Now he was behind his pursuer.
Driver resumed speed and, clocking exactly twenty mph over, struck the cop car scant inches to the right of the left tail light. The car went skidding out of control, nose gone from north to northeast when wheels came back online and took the car the way it was headed-off the road.
To everyone’s surprise, the stunt went down without a hitch, first take. The director shouted Yes! when the two of them climbed out of their cars. Scattered applause from cameramen, onlookers, gofers, set-up men, hangers-on.
“Righteous work out there,” Driver said.
He’d driven with this guy once or twice before. Patrick something. Round Irish moonface, harelip poorly repaired, shock of unruly straw-colored hair. Belying the ethnic stereotype, a man of few words.
“Yourself,” he said.
Dinner that night at a restaurant out in Culver City, place packed to bursting with ponderous Mission furniture, plaster shields and tin swords on the wall, red carpeting, a front door like something you’d see on movie castles. Everything new and made up to look old. Wooden tables and chairs distressed, ceiling beams etched with acid, concrete floor ground down by polishers, cracks laid in. Thing is, the food was great. You’d swear two or three generations of women were back in the kitchen slapping out tortillas by hand, squatting by fires to roast peppers and chicken.
For all he knew, maybe they were. Sometimes he worried about that.
Driver had a few drinks in the bar first. Everything there shamelessly new, stainless steel, polished wood, as though to refute what lay outside the bat-wing doors. Halfway into his first beer he found himself in a political discussion with the man sitting next to him.
Knowing nothing of current affairs, Driver made it up as he went along. Apparently the country was about to go to war. Words such as freedom, liberation and democracy surfaced repeatedly in his companion’s patter, causing Driver to remember ads for Thanksgiving turkeys, how simple it’s become: just stick them in the oven and these little flags pop up to let you know they were done.
Causing Driver also to remember a man from his youth.
Every day Sammy drove his mule cart through the neighborhood crying out Goods for sale! Goods for sale! His cart was piled high with things no one had need of, things no one wanted. Chairs with three legs, threadbare clothing, lava lamps, fondue sets and fishbowls, National Geographics. Day after day, year after year, Sammy went on. Why and how, no one knew.
“Can I cut in?”
Driver looked to his left.
“Double vodka, straight up,” Standard told the barkeep. He took his drink to a table near the back, beckoning Driver to follow.
“Haven’t seen you around much lately.”
Driver shrugged. “Working.”
“Any chance you’d be available tomorrow?”
“Could be.”
“I’ve got something lined up. One of those check-cashing places. Way off the beaten path-off any path. Nothing around at all. Gets its bankroll for the week-and for the weekend-tomorrow before opening.”
“And you know this how?”
“Let’s just say, someone I met. Someone lonely. Way it looks, we’re in and out in five, six minutes tops. Half an hour later you’re sitting over a lunch of prime rib.”
“Okay,” Driver said.
“You have a vehicle?”
“I will have. The night’s still young.” On one hand, he didn’t like so short a lead. On the other, he’d had his eye on a Buick LeSabre in the next apartment complex. Didn’t look like much, but the engine sang.
“Done, then.” They set a meet time and rendezvous point. “Buy you dinner?”
“I’m easy.”
Both of them had steaks smothered in a slurry of onion, peppers and tomato, sides of black beans, pimento-studded rice, flour tortillas. Beer or two with dinner, then back to the bar after. TV’d been turned on but blessedly you couldn’t hear it. Some brainless comedy where actors with perfect white teeth spoke their lines then froze in place to let the laugh track unwind.
Driver and Standard sat quietly together, proud men who would forever keep their own counsel. No need, use or call for banter between them.
“Rina thinks the world of you,” Standard said after ordering a final round. “And Benicio loves you. You know that, right?”
“Both sentiments are fully returned.”
“Any other man got that close to my woman, I’d have cut his throat long ago.”
“She’s not your woman.”
Drinks arrived. Standard paid, adding an oversize tip. Connections everywhere, Driver thought. He identifies with these servers, knows the map of their world. A certain tenderness.
“Rina’s always claimed that I expect too little from life,” Standard said.
“Then at least you’ll never be disappointed.”
“There is that.”
Clicking glasses with Driver, he drank, pulling lips back against teeth at the stringent burn of it.
“But she’s right. How can I expect more than what I see here in front of me? How can any of us?” He finished his drink. “Guess we oughta be going. Get our beauty rest. Busy day tomorrow and all that.”
Outside, Standard glanced up at the full moon, looked across at couples hanging out by cars, at four or five kids in gangsta finery-low-slung pants, oversize tops, head wraps-on the corner.
“Say something happened to me…” he said.
“Say it did.”
“Think you might see your way clear to taking care of Irina and Benicio?”
“Yeah…Yeah, I’d do that.”
“Good.” They’d reached their cars by then. Uncharacteristically, Standard held out a hand. “See you tomorrow, my friend. Take care.”
They shook.
Bouncy accordion on the Mexican station as Driver fired up his car. Back to the current apartment. Never thought of any of them as home really, however long he stayed in them. He cranked up the sound.
Happy music.
Before he could pull out, two firetrucks came screaming down the street, followed by an ancient sky-blue Chevy station wagon with five or six brown faces peering out from within, coop of chickens lashed to the top.
Life.
Chapter Sixteen
Nothing in the Chevy to lead him anywhere. An empty container, essentially. Impersonal as a carry cup. He’d have been surprised if it were otherwise.
If he had some way to run the registration, nine to one it was bogus. And even if it wasn’t, all it was going to tell him was the car’d been stolen.
Okay.
But the hand had been dealt. He was holding.
When their hard boys didn’t come back-the fat man, the albino-those who sent them would be sending someone in after. Too many loose ends whipping about in the wind, only a matter of time before someone got whacked in the head.
That was the advantage he had.
Driver figured the best thing he could do was move the Chevy. Stow it where it would be hard but not too hard to find. Then hang close by and wait.
So for two days, arm aching like a son of a bitch the whole time, figurative knives slitting shoulder to wrist again and again, ghost axe poised and descending whenever he moved, Driver sat across from the mall where he’d parked the Chevy. He forced himself to use the bad arm, even for the chi-chi coffee he bought, $3.68 a cup, at an open stall just inside the mall’s east entrance. This was in Scottsdale, back towards Phoenix proper, a high-end suburb where each community had its own system of walls, where malls teeter-tottered on a Neiman-Marcus, Williams-Sonoma axis. Sort of place a vintage car like the Chevy wouldn’t seem too far out of place, actually, there among the Mercedes and Beemers. Driver had parked it on the lot’s outer edge in the sketchy shade of a couple of palo verdes to make it easier to spot.
Not that it much mattered at this point, but he kept running the script in his head.
Cook had set them all up, of course. Little doubt about that. Driver’d seen Strong go down-for good, to every appearance. Maybe Strong had been part of the set-up, maybe like the rest of them only a board piece, a shill, a beard. Blanche he wasn’t sure about. She could have been in from the first, but it didn’t feel that way. Could be she was only looking out for herself, keeping her options open, trying to find some way out of the corner she and Driver had been shoehorned into. Far as Driver knew, Cook was still a player. No way Cook had the weight or stones for those hard boys come to collect, though. So he had to be fronting.