Ida (always ready with a quick one-liner) quips to the cop: "Look, I bruise easy." Ida passes Wally as she is summoned away for questioning - she sarcastically greets him: "Well, what is this, the class-reunion?" Wally grimly tells Mildred: "I""ll have a tough time talking my way out of this.During the fierce gunbattle, the last remaining injection gun with the sample dropped to the floor - it was the object of everyone""s interest.He""s a lonely forgotten man desperate to prove that he""s alive.De Niro""s performance is utterly compelling and fascinating to watch as the ""taxi driver""- as the unlikely knight redemptively prepares to "wash all this scum off the streets" after a failed and misguided date with a blonde political worker and his stalking of political candidate Charles Palantine.He volunteered to be brought in, through a rendezvous with Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), Treadstone""s operative in Paris two years earlier.She shuffled over to a wooden able across from where her father""s gruff boozing companion Marthy Owens (Marie Dressler in a comeback role) sat, and dropped her suitcase onto the floor.