James Sallis - Drive

Drive

By the same author

Novels

The Long-Legged Fly

Moth

Black Hornet

Eye of the Cricket

Bluebottle

Ghost of a Flea

Death Will Have Your Eyes

Renderings

Cypress Grove

Stories

A Few Last Words

Limits of the Sensible World

Times Hammers: Collected Stories

A City Equal to My Desire

Poems

Sorrows Kitchen

My Tongue in Other Cheeks:

Selected Translations

As editor

Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany

Jazz Guitars

The Guitar in Jazz

Other

The Guitar Players

Difficult Lives

Saint Glinglin by Raymond Queneau (translator)

Gently into the Land of the Meateaters

Chester Himes: A Life

A James Sallis Reader

Forthcoming

Black Nights Gonna Catch Me Here:

Selected Poems 1968-2002

Cripple Creek (novel)

Drive

James Sallis

Copyright 2005 by James Sallis

First Edition 2005

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005925325

ISBN: 9781590581810 Hardcover

9781615951888 Epub

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

Poisoned Pen Press

6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

Scottsdale, AZ 85251

www.poisonedpenpress.com

info@poisonedpenpress.com

Printed in the United States of America

To Ed McBain,

Donald Westlake and

Larry Block

three great American writers

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy Holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen

The Collect for Purity, Rite I

The Book of Common Prayer,

Of The Episcopal Church

CONTENTS

Much later, as he sat with his back against an inside wall of a Motel 6 just north of Phoenix, watching the pool of blood lap toward him, Driver would wonder whether he had made a terrible mistake. Later still, of course, thered be no doubt. But for now Driver is, as they say, in the moment. And the moment includes this blood lapping toward him, the pressure of dawns late light at windows and door, traffic sounds from the interstate nearby, the sound of someone weeping in the next room.

The blood was coming from the woman, the one who called herself Blanche and claimed to be from New Orleans even when everything about her except the put-on accent screamed East CoastBensonhurst, maybe, or some other far reach of Brooklyn. Blanches shoulders lay across the bathroom doors threshhold. Not much of her head left in there: he knew that.

Their room was 212, second floor, foundation and floors close enough to plumb that the pool of blood advanced slowly, tracing the contour of her body just as he had, moving toward him like an accusing finger. His arm hurt like a son of a bitch. This was the other thing he knew: it would be hurting a hell of a lot more soon.

Driver realized then that he was holding his breath. Listening for sirens, for the sound of people gathering on stairways or down in the parking lot, for the scramble of feet beyond the door.

Once again Drivers eyes swept the room. Near the half-open front door a body lay, that of a skinny, tallish man, possibly an albino. Oddly, not much blood there. Maybe blood was only waiting. Maybe when they lifted him, turned him, it would all come pouring out at once. But for now, only the dull flash of neon and headlights off pale skin.

The second body was in the bathroom, lodged securely in the window from outside. Thats where Driver had found him, unable to move forward or back. This one had carried a shotgun. Blood from his neck had gathered in the sink below, a thick pudding. Driver used a straight razor when he shaved. It had been his fathers. Whenever he moved into a new room, he set out his things first. The razor had been there by the sink, lined up with toothbrush and comb.

Just the two so far. From the first, the guy jammed in the window, hed taken the shotgun that felled the second. It was a Remington 870, barrel cut down to the length of the magazine, fifteen inches maybe. He knew that from a Mad Max rip-off hed worked on. Driver paid attention.

Now he waited. Listening. For the sound of feet, sirens, slammed doors.

What he heard was the drip of the tubs faucet in the bathroom. That woman weeping still in the next room. Then something else as well. Something scratching, scrabbling.

Some time passed before he realized it was his own arm jumping involuntarily, knuckles rapping on the floor, fingers scratching and thumping as the hand contracted.

Then the sounds stopped. No feeling at all left in the arm, no movement. It hung there, apart from him, unconnected, like an abandoned shoe. Driver willed it to move. Nothing happened.

Worry about that later.

He looked back at the open door. Maybe thats it, Driver thought. Maybe no one else is coming, maybe its over. Maybe, for now, three bodies are enough.

Driver wasnt much of a reader. Wasnt much of a movie person either, you came right down to it. Hed liked Road House, but that was a long time back. He never went to see movies he drove for, but sometimes, after hanging out with screenwriters, who tended to be the other guys on the set with nothing much to do for most of the day, hed read the books they were based on. Dont ask him why.

This was one of those Irish novels where people have horrible knockdowndragouts with their fathers, ride around on bicycles a lot, and occasionally blow something up. Its author peered out squinting from the photograph on the inside back cover like some life form newly dredged into sunlight. Driver found the book in a secondhand store out on Pico, wondering whether the old-lady proprietors sweater or the books smelled mustier. Or maybe it was the old lady herself. Old people had that smell about them sometimes. Hed paid his dollar-ten and left.

Not that he could tell the movie had anything to do with this book.

Driverd had some killer sequences in the movie once the hero smuggled himself out of north Ireland to the new world (that was the books title, Seans New World), bringing a few hundred years anger and grievance with him. In the book, Sean came to Boston. The movie people changed it to L.A. What the hell. Better streets. And you didnt have to worry so much about weather.

Sipping at his carryout horchata, Driver glanced up at the TV, where fast-talking Jim Rockford did his usual verbal prance-and-dance. He looked back down, read a few more lines till he fetched up on the word desuetude. What the hell kind of word was that? He closed the book and put it on the nightstand. There it joined others by Richard Stark, George Pelecanos, John Shannon, Gary Phillips, all of them from that same store on Pico where hour after hour ladies of every age arrived with armloads of romance and mystery novels they swapped two for one.

Desuetude.

At the Dennys two blocks away, Driver dropped coins in the phone and dialed Manny Gildens number, watching people come and go in the restaurant. It was a popular spot, lots of families, lots of people if they sat down by you youd be inclined to move over a notch or two, in a neighborhood where slogans on T-shirts and greeting cards at the local Walgreens were likely to be in Spanish.

Maybe hed have breakfast after, it was something to do.

He and Manny had met on the set of a science fiction movie in which, in one of many post-apocalypse Americas, Driver had command of an El Dorado outfitted to look like a tank. Wasnt a hell of a lot of difference in the first place, to his thinking, between a tank and that El Dorado. They handled about the same.