the open storage space behind the two bucket seats and endure a bit of
squeezing. Benny was too big to fit, so Rachael got behind the seats,
and he took the wheel for the trip to the hospital.
As they pulled out of the driveway, a car turned the corner, headlights
washing over them, and when they entered the street, the other car
suddenly surged forward, fast, coming straight at them.
Rachael’s heart stuttered, and she said, “Oh, hell, it’s them!”
The oncoming car angled across the narrow street, intending to block it.
Benny wasted no time asking questions, immediately changed directions,
pulling hard on the wheel, putting the other car behind them. He
tramped the accelerator, tires squealed, the Mercedes leaped forward
with dependable quickness, racing past the low dark houses.
Ahead, the street ended in a cross street, forcing them to turn either
left or right, so Benny had to slow down, and Rachael l6wered her head
and peered through the rear window against which she was crammed, and
she saw that the other car-a Cadillac of some kind, maybe a Seville-was
following close, very close, closer.
Benny took the corner wide, at a frightening slant, and Rachael would
have been thrown by the sudden force of the turn if she hadn’t been
wedged tightly in the storage space behind the seats. There was nowhere
for her to be thrown to, and she didn’t even have to hold on to
anything, but she did hold on to the back of Sarah Kiel’s seat because
she felt as if the world were about to fall out from under her, and she
thought, God, please, don t let the car roil over.
The Mercedes didn’t roll, hugged the road beautifully, came out into a
straight stretch of residential street, and accelerated. But behind
them, the Cadillac almost went over on its side, and the driver
overcompensated, which made the Caddy swing so dangerously wide that it
sideswiped a Corvette parked at the curb. Sparks showered into the air,
cascaded along the pavement. The Caddy lurched away from the impact and
looked like it would veer across the street and into the cars along the
other curb, but then it recovered. It had lost some ground, but it came
after them again, its driver undaunted.
Benny whipped the little 560 SL into another turn, around another
corner, holding it tighter this time, then stood on the accelerator for
a block and a half, so it seemed as if they were in a rocket ship
instead of an automobile. Just when Rachael felt herself pressed back
with a force of maybe 4.5 Gs, just when it seemed they would break the
chains of gravity and explode straight into orbit, Benny manipulated the
brakes with all the style of a great concert pianist executing
“Moonlight Sonata,” and as he came up on another stop sign with no
intention of obeying it, he spun the wheel as hard as he dared, so from
behind it must have looked as if the Mercedes had just popped off that
street onto the street that intersected from the left.
He was as expert at evasive driving as he had proved to be at
hand-to-hand combat, and Rachael wanted to say, Who the hell are you,
anyway, not just a placid real-estate salesman with a love of trains and
swing music, damned (f you are, but she didn’t say anything because she
was afraid she would distract him, and if she distracted him at this
speed, they would inevitably rnllr worseand be killed for sure.
Ben knew that the 560 SL could easily win a speed contest with the
Cadillac out on the open roads, but it was a different story on streets
like these, which were narrow and occasionally bisected by speed bumps
to prevent drag racing. Besides, there were traffic lights as they drew
nearer the center of town, and even at this dead hour of the morning he
had to slow for those main intersections, at least a little, or risk
plowing broadside into a rare specimen of crosstown traffic.
Fortunately, the Mercedes cornered about a thousand times better than
the Cadillac, so he didn’t have to slow down nearly as much as his