Drive by James Sallis

counsel. No need, use or call for banter between them.
    “Rina thinks the world of you,” Standard said after ordering a final round. “And Benicio loves you. You know that, right?”
    “Both sentiments are fully returned.”
    “Any other man got that close to my woman, I’d have cut his throat long ago.”
    “She’s not your woman.”
    Drinks arrived. Standard paid, adding an oversize tip. Connections everywhere, Driver thought. He identifies with these servers, knows the map of their world. A certain tenderness.
    “Rina’s always claimed that I expect too little from life,” Standard said.
    “Then at least you’ll never be disappointed.”
    “There is that.”
    Clicking glasses with Driver, he drank, pulling lips back against teeth at the stringent burn of it.
    “But she’s right. How can I expect more than what I see here in front of me? How can any of us?” He finished his drink. “Guess we oughta be going. Get our beauty rest. Busy day tomorrow and all that.”
    Outside, Standard glanced up at the full moon, looked across at couples hanging out by cars, at four or five kids in gangsta finery—low-slung pants, oversize tops, head wraps—on the corner.
    “Say something happened to me…” he said.
    “Say it did.”
    “Think you might see your way clear to taking care of Irina and Benicio?”
    “Yeah…Yeah, I’d do that.”
    “Good.” They’d reached their cars by then. Uncharacteristically, Standard held out a hand. “See you tomorrow, my friend. Take care.”
    They shook.
    Bouncy accordion on the Mexican station as Driver fired up his car. Back to the current apartment. Never thought of any of them as home really, however long he stayed in them. He cranked up the sound.
    Happy music.
    Before he could pull out, two firetrucks came screaming down the street, followed by an ancient sky-blue Chevy station wagon with five or six brown faces peering out from within, coop of chickens lashed to the top.
    Life.

Chapter Sixteen
    Nothing in the Chevy to lead him anywhere. An empty container, essentially. Impersonal as a carry cup. He’d have been surprised if it were otherwise.
    If he had some way to run the registration, nine to one it was bogus. And even if it wasn’t, all it was going to tell him was the car’d been stolen.
    Okay.
    But the hand had been dealt. He was holding.
    When their hard boys didn’t come back—the fat man, the albino—those who sent them would be sending someone in after. Too many loose ends whipping about in the wind, only a matter of time before someone got whacked in the head.
    That was the advantage he had.
    Driver figured the best thing he could do was move the Chevy. Stow it where it would be hard but not too hard to find. Then hang close by and wait.
    So for two days, arm aching like a son of a bitch the whole time, figurative knives slitting shoulder to wrist again and again, ghost axe poised and descending whenever he moved, Driver sat across from the mall where he’d parked the Chevy. He forced himself to use the bad arm, even for the chi-chi coffee he bought, $3.68 a cup, at an open stall just inside the mall’s east entrance. This was in Scottsdale, back towards Phoenix proper, a high-end suburb where each community had its own system of walls, where malls teeter-tottered on a Neiman-Marcus, Williams-Sonoma axis. Sort of place a vintage car like the Chevy wouldn’t seem too far out of place, actually, there among the Mercedes and Beemers. Driver had parked it on the lot’s outer edge in the sketchy shade of a couple of palo verdes to make it easier to spot.
    Not that it much mattered at this point, but he kept running the script in his head.
    Cook had set them all up, of course. Little doubt about that. Driver’d seen Strong go down—for good, to every appearance. Maybe Strong had been part of the set-up, maybe like the rest of them only a board piece, a shill, a beard. Blanche he wasn’t sure about. She could have been in from the first, but it