He remembered catching her as she fell-and then, for a long time, not much else.
Gang business, the police would tell him later. Some sort of territorial dispute, we think.
Irina died just after four a.m.
Driver having no legal rights, Benicio got shipped off to grandparents in Mexico City. For a year or more he’d write the boy every week, and Benicio would send back drawings. He’d put them up on the refrigerator of whatever apartment he was living in, if it had a refrigerator. For a while there he kept on the hop, moving cribs every month or two, old Hollywood to Echo Park to Silverlake, thinking that might help. Time went by, which is what time does, what it is. Then one day it came to him how long it had been since he’d heard from the boy. He tried calling, but the number was out of service.
Hating to be alone, to face empty apartments and the day’s gapping hours, Driver kept busy. Took everything that came his way and went looking for more. Even had a speaking part in one movie when, half an hour into the shoot, a bit player grew ill.
The director ran it down for him.
“You pull in and this guy’s standing there. You shake your head, like you’re feeling sorry for him, this poor sonofabitch, and you get out of the car, leaning back against the door. ‘Your call,’ you tell him. Got it?”
Driver nodded.
“That just goddamn dripped with menace,” the director said later when they broke for lunch. “Two words- just two fucking words! It was beautiful. You should think seriously about doing more.”
He did, but not the way the director meant.
Standard used to hang out a lot at a bar called Buffalo Diner just off Broadway in downtown L.A. Food hadn’t been served there since Nixon’s reign, but the name survived, as did, in patches, the chalk in which the last menu had been put up on a blackboard above the bar. So Driver started being there afternoons. Strike up conversations, stand a few drinks, mention he was a friend of Standard’s, ask if they knew anyone looking for a first-rate driver. By the second week he’d become a regular, knew the rest of them by name, and had more work than he could handle.
Meanwhile, as he began turning down shoots, and went on turning them down, offers declined.
“What am I supposed to tell these people?” Jimmie said the first few times.
Within weeks he shifted to: “They want the best. That’s what they keep telling me.” Even the Italian guy with all the forehead creases and warts had been calling, he said-in person, not just through some secretary or handler. In goddamn person.
“Look,” Jimmie’s penultimate message said. By this time Driver had stopped answering the phone. “I have to figure you’re alive but I’m starting not to give half a goddamn, if you know what I mean. What I’m telling people is I seem to have acquired a second asshole.”
His last message said: “Been fun, kid, but I just lost your number.”
Chapter Nineteen
From a phone booth Driver called the number on the coupons. The phone rang and rang at the other end- after all, it was still early. Whoever finally answered was adamant, as adamant as one could be in dodgy English, that Nino’s was not open and please he would have to call back after eleven please.
“I could do that,” Driver said, “but it’s possible your boss won’t be happy when he finds you’ve kept him waiting.”
Too big a mouthful, apparently.
“It’s also possible that you could pass me along to someone whose English is a tad better.”
A homeless man went by on the street outside pushing a shopping cart piled high. Driver thought again of Sammy and his mule cart laden with things no one wanted.
A new voice came on. “Can I be of service, sir?”
“I hope so. Seems I find myself in possession of something that’s not mine.”
“And that would be…?”
“Close to a quarter of a million dollars.”
“Please hold, sir.”
Within moments a heavy, chesty voice came on the line.
“Nino here. Who the fuck’s there. Dino says you have something of mine?”
Nino and Dino? “So I have reason to believe.”
“Yeah, well, lots of people have stuff of mine. I got a lot of stuff. What was your name again?”
“I’d just as soon keep it. I’ve had it a long time.”
“Why the hell not? I don’t need no more names either.” He turned away. “I’m on the fuckin’ phone here, you can’t see that?” Then back: “So what’s the deal?”
“Recently I had some business with a man from out your way driving a Crown Vic.”
“It’s a popular car.”
“It is. What I wanted to let you know is that he won’t be doing any more business. Nor will Strong and Blanche. Or two gentlemen who checked out for the last time, though it wasn’t their room, at a Motel 6 north of Phoenix.”
“Phoenix is a hard town.”
Driver could hear the man breathing there at the end of the line.
“What are you, some kind of fuckin’ army?”
“I drive. That’s what I do. All I do.”
“Yeah. Well, I’ve gotta tell you, it’s sounding to me like sometimes you give a little extra value for the money, if you know what I mean.”
“We’re professionals. People make deals, they need to stick to them. That’s the way it works, if it’s going to work at all.”
“My old man used to say the same thing.”
“I haven’t counted, but Blanche told me there’s something over two hundred grand in the bag.”
“There damn well better be. And you’re telling me this because?”
“Because it’s your money and your bag. Say the word, both can be at your door within the hour.”
Driver heard something fizzy and sinuous, Sinatra maybe, playing in the background.
“You’re not very good at this, are you?”
“At what I do, I’m the best. This isn’t what I do.”
“I can go with that. So what do you get out of it?”
“Just that: out of it. Once the money’s in your hands, we’re even. You forget Cook and his Crown Vic, forget the goons at that Motel 6, forget we’ve ever had this conversation. No one steps up to me a week from now, or a month from now, with your regards.”
Silence beat its way down the line. Music started up again at the far end.
“What if I refuse?” Nino said.
“Why would you? You have nothing to lose and a quarter of a million to gain.”
“Good point.”
“We have a deal, then?”
“We have a deal. Within the hour…?”
“Right. Just remember what your old man said.”
Chapter Twenty
Doc threw sponges, swabs, syringes and gloves into a plastic bucket produced to fit against floorboards and serve as a wastebasket for cars. Hey, he lived in a garage, right? Lived on an island, he’d use coconut shells. No problem.
