The Driver (8 page)

Milton turned off the coast road and continued to the gate. The radio was on and tuned in to a talk radio channel; the presenter was speaking to one of the candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidential election. He sat for a moment, half listening to the conversation: immigration, how big government was wrong, taxation. The man had a deep, mellifluous voice, accented with a lazy West Coast drawl. Milton had heard of him before: the Governor of California, seen as a front-runner in the race. Milton had little time for politicians but this one was convincing enough.

He counter-clockwised the dial to switch the radio off, lowered the window and entered the code that Madison had given him last night.

2-0-1-1.

The final number elicited a buzz and the gate remained closed.

The code had been changed.

Milton looked at the gate and the community beyond and thought. Why had it been changed? He tried the combination a second time and, as the keypad buzzed at him again, he noticed the dark black eye of a CCTV camera pointed at him from the gatehouse. He hadn’t noticed that being there last night.

He put the car into reverse and the camera jerked up and swivelled as it tracked him. He turned around and drove slowly back down the drive until he was around the corner and out of sight. He killed the lights and then the engine and reached into the back for the black denim jacket he had stuffed into the footwell. He had a pair of leather gloves in the glove compartment and he put them into the pockets of the jacket. He took the S&W 9mm that he had confiscated from the guard outside the house and slipped it into the waistband of his jeans. He put the jacket on, opened the door and, keeping within the margin of the vegetation at the side of the road, made his way back towards the gate again.

About fifteen yards from the gate, a wooden pole carried the high tension power cabling from the substation into the estate. Three large cylindrical transformers were rigged to the pole, twenty feet in the air, and the wire crossed over to a corresponding pole on the other side of the wall. From there, individual wires delivered the current to the houses. Milton took out the S&W and racked a bullet into the chamber. There were better ways to disable a power supply––Mylar balloons filled with helium would have shorted it out very nicely––but he was working on short notice and this would have to do. He took aim at the ceramic insulators that held the wire onto the pole. It was a difficult shot: the insulators were small targets at reasonable distance, it was dark and the fog was dense. He fired, once, but the shot missed. He re-sighted the target, braced his right wrist with his left hand and fired again. The insulator shattered and the wire, sparks scattering into the gloom, swept down to earth in a graceful arc.

The light above the gate went out.

Milton cut into a dense copse of young fir that crowded close to the left of the road and, using it as cover, moved carefully to the wall. It was made of brick and topped with iron spikes. He reached up and dabbed a finger against the top, feeling for broken glass or anti-climb paint. All he could feel was the rough surface of the brick. Satisfied, he wrapped each gloved hand around a spike and, using them for leverage, hauled himself up, his feet scrabbling for purchase. He got his right foot onto the lip of the wall and boosted himself up until he was balancing atop it. The vantage offered an excellent view of the community beyond. He could see half a dozen big houses in the immediate vicinity and, as the road turned away to the east, the glow of others. There was no-one in sight. He stepped carefully over the spikes and lowered himself down.

The big house where the party had been held was quiet. All the windows were dark. Milton moved stealthily into the cover of a tree and, pressing himself against it, scoped out the road. It was empty in both directions. There was no-one visible anywhere. He ran quickly across, vaulting the low fence and making his way through the large garden to the back of the house. He remembered the layout from the quick glimpse through the window last night: the T-shaped swimming pool with the underwater lamps; the series of terraces on different levels; trees and bushes planted with architectural precision; the fire pit; the dark, fogged waters of the bay. A redwood platform abutted the house here, a sheer drop down the cliff to the rocks below on the right-hand side. The surf boomed below, crashing against the cliff, and the air was damp with salty moisture.

Milton followed the platform.

He pressed himself against the back wall and risked a glance through the windows. The living room beyond was very different now from how it had been the previous night. It was empty. The furniture had been returned to more usual positions around the room. The DJ equipment was gone. The bar, which had been strewn with bottles and glasses, was pristine. The salvers of cocaine that had been so ostentatiously left on the tables had been removed. The room was cool and dark and quiet. The windows were still open a little at the tops and the curtains shivered in and out on each breath of wind, the only movement that Milton could see.

It was as if the party had never even happened.

Milton flitted quickly across the window to a door that was set into a long extension that had been built across one side of the house. He tried the door. It was locked. Taking off his gloves, he took a pair of paperclips from his pocket and bent them into shape. He slid one into the lower portion of the keyhole, used it to determine which way the cylinder turned, applied light tension and then slid the other clip into the upper part of the keyhole and felt for the pins. He pressed up and felt the individual pins with the tip of the clip, finding the stiffest one and pushing it up and out of the cylinder. He repeated the trick for the remaining four pins, adjusting the torque for each. He turned the cylinder all the way around and the door unlocked.

Milton scrubbed the lock with the sleeve of his shirt, put the gloves back onto his hands and went inside. It was a utility room. He closed the door behind him, leaving it unlocked, and then paused for a moment, listening carefully. He could hear nothing. He was confident that the house was empty. He walked quickly into a huge kitchen with wide windows, then a hallway, then into the living room. It was gloomy, but there was just enough suffused moonlight from outside for him to see his way. He checked the downstairs quickly and efficiently. There was another formal living room with a large, carved stone mantel. A secret doorway in the bookshelves led to a speakeasy-style wet bar. The dining room looked like it was being used as a conference room, with a speakerphone in the middle of the table and videoconferencing equipment at the other. A spiral staircase led down to a wine cellar that had been built around crouching monk corbels that had been turned into light fittings; there were hundreds of bottles, thousands of dollars’ worth of wine, but nothing of any obvious interest.

He found the stairs and climbed to the first floor. There were four bedrooms, all with en-suite bathrooms. He climbed again to the second floor: three more bedrooms, all enormous. He searched them all quickly and expertly. There were no clothes in the closets and no products in the bathrooms. No signs of habitation at all.

It looked as if the house was vacant.

Distantly, down the stairwell, two storeys below, Milton heard the sound of the front door opening.

He froze.

Footsteps clicked across the wooden floor.

“Power’s out,” the voice said.

“The fuck?”

“Whole road from the look of things.”

“Place like this, millions of dollars, and they lose the power?”

“Shit happens.”

“You say so.”

“I do.”

“You got a flashlight?”

“Here.”

There was a quiet click.

“You know this is a waste of time.”

“It’s gotta get done.”

“What we looking for?”

“Just make sure everything looks the way it should.”

“What would look like the way it shouldn’t?”

“Anything that looks like there was a crazy-ass party here.”

“Looks clean to me.”

“Had professionals in––everything you can do, they did.”

“So what are we doing here?”

“We’re making sure, okay? Double checking.”

Milton stepped further back, to another door. He moved stealthily. He could hear footsteps down below. He opened the door; it led to another bedroom. The footsteps downstairs were hard to make out. Was that somebody walking up the stairs to the floor below, the first floor? Or somebody walking through the foyer on the ground floor? He couldn’t tell but, either way, he was stuck. If he crossed the landing there he would have to go past the stairwell and then he might be visible from below for a certain amount of time.

“You ever seen a place like this? Look at all this shit. This is where the real money’s at.”

“Concentrate on what you’re doing.”

They were definitely up on the first floor now.

“Go up there. Check it out.”

“Just gonna be more bedrooms.”

“And crazy ass parties end up in the bedroom, so go up and check them all out.”

“What about you?”

“I’m calling the boss.”

Milton could hear scuffed footsteps coming up the stairs: it was the unenthusiastic, resentful one of the pair. That was probably fortunate.

He dropped to the floor and slid beneath the bed.

“It’s me,” the other man was saying, his voice muffled now by the closed door. “We’re at the house. Yeah––looks good. Clean as a whistle. Power’s out, though. Alarm was off. Whole neighbourhood. I don’t think that’s anything to bother us. One of those things.”

Milton held his breath as the door to the bedroom opened and heavy footsteps sounded against the boards. A flashlight swept the room. The bed was low down, the boards and the mattress snug against his back, and he couldn’t see his feet; he thought they were beneath the valance but he couldn’t be completely sure. He felt horribly vulnerable and suddenly cursed himself for picking the bed over the walk-in cupboard he could have sheltered in. He could have pulled the gun in there, too. If the man saw him under here, there would be nothing he could do. It was a rookie mistake. He was trapped.

He turned his head to the right and looked through a gap between the fabric and the floor. He saw the soles of a pair of boots: heavy treads, worn and scuffed leather uppers, lots of buckles.

The boots made their way from one end of the room to the other.

A door opened, creaking on rusty hinges, and then closed again.

The man downstairs was still on the phone. “Up to you, obviously, but I say we check the garden, then get out of here. Alright? Alright. Sweet. We’ll see you there.”

The flashlight swept across the floor, the light glowing through the thin cotton valance.

The boots came closer, shoes on polished wood. He saw them again, closer this time. He could have reached out and touched them.

The boots moved out of sight, away to the door, steps sounded going away again.

“Nothing up here,” the man said.

“You sure? They want us to be absolutely sure.”

“Check yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“If you say it’s okay, it’s okay. Take it easy.”

Milton slid carefully out from under the bed and stayed low, crouching, listening. He heard steps, a pause, more steps, a door opening downstairs, then closing, then another door, a heavier door, then closing, and then silence.

He moved quickly but quietly out onto the landing, gently pulled the door closed and then descended, treading on the sides of the steps as he made his way down to minimise the risk of putting weight on a creaking board. He did the same on the next set of stairs. He was halfway down the final flight, facing the big front door and about to make the turn to head back along the long hall to the kitchen and the rear door, when he heard the sound of a key in the front door’s lock.

He froze: too late to go back up, too late to keep going down.

The door didn’t open.

He realised what it was: they had forgotten to lock it.

The fresh, cool evening air hit his face as he opened the rear door and stepped out into the garden. He breathed it in deeply. He heard the sound of two powerful motorcycle engines grumbling and growling into life, the sound fading as they accelerated away. He shut the door behind him and walked carefully and quickly to the road.

10

MILTON MADE HIS WAY towards the house that Madison had run to last night, the one with the old man who had threatened to call the police. It was another big place, a sprawling building set within well tended gardens and fronted by a stone wall topped with ornamental iron fencing. Milton buzzed the intercom set into the stone pillar to the right of the gates and waited. There was no answer. He tried again with the same result. He was about to leave when he saw the old man. He came out of a side door, moving slowly and with the exaggerated caution of advanced age. Behind him was a wide lawn, sloping down to the shore. A collie trotted around the garden with aimless, happy abandon, shoving its muzzle into the flowerbeds in search of an interesting scent.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” Milton said. “Could I have a word?”

Milton assessed him as he approached. He was old: late eighties, he guessed. He was tall but his frame had withered away with age so that his long arms and legs were spindly, sharply bony shoulders pointing through the fabric of the polo shirt that he was wearing.

“What can I do for you?”

“I was here last night.”

The man thought for a moment, the papery skin of his forehead crinkling. He remembered and a scowl descended. “This morning, you mean?”

“That’s right.”

“She woke me up, all that racket, my wife, too. You with her?”

“No, sir. But I drove her out here.”

“So what are you? A taxi driver?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s your name, son?”

“John Smith. And you?”

“Victor Leonard.”

“Sorry about all the noise, Mr. Leonard. The disturbance.”

“What the hell was she so exercised about?”