By the summer of 1926, I was asking for work in places where I once had only to show my face. I still drove for men connected with Capone, but the dependable shifts went elsewhere. Frank kept the truck, Bruno kept his grievance, and my vanished deposit had settled nothing. That morning a dispatcher gave me a day’s assignment carrying a buyer between warehouses. I put on my better collar. One full day’s pay would cover rent without another explanation to Rose.
The passenger was an elderly man with a stiff knee and a case of fabric samples. He climbed into the rear seat with both hands on the door frame. I put his case beside him and drove toward a loading yard where he expected to meet a supplier. Paul met us near the entrance, standing beside another automobile. Across the gate sat a wagon loaded with empty crates. Two of Bruno’s men leaned against it. They watched me stop and made no effort to move.
I told the passenger I would find out how long the delay might be. He nodded and took off his hat. The morning was already close, with flies gathering around a spilled sack near the curb. Paul came to my window. “Stay put. They’re doing this because of you.” Beyond him, one of the men turned a crate over and sat down. The yard remained open to pedestrians, but no automobile could pass. “They say until somebody pays for their truck,” Paul added.
I got out and asked the seated man to clear enough room for the car. He was called Benny, though I knew little else about him. “Walk your customer in,” he said. “He can’t manage that distance.” “Then take him home.” Paul stepped close behind me. “You hear how he talks?” I heard it plainly. I also heard the passenger coughing in the enclosed car. He had loosened his collar and was feeling along the door for its handle.
I returned to him. The door on the sidewalk side was jammed close to Paul’s automobile; the street side opened into passing traffic. I asked Paul to move his car. He said it would look like giving way. The passenger tried to stand and sank back, breathing through his mouth. I opened the street door and held up my hand to stop a delivery wagon. Its driver cursed me, then reined in. I helped the old man turn his legs onto the running board.
He was heavier than his narrow shoulders suggested. His knee would not bend enough, and his shoe caught beneath the seat. I knelt in the dust to free it. Benny rose from the crate and came toward us; Paul moved to intercept him. For a moment I expected the whole thing to collapse over the passenger’s lowered head. Instead, Benny held the car door steady. I got the man upright and put his arm across my shoulders. Together we crossed toward the sidewalk.
Paul caught my sleeve. “Put him back.” I pulled free, nearly upsetting my passenger. There was a drugstore half a block away with chairs inside. I walked him there slowly, stopping once while he found his breath. He apologized for the trouble. I told him it was not his doing. Inside, the clerk brought water and let him sit near a fan. I returned for the sample case, carrying it through the gate’s narrow pedestrian opening rather than leave it in the car.
Paul waited beside Benny, who had gone back to the wagon. “Move him,” Paul told me. “You want your work, show them they can’t stop us.” Benny stood when I approached, but kept his hands at his sides. I could strike him and perhaps have the wagon shifted afterward. I could also bring the quarrel down on a street where an old man was waiting for me to take him home. I picked up the sample case. “Get someone else to do it.”
The dispatcher had heard Paul’s account before I returned. He paid me nothing for the day and sent another driver to collect the passenger. I waited until that car arrived, transferred the case myself, and watched the old man settle inside. He thanked me through the open window. Paul stood behind me as they left. I said he might have remembered another time when a man needed help getting out of a car. I regretted it as soon as I saw his face.
He touched the pale scar along his wrist. The wreck had been burning when I pulled him free, years before Leo or the truck. “You saved my life,” he said. “That didn’t purchase my obedience.” Then he took the empty driver’s seat and left me standing.