The Driver

by Mark Dawson

  He stayed at the firm more than long enough for it to lose its lustre. Stuck in a rut. Law had been the easy decision out of school, cashing in his degree for the easy money despite the nagging suspicion that he would have been better satisfied doing something else: academia, perhaps, or something where he could write. And then he turned forty and he realised, with a blinding flash of self-awareness that was frightening in its certainty, that he was wasting his life. He quit the next day, called an old friend at Georgetown and asked him for a job.

  The man had obliged. He had been teaching the legislative process to keen young up-and-comers for three years when two very different offers came at the exact same time: the first was the offer of millions as a partner at a lobbying firm in Washington; the second was J.J. Robinson inviting him out to dinner.

  He had watched his old opponent’s career with a strange mixture of jealousy and relief that it wasn’t him. Robinson had run for the House of Representatives as a twenty-eight year old Republican but had been handily defeated by the incumbent. Instead, he had switched his target to the Attorney Generalship and, after defeating a host of minor opponents, he had been elected at the age of thirty. Two years later, he defeated the Democratic Governor of California and finally took the high office that he had always craved. He had managed to hold onto his youthful appearance, a fact that gave his opponents something to latch onto when they laid into him; he was routinely derided as the ‘Boy Governor’ and not to be taken seriously. He lost popularity over misjudged taxation and immigration policies and was ousted by his Democratic challenger after just one term of office. He licked his wounds in a lobbying practice for a short while before winning the governorship again, this time serving for ten years.

  Crawford had taken up his offer of dinner. He remembered the conversation. There had been some small talk, nothing consequential, until Robinson explained the reason for getting back in touch. He was forty-six now, a political veteran, and he was looking for a new challenge.

  He was running for President.

  And he wanted Crawford to be his Chief of Staff.

  THE BUS PULLED UP outside the campaign office and the entourage duly decamped. The office was the same as the other ones, all the way across the country. It was entirely generic. It didn’t seem to matter where they were, everything looked the same. There was some comfort to be had in that, Crawford thought. There was the usual clutch of pollsters working the phones, entering data into laptops, pecking at the platter of sandwiches from the deli around the corner, the cellophane wrapper still halfway across. Empty soda cans were stacked on desks. Some wore headphones, nodding their heads to the music that seeped out. Crawford knew some of them from the convention last year but most were new recruits, drawn into the candidate’s orbit by the tractor beam of his charisma, offering their time for free.

  He saw Sidney Packard standing to one side, a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and his phone in the other. It was pressed to his ear and he had an expression of deep concentration on his face. Packard was older, bald-headed and wrinkled, and, when he moved, his limbs flowed with a lazy confidence. He had been in the police before and, before that, there was talk of the army. He was head of the security detail and he had been working with the Governor for the last ten years. It was an interesting job. Crawford watched him speaking and, eventually, the other man noticed that he was looking at him and gave him a single, curt nod. Crawford interpreted that as good news, went to the nearest platter of sandwiches and loaded up a plate.

  The radio crew had already set up their gear in the conference room and so Crawford went looking for the Governor. He opened the door to the bathroom and there he was; he was buttoning his shirt and fastening his belt. He recognised the young staffer, too. She was adjusting her clothes in the stall behind the Governor.

  “I’m sorry,” Crawford said.

  The woman seemed confused. Robinson drew her out and put his arm around her. “This is Karly Hammil,” he said. “She’s working for us now.”

  “Yes,” Crawford replied. “I know. I hired her. Hello, Karly.”

  She seemed to brace herself against the washbasin and just about managed a shy smile, an attempt to maintain the appearance of propriety that was redundant in the circumstances. Robinson, on the other hand, did not appear to have the capability of being embarrassed. It was as if he had just come out of the stall after using the toilet. Nothing unusual. Nothing out of order. It was an act he had, no doubt, perfected over many years. My God, Crawford thought, there had been plenty of practice. He had seen that shit-eating grin many times since he had started working for him.

  “Well, then,” Robinson said. “We ready?”

  “We are,” Crawford said.

  Robinson winked at Crawford as he stepped outside and moved over towards the food.

  Crawford followed behind him.

  “You can’t keep doing this,” he said, and the note of resignation he heard in his voice made him feel even more pathetic.

  “Relax.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “No lectures today, Arlen.”

  “If just one of them tells their story, you do know what’ll happen, right? You do understand?”

  “Arlen––”

  “I’m just checking because I don’t think you’ve thought about it.”

  “No-one’s saying anything, are they?”

  He bit his lip. “If they did that’ll be the end of it for you. End of the road. That kind of thing––Jack, I’m telling you, you need to listen to me. This isn’t the 60s. You’re not JFK.”

  “Not yet.”

  Arlen clenched his teeth; the man was infuriating. “It’s toxic,” he protested.

  Robinson took Crawford’s right hand in his and squeezed it tight. Depending on his mood and what was required, the Governor had several ways of shaking hands. He might place his left hand by the elbow or up around the biceps or take your hand in both of his. That meant that he was especially interested, underscoring a greeting and making the recipient feel as if they were the most important person in the room. Other times, he would squeeze the shoulder or, for those he really wanted to bring within the dazzling aura of his personality, he might loop the arm across the shoulders and bring them in for a hug. He did this now, releasing Crawford’s hand, draping his arm around his shoulders and squeezing him tight.

  “I’m keeping a lid on it,” he said. “You need to stop worrying. You’ll get an ulcer.”

  Crawford felt like sighing at the sheer boring predictability of it and the frustration that despite it all––despite increasingly doom-laden warnings of what would happen to the campaign if any of his indiscretions were to be aired in public––that the Governor would just not listen to him.

  9

  MILTON DROVE BACK to Belvedere. It was a little after eight as he drove the Explorer out of the city, heading north out of the Mission District until he picked up the 101 and then passed through Presidio. He paid more attention this time, orientating himself properly and memorising as much of the landscape as he could. Newly formed whitish fog filtered through the harp strings of the Bridge and then puffed out its chest as though pleased with its dramatic entrance; its only applause was the regular blare of the two foghorns, the lapping of the waves as they disappeared under the silent mass and the constant hum of the traffic. He passed turnoffs for Kirby Cove Campground and the Presidio Yacht Club, continued on after Southview Park and Martin Luther King Jr Park, the big cemetery at Fernwood and then, as he turned east and then back south, Richardson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and McKegney Field with the placid waters of Richardson Bay off to the west. The darkness, and the fog––deep and thick––reduced visibility to a handful of yards. Milton drove carefully.

  The price of living down here on the coast was high but the benefits were valuable, too: clean air, untamed beauty and, weather allowing, incredible views. If that was the kind of thing you wanted, you would be hard-pressed to find a better example of it a
nywhere on this side of the continent.

  Milton had done a little internet research before setting out. Pine Shore was governed by a residents’ association, with an executive board that was elected from residents who became eligible after living in the area for ten years. The presidency of the board had transferred over the years from Vera Schulman, a lawyer, to Pauline Bridges, an artist, to, most recently, Harvey Dell, another lawyer. It was a precarious kind of place. The thirty houses had been built on land that did not belong to the residents. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a Presbyterian pastor named Peter Rogers Casey had negotiated a seventy-year lease from the nearby town of Tiburon, which owned the land of Pine Shore. The original purpose was to build a retreat for sailors who had fallen upon hard times. Those plans grew and the months passed and, soon afterwards, the pastor’s flock constructed a community building that was sufficient to seat five-hundred people. Five years later and Tiburon was persuaded to grant a ten-year lease to the Pine Shore Residents’ Association. In return for two hundred dollars a year, they would be permitted to build houses on the land. The lease had been renewed throughout the years, each extension for another ten years and each, as it neared its expiry, carrying the threat that the townsfolk would exorcise their perpetual jealousy of the people who made their homes there and the city dwellers who made the place their summer retreat, and either inflate the rent to uneconomic amounts or refuse to renew it. That kind of tenuous year-to-year existence could only be tolerated by a small slice of the population and, as a result, you would only find a particular kind of person in Pine Shore: very rich, upper middle-class, usually white. It also generated something of a siege mentality.

  Milton turned off the coast road and continued to the gate. The radio was on and tuned in to a talk radio channel; the presenter was speaking to one of the candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidential election. He sat for a moment, half listening to the conversation: immigration, how big government was wrong, taxation. The man had a deep, mellifluous voice, accented with a lazy West Coast drawl. Milton had heard of him before: the Governor of California, seen as a front-runner in the race. Milton had little time for politicians but this one was convincing enough.

  He counter-clockwised the dial to switch the radio off, lowered the window and entered the code that Madison had given him last night.

  2-0-1-1.

  The final number elicited a buzz and the gate remained closed.

  The code had been changed.

  Milton looked at the gate and the community beyond and thought. Why had it been changed? He tried the combination a second time and, as the keypad buzzed at him again, he noticed the dark black eye of a CCTV camera pointed at him from the gatehouse. He hadn’t noticed that being there last night.

  He put the car into reverse and the camera jerked up and swivelled as it tracked him. He turned around and drove slowly back down the drive until he was around the corner and out of sight. He killed the lights and then the engine and reached into the back for the black denim jacket he had stuffed into the footwell. He had a pair of leather gloves in the glove compartment and he put them into the pockets of the jacket. He took the S&W 9mm that he had confiscated from the guard outside the house and slipped it into the waistband of his jeans. He put the jacket on, opened the door and, keeping within the margin of the vegetation at the side of the road, made his way back towards the gate again.

  About fifteen yards from the gate, a wooden pole carried the high tension power cabling from the substation into the estate. Three large cylindrical transformers were rigged to the pole, twenty feet in the air, and the wire crossed over to a corresponding pole on the other side of the wall. From there, individual wires delivered the current to the houses. Milton took out the S&W and racked a bullet into the chamber. There were better ways to disable a power supply––Mylar balloons filled with helium would have shorted it out very nicely––but he was working on short notice and this would have to do. He took aim at the ceramic insulators that held the wire onto the pole. It was a difficult shot: the insulators were small targets at reasonable distance, it was dark and the fog was dense. He fired, once, but the shot missed. He re-sighted the target, braced his right wrist with his left hand and fired again. The insulator shattered and the wire, sparks scattering into the gloom, swept down to earth in a graceful arc.

  The light above the gate went out.

  Milton cut into a dense copse of young fir that crowded close to the left of the road and, using it as cover, moved carefully to the wall. It was made of brick and topped with iron spikes. He reached up and dabbed a finger against the top, feeling for broken glass or anti-climb paint. All he could feel was the rough surface of the brick. Satisfied, he wrapped each gloved hand around a spike and, using them for leverage, hauled himself up, his feet scrabbling for purchase. He got his right foot onto the lip of the wall and boosted himself up until he was balancing atop it. The vantage offered an excellent view of the community beyond. He could see half a dozen big houses in the immediate vicinity and, as the road turned away to the east, the glow of others. There was no-one in sight. He stepped carefully over the spikes and lowered himself down.

  The big house where the party had been held was quiet. All the windows were dark. Milton moved stealthily into the cover of a tree and, pressing himself against it, scoped out the road. It was empty in both directions. There was no-one visible anywhere. He ran quickly across, vaulting the low fence and making his way through the large garden to the back of the house. He remembered the layout from the quick glimpse through the window last night: the T-shaped swimming pool with the underwater lamps; the series of terraces on different levels; trees and bushes planted with architectural precision; the fire pit; the dark, fogged waters of the bay. A redwood platform abutted the house here, a sheer drop down the cliff to the rocks below on the right-hand side. The surf boomed below, crashing against the cliff, and the air was damp with salty moisture.

  Milton followed the platform.

  He pressed himself against the back wall and risked a glance through the windows. The living room beyond was very different now from how it had been the previous night. It was empty. The furniture had been returned to more usual positions around the room. The DJ equipment was gone. The bar, which had been strewn with bottles and glasses, was pristine. The salvers of cocaine that had been so ostentatiously left on the tables had been removed. The room was cool and dark and quiet. The windows were still open a little at the tops and the curtains shivered in and out on each breath of wind, the only movement that Milton could see.

  It was as if the party had never even happened.

  Milton flitted quickly across the window to a door that was set into a long extension that had been built across one side of the house. He tried the door. It was locked. Taking off his gloves, he took a pair of paperclips from his pocket and bent them into shape. He slid one into the lower portion of the keyhole, used it to determine which way the cylinder turned, applied light tension and then slid the other clip into the upper part of the keyhole and felt for the pins. He pressed up and felt the individual pins with the tip of the clip, finding the stiffest one and pushing it up and out of the cylinder. He repeated the trick for the remaining four pins, adjusting the torque for each. He turned the cylinder all the way around and the door unlocked.

  Milton scrubbed the lock with the sleeve of his shirt, put the gloves back onto his hands and went inside. It was a utility room. He closed the door behind him, leaving it unlocked, and then paused for a moment, listening carefully. He could hear nothing. He was confident that the house was empty. He walked quickly into a huge kitchen with wide windows, then a hallway, then into the living room. It was gloomy, but there was just enough suffused moonlight from outside for him to see his way. He checked the downstairs quickly and efficiently. There was another formal living room with a large, carved stone mantel. A secret doorway in the bookshelves led to a speakeasy-style wet bar. The dining room looked like it was being
used as a conference room, with a speakerphone in the middle of the table and videoconferencing equipment at the other. A spiral staircase led down to a wine cellar that had been built around crouching monk corbels that had been turned into light fittings; there were hundreds of bottles, thousands of dollars’ worth of wine, but nothing of any obvious interest.

  He found the stairs and climbed to the first floor. There were four bedrooms, all with en-suite bathrooms. He climbed again to the second floor: three more bedrooms, all enormous. He searched them all quickly and expertly. There were no clothes in the closets and no products in the bathrooms. No signs of habitation at all.

  It looked as if the house was vacant.

  Distantly, down the stairwell, two storeys below, Milton heard the sound of the front door opening.

  He froze.

  Footsteps clicked across the wooden floor.

  “Power’s out,” the voice said.

  “The fuck?”

  “Whole road from the look of things.”

  “Place like this, millions of dollars, and they lose the power?”

  “Shit happens.”

  “You say so.”

  “I do.”

  “You got a flashlight?”

  “Here.”

  There was a quiet click.

  “You know this is a waste of time.”

  “It’s gotta get done.”