Drive by James Sallis Read Free Book Online Page A

in as well. Fished one out with two fingers.
    “Mother was Peruvian. How the hell they ever met’s beyond me, circles he traveled in. Back home she’d been a midwife and curandera. A healer. Important person in the community. Here, she got turned into goddam Donna Reed.”
    “By him?”
    “Him. Society. America. Her own expectations. Who can say?”
    Doc swabbed gently at the wound.
    His hands had quit shaking.
    “Medicine was the great love of my life, the only woman I ever needed or went after….Been a while, though—like you say. Sure hope I remember the how of it.”
    Yellowing teeth broke into a grin.
    “Relax,” he said. He swiveled a cheap desk lamp closer. “Just having my fun with you.”
    The bulb in the desk lamp flickered, failed, came back when Doc thumped it.
    Taking a healthy swig himself, he handed Driver the jug of bourbon.
    “Think that record’s got a skip in it?” Doc said. “Sounds to me like it’s been going round and round for some time.”
    Driver listened. How could you tell? Same phrase over and over. Kind of.
    Doc nodded to the jug.
    “Take a few more hits off that, boy. Chances are you’ll need them. Probably both of us will, before this is over. You ready?”
    No.
    “Yes.”

Chapter Fifteen
    As always, the set-up took most of the time. Spend five hours on the prep, then you drive it in a minute and a half flat. Driver got paid the same for that five hours as he did for the minute and a half. If it was a high-end shoot, he’d been in the day before to check out the car and test-drive it. Budget variety, he’d do that first thing the day of the shoot, while the rest of the staff scrambled about like ants, getting in line. Then he’d spend his time hanging out with writers, script people and bit players, taking advantage of the buffet table. Even on a “wee small” film (as Shannon described them) there’d be enough food to feed a midsize town. Cold cuts, various cheeses, fruit, pizza, canapés, bite-size hot dogs in barbecue sauce, doughnuts and sweet rolls and Danish, sandwiches, boiled eggs, chips, salsa, onion dip, granola, juices and bottled water, coffee, tea, milk, energy drinks, cookies, cakes.
    Today he was driving an Impala and the sequence was: double-vehicle ram, bootlegger’s turn, moonshiner’s turn, sideswipe. Ordinarily they’d break it down to segments, but the director wanted to try for a straight shoot in real time.
    Driver was on the run. Coming over a hill he’d see a blockade, two State Police cars pulled in nose to nose.
    What you do is start off from almost a full stop, car in low gear. You come in from the right, a quarter of a car-width or so—just like finding the pocket by the headpin for a strike. Gas to the floor, you’re going between fifteen and thirty mph when you hit.
    And it worked like a charm. The two State Police cars sprang apart, the Impala shot through with a satisfying fishtail and squeal of tires as Driver regained traction and floored it.
    But it wasn’t over. A third cop car lugged down the hill. Seeing what happened, he’d jumped the road up there and now came sliding and crashing down through trees, throwing up divots of soil and vegetation, bottoming out more than once, hitting the road fifty yards behind.
    Driver let off the gas, dropping to twenty-five, maybe thirty mph, then hauled the steering wheel just over a quarter-turn. At the very same moment he hit the emergency brake and engaged the clutch.
    The Impala spun.
    Ninety degrees into the spin, he released the brake, straightened the wheel and hit the gas, let the clutch out.
    Now he faced back towards the oncoming car.
    Accelerating to thirty, as he came abreast—cop’s head swiveling to follow, incredulous—he hauled the wheel to the left hard and fast. Dropped into low, hit the gas, righted the wheel.
    Now he was behind his pursuer.
    Driver resumed speed and, clocking exactly twenty mph over, struck the cop car scant inches to the right of the left tail