Текст книги "The Driver"

Автор книги: Mark Dawson

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

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?”

“Mr. Smith?”

“That’s right. But you can call me John.”

“Can I get you a beer?”

“That’s alright. I don’t drink.”

“Something else?”

“That’s alright – I’m fine.”

“You don’t mind if I do?”

“No. Of course not.”

The boy went to the bar and Milton checked him out. He guessed he was in his early-twenties. He had a fresh complexion that made him look even younger and a leonine aspect, with a high clear brow and plenty of soft black curls eddying over his ears and along his collar. He had a compact, powerful build. A good looking boy with a healthy colour to his skin. Milton guessed he worked outside, a trade that involved plenty of physical work. He was nervous, fingering the edge of his wallet as he tried to get the bartender’s attention.

“Thanks for coming,” he said when he came back with his beer.

“No problem.”

“You mind me asking – that accent?”

“I’m English.”

“That’s what I thought. What are you doing in San Francisco?”

Milton had no wish to get into a discussion about that. “Working,” he said, closing it off.

Trip put his thumb and forefinger around the neck of the bottle and drank.

“So,” Milton said, “shall we talk about Madison?

“Yes.”

“She hasn’t come back?”

“No. And I’m starting to get worried about it. Like – seriously worried. I was going to give it until ten and then call the police.”

“She’s never done this before?”

“Been out of touch as long as this?” The boy shook his head. “No. Never.”

“When did you see her last?”

“Last night. We went to see an early movie. It finished at eightish, she said she was going out to work and so I kissed her goodnight and went home.”

“She seemed alright to you?”

“Same as ever. Normal.”

“And you’ve tried to call her?”

“Course I have, man. Dozens of times. I got voicemail first of all but now I don’t even get that. The phone’s been shut off. That’s when I really started to worry. She’s never done that before. She gave me your number last night—”

“Why did she do that?”

“She’s careful when she’s working. She didn’t know you.”

Milton was as sure as he could be that Trip was telling the truth.

The boy drank off half of his beer and placed the bottle on the table. “Where did you take her?”

“Up to Belvedere. Do you know it?”

“Not really.”

“There’s a gated community up there. She said she’d been up there before.”

“She’s never mentioned it.”

“There’s a couple of dozen houses. Big places. Plenty of money. There was a party there. A big house just inside the gate. She didn’t tell you about it?”

He shook his head. “She never told me anything. Can’t say it’s something I really want to know about, really, so I never ask. I don’t like her doing it but she’s making money, thousand bucks a night, sometimes – what am I gonna do about that? She makes more in a night than I make in two weeks.”

“Doing what?”

“I work for the electric company – fix power lines, maintenance, that kind of thing.”

“What does she do with the money?”

“She saves it.”

“She have a kid?”

“No,” he said.

Milton nodded to himself: suckered.

“She’s saving as much as she can so she can write. That’s her dream. I suppose I could ask her to stop but I don’t think she’d pay much attention. She’s strong-willed, Mr. Smith. You probably saw that.”

“I did.”

“And, anyway, it’s only going to be a temporary thing – just until she’s got the money she needs.” He took another swig from the bottle. Milton noticed his hands were shaking. “What happened?”

“I dropped her off and then I waited for her to finish.”

“And?”

“And then I heard a scream.”

“Her?”

“Yes. I went inside to get her.” He paused, wondering how much he should tell the boy. He didn’t want to frighten him more than he was already frightened but he figured he needed to know everything. “She was in a state,” he continued. “She looked terrified. She was out of it, too. Wouldn’t speak to me. I don’t even know if she saw me.”

“Out of it? What does that mean?”

“She ever do drugs?”

“No way,” Trip said. “Never.”

“That’s what she told me, too.” Milton frowned. “I went in to see her and, look, if I had to say I’d say one way or another then I’d say she was definitely on something. She said everyone was trying to kill her. Very paranoid. Her eyes wouldn’t focus and she wasn’t making any sense. I’m not a expert, Trip, I’m not a doctor, but if you asked me to testify to it I’d say she was definitely on something.”

“Maybe her drink was spiked?”

“Maybe,” Milton said. But maybe not. He thought it was more likely that she was doing drugs. A job like that? Milton had helped a girl in the Balkans once during the troubles over there and she had worked up a ferocious heroin habit. The way she had explained it, she’d needed something to deaden herself to the things she had to do to stay alive and that had been as good as anything else. And Madison had kept the details of her hooking away from Trip, so wasn’t it likely that she’d keep this from him, too? Didn’t it stand to reason? No sense in pushing that now, though.

“What happened after that?”

“She ran. I went after her but she was too quick for me and, to be honest, I’m not sure what I would’ve done if I’d caught her anyway. I got in the car and drove up and down but there wasn’t any sign of her. I called her cell but didn’t get anywhere. In the end, I waited as long as I could and then I came back. I was hoping she might have found her way home.”

Trip blanched with worry. “Fuck.”

“Don’t panic,” he said, calmly. “It’s only been a day. There might be a reason for it.”

“I don’t think so. Something’s wrong.”

Milton said nothing. He pushed Madison’s rucksack along the floor with his foot. “Here,” he said. “She left this in the car. You better take it.”

He picked up the bag, put it on his lap, opened it and idly picked out the things inside: her book, the bottle of vodka, her purse. “What do I do now?”

“That’s up to you. If it was me, I wouldn’t wait to call the police. I’d do it now—”

“—but you said.”

“I know, and the chances are that there’s a perfectly good explanation for what’s happened. She’ll come home and you’ll just have to explain to them that it was a false alarm. They won’t mind – happens all the time. But if something is wrong, if she is in trouble, the sooner you get the police onto it the better it’s likely to be.”

“How do I do that? Just call them?”

“Better to go in.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding vigorously. “I’ll go in.”

“You want some backup?”

“What – you’ll come too?”

“If you like.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said, although his relief was palpable.

It was the right thing to do. The way he saw it, they would want to speak to him and it would save time if he was there at the same time. It would show willing, too; Milton was a little anxious that there might be questions about him driving a prostitute to a job and he thought it would be better to front it up right from the start. He would deny that he knew what was going on – which was true, at least up to a point – and hope for the best. And, he thought, the boy was becoming increasingly anxious. He thought he might appreciate a little moral support.

“Come on,” he said. “You drive here?”

“I don’t have a car. I got the bus.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

6

They were met in the reception area by a uniformed cop who introduced himself as Officer Francis. He was an older man with the look of a long-standing veteran. His hair was shot through with streaks of grey, his face was creased with lines and he sat down with a sigh of contentment that said that he was glad to be off his feet. He wasn’t the most vigorous officer that Milton had ever seen but he wasn’t surprised by that: with something like this, why waste the time of a more effective man? No, they would send out one of the older guys, a time-server close to his pension, someone who would listen politely and give them the impression that they had been given the attention that they thought their problem deserved and then he would send them on their way.

“You’re Mr. Macklemore?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re the boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

“And you, sir?”

“John Smith.”

“How are you involved in this?”

“I’m a taxi driver. I dropped Madison off last night.”

“You know Mr. Macklemore?”

“We just met.”

“So you’re here why?”

“I’d like to help. I was one of the last people to see Madison.”

“I see.” He nodded. “Alright, then, Mr. Macklemore. Why don’t you tell me what’s happened and then we can work out what to do next.”

Trip told the story again and Detective Francis listened quietly, occasionally noting down a detail in a notebook that he took from his breast pocket. When Trip was finished Francis asked Milton a few questions: how had Madison seemed to him? Did he have any idea why she had run off the way she did? Milton answered them all honestly.

“You know she was hooking?”

“I didn’t,” Milton said.

“Really?”

“No. I didn’t. Not until we got there. It was just another job for me. I know the law, detective.”

“And you’ve come here without being asked,” he said, pursing his lips.

“Of course. I’d like to be helpful.”

“Fair enough. I’m happy with that. What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it was, she was frightened.”

“Who’s party was it?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that.”

“A lot of rich folks up there,” Francis mused. “I can remember when you could buy a place with a nice view of the Bay for a hundred grand. You wouldn’t get an outhouse up there for that these days. Plenty of the tech guys have moved in. Driven up the prices like you wouldn’t believe.”

Francis closed the notebook and slipped it back into his breast pocket.

“Well?” Trip said.

“I gotta tell you, Mr. Macklemore, this isn’t what we’d call a classic missing persons case. Not yet, anyway. She’s only been gone a day.”

“But it’s totally out of character. She’s never done anything like this before.”

“That maybe, sir, but that don’t necessarily mean she’s missing. She’s young. From what you’ve said it sounds like she’s a little flighty, too. She’s got no history of mental illness. No psychiatric prescriptions and you say she wasn’t on drugs. Just because you can’t find her, that don’t necessarily mean that she’s missing, you know what I mean?”

“No,” Trip said. “I don’t agree.”

“Not much I can do about that, sir,” Francis said, spreading his hands.

Milton shook his head. “I agree with Mr. Macklemore, detective. I’m not sure I’m as relaxed about it as you are.”

The policeman looked up at Milton with a look of mild annoyance. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t see the state she was in last night.”

“That maybe – I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“Smith.”

“That maybe, Mr. Smith, but she wouldn’t be the first working girl I’ve seen freak out then check out for a bit.”

“Not good enough,” Trip complained angrily. “It’s because she’s a hooker you’re not going to assign someone to this, right? That’s the reason?”

“No. That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant.”

He stood and held out his hands, palm first. “Take it easy, son. If she’s still not back tomorrow, you give us another call and we’ll see where we are then. For now, I’d go back home, make sure your phone’s switched on and try and relax. I’ve seen plenty of cases like this. Plenty. Seriously. I’m telling you, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they come back, a little embarrassed about the whole thing, and everything gets explained.”

“And the other time?”

“Not going to happen here, Mr. Macklemore. Really – go home. She’ll turn up. You’ll see.”

* * *

They made their way outside and onto the street.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Take it easy,” Milton said.

“You think he was listening to a word we said?”

“Probably not. But I’m guessing that’s standard operating procedure. And he’s right about one thing: it’s been less than a day.”

“You agree with him?”

“I didn’t say that. And no, I don’t. Not with everything.”

Milton had expected a reluctance to get involved and part of him could accept the logic in what the officer had said: it was still early, after all. But, the more he thought about what had happened last night, the more he had a bad feeling about it.

The way she had looked.

The way she had run.

The car speeding away.

The bikers. What were they doing at a high-end party like that?

Milton had made a living out of relying on his hunches. Experience told him that it was unwise to ignore them. And they were telling him that this didn’t look good.

Trip took out a packet of Luckies. He put one into his mouth and lit it. Milton noticed that his fingers were trembling again. “That was a total waste of time. Total waste. We could have been out looking for her.”

He offered the packet to Milton. “It wasn’t,” he said, taking a cigarette and accepting Trip’s light. “At the very least, he’ll file a report that says that you came in tonight and said she was missing. Now, when you call them back tomorrow, they’ll have something to work with. And the clock will have started. I wouldn’t be surprised if they treat it more seriously then.”

“So what do I do now? How long do we have to wait before they’ll do something? Two days? Three days? What’s the right time before they accept that something is wrong?”

“If she’s not back in the morning I’d call again. I’d make a real nuisance of myself. You know what they say about the squeaky hinge?”

“No.”

“It gets the oil. You keep calling. Do that until ten or eleven. If it doesn’t work, and if she’s still not back by then, go back to the precinct and demand to see a detective. Don’t leave until you’ve seen one. Authority’s the same the world over: you give them enough of a headache, eventually they’ll listen to you even if it’s just to shut you up.”

“And until then? It’s not like I’m gonna be able to sleep.”

“There are some things you can do. Do you know anything about the agency she was working for?”

“No. She never said.”

“Never mind. Google all the Emergency rooms in a twenty mile radius. There’s one in Marin City, another in Sausalito, go as far north as San Rafael. That’s the first place to look. If something’s happened to her, if last night was some sort of episode or if she’s hurt herself somehow then that’s probably where she’ll be. And when you’ve tried those, try all the nearby police stations. Belvedere, Tiburon, the Sheriff’s Department at Marin. You never know. Someone might’ve said something.”

“Okay.”

“Does she have a laptop?”

“Sure.”

“There might be emails. Can you get into it?”

“I don’t know. There’ll be a password. I might be able to guess it.”

“Try. Whoever booked her is someone we’ll want to talk to. The police will get to it eventually, assuming they need to, but there’s nothing to stop us having a look first.”

He looked at him, confused. “Us?”

“Of course.”

“What – you’re going to help me?”

He was almost pitifully grateful.

“Of course I’m going to help.”

“But you don’t even know us. Why would you do that?”

“Let’s just say I like helping people and leave it at that, alright?”

His time in A.A. had taught him plenty of things. One of them was that it was important to make amends; recovering alcoholics considered that almost as important as staying away from the first drink. It wasn’t as easy for him to do that as it was for others. Most of the people that he would have had to make amends to were already dead, often because he had killed them. He had to make do with this. It wasn’t perfect, but it was still the best salve he had yet discovered for soothing his uneasy conscience.

7

Governor Joseph Jack Robinson II was a born talker. It was just what he did. Everyone had a talent: some men had a facility for numbers, some for making things, some for language; hell, others could swing a bat and send a ball screaming away to the fences. Governor Robinson was a speaker and Arlen Crawford had known it within five seconds of hearing him for the first time. That was why he had given up what could have been very a profitable career in law, turned down the offer of a partnership and the millions of dollars he would have been able to make. He had postponed the chance to take an early retirement and the house on the coast he and his wife had always hankered after. The Governor’s gift was why he had given all that up and thrown in his lot with him. That was back then, two years ago, back when Robinson was governor, just starting out on this phase of his political career, but he had never regretted his decision, not even for a second. It could have gone wrong, a spectacular flame-out that took everyone and everything around him down too. But it hadn’t, and now J.J.’s star was in the ascendant, climbing into the heavens, streaking across the sky.

Arlen Crawford had seen nothing to make him think that he had misjudged him.

He took his usual place at the back of the room and waited for the Governor to do his thing. There had been plenty of similar rooms over the course of the last few months all the way across the country from the Midwest to the coast of the Pacific: school gymnasia, town halls, factory dining rooms, warehouses, anywhere where you could put a few hundred seats and fill them with enthusiastic voters who were prepared to come and listen to what the candidate had to say. It was like that today: they were in the gymnasium where the Woodside Cougars shot hoops, a polished floor that squeaked when he turned his shoe on it, a banked row of seats where moms and pops and alumni and backers of the school would gather to cheer on the kids, a scoreboard at one end that said COUGARS and AWAY, the neon numerals set to zero. A lectern had been placed against the wall that faced the bleachers with enough space for six rows of folded chairs to be arranged between the two. A poster that they had fixed to the lectern said AMERICA FIRST. A larger banner that they had fixed to the wall behind it read ROBINSON FOR PRESIDENT. The room was full: Crawford guessed there were five hundred people inside. There were a few curious students, not Robinson’s normal constituency, but Crawford had insisted: it made him look more hip, helped in his campaign to broaden his appeal to a younger audience. He knew, too, that the Governor was occasionally prone to phoning it in if the room was too friendly; it did him no harm at all to think that there was the possibility of awkward questions in the Q&A that would follow his speech. The rest of the audience were naturally right-leaning voters from the area, all of them given a little vim and vigour by the dozen or so backers that the campaign brought with them on the bus. They were doing their thing now, hooting and hollering as they watched a video of the Governor’s achievements as it played on the large video screen that had been fixed to the wall.

The video ended and Robinson walked through a storm of applause to the lectern.

“Thank you, Woodside. Thank you so much. The sign over there that says, “Thank you, Joe,” no, I thank you. You are what keeps me going, keeps so many of us going. Your love of country keeps us going. Thank you so much. Woodside, you are good people. You are all good people. Thank you.”

Crawford looked around the room: five hundred avid faces, hanging on every word.

“So, what brought us here today? Why aren’t we catching a game, the 49ers or the Raiders, grilling up some venison and corn-on-the-cob, maybe some steak with some friends on this Labor Day weekend? What brought us together is a love of our country, isn’t it? Because America is hurting. You know it. I know it. We all know it. And we’re not willing to just sit back and watch the demise of the greatest country on Earth. We’re here to stop that demise and to begin the restoration of the country that we love. We’re here because America faces a crisis and this crisis will rage until we restore all that is free and good and right about America. It’s not just fear of another recession. It’s not the shame of a credit downgrade for the first time in U.S. history. It’s deeper than that. More fundamental. This is a crisis due to failed policies and incompetent leadership. That may be hard to admit but we can’t afford to be polite. We’re going to speak truth today because we need to start talking about what hasn’t worked, and we’re going to start talking about what will work for America.”

Robinson stopped. He waited. One of the women in the audience called out, “We’re listening!”

He grinned. “Some of us saw this day coming. I delivered the same message when I gave my acceptance speech after I was re-elected as Governor. And in my speech I asked: ‘When the dust has settled and when the great speeches have been forgotten … what exactly is the President’s plan?’ His answer has been to make government bigger, to take more of your money and to reduce the strength of America’s military in a dangerous world. I warned against that back then, you’ll remember it, but not as many people were listening to me then as are listening today. So I’m going to repeat that message, and I’m going to say it as loud as I can: the President is destroying our country. You’ve seen the proof yourself. He rode in on a cloud of hope and rhetoric and he didn’t have a record, but, my goodness, he has a record now. We know what he promised. He promised a lot of things. He promised to transform America and, for all the failures and the broken promises, that’s the one thing he has delivered on, and I wish that he hadn’t. He has transformed us from a country of hope to one of anxiety and fear. People are poorer now than they were before. Some are on food stamps. Unemployment is up. Mortgages are underwater. Some places are suffering worse than they did in the Great Depression. The President promised to get rid of the deficit but instead he tripled it. You know that our national debt is growing at $3 million a minute? That’s $4.3 billion a day. Mr. President, I’m here to tell you that this will not stand. The American people will not stand for this any longer. You told us it was all about change, and it is. I’m going to bring real change. Lasting change. With the support of all these good people, I pledge to turn this country around and restore all that is good about it once again. We can make America better. We will make America better.”

He went on in the same vein for another ten minutes. It was a bravura display, yet again. In his two years as Robinson’s Chief of Staff, Crawford had probably heard him speak a thousand times, and that, right there, was another in a long line of brilliant speeches. It wasn’t so much the content. That didn’t matter, not at this stage of the game. It was the way he effortlessly connected to his audience, made them feel like he was one of them, the kind of fellow you could imagine having a beer with, shooting the breeze and setting the world to rights. That was what summed up the man and made him so exciting. He measured his audience so well and connected so precisely and, more incredible even than that, was the fact that he did it all so effortlessly. It wasn’t a conscious thing, a talent he calibrated and deployed with care and consideration; it was totally natural, so much so that he didn’t even seem to realise what he was doing. It was an impressive bit of politics. He stepped away from the lectern and made his way along the front row of the folding chairs, pumping offered hands, sometimes taking them in both of his and beaming that brilliant megawatt smile. They were all over him, clapping his back, hugging him. He didn’t back off or fend them away, the way that some politicians would; instead, he hugged them back, seeming to get as much satisfaction from touching them, draping his big arm over their shoulders, as they got from him.

Crawford watched and smiled and shook his head in admiration.

No doubt about it: Joseph Jack Robinson was a natural.

He stayed with them for half an hour, listening to their stories, answering their questions and signing autographs. The principal pitched him about the need for more money to fix a leaking roof and the Governor said that increasing funding for education was one of his campaign priorities; that was news to Crawford, who tapped out a note in his phone to remind himself to look into that later. Then they all followed him back downstairs, and out to the campaign bus. Crawford and Catherine Williamson, the press manager, trailed the crowd. Catherine looked at Crawford and raised her manicured eyebrow, an inverted tick of amusement that the Governor had done it again. Crawford looked back at her and winked. J.J. did that, now and again, surprised even the staffers who had been with him the longest. It seemed to be happening more often these days. As the speeches got more important, as the television crews that tailed them everywhere grew in number, as his polling numbers solidified and accrued, Robinson pulled the rabbit out of the hat again and again and again.

It was why they were all so excited.

This felt real.

It felt like they were with a winner.

Crawford followed the Governor up the steps and onto the bus.

“Great speech,” he told him as he opened his briefcase and took out the papers he needed for the trip.

“You think?”

“Are you kidding? You had them eating out of your hand.”

Robinson shrugged and smiled. Crawford found that habit of his a little annoying, the aw-shucks modesty that was as false as the gleaming white veneers on his teeth. The Governor knew he was good. Everything was done for a reason: every grin, every knowing wink, every handshake and backslap and beam of that radiant smile. Some of the rivals he had crushed on the way had been good, too, but not as good as him. They had a nagging sense of the ersatz that stuck with their audiences and curdled over time, seeds of doubt that grew into reasons why the voters chose Robinson instead of them when they finally got to the polling booths. The Governor didn’t suffer from that. He was a good man, completely trustworthy, honest to a fault, or, more relevantly, that was what they thought. The greatest expression of his genius was to make the whole performance look so effortlessly natural.

“Those questions on immigration,” Robinson began.

“Go vague on the numbers. We don’t want to get caught out.”

“Not the numbers. The message. It’s still holding up?”

“People seem to agree with you.”

“Damn straight they do. If I can’t say it like it is, what’s the point?”

“I know – and I agree.”

“These fucking wetbacks,” he said with a dismissive flick of his wrist, “taking jobs that belong to Americans, damn straight we should be sending them back.”

Crawford looked around, making sure they weren’t overhead. “Easy,” he advised.

“I know, I know. Moderation. I’m not an idiot, Arlen.” He dropped down into the chair opposite and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. “Where next?”

“Radio interview,” Catherine said. “And we’re already an hour late already.”

Robinson was suddenly on the verge of anger. “They know that?” he demanded.

“Know what?”

“That we’re gonna be late.”

“Don’t worry. I told them. They’re cool.”

They were all used to his temper. He switched unpredictably, with even the smallest provocation, and then switched back again with equal speed. It was unnerving and disorientating for the newest members of the entourage who had not had the opportunity to acclimate themselves to the vagaries of his character but, once you realised was usually a case of bark over bite, it was just another vector to be weighed in the calculus of working for the man.

She disappeared further up the bus.

“No need to snap at her,” Crawford said.

“You know I hate being late. My old man used to drill it into me—”

“You’d rather be thirty minutes early than a minute late. I know. You’ve told me about a million times. How’s the head?”

“Still pretty sore. You should’ve told me it was time to go.”

“I did.”

“Not early enough. We should have left about an hour before we did. You didn’t insist.”

“Next time, I will.”

“We probably shouldn’t even have been there.”

“No,” he said, “we should.”

The party had been a little more raucous than Crawford would have preferred but it was full of donors and potential donors and it would’ve been unseemly to have given it the bum’s rush or to have left too early. The hour that they had been there had given the Governor plenty of time to drink more than he should have and Crawford had spent the evening at his side, a little anxious, trying to keep him on message and making sure he didn’t do anything that would look bad if it was taken out of context. It had been a long night for him, too, and he knew he would have to find the energy from somewhere to make it through to the end of the day.