the taxi and kirphos the greek
Always the hotel lobby, that’s where everything is in place for the going wrong.
Hotel lobby pillars are for gliding around, and the mirrors on the walls are for seeing where you are going in advance, who knows who might be coming around the other way. So there is enough time to double away, and disappear. This is called the Eddie Obeid manoeuvre, it helps if you’re little.
Hotel forecourts are for the boys in livery and the men who manage them and the Limo and taxi flow that brings the bags in and takes the bags out.
Burwood is to where today, and this is Elizabeth Street Sydney – on the map, 13 k’s. The taxi pulls in, we pile in, the forecourt boss leans in the passenger window and asks the driver, Freddy, is he ok for Burwood.
Freddy grunts one.
He’s a bald-headed man with a suntan that doesn’t fade, Fred. Whiskery, and there’s an empty stubby stuck in the pocket behind his seat. Fred’s a grub here.
‘B U R W O O D .. ..’
The forecourt boss again, Kirphos, and he’s a small dark Greek, in the Al Capone movies he was always the quiet little guy with the knife. Now he’s spelling out where we want Freddy to go.
Freddy’s given up the grunt and is plunking Burwood into his screen; looking for B now. I think he’s an ex-Congolese ivory trader settled in Matraville with his eight brothers.
He gets the B, now the U, and for Freddy that’s a tough find right now because Kirphos is leaning all the way into the window there and he’s giving directions.
This to a guy who still hasn’t told the Greek he’s ok for Burwood. And he’s got the U. Six to go. The appointment is in 30 minutes. 8.30 am, it’s monday morning. He’s got the fucking R.
‘Go back around onto Market and take the ramp onto Anzac Bridge, then swing into the Western Distributor and exit out on The Crescent ………’
Plunk goes this big brown sausage finger on the W, there’s human grease all over the screen. Kirphos the little smart-arse is still rattling away …’ and the Crescent Metro 4 through Ashfield and towards Paramatta.
I’m thinking that if he says Paramatta a couple of times more this child of the Serengeti will spear him for dinner. W. Got it. And there’s grease all over the rear-view mirror because he’s tweaked it to have a look at me, this is because I look like Abraham Lincoln so said the guy with the drug wand later that day at the airport. Negative colour change. What’s in the system stays in the system.
This won’t last until the O, but then again once he’s got that it’s a double which just leaves the D and then all we have to do is get in the street name.
Kirphos is now handing out the fifteen shortcuts to Fred if Paramatta Road is tight ..
That’s how it went so I got out and flagged a limo with Mike at the wheel. Mad Leb bastard, got there in twenty minutes.
It was a hot ride.
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