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!

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.”

Heller then got under the wheel. He did all those things Mortie had done, with a few embellishments.

With bent fenders, raw voices and screams of anguish and terror strewn behind them, Mortie now guided Heller to a cabby bar on Eighth Avenue. It was a time of traffic lull and one had better have a sandwich.

Heller tried to order a beer and got scolded both by Mortie and the proprietor: “Trying to make the place lose its license?” So Heller had milk with his steak instead. “You got to have respect for the law, kid,” Mortie told him. “Learn to grow up to be a good, peaceful, orderly, law-abiding citizen. That’s the only way to get ahead.

“Got to get going!” said Mortie. “Time for theater traffic around Times Square.”

En route, Mortie told him, “Now you got to learn how to handle police. When a cop stops you for speeding, you stop, see. You wait until he comes up and then you whisper, ‘Run for your life. This fare is holding a gun on me.’ And the cop will beat it every time!”

Heller thanked him.

“You got to know these things, kid.” But something else had attracted Mortie’s attention. “You got any enemies, kid? Your parents looking for you or something?”

“Why?”

“Well, it’d have to be you. I never made an enemy in my life. A cab started up behind us when we left the eatery and it’s still back there.”

Mortie did a right-angle turn, went down an alley, went wrong way on a one-way street. Looked back. “Don’t see him now. I think we shook him. So we can get busy.”

They were into the theater district. It was well before the evening start of the shows but the traffic was THICK!

“Now, you see that line of cars, kid? Watch!”

Mortie came up alongside of a cab in the line. He stopped. He screamed an insult at the driver. Mortie made a motion to get out of his cab. The other driver, in a rage, leaped out of his. Mortie didn’t leave his cab. The line moved ahead. Mortie slid the cab into it, taking the place of the immobilized cab. “See, kid? Art!”

Mortie got to an intersection near a big hotel. There were several cabs and few customers. Mortie sailed in,

skidding to block the exit of the driveway, and killed his engine. Other cabbies screamed at him. He screamed back, “I’m stalled!” As he was now first in line, an elderly, well-dressed man and woman tried to get into Mortie’s cab. “Sorry,” said Mortie, “I’m going to the barn.” He drove off. “See, kid, I could have had my pick of fares. You got to know what you’re doing and think, think, think all the time.”

He raced down a line of traffic. A car looked like it was going to turn out and block him. He sideswiped it with a scream of metal. The car pulled hastily back. “Don’t try it with limousines, kid. They’re really yellow. Scared for their paint. You don’t have to sideswipe. You just gesture, like this.” He veered toward a limousine and it promptly climbed the curb.

The bright lights of theater marquees, the flashing advertising signs, the throngs and ticket lines. A lively, blazing night.