pursuers, and every time he switched streets he gained a few yards that
the Caddy could not entirely regain on the next stretch of straightaway.
By the time he had zigzagged to within a block of Palm Canyon Drive, the
main drag, the Caddy was more than a block and a half behind and losing
ground, and he was finally confident that he would shake the bastards,
whoever they were -and that was when he saw the police car.
It was parked at the front of a line of curbed cars, at the corner of
Palm Canyon, a block away, and the cop must have seen him coming in the
rearview mirror, coming like a bat out of hell, because the flashing red
and blue beacons on the roof of the cruiser came on, bright and
startling, ahead on the right.
“Hallelujah!” Ben said.
“No,” Rachael said from her awkward seat in the open storage space
behind him, shouting though her mouth was nearly at his ear. “No, you
can’t go to the cops! We’re dead if you go to the cops.”
Nevertheless, as he rocketed toward the cruiser, Ben started to brake
because, damn it’ she’d never told him why they couldn’t rely on the
police for protection, and he was not a man who believed in taking the
law into his own hands, and surely the guys in the Cadillac would back
off fast if the cops came into it.
But Rachael shouted, “No! Benny, for Christ’s sake, trust me, why don’t
you? We’re dead if you stop. They’ll blow our brains out, sure as
hell.”
Being accused of not trusting her-that hurt, stung.
He trusted her, by God, trusted her implicitly because he loved her.
He didn’t understand her worth shit, not tonight he didn’t, but he did
trust her, and it was like a knife twisting in his heart to hear that
note of disappointment and accusation in her voice. He took his foot
off the brake and put it back on the accelerator, swept right past the
black-and-white so fast that the light from its swiveling emergency
beacons flashed through the Mercedes only once and then were behind.
When he’d glanced over, he’d seen two uniformed officers looking
astonished. He figured they’d wait for the Caddy and then give chase to
both cars, which would be fine, just fine, because the guys in the Caddy
couldn’t catch up with him and blow his brains out if they had the
police on their tail.
But to Ben’s surprise and dismay, the cops pulled out right after him,
siren screaming. Maybe they had been so shocked by the sight of the
Mercedes coming at them like a jet that they hadn’t noticed the Cadillac
farther back. Or maybe they’d seen the Caddy but had been so startled
by the Mercedes that they hadn’t realized the second car was approaching
at almost the same high speed. Whatever their reasoning, they shot away
from the curb and fell in behind him as he hung a right onto Palm Canyon
Drive.
Ben made that turn with the reckless aplomb of a stunt driver who knows
that his roll bars and special stabilizers and heavy duty hydraulic
shock absorbers and other sophisticated equipment remove most of the
danger from such risky maneuvers-except he didn’t have roll bars and
special stabilizers. He realized he’d miscalculated and was about to
turn Rachael and Sarah and himself into canned meat, three lumps of
imitation Spam encased in expensive German steel, Jesus, and the car
tilted onto two tires, he smelled smoking rubber, it seemed an hour they
teetered on edge, but by the grace of God and the brilliance of the Benz
designers they came down again onto all fours with a jolt and crash
that, by virtue of another miracle, did not blow out any tires, though
Rachael hit her head on the ceiling and let out her breath in a whoosh
that he felt on the back of his neck.
He saw the old man in the yellow Banlon shirt and the cocker spaniel
even before the car stopped bouncing on its springs. They had been
crossing the street in the middle of the block when he had come around