“Where I live, it happens in a minute. A minute later the do-er’s grabbing a sandwich.”
The oldster pulled up by Mail N More. He took a plastic grocery bag out of his back pocket and snapped it open, went in. Came out with what looked to be only a few pieces of mail in the bag.
“Probably the high point of his day.”
“Perspective is everything,” Driver said.
“Yeah.”
They sat watching the golf cart make its way back along the street, cars stacking up behind.
“I finished school, top ten percent of my class, had it made. All these firms on campus looking for talent, gladhanding me. Grabbed at the job when a top firm offered. There’s like three chiefs and two hundred Indians, every one of them in the top ten percent, every one of them scary smart. Turns out the firm hadn’t hired another Indian, they’d just bought themselves a new horse.”
Driver was silent.
“The corral’s on Highland, near 24th Avenue. Genneman, Brewer, and Sims. This particular errand came from Joseph Brewer’s assistant, Tim. Yellow hair. Not blond, yellow. And clothes just a little too tight. That’s what I know.” The cart turned eastward off the street four blocks up. “For the record: I made the delivery. I leave, reboot at the office, everything’s square.”
“And no one knows about our conversation.”
“My point.”
“As I said, it was private.”
Driver got out, watched the Saturn as it pulled away. He found himself thinking of the man, not much younger than he was, actually, as a kid. What was that phrase Manny used? Spilled anew into the world. A new horse, the kid had said. Ridden-he was definitely ridden.
Joseph Brewer’s assistant, Tim Bresh, lived in one of the enclaves near Encanto Park, a jumble of old Craftsman homes and carport suburbans from the fifties. Half the Craftsmans looked trashed, half of them gussied up and gentrified. Lots of For Sale signs out front of both. Bresh’s sat between a long-unpainted wooden house all but invisible behind a screen of oleanders, and another of slump block painted such a vivid white that it looked unreal, not of this world. Bresh’s was off-white, ivory maybe, but where mowers and ground water and time had nibbled at borders, patches of aqua showed.
Having posed as a messenger with a sign-for package addressed to Joseph Brewer, Driver had bluffed his way into the upper digestive tract of Genneman, Brewer, and Sims, to the outer office of Brewer himself and there tagged Bresh, yellow hair and all. The package, not that it mattered, contained a book, the latest full-tilt indictment of pyramid-scheme capitalism and those who fed off it. Driver liked to imagine Brewer picking up the book repeatedly, puzzling over its source and message. Realistically, he knew the bastard had probably just tossed it in the shredder. Or had his assistant do so.
“I’ll get it,” someone said from inside when Driver hit the bell.
A woman opened the door. Tall, halter top, shorts, thin armsspindly came to mind. Her hair was wet, from a shower, from swimming. She and Driver stood listening as the intro to “Sympathy for the Devil” faded.
“Gets me every time,” the woman said.
“That’s quite a doorbell. Is Tim-”
But there Tim was, stepping up behind her. In his hand he had what looked to be a brandy snifter filled with what smelled to be Bailey’s. He stared a moment.
“Don’t I know you?”
Then he had it.
“The package. That book, Street Smarts, with the S made of dollar signs. Cute. I’m sure Joe’s home wading into the thick of it as we speak, just his sort of thing.” He stopped, as though taking a minute to wonder what Driver’s sort of thing might be. Hard to say what was showing in his face. Wariness? Speculation?
“What can I do for you?” he said. “You don’t seem to be making a delivery.”
“Carry-out this time.” Driver had edged into the room.
“Okay.”
“Maybe your friend should leave.”
“Or you should.”
Driver shook his head.
“Look.” Bresh moved farther inside, to allow him more room. “GBS has eighteen lawyers, not to mention paralegals, secretaries, and the usual office trash. That’s a lot of personalities, a lot of egos-even without the clients, who, given the firm’s fees, tend to be a demanding lot. And who do you think keeps the thing running? Me. So, same as I say day after day, just tell me what you want.”
“One of your lawyers made a drop out in Glendale early this morning. Black, late twenties, driving a Saturn.”
“I can’t-”
“I know what he dropped, and why. I need to know who made the call, who sent him. Your name floated to the top.”
“I see. And you need to know this because?”
Driver didn’t answer right away. Finally he said, “Because I’m here and asking quietly.”
“You followed me.”
Driver nodded. He saw in Bresh’s eyes that he had it all, the fake delivery, the tag, all of it.
“It wasn’t me,” Bresh said. “I called Donnie, sure, passed the message along. That’s what I do mostly. It’s a big place, GBS.”
The woman nodded, though it was more of a bob. “Huge. It just kinda goes on and on.”
“You work there too?”
“Computer geek. Timmy thinks he runs the show. I’m the one who really does.”
“You know those guys you always see in the mall and so on,” Bresh said, “old guys with bowling pin heads, a big round belly, and pipestem legs sticking out the bottom? That’s what GBS is like, only under the round belly there’s like a hundred legs, all of them going in different directions.”
“Now’s when Timmy usually breaks into his rogue bulldozer speech. Hope you’re not in a hurry.”
“You ever read Weber?” Bresh went on. “About bureaucracies? Firms like GBS, that’s what they came down to long ago. It’s all about not losing one’s seat on the bus, all about keeping the machine running the way it always has. Everything else-clients, employees, law itself-is secondary.”
“Doesn’t sound much like your loyalty oath took.”
“I’m part of the machine-”
“I am the bulldozer!” his friend said.
“-but that doesn’t mean I can’t see it.”
Bresh put his drink down on the narrow table just inside the door. Its far end was taken up by a transparent blue vase of silk flowers, cattails, and feather fans on long handles. In the center sat a wicker basket heaped with milky-white crystal eggs not much larger than marbles.