Smart Moves by Stuart M. Kaminsky Page B

almost killing a guy who looked like Herbert Hoover. Maybe it was Herbert Hoover.
    “I’m not in a hurry,” I said.
    “Then you’re the only one these days who ain’t,” said the cabbie. “You want to know what’s wrong with the world?” he went on, looking over his shoulder at me, instead of at the traffic we were heading for on Fifth Avenue. He had a sagging face, covered with bristly white hairs, to compensate for the lack of hair on his head. He squinted at me painfully as if I were the sun.
    “No,” I said. “Just drive.”
    “A philosopher,” he sighed with a giant shrug, turning around just as we were about to run a light and collide with a milk truck caught in the intersection on Fifth. He hit the brakes and turned to me again. “What’s the matter, Jackson? You think you can’t learn anything? You think you’re too old? I’m sixty-five. Can you believe that?”
    “I’m seventy,” I said.
    “I can’t believe that,” he said, giving me a sour stare. “Hey, you wanna talk sense or you wanna talk sense?”
    “I don’t want to talk at all,” I said, pointing over his shoulder at the light that had just turned green. The guy in the car behind us hit his horn, and the guy behind him hit his horn, and the traffic tied up behind us all the way to Detroit hit their horns, but my cabbie didn’t move.
    “Hold your horses,” he shouted over my shoulder through the rear window. There was no way anyone outside could have heard him. Only I was given the chance to go stone deaf. “Can you imagine that, Jackson? The Krauts decide to hit us tonight, they can come in on the noise. Patriotism, where is it? What happened to it?”
    “Drive,” I said. “Now.”
    I can be very persuasive when my nose is almost touching someone else’s and the scent of breakfast overpowers that of my tooth powder. He drove, making a sharp right, and kept quiet for about ten blocks.
    “Kids,” he mumbled as he raced through lights, missed elusive pedestrians, and banged the heels of his hands on the steering wheel. I didn’t answer him so he repeated, “Kids.”
    “Kids,” I said.
    “Yeah, whether you like it or not kids are what’s wrong with this world,” he bellowed. “Am I right or am I right?”
    “You’re right,” I said, wondering how many more blocks we had to go and trying not to look at the cabbie. I watched the stores roll by, their reflections in the jigsaw puddles of rain on the street, pedestrians leaping over or dashing around the water traps.
    “I’ll say I’m right,” the cabbie whispered to himself. “Kids. They go around saying ‘solid’ and ‘jive’ and when they like something, you know what they say?”
    “I like that,” I tried.
    “I like … Funny. No, they say ‘murder.’ Does that make you feel like puking right in the street? I ask you.”
    “I’m offended,” I said.
    “Sure you are. Who wouldn’t be?”
    “What about the kids in the army?” I asked, trying to catch some addresses so I could figure out where we were. We shot past 1023.
    “Oh, the kids in the army. Well, you’re gonna get technical on me, huh, Jackson? The kids in the army,” he told God, his eyes looking upward through the roof of the cab. God would understand and support him.
    “I’m not talking about them,” he spat. “I’m talking … here we are. Two bucks even.”
    I looked around and didn’t see anything, no people on the street. There was a doorway just opposite where the cab had stopped, lit by a single bulb. I began to think that Albanese had given me a fake address. “Hold it,” I said, getting out.
    “No, you don’t,” the cabbie said, reaching for something in his glove compartment. I knew what I kept in my glove compartment.
    “I may not be staying,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Here’s the two bucks. You want a tip? You wait.”
    He shut up, took the two bucks, and I got out and slammed the door. He took off without the tip, but—like Santa—as he drove out of