the corner like a fugitive from a demolition derby. He was bearing down
on them at a frightening speed, and they were frozen in surprise and
fear, both dog and man, heads up, eyes wide. The guy looked ninety, and
the dog seemed decrepit, too, so it didn’t make sense for them to be out
on the street at nearly two o’clock in the morning.
They ought to have been home in bed, occupied with dreams of fire
hydrants and well-fitted false teeth, but here they were.
“Benny!” Rachael shouted.
“I see, I see!”
He had no hope of stopping in time, so he not only jumped on the brakes
but turned across Palm Canyon, a combination of forces that sent the
Mercedes into a full spin combined with a slide, so they went around a
full hundred and eighty degrees and wound up against the far curb. By
the flme he peeled rubber, roared back across the street, and was headed
north again, the old man and the cocker had finally tottered for the
safety of the sidewalk-and the police cruiser was no more than ten yards
behind him.
In the mirror, he could see that the Caddy had also turned the corner
and was still giving chase, undeterred by the presence of the police.
Crazily the Caddy pulled out around the black-and-white, trying to pass
it.
“They’re lunatics,” Ben said.
“Worse,” Rachael said. “Far worse.”
In the passenger seat’ Sarah Kiel was making urgent noises, but she did
not appear to be frightened by the current danger. Instead, it seemed
as if the violence of the chase had stirred the sediment of memory,
recalling for her the other-and worse-violence that she had endured
earlier in the night.
Picking up speed as he headed north on Palm Canyon, Ben glanced again at
the mirror and saw that the Cadillac had pulled alongside the police
cruiser. They appeared to be drag racing back there, just a couple of
carloads of guys out for some fun. It was… well, it was downright
silly was what it was. Then suddenly it wasn’t silly at all because the
intentions of the men in the Caddy became horribly clear with the
repeated winking of muzzle flashes and the tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of
automatic weapons fire.
They had opened up on the cops with a submachine gun, as if this weren’t
Palm Springs but Chicago in the Roaring Twenties.
“They shot the cops!” he said, as astonished as he had ever been in his
life.
The black-and-white went out of control, jumped the curb, crossed the
sidewalk, and rammed through the plate-glass window of an elegant
boutique, but still a guy in the back seat of the Cadillac continued to
lean out the window, spraying bullets back at the cruiser until it was
out of range.
In the seat beside Ben, Sarah said, “Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,” and she
twitched and spasmed as if someone were raining blows on her. She
seemed to be reliving the beating she had taken, oblivious of the
immediate danger.
“Benny, you’re slowing down,” Rachael said urgently.
Overcome by shock, he had relaxed his foot on the accelerator.
The Cadillac was closing on them as hungrily as any shark had ever
closed on any swimmer.
Ben tried to press the gas pedal through the floorboards, and the
Mercedes reacted as if it were a cat that had just been kicked in the
butt. They exploded up Palm Canyon Drive, which was relatively straight
for a long way, so he could even put some distance between them and the
Cadillac before he made any turns. And he did make turns, one after the
other, off into the west side of town now, up into the hills, back down,
working steadily south, through older residential streets where trees
arched overhead to form a tunnel, then through newer neighborhoods where
the trees were small and the shrubbery too sparse to conceal the reality
of the desert on which the town had been built. With every corner he
rounded, he widened the gap between them and the killers in the
Cadillac.
Stunned, Ben said, “They wasted two cops just because the poor bastards
got in the way.