The Driver

“I’m keeping a lid on it,” he said. “You need to stop worrying. You’ll get an ulcer.”

Crawford felt like sighing at the sheer boring predictability of it and the frustration that despite it all — despite increasingly doom-laden warnings of what would happen to the campaign if any of his indiscretions were to be aired in public — that the Governor would just not listen to him.

9

Milton drove back to Belvedere. It was a little after eight as he drove the Explorer out of the city, heading north out of the Mission District until he picked up the 101 and then passed through Presidio. He paid more attention this time, orientating himself properly and memorising as much of the landscape as he could. Newly formed whitish fog filtered through the harp strings of the Bridge and then puffed out its chest as though pleased with its dramatic entrance; its only applause was the regular blare of the two foghorns, the lapping of the waves as they disappeared under the silent mass and the constant hum of the traffic. He passed turnoffs for Kirby Cove Campground and the Presidio Yacht Club, continued on after Southview Park and Martin Luther King Jr Park, the big cemetery at Fernwood and then, as he turned east and then back south, Richardson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and McKegney Field with the placid waters of Richardson Bay off to the west. The darkness, and the fog — deep and thick — reduced visibility to a handful of yards. Milton drove carefully.

The price of living down here on the coast was high but the benefits were valuable, too: clean air, untamed beauty and, weather allowing, incredible views. If that was the kind of thing you wanted, you would be hard-pressed to find a better example of it anywhere on this side of the continent.

Milton had done a little internet research before setting out. Pine Shore was governed by a residents’ association, with an executive board that was elected from residents who became eligible after living in the area for ten years. The presidency of the board had transferred over the years from Vera Schulman, a lawyer, to Pauline Bridges, an artist, to, most recently, Harvey Dell, another lawyer. It was a precarious kind of place. The thirty houses had been built on land that did not belong to the residents. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a Presbyterian pastor named Peter Rogers Casey had negotiated a seventy-year lease from the nearby town of Tiburon, which owned the land of Pine Shore. The original purpose was to build a retreat for sailors who had fallen upon hard times. Those plans grew and the months passed and, soon afterwards, the pastor’s flock constructed a community building that was sufficient to seat five-hundred people. Five years later and Tiburon was persuaded to grant a ten-year lease to the Pine Shore Residents’ Association. In return for two hundred dollars a year, they would be permitted to build houses on the land. The lease had been renewed throughout the years, each extension for another ten years and each, as it neared its expiry, carrying the threat that the townsfolk would exorcise their perpetual jealousy of the people who made their homes there and the city dwellers who made the place their summer retreat, and either inflate the rent to uneconomic amounts or refuse to renew it. That kind of tenuous year-to-year existence could only be tolerated by a small slice of the population and, as a result, you would only find a particular kind of person in Pine Shore: very rich, upper middle-class, usually white. It also generated something of a siege mentality.

Milton turned off the coast road and continued to the gate. The radio was on and tuned in to a talk radio cha

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.