Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics by Tim McLoughlin Read Free Book Online Page A

push the hack five more hours and I go home and Annie yells some more and I get up tomorrow and push the hack some more.” He poured himself another drink. “That is a life for a dog,” he said. “For a Airedale.”
    “In Italy,” Palangio said, “they got donkeys don’t work as hard as us.”
    “If the donkeys were as bad off as you,” Geary yelled, “they’d have sense enough to organize.”
    “I want to be a executive at a desk.” Elias leaned both elbows on the bar and held his chin in his huge gnarled hands. “A long distance away from Brownsville. Wit’ two thousand pigeons. In California. An’ I should be a bachelor. Geary, can yuh organize that? Hey, Geary?”
    “You’re a workin’ man,” Geary said, “an’ you’re goin’ to be a workin’ man all yer life.”
    “Geary,” Elias said. “You red bastidd, Geary.”
    “All my life,” Palangio wept, “I am goin’ to push a hack up an’ down Brooklyn, fifteen, sixteen hours a day an’ pay th’ Company forever an’ go home and sleep in a room no bigger’n a toilet. Without a radio. Jesus!”
    “We are victims of circumstance,” Elias said.
    “All my life,” Palangio cried, “tied to that crate!”
    Elias pounded the bar once with his fist. “Th’ hell with it! Palangio!” he said. “Get into that goddamn wagon of yours.”
    “What do yuh want me to do?” Palangio asked in wonder.
    “We’ll fix ’em,” Elias shouted. “We’ll fix those hacks. We’ll fix that Company! Get into yer cab, Angelo. I’ll drive mine, we’ll have a chicken fight.”
    “You drunken slobs!” Geary yelled. “Yuh can’t do that!”
    “Yeah,” Palangio said eagerly, thinking it over. “Yeah. We’ll show ’em. Two dollars and seventy-fi’ cents a day for life. Yeah. We’ll fix ’em. Come on, Elias!”
    Elias and Palangio walked gravely out to their cars. Everybody else followed them.
    “Look what they’re doin’!” Geary screamed. “Not a brain between the both of them! What good’ll it do to ruin the cabs?”
    “Shut up,” Elias said, getting into his cab. “We oughta done this five months ago. Hey, Angelo,” he called, leaning out of his cab. “Are yuh ready? Hey, Il Doochay!”
    “Contact!” Angelo shouted, starting his motor. “Boom! Boom!”
    The two cars spurted at each other, in second, head-on. As they hit, glass broke and a fender flew off and the cars skidded wildly and the metal noise echoed and re-echoed like artillery fire off the buildings.
    Elias stuck his head out of his cab. “Are yuh hurt?” he called. “Hey, Il Doochay!”
    “Contact!” Palangio called from behind his broken windshield. “The Dawn Patrol!”
    “I can’t watch this,” Geary moaned. “Two workin’ men.” He went back into Lammanawitz’s Bar and Grill.
    The two cabs slammed together again and people came running from all directions.
    “How’re yuh?” Elias asked, wiping the blood off his face.
    “Onward!” Palangio stuck his hand out in salute. “Sons of Italy!”
    Again and again the cabs tore into each other.
    “Knights of the Round Table,” Palangio announced.
    “Knights of Lammanawitz’s Round Table,” Elias agreed, pulling at the choke to get the wheezing motor to turn over once more.
    For the last time they came together. Both cars flew off the ground at the impact and Elias’s toppled on its side and slid with a harsh grating noise to the curb. One of the front wheels from Palangio’s cab rolled calmly and decisively toward Pitkin Avenue. Elias crawled out of his cab before anyone could reach him. He stood up, swaying, covered with blood, pulling at loose ends of his torn sweater. He shook hands soberly with Palangio and looked around him with satisfaction at the torn fenders and broken glass and scattered headlights and twisted steel. “Th’ lousy Company,” he said. “That does it. I am now goin’ to inform ’em of th’ accident.”
    He and Palangio entered the Bar and Grill, followed by a hundred men,