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Car Wrecks I Have Known

Contributed by Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 25/03/09

It takes a polite but firm question at the bar to find out that he’s in the back room. It only takes a particular kind of look to get the security guy guarding the door to let me by. I guess he remembers me. Or it’s a really particular kind of look.

I take the seat opposite him. It’s so rare that anyone disturbs him back here, he doesn’t even notice me until I’m fully settled. I’m smiling as he looks up, and I’m smiling when his eyes widen.

To his credit, he’s got it under control again almost instantly.

”Serene.” He says, using the name I gave him, greeting me like we had a poker game scheduled or something.

“Mr Jacobs.”

“What can I do for you?” He asks, quietly folding the paper he was reading, and putting it to one side.

He’s probably confident enough not to have a gun on him in here. He’s definitely smart enough not to try and use one on me.

There’s no useful way to answer the question, so I ignore it.

“I’ve had an interesting time with cars in the past, you know.” I say instead.

He says nothing.

“I remember in ’93, back in the UK: I was going too fast on a too slow road, and the car spun out hard. It’s hard to remember when the air-bag engaged, but it was quite a thrill, really. The impact hurt a little, but the other cars I hit came off worse.”

He grunts.

“Air-bags, you see? Air-bags were kind of a revelation for me. I went a bit out of control in the ’90s, after that first time. Probably totalled around ten or eleven cars in ’95 alone, just off the back of adrenaline driving. I mean, I don’t take a lot of care usually, but impact without pain and injury? I wanted some of that.

Course, sometimes it’s hard to get a sense of spec. with a stolen car, so there were times there were I came off that little bit worse – not every car had the bags, and in a hurry you couldn’t always tell. Some hairy old times, I have to tell you. One time, I went through a windscreen and under a VW van. It took seven or eight hours under the knife in casualty before I was a shape that the nurses could look at without freaking out.

But that’s just stupid macho driving, isn’t it? It’s a bit embarassing to talk about it now, really… this was before I went professional, and my life required more… finesse.”

He is staring at a point on my face. It’s hard to say whether that’s nerves, or just that there’s something on my face. Did I shave this morning, I wonder? Hm. It’s probably actually nerves. I mean, he knows why I’m here.

“Over the years, I’ve lived through, what, four… maybe five drive-by shootings? I don’t know if you can count those, but I was in cars at the time, so I guess you can. All here in the US, of course.

What is it with this country, murder and cars? Aside from that car-bomb in Ireland, every time someone’s tried to off me either in a car or with a car, it’s been here. I mean, I know it’s a big country and all, and I shouldn’t judge the whole place by a few cities, but seriously!

So, anyway, what, shootings, crashes… and a couple of times I’ve been run down, but one of those was Italy, and it may not have been deliberate.

Oh, and then of course there’s the movie-villain telegraphed killings. The chloroform-and-leave-in-peril gambit. You’d be surprised at how many people try that on.

Well, maybe you wouldn’t.

Some nice touches there, by the way. Not sure how much you leave to the initiative of your guys, but most people wouldn’t bother with the bullets, restraints, trunk and river dump combo, but your guys are thorough.”

His expression doesn’t change, but he quickly move to stand up. I raise my index finger. I’m not sure what the signal is supposed to mean, but Colombo used to do it all the time, and it seems to work. He sits back down sharp.

“That’s right,” I say, “stay calm. Don’t worry, nothing really very bad is going to happen, here. I’m just going to wait until you open up that laptop, and I get paid for the work I did for you. I’m not in the habit of disposing of paying customers. This little chat is just to remind you that it’s polite to pay for services rendered.”

I sit and wait while he taps at the keyboard. I’ll make sure, of course, but the furtive glances he keeps flashing at me tell me that he’s unlikely to try and rip me off – or kill me – again. At least till his sphincter relaxes.

He’s looking at that same spot on my face. I reach up to it, and give an exploratory rub. A large dark fleck falls away and lands in front of me on the table, and I wonder if maybe I should have showered before I came. I brush a few similar flecks from the collar of my shirt. They all land in a small pile on the table, which I scoop onto the floor with the back of my hand.

After not very long, he closes the laptop, and pushes it to one side. Seconds later my cellphone buzzes with a text from my accountant, confirming the transaction.

He says nothing as I stand to go. At the door I think of something and turn back to him, and this time he doesn’t have the composure to hide his fear.

“You know,” I say, “the first time I died in a car was my first time full-stop. Back then, the cars weren’t so fast, but if you dropped one down a hillside, it’d crumple up around you quicker than a pocketed fifty on a street corner.

I did it to myself, mind. Kind of expected it to be final, but it didn’t take. And here we are today…”

I let that sit in the air, and leave him to it.