Free Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark Page B

knew, but he'd stopped for someone.
    The kids weren't the only ones having trouble getting a cab. Just south of Irving Park, a husky black guy in jeans and a nylon windbreaker was hurrying south alongside the parked cars. He stuck out his arm but barely slowed down. One look was all I needed. This was a man who worked for a living. And he was going where he was going whether I took him there or not.
    "I'm just going down to Belmont," he said. "Man, I didn't think anybody was ever gonna stop."
    It was a familiar story. Every time a driver got killed certain people found it nearly impossible to get a cab.
    "Two-twenty," I said when we got there.
    He handed me a five. "That's yours," he said.
    On Clark Street, a well-dressed black woman waved, then approached the cab. "Are you for hire?" she asked.
    "Come on," I said, and reached back and opened the door.
    "What is wrong with you cabdrivers?"
    "Huh?"
    "Six cabs just passed me by."
    "Lady," I started.
    "Do I look like a criminal?"
    "Lady," I tried again.
    "Now you answer my question. Do I look like a criminal?"
    "Lady, if you looked like a criminal I wouldn't have picked you up. Now would you mind telling me where you're going?"
    "I'm going to the I.C. Station," she said. "I live in the suburbs. I am not a criminal. I have never been a criminal. I do not associate with criminals. I have a good job. I pay my taxes. I go to church. But you cabdrivers, all you can see is the color of my skin."
    "Lady, why you giving me a hard time?" I asked. "I'm the guy who stopped."
    "Six cabs," she went on and on. "And I have each and every number and tomorrow morning I am reporting each and every cab to the Department of Consumer Services. What I don't understand, what I cannot fathom at all, is that two of the drivers were black themselves. Now would you please tell me why a driver would pass up someone of his own race?"
    "Lady, black drivers get killed just as often as white drivers."
    "But they can't seriously think I would harm them?"
    "No," I agreed. "They probably figured you were going to some crummy neighborhood where they didn't want to be."
    "And why did you stop?"
    "I stop for just about everybody," I told her the truth.
    "Well, thank you so very much," she said, and that put an end to that conversation.
    Four-sixty on the meter. I got five.
    The door never closed. A businesswoman slid into the back seat. "North and Sedgwick," she said.
    I continued west on Randolph, through the Loop, then turned north on Franklin. "Hey, didn't I have you last night?" the woman asked.
    I glanced back but she didn't look familiar. "I don't think so," I said.
    "Sure, I did," she said, and she leaned over the front seat to look at my chauffeur's license, which was in a plastic holder for all the whole world to see. "I remember your name. Edwin Miles. I remember thinking that was a really appropriate name for a cabdriver."
    "Eddie," I said.
    "You were telling us how Hudson Street was going to get better, remember? That's where I'm really going, Hudson south of North Avenue."
    I turned around. "You're the girl without the bed."
    "That's me." She smiled but she didn't look anything like the night before. She was wearing thick-rimmed glasses. Her blond hair was pulled tight and tied in back. She looked like a librarian in a very serious library.
    "You're all dressed up," I said.
    "A girl's got to make a living," she said.
    "Yeah, but "
    "What?"
    "Nothing."
    "Come on." She smiled. "What were you going to say?"
    The smile was hard to resist. "It's just that you're hiding all the good stuff."
    "You really think so?"
    "No doubt about it."
    "How about now?" she asked a moment later. I turned around and her hair was undone and the glasses gone. Just like a bad movie, she was a knockout again.
    "Now why would you want to hide that?"
    "One of my rules," she said. "Never let the people at work know who you really are."
    "Where's your friend?"
    "Oh, him," she said. "He's probably sleeping, the bum. He keeps me up all