How Louie lost his right eye and how I found out he killed himself. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Come on, come on, love me for the money,

Come on, come on, listen to the money talk -

Moneytalk AC/DC

  

Trump has a way of talking and talking but I guess that's what I signed up for- listening to his monologues. But his cigarettes are going to be the death of me.:

 "This is how I found out that Albanian Louie's dead, that he  hanged himself in a fleabag hotel in Las Vegas.

   

"See, I was sitting on the bench shaping up waiting for Einstein (that's his actual first name) the dispatcher to call my name and give me a trip sheet and keys to a taxi so I could go to work.

   

"Back then I was a stubborn guy and I had my principles. I wasn't going to give Einstein ten goddamned dollars so that I can go to work. After all I'm a fuckin regular American. I wasn't gonna pay off some motherfucker who was born in a grass hut in Africa so that he could let me work. I would give him two, which I didn't think of as a bribe but rather a tip because I know that Castro the owner doesn't pay his people shit. It's not that I hated Bamba. I could see his point of view. Castro's dispatchers and cashiers make shit plus what they can squeeze out of the drivers.

   

"The amount of time a driver waits to go to work (or if he goes to work at all) and the quality of the car is up to the dispatcher.  So Einstein would sweat me, and I wouldn't fuckin' bend so I would just sit there. And wait.

   

"If I would have given him the freakin' ten bucks he'd have got me out pretty quick in a decent car or at least half decent.  I really don't have to give gawdam anything because Castro has this rule that any driver that's a veteran gets to work no matter what and Castro is the boss. I happen to be a veteran, it says so on my driver's license.

   

"Einstein Sagan Bamba is the night dispatcher at Pleasant Avenue Taxi and we had this little thing going on.

   

"So when I heard Bamba call my name so early I was wondering why. When I got to the window he told me to come into the office and buzzed me in. He told me a guy from the Las Vegas Coroner's Office wanted to talk to me and  handed me the phone.

   

"Not that I hate cops. They're the thin blue line and shit but I don't like talking to them. I could tell you why but I'll put it this way: I don't like talking to cops and I don't like giving them information. Far as I'm concerned someone from the coroner's office is a goddamned cop.

   

"Okay, so the guy tells me his name and that he works at the Las Vegas coroner's office.

   

"Now I want information from him. I know that Louie must be dead or I wouldn't be on the phone with this fucker. I'm going to be asking him some questions and I'm not going to tell him much of a any frickin'  thing about Louie. One thing that I wanted to know was did Louie dig up the million dollars he told me he had hidden underneath the boardwalk in Coney Island.

   

"So he tells me they found my name on some papers in Louie Xhaxaka's room that had my name on it and that he had to write a report about Louie so they could figure out what happened, about why he mighta hanged himself.

   

"Einstein named Louie Albanian Louie because no one can pronounce Louie's last name.

   

"So the coroner guy says to me they want to know some things. Was Louie a gambler? Now I could tell you the truth between you and me is that I don't think Louie was a gambler. So I told him I don't think Louie was a gambler, he used to laugh at me when I bought lottery tickets.

    

"Louie had this friend who was a gambler. (I'm not telling this to the cop, I'm telling this to you.) Julius somebody or other. I forget his name. Julius used to work at the garage here. He never said anything to anyone without saying "so so and so has been since Flip was Geraldine". He used to drive days. Now he was a reckless gambler and you would think that what happened to Louie woulda happened to him but it didn't. It happened to Louie. He went out to drive a taxi in Las Vegas - not Louie, Julius What's His Name. And he told Louie that there was a lot of money in being a security guard in construction if he could get a gun carry permit because there's a lot of construction going on. Since Louie couldn't drive anymore Louie went out to Las Vegas and got a room in the same hotel that Julius did. (I'm telling this to you not to the guy from the coroner's office.) I had told Louie that I didn't think he could get the pistol permit with his record and he answered me "I got a fuckin' hack license, didn't I?"

   

"The guy from the coroner's office asked me if I ever visited Louie out there in Las Vegas and I said no which is the truth between you and me and him. So he says to me 'so you don't know what kind of place he was staying in do you?'

    

"I says to him the truth that as far as I know it was a nice place. He told me ``No, it's kind of a fleabag .'

    

"Now like they say: 'one man's meat is another man's poison'. One man's fleabag hotel is another guy's pretty nice place.

    

"Between you and me Louie had told me they got a swimming pool there and there's all these hot chicks hanging out by the pool and that the rooms are nice, that it's all air conditioned. Louie told me this in a letter. In the letter Louie told me he's doing good but the guy from the coroner's office said to me that Louie didn't have a frickin' job and that the room was filled with empty beer cans all over the place.

   

"Then he asked me if I know what happened to Louie's eye and I'll tell you but I won't tell him that Louie got punched in the eye with a pinky ring or brass knuckles or something by some assshole who probably thought that Louie was gay. Louie's not gay and he wasn't ever gay. In fact Louie had a pretty hot girlfriend, that waitress as a matter of fact, but then he left after this shit happened and he went out to Las Vegas like I told you.

    

"Between you and me (I'm not telling any fuckin' scum cop this) but Louie was kind of a sleazy guy. I'm not God and I'm not a priest or a rabbi and I don't judge people but Louie used to tell me about how he would take these tourists on these long rides and shit like that. He used to like to work La Guardia, (which I don't understand given that he is a white guy) and the hotels and he also used to like to cruise around Rockefeller Center looking for rubes is what he said.

     

"To tell the whole story I knew that he was in some porno movies, him with that ugly face only his mother could love, and that he also did some time out in Rahway,  about breaking and entry that he used to do in New Jersey when he got caught.

     

"I'll get around to telling you about some of the stuff he used to be into that he told me about. 

    

"He was a paranoid kind of guy.

    

"Once Louie told me that he had almost a million dollars buried somewhere in Coney Freakin' Island fawgawdssakes but that he was scared to go get it because he thought the mafia was always watching him. Also the City had the cave entrance closed off with boulders after he buried the money, and I could not follow what this had to do with a gawddam cave but sometimes Louie's mind wanders. From what he told me about it maybe the mafia was keeping tabs on Louie. Now I'm telling you this not this fuckin' cop from the coroner's office."         

 Trump continued dictating his monologue. I asked him to wait while I take a leak. When I came back this blabbermouth taxi driver picked right up where he had left off. He didn't skip a beat. I really can't take the smoke.

   

"Another thing (since this is between you and me) one night probably my last passenger that night left a bag with a few boxes of Oxycontin in it. We used to have this arrangement. I would finish my shift at 4 in the morning and go to the corner of 74th Street and Broadway in front of the Korean Deli a couple of doors up from Candle which was a famous gay bar. It was in the movie ``Six Degrees of Separation."

   (I have to go see that flick one day.)

"This is where he got punched in the eye by the way when I didn't show up and he was waiting for me. Our deal was that I pick him up at four in the morning on that corner, that we drive to the garage and he drives me home which at the time was a furnished room in the East Village.

    

"Anyhow Louie said 'let me take the Oxycontin. I could sell it.' You see Louie's favorite cousin lives out on the South Shore of Staten Island, Louie says his favorite orange rapper JoJo Pelligrino calls it the Paradise Slum. It's filled with successful criminals like Louie's cousin, who sells pills.

    

"Then I drove us over to the garage where I settle my lease and he gets his trip card and I give him the keys.

     

"When I took the car from Louie that afternoon he told me that he made four hundred dollars from the Oxycontin and my share was a hundred dollars. Since he took the risks in getting rid of the Oxycontin and lost time going out to Staten Island doing it I thought that was fair enough. Besides who wants to get into a fight in the garage over getting money from selling drugs? That would be plain stupid wouldn't it?"

  

 Almost as stupid as telling me about it.

    

"Let me tell you how come Louie got punched in the eye."

   

You mean I have a choice in this?

   

"Ronald, I have to ask a favor. Please put out that cigarette."

    

"Okay, here. I put it out for you.

    

"It's partly my fault I guess but not really.

    

"About one that morning I was empty and I was going up on Irving Place, which is a very small avenue which is really like Lexington Avenue below Gramercy Park but it only goes like six blocks where it dead ends at 14th Street.

   

 "I got t boned  by this guy who had knocked back a couple of drinks, no license on him and  driving a car that had Massachusetts plates. I didn't get hurt and he didn't get hurt. Turns out he's a French Canadian guy and the car belongs to somebody who's in the state senate up in Bay Colony. I wasn't mad because this shit happens. I went to a phone booth and called 911 but the cops took forever. I also called the garage to get a tow truck and that took a long time more than the cop. So the cop does the paperwork. He doesn't arrest the guy.  I guess he wanted to get home fast (maybe had a hot date or something.)

    

"Anyway when I called the dispatcher to tell him the car  got fucked up I guess I was a little worked up and I didn't ask him to call Louie.   At that time Louie did not want me to have his phone number and he did not want me to know exactly where he lived either. That actually made sense and I'll explain it to you.

    

"Taxi drivers are always chiseling each other.  In that sense we are pretty much a bunch of scumbags"

 I've started noticing that. Is it the job makes the man? or....

   

"Louie figured or I should say he knew that if I had his phone number I would work past four and call him and tell him I was coming late to pick him up late. So we chose this corner which was really just a couple blocks from the Belmar Hotel which is where Louie was staying. We weren't living up at McGillicutty's anymore cuz old man McGillicutty died and his sons took the house and told us we had to get out of there. So I found a furnished room in the East Village. It was a big apartment that was still rent controlled and the guy was paying like $150 a month which even then was dirt cheap and that's what he charged me for the room $150 and even then that was dirt cheap. But Louie wouldn't tell me where he was living. All I knew it was somewhere near 74th and Broadway.  So needless to say I was not showing up at four o'clock and also needless to say, Louie was there on that corner.

    

"So four o'clock came and four o'clock went.

    

"So anyhow Candle Bar closes at four which is last call for alcohol in New York. The gay caballeros come out of there and some of them loiter on that corner and some of them go into the Korean Deli to get coffee or whatever. So Louie is standing in the middle of this crowd of caballeros when all of a sudden this car pulls up and a white guy jumps out of the car and pops Louie in the left eye, gets in the car and the car jets away 1 2 3 bing bang bing.

    "I didn't find this out until after a couple of days because the next day I went to work like always but someone else not Louie was driving our car. Buddhist  Bob told me  gornisht, nada, gatz. So I asked that blood-sucking motherfucker 'what happened? Did Louie call the garage and say he couldn't come in?' Buddhist Bob said he didn't know and that I should ask Kevin when I come in. Two bloodsuckinmotherfuckers.

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