96. Interview with Jeff Kinsey: Part 1

Jeff Kinsey is the cab driver in Boca Raton who took Anthony Stephens home from his showing the night of his death.  Mr. Kinsey conducts his interview in his cab, driving past Antique Row and the many shops it holds, one of which is Veicht Studios.

27 June 2011

– Things aren’t the same now as they used to be. Try to switch things up now, so I don’t get too bored. Back then though, back when you’re talking about, I had a ritual.

– Everyday was the same: I’d walk up to the car before each shift, check the gas, the oil, put my rearview mirror in the right position, brush down the seats, spritz some of that vanilla body spray my wife bought me, hang a air freshener for a little insurance, climb in the car, turn on the engine, press the gas and let her purr for a bit, take a deep breath, reverse from the depot and head right over here. Antique Row.

– That’s how I started every shift, every afternoon Monday thru Friday, for almost six years.

– No, sir. Plenty of fares around. Antique Row was the primary source, though. I always drove here first because it’s close by the beach, the tourists, the money. There’s like, five different art galleries around here, you know?

– And they all serve that same sort of clientele, the type of people that love to throw money at things like paintings and sculptures and lamp posts and fucking waterfall swimming pools. Excuse the language. Irks me sometimes though, how these people’ll spend same as my year’s salary on decorations for their house.

– Oh, they was fine once they was in my cab.  Throw some of that cash my way, you can bark directions at me all you want. People’d climb in the backseat and start fiddling through their shopping bags and fanning themselves with hundred dollar bills and fondling each other, yapping on and on about what they was going to do when they got home with all this—shit they’d bought. Excuse the language. Get all excited offa sun tan oil and Benjamin Franklin’s.

– But, you know, these people paid my bills. Put milk in my fridge and toilet paper in my bathroom. Didn’t matter if I couldn’t stand the whole lot of them, I had to respect them.

– No need to wait on calls around here. Just drive out and wait, somebody’ll come. You can always tell the ones that need a ride too, by the lost in their eyes. Especially the New Yorkers. We get a lot of those. They’re used to cabs on every corner, it’s like an epidemic of them up there.

– Up there, you don’t gotta do much but hold your hand up and there’s like five or six cabbies fighting to give you a ride. The guy you’re asking about, though, fella from the art show that night, he was a local. Wack job though. Came out right there. [Mr. Kinsey points at Felicia Veicht’s art gallery as the car passes. In the window, there are a few patrons surveying paintings, Ms. Veicht speaking animatedly with one of them] I’m driving by and I’ve got to slam on my brakes because this idiot just runs out of the place, right in front of my car. He puts his hands on the hood and stares at me through the windshield like I’m Christ returned, then comes around that side and jumps in the backseat.

– Gallery was packed, too. People outside scattered like leaves, sipping champagne and laughing, and I can see through the front door that inside the place is bustling. I stare at the sign outside the front door and there’s a picture of the guy whose art they’re showing and I’ll be damned if the guy in the picture ain’t the same one’s in my backseat hunched over and peeking out the window, on all fours so his ass is in the air and his eyes are so wide I can see the red behind them. I look at where he’s looking out the back window and there’s nothing but more cars behind me, pissed off and honking because I won’t move.

– I ask the guy if he’s alright because, no matter if he’s raving mad, he’s still a client, and I still need my money.

– He tells me to just go and I did, even though I didn’t want to.

– How spooked that guy was, it was crazy. Even had me paranoid. Looking in my rearview every two seconds like death was coming after us both.

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