Chapter Seven
The Metropolitan Garage was on Sixty-first Street, a half-block from the West Side Highway. It was the largest taxi garage in Manhattan, with a fleet of three hundred cabs.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Kowalchuk approached the garage, wearing his blue bomber jacket and gray peaked cap. He had a five-day growth of beard which effectively obscured his features. He’d been spending his nights at the Osborne Hotel in the Bowery area, and his days at various movie theaters. Now he was running low on cash and had to return to work.
The garage was two stories high and made of red bricks. Adjacent was a parking lot half full of yellow cabs. It was in a neighborhood of factories and loft buildings.
The front proscenium door of the garage was open now that it was spring, and Kowalchuk looked to make sure a cab wasn’t coming out, then slipped inside the greasy dimness of the huge downstairs room. In its center were gas pumps manned by inside workers in their filthy one-piece suits. A line of cabs returning from the day shift entered the rear of the garage and came to a stop beside the pumps. The day drivers got out and were replaced by night drivers, while inside workers filled gas tanks and checked oil. The inside workers banged on the trunks when they finished and the drivers sped their cabs out the proscenium door into the city.
Kowalchuk passed a line of cabs mangled and battered in traffic accidents, and headed for a door marked with a sign that said Ride Yellow Ride Safe, a slogan the taxi industry had employed several years back to counter the growing threat of gypsy cabs. He pushed open the door and entered the shape-up room, filled with tobacco smoke and cabbies standing elbow to elbow arguing with each other while waiting to be assigned cabs.
Hogan, the dispatcher, sat behind the metal grating of a window, a burly, bald man who seldom smiled. Kowalchuk took out his hack license and passed it under the grating.
Hogan looked at him. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Sick.”
“You haven’t been here for almost a month.”
“It’s less than three weeks.”
“We’ve been firing guys like you who don’t come in regular. If you wanna work here, you gotta come in more regular.”
“C’mon, most of the guys here don’t come in regular.”
“That’s gonna end. We’re runnin’ a fuckin’ taxi garage here, not a funny farm.”
Kowalchuk decided to keep his mouth shut. He looked at his dirty fingernails while waiting for Hogan to cut out the bullshit.
Hogan put Kowalchuk’s hack license at the bottom of the pile and went back to his Playboy. Kowalchuk sidestepped through the crowds of yakking cabbies to a spot in the corner near the toilet, took out a cigarette, and lit it. Puffing the cigarette, he looked over the other cabdrivers. He wondered what they’d think if they knew he was the New York Slasher.
Chapter Eight
Kowalchuk was cruising in his cab at Kennedy Airport although cabdrivers were supposed to wait in special lots and approach the platforms in orderly lines. He didn’t like to do that, preferring to cruise the fronts of terminals illegally. He’d never been caught yet. You had to know which terminals were safe.
He was approaching one of the safe ones now, the terminal for Air Canada, Delta, and United. It was a big, white modern building and beside it was a lot filled with yellow cabs that trailed to the side of the building, where a special dispatcher from the taxi union kept everything moving in orderly fashion. It was six o’clock in the afternoon.
Kowalchuk steered to the lower road where the buses came. He drove slowly and saw the anxious faces of people standing beside their luggage waiting for the buses. Most of them were out-of-towners bewildered about being in the city. They were the easiest kinds to rip off.
Sure enough, two women raised their hands. Kowalchuk veered toward them and braked. They were business women in their forties and one knocked on his side window, which he rolled down.
“How much to go to the Hilton?” she asked.
“For just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“Fifteen bucks apiece.”
She looked at her companion. “Why don’t we take it?”
“The bus is so much cheaper.”
“I’m tired of waiting for the damn bus. We can charge it to the company.”
The other woman shrugged. “ If you say so.”
The first one looked at Kowalchuk. “Would you wait a minute while we get our luggage?”
“Sure.”
They scurried back to the sidewalk, and he drove closer to the curb, noticing that the people waiting for buses were looking at him. He checked his rearview window and could see no cops. The women and a man, all with suitcases, came toward him. He got out of the cab and unlocked the trunk.
“Can he come too?” one of the women asked.
“Fifteen more bucks,” Kowalchuk replied.
“Okay,” said the guy, a sissy in a suit.
The three of them got into the back seat. Kowalchuk slammed shut the trunk and slid behind the wheel. He shifted into gear and stepped on the gas. The cab accelerated away from the curb. He turned on the meter so he wouldn’t get a ticket on the Kennedy road complex, intending to turn it off when he hit the Van Wyck Expressway.
His passengers said nothing about the meter. If he used it like he was supposed to, the trip would cost a total of sixteen dollars, and he’d have to give half to the Metropolitan Garage. This way he’d take in forty-five dollars and only give eight to the garage.
He smiled as he sped over the cloverleaf road. At this rate he’d have a few hundred dollars by Saturday, and then he could become the Slasher again.
Chapter Nine
It was ten o’clock on Saturday night. Kowalchuk was back on Times Square for the first time since he’d killed the whore in the Polka Dot Lounge. His beard covered his features, he wore his visored cap low over his eyes, and had on the blue bomber jacket. Walking past the peep shows and porno movies on Forty-second Street, he could smell lewdness in the air. His hands were in his pockets and his right hand fingered his switchblade.
He drifted into one of the shiny new peep show establishments, gave two dollars to the guy behind the counter, and got some quarters. Clinking the coins around in his big paw, he walked past the peep show booths, looking at the pictures in front for something interesting.
He stopped cold before one that had a photo of Barbra Streisand outside. The caption underneath said the famous star had made a fuck film when she was starting out in show business, and it could be seen for only a quarter. Kowalchuk turned up a corner of his mouth. He didn’t think it could really be Barbra Streisand in the movie, but for a quarter he could find out for sure. It would be okay if he could just see someone who looked like Barbra Streisand getting a stiff cock shoved up her ass.
He went into the booth, closed the door behind him, dropped a quarter in the slot, and pressed the button for the Barbra Streisand film. He noticed there was a little puddle of something on the floor. Somebody must have shot a load down there. The screen lit up and showed a close-up of a man with a mustache going down on a woman. The woman scissored her legs and swayed her fanny while the guy slurped away, his eyes closed in ecstasy. The guy looked like a real degenerate, and was that supposed to be Barbra Streisand? Maybe they’d show her face after a while. Kowalchuk watched impatiently, and the screen went black. He dropped in another quarter. The guy still was going down on the woman and Kowalchuk thought the guy’s tongue must be made of steel. The camera pulled back. The guy rolled over and the girl got on her knees over him. She definitely wasn’t Barbra Streisand although she resembled her a little. Kowalchuk had been ripped off again.