Drivers Wanted (a novel) Read online

  Drivers Wanted

  (A Novel)

  LAYMON SCOTT

  ©2015

  Chapter 1 3

  Chapter 2 10

  Chapter 3 16

  Chapter 4 22

  Chapter 5 27

  Chapter 6 36

  Chapter 7 45

  Chapter 8 50

  Chapter 9 58

  Chapter 10 67

  Chapter 11 77

  Chapter 12 84

  Chapter 13 93

  Chapter 14 106

  Chapter 15 114

  Chapter 16 124

  Chapter 17 133

  Chapter 18 146

  Chapter 19 156

  Chapter 20 166

  Chapter 21 179

  Chapter 22 186

  Chapter 23 194

  Chapter 24 202

  Chapter 25 213

  Chapter 26 220

  Chapter 27 228

  Chapter 32 270

  Chapter 1

  Hollywood, California

  September 1992

  David Hogan walked home from his new sales job at Hollywoodland Stereo more stoned than when he had showed up stoned that morning. His boss, Steve Mahmoud, who had hired him two days earlier, must have assumed anyone who wore long, thick, wooly dreads, a scruffy goatee, and looked like Bob Marley’s twin as David did, had to smoke weed. He just came right out and said it around lunchtime.

  “Hey David, I left a half a joint in my car, it’s Indica. You’re welcome to it.”

  “Yeahhhh, heh-heh—don’t mind if I do, thanks!”

  David grinned and raised his eyebrows as Steve handed him the keys to his new 325i parked in the back of the store.

  “It’s in the ash tray. Be careful, man. Use the cologne.”

  David thought his measly salary had just gotten a little better. Now it made sense why Steve, who managed the store for his father, an emigrant from Saudi Arabia, had hired him so casually—he was part of the stoner nation.

  David lit the monstrous joint and inhaled. The potent cannabis crashed right through any tolerance built up with the commercial Mexican weed he regularly smoked. He coughed profusely on the first toke and took one more hit for good measure, which turned out to be almost too much.

  Thoroughly stoned, he sauntered back into the store to do what? Oh yeah, sell TVs, stereos, cameras, and walkmans.

  “You were right about being careful. Damn, what is that stuff?” David asked.

  “I told you man, it’s Indica.”

  They grinned and laughed. David had forgotten how much fun it was to get high with someone else.

  His boss proceeded to give him a sniff test for cannabis odor when two customers walked into the store. They appeared to be tourists, a mother and teenage daughter. David eased into his salesman role and asked if he could help them find something.

  Minutes later he rang up an expensive digital camera that had a good mark-up. He winked at Steve, who was watching him handle the sale. The mother and daughter seemed excited as they left to take a picture of Lucille Ball’s star on the sidewalk right outside the store.

  As David stood on the corner waiting for the light to change on Sunset Boulevard, he thought about his clunker of a car he decided to sell a week earlier. It had sold for parts and saved him from getting evicted. He also thought how his new job might work out despite the low pay.

  Hollywood Boulevard and Cherokee, where he worked, to Santa Monica Boulevard and Cahuenga, where he lived, took less than fifteen minutes to walk, no problem. Stay with the cheaper codeine tabs instead of the Percocet pills, no problem. And stick with the Mexican weed instead of the expensive Colombian, yeah no problem. The extra forty would come in handy next month when his pay bumped up from $5.95 an hour to $6.95.

  A thirty-one-year-old making McDonald’s wages could be a little deflating, but as long as he could afford his ‘medicine’ as he liked to call it, what’s the problem? Yeah, he thought, this job would work out fine.

  He had moved from Philadelphia five years ago to break into the music business, and so far had nothing to show for it but an illegal and costly pain pill addiction.

  David didn’t sing, but he thought he knew how to create good music. One month after he had arrived in L.A., he talked his way into a hard-to-get appointment to play songs for an executive at RCA. The A&R person, Jason Hunter, shook his head as he listened to the unpolished demos.

  “Nah, this won’t cut it either,” Hunter had said, as he shut off the second song midway through the first chorus.

  He added, “I’m looking for something I can take straight to Whitney or Michael. Your stuff’s not ready.”

  He quickly ushered him out of his office. David felt defeated and let that one encounter dash all his hopes. And so he joined a million other musicians, singers, and actors who come to Tinsel Town with big dreams but settle for a 9 to 5.

  Today, five years later, as he approached his apartment still buzzed from the Indica, he had no idea his life was about to change forever.

  After checking his mailbox, David clicked off “Message of Love” by Hendrix on his walkman and unlocked the door to his place. He stood at the doorway a few seconds to see if anyone had broken in. This had happened a week ago, and all they took was a black leather jacket.

  They left behind his ancient 19-inch black and white TV that weighed a ton and an old stereo with knobs missing.

  He plopped down on his worn-out futon sofa bed and reached for his stash of codeine and weed inside the lining of a pillow when the phone rang.

  “Hi, is this David?” a young, perky sounding female asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “David, it’s Nicole Robinson from Philly. How are you?”

  “Nicole, heyyy…what a surprise!”

  “Yeah, I know it must be, out of the blue and everything. My, it’s been, what, five years, ha-ha. How are you?” she asked again.

  “Fine, fine…how are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. Hey, I’ve wanted to reach you, and I finally managed to track down your friend Ivan. He gave me your number and told me to say hi for him.”

  “Yeah, Ivan…yeah,” he said, wondering if somebody died.

  “Listen, David, I have something very important to tell you, but you have to swear on a stack of Bibles you won’t tell where you received this information from,” she said, sounding serious.

  “Oh…well, umm…okay.”

  A long pause followed.

  “My sister, Marie, has a five-year-old daughter named Adrienne…and Adrienne,” she paused again, “is the spitting image of you.”

  There was silence as Nicole seemed to wait for the news to register.

  “What!!!”

  She continued, “Marie used to tell my parents and me she wasn’t sure who the father was. She said it could’ve been you or another student she had a—”

  “Wait a minute Nicole, wait a minute, heh-heh-heh, are you kiddin’ me? C’mon now,” he said, thinking she might start laughing and say “gotcha!”

  “Nooo, David, I wouldn’t kid about something like this,” she said, sounding more serious. “Marie became pregnant when you two were living together on Girard Avenue. Adrienne was born in September of ’87. She’ll be five later this month, and David, she is yours, there’s no doubt in my mind. I have a picture of her I can send you.”

  There was more sobering silence, as David’s cannabis-laced brain tried to take this all in. He knew Nicole, Marie’s only sibling, had close ties with her.

  “Are you still there?” she asked.

  “This is crazy. This is…crazy. I gotta talk to Marie. Is she home now?”

  He hadn’t spoken to Marie in over five years, since the day they broke up.

  “She probably is.
Remember, she doesn’t know I’m calling you with this. But I talked it over yesterday with my parents, and we don’t like the fact that you’ve never been contacted. They don’t like Marie acting so independent and secretive. I don’t know if you knew, she’s about to graduate from Penn Law School.”

  “No, I didn’t know. That’s, uh…great,” David said, remembering Marie had planned it since he had known her.

  “Give me your address and I’ll send the picture of Adrienne. It was taken a year ago, and by the way, she’s adorable.”

  David gave her his address and thought about Marie, who he considered the one that got away. It was the one relationship he wished he hadn’t messed up on, and it was an awful mess. So messy, he had felt compelled to move far away to distance himself from the guilt and shame of it.

  “You know, David, we never knew the real reason why you and Marie split up. She’s told me you never knew she became pregnant…I always found that hard to believe, but now I—”

  “Nicole, this is a complete shock.”

  “Oh my God, David, I can tell,” she paused, “Marie became very depressed when you two broke up. Whenever we, and I’m including my parents, asked her what happened, she’d get a disturbed look on her face and say it didn’t work out, please change the subject.”

  He thought about that.

  “Yeah…well…” He elected to be discreet too. The way it sounded to him, Marie never told her family all the sordid details of what he did. He knew Nicole was fishing for some answers.

  After he hung up, he sat back on his futon and looked around his studio apartment. It was a mess as usual. He got up, straightened some things, and put other things away or in the trash.

  He felt like a different person all of a sudden. He felt older, like he wasn’t a kid anymore. Damn, he had a kid—and not a baby, but a walking-talking five-year-old. Before he answered Nicole’s call, he was just a lonely, single guy who loved to smoke weed and pop pain pills by himself.

  He had to get final confirmation—so he called the number Nicole gave him. He didn’t recognize Marie’s voice when she said hello. It had been so long.

  “Marie?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s David, how are you?”

  He didn’t hear anything but a heavy sigh. It took a few moments for her to break the silence.

  “What do you want?” She sounded like she was talking to an old bill collector who tracked her down.

  He felt nervous, “Do you have…a daughter now?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I can’t say, but do you? Is it…my daughter?”

  “I said who told you that?”

  “Why does that matter, Marie, I just wanna—”

  “Don’t call here anymore.”

  In the next split second, David heard a click and then a dial tone.

  He sat there stunned—realizing she did have his daughter or else would’ve questioned his sanity for calling and asking such a question. He hadn’t doubted Nicole’s honesty, but this sealed the deal. He had a daughter. He waited ten minutes and called Marie again. She answered, this time with a wary sounding hello.

  “Marie, please let’s talk, I—”

  “I said don’t call here again.”

  Click.

  She hung up on another call from him the next day. Then she let her answering machine screen her calls. He told her answering machine he felt sorry for all the pain he caused her in the past and to please call him back. He left his home and work number.

  On another message the next day, he went on the offensive. He had a right to know his daughter, and she had a right to know him, he said. Please don’t be so unforgiving, and so on. Later, she had her number changed. He called and got:

  “The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in use. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”

  He tried again and got the same recording that began with those annoying little whistle notes.

  Chapter 2

  Although Marie Robinson felt like she’d been betrayed, she felt a sense of relief at the same time. Now that her daughter was about to turn five, she was feeling mounting pressure to tell Adrienne about her father. It had been easy ignoring David when he moved to L.A. right after their “shackin up” relationship ended.

  Now her daughter had been telling schoolmates her father was in Desert Storm fighting the bad guys. Where that came from, Marie had no idea. When Adrienne’s teacher approached Marie about it, she could only reply, “Adrienne has a great imagination.”

  There were times she wanted to call David and just tell him, “You fathered my daughter.” How hard would that be? Now, one of her parents, or more likely her younger sister Nicole, had found his number and spilled the beans without her consent.

  Marie assumed the Labor Day cookout a few days earlier at her parents’ prompted the intervention. When Adrienne went inside to watch cartoons, the subject of David came up again, and how he should be informed about his daughter.

  Marie had gone back and forth over the years as to whether she would do this, but she felt comfortable being a single mom. Adrienne was a happy child. If it wasn’t broke, why friggin fix it?

  Her parents and sister felt strongly the other way, and suggested to Marie she was being selfish and not thinking about her daughter’s long term happiness. They worried Adrienne would think it was because of her being born that her father had run away and wouldn’t come back. They feared it might cause self-esteem issues later on. Marie refused to see it their way and became unwilling to talk about it.

  She called her mother in Harrisburg the day after David contacted her.

  “Mom, I received a call from David last night. Did you guys call and tell him about Adrienne?”

  “No, I didn’t, and how are you today, Marie?”

  “Mom, either you or Dad or Nicole called him and told him about my business. You know I’m gonna find out sooner or later.”

  “Like I said, dear, I didn’t, but we all feel it’s the right thing to do for Adrienne’s sake. We can’t come to terms with your decision, or maybe indecision, to keep this whole thing your own personal secret. It’s not right and it’s not fair. We didn’t raise you to treat others in such a cruel way.”

  “How do you know it’s cruel, Mom? Do you think you know everything that goes on in my life?”

  “Only what you tell us, dear. Only what you tell us. When we ask you about him and all you say is, it didn’t work out—that you were two different people and he never abused you, or was a criminal, what does that tell us?”

  Marie clucked her tongue, “Well, anyway, I have my answer now. If it wasn’t you, I know it wasn’t Dad. He wouldn’t go behind my back, so it must’ve been—”

  “Marie, this is also family business. This is about our granddaughter, Nicole’s niece. Please don’t be upset, and I hope you’ll forgive us if we’re going about this the wrong way. You know we love you and Adrienne, and only want the best for both of you, darling.”

  “Well, you have a fine way of showing it. I’ll get over it—I guess— but I don’t have to like what you all did. In fact, I think it really stinks. I gotta go.”

  “Love you, darling.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  Marie paced around her apartment and thought about it. Her mother, a free-lance management consultant, had a good way of justifying what she saw fit. Marie felt she had been treated like a child, although she was twenty-six and about to graduate law school.

  She knew one thing—her mother had done a great job of cooling off her hot temper that she had planned to unload on Nicole. That’s who she had suspected all along had been the real backstabber who called up her ex. Nicole always talked about David like he was Mr. Wonderful. Marie thought: it’s time she knew what David really did.

  Stoned again from the Indica his boss offered, David floated home from work Thursday. A few days ago he never would’ve dre
amed of receiving something like this…

  He took the letter out of his mailbox, along with the familiar postcard stating his phone bill was overdue and service could be cut off next week. He stood there awhile staring at the envelope that had Nicole’s return address on it. He decided to go inside his apartment to open it.

  When he saw the wallet-sized picture of Adrienne, it was like the clouds parted and a choir of angels sang in his ears. Their resemblance astonished him. There she was—the young female version of his face. His prominent nose, full lips, and brown caramel skin tone were on full display.

  Adrienne wore two long, braided pigtails and had the cutest little baby teeth that might be all gone soon. Her four-year-old angelic face had the perfect blend of Marie’s beautiful eyes and her father’s wide smile. He stared at the picture of his daughter for hours.

  The next day, he bought a new wallet with laminated sleeves to put the picture in so it wouldn’t get damaged. He wanted to always have it with him to show his daughter to the few friends he had and to look at while having lunch or waiting in a laundromat.

  The day after that, he had a larger 5x7 copy made and bought a frame to display in his home. He also made a copy he sent to his mom.

  David called his mom, Dorinda, in Philly to tell her about the newest addition to the family. She was speechless for a while, realizing she’d been a grandmother for five years without any opportunities to visit and spoil her granddaughter. Of course she wanted to know more than he would tell her.

  “David, what I don’t understand is why Marie wanted to keep you from knowing about your daughter? What really happened between you two?”

  “Mom, like I told you before, it’s complicated, and I’m not sure all the reasons why,” he lied.

  He knew all the reasons why, but wouldn’t dream of discussing them with her. He had never told anyone except his friend Ivan and a few people who didn’t really know him, curious to get their take.