Drive

by James Sallis

  “Attitude like that has to cut down something fierce on offers.”

  “It’s not attitude, it’s principle. I turn down a lot more work than I take.”

  “This one’s sweet.”

  “They always are.”

  “Not like this.”

  Driver shrugged.

  One of those rich communities north of Phoenix, New Guy said, a seven-hour drive, acre upon acre of half-a-mill homes like rabbit warrens, crowding out the desert’s cactus. Writing something on a piece of paper, he pushed it across the table with two fingers. Driver remembered car salesmen doing that. People were so goddamned stupid. Who with any kind of pride, any sense of self, is gonna go along with that? What kind of fool would even put up with it?

  “This is a joke, right?” Driver said.

  “You don’t want to participate, don’t want a cut, there it is. Fee for service. We keep it simple.”

  Driver threw back his shot and pushed the beer across. Dance with the one who bought you. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “Help if I add a zero to it?”

  “Add three.”

  “No one’s that good.”

  “Like you said, plenty of drivers out there. Take your pick.”

  “I think I just did.” He nodded Driver back into the chair, pushed the beer towards him. “I’m just messing with you, man, checking you out.” He fingered the small hoop in his right ear. Later, Driver decided that was probably a tell. “Four on the team, we split five ways. Two shares for me, one for each of the rest of you. That work?”

  “I can live with it.”

  “So we have a deal.”

  “We do.”

  “Good. You up for another shot?”

  “Why not?”

  Just as the alto sax jumped on the tune’s tailgate for a long, slow ride.

  Chapter Five

  Walking away from Benito’s, Driver stepped into a world transformed. Like most cities, L.A. became a different beast by night. Final washes of pink and orange lay low on the horizon now, breaking up, fading, as the sun let go its hold and the city’s lights, a hundred thousand impatient understudies, stepped in. Three guys with skinned heads and baseball caps flanked his car. Couldn’t have looked like much to them. An unprepossessing 80’s Ford. Without popping the hood they’d have no way of knowing what had been done to it. But here they were.

  Driver walked to the door and stood waiting.

  “Cool ride, man,” one of the young toughs said, sliding off the hood. He looked at his buddies. They all laughed.

  What a hoot.

  Driver had the keys bunched in his hand, one braced and protruding between second and third fingers. Stepping directly forward, he punched his fist at alpha dog’s windpipe, feeling the key tear through layers of flesh, looking down as he lay gasping for air.

  In his rear view mirror he watched the young tough’s buddies stand over him flapping hands and lips and trying to decide what the hell to do. It wasn’t supposed to go down like this.

  Maybe he should turn around. Go back and tell them that’s what life was, a long series of things that didn’t go down the way you thought they would.

  Hell with it. Either they’d figure it out or they wouldn’t. Most people never did.

  Home was relative, of course, but that’s where he went. Driver moved every few months. In that regard things hadn’t changed much from the time he inhabited Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s attic room. He existed a step or two to one side of the common world, largely out of sight, a shadow, all but invisible. Whatever he owned, either he could hoist it on his back and lug it along or he could walk away from it. Anonymity was the thing he loved most about the city, being a part of it and apart from it at the same time. He favored older apartment complexes where parking lots were cracked and stained with oil, where when the guy a few doors down played his music too loud you weren’t about to complain, where frequently tenants loaded up in the middle of the night and rode off never to be heard from again. Even cops didn’t like coming into such places.

  His current apartment was on the second floor. From the front the dedicated stairway looked to be the only way up and down. But the back opened onto a general gallery, balconies running the length of each level, stairwells every third unit. A claustrophobic entryway just inside the door broke off to a living room on the right, bedroom to the left, kitchen tucked like a bird’s head under wing behind the living room. With care you could store a coffeemaker and two or three cookpans in there, maybe half a run of dishes and a set of mugs, and still have room to turn around.

  Which Driver did, putting a pan of water on to boil, coming back out to look across at blank windows directly opposite. Anyone live over there? Had an inhabited look somehow, but he’d yet to see any movement, any signs of life. A family of five lived in the apartment below. Seemed like whatever time of day or night he looked, two or more of them sat watching TV. A single man dwelled to the right, one of the studio apartments. He came home every night at five-forty with a six-pack and dinner in a white bag. Sat staring at the wall and pulling steadily at the beers, one every half-hour. Third beer, he’d finger out the burger and munch down. Then he’d drink the rest of the beers, and when they were gone he’d go to bed.

  For a week or two when Driver first moved in, a woman of indeterminate age lived in the unit to the left. Mornings, post shower, she’d sit at the kitchen table rubbing lotion into her legs. Evenings, again nude or nearly so, she’d sit speaking for hours on a portable phone. Once Driver had watched as she threw the phone forcibly across the room. She stepped up to the window then, breasts flattening against the glass. Tears in her eyes—or had he just imagined that? He never saw her again after that night.

  Returning to the kitchen, Driver poured boiling water over ground coffee in a filtered cone.

  Someone was knocking at his door?

  This absolutely did not happen. People who lived in places like Palm Shadows rarely mixed, and had good reason to expect no visitors.

  “Smells good,” she said when he went to the door. Thirtyish. Jeans looking as though small explosions had taken place here and there, outwards puffs of white showing. An oversize T-shirt, black, legend long since faded, only random letters, an F, an A, a few half consonants remaining. Six inches of blonde hair with a half-inch of dark backing it up.

  “I just moved in down the hall.”

  A long narrow hand, curiously footlike, appeared before him. He took it.

  “Trudy.”

  He didn’t ask what white bread like her was doing here. He did wonder about the accent. Alabama, maybe?

  “Heard your radio, that’s how I knew you were home. Had myself a batch of cornbread all but ready to go when it came to me I didn’t have a single egg, not a one. Any chance—”

  “Sorry. There’s a Korean grocer half a block up.”

  “Thanks….Think I could come in?”

  Driver stepped aside.

  “I like to know my neighbors.”

  “You’re probably in the wrong place for that.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time. I have a history of bad choices. A downright talent for them.”

  “Can I get you something? I think there may be a beer or two left in the fridge—what you’d probably call the icebox.”

  “Why would I call it that?”

  “I thought—”

  “Some of that coffee I smelled would be great, actually.”

  Driver went into the kitchen, poured two mugs, brought them back.

  “Kind of a strange place to live,” she said.

  “L.A.?”

  “Here, I meant.”

  “I guess.”

  “Guy below me’s always peeking out his door when I come in. Apartment next to me, their TV’s going twenty-four hours a day. Spanish channel. Salsa, soap operas with half the characters getting killed and the rest screaming, godawful comedy shows with fat men in pink suits.”

  “See you’re fitting right in.”

&n
bsp; She laughed. They sat quietly sipping coffee, chattering on about nothing in particular. Driver hadn’t developed the capacity for small talk, could never see the point of it. Nor had he ever had much sensitivity to what others were feeling. But now he found himself talking openly about his parents and sensing, in his momentary companion, some deep pain that might never be lessened.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” she said at length. “For the conversation even more. But I’m fading fast.”

  “Stamina’s the first thing to go.”

  They walked together to the door. That long, narrow hand came out again, and he took it.

  “I’m in 2-G. I work nights, so I’m home all day. Maybe you’ll come by sometime.”

  She waited and, when he said nothing, turned and walked away down the hall. Hips and rear end a marvel in her jeans. Growing ever smaller in the distance. Carrying that pain and sadness back with her to the lair where it, and she, lived.

  Chapter Six

  Second job he ever drove on, everything went wrong that could. Guys had passed themselves off as pros. They weren’t.

  The mark was a pawn shop out towards Santa Monica, near the airport, by a couple of buildings that put you in mind of old time computer punch cards. Shop wasn’t much to look at if you went in the front door, the usual accordions, bikes, stereos, jewelry and junk. All the good stuff went in and out the back door. The money to pay the toll on that back door was stashed in a safe so old that Doc Holliday could have kept his dental tools in it.

  They didn’t need any accordions or jewelry. Money in that safe was another thing.

  He was driving a Ford Galaxie. Right off the line this thing had more power than made any kind of sense, and he’d been seriously under the hood. From an alley alongside, he watched the principals, two of whom he figured as brothers, head towards the pawn shop. Minutes later, he heard the shots, like whip cracks. One. Two. Three. Then a sound like a cannon going off and a window blowing out somewhere. When he felt a load hit the car behind him, without even looking to see, he peeled out. Half a dozen blocks away, cops pulled in hard behind, two cars at first, then three, but they didn’t have much chance against the Galaxie or the route he’d mapped out—not to mention his driving—and he soon lost them. When it was all over he discovered he’d got away with two of the three principals.

  Fucker pulled a shotgun on us, you believe it? A fuckin’ shotgun.

  One of the presumed brothers they’d left behind, shot dead or dying on the pawn shop floor.

  They’d also left the fuckin’ money behind.

  Chapter Seven

  He wasn’t supposed to have the money. He wasn’t supposed to be a part of it at all. And he damned well ought to be back at work doing double-eights and turnarounds. Jimmie, his agent, probably had a stack of calls for him. Not to mention the shoot he was supposed to be working on. The sequences didn’t make much sense to him, but they rarely did. He never saw scripts; like a session musician, he worked from chord charts. He suspected the sequences wouldn’t make a lot more sense to the audience if they ever stopped to think about them. But they had flash aplenty. Meanwhile all he had to do was show up, hit the mark, do the trick—“deliver the goods,” as Jimmie put it. Which he always did. In spades.

  That Italian guy with all the forehead creases and warts was on the shoot, starring. Driver didn’t go to movies much and could never quite remember his name, but he’d worked with him a couple of times before. Always brought his coffeemaker with him, slammed espressos the whole day like cough drops. Sometimes his mother showed up and got escorted around like she was queen.

  That’s what he was supposed to be doing.

  But here he was.

  The score’d been set for nine that morning, just after opening. Seemed ages ago now. Four in the crew. The cook—New Guy—who’d put it together, engineer and pit boss. Fresh muscle up from Houston by the name of Dave Strong. Been a Ranger, supposedly, in the Gulf War. The girl, Blanche. Him driving, of course. They’d pulled out of L.A. at midnight. All of it pretty straightforward: Blanche would set up the room, grab and hold attention, as Cook and Strong moved in.

  Driver’d been out three days before to get a car. He always picked his own car. The cars weren’t stolen, which was the first mistake people made, pros and amateurs alike. Instead, he bought them off small lots. You looked for something bland, something that would fade into the background. But you also wanted a ride that could get up on its rear wheels and paw air if you needed it to. Himself, he had a preference for older Buicks, mid-range, some shade of brown or gray, but he wasn’t locked in. This time what he found was a ten-year-old Dodge. You could run this thing into the side of a tank with no effect. Drop anvils on it, they’d bounce off. But when he turned the motor over, it was like this honey was just clearing its throat, getting ready to talk.

  “Got a back seat for it?” he asked the salesman who’d gone along on the test drive. You didn’t have to push the car, just turn it loose, see where it went. Watch and feel how it cornered, if its center stayed put when you accelerated, slowed, cut in or out. Most of all, listen. First thing he’d done was turn off the radio. Then, a couple of times, he had to hush the salesman. There was a little too much play in the transmission for his taste. Clutch needed to come up some. And it pulled to the right. But otherwise it was about as perfect as he had any right to expect. Back at the lot, he crawled underneath to be sure the carriage was straight, axles and ties in good shape. Then asked about the back seat.

  “We can find you one.”

  He paid the man cash and drove it off the lot to one of several garages he used. They’d give it the works, new tires, oil and lube, new belts and hoses, a tune-up, then store it, where it would be out of sight till he picked it up for the job.

  Next day, his call was at six a.m., which in Hollywoodese translated to show up around eight. Guy working second unit held out for a quick take (why wouldn’t he, that’s what he got paid for) but Driver insisted on a trial run. Buggy they gave him was a white-over-aqua ’58 Chevy. Looked cherry, but it drove like a goddamned mango. First run, he missed the last mark by half a yard.

  Good enough, the second-unit guy said.

  Not for me, Driver told him.

  Man, Second Unit came back, this is what? ninety seconds in a film that lasts two hours? That rocked!

  Plenty of other drivers out there, Driver told him. Make the call.

  Second run went like a song. Driver gave himself a little more time to get up to speed, hit the ramp to go up on two wheels as he sailed through the alley, came back down onto four and into a moonshiner’s turn to face the way he’d come. The ramp would be erased in editing, and the alley would look a lot longer than it was.

  The crew applauded.

  He had one other scene blocked for the day, a simple run against traffic down an interstate. By the time the crew finished setting up, always the most complicated part, it was coming onto two in the afternoon. Driver nailed it on the first run. Two-twenty-three, and the rest of the day belonged to him.

  He caught a double-header of Mexican movies out on Pico, downed a couple of slow beers at a bar nearby making polite conversation with the guy on the next stool, then had dinner at the Salvadoran restaurant up the street from his current crib, rice cooked with shrimp and chicken, fat tortillas with that great bean dip they do, sliced cucumbers, radish and tomatoes.

  By then he’d killed most of the evening, which is pretty much what he aimed for when he wasn’t working one job or the other. But even after a bath and half a glass of scotch he couldn’t get to sleep.

  Now he knew: that was something he should have paid attention to.

  Life sends us messages all the time—then sits around laughing over how we’re not gonna be able to figure them out.

  So at three a.m. he’s looking out the window at the loading dock across the street thinking no way the crew over there, hauling stuff out of the warehouse and tucking it away in various trucks, is legit. There’s no acti
vity anywhere else on the dock, no job boss or lights, and they’re moving at a good, nonunion pace.

  He thinks about calling the police, see how that plays out, watch while it all got a lot more interesting. But he doesn’t.

  Around five, he pulled on jeans and an old sweatshirt and went out for breakfast at the Greek’s.

  999

  Things go wrong on a job, sometimes it starts so subtly you don’t see it at first. Other times, it’s all dominoes and fireworks.

  This was somewhere in between.

  Sitting in the Dodge pretending to read a newspaper, Driver watched the others enter. There’d been a small line waiting outside the door, five or six people. He could see them all through the blinds. Blanche chatting with the security guard just inside the door, brushing hair back from her face. Other two looking around, at the point of putting guns in the mix. Everyone still smiling, for now.

  Driver also watched:

  An old man sitting on the low brick wall across from the storefront, knees stuck up like a grasshopper’s, struggling to get his breath;

  Two kids, twelve or so, skateboarding down the sidewalk opposite;

  The usual pack of suit-and-dress people heading for work clutching briefcases and shoulder bags, looking tired already;

  An attractive, well-dressed woman perhaps forty years old walking a boxer from both sides of whose mouth strings of gluey saliva hung;

  A muscular Latino offloading crates of vegetables from his double-parked pickup to a Middle Eastern restaurant down the block;

  A Chevy in the narrow alley three storefronts down.

  That one brought him up short. It was like looking in a mirror. Car sitting there, driver inside, eyes moving right to left, up, down. Didn’t fit the scene at all. Absolutely no reason for that car to be where it was.

  Then sudden motion inside caught his attention—everything happened fast, he’d put the pieces together later—and Driver saw the backup guy, Strong, turn toward Blanche, lips moving. Watched him go down as she drew and fired before hitting the floor as though she’d been shot herself. Cook, the guy who’d put it all together, had begun firing in her direction.