Driver

Driver - Chapter 10

In Danny’s early morning dream the jackrabbit while being chased by the pack of dogs stopped dead still in between the chase and turned on the dog curling its lips back to reveal huge razor-sharp teeth just before it sprang on the dogs one by one.

That’s when Danny woke by the sound of someone’s presence in his room. The guest he was expecting came earlier than expected. A change in the light coming from the window told him where the intruder was moving. Danny immediately turned in his bed and blocked the intruder’s way. The man turned away and tried to keep going but Danny had his neck in his hands and slashed at his frame with a sharp antenna that he was holding onto the entire time while he slept.

There was much blood and for a moment or so the man stood in his place surprised at Danny’s quick reaction, he stood frozen. He kicked the man’s leg from under and as he went down slashed again with the antenna, at the other side this time. He saw the man reaching for a gun inside his jacket. He slashed at his hand again stopping him from reaching what looked like a hidden gun.

His attacker fell to the ground as Danny stood tall over him. Bending down his foot firmly foot planted on the man’s arm, he removed the gun that was hidden within his jacket. A short barreled .38. The poor thing looked like it had a nose job to make it fit inside a man’s jacket hidden away from the eyes of his potential targets.

“On your feet now,” demanded Danny pointing his assailant’s gun towards him now.

“Okay, whatever you say. I am cool now,” came back the reply.

Danny looked at him from head to toe. The man looked like an overgrown kid who had merely bulked up from workouts and steroids in equal measure. He kept his hair short cut down almost to the scalp on his sides; a sport jacket over a black T-shirt along with a couple of gold chains.

Danny pointed him towards the front door and out onto the balcony that circled the building. All the apartments opened onto it.

“Jump,” Danny said.

“But we are on the second floor.”

“Your call. I don’t care much either way,” he added “Either you jump or I shoot you where you stand. It’s only thirty feet or so. Probably you’ll live through it, maybe a couple of broken legs or a shattered ankle.”

The man put his hand on the railing and looked over.

“Give my regards to Nino,” Danny said.

Afterwards he went back inside his room and collected his duffel bag kept besides the door. He used the back stairs to go down to his car. The car radio sprung to life as soon as the engine roared.  He looked around and saw no signs of his early morning guest. Presumably he had escaped the place with his broken legs and equally bruised ego.

Danny pulled onto the interstate. Something about his morning assault didn’t quite add up. Why had they sent a single dog after him?  And that too a new dog, not even the pick of the litter. That was plain stupid, made no sense whatsoever.

Or maybe it did Danny could think of only two possibilities.

One: They were trying to set him up. His designated assassin wouldn’t talk, of course. But if Danny had killed him—as whoever had sent him had every reason to expect—police would be going door to door and checking apartment house records searching for a young man in his early thirties, living alone. All over California and other adjoining states fax machine would be spewing out Danny’s pictures from his DMV records and whatever other information that could be unearthed about him. There was not a lot of information about him with the authorities but instinctively Danny kept his head down.

The second possibility hardened to reality when a black Mustang came up behind him leaving behind a trail of cars in its path. The Mustang lodged itself in Danny’s rear-view mirror and wouldn’t be shaken. So not only they had put a tail on him they wanted him to know that they had put a tail on him. Make him keep looking over his shoulders all the time.

Danny cut abruptly off the interstate and headed into a service area. He pulled in and remained in his seat waiting by the trucker parked besides him. Nearby a family spilled onto the streets from its van with dogs in tow, parents shouting at the kids, kids shouting at the dogs and also at each other.

The Mustang materialized on his mirror again.

Okay then, he thought. My game now.

Popping the clutch he shot along the service road. As he gained speed his eyes swept constantly from his rear-view mirror to the highway and then back again. With a car length to spare he slid onto the highway between two semi-trucks.

But he couldn’t lose the son of a bitch no matter what he tried.

Periodically he’d go off-road, blend into local traffic to take advantage of it, interpose traffic lights like blockades between himself and his pursuer. Or back on the interstate he’d accelerate with his blinkers going as though to take the off ramp, drop in front of a rig, then, once out of sight, floor it and surge ahead.

Whatever he did the Mustang hung onto him, like a bad memory, a part of your history you couldn’t escape.

If this was a desperate time it called for some desperate measures.

Well out of the city, out where the first of a crop of white windmills, lazily turning, reaching for the sky in the desert, Danny sailed without warning onto an exit ramp and into a one-eighty. Sat facing back the way he’d come as the Mustang raced towards him.

Then he hit the gas.

He was out of his comfort zone for a minute or two, no more. An old stunt man’s trick: at the last moment, he’d thrown himself into the back seat and braced for the collision. The cars struck head-on. Neither was going to leave on its own steam, but the Mustang, predictably, got the worst of it. Kicking his door open, Danny climbed out.

“You okay?” someone shouted from the window of a battered pickup idling at the bottom of the off ramp.

Then the long blare of a horn and a squeal of brakes as a Chevy van skidded to a stop, just behind the pickup. Danny stepped up to the Mustang. Sirens could be heard in the distance. Gordon Ligocki’s ducktail would never look good again. His neck was broken. Internal damages were suffered too, judging from the blood around his mouth, probably slammed into the steering wheel.

Driver still had the coupons from Nino’s diner. He tucked one into Gordon Ligocki’s shirt pocket.