Driven: The Sequel to Drive Read Online Free PDF Page B

were in suspension, and could shift at a moment’s notice.
A security guard strolled by, walkie-talkie in hand, pant legs six inches too long in the crotch and well chewed at the bottom. Driver heard “down by the food court, be about,”then he was gone.
“And what business might that be?”
“Diversified, actually.” Again the man’s head went back as the cup tilted. A thin line of red slush ran down his jaw.
“For the moment it seems to be me.”
“For the moment.”
“I don’t much care for being followed,” Driver said.
“Few of us would.” He looked off at two teenagers walking out of Spencer’s. One would push the other, who’d stagger off, come back and push him. They kept at this as they proceeded down the mall. Both wore hightops without laces. “You think about stuff much? Why you’re here, what it all means?”
“Not really.”
“Yeah. Knew a guy back in law school, more years ago than I want to think about, that did. Boy thought he was going to change the world. All he had to do first, was get to what the problems were, you know?”
“He ever figure it out?”
“We’d have to dig him up and ask. Second year, he went off the fourth-floor balcony.”
Driver heard ice rasping at the cup as the man swirled it and peered inside.
“Some people look at what happens to them and they think, there’s something responsible , some invisible agent behind all this, moving things around, causing things to happen.”
“Coherence,” Driver said.
“What?”
“Coherence. What they’re looking for.”
“I guess. Then others look at the same thing and see the purposelessness of it all. That there are only lame explanations, or none. No reason or reasons behind it. Things just happen. Life, death. Everything.”
Driver finished his coffee, stood looking around for the nearest trash receptacle. It was by the column where his visitor sat. He started that way.
“As I said, I don’t much care for being followed. I particularly don’t like having people close to me killed.”
The man smiled and said, “Lie down with dogs…” That was the last thing he said. As he tilted his head back, Driver swung around from the trash receptacle, fingers tucked, middle knuckle extended, and struck him in the throat. He felt the trachea give way and fold in on itself, watched surprise hit the man’s face, then his first gasps for air.
As the man slumped and looked about wildly, as he grasped for the table and slid down it, hands at last letting go just before he hit the floor, Driver walked away.
— • —
     
On impulse he swung out onto I-10 and tooled down past Tempe, through Ahwatukee and Casa Grande, to Tucson. Hour and twenty minutes with the new 75-mph speed limit, then you hit town and spent damn near as long inching down Speedway or Grant. Lots of empty buildings where small shops used to be, specialty clothing, hobbies and games, pool service centers, tax preparers. A row of five or six room-sized abandoned restaurants, home-cooking, Thai, Mexican, Lebanese, daily specials still painted on windows.
He pulled up in front of the old house. If they still lived here, they’d spent some of the money on fixing up the place. A new driveway, one without the edges that had crumbled away like old cornbread and the long cracks spilling over with green shoots and ant colonies. New wooden gate to the backyard and, back there, what looked to be a room added on. Dark reddish tiles on the roof.
Chances were good they’d moved on, of course. Maybe they weren’t even alive anymore. But then again, maybe they were still here. Tucson didn’t have the shifting-sands population of its neighbor to the northwest; here, people took root.
He thought of Mrs. Smith’s thinning hair, how she’d spend half an hour each morning brushing it out and spraying it with dollar-store hairspray to make it look fuller. He remembered the tiny stifling attic room that was his. How seldom Mr. Smith spoke and, when he did, how apologetically, as