Sometimes it seems like, say, seven out of ten times you get into a cab, if you asked the person driving it if he or she knew how to kill a man, the driver would say yes. They’ve got road rage all day long, they’re constantly meeting new and scary people, and they never get to go to the bathroom. Good odds, right? Well, Veronica Escalona gambled on those odds, and lost, when she asked a friendly cabbie to put her in touch with someone who would murder her husband for hire.
Veronica wasn’t just asking anybody. She was asking Rachid Rakhis, whom she knew pretty well from hiring him over and over for a month to drive her around, following her estranged husband in a desperate attempt to catch him cheating. From the Post:
The taxi fares soon exceeded $1,000. Not long ago, she’d had enough, and she turned to Rakhis and said: “I want him dead!” At which point, Rakhis made a judgment call: “I said to myself, ‘This guy is innocent. I’ve never seen him with another woman.’” And he’d know, from following the guy for a month. So instead of putting her in touch with the Cabdrivers’ Hit-Man Hotline (on call 24 hours in all boroughs except Staten Island), he contacted the police, who set up a sting. Veronica was busted paying an undercover cop $2,000 to kill her husband.
She should have known it costs more than two grand to get a man killed. At least, it does if you don’t have the taxi-driver courtesy discount.
