Water Taxi Boatman

by David Castlewitz

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Lou untied the boat from the dock, slipping off the rope at the bow and then climbing in and making his way to the stern. Hal started the engine and turned into the heavy waves that suddenly sprang up. The overhead lights flickered but didn’t go out. Sam wrapped his long coat around the woman’s frail shoulders and held her close.

“We’ll never get far enough away,” she said, her cheek pressed against Sam’s shoulder.

Hal wondered what this was about, but didn’t ask. His chin still hurt from Sam’s rough treatment. Besides, he had waves to fight and debris in the dark water to evade. Shouting to Lou to watch out, Hal made a sharp right to avoid a floating door. As he turned, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Straightening the boat and steering across an undulating wave, he looked back at the dock.

Two men pulled the guard from his perch and forced him to unhook one of the boats hoisted up for safe-keeping.

“Get us out of here,” Sam yelled. .

“Who are you, anyway?” Hal demanded.

Sam didn’t answer. The men at the dock dropped a transit patrol boat into the water and climbed down into its narrow cavity, one man at the stern to control the outboard motor, the other up front.

Hal slipped his boat into the northbound lane. That transit police boat was faster than his taxi, but those two pursuing him didn’t know these waters. They wouldn’t know how to fend off the swirling junk churned up from the tunnel’s depths. They’d flounder, get caught in an eddy, maybe get dashed against the tunnel walls.

I’m earning my extras, Hal thought to himself, picturing eScript dropping into a bucket at his feet.

He slowed as he approached a convergence of tunnels. Something didn’t look right. He didn’t come south of Times very often, and he wasn’t use to this configuration of intersecting waterways. Checking a plastic-coated map he kept under the control panel, he squinted to make out the colorful lines depicting the old tunnels. He took out a flashlight to see better and compared the map to what he saw around him. The tunnel he needed to enter was flooded. The tunnel he was in had lifted his taxi a foot higher than usual.

To his left, a grate dangling from rusted hinges corresponded to a black X on the map. “Well,” Hal said out loud, “it ain’t blocked now.”

He maneuvered close to the grate, grabbed hold of the slimy metal, and yanked. The old hinges gave way.

“Where’s that going to take us?” Lou shouted from the stern.

A wave lifted the taxi. Then it receded. Water flowed across the gunwales. Sam cringed. The girl shivered, and lifted her slipper-encased feet out of the blackish swirling water.

Rain poured from overhead grates, Sewer runoff failing as usual, Hal imagined. Pumps going dead. Judging by how succeeding waves lifted the boat, he gauged his next move. He had to time it right.

He hit the accelerator. The taxi rushed forward, carrying the boat to just below the lip of the open tunnel. The bow hit cement, scraping away pieces of green paint, injuring the starboard side’s decorative eye. When the wave receded, Hal floated back to where he’d started.

“You! In the boat. Pull over to the dock.”

Hal sneered at the pursuers who’d come close enough to yell orders at him. The girl began to cry, gulping for air between sobs, her chest heaving under that scanty garment.

In answer to the demands he heard, Hal rushed at his pursuers’ boat, causing the one standing at the bow to lose his balance and grab the gunwale. The wake he made showered the occupants with dank, stinking water, making them vomit and cough. He spun 180 degrees, his eye on the tunnel that had been closed off by that grate with rusted hinges. Wave action lifted the taxi higher and it hit the tunnel’s lip, bounced up, its bottom screaming like an injured player in a deadly game. Then the boat flopped onto the water’s surface, splashing the two passengers as well as Lou hunkered down at the stern.

“Look at that,” Lou shouted, pointing at the shallow water. “There’s tracks down there.”

Hal didn’t care, didn’t bother to look. A catwalk lined one side of the tunnel. Thick cables ran up to the curved roof. Pipes ran horizontal on both sides of the tunnel. Light bulbs encased in steel cages blinked off once, causing the girl in Sam’s arms to scream with alarm.

“Check that out,” Hal said to Lou, pointing at a door emblazoned “Maintenance Crew Only.”

“It’s all true,” Lou said. “The myths aren’t myths. This tunnel was used by maintenance men. Those tracks were probably for some sort of train car. There used to be electricity pumped in down here. Back when. You know?”

“I don’t care. I ain’t waiting around for those guys to figure out how to get in here and get us.”

“They don’t want us. They want the passengers.”

“And what do you think they’ll do with us?”

“Hear that?” Lou asked.

Hal looked sideways. He’d heard something splash in the water and expected to see the pursuers wading towards his taxi.

He saw nothing.

The girl shrieked and Sam jumped up. “Something’s in the water.” He pulled a pistol from inside his coat. Lou picked up the oar lying near the stern.

Hal fed the engine just enough juice to turn the propeller. Whatever had splashed in the water did so again, and there was more than one of... what? Alligators?

One of the two pursuers appeared at the entrance to the tunnel, water up to his waist as he waded towards them. Behind him came his partner. Both carried automatic pistols with short barrels and long magazines.

“Just give us Liz,” one of the pursuers shouted. His partner fanned out to one side. He climbed onto the catwalk, using a ladder that Hal hadn’t noticed before.

“I’m not up for no gun fight,” Hal spat at his passenger.

“Just get us out of here,” Sam said.

Hal backed off from the underwater obstruction. He turned the boat around. The man on the catwalk slowly advanced, pistol level with his waist. The one in the water kept repeating what he’d said before, that they were only interested in the girl.

Something long and black rose from beneath the water.

The man on the catwalk fired his pistol. He shouted to his partner, but then there was only splashing in the water and a trail of red on the surface.

Hal pointed the taxi at the tunnel’s opening and sped forward, disregarding the zip-zip sound of bullets, hoping fear and adrenaline would thwart the man’s aim. When the overhead lights dimmed, he heard the man run along the catwalk, still shooting. A quick sideways glance showed him facing two large lizards, each more than ten feet long, swishing their tails back and forth.

The taxi burst out of the tunnel, while a gurgling scream exploded from behind. Suddenly, the boat dropped into the water. The overhead lights blanked out and the taxi floated in the dark.

“There’s a boarding platform,” Sam said. “I can see it. The light’s on over there.”

“That ain’t where we’re going. Just wait. They’ll open the drains pretty soon.”

Sam approached, pistol pointed at Hal’s chest. “Steer over to that platform.” He waved the pistol in that general direction. With a sigh, Hal did what Sam wanted. Maybe it was just as well to get rid of these two troublemakers.

Sam stepped onto the station platform. He put out his hand and helped the girl out of the boat. “The safe house isn’t far from here,” he said, and glanced at the black-and-white checkered wall with the legend “50th Street” emblazoned on it.

“You owe me for the fare,” Hal shouted, but Sam and the girl were already climbing the steps to street level.

Hal shook his head, angry with himself for agreeing to transport the guy without collecting in advance. They could’ve gone up together at Battery Park. He could’ve gotten a link to the bank in spite of the storm. He’d been too trusting.

“You see those ’gators?” Lou asked. “Told you. See those tracks?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Hal waved him off. “We got cheated out of a fare, and all you care about are myths.”

“But they’re not, Mr. Hal. We saw them. Gators and tracks. They ain’t myths.”

Hal shrugged and grumbled, “Guess not.”

“Who you think that guy was?”

“Someone who cheated me.”

“Us,” Lou said. When Hal looked at him, he repeated, “Us, Mr. Hal. He cheated both of us.”

The tunnel Hal wanted to get into eventually cleared, but the lights didn’t come back on. Hal resorted to the lantern to light the way and gauged by the meter on the dashboard that they’d need to row the boat to the dock for the last couple of hundred yards.

“Come in an hour later tomorrow,” he told Lou when they returned to Dykman Street.

Many of the kiosks showed damage from the storm. All of it light. Hal’s had suffered only a torn-off piece of particle board, which he could fix easily with tape.

“Admit it, Mr. Hal,” Lou said before skipping away, all smiles. “Those were ’gators. There were tracks. There’s got to be something to those stories.”

* * *

The next morning, with the side of the kiosk patched and two fresh batteries in the taxi, Hal waited for customers. Lou stood out in front of the kiosk, calling to passers-by, soliciting business.

“You the guy that took Sam yesterday?” someone asked Lou, who pointed back at Hal sitting in the kiosk, his elbows on the front counter.

Hal said, “I took somebody. I don’t know if his name was Sam.” The man asking the question didn’t look dangerous, but Hal remained cautious.

“Sam’s thankful. Here’s a token, a one-timer for you to load up.”

Hal took the round piece of plastic the stranger handed over. He inserted it into his fare register.

“That’s four times the regular,” he said.

“Sam’s appreciative.”

“Yeah, I see that.” Hal stared at the register’s two-line screen. “Tell Sam I said thanks.”

“I don’t know no Sam. Neither do you.”

Hal nodded.

“What was that about?” Lou asked after Hal was alone at the kiosk.

Hal told him.

“Who do you think he was?” Lou asked. “And the girl. Bet he rescued her from something. I bet he’s a private detective and the girl’s father hired him to— ”

“You really like these stories that go ’round in your head.”

“I was right about the alligators, wasn’t I?”

Hal laughed. “Yes, you were right about the alligators.”