The Driver (4 page)

Milton heard the growl of several motorcycle engines. Four sets of lights blasted around the corner, powerful headlamps that sliced through the fog. He turned and looked into the glare of the high beams. The shape of the bikes suggested big Harleys. The riders slotted the hogs in along the side of the road. The engines were killed, one by one, but the headlights were left burning.

A car rolled up alongside them. It was difficult to make it out for sure but it looked like an old Cadillac.

He got back into the Explorer and drove slowly up the road after Madison. It was poorly lit, with dense bushes on the left. He couldn’t see where she had gone. He dialled the number she had used to book him earlier. There was no answer.

Another set of headlights flicked on behind him, flashing across the rear-view mirror. The town car from before had pulled out of the driveway to the party house. Milton redialled the number as he watched its red taillights disappear into the fog, swerving away behind the shoulder of dark trees at the side of the road.

He turned around and went through the gate in case she had doubled back and tried to make her way back up towards West Shore Road. The vegetation was dark and thick to either side, no light, no sign of anyone or anything. No sign of her anywhere. He parked. After five minutes, he heard the engines of the four motorbikes and watched as they looped around in a tight turn and roared away, heading back out towards the road, passing him one after the other and then accelerating sharply. The Cadillac followed. Five minutes after that he heard the siren of a cop car. He slid down in the seat, his head beneath the line of the window. The cruiser turned through the gate and rolled towards the house. He waited for the cruiser to come to a stop and then, with his lights off, he drove away. He had already taken more risks than was prudent. The cops would be able to help her more than he could and he didn’t want to be noticed out here.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t feel bad.

He flicked the lights on and accelerated gently away.

4

MILTON STIRRED AT twelve the next day. His first waking thought was of the girl. He had called her cell several times on the way back to the city but he had been dumped straight to voicemail. After that he had driven home in silence. He didn’t know her at all and yet he was terribly worried. He made his bed, pulling the sheets tight and folding them so that it was as neat as he could make it, a hang-up from a decade spent in the army. When he was done he stared out of the window of his room into the seemingly never-ending shroud of fog in the street beyond. He feared that something dreadful had happened.

His apartment had a shared bathroom and he waited until it was unoccupied and then showered in the lukewarm water. He ran his right hand down the left-hand side of his body, feeling for the broken ribs that he had suffered after Santa Muerte had stomped him in the dust and dirt outside Juárez. There had been no time to visit a doctor to fix them but they had healed well enough. It was just another fracture that hadn’t been dealt with properly and he had lost count of the number of times that that had happened. He took his razor and shaved, looking at his reflection in the steamy mirror. He had short dark hair with a little grey. There was a scar on his face, running horizontally from his ear lobe, across his cheek, and terminating just below his right nostril. He was even-featured although there was something ‘hard’ about his looks. He looked almost swarthy in certain lights and, now that he had shaved away the untidy beard that he had sported while he travelled north through South America, his clean, square, sharply defined jaw line was exposed.

His day work was physically demanding and hefting the weighty boxes from the depot into the back of the truck had been good for his physique. His old muscle tone was back and he felt better than he had for months. The tan he had acquired while he was in South America had faded in the grey autumnal gloom and the tattoo of angel’s wings on his back and neck stood out more clearly now that his skin was paler. He dried himself and dressed in jeans and a work shirt, locked the door and left the building.

TOP NOTCH BURGER was a one room restaurant at the corner of Hyde and O’Farrell. Milton had found it during his exploration of the city after he had taken his room at the El Capitan. It was a small place, squeezed between a hair salon and a shoe shop, with frosted windows identified only by the single word BURGER. Inside, the furniture was mismatched and often broken, the misspelt menu was chalked up on a blackboard and hygiene looked as if it was an afterthought. The chef was a large African-American called Julius and, as Milton had discovered, he was a bona fide genius when it came to burgers. He came in every day for his lunch, sometimes taking the paper bag with his burger and fries and eating it in his car on the way to Mr. Freeze and, on other occasions, if he had the time, he would eat it in the restaurant. There was rarely anyone else in the place at the same time and Milton liked that; he listened to the gospel music that Julius played through the cheap Sony stereo on a shelf above his griddle, sometimes read his book, sometimes just watched the way the man expertly prepared the food.

“Afternoon, John,” Julius said as he shut the door behind him.

“How’s it going?”

“Going good,” he said. “What can I get for you? The usual?”

“Please.”

Milton almost always had the same thing: bacon and cheddar on an aged beef pattie in a sourdough bun, bone marrow, cucumber pickles, caramelized onions, horseradish aioli, a bag of double-cooked fries and a bottle of ginger beer.

He was getting ready to leave when his phone rang.

He stopped, staring as the phone vibrated on the table.

No-one ever called him at this time of day.

“Hello?”

“My name’s Trip Macklemore.”

“Do I know you?”

“Who are you?”

Milton paused, his natural caution imposing itself. “My name’s John,” he said carefully. “John Smith. What can I do for you?”

“You’re a taxi driver?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you drive Madison Clarke last night?”

“I drove a Madison. She didn’t tell me her second name. How do you know that?”

“She texted me your number. Her usual driver wasn’t there, right?”

“So she said. How do you know her?”

“I’m her boyfriend.”

Milton swapped the phone to his other ear. “She hasn’t come home?”

“No. That’s why I’m calling.”

“And that’s unusual for her?”

“Very. Did anything happen last night?”

Milton paused uncomfortably. “How much do you know––”

“About what she does?” he interrupted impatiently. “I know everything so you don’t need to worry about hurting my feelings. Look––I’ve been worried sick about her. Could we meet?”

Milton drummed his fingers against the table.

“Mr. Smith?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Can we meet? Please. I’d like to talk to you.”

“Of course.”

“This afternoon?”

“I’m working.”

“After that? When you’re through?”

“Sure.”

“Do you know Mulligan’s? Green and Webster.”

“I can find it.”

“What time?”

Milton said he would see him at six. He ended the call, gave Julius ten bucks and stepped into the foggy street outside.

THE BUSINESS had its depot in Bayview. It was located in an area of warehouses, a series of concrete boxes with electricity and telephone wires strung overhead and cars and trucks parked haphazardly outside. Milton parked the Explorer in the first space he could find and walked the short distance to Wallace Avenue. Mr. Freeze’s building was on a corner, a two-storey box with two lines of windows and a double-height roller door through which the trucks rolled to be loaded with the ice they would deliver all around the Bay area. Milton went in through the side door, went to the locker room and changed into the blue overalls with the corporate logo––a block of motion-blurred ice––embroidered on the left lapel. He changed his Timberlands for a pair of steel-capped work boots and went to collect his truck from the line that was arranged in front of the warehouse.

He swung out into the road and then backed into the loading bay. He saw Vassily, the boss, as he went around to the big industrial freezer. His docket was fixed to the door: bags of ice to deliver to half a dozen restaurants in Fisherman’s Wharf and an ice sculpture to a hotel in Presidio. He yanked down the big handle and muscled the heavy freezer door open. The cold hit him at once, just like always, a numbing throb that would sink into the bones and remain there all day if you stayed inside too long. Milton picked up the first big bag of ice and carried it to the truck. It, too, was refrigerated and he slung it into the back to be arranged for transport when he had loaded them all. There were another twenty bags and by the time he had finished carrying them into the truck his biceps, the inside of his forearms and his chest were cold from where he had hugged the ice. He stacked the bags in three neat rows and went back into the freezer. He just had the ice sculpture left to move. It was of a dolphin, curled as if it was leaping through the air. It was five feet high and set on a heavy plinth. Vassily paid a guy fifty bucks for each sculpture and sold them for three hundred. It was, as he said, “a big ticket item.”

Milton couldn’t keep his mind off what had happened last night. He kept replaying it all: the house, the party, the girl’s blind panic, the town car that only just arrived before it had pulled away, the motorcycles, the Cadillac. Was there anything else he could have done? He was embarrassed that he had let her get away from him so easily when it was so obvious that she needed help. She wasn’t his responsibility. He knew that she was an adult, but he also knew he would blame himself if anything had happened to her.

He pressed his fingers beneath the plinth and, bending his knees and straining his arms and thighs, he hefted the sculpture into the air, balancing it against his shoulder. It was heavy, surely two hundred pounds, and it was all he could manage to get it off the floor. He turned around and started forwards, his fingers straining and the muscles in his arms and shoulders burning from the effort.

He thought about the call from her boyfriend and the meeting that they had scheduled. He would tell him exactly what had happened. Maybe he would know something. Maybe Milton could help him find her.

He made his way to the door of the freezer. The unit had a raised lip and Milton was distracted; he forgot that it was there and stubbed the toe of his right foot against it. The sudden surprise unbalanced him and he caught his left boot on the lip too as he stumbled over it. The sculpture tipped away from his body and even as Milton tried to follow after it, trying to bring his right arm up to corral it, he knew there was nothing he could do. The sculpture tipped forwards faster and faster and then he dropped it completely. It fell to the concrete floor of the depot, shattering into a million tiny pieces.

Even in the noisy depot, the noise was loud and shocking. There was a moment of silence before some of the others started to clap, others whooping sardonically. Milton stood with the glistening fragments spread around him, helpless. He felt the colour rising in his cheeks.

Vassily came out of the office.

“What the fuck, John?”

“Sorry.”

“What happened?”

“I tripped. Dropped it.”

“I can see that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You already said that. It’s not going to put it back together again, is it?”

“I was distracted.”

“I don’t pay you to be distracted.”

“No, you don’t. I’m sorry, Vassily. It won’t happen again.”

“It’s coming out of your wages. Three hundred bucks.”

“Come on, Vassily. It doesn’t cost you that.”

“No, but that’s money I’m going to have to pay back. Three hundred. If you don’t like it, you know where to find the door.”

Milton felt the old, familiar flare of anger. Five years ago, he would not have been able to hold it all in. His fists clenched and unclenched but he remembered what he had learnt in the rooms––that there were some things that you just couldn’t control, and that there was no point in worrying about them––and, with that in mind, the flames flickered and died. It was better that way. Better for Vassily. Better for him.

“Fine,” he said. “That’s fine. You’re right.”

“Clean it up,” Vassily snapped, stabbing an angry finger at the mess on the floor, “and then get that ice delivered. You’re going to be late.”

5

MILTON DROVE the Explorer back across town and arrived ten minutes early for his appointment at six with Trip Macklemore. Mulligan’s was at 330 Townsend Street. There was a small park opposite the entrance and he found a bench that offered an uninterrupted view. He put the girl’s rucksack on the ground next to his feet, picked up a discarded copy of the
Chronicle
and watched the comings and goings. The fog had lifted a little during the afternoon but it looked as if it was going to thicken again for the evening. He didn’t know what Trip looked like but he guessed the anxious-looking young man who arrived three minutes before they were due to meet was as good a candidate as any. Milton waited for another five minutes, watching the street. There was no sign that Trip had been followed and none that any surveillance had been set up. The people looking for him were good, but that had been Milton’s job for ten years, too, and he was confident that they would not be able to hide from him. He had taught most of them, after all. Satisfied, he got up, dropped the newspaper into the trash can next to the seat, collected the rucksack, crossed the road and went inside.

The man he had seen coming inside was waiting at a table. Milton scanned the bar; it was a reflex action, drilled into him by long experience and reinforced by several occasions where advance planning had saved his life. He noted the exits and the other customers. It was early and the place was quiet. Milton liked that. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

He allowed himself to relax a little and approached. “Mr. Macklemore?”