Phil Cohen War Stories: In Debt to the Mafia
Editor’s Note: This is Part Three of Phil’s three-part saga about his days driving an illegal taxi [otherwise known as a “gypsy cab”] on the streets of New York City back in the late 1960s when he was still just a teen. Click here for parts One and Two
I returned to New York out of money and learned that the landlords of The Apartment had refused to renew the lease. Desperate to reorganize my life, I found what appeared to be a professionally run taxi stand on Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica.
With a sleepless night behind me, I stumbled in at 6 a.m. and was surprised to find Big Mike sitting at the dispatcher’s window. He gave me a cool reception but assigned a car. The early Sunday morning business was brisk as I worked a mix of radio calls and street hails. The wad of money in my wallet started growing, calming the fear of living on the street with the New York winter looming.
The radio crackled with a pick-up in Ozone Park. The morning sun felt good as I barreled down narrow, empty streets, dead tired but wired on adrenalin, dodging pot holes, running through uncontrolled intersections at 40 mph, and then broad-siding another car doing the same. The daze lifted and I discovered that except for a few bruises, I was still intact. I notified the stand, and crawled out. The front end of the cab was totaled but I managed to nurse it back to the base.
I was met by the fleet manager, a 30-year-old man with slicked back hair, wearing a leather jacket. He put his arm around my shoulder and in a friendly manner explained a company policy that drivers were responsible for half the repair cost of front end accidents. “I’m not telling you what to do kid, but this business is owned by wiseguys, and if you don’t want to end up in the same condition as this cab, you’d better come up with the money. You can work it off until we’re straight.”
“This is bullshit,” I told him. “I’m sorry about the cab, but I was never informed about this when I started, and accidents are a risk assumed by the owners.”
“Look, you better split right now, because Nick Romano, who’s the real boss, is on his way down and it’s better he doesn’t get his first glimpse of you and the car at the same time. Come back at 9 a.m. tomorrow.”
I returned at the appointed hour and Nick walked me outside. He looked like the movie stereotype of a 1940’s bookie, which was better than the Frank Nitti persona I’d envisioned. “Look kid, Big Mike says you beat another outfit outta some money once before. Well OK, that’s all water under the bridge. But this is different people and no one does this to Nick Romano! You report to work tomorrow morning and start paying off your debt.”
Not interested in becoming a slave to mobsters, I didn’t show up but remained uncertain about finding a way out of this. I spent each night as the guest of a different friend. Several days later on impulse, I stood at a pay phone and called Nick.
“Where the hell you been?” he growled.
“Listen, things haven’t worked out for me here in New York, so I’m leaving for LA tomorrow. Sorry about the trouble I caused you.”
I heard him turn away from the phone and address his associates. “This kid’s Johnnie here today and gone tomorrow. What the hell can you do?”
Briefly returning to me he advised, “You just better never show your face around this neighborhood again, kid.”
That was it. I was as free and clear of my mob obligations. There was a common expression in my world: You can’t hustle a hustler.
I found some telephone survey work in midtown Manhattan, which paid enough to rent a furnished room on a side street just north of Jamaica Avenue. One afternoon, while walking down Park Avenue on errands, I spotted a yellow, metered gypsy cab, driven by a young man with long blonde hair and a beard. I ran to catch him before the light changed and asked who owned the taxi. When he said it was his, I asked if he could use another driver and he gave me his phone number.
A couple of days later, I met Frank at his Washington Heights apartment. He turned out to be an eccentric mystic who read my psalm to determine if I’d be a good person to work with. I was astonished when he described my personality and life story as if he’d known me for years. But he was also street smart and a martial artist. The cab was in good condition and we worked out a rental agreement where I’d pay him $1.50 per hour, heralding the end to grueling twelve-hour shifts.
My schedule alternated between days and nights, depending when the cab was available. I remained in Harlem when business was good, such as the day welfare checks were delivered (Mother’s Day) or Sunday mornings to catch the enormous church crowd. Otherwise, I’d make my way downtown to impersonate a legitimate taxi.
The money was decent, but in the wake of living with Irene, followed by constant action at The Apartment, my emotions began to unravel trapped in a sterile, isolated furnished room. All I wanted was a cushion of money between me and the raw edge of the street. The exhilaration of hustling was slowly replaced by paranoia. I felt abandoned by whatever guardian angels had been protecting me.
One night, I picked up a man going to 12th Street and Avenue D who told me “forget about the meter. I’ll take care of you.” He was wired on coke, complaining about all the money he’d just lost in a dice game as we headed down one of the gloomiest side streets I’d seen in Manhattan. I was certain he was going to rob me, so as we stopped, I swiveled to face him with the can of mace cupped in my hand. My eyes followed his hand sliding down into his trouser pocket but it came out holding folded bills; twice what the ride had been worth.
While uniformed police had greater concerns than a young, hardworking guy trying to earn a living, the Hack Bureau was initiating a crackdown. Their job required actually catching someone in the act of accepting a street fare, as every livery vehicle was theoretically engaged in legitimate radio calls. The plain clothes officers entrapped gypsies by hailing them. My turn finally came and I was politely issued a summons for an Administrative Code violation, requiring a court appearance. I attended my hearing, wasted thirty minutes on the witness stand getting grilled by the district attorney, and was issued a stiff but affordable fine.
It wasn’t nearly so bad as imagined, except it began happening on a regular basis and I eventually stopped showing up in court. One afternoon, the same officer, wearing a different disguise, busted me for the second time. He was a cordial but goofy young guy, and as he chatted like we were old acquaintances. Suddenly, a bee began flying around the back seat. He started screaming, “A bee! Oh no, don’t let it sting me! A bee!” As he tried to exit the cab, his foot got caught in the door and he ended up sprawled on his face across Central Park West.
A week later, I stopped downtown for a young couple headed to the Bronx. At their request, we paused at a bar on 143rd Street and 7th Avenue so they could pick up a bottle to enhance their date. A few minutes later, the man returned with a male friend. This didn’t feel right, so I locked my doors, cracked the passenger window, put the transmission into drive with my foot on the break and waited. The accomplice had his right hand in his coat pocket with a bulge pointing toward me, tried the locked door, and then said, “Gimme your money or I’ll blow your head off!”
When one has survived enough dangerous encounters, a hundred options run through your mind in a split second. In this neighborhood, there was no reason not to openly brandish a weapon. I floored the gas, heading toward 8th Avenue, sacrificing two dollars just in case he actually was armed but given to discretion.
As winter set in, Frank hit his burn out threshold and sold me the taxi in exchange for the Studebaker and two hundred dollars. I spent the next two weeks attending to the bureaucracy of gypsy cab ownership. One had to oblige the Motor Vehicle Bureau with proof of livery insurance to obtain the proper license plates. The cost was a prohibitive $1,300 annually, but could be paid on a monthly basis. Though not satisfying the Hack Bureau, the policy covered vehicles transporting passengers for hire. I also had to have the cab painted because a new law was going into effect that required medallion taxis to be yellow and all others something else. I chose dark blue with a white top.
A week into the new year, I learned there was another, completely unpublicized aspect to the law: livery vehicles were prohibited from being a dark color with a white roof. Many fleets fell into the same trap. Even the Public Livery Association in Harlem, which provided legal assistance to members, hadn’t been informed. This was clearly an underhanded scheme to cripple the gypsy cab business.
Wherever I traveled, even on personal business, I was stopped by carloads of plainclothes detectives and cited for “improper taxi colors.” I continued ignoring my court appearances for what I considered an utterly corrupt racket.
I began hustling the airports at night, cutting in and out of legitimate taxi lines. I’d study arriving flight schedules to synchronize my movements, assembling discounted group rides to Manhattan. During the day I returned to Jamaica, working the railroad station and hoping I didn’t encounter one of the mob guys.
The fine points of circumventing trouble came into sharper focus: how to avoid hack inspectors, confrontations with regular cabs, and identifying muggers at the outset. I became increasingly aware of what I called the one percent factor: no matter how much a community likes and accepts you, there is always a small minority that would just as soon kill as look at you, based solely on ingrained prejudices.
One night at the Port Authority bus terminal, I picked up a couple heading to 141st and 7th Avenue. Watching them whisper to each other in my rearview mirror, I suddenly recognized the same woman who’d participated in the recent robbery attempt. Apparently other drivers shared my belief about couples on a date being low risk. This attractive young player made her way helping thugs exploit this perception. I raced up Broadway in a cold sweat, uncertain how to extricate myself, skidding through red lights as my mind raced. I suddenly cut my wheel left and stopped in front of a diner on 69th Street, explaining I needed to use the restroom. Once outside with the engine turned off, I told them I felt sick and was going inside to vomit. If I didn’t return in five minutes they should consider the first half of their trip a free ride.
I sat at the counter for half an hour, my shaking hand splashing coffee to either side, before finally returning to the cab. My would-be assailants had vanished into the night in search of unsuspecting victims.
The tension of working a job that required being armed, coupled with the prospect of every night being my last, was escalating to a ragged edge where the boundary between perception and paranoia becomes increasingly blurred. But I wasn’t planning to quit. I worked mornings in Jamaica, rested in my barren furnished room, and then spent several hours behind the wheel after dark.
Returning home on a rainy Sunday night, my windshield wipers quit on the Grand Central Parkway and the taxi crashed at 60 mph into the glowing taillights of a stalled vehicle. I amazingly exited unscathed, but my cab was demolished. When friends invited me to join their car pool out to the West Coast, I welcomed the opportunity to leave New York in the rearview mirror.
I returned a year later to discover my driver’s license had expired and couldn’t be renewed because a stack of bench warrants had been issued for failure to appear in court. I had to remain below-the-radar and spent the next year in a cheap hotel, barely scraping by with whatever work I could find off the books. The owners knocked on my door one morning, and surprised me with a lucrative offer to become live-in manager. Contrary to Irv, they possessed the instincts to recognize that unlike most of the residents, I wasn’t a dope fiend.
The price of taxi medallions rose to $1.2 million by 2014, only to lose eighty-five percent of their value as Uber and Lyft captured much of the market share. The gypsy cab business continues to flourish.
Phil Cohen spent 30 years in the field as Special Projects Coordinator for Workers United/SEIU, and specialized in defeating professional union busters. He’s the author of Fighting Union Busters in a Carolina Carpet Mill and The Jackson Project: War in the American Workplace.