Heller was shortly involved in trying to purchase something that fit. It was off-season — too late for summer clothes to be in demand, too soon for winter clothes — and because business was bad, the shop was dedicated to making it worse.
He found a dark blue suit of summer weight. He couldn’t find a normal shirt — they all had collars of twenty-five or so inches and girths of sixty. Finally he located three drip-dry cotton ones. They had Eton collars! These are the kind the undergraduates wear in England!
The real tailor that did adjustments was on vacation and the helper he had left behind botched the suit alteration. He adjusted the coat sleeves and pants cuffs too short again!
But Heller dressed anyway. He was now in dark blue with an Eton collar and he looked younger than ever!
He presented the store with the red-checked jacket and the blue-striped pants. And because those clothes were bugged, I bitterly surmised that Raht and Terb, who were depending on those bugs, would now stake out the tall man’s shop!
He couldn’t find any shoes he liked so he kept the baseball spikes on, popped his red baseball cap on the back of his head and was shortly engaged again in what seemed his favorite pastime: examining fenders of parked cars.
In peripheral vision, I saw the figure again. He was being tailed!
But Heller? Did he take evasive tactics? Run through a large store with two entrances? Dash into a crowd? Not Heller! He didn’t even inspect the street behind him! Amateur!
He knelt down by the fender of a very modern car and bent it with his fingers — an easy thing for anybody to do. Then he looked around quickly to see if the unintentional act of vandalism had been noticed. Apparently to make sure he covered it up, he stood, turned, folded his arms and sort of lounged back against the fender. It really buckled!
He walked off. And then, abruptly, began the craziest series of actions I had yet seen him engage upon.
He caught a cab. Breathlessly, he said to the driver, “Quick! Take me to the bus terminal! Five-dollar tip!”
They went westward. No especially hurried ride. Heller got out at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and paid the driver.
Immediately, he got another cab. He leaped in and said urgently, “Quick! Take me to the Manhattan Air Terminal! I’m late! Five-dollar tip!”
Aha! I thought I understood at last! He had noticed the tail and was shaking it!
Cross-town rides are slow and it was very uneventful.
At the Manhattan Air Terminal, he paid the driver and got out.
Then Heller walked along a line of cabs, looking at their fenders. He found one with some bashes. It was a Really Red Cab Company hack.
Heller leaped in. “Quick! I have to be at Broadway and 52nd Street in two minutes and nineteen seconds. There’s a five-dollar tip!”
Disregarding other drivers’ protests that it was not his turn to go, the cabby zipped out of line, screamed into high gear. He cut a corner, bashed a car out of his way, ran a red light, sent a works-in-progress sign skyrocketing and stopped at Broadway and 52nd Street. Heller looked at his watch. It was two minutes!
Heller paid him the fare and the five-dollar tip.
AND THEN HELLER JUST SAT THERE IN THE CAB!
The driver, expecting Heller to rush out, looked at him in amazement.
“How would you like to teach me to drive in New York?” said Heller.
Oh, my Gods! Heller was not shaking a tail. He was trying to find a reckless cab driver! Heller was a hopeless idiot!
“I ain’t got the time, buddy,” said the driver.
“For a hundred bucks would you have the time?”
Silence.
“For two hundred bucks would you have the time?”
Silence.
Heller opened the cab door to get out.
The driver said, “I’m almost off shift! I’ll race up to the barn, turn in and come back. You wait here. No. You come with me. I’ll turn this wreck in and get a decent hack.”
Promptly, driving rapidly, the cabby started for the Really Red Cab barn. “What’s your name?” he shot back through the open glass partition.
“Clyde Barrow,” said Heller.
I snorted. That was a famous gangster! Nothing was sacred to Heller!
“I see on the card here,” said Heller, “that you’re called Mortie Massacurovitch. Been driving cabs long?”
“Me?” said the cabby, glancing back at Heller without regard to a near collision. He was a very tough-looking oldster. “My old man was a hacker in this town and I learned how from him. In the last war, on the strength of it, they made me a tank driver.”
“Get any medals?” said Heller.
“No. They sent me home — said I was too brutal to the enemy!”
Heller waited outside while the hacker turned his cab and receipts in. And suddenly it dawned on me what he was up to. He had believed that tale about it being too hard to drive in New York! He was going to bring the Cadillac into town!
Oh! No, no, no! There was no way to warn this naive simpleton! One of the things Bury would surely have done was to have that Cadillac rigged to explode! Bury had not wanted it to be near the planned murder of the bogus Rockecenter, Junior. But aside from that, it was strictly textbook that he would have it set to explode, particularly now that he had missed. Bury was the sort of man who did multiple planning and handled eventualities.
So I sat there helplessly while Heller, in a forthright fashion, industriously planned his own suicide!
Chapter 4
Shortly, Mortie Massacurovitch came out of the huge garage they called a barn. He beckoned and Heller went inside.
Way back in the corner, covered with dust, sat the remains of a cab. Most of the paint was off by reason of dents and scrapes. It still had its meter and its top taxi lights but it was a long way from a modern cab. It was sort of square, with no smooth gentle curves.
“Here,” said Mortie, “is a real cab! It has real steel fenders, quarter of an inch thick. It has real bumpers with side bars and hooks. It has real bulletproof, nonshatter glass.” He looked at it proudly. “They really used to build them! Not plaster and paper like today.”
A passenger could ride with the driver in this one and Mortie wiped off the seat and got Heller in. Then the cabby got in. “Gives you the edge,” he said. “My favorite cab!”
He got its oil and gas checked and off they went, back to town. And, in truth, there was nothing wrong with its motor. It seemed to have more acceleration than modern cabs in that it got away from lights way ahead of everybody. “Geared down for fast darts,” said Mortie.
Heller learned how to handle the gear shift and clutch on a quiet street and Mortie, satisfied now on that score, took over. “Now, let’s see, where is the traffic thickest this time of day?” He looked at his watch. “Ah, yeah. Grand Central Station.” And off they roared.
It was creeping up to afternoon going-home time when they neared the area. The traffic was THICK! And fast!
“Now,” said Mortie, “this is going to require your close attention because it is a very high art. People are basically yellow. They always give up before you do. So that leaves you a very wide scope.”
Chattering along, naming each maneuver as he went, Mortie Massacurovitch performed.
It was horrifying!
They dashed between two cars to make the cars split each way! They squealed brakes to startle people “because honking was frowned upon.” They swerved to make a car dodge away from its intended parking place and then stole it. They dove in ahead of another hailed cab and when the passenger tried to get in, told him the cab was engaged. They bashed backwards to widen a place to park. They bashed forward to get a place to park. They did a skid “to alarm a motorist, who then stamps on his brakes and you grab his place in line.” They followed an ambulance to get somewhere quick. They followed a fire engine to really run the meter up fast, “but setting a fire ahead to get the engines to run is frowned on.”