad shouldered man. There was a handful of people between them, trying to talk some sense into the situation. The woman required more restraint, as she yelled, and attempted to aggressively wiggle free of her friends.

The tough guy was pulling at his shirt like it was about to come off…he was going to reveal the guns. They were throwing all the typical signals, the body language of two people about to unleash hell on each other.

If she was smart, she was faking it. A sensible man would not want to fight that guy…the woman, roughly 1/3 his size, would not stand a chance.

I saw it all the time, people going through the motions, trash talking, neither wanting to back down, but most of the time, neither really wanted to fight and face the consequences either.

It appeared that would be the case. The crowd had them pretty well broken up when I stepped out of the cab and lit a cigarette. She was being forced East toward Madison, he was headed West toward Monroe. There were twenty-five yards between them and the tension eased a little.

Then she sprung, like a running back, breaking to the outside, she made the edge and there was no one left to beat. She closed quickly on her target, he was ready for her.

She didn’t break stride as she reached him. He swung around with a perfectly timed hay-maker right hook that caught her on the bridge of the nose. POW. The ol’ brick wall. She went from sprinting to on her back in the sidewalk in half a second. Everyone on the street said “Oh!” in unison.

They were all shocked…except me. I saw it coming the second she cleared that edge and all I could do was stand there, smoking a cigarette with an unimpressed, borderline disgusted look on my face that should have been interpreted as “What the fuck was she thinking?”

It was pandemonium for the next twenty-five seconds. Their fight continued on the ground, the frenzy at the scent of blood in the water brought on a couple skirmishes around the fringes. You’d see a reluctant leg kick at the guy on the ground with the girl, others pushing and shoving and yelling, then the first squad car pulled up.

The large officer with the shaved head had his nightstick drawn as he approached the scene deliberately. I was surprised and impressed with how calmly he walked up to the fight, he wanted to see what was happening exactly before he started peeling it apart.

The tough guy shot up when he realized the police were starting to arrive. I expected to see him maced, tasered, and in hand-cuffs immediately, but it wasn’t totally clear to the officer what’d just happened…could’ve looked like two people rolling around on the ground.

The puncher darted across the street toward the alley next to Big Al’s. With all the fingers pointing his way, and the obvious guilt in fleeing, the officer knew who to chase. Over his shoulder, the guy yelled back, “I didn’t do shit!”

He disappeared down the alley with the officer in pursuit on foot and a squad car not far behind. Then another cruiser raced down Monroe to cut off his path and I was confident he’d be in custody very quickly. Even Steve, the Hoops bartender with the legendary mullet, made a track-star break toward Madison to make sure he didn’t get away.

The woman stumbled down the street, helped by a couple bystanders, there was blood gushing from her nose and she looked dazed to say the least.

You could feel the outpouring of sympathy for her there, leaning against a wall in front of the bars, as someone gave her a bag of ice, as they comforted her, this poor, helpless, assaulted soul, this battered woman…this victim.

I couldn’t help but think about how she had to sprint twenty-five yards around a mob of people to claim that title.

Oh well.

The street was filling with flashing lights and badges. It was time to move my cab, or risk getting pinned down there until they were finished taking statements. My customer going to the Taft would be calling back soon, and I had something to talk about.