Julius What's His Name loses his license CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
JULIUS WHAT'S HIS NAME LOSES HIS LICENSE
The Stranger in The Big Lebowski
One thing no taxi driver wants to do is fall asleep behind the wheel while the car he's sitting in is moving.
It's something that Julius What's His Name had done once before. It was around 3:30 on an August Wednesday morning. He was heading back to the garage a little bit early because he was pretty tired. He had actually pulled over by Madison Square Park on Madison Avenue where 24th Street would have been if they hadn't put a park there. He got in the backseat after locking the front doors, curled up and tried to sleep without any luck. He got back in the driver's seat and scooted up to 54th Street where there's an all-night deli. Julius got himself a large cup of coffee, gulped it down and tried to fall asleep again. He had read somewhere that it takes about 20 minutes for the caffeine to kick in and that this is how big shots recharge in the middle of their work days.
Around 20 minutes later he headed up Madison Avenue. All of a sudden he was asleep or having some kind of a seizure or something. One second he was in the left lane heading north. The next second he had collided with a double parked Uber leaving it in pretty bad shape. The poor schmuck who was making payments on that car had the trunk open and was polishing the passenger side of the car which is probably why he's still alive, because the left side of the car, the driver's side, is what took the hit.
The cops came, an ambulance came, a firetruck came and they took Julius to Harlem Hospital where they checked him out, even gave him a cat-scan. He had no broken bones, no sign of a concussion. While he was waiting in the bed in the emergency area the two cops who had responded to the accident came to see him. They wanted to give him a receipt telling him where they had towed the car and asked him about the knapsack they found in the taxi. This is where Julius had his cash and the Beretta he had bought in Vegas with a few rounds of ammunition. Julius told them that he did not know anything about any knapsack. Maybe a passenger had left it in the car. This answer seemed to please the cops very much.
Around three years later Julius got a letter giving him three weeks to have a doctor sign off that he was fit to drive a vehicle. Einstein hooked him up with this old old doctor who had this smelly musty little office in this wooden two family house in a rundown neighborhood up in Yonkers. The waiting room was filled to standing room only with immigrants clutching documents from the TLC and DMV. For ten bucks the nurse took his blood pressure and temperature, checked the box that said "fit to drive," stamped the DMV form and scrawled the doctor's name above it. (Julius remembered this place from when he first got his hack license. This was an office that was listed on one of the pieces of paper he got from the TLC when he first applied.) Julius mailed the form back to the DMV and that was the end of that. Only a few months later almost the same thing happened again in almost the exact same place. This time the car veered into a car parked on his left and flipped onto the passenger side. One thing about Julius. Since that first episode he never forgot his seatbelt. He probably was the only taxi driver in New York City or Vegas who wore his seatbelt. This no doubt saved him. Odd, when you realize he's really a self-destructive risk taker. When he woke up he was dangling, held in place by his seat belt. The cops came. So did a fire truck and an ambulance. The firemen smashed the windshield. One of the firemen climbed into the car and positioned himself so that when the other fireman cut the seat belt Julius, all 270 pounds of him, fell on top of him. They pushed and pulled him through the front of the car where the windshield had been, put him on a stretcher, into the ambulance and once again brought him to Harlem Hospital. The hospital gave him the same thorough check-up they had given him a few years previously. This time he had a broken rib and some superficial wounds on his arms that were caused by the jagged glass that had remained of the windshield he had been yanked through. The letter from the Motor Vehicle Bureau came promptly around a month later with a courtesy copy to the Taxi & Limousine Commission. Up in Yonkers he discovered two days later that the old doctor's office had been raided. Einstein told him that the Taxi and Limousine Commission would not accept any documents signed by the doctor they had once recommended. Julius would have to find and pay for a legitimate doctor if the nurse at the clinic would not sign off on the form. She told him he would have to go to a specialist. Two weeks later his DMV suspension hit the computer and Einstein would not give him a car. Julius needed money. He now regretted the Bazooka he had smoked up and the fun he had had with a hooker, fun that had not been for free. He went to Noah to see about starting up the old poker game that Albanian Louie used to run in the shop. He found out that Trump runs the game now.
Alejandro Castro was not amused by the letter from the insurance company denying his claim for the damage caused by the accident that happened when Julius fell asleep while driving for the second time. Julius had not been lawfully assigned to drive that Taxi. Bazookahead Noah had given him the cab for cash under the table after Julius had got wiped out by Trump during a poker game. Castro was fit to be tied and he went on a tear. Noah was fired, Castro banned the card game and even put security cameras in the workshop to make sure that the game was really stopped. This had repercussions for the mechanics who were not accustomed to working under a situation where their every move was being videotaped and could be reviewed by the boss.
So you see Trump didn't lie to the guy from the Las Vegas Coroner's office after all. Louie was not a gambler. Everyone else in the game including Noah was.
Okay so it's Sunday night. Who walks into the room but Julius What's His Name. Wonder why he's back from Vegas looking for Trump. No, I take that back. I reckon he has more than nine hundred thousand reasons to be back in New York.
So it's Donald, Al Chin, Julius What's His Name, Manny Gorkowski and Mamadou at the table. Donald's a little bit ahead, Julius What's His Name is down a hundred or so and everyone else is pretty much even. This is how the last hand went.
Donald had the button. That means he was the dealer. To his left is Al Chin. Next is Julius What's His Name, followed by "Gorka" who is followed by Mamadou.
Al Chin lays down a twenty and Julius lays down two.
Trump deals himself the Jack of Clubs and Five of Hearts. Then him being dealer for this hand, he deals two cards to each player going clockwise. When everyone has his two cards Gorka and Mamdou each put down forty bucks. Donald Trump calls. Now he deals out the flop. Ace of Diamonds, Ace of Clubs and Three of Hearts. Al Chin puts down twenty, Julius checks, Gorka puts down another forty. 'Zookahead Harry is standing behind Donald. He leaves the room. Mamadou puts down forty. Here comes Trump's bluff. He raises to a hundred dollars. Everyone else folds. Trump takes the $280 that's the pot. Bazookahead Noah the overnight dispatcher shows up to announce quitting time. Trump was $40 ahead before this last hand so he's made himself $280. Bazookahead Harry gets five for bringing Noah in to close the game. while Trump is well ahead behind his bluff. Noah gives a car off the books to Gorka. Trump gives twenty bucks to Noah and calls it a day, heading home to his room in the Bronx.
'Zookahead Harry is not a driver. He hangs around the garage. He hangs around other places too. Harry dumpster dives, begs, steals, opens taxi doors for tips, collects bottles and sleeps in the four and five 138th Street subway station where workers and even cops have sort of adopted him, giving him sandwiches, pizza slices, and stuff like that. Once a cop gave him ten bucks. There are two big benches on the mezzanine level where hardly anyone ever sits. Sometimes he goes to one of the drop-in centers they have for homeless guys and gets to sleep on a nice soft reclining chair. He also gets to take a shower and gets to put his dirty clothes into a washing machine. He keeps his clothes in a storage locker near the drop in center.
It so happens that Bazookahead Harry came across a Citibike just lying there underneath the Metro-North tracks near the subway stop. Harry hopped on the Citibike and pedaled down to Pleasant Avenue.
When Trump came out of the card game Bazookahead Harry was standing in front of him holding the handlebars of a Citibike. Just for a lark Julius gave it a spin. He pedaled one block north, did a U-turn to come back to the garage when guess what? A cop car pulled up and two cops emerged with their hands on their holsters. One of them asked Julius if he had rented that bike. Julius motioned towards 'zookahead Harry and said to the cops "it's his bike" which Harry vehemently denied.
At the precinct Julius had to wait awhile while paperwork was being done. About three hours after he was brought in he faced the sergeant at the desk who gave him a desk appearance ticket charging him with criminal possession of stolen property. " don't worry guy they won't prosecute you. You don't even need to get a lawyer" was the advice he was given.
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