The Driver Read online

  Both brandish crap Hi-Point nines, bought on a corner for a hundred bucks and whatever drugs they carried in their backpacks.

  The crescendo of shouts and screams breaks and recedes like a messy wave as people get the hell out.

  The Slavic-looking kid fires again and I feel the hot streak of a bullet crease my armpit, because I’m already turning to grab Tweedledee’s Glock as he slumps to his knees, gripping his spreading-red gut (maybe praying, probably praying), definitely crying because he is shot and dying. I flick off the safety as I bring the gun around and the Goth boy makes a sound—OH!—like someone threw a bucket of cold water on him and then executes some kind of movie-action-hero somersault move, intending, I guess, to pop up and shoot me.

  Except he loses the gun and pops up facing me with nothing but an irritated look that his killer move hasn’t worked out.

  I cannot bring myself to shoot his stupid young life into a ghost voice in the wind, so I blast Tweedledee’s cannon into the ceiling three times above him. The Slavic zit kid grabs his buddy by the collar and yanks.

  “He said don’t get caught,” Slavic Kid yells into Goth Boy’s ear. They turn to run, Slavic Kid firing his gun into the air, agents and managers and tourists and a familiar-looking local TV traffic girl flailing out of the way.

  I turn to see if Tweedledee is still breathing.

  A flash of light blinds me and I think it’s a camera, but the flash isn’t light, it’s pain, and flashing light turns to flashing dark and I almost have time to laugh before everything goes away: the electric copper smell of Tweedledee’s blood, the mewling sound he makes like a tortured cat, cologne and perfume and sweat and expensive liquor spilled everywhere, and the musty softness of carpet on my cheek, and I think about how Los Angeles is really a chain of restful nooks where happiness and comfort dwell but between them is a wasteland of purgatorial hell or hellish purgatory and I think, Shelter from the devil wind, and close my eyes, resting and happy.

  TWEEDLEDEAD

  I open my eyes in the ambulance. I can’t hear anything. No voices, no siren, nothing. On the gurney next to me, Tweedledee spasms and expectorates a blast of bright-red arterial blood into his clear plastic oxygen mask and transitions from Tweedledee to Tweedledead. The EMTs rush and pump and smash and inject and push and shock, but it’s all over for the big man. His ghost drifts up to the ceiling of the ambulance like an accidentally released helium balloon, looking down at his own dead self, finally realizing his sad situation. I catch eyes with his ghost (nothing I can do to help; Tweedledead’s never going to speak to me because I didn’t kill him and those are the only ghosts who haunt me).

  We both fade away, each of us dissolving. Me, figuring I’ve been shot in the head, it hurts that much, wondering if I am on my way to everlasting peace or if this time purgatory will stretch from here all the way through eternity.

  I’M NOT DEAD

  “Mr. Skellig? Mr. Skellig? Could you please open your eyes, sir?”

  The voice is female, reassuring and warm, insistent, a slight note of reproach implying that laziness is the only thing keeping me from waking. The same tone my mother took Sunday mornings when I was fourteen and pushing back at her on the whole go-to-church issue, even though I knew it was important to Mom’s constituency that her family be God-fearing and churchgoing and gun-toting and free.

  It was out of respect for Mom that I opened my eyes. It took a moment to focus. Leaning close into my face was a teenage Asian girl, solid and solemn in a reassuring way, like she had her priorities in life straight.

  “Can you tell me your name, sir?”

  “Michael Skellig.”

  My throat didn’t hurt. Good sign. It meant I hadn’t been intubated. Or embalmed.

  “Do you know what day it is, Mr. Skellig?”

  “That depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “How long I’ve been black.”

  The girl pulled back, fresh worry etched on her face. “I’m sorry, Mr. Skellig, you believe you are black?”

  “No. Sorry, no, Army lingo. How long have I been unconscious?”

  “Approximately three hours.”

  “Saturday, seventeen January,” I said. “Approximately eight P.M.” (Showing off now.)

  “Do you know what happened to you?”

  “Excuse me, who are you?”

  A tiny flashlight appeared between her face and my left eye, strobed, then moved over to my right eye. Painful. During this, she explained that she was Dr. Quan, an emergency room resident here at the UCLA Medical Center. I made a joke about medical licenses being handed out in high school; she countered with “I’m older than I look,” in a way that told me she’d done it a hundred times before.

  “What exactly happened to me?”

  “You were bludgeoned on the top of your head.”

  Tweedledum. Bastard. After I scared away the two shooters, he didn’t know whether to shit or go blind, so he conked me on the head to prove to his boss he had everything under control.

  “Your skull is not fractured but you required sixteen stitches to your scalp,” Dr. Quan said, rocking back so that I could focus on her. Considerate. My eyes were definitely bollixed; it took all my concentration to keep them from independently rolling around in my head like marbles. “I’d like to admit you overnight for observation.”

  “No, thanks,” I said, sitting up—which turned out to be an awful, painful, unpleasant adventure. Struggling to keep a straight face, Dr. Quan gave me a moment to fight my way back from nausea, tunnel vision, and the spins before advising me not to sit up too quickly.

  “Funny,” I said.

  “Sorry. But I knew you’d be one of those guys who says, ‘I got this!’ then passes out.”

  “I did not pass out.”

  “I’ve cataloged your scars pretty thoroughly,” Dr. Quan said, handing me a sippy cup for grown-ups. “You’ve been blown up, savaged by a dog, stabbed, and shot three times. And those are only the injuries visible to the naked eye. Your X-rays are a horror show. I assume you are some kind of tough hombre? Military?”

  “Former military,” I said, “so only a former tough hombre.”

  “Thank you for your service,” Dr. Quan said, the way sincere people do when they don’t know how else to thank a veteran, not realizing that the stock phrase sets up a kind of discouraging buffer between us and them, between a returned soldier and the world.

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Skellig, I’m not the one you have to convince to let you go.”

  Dr. Quan pointed to where Detective Delilah Groopman of the Los Angeles Police Department, Major Crimes, Pacific Division, leaned on the doorjamb, smiling at me and waggling her fingers, like a beauty queen. Foulmouthed, sexy, armed, scary smart, tough, and streetwise—that kind of beauty queen.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “Now, fuckwit, be nice,” she said.

  “Do I need a lawyer, Delilah?” I asked.

  “Considering the situation,” she said, “let’s go with Detective Groopman.”

  “Ah, crap.”

  “I’ve got other patients, so . . . ,” Dr. Quan said, pointing to the corridor, and who could blame her for wanting to get the hell out?

  “Dr. Quan? The guy who was in the ambulance with me?”

  Dr. Quan looked at Delilah for permission to speak, which answered my question.

  Delilah said, “Dead as God’s grampa.”

  I was in the middle of a homicide investigation.

  Dr. Quan patted me on the foot in an encouraging manner and left. Delilah poked around the end of my bed and then pushed the button that raised me so that we could speak eyeball to eyeball. I felt like my head was about to pop off my shoulders and roll down my chest to rest in my lap, which (knowing Delilah, and you will see that I do) is exactly the effect she was going for.

  As I drew leve
l with her, I could see that Delilah looked a little ragged. Puffy eyes, carrying maybe fifteen pounds more than the last time I saw her, but even so, carrying it well, a statuesque woman with blond hair and warm light-brown eyes, lines on her forehead from the effort of projecting herself into the mind-set of dumb-ass criminals all day every day. I hoped she wasn’t drinking again or getting jerked around by yet another shitbird from SWAT or, worse, Drug Enforcement.

  “You drinking again, Delilah?”

  “Oh, Skellig, aren’t you just the sweetest vanilla cupcake with shit frosting?”

  Hippocrates would categorize Delilah Groopman as Phlegmatic: ruled by snot (which, despite how it sounds, is not disgusting).

  I asked if I could borrow Delilah’s chewed-up pen and cop notebook. She watched as I found the first clean page and scribbled on it.

  “If that’s a confession, you gotta sign it.”

  “It’s a license plate.”

  I told Delilah about Chelsea Boots. I told her that he was African American, approximately thirty years old, sun-rusted surfer hair, a weed-packed cigarillo, and why I called him Chelsea Boots.

  “What the flickety-fuck are Chelsea boots and why the fuck shouldn’t a black man wear them if he wants?”

  “The Beatles wore them.”

  “Who cares about the Beatles? The Beatles are irrelevant. They all died fifty years ago.”

  “Chelsea boots are slip-on. They got elastic on the sides to hold them tight. This guy’s had bling on them.”

  “How’s about if you aren’t going to say anything worthwhile to me, have the decency to shut the fuck up?”

  Sometimes you just have to give people what they want. Especially cops. So I stopped talking. Delilah crumbled after thirty seconds of silence.

  “You’re implying that Mr. Beatle Boots is a possible person of interest?”

  “It’s worth checking out.”

  “Why did you enter the bar?”

  “To warn my client of impending danger.”

  “I don’t mean, ‘To what end did you enter the bar?’ I mean, ‘What caused you to enter the bar?’”

  “My client hadn’t paid me yet.”

  “You drove Avila around for thirty hours, so at your going rate that’s what? Thirty-six hundred bucks? If Avila’s a good tipper, count on another thousand in gratuities . . . say, five grand in total. Is that about right?”

  I nodded. It was like getting conked on the head with a log.

  “So your motive for entering the bar to save Bismarck Avila’s life was that you wanted to get paid?”

  “It makes me nervous, a cop using the word motive.”

  “If I ask you about where you took your client—were there any disagreements along the way? did he enjoy sexual relations with another man’s woman? that sort of thing—you gonna plead limo-driver privilege?”

  “Oasis Limo Services guarantees absolute discretion,” I said. “You get a warrant and I’ll provide you details of Bismarck Avila’s itinerary. But trust me, that’s a tree with no bark on it.”

  In fact, I’d driven Avila to half a dozen aboveground nightclubs (where he got TMZed and Instagrammed and Snapchatted and selfied and Twittered) but also to an underground sex club in Koreatown off Western.

  “Drugs?”

  “Nope. He drank about equal amounts of vodka, Red Bull, and coffee,” I told her. “At least in my limo. I have no idea what he did inside any of the destinations.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I didn’t go into the destinations with him because I was his driver, not a member of his entourage.”

  “How did you even know Avila was in danger? You said yourself, he was inside, you were outside, in the alley. The hitters entered through the front doors. You couldn’t see them.”

  “People started screaming—”

  “I have statements that you entered the bar before the hit men, so nobody was screaming yet.”

  “Not men. Boys. Teenagers.”

  “Don’t deflect, Skellig! What made you go in, knocking over kitchen staff and barbacks and leveling a bouncer?”

  Here’s the thing about Delilah. If she’s cursing you out, you’re fine. It’s when she starts asking questions that you remember what an excellent investigator she is, able to smell bullshit from three rooms over and two across.

  I wracked my brain for a possible answer that did not include crazy-man ghost voices in the wind.

  “The guy, Chelsea Boots. He made me suspicious.”

  “Because of his classic-rock footwear?”

  I told Delilah that his suit was too small—like it was stolen or borrowed—that he left his car running for the air-conditioning but the back doors were wide open and the car was pointed the wrong way in the one-way alley, set up for a fast getaway.

  “Chelsea Boots was the wheelman for the two hit . . . boys?”

  “They sure as hell weren’t going to escape on skateboards.”

  “They were skaters?”

  “They wore skateboard backpacks. The loops in the back were flapping.”

  “Decks are personalized and distinctive,” she said. “Like tattoos. Those boys were smart not to bring them along.”

  I told you Delilah was a good cop. Look what she got out of me that I didn’t even know I knew.

  “Decks?”

  “That’s what skateboarders call the board part they stand on,” she said. “The wheels they call trucks. You should concentrate more on current culture, what’s happening in the world today and less on what kind of shoes old bands your father likes wear on their fucking feet.”

  Insults and cursing. Much better than questions. I let myself relax slightly.

  “My dad is a Stones guy,” I said. “Not a Beatles guy.”

  “I have eyewitness statements that you prevented one of Bismarck Avila’s bodyguards from doing his job by taking his gun from him, which, in turn, led to him being killed.”

  “Delilah!”

  “Let’s stick with ‘Detective Groopman.’”

  “The bodyguard was already shot and on the ground when I borrowed his gun.”

  Delilah sighed. I sniffed her breath. Delilah is in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous and tried once to be a Scientologist but was declared a Suppressive when her auditor got too aggressive and ended up lying on the floor with one of the magic tin auditing cans jammed up his ass.

  Her breath smelled only of coffee.

  “I stumbled a week or so ago,” she said, catching me at it. “But I’m back working the program. But right now I have to ask you, Mr. Skellig, if you were in any way working with the shooters.”

  “I need my doctor.”

  Delilah crossed her eyes at me, then went to the door and waved. A moment later, Dr. Quan reappeared, chewing on an energy bar, hurriedly tucking the uneaten portion neatly into her lab coat pocket.

  “Dr. Quan, I am confused about what happened to me, the date, who is president, even my own identity, what I had for breakfast, plus I am in a great deal of pain.”

  Delilah grimaced at Dr. Quan and said, “He’s just tired of me asking him questions.”

  “Still, I have to ask you to postpone this interview, Detective,” Dr. Quan said.

  Delilah laughed, accepting my play with good grace. “I was done anyways. Have Connie get in touch and set a time when you feel well enough to answer a few more questions.”

  Connie is my lawyer and Delilah’s best friend, so now you’re caught up on why Delilah and I are on such familiar terms. You were probably thinking that it’s because I’m Known to Police, an Underworld Informant, a shitheel. Shame on you. Me killing that vicious dog in self-defense convinced you that I’m a shady guy despite my revealing my innermost thoughts in a full and frank manner.

  “Later, ’tater,” Delilah said. I waved.

 
Big mistake. I missed Delilah’s exit due to the jolts of blinding agony running through my head and down my spine.

  “Can I offer you something for the pain?” Dr. Quan asked.

  CLEAR SHALLOW WATER

  While I’m drugged and asleep, let me tell you about my old man. Hippocrates figured that why and how we do what we do is irrevocably attached to what particular bodily fluids dominate our character. My dad, Abel Skellig, may not be an ancient Greek alchemist, but he is something equally anachronistic (a cowboy), plus he’s a deep thinker who has his own take on people.

  When I was eleven and my brother, Brendan, was ten, my father worked as manager on a four-thousand-acre mixed-use ranch up in Big Sur called Rancho Pico Blanco, named for the most distinctive peak in the Santa Lucia mountains of Big Sur. The family who owns Pico Blanco deeded Mom and Dad a hundred of the best acres plus the house I grew up in along a dirt road off Old Highway One above the headwaters of Bixby Creek. Since the owners live in New York and San Francisco and Chicago, by any real measure Pico Blanco is Dad’s ranch.

  These days Mom is a state senator in Sacramento, which means my parents live apart much of the time, though it’s obvious (and baffling) that they are as in love now as they were when we all lived together like a normal family on the ranch and Mom commuted into the city of Monterey to teach school.

  When I was a boy I loved nothing more than when Dad asked me to help him ranch, because he was (and is) the most competent man I’ve ever met.

  So here we are (me eleven, Dad thirty-five), early spring, climbing from the floor of Bixby Canyon through the redwood groves, up, up, up to Serra Ridge on top of the world. Being a runty kid, I have to take twice as many steps as the old man, but when we start climbing the ridge, my father’s long legs lose their advantage.