The Driver

by Hart Hanson

  “How would he get that?”

  Willeniec. I gave him my card. He ran my business through the system. He shared what he knew with Keet. Simple. Maybe even foreseeable.

  When I told Dad my theory, he said, “Hell, Mikey, don’t worry. Nobody can sneak up on me up here. I’m safer here than you are back in LA.”

  “We gotta warn Mom too. What if Keet knows she’s my mother?”

  “I’ll take care of warning your mom. Stan already promised me the state troopers will keep an eye out. Drive carefully. Watch out, I’m pretty sure these old-fashioned thermoses actually make things hotter.” (No use telling the man that physics made that impossible.)

  Dad stood waving in my rearview mirror until I was out of sight, like always.

  The next morning, Delilah came by Oasis to inform me and Lucky that a deputy sheriff at the county jail had found X-Ray dead in his cell even though he’d been segregated due to his youth.

  “Dead how?” I asked.

  “He hung himself.”

  “Didn’t the deputies take his shoelaces?”

  “He used his underwear.”

  “The kid didn’t wear underwear.”

  Delilah showed us a police photo of X-Ray’s suicide. On the back was a typed label bearing his real name.

  “Bogdan Milic,” Lucky read. “What’s that, Serbian?”

  But it wasn’t the kid’s ethnic background that interested me.

  “Delilah, he’s wearing pants.”

  “You got the eye of a detective, Skellig.”

  “Does it scan for you that young Bogdan removed his cargo shorts, took off underpants he didn’t own and never wore and wasn’t wearing when he was arrested, put his cargo shorts back on, and then hung himself?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to think it was an autoerotic accident.”

  Delilah told us that Bogdan Milic had been in and out of the foster system and juvie since he was seven years old. He got his nickname, X-Ray, from the number of times he’d hurt himself doing backyard stunts and posting them on YouTube.

  “Kid had a following,” Delilah said.

  “Why?” Lucky asked.

  “People dig seeing other people hurt themselves on the Internet,” she said. “He was half a quasicelebrity in that world.”

  I handed the photos back to Delilah.

  “No way this kid killed himself.”

  “I know, Skellig,” Delilah said. “I’m not an idiot. I want you to consider that maybe if you hadn’t lied and taken away my leverage on Avila, this kid might still be alive.”

  “Are you trying to make me wear this?”

  “You made your decision; you gotta live with it. Maybe trust me a bit more next time.”

  “Next time?”

  But she was already moving out the door.

  “The boy was Serbian,” Lucky told Ripple an hour later, as though that explained everything. Ripple was dozing off and on as we waited for the hospital to finalize his release. He’d been given a generous dose of some strong pain meds in preparation for his trip home, so he was loopy.

  “Who was Serbian?” Ripple asked, but we’d learned over the last twenty minutes that if we simply waited a few seconds, he’d drift off without requiring an answer.

  Lucky showed me a video on his phone. In the video, X-Ray jumped between two buildings downtown. He had to take a run because he had to travel about fifteen feet across and another twelve feet down. He hit the edge of the building and scrambled to climb onto the roof, scraping his face and elbows, but he raised his arms to the sky and whooped in victory when he made it.

  “Hell of a jump,” I said, thinking how Delilah blamed me for his death and the way I’d find out if I was really responsible or not was if I heard his voice in the wind. I hoped I never would.

  “Over a quarter of a million views,” Lucky said.

  “Poor little bastard,” I said.

  “I’m fine,” Ripple said, waking up just long enough to think he was the poor little bastard being discussed.

  “What about Mr. Tums?” Lucky wanted to know as soon as Ripple drifted off again.

  “Tums could only be charged with trespassing,” I told Lucky, repeating what Delilah had told me. “His gun is registered and he said he was carrying it because he was afraid of mountain lions. He’s awaiting a bail hearing.”

  Mr. Tums had no YouTube presence, and according to Delilah, he was refusing to say a word about anything to anyone, which was probably the reason Keet let him live. Not to mention that my statement could only put him at the scene of the homicide, not definitively incriminate him as an accomplice.

  I’d asked Delilah to please let the task force and district attorney’s office know the truth: Tums had been sent up to Big Sur to kill me and probably my father. I hoped that would at least toss a couple of obstacles in Tums’s path before he was allowed back out into the world with an evil little assassin’s gun tucked into the small of his back.

  I also told her my theory that the only way Keet could have found me up in Big Sur was through Willeniec. I told her this both because it was true and because it might help sway the task force over into thinking that maybe Willeniec had run afoul of Keet and gotten himself disappeared.

  Lucky wondered if it was safe for us to resume normal lives. “Keet has lost two Valued Henchmen coming after us. One permanently.”

  “Tums is Keet’s right-hand guy,” I theorized. “We’re safe until he’s released.”

  “This is what I would call Cold Comfort,” Lucky said.

  “Cold Comfort!” Ripple hollered in his outdoors voice.

  I agreed.

  Tinkertoy was nearing the end of her involuntary seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center down in Torrance, but Connie (who was not speaking to me) had told Delilah that Tinkertoy was resisting all treatment and medications and had no intention of admitting herself willingly for further psychiatric help, so a county psychiatrist was recommending a 5250 hold order.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Another two weeks,” Lucky said, “but first the Law Requires a probable-cause hearing, where Connie will argue for our Tinkertoy to be Set Free.”

  “Does Connie think she’ll win that?”

  “She said that while she is not pessimistic she is also not optimistic.”

  “Fifty-fifty?”

  Lucky nodded and looked worried. The Afghan Mope.

  “Tinkertoy won’t say anything,” I told him.

  “They are feeding our Tinkertoy psychotropic drugs. She is Disoriented, Afraid, and Paranoid.”

  “You worried Tinkertoy will blab?” Ripple asked. And he was looking at us apparently completely clear-eyed.

  “Hi, Ripple,” I said. “Good to see you.”

  “Tinkertoy won’t blab,” Ripple said—and fell back asleep.

  Dr. Quan entered. She greeted us coolly and professionally, which I eventually realized was not because she thought we were evil murderers or mutilators of redheaded boys but because she was smitten by Lucky.

  “How’s our Darren?” Lucky asked.

  “Ask him,” Dr. Quan said. “He’s the one whose hand you’re holding.”

  “We did ask him,” I said. “He sang us a song he performed at his church when he was eight years old.”

  “He changed the lyrics to something less religious,” Lucky said in the understatement of the year.

  I helped Dr. Quan move Ripple to a wheelchair. We placed him gently upon a huge hemorrhoid doughnut, which Dr. Quan said we could take home.

  “He may be a little cranky as the pain medication wears off,” she said.

  “He’s never not been cranky,” Lucky said, smiling at her. She smiled back at him. (This was the exact point where I realized they had done some bonding when I wasn’t looking.)

>   As we moved down the hallway and toward the elevators, Dr. Quan told us about the care and feeding of Ripple over the next few days. He should try to move, stay active, keep the stitches clean, there shouldn’t be much pain, the remaining testicle wasn’t bruised so we didn’t have to keep wincing all the time.

  “Lucky wants to bang you so hard!” Ripple hollered as we descended in the elevator.

  Both Dr. Quan and Lucky looked shocked.

  “I never said that, Gracie,” Lucky said in a strangled voice after a very long ten seconds. “I especially never said it in that manner.”

  “I’m a witness,” I told Dr. Quan. “Lucky only speaks of you with respect.”

  Lucky gave me a look of Afghan Appreciation, knowing that I had forgone the much more amusing route of making things worse.

  As I left them to get the car, I heard Lucky ask Dr. Quan to have dinner with him after her shift. I couldn’t make out the exact words of her response, but it didn’t sound negative.

  I dropped Lucky and Ripple off at their duplex around the corner from Oasis and then swapped the Transit for Three, the haunted Caddie, and headed out to Avila’s place in Calabasas, figuring the least I could do was bring him up to date in person about Tums and X-Ray. Not to mention that we might be able to speak without the task force writing down every word.

  My old friend Lou was at the gate and took no joy in notifying me that I wasn’t on the list of approved visitors. I asked Lou to call Avila. Lou said that he was not authorized to do anything that would inform someone not on the list (like myself) whether or not Avila was on the grounds. I asked Lou to call Cody Fiso and tell him that if I wasn’t through this gate in three minutes I would inform Avila that Cody had been the one who bugged my limo on behalf of the police which is why they had a recording of him suborning murder.

  “Is that true?” Lou asked.

  “You’ll be able to tell by how Cody reacts.”

  Lou stewed for about six seconds, probably figuring out which course of action was more likely to get him fired, then made a call on his cell, turning away so I couldn’t hear what he said.

  Lou hung up. The gate swung open ahead of me.

  “Thanks to you, I know something about Fiso I wish I didn’t,” Lou said. “And he knows I know it. So when I get fired, I’ll be looking to you for a driving job.”

  “You’re in the gravy, Lou. Fiso knows if he fires you, you’ll tell everyone what he did and he’ll be the one looking for a new job. My advice, ask for a raise.”

  I drove the Caddie up to the house and parked.

  There was no one on Nina’s island and no one on the vertical ramp, so I walked in the front door and headed for the kitchen, where I found a very drunk Avila struggling to make himself a toasted roast beef sandwich. I stepped in and made the sandwich for him.

  “You mind if we go somewhere less likely to be bugged?” I asked.

  “Like where?”

  We ended up sitting on the edge of the vertical ramp in the backyard, our legs dangling like kids’. This was Avila’s true domain. I brought him up to date, which seemed to sober him up pretty quickly.

  “Keet sent them to kill you?”

  “Me and my dad.”

  “You think Keet killed X-Ray in jail?”

  “Yeah. You worried yet?”

  “Keet’s not gonna kill me.”

  “Not until he’s killed everyone around you first.”

  “Keet’s just talking, brah.”

  “They came up to my dad’s place. That’s a six-hour drive.”

  “And you got two of his guys. One’s dead. Keet’s done.”

  “If you think he’s done, why are you so drunk?”

  Avila chewed on his sandwich and shrugged.

  In my brain, a few tumblers turned and clicked. (It’s possible you got there before me.)

  “I know you’re laundering money for Keet.”

  Avila stared at me, forgetting to chew the sandwich I’d made him. Suddenly sober, he asked, “Are you wired?”

  “Moron, I’m the one who suggested we come out here where no one could hear us.”

  “How do I know you aren’t playing me?”

  He made me strip to my boxers, toss my clothes down to the bottom of the ramp.

  “Look at you,” he said, “all stippled with scars and shit.”

  “You bought up all these shitty, deserted buildings. Empty lots. But on paper, they’re occupied by premium renters paying premium rents.”

  Avila turned his attention back to his sandwich.

  “Dirty barrels of cash in, clean rent out, probably to some offshore setup? Simple. Cops are looking for the connection between you and Keet, and there it is—a bunch of companies in Belize or Luxembourg or somewhere else they don’t ask questions.”

  “What buildings? You can’t trace those buildings to me. Nobody can.”

  “Willeniec did.”

  “Willeniec’s gone, brah.”

  “Did you kill him?” (Just in case the task force was listening.)

  “I got no idea what happened to that racist piece of shit.”

  “I wish you’d give Keet those barrels.”

  “Why?”

  “So he’ll stop killing people. By people, I mean me.”

  “Them barrels are just one part of my beef with Keet.”

  And the tumblers in my brain turned again.

  “You want to take your company public,” I said. “And you can’t do that as long as you own those bogus rental properties.”

  “Nobody can trace those properties to me.”

  “From the outside,” I said. “But when you go public, you gotta open the books. Due diligence. Keet tells you no, he likes things the way they are. But you, you need to be world champion. You want what you want.”

  Avila’s chin tilted up, an alpha-male tell he couldn’t control.

  “Why you wasting your life being a driver? You got mad skills.”

  “One thing I can’t figure is why you’d take those barrels when you had real money at stake.”

  “Rocky took those barrels because he thought he could get away with it. Dumb-ass kid. There’s only so many people had access. Took Tums about five minutes to figure out it was Rocky. You think you’re smart? Multiply that by ten and you got Tums.”

  “How did Willeniec find out about the barrels?”

  “He was a cop. Cops hear things.”

  “How’d he get a list of your properties? Who else knows Rocky took those barrels? Nina, Keet and his people, you, me. Anyone else?”

  Avila shook his head. Nobody.

  “Then one of them told Willeniec. It wasn’t me.”

  “Shit,” Avila said.

  “No one on that list of people benefits from telling Willeniec about the barrels—except Keet.”

  “I get it.”

  “Give Keet his barrels of money,” I suggested. “Then sign the real estate over to him or the dummy companies, whatever, let him have it all. Walk away.”

  “Let Keet win?”

  “It’s the only way you get to be chairman of the board.”

  Avila smiled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Get your clothes and follow me.”

  Avila led me into his media room and sat me down on the most comfortable couch in the world in front of an eighty-five-inch 4K TV. He plopped himself down at the other end of the couch and pulled a tablet out of a leather pouch on his onyx coffee table. He flipped through a database and tapped the screen. Images appeared on the TV, a rough, punk-style credit sequence that Avila fast-forwarded through before he froze on the image of a mahogany-colored kid sporting bright Day-Glo pink dreads at the Venice Skate Park, midteens, cocky as hell, jutting out his chin, stroking his bare chest with one hand, holding a battered skateboard in the oth
er, shot from a real low angle, like a superhero.

  “That’s Biz,” Nina said from behind us. She entered the room sucking on a doobie (glory!), buzzed out of her mind, wearing an untied Chinese silk robe and nothing else, the purple robe billowing to reveal gravity-defying breasts, pubic hair cut to a landing strip, weed smoke trailing her into the room like an entourage.

  Avila said, “Your cha-cha’s out.”

  Nina ignored him, threw herself down on the couch beside me, crossed her fine legs, and nodded at Avila to play the footage. Avila unpaused. Punky-rap-metal-surf music blares, adolescent, aggressive underscore for young Bismarck Avila striking testosterone poses for the camera.

  Cut to: grainy footage in a club. The band on the stage is playing the aggressive music we’ve been hearing as sound track and, lo, there’s young Bismarck Avila fronting the band, sixteen, pink hair, singing his little heart out, obscene graffiti behind him, and a banner spelling out his name, exclamation mark and all. (The branding started young.)

  Cut to: the crowd of skaters, surfers, punks, girls, and burnouts, beer and dope, a mosh pit going crazy.

  “I remember that place,” Nina said. “House club just off the boardwalk back when Venice was proper Venice.”

  Cut to: grainy video footage of lead singer Avila seizing his groin in his right hand, his microphone in the left, screaming at the top of his lungs, veins cording in his neck and forehead. The boys in the crowd scream with Avila, like a pack of young coyotes; the girls scream at him.

  What would it feel like to be young the way Avila was young? One day you’re a street kid trying not to get your ass beat (or worse) by your mom’s boyfriends; the next, you’re a demigod. What happens to the soul of a kid like that?

  Cut to: network-quality coverage of a huge athletic event. Young pink-haired Bismarck Avila skates on a gigantic ramp in front of thousands of people. A banner reads OI VERT JAM!

  “Brazil,” Nina said. “Two thousand six.”

  “I might be as impressed as you want me to be if I knew what Oi Vert is,” I said.

  “World championships!” Nina said, disgusted.

  “My second run,” Avila said, and he fast-forwarded to a slight mahogany elf on a skateboard with bright orange wheels, his burnt-orange shorts clashing with his pink hair, shooting a good twelve, fifteen feet above the lip of the vertical ramp, and something goes wrong (I don’t know what), and to me it looks like he falls three stories before crashing into the nadir of the parabola. The music continues, but young Avila lies motionless as EMTs and officials converge.