The Driver

by Hart Hanson

  “Embarrassed! Have you really read Atlas Shrugged? I mean, really read it?”

  “Is that the one where all the greatest minds in the world run away and hide? Or the one about the rapey architect?”

  “The greatest minds in the world disappear because they’re tired of being impeded by lesser minds.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Bullshit?”

  “It’s Atlas’s job to hold up the world. All of a sudden he’s tired and doesn’t feel appreciated? Wah-wah-wah! She should have called that bullshit book Big Baby Shrugs.”

  “Mom, in order to restart the motor of the world, you have to stop it first.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Stop saying bullshit!”

  “There’s a lot of things we don’t get to choose, Mikey. How smart we are, how talented—but we do get to choose how we use the gifts God gives us. You and me, we’ve got something in common. We’re leaders.”

  “You’re just saying that because you think I’ll like it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Again!”

  “God put you and me on planet Earth to lead. We don’t whine and bitch and complain and hide on a secret invisible island; we change the world through taking action. Not by stopping the motor of the world! We are the motor of the world. It’s a mortal sin to stop yourself from doing good. It’s a sin to withhold the best part of yourself.”

  Back then I thought Mom had missed the point because Ayn Rand’s leaders didn’t hide on a secret invisible island; they hid in a secret valley in Colorado. That particular detail, in my adolescent boy opinion, indicated why Mom was incapable of venerating Ayn Rand’s beautiful vision of geniuses sweeping floors while civilization crumbled.

  A few years later, when I became the leader my mother expected me to become, I realized she’d been right. I think my thoughts like my father, and I make my decisions like my father, but to this day when I give orders I give them in my mother’s voice, only without shouting, “Bullshit!” quite as often or as loudly.

  Why do I bring up this story now?

  It was me who killed Willeniec, A., which means that those who followed me (Lucky, Tinkertoy, and poor Ripple, lying in the hospital) are my responsibility.

  I am their leader and Ayn Rand is bullshit. No shrugging.

  “We’re a family,” Mom told me as we turned off the Old Coast Road to start the series of switchbacks leading up to our house on the ranch. “We hardly agree on anything between the four of us, and maybe not all of us make the bullshit political brochure, but we are stuck in this life together.”

  In my head I thought Bullshit! and considered driving off the road and into the Pacific Ocean just to make Mom scream, but now I’m amazed and thankful I had the sense to keep my mouth shut and hold the course.

  SORRY, LINDA

  Midmorning the next day, I’m driving Avila from his ludicrous Calabasas mansion to his business manager’s office in Century City, when I get a call from a loopy Ripple telling me he’s scheduled for surgery later that afternoon.

  “They’re taking one ball,” he said, “but they’re gonna replace it.”

  “With what? A pig’s ball?”

  “With a prosthetic. Why would I want a pig’s ball?”

  “Why would you want a fake ball?”

  “I don’t want a fake ball.”

  “Then why bother?”

  “Wait. Why bother which? Removing? Or replacing?”

  “I know why they’re removing your ball, Ripple. It’s dead. It goes toxic, it’ll kill you. Heads up, they aren’t buying the squared-on-the-toilet-bowl scenario.”

  “I know. They keep asking me for the truth, but I’m sticking to my story.”

  “Taking a ball? You mean like a testicle?” Avila asked from the backseat.

  “Personal conversation,” I said, “if you don’t mind.”

  “You have a conversation on my time, it’s my conversation.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Ripple.

  “Bismarck Avila.”

  “Don’t say where we are at,” Avila said. “Nobody’s supposed to know my whereabouts.”

  “Says who?”

  “My new security people, who cost a fortune.”

  “If you really don’t want anyone to know where you are, you’d turn off your phone, take out the battery.”

  “I did that already,” Avila said. “Why do you think I’m listening to you discuss some random person’s maracas problems?”

  “Wait, is that really Bismarck Avila?” Ripple asked.

  “Listen, Ripple, what they think is maybe you had casual rough sex with somebody who grabbed your ball.”

  “Like, for fun? Who does that?”

  “It’s a fetish,” I said. “People do it. People do anything you can think of. The doctors think maybe you hooked up with somebody you found online and now you’re ashamed and made up the toilet story. So if that’s what happened, I think it’s time for you to come clean and tell them the truth.”

  I cracked the window for some air and heard Willeniec’s raspy voice in the wind Looklooklooklooklooklook . . .

  So I look-look-looked.

  “I’m down with that! Rough sex with a stranger is way more epic than slipping off a toilet. Ask Bismarck Avila if he ever did such a thing.”

  I had a more important question for Avila. “Your security people aren’t following us?”

  “No,” Avila said. “Why?”

  The answer was a late-model burgundy Ford Taurus, three cars back. I saw no reason to share that information with Avila until I confirmed my suspicion. So I scraped his attention off on Ripple.

  “The kid I’m talking to is my dispatcher,” I said. “He’s gotta have a testicle removed.”

  “What happened?”

  “Better he explains.”

  I handed my phone to Avila, jiggered lickety-split onto the 405 off-ramp to Olympic, and took advantage of a left turn on a yellow light at Sawtelle to spurt through.

  “Bismarck Avila speaking,” Avila said into the phone. Very formal.

  Behind us the Taurus burned through the red. So not a sophisticated tail, or they’d have played it subtle and handed me off to somebody up ahead.

  Behind me Avila said, “My condolences, but yeah, that shit can get out of hand, but no, I never got permanently hurt playing none of those games. I came pretty close to losing a maraca myself, once. European championships, twenty years old, vertical ramp, I square myself on my own board . . . you remember that injury? You a fan? . . . Yeah, the groin muscle was a cover story, brah, a complete lie. What really happened was I crushed one of my maracas but my PR people said that if the world knew the truth, it would be all the world ever talked about when they talked about me. It would detract from my brand, brah! So that was the big lie, a groin injury. But the point is the German doctors operated, fixed my scrotal hematoma and my parenchyma, stitched the sack back up, good as new. Told me if I’d waited another six hours they’d have had to remove the ball.”

  Which was a helluva way to discover that I should have taken Ripple to the hospital immediately after Willeniec hurt him instead of waiting. Meaning that losing this testicle was due to my faulty judgment.

  Heading east on Olympic, crossing Veteran, approaching Westwood, I ran through a number of possible alternatives. Overland was coming up and that would be my fastest route to the 10 freeway. From there I could head toward downtown. At least on the freeway nobody could jump out at a red light, use a carjacking as cover to pump bullets into me.

  “The reason they put in the fake ball is for cosmetics,” Avila told Ripple.

  Avila listened for a moment, then made a sucking sound with his teeth (sympathetic) and said, “All due respect, just because you got no legs don’t mean give up on making sure your junk presents. Bright side, at least you
damaged a redundancy. Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been the main diggity.”

  Up ahead I could see the towers of Century City and, to the right, the Plaza Hotel that overlooks the Fox Studios Lot. The burgundy Taurus was still there, three cars back, playing it cool.

  “Okay, Ripple, you rest up for your operation. Good luck.”

  Avila hung up and gave me back my phone.

  “Nice kid,” said Avila.

  “Not how I’d describe him.”

  “He’s alive, at least,” Avila said. “You meet some of these kinky sex people online, you end up buried in the backyard. Gotta take the positive view sometimes. Least he’s got a story to tell.”

  Avila stared out the window a minute, then said, “I’ll stay in tonight. That way you can be there when the kid comes out of his operation.”

  I was pretty sure it was only the Taurus following us. No flanking vehicles and no air support meant that if they were cops, then we were either a low-priority tail or the police wanted us to make them.

  Or they weren’t law enforcement at all. They were bad guys waiting for the right time to kill Avila and (worse) his driver.

  “Avila. Keep facing forward.”

  “Mr. Avila.”

  “Do not turn around.”

  “I wasn’t going to turn around, but now I want to.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “We’re being followed and I need a couple minutes to figure out how to lose them, and if you look back, they’ll know we made them and they’ll be ready when I make my move.”

  “Are you good at this?” Avila asked.

  “I’m extremely good at this.”

  Century City provides the usual dodges (alleys, underground parking, pedestrian walkways, nooks and crannies) but while One is comfortable, she is not agile. In a freeway chase, One would be my first choice. Great top speed. Excellent suspension. And enough gas in her for about two hundred miles at high speeds. But if our followers had access to a helicopter, then we would cease being a quiet matter and burst into the news/entertainment matrix.

  I debated if that was good or bad and decided on bad.

  “You gonna do something?” Avila asked.

  We sailed past Beverly Glen, high concrete walls rising above us to the south as Olympic passed beneath the Avenue of the Stars. Up ahead rose the Fox Plaza, which in real life houses Rupert Murdoch’s army of lawyers but is on the tourist maps as the Die Hard building.

  Which gave me a notion that I hoped was the beginning of an idea.

  “Turn around and stare at the burgundy Ford Taurus that’s following us.”

  “You want me to do what you just told me don’t do?”

  “Make sure they see you seeing them.”

  “You got a very gymnastic mind,” Avila said, but he did as I asked, and then, with an extra flourish, he extended his middle finger.

  “They see you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I floored One. Avila bounced around a little in the backseat before he managed to get his seat belt fastened. We gathered speed beneath the overpass and looped to the right, tires squealing, onto a tight ramp leading around and up onto Avenue of the Stars, g-forces driving my left shoulder into the car door and thunking Avila’s head into the window.

  “They hit the curb!” Avila shouted.

  “They still coming?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Too bad they missed the trees.”

  Easy for him to say. Last thing I needed was to kill another couple of cops. If they were cops.

  I straightened out, but just for a second or two before jamming into a hard left turn onto Avenue of the Stars, the globular shapes of pedestrians, shocked faces turning toward us, lawyers or agents or Fox executives.

  We lost a hubcap.

  The car leveled out like a boat just in time for me to crank her into a tight fast right onto Galaxy.

  “Dead end!” Avila shouted.

  He was only partially right. It was a dead end but it was bracketed by two parking structures. The one on the right serviced the Die Hard lawyer building, which we’d now circumnavigated, and the one on the left serviced the Fox Lot studios themselves, parking for visitors and lower-level assistants and crew members.

  That’s the structure I chose.

  A Lexus checking in at the entrance left me with no choice but to crash through the drop-down barrier. In through the out door. Avila shouted at me, but I suspected that his protests were not germane to our situation. There were two parking floors above us, culminating in the roof, but I drilled downward, keeping an eye out for which level which would bring us even with the Fox Lot surface streets. If I overshot, we’d be in a real dead end three floors farther down in the basement with no way out.

  One floor, two floors, tires squealing, security guards following, hilariously, in golf carts, which, if the frantic honking I heard was any indication, were slowing down the Taurus. More guards barked into walkie-talkies, setting off alarm protocols across the lot, warning people to stay in their offices or trailers or on dozens of soundstages. One particularly motivated and physically fit guard was pretty much keeping level with us, charging down the stairs on the western side of the parking garage, moving fast, like a pro ball player. Down we went, tires screeching, leaning on the horn, two more levels. I prayed out loud that nobody would back out of a stall and end the chase here.

  There was the exit!

  I saw daylight through a gate that led to the main thoroughfare on the lot, between Stages 22 and 20, lined by tall Mexican fan palms, the gleaming-glass modern network building to the left and the Spanishy old-timey movie studio offices to the right.

  “Can you see the Taurus?” I asked.

  “No,” Avila said, craning his neck. “But there’s six golf carts and about a hundred people running after us.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  I killed the engine, slowed down to a stately crawl, and coasted into the no-parking area at the grand front of the Fox television network building, where a large black ball sat in a fountain to the left of the main entrance, water shimmering down the surface, symbolizing, I don’t know, maybe existential despair due to rampant materialism?

  “Good girl,” I said, patting the dash.

  It was peaceful there, near the black-ball water feature with a dozen security people moving toward us, some with hands on their sidearms, others with their sidearms fully drawn.

  “What the hell?” Avila asked. “Let’s get out of here, man! There’s the main gate, right there! Let ’er rip. Let’s go.”

  “Stay in the car.”

  “Stay in the car? Maybe you’re mistaking me for your personal bitch? You stay in the car.”

  I exited the car with my hands up.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, everybody.”

  I emulated a major in Army Intelligence I’d known who had fucked up hugely and tried to get me to forgive him for nearly getting me and my people killed. I made a big act out of leaning on the hood of the car as though I’d just survived the most terrifying experience.

  Twenty-five yards behind us, the Taurus stopped beneath a looming mural of Mary Poppins twirling in the Alps. I could discern two figures in the Taurus, no faces.

  “My accelerator jammed,” I told the nearest security guard, who had his gun trained on me. “It jammed. I didn’t know what else to do. Anybody hurt? I’m really sorry. Tell me everybody’s okay.”

  “Your accelerator jammed?” he said.

  “I heard of that happening,” someone said.

  “Took off on its own,” I said. “My life flashed before my eyes. Anybody hurt? Please tell me nobody got hurt.”

  “Nobody got hurt,” the guard said. It was the superhero who’d run down the stairs. He was buying it.

 
The Taurus drove by us, on its way to the main gate. Whoever they were, they were leaving, averting their heads. The driver was a white male, but that’s the most I could tell.

  I leaned inside the car and told Avila to step out.

  “We had business on the lot,” I said. “Mr. Bismarck Avila. Here for a meeting.”

  Avila stepped out of the car. Everybody there recognized him.

  “Howzit goin’?” Avila asked.

  The security guard holstered his sidearm, which prompted everyone else to do the same. Everybody relaxed. What could be wrong? There was a celebrity present! One of their own. In another five minutes Avila would be signing autographs. Nobody was going to get shot today.

  “You want us to call a tow truck?” asked the guard.

  “That’s okay. I got a guy,” I said, dialing my phone. “You need to inform the police?”

  “Nah,” said the guard. “We’re law enforcement on the lot here. Nobody’s hurt. No damage done.”

  My usual tow-truck driver is a buddy who sells secondhand Land Rovers, Broncos, FJ40s, and some Czech military four-by-fours from his lot on Lincoln Avenue. Most of his stock originated in Louisiana about the time of Hurricane Katrina, which means that they spent time under the waters of Lake Pontchartrain or the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, their electrical systems tend to fail, which is why he requires his own in-house tow truck.

  He appeared half an hour later, Lucky in the passenger seat. Of course by then I’d fixed the nonexistent accelerator problem myself and had my fixes confirmed by Lucky, who everybody bought as an accomplished mechanic because he was brown and wearing grimy overalls.

  It was a long half hour, though, because there’s always at least one person on the job who is smart and competent. In this case it was a dumpy Hispanic woman who worked as a liaison between Security and Facilities on the Fox Lot. She wore a pantsuit in a color my mother’s political advisers would have called Screaming Babyshit with matching shoes. Her name was Linda. Linda was troubled because there was no record of Bismarck Avila having an appointment on the books at the Fox network. I bought an extra five minutes by suggesting to Linda that perhaps the meeting was at the Fox News Channel due to Mr. Avila’s recent experience as a victim of violence. I got another reprieve when I said the meeting could be at the Fox Business Network because Mr. Avila was also a respected businessman who was about to take his company public.